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Brexit-hit, energy-starved Britain leads the way as world enters an ‘omnishambles’ era
- New British Prime Minister Liz Truss inherits a country reeling from high energy prices, inflation, a weakening pound, Brexit’s effects and more
- Britain is not alone, though, as Europe, Russia, the US and China are all struggling with various issues at a time when cooperation is lacking
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David Dodwell is a journalist focused on Hong Kong and China since the 1970s.
The British seem to have a word for it: “omnishambles” – a string of blunders and miscalculations that lead to comprehensive mismanagement. When new British Prime Minister Liz Truss opens the box on her Downing Street desk marked “The State of the Nation” this week, omnishambles is likely to be embossed on it.
One might have passing sympathy for Truss, not least because she bears little responsibility for the “omnishambles” that greets her. But the sobering reality is that Britain is not alone in its mess.
Mix these omnishambles with an energy crisis, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, devastatingly damaging weather in many parts of the world, rampant inflation, a looming global recession and a collapse in multilateral cooperation, and the scene is set for bad things to happen worldwide. As Martin Wolf warned in the Financial Times in June, “We are now moving into a new era of world disorder.”
Looking beyond the UK’s omnishambles, our own Hong Kong omnishambles seems positively modest, no matter how much morale-sapping harm it has inflicted on our hermit economy.
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