A mere 75% of first class mail arriving on time. This is not a statistic. It is a national scandal. The Royal Mail, once the envy of the world, now limps along like a Victorian workhouse orphan: underfed, overworked, and utterly incapable of meeting the most basic demands of a modern economy. The defenders of this slow-motion collapse will bleat about underfunding, about the unfairness of competition, about the sacred duty of a public service. But let us dispense with these sentimental follies. The Royal Mail’s decline is not a failure of resources. It is a failure of culture. A failure of incentives. A failure of the very principle of state-run enterprise.
Consider the historical arc. In the age of Victoria, when Britain bestrode the world like a colossus, the Royal Mail was a marvel of efficiency and innovation. It pioneered the penny post. It delivered to the furthest reaches of empire with unerring accuracy. It was, in short, a symbol of national competence. Today, it cannot reliably get a birthday card from London to Liverpool in under a week. This is not merely inefficiency. This is a metaphor for the broader decay of British institutional life. We have become a nation that tolerates mediocrity, that makes excuses for failure, that retreats into a cocoon of state-sponsored lethargy.
The solution is obvious. Privatisation. But not the half-hearted, regulatory-encrusted privatisation of the past. I am talking about a clean break: sell the whole mess to a private operator with a binding performance contract. Let the market work its magic. Competition will breed efficiency. Profit incentives will drive innovation. And if the new owner fails to deliver? Then they fail, and someone else takes their place. That is how progress is made. That is how Rome avoided collapse for centuries: by allowing the dynamism of private enterprise to course through its veins. Instead, we have chosen the path of the late empire: bureaucratic stagnation, declining standards, and a populace that grumbles but does nothing.
Of course, the howls of protest will be loud. The unions will rage. The Labour Party will wring its hands about the loss of a ‘public asset’. But ask yourself: what good is a public asset that no longer serves the public? The Royal Mail is a relic, a museum piece kept alive by taxpayer subsidy and sentimental attachment. It is time to admit that the world has moved on. Email has killed the letter. Amazon has killed the parcel monopoly. The Royal Mail cannot be saved by tinkering with targets and pouring in more cash. It needs to be fundamentally rethought.
The real scandal is not that 75% of first class mail is on time. The real scandal is that we accept this as normal. We have become a nation of declinists, shuffling towards the exit of history with a shrug and a cup of tea. The Victorians would be aghast. The Romans would smirk. It is time to act. Privatise. Reform. Or continue to wallow in the comfortable mediocrity of a second-rate power.
