A few things I’ve been thinking about this week. The forty-second post of a series.

A great post on the LRB blog this week by Liam Shaw makes the fundamental point that “prescribing a course of antibiotics shouldn’t be an isolated consumer transaction; rather, treatment should be part of an integrated system with continuity of care”.

On one of its front pages this week, alongside a headline reporting that “Truss was a disastrous dalliance who served only to remind us what a real leader looks like,” the Daily Mail claimed to offer “unrivalled reports and analysis.”

Only 79 days previously, one of their headlines informed the readership that “Liz has the boldness, vision and strength of conviction to build on what Boris began.”

Only 45 days previously, their banner headline celebrating Liz Truss’s selection by the Tory membership screamed, “cometh the hour, cometh the woman.”

Only 27 days ago, their front page proclaimed the disastrous mini-budget to be “a true Tory budget” offering the “biggest boost for 50 years.”

There’s only one way in which these reports and analyses are unrivalled: their distance from reality.

“The possible return of this unscrupulous leader who damaged the moral credibility of the Conservative Party is causing a lot of concern,” says Cécile Ducourtieux in Le Monde, with understatement.

And this editorial is stinging:

Still traumatized by the shock of Brexit and the never-ending negotiations and extreme division it brought about, the UK is struggling to point to its exit from the EU as the trigger for the downgrading and destabilization impacting the country. Growth and investments are at half speed, with exports slowed, and there is the renewed risk of secession by Scotland and Northern Ireland. For a while, Covid masked the damage of Brexit, which has become the elephant in the room that few people, even those in the opposition, want to see. From this perspective, Ms. Truss’s time in office, which claimed to “take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit,” looks like a terrible crash test.

Learning the lessons will be long and painful. But it is hard to see how the UK can return to stability and prosperity without escaping from the denial and silence about the consequences of a decision that has isolated it and cut it off from neighbors and natural partners on the continent.

Eshe Nelson in the New York Times:

Since Brexit, the nation has had more barriers with its largest trading partner, the European Union, business investment has been lackluster and companies have lost easy access to a large pool of workers. The National Health Service is overburdened, and the immense backlog of patients needing care is keeping many of them out of work.

In addition, like many nations, Britain is enduring the highest pace of inflation since the 1980s, taking the momentum out of consumer spending and economic growth.

While Britain shares some economic problems with other advanced economies, its outlook for inflation is particularly painful. Consumer prices in the country rose 10.1 percent in September from a year earlier. with the annual inflation rate returning to its fastest pace since 1982.

Tom McTague in The Atlantic, even before this week’s events:

For the first time in my adult life, there is a genuine sense of decay in Britain–a realization that something has been lost that will be difficult to recover, something more profound than pounds and pence, political personalities, or even prime ministers. Over the past three weeks, the U.K. has been gripped by a crisis of crushing stupidity, one that has gone beyond all the turmoil of Brexit, Boris, even the great bank bailouts of 2007, and touched that most precious of things: core national credibility.

None of this is fixed by changing Prime Minister. It’s hard to imagine our country side-stepping some kind of fundamental constitutional reform after this level of destruction, probably beginning with the break-up of the nation.

Wendy and I have been visiting someone in Berwick-upon-Tweed this week, in only our second visit to the town, despite speeding through on the train many times. We particularly enjoyed a stroll around the town walls, only a few weeks after I did the same in York. We also popped to Bamburgh on the way back, though the world-renowned majesty of the Northumberland coast was enveloped in fog, so really we could have been anywhere.