While the continent burns, literally, Britain stands aloof and sensible. The news that 1,300 souls have been lost in a European inferno should shock us, but instead it confirms what many of us have long suspected: the Continent is in a state of terminal decadence, a modern Rome fiddling while its provinces burn. But let us not indulge in schadenfreude too quickly; this tragedy is a mirror held up to our own precarious existence.
Consider the facts. A conflagration of such magnitude, claiming over a thousand lives, is not merely a natural disaster. It is a political and social failure of the first order. The European Union, that great bureaucratic leviathan, has proven itself incapable of preventing such catastrophes, let alone responding with efficiency. Its member states, fractured by squabbling over everything from migration to fiscal policy, have allowed their infrastructure to crumble, their emergency services to atrophy, and their citizens to perish in a blaze that could have been contained with proper foresight.
But what of Britain? We, with our cool head, our island mentality, our stubborn insistence on doing things differently, have escaped the worst. Our Brexit, so reviled by the chattering classes, now looks like a prescient retreat from a sinking ship. We have not been forced to bail out feckless southern economies; we have not opened our borders to a flood of desperate migrants; we have not subcontracted our sovereignty to a remote and unaccountable bureaucracy. Instead, we have maintained our own standards, our own resilience.
Yet let us not be complacent. The intellectual decadence that has gripped Europe is a virus, and viruses travel. Already, our own elite classes sneer at national identity, at tradition, at the very idea of a cohesive society. They would have us believe that the inferno is an aberration, a one-off, when in truth it is a symptom of a deeper malaise. The worship of diversity over unity, of globalism over localism, of emotion over reason: these are the tinder that fuels such fires.
We must learn from this tragedy. Not to gloat, but to fortify. We need to invest in our own fire brigades, our own emergency services, our own community bonds. We need to reject the siren calls of supranational governance and reaffirm the nation state as the only viable vessel for democracy and security. And we must remember, as we offer our condolences and perhaps some aid, that the best way to prevent such horrors is to remain apart, to cultivate our own garden, and to keep our cool head while others lose theirs.
In the end, the inferno is not just a European tragedy. It is a warning. A warning that the path of rootless cosmopolitanism, of bureaucratic centralisation, of moral relativism, leads to ashes. Britain, for now, has averted the flames. But we must ensure we do not import the ideas that kindled them.
