Amid ‘Civil War’ Discourse, Three-Quarters of Britons Worried About ‘Political Violence’

Vast majority of Britons believe the country is “broken” and in “decline” in polling that comes amid a broader discussion on whether Western nations including the United Kingdom are showing signs of having achieved a pre-“civil war” state.

Some 76 per cent of the British public “are worried about political violence”, polling by Merlin Strategy for campaign group Looking For Growth (LFG) and published by The Sun on Sundaystates. The polling prompted a prominent expert on civil wars who has previously warned about the danger to Western nations like the United Kingdom to observe the government faces simultaneous crises which, it was implied, they were not equal to taming.

As for why so many fear outbreaks of political violence, the report states 68 per cent say they believe the country is in “decline” and 65 per cent say the country is already “broken”. The distribution of this fatalistic belief is relatively evenly distributed across political outlook.

While 81 per cent of Reform UK party backers say the country is broken, their clearest ideological opponents the left-wing Labour Party sees a full half of their supporters say the same. The figures will be a matter of concern for the UK’s Labour-controlled government, if for no other reason than their own voters holding such pessimistic views.

LFG stated that, based on the polling, “radical” change is needed. They predicted: “If bold action isn’t taken by politicians now, our nation faces a very dark future”.

The Sun on Sunday cited the remarks of Dr Lawrence Newport, LFG co-founder, who remarked: “Voters are not just feeling crushed economically, they are now fearful that political violence could ensue if the Government does not reverse the country’s decline. When a system stops delivering and people stop believing, things break. That’s where we are now.”

The astonishing polling comes as the possibility for systemic failure and social collapse to trigger protracted violence has suddenly this year become a subject for speculation and debate, even if it hasn’t yet broken through into the wider public sphere.

As reported, King’s College London War Studies Professor David Betz kick-started this discourse with a series of articles and podcast appearances expressing the view he said he reached through comparing the conditions of Western states to the existing expert literature on the causes of civil war. According to his view many high-migration Western states are already in a pre-civil war state and there is now no “political offramp” from the path to violence because “already past the tipping point” and “there isn’t anything they can do, it’s baked in. We’re already past the tipping point”.

Responding specifically to the LFG study, Betz reached back to his point that it appeared there were no “normal politics” routes left available to prevent violence in challenging their assertion that all was needed now is “bold action”. He said: “It’s not just that the government has to ‘reverse…decline’ somehow, while at the same time owning up to what looks like a longstanding rapes for votes scheme, but handle the next propaganda of the deed event—all at the same time.”

Professor Betz’s caustic reference to the “rapes for votes scheme” comes as the UK government finally relented on agreeing to a full national inquiry with legal powers into the decades-long scandal of the industrial-scale child rape-for-profit of young white girls by predominantly Pakistani-heritage gangs.

Labelled “Britain’s Chernobyl”, if the inquiry does indeed find there is evidence behind long-made assertions that local government and even the police were involved in covering up the grooming and abuse of children, or that politicians aided the cover up in return for bloc-votes, Britain’s state could suffer a massive legitimacy shock.