A reflection on how Britain’s independent schools and social hierarchies mirror one another—each a compartment where people learn the codes of belonging that keep them exactly where they are.
Once the British working class carried an unspoken code of loyalty, duty, and honour — a moral architecture that gave meaning to lives built on hard labour. Today, that structure has collapsed. What remains is not liberation but loss: a generation cut adrift from purpose, belonging, and hope.
For three centuries France and Britain have rebelled against religious authority, from Voltaire’s écrasez l’infâme to Nietzsche’s death of God and the modern satire of Private Eye and Le Canard enchaîné. Yet rebellion, once a weapon of liberation, has hardened into reflex. The challenge today is not to keep mocking but to recover conviction—before the state learns to silence even our laughter.
It is a paradox that in Britain, after thirteen years of compulsory schooling, many young people emerge without a secure grasp of either English grammar or basic arithmetic, while at the same time official figures tell us that one in five schoolchildren suffers from a “probable mental disorder.” Adults fare little better: rates of anxiety, depression, and mixed emotional disorders are climbing steadily, particularly in the working class.