Let’s just say the quiet part out loud: the UK didn’t get hijacked by “patriots.” It got hijacked by failures — and by the very smart, very cynical people who realised how easy those failures are to manipulate.
For decades, Britain has produced a growing population of people who never did the reading, never pursued the learning, never developed useful skills, never matured emotionally, and rarely took meaningful responsibility for the direction of their own lives. Then they reached adulthood angry that the world wasn’t built around their choices.
They took the easiest path available, coasted where they could, and then expected the country to change so they would never have to confront feelings of inadequacy, disappointment or failure.
Then came the political strategists.
They looked at this enormous pool of angry, insecure and resentful people and recognised an opportunity.
What if we simply told them they were right?
What if we told them that their problems weren’t the result of their own decisions? What if we gave them someone else to blame? What if we convinced them that everyone who challenged their worldview was the real enemy?
The calculation was simple: tell people that they are the victims, tell them that everyone else is responsible for their problems, and they will become fiercely loyal to whoever delivers that message.
And that is precisely what happened.
Weaponising Weakness
This movement didn’t rise because its followers suddenly became powerful.
It rose because someone discovered how to weaponise their weaknesses.
Tell the failures that they are actually the real British patriots.
Tell the people who never achieved what they wanted that the successful secretly envy them.
Tell those who never developed the confidence to compete that their lack of success is someone else’s fault.
Tell people who never learned to grow up that maturity is “woke.”
And suddenly, you have an army.
Not necessarily an army of thinkers, leaders or contributors, but an army of people emotionally invested in a story that protects them from confronting themselves.
The most effective political movements have always understood that people don’t necessarily need complicated answers. Sometimes they simply need an explanation that makes them feel better.
And resentment is one of the easiest emotions to organise.
The Politics of Blame
The formula is remarkably straightforward.
You take someone’s economic anxiety and blame immigrants.
You take their distrust of institutions and blame teachers, scientists or universities.
You take social change they don’t understand and blame cities, books or “the establishment.”
You take their discomfort with people who are different and turn minorities into political targets.
And, most importantly, you make sure the individual never has to look inward.
It is always someone else.
Someone else’s fault.
Someone else’s responsibility.
Someone else’s agenda.
The message becomes:
None of this is your fault. You are fine. You are the victim. The problem is them.
And that message can be extraordinarily powerful.
Because accountability is difficult.
Self-reflection is uncomfortable.
Admitting that some of our problems are consequences of our own decisions is painful.
Being told that we are blameless, however, feels wonderful.
They Don’t Need Solutions. They Need Soothing.
This is where the cynicism becomes particularly disturbing.
The people at the top of these movements often understand their supporters far better than the supporters understand themselves.
They don’t necessarily respect them.
They don’t necessarily admire them.
They don’t necessarily believe the things they tell them to believe.
They understand them.
And they know how to use them.
Because a population demanding genuine solutions can become difficult to control.
A population demanding validation is much easier.
People who want better schools, better infrastructure, stronger institutions, higher productivity and functioning public services require politicians to actually deliver.
People who simply want someone to blame require something much cheaper:
An enemy.
Give them an enemy to hate.
Give them a fantasy to believe in.
Give them a story in which they are the heroes.
And they may give you almost anything in return.
The Comfort of Being the Victim
There is a particular comfort in discovering that you are not responsible for your circumstances.
If your career failed, it wasn’t your decisions.
If your relationships failed, it wasn’t your behaviour.
If your education didn’t work out, it wasn’t your lack of effort.
If society changed in ways you don’t understand, it wasn’t because the world moved on without you.
It was someone else.
The immigrants.
The academics.
The teachers.
The politicians.
The cities.
The “elites.”
Anyone but you.
That is an extraordinarily seductive political message because it removes the burden of personal responsibility.
You no longer have to improve.
You only have to be angry.
And anger, unlike competence, requires no qualifications.
A Movement Built on Fragility
The result is a political culture that can end up celebrating precisely the characteristics it once claimed to oppose.
Resentment becomes strength.
Ignorance becomes independence.
Insecurity becomes authenticity.
Hostility becomes patriotism.
And accountability becomes betrayal.
The movement is presented as a revolt by ordinary people against the powerful. Yet its greatest strength can come from convincing ordinary people that they have no agency except through anger.
That is not empowerment.
It is dependency.
The followers become dependent on the story, dependent on the outrage and dependent on the next person who tells them that their problems are somebody else’s fault.
The political entrepreneur simply has to keep supplying the villains.
The Real Problem
Britain does not have a “patriot problem.”
Patriotism itself isn’t the problem.
The deeper problem is a political ecosystem in which failure, insecurity and resentment can be packaged, monetised and converted into political power.
The people exploiting that ecosystem understand something important: you don’t necessarily need to make people’s lives better to win their loyalty.
Sometimes you only need to make them feel better about why their lives aren’t better.
That is the political ATM.
And the currency is resentment.
It would be tragic if it weren’t so predictable.
Because the real danger isn’t that angry people have discovered politics.
The danger is that sophisticated political operators have discovered how profitable anger can be — particularly when it is directed everywhere except at the people who are actually selling it.
Thank you to the person who wrote this anonymously. You have smashed it.
