Systems Feedback Loops

Britain Doesn’t Hate Fear.
It Hates the Truth That Requires Action.

Britain consumes fear every day. But when a warning implicates our economy, consumption and political choices, fear suddenly becomes “doom and gloom.” That is not optimism. It is avoidance.

Essay Climate Political psychology 10–12 min read

Every day, I find Britain a little more fascinating.

Not necessarily in a good way.

We are now ten years on from the Brexit referendum. Ten years since Britain decided that expertise was elitist, complexity was suspicious and decades of international cooperation could be replaced by something called “common sense.”

And through almost every meaningful measure—trade, productivity, investment, living standards, political stability and our influence abroad—we are worse off than we were promised we would be.

The Office for Budget Responsibility still estimates that Brexit will leave Britain’s long-term productivity around 4% lower than it would have been inside the European Union, with UK imports and exports approximately 15% lower in the long run. That is not Project Fear. It is the assessment of Britain’s own independent fiscal watchdog.

Yet if you dare to tune into LBC, you will hear Bonkers Britain presented in miniature.

And I am not talking about Katie Hopkins-style bonkers. Katie Hopkins is an act. The outrage is the product. She understands what she is doing, understands the audience and understands how provocation turns into attention and money.

This is something else.

These are ordinary members of the public ringing a national radio station, discussing extraordinarily complicated subjects—international trade, migration, economics, energy and climate science—and confidently announcing that the answer is simply “common sense.”

No evidence. No specialist knowledge. No awareness of how much they may not know.

Just common sense.

Common Sense Is Not Evidence

“Common sense” has become one of the most powerful phrases in British politics because it places an opinion beyond examination.

What it claims to mean

I have studied the evidence and reached this conclusion.

What it often means

This feels true because it agrees with something I already believe.

Brexit was built on it.

We did not need economists explaining trade friction. We did not need constitutional lawyers explaining Northern Ireland. We did not need businesses explaining supply chains. We did not need scientists, academics or civil servants complicating everything.

We had common sense.

Then reality arrived.

Reality is complicated. Borders matter. Regulation matters. Geography matters. Supply chains matter. Trading with the enormous economic bloc located directly beside you is not the same as announcing a trade agreement with a country on the other side of the planet.

But even after ten years, the response is rarely an honest reckoning. Instead, the explanation is that Brexit was not done properly, the wrong people were in charge, Europe punished us or the promised opportunities are still waiting somewhere over the horizon.

There is always another excuse because admitting the obvious would mean admitting that “common sense” got it wrong.

And that same psychology now runs straight through the climate argument.

Suddenly, Britain Doesn’t Like Fear

Britain is constantly told that it does not respond well to doom and gloom.

We supposedly do not like being frightened. We do not like fearmongering. We prefer optimism, resilience and a positive story about the future.

I do not believe that for a second.

British politics runs on fear.

Immigrants Small boats Benefit claimants Crime Brussels Taxes Trans people National decline

Our newspapers sell fear every morning.

Turn on the radio and somebody is explaining that the country is being invaded, betrayed, silenced, bankrupted or stolen from us.

Britain does not reject fear.

Britain rejects particular kinds of fear.

Fear is perfectly acceptable when it gives us an enemy. It becomes “doom and gloom” when it gives us responsibility.

That is why climate change produces such a defensive reaction. Taking it seriously means confronting our consumption, our energy system, our industrial history and the political choices we continue to make. It means accepting that our way of life is not detached from what is happening to the planet.

That is much less emotionally satisfying than blaming somebody else.

Enjoy the Sunshine

Richard Tice recently demonstrated the entire mechanism when he encouraged Britain to enjoy the heat and celebrate the possibility of better English sparkling wine instead of being so “doom and gloom” about climate change.

It sounds cheerful. Reasonable, even.

Why must everybody be so miserable? Why can we not enjoy a nice summer?

But severe heat is not merely pleasant weather. It means additional deaths, wildfires, pressure on water supplies, damaged crops, disrupted infrastructure and farmers watching the viability of their businesses deteriorate.

The National Farmers’ Union described the drought affecting England and Wales as among the worst harvest conditions farmers had experienced.

Yet all of that can be pushed aside with a bottle of English fizz.

The changing climate is no longer the problem. The miserable person mentioning it becomes the problem.

That is what “doom and gloom” does. It does not answer the evidence. It changes the subject from whether the warning is accurate to whether the person delivering it has the correct attitude.

Instead of asking
Is this actually happening?
we ask
Why are you trying to frighten everybody?

Optimism as an Escape Route

There is a psychological explanation for some of this.

Optimism bias

Something bad may happen, but probably somewhere else, to somebody else or at some distant point in the future.

Normalcy bias

Because life appeared broadly normal yesterday, we assume it will remain broadly normal tomorrow.

Present bias

The cost of changing something today feels more important than a much larger cost arriving in the future.

Solution aversion

When we dislike the proposed response, we become more inclined to reject the evidence behind it.

If accepting climate science means accepting regulation, investment, taxation or changes to consumption, denying or minimising the science becomes emotionally convenient.

The result is a familiar collection of phrases:

“We have always had hot summers.”

“The climate has always changed.”

“Britain only produces 1% of global emissions.”

“What about China?”

“It was hot in 1976.”

“Let’s use some common sense.”

“Stop being so doom and gloom.”

None of these statements seriously addresses the system being discussed. They simply reduce an enormous, complicated problem into something small enough to dismiss.

The Recession We Are Not Allowed to Call a Recession

The same trick appears in the way Britain discusses the economy.

Technically, no, Britain has not been in one continuous recession. The conventional definition requires two consecutive quarters of shrinking GDP, although even the Office for National Statistics says that rule is simplistic and can be misleading.

But that technical answer does not describe how the country feels or how many people have experienced the past decade.

Headline GDP can increase slightly because the population has grown, while the amount produced per person barely moves. A quarterly rise can be reported as a “boost,” a “bounce” or proof that Britain has “turned a corner,” even when ordinary households feel no meaningful improvement.

1.3% headline GDP growth during 2025

0% GDP-per-person growth during 2024

6 years to produce growth previously expected in roughly seven months

In 2025, headline GDP increased by 1.3%, but GDP per person grew by only around 1% after showing no growth in 2024. The Resolution Foundation says Britain’s GDP per person has barely grown since the pandemic—taking six years to achieve the growth Britain would previously have expected in about seven months.

That is not technically one endless recession.

But for millions of people, it is a prolonged experience of stagnation: higher bills, weaker public services, unaffordable housing, insecure work and wages that never seem to stretch far enough.

Then one quarterly figure comes in 0.1% above expectations and the newspapers announce that the economy is roaring back.

The News Must Never Talk Britain Down

This is where I struggle with the news now. I struggle to listen to it and I struggle to read the newspapers because so many editors, commentators and political journalists appear to share the same narrow emotional boundary.

Britain must never be talked down.

Any improvement, however microscopic, must be presented as a turning point. Any deeper criticism must be balanced with something reassuring. Any structural decline must be treated as a temporary difficulty that the correct mood, leader or slogan will eventually reverse.

There is always a bump coming.

There is always a recovery around the corner.

There is always a reason the situation is not quite as bad as the evidence suggests.

And when reality can no longer be denied, it is described as a surprise.

A Country Protected From Its Own Reality

This is not optimism.

Optimism begins with an honest account of where you are and a belief that you possess the ability to improve it.

What Britain increasingly practises is avoidance.

We soften the economic figures. We isolate Brexit from its consequences. We turn climate breakdown into pleasant weather. We call detailed warnings “Project Fear” and uninformed instinct “common sense.”

The public is protected from the reality of the country, and then everybody acts surprised when the country fails to prepare for what was plainly visible.

Brexit should have taught us something profound about this.

It should have taught us that confidence is not competence. That slogans do not dissolve complexity. That dismissing experts does not make the underlying systems disappear. That calling a warning “fearmongering” does not prevent the warned-about consequences from arriving.

Instead, we appear to have absorbed the opposite lesson.

Keep the explanation simple. Keep the public reassured. Find somebody else to blame. Never acknowledge that the fundamental direction may be wrong.

And if anybody describes the situation too honestly, accuse them of talking Britain down.

The Threat Is Real Whether We Feel Positive About It or Not

Climate change does not care about British optimism.

The atmosphere does not respond to common sense. Carbon dioxide does not negotiate with newspaper editors. A drought does not become less serious because Richard Tice has found a positive angle involving sparkling wine.

And Britain’s historical responsibility cannot be reduced to the emissions produced within our borders this year. This country industrialised early, accumulated enormous wealth through carbon-intensive development and continues to consume goods whose emissions are recorded elsewhere.

“Britain only produces 1%” is not an argument for doing nothing. It is a country searching for a moral exemption from a system it helped create and still benefits from.

The point is not to terrify people without purpose. Fear without agency can become paralysing. A serious warning must be accompanied by credible action, collective responsibility and a route forward.

But we cannot build hope by lying about the starting point.

We cannot prepare for climate change while treating every accurate warning as negativity.

We cannot repair the economy while celebrating every fractional rise as a national revival.

And we cannot learn from Brexit while continuing to pretend its consequences are merely the pessimistic interpretation of people who never believed in Britain enough.