The United States is scrambling to hire hospitality staff ahead of the 2026 World Cup. Hotels, restaurants, and catering firms are struggling to find warm bodies to serve the expected hordes of football fans. And who has come riding to the rescue?
British hospitality firms, naturally, eager to export their expertise and, no doubt, their overpriced gastropub fare. The irony is delicious. While America frantically builds its service industry from scratch, Britain is busy exporting its own workforce, a testament to our global reputation for service.
But let us not pretend this is a triumph of British enterprise. It is rather a symptom of a deeper rot: our own hospitality sector is a bloated, inefficient mess, and now we are foisting it on the unsuspecting Americans. The World Cup is a microcosm of the decline of the West.
America, the colossus of commerce, cannot even staff its own hotels for a football tournament. Britain, the once-proud industrial titan, now peddles waiters and bartenders abroad. We are living in the twilight of the empires, where the great powers have been reduced to servicing each other's leisure.
The Romans would have understood. They too saw their glory fade into a service economy, until the barbarians arrived. As I watch the scramble for hospitality staff, I cannot help but think: the barbarians are already at the gate, and they are carrying a CV.
