Remembrance Day, November 11, is big in Britain. We mark it alongside our Commonwealth partners to remember members of the armed forces who have given their lives for our freedom, but starting with a service on the previous Sunday, it’s gradually grown to embrace theoretically the civilian war dead of all sides as well.

I personally find this rather odd — some of the people our side had to see off were literally fighting for evil, and many German civilians supported Hitler. It’s very much in line with King Charles and his Kumbaya-style defender-of-all-faiths shtick. It’s not the same without the Queen, who lived through the war with the last of the old soldiers so proudly marching past the Cenotaph.

Elizabeth II’s parents refused suggestions from the government to have her evacuated abroad during the Blitz, with the Queen Mother famously saying “The children could not possibly leave without me. I will not leave without the king, and the king will never leave.” It’s a bitter irony that the two members of the Royal Family who saw active service, Andrew and Harry, are now in disgrace and certainly won’t be getting an invite to the commemoration.

It’s become normal for Britons to wear poppies made of paper, or metal, for weeks before the actual day; if someone doesn’t, especially a public figure, he will be seen as something of a traitorous rotter. Perhaps the man with the biggest shoes in the current clown-show cabinet is a man named David Lammy, who when taking part in a TV quiz show opined that Marie Antoinette was a Nobel-prize-winning scientist and that King Henry VII succeeded King Henry VIII.

When as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party he stood in for the absent Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Question Time last week, the absence of a poppy was quickly noted by his opponents on the Tory benches, leading him to request one from a nearby colleague. With a stroke of the tragi-comedy that has become the signature move of this government, the poppy which was eventually found for Mr. Lammy belonged to one of the few MPs to actually have served in the armed forces; that is, the acting leader of the Government took a poppy from a veteran. 

It was another old soldier, the 100-year-old Alec Penstone, who on a breakfast TV show gave voice to the widely-held opinion that this country is an unholy mess. “Rows and rows of white tombs, and everyone who gave their lives, and for what? A country of today? No, I’m sorry. The sacrifice wasn’t worth the result. I fought for freedom, and it’s darn sight worse now than when I fought.”

Though Britain had been through a six-year war that left us impoverished and living on a bomb-site, the mood at the end of WW2 could not have been more different from the one which now afflicts us after 80 years of peace and prosperity. Then we were full of hope for the future, with a high level of trust in every national institution from the state broadcaster to the police to the monarchy.

Now the BBC lies ceaselessly, like some sneaky propagandist for the enemy, more Lord Haw Haw than Lord Reith; it lied about Israel during the Gaza war, helping fuel the rampant antisemitism in this country, and now they have been found guilty of lying about President Trump, editing a speech he made on the day of the Capitol riot to make it appear as if he was encouraging violence.

The police defend Hamas supporters and tell passing Jews not to provoke them by being “quite openly Jewish” — wearing a Star of David, say — while Jewish children are told by their parents to hide the symbols of their faith, and synagogues are attacked and worshippers murdered by Islamists. 

Freedom of expression has been quashed in every branch of national life from the health service to publishing, where those who question the elaborate fantasy of “transexuality” can expect to be shamed, sacked or driven from their profession.

We are a country where trust in both our fellow citizens and our institutions is at an all-time low; now we are post-hope, with no direction home. On Remembrance Day this year, it will be sad to remember not just how many people died, but also, to remember what this country once was.