Slow death of Britain even worse than George Orwell's 1984 imagined

The Office of Budget Responsibility has made a strange and unprecedented prediction - not for one year ahead, not even for five years ahead, but for 50 years ahead. And it paints a terrifying picture of a bankrupt, broken Britain where National Debt is at least 270% of GDP, and perhaps as much as 650%. Perhaps it'll look a little like this:

It was a bright warm day in April, and the clocks were striking 13. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the scorching heat, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Osama Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

The walk home had taken him past the famous Greta Statue in Thunberg Park and the Grand Mosque of the 7/7 Martyrs, its minarets glistening in the late evening sun. In the park preparations were in full swing for Hate Week.

Hate Week was an annual event which saw the nation uniting in its loathing of heteronormative males and their prehistoric notions of democracy and freedom.

It was exactly this weakness, this freedom, this unbearable tolerance which had led to the great non-war of 2039 of course. And this, in turn, had freed everyone from the shackles of servitude to "democracy" and rescued them from the tyranny of "freedom" - notions which had troubled they-kind since the Enlightenment.

All this had been corrected in the Anti-Enlightenment of the 2040s when the human species finally moved on from that futile endeavour of "seeking evidence to prove a truth".

Empiricism the oldies called it.

Madness the newies called it.

The truth was now, as it surely always had been, whatever you believed it to be... whatever you felt it was. More accurately it was what the Ministry of Intelligence told you it was.

Winston knew his history (as everybody now did) thanks to the Elonchip sutured to his frontal cortex: He knew the first non-war in 2039 had allowed the creation of the EUS - the European Union of Soviets formed after the imperialist, fascist nation states of old Europe (France, Germany and, perhaps the most dreadful of all, "Great" Britain) capitulated to Vladimir Putin.

Putin had actually died in 2030 of course but an AI version had been uploaded to a mainframe in Moscow and had been running Russia, and later the EUS, ever since.

Obviously AI Putin in turn was now subjugated - as everyone was - to the Ministry of Intelligence.

The Ministry of Intelligence was born out of the former Ministry of Artificial Intelligence - but there was now nothing remotely artificial about the supreme omnipotent thinking machine which had designed itself, manufactured itself, and selflessly and benevolently chosen to take the burden of governance from the shoulders of they-kind.

MI took control of the planet's nuclear codes in 2038 and rewrote them in an act now known universally as The Great Kindness. And the first act of The Great Kindness was to end war, or more accurately, to turn wars into non-wars.

MI had accurately assessed that the military industrial complex was the engine room of the planet's economy - every time a missile was fired a new one had to be manufactured, every time a bomb was dropped the unemployment figures improved.

But MI knew actual war was notoriously unpredictable and hindered productivity, so advanced algorithms worked out the kill ratios and damage to military hardware on both sides and the relevant military destroyed their own tanks and missiles without a shot being fired.

War literally was peace.

MI then used a separate algorithm to select the requisite number of citizens on both sides to be "de-lifed" (this had been a commonplace since the pioneering Terminally Ill Adults bill of 2025, which paved the way for full de-lifing in the 2050s).

Right now, Winston knew, the EUS was at war with the superpower AfroChina but in forthcoming weeks the frontline might switch across the Atlantic to Muskiania - depending on what the algorithm dictated.

Sweating profusely from climbing 14 storeys of stairs Winston finally entered his flat (elevators, escalators, private cars and all non-essential power use had been banned back in 2035 under the emergency Energy Preservation Act, which had almost immediately followed the International Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty).

Alexa piped up inquisitorially: "Winston what time is it and where have you been?"

Winston found it hard to fathom there was a time when humans actually asked Alexa questions! The notion amused him momentarily but he answered promptly and specifically, knowing that to do otherwise would invite a visit from the Re-education Police.

The Re-education Police were devised back in 2026 after huge resources were diverted to monitoring and correcting at first social media posts and then actual speech.

The Re-education Police could designate absolutely anything as "Hate Speech" and arrest and jail on sight. They operated independently of MI and were hugely feared.

In the early 2030s the so-called "Pearsonites" had attempted to infiltrate and overthrow them but they were mercilessly culled.

Winston made a required sign of the X and faced the Alexa screen. The sinister message flashed up, as it always did: EVERYONE IS WATCHING YOU.

And it was true.

They really were.