Britain Is in the Midst of One Long, Hot, Nervous Summer

There is an ominous sense in the air in Britain — a sense that the country is headed toward the rocks and that the captain has no idea how to steer the ship. This feeling is vague — hardly the stuff of graphs or numbers — but vague feelings can sometimes tell us more about the future than the hardest economic statistics.

The two biggest rocks on the horizon are labeled debt crisis and civil unrest. Blood-curdling warnings from the right are par for the course. Andrew Neil warns in the Daily Mail that “broke Britain is on the edge of financial disaster … I’m scared for what’s to come.” But equally dire warnings are coming from the left — and even from the very heart of government. Gary Smith, the general secretary of the GMB union, notes that “our finances are precarious … this could unravel very quickly.” Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has told her boss that Britain could face a repeat of last year’s summer riots unless “the government shows it can address people’s concerns.” Seven in 10 Britons think that it’s likely the country will experience race riots in the future, according to a poll for The Economist.