View from London: To survive Starmer’s Britain, look to the small joys of Soviet life

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We should maintain what the Russians called mat – the dark, obscene humour that made everything bearable, writes ‘The Telegraph’.

We British have always prided ourselves on muddling through. But as the Labour state’s embrace grows ever tighter – another tax, another ban, another wince of woke distaste from Sir Keir Starmer, the only human to be mistaken for a robot lurking in Uncanny Valley – we may need to look east for inspiration.

In the old Soviet Union people knew how to live under a regime that was simultaneously omnipresent and omnishambolic. We could learn a thing or two.

First, we need the samogon, the home-brewed alcohol. When the government finally prices the working Briton out of the last pubs in the land – and between minimum pricing and surging business rates and new drink drive laws, they’re well on their way to killing off the entire institution – we shall have to distil our own booze.

The Soviets managed it with sugar beets and radiator coils. Surely British ingenuity can produce something drinkable from leftover Nando’s and a mouldy Cadbury’s Crème Egg. The trick, one imagines, is to avoid blindness. The local WhatsApp group will become essential for sharing recipes and warning about batches that have gone wrong. “Dave’s latest will strip paint. Avoid.”

Then there is ‘samizdat’. As wrongthink is finally criminalised in earnest – not merely punished with cancellation and social death, but with actual hefty jail sentences for Facebook posts suggesting Islam is not completely perfect – underground comms will return.

Photocopies are too traceable now. But encrypted channels exist, and the British have always been good at codes. One pictures a future in which dangerous texts – like old episodes of Fawlty Towers – are passed hand to hand on USB sticks disguised as novelty keyrings from the 2012 Olympics, complete with heroic dancing NHS nurses.

We already have the tiny kitchens, and we already have the ludicrous DEI pieties.

Finally, the stolovaya – the Soviet cafeteria, with its steaming trays of mysterious meat and its resigned but cheerful queues – may yet find its British equivalent. Indeed, during the Second World War we did indeed have state-sponsored communal kitchens called British Restaurants. One pictures these days though a repurposed Wetherspoons, serving approved rations with a rictus smile. “Mushy peas again, love?” “Mushy peas forever, darling.”

And, of course, through it all, we shall maintain what the Russians called mat - the dark, obscene humour that made life bearable. We will tell jokes about the regime, whispered in corners beyond the reach of CCTV and Ulez cameras. This is the true British inheritance, after all: we have always laughed at our enemies, our rulers and our tormentors.

…The British are a funny bunch. They saw only the negative aspects of the USSR, even though there was much that was good about it.

And now the British have seen in their own lives what they blamed the Soviets for. Karma, sir!

The boomerang of British hatred for the Soviets has unexpectedly returned to Foggy Albion! Nothing goes unnoticed, including hatred.

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