Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Tyler Brûlé the editor of Monocle a magazine of euro-elite lifestyle chanced his wrist at an underesearched trade against Britain after having had a bad Heathrow day (and we all know what that's like). You can see it in today's IHT. It strikes me that this is how Brown's efforts at creating a tradition of Britishness are going to be treated by smart plutocrats.
Citizens and residents who do pluck up the courage to return from their summer holidays might notice that the country's image-makers have been busy with the paintbrush. In case there was some doubt on the part of passengers before, big bold signs have been posted in the immigration area of airports letting all arrivals know that they're about to cross the British border. It's hard to tell whether the border sign, looming high above the immigration officers' desks at Heathrow's terminal one, is a warning, a threat or a misleading bit of branding. Most people shuffling along with passports in hand might think they're arriving or returning home to a place called the United Kingdom - the reality is that sometime over the summer it officially became the Unraveled Kingdom.
There were no formal announcements about this rebranding in the national press - just a rapid, sustained set of stories that suggested the transformation was complete. First there was a call by Prime Minister Gordon Brown for more people to rally around the Union Jack and raise it from every rooftop - a glaring sign that a nation is coming undone if ever there was one. At the same time one part of the consortium running the London Underground caved in on itself. Next came an announcement that all departments responsible for frontier controls would come under one unified banner - complete with uniforms. This was followed by some of the worst flooding in recent history and a very public display of incompetence when the government was unable to get enough fresh water to the displaced in stranded areas.
Off the front pages, ambassadors in London were suggesting that deadlines for the 2012 Olympics were under threat due to severe labor shortages in the construction sector. Over in Lausanne, Switzerland, more than a few eyebrows were being raised at the International Olympic Committee's headquarters as Britain's crumbling transport infrastructure became a lead story in the closing days of July. Indeed, just as most of Britain and southern Europe was heading off on holiday, Heathrow had become the ugly poster child for all that was wrong with the country - it's underfunded, poorly managed, arrogant, badly designed, outdated, greedy and "not my fault, mate."
He then compares it to the start of New Labour, "A decade ago a bit of slick sloganeering in the form of "Cool Britannia" could gloss over all kinds of shortcomings and capture the imagination of editors and investors alike". Even Demos and Mark Leonard at their finest would be hard put to claim that much of a success! Finally, comes the pitch. But would you give Monocle the contract? "This time around, public relations won't win the day. The Unraveled Kingdom needs to pick up its needles and start stitching together disenfranchised communities, battered transport hubs, worn down rail links and forgotten corners of the country. At the same time it needs to breed a culture of excellence that will create benchmark businesses and public institutions, and move a marker that's currently stuck on mediocre".
