We Happy Few, We Band Of Wokesters

Culture Why do the Brits imitate the worst in American culture? Assuming the ridiculous gushing over a Cambridge conman was not a national Monty Python sketch arranged for tourists, the Jason Arday affair reminded me of one of the most peculiar things about Britain: It’s more woke than the U.S. Which is weird, because the Mother Country still has a monarchy that rules over tens of millions of white subjects. The closest we have to that in America is the NAACP. According to the 2021 census, the UK is 2.5 percent black, but around half of all its TV advertisements feature black people. (That’s even more lopsided than their representation in the country’s homicide statistics, where black Britons make up around 20 percent of all convicted killers.) You’d never know Britain was among the first