We Were Promised Fairness. We Got Two-Tier, Train Strikes, and Terrorist Appeasement.

They told us the rules applied to everyone. That justice was blind. That hard work mattered. Instead, we got broken courts, rigged systems, cowardly politics, and institutions that reward grift and punish honesty. You’re not going mad. This is happening.

Right. Let’s get the introductions out of the way. I’m Peter C. Barnes — Westminster survivor, media meddler, occasional host, full-time cynic. I sit somewhere on the right, though I’ve spent much of the last decade pointing out that my side is just as corrupt, cowardly and confused as everyone else’s. That tends to clear the room.

The fine folk at Hinton Magazine — brave souls that they are — asked me to weigh in on this strange new Britain we all seem to be living in. A country where nothing quite adds up anymore. Where the rules wobble. Where fairness feels like a relic, trotted out in speeches but never enforced. A country that, increasingly, doesn’t feel like it’s run for the people at all.

You’re not mad. You’re not imagining it. You’ve just woken up to the fact that fairness — once the great British promise — is a fantasy. Right up there with Nessie and Prince Andrew’s Pizza Express alibi.

We like to think fairness is in our bones. It’s certainly in our language: play fair, even playing field, level-headed, a gentleman’s agreement. It’s baked into our sport, our customs, even our queueing. A national reflex — that competition should be dignified, losses should be respected, and rules are there to stop life becoming a free-for-all.

But we don’t live by that anymore. We live by exceptions, optics, double standards. The rules are bent for the loudest, the worst-behaved, and the politically convenient. The result? A Britain where fairness is no longer real. It’s just a story we tell ourselves while everything collapses around us.

“Justice doesn’t wear a blindfold anymore. It checks your hashtags.”

In court, a violent anti-racism protester who smashed a police van and assaulted officers is spared jail. The judge calls it a “moment of passion.” Meanwhile, a single mum is imprisoned for stealing baby formula. A pensioner fined for not paying the BBC. A man arrested for silently praying outside a clinic.

Police officers kneel at one protest and shove pensioners at another. A Christian street preacher is dragged away while actual Hamas supporters march freely in the capital. You’re more likely to be investigated for your views on gender than for theft or assault. If you’re aligned with the narrative, the law looks away. If not, expect handcuffs.

“In modern Britain, law enforcement isn’t neutral — it’s curated.”

During Covid, we were told to stay home while government ministers popped corks in Whitehall. Funerals missed. Grandparents died alone. Meanwhile, civil servants danced around with wine bottles. The Met refused to investigate until shamed into it. Most got away with it. No resignations. No real punishment.

And the media cheered it on. ITV held phone-ins asking if you should report your neighbour for a second walk. Public benches were taped off. Drones hunted dog walkers. And we — the public — went along with it. We believed the fairness would return when the crisis ended. It didn’t.

“We followed the rules. They laughed. And we clapped for them.”

On immigration, the betrayal is obvious. Legal migrants spend years navigating the process — paying fees, attending interviews, doing everything right. Meanwhile, those who arrive illegally on small boats are housed in hotels, processed rapidly, and almost never deported.

Speak up and you’re smeared as a racist. Question the logic and you’re called far-right. But most people — including those who came here legally — want rules that mean something. Instead, we’ve created a system that punishes compliance and rewards chaos.

Labour’s answer? A proposed Islamophobia law — not to protect all faiths, but to shore up their Muslim vote after the Gaza fallout. The goal isn’t consistency. It’s appeasement.

“We used to believe in fairness. Now we legislate for factions.”

And when even that fails? Change the system. Labour drops plans for PR in Welsh local elections once the numbers start to look awkward. Mayoral voting systems are rewritten to stop Reform UK from winning. And votes at 16 are floated — not to empower young people, but to manipulate the electorate.

Meanwhile, the Civil Service launches job schemes open only to people from working-class backgrounds. It’s not mobility. It’s optics. The bigotry of low expectations, where class becomes a quota and talent becomes an afterthought.

“You don’t fix inequality by picking favourites. You do it by fixing the game.”

Housing? The same story. Young professionals with stable jobs can’t afford homes in the towns they were raised in. Mortgages have doubled. Rents are outrageous. And MPs tell them to “cut back on Netflix.” The same MPs, by the way, who claim second homes on expenses.

Public services? Imploding. Try seeing a GP in under three weeks. Try affording a train to work. Try reporting a crime and seeing a result. Your council tax goes up and your bins go uncollected. You’re told to be patient, grateful, and quiet.

And if you speak out? You’re selfish. Spoiled. Probably voting wrong.

“We’re being taxed like Denmark. And served like Moldova.”

Fairness hasn’t just broken — it’s been inverted. Veterans are prosecuted for battlefield decisions made 20 years ago, while violent criminals are let out early. Farmers are punished for passing down land to their children, while big landowners get green subsidies to do nothing. A man who threw soup at a shoplifter is jailed — not the thief, him.

In schools, pupils are expelled for misgendering classmates, while others who assault teachers are kept in class. Jewish schools are hiring private security while the police look the other way at open support for Hamas. The Met lied about the arrests of journalists. No one was fired.

“This isn’t a culture war. It’s institutional collapse.”

Even our culture of work has been infected. We’ve gone from a society that believed in dignity through contribution, to one where handouts are normalised and entitlement is sacred. Universal Credit claimants refuse interviews. Doctors demand four-day weeks. Whitehall staff ask for remote-first policies while running departments into the ground.

We created a handout culture, not by accident, but by design. And now we’re surprised that productivity’s collapsed and no one takes ownership of anything.

The truth is, we stopped paying attention. We stopped voting. We let the loudest voices win. We put Love Island over local elections, and when the system broke, we acted like it was someone else’s job to fix it. We didn’t just lose fairness. We traded it — for convenience, for novelty, for comfort.

And now we wonder why we don’t recognise our own country.

“Maybe this is the price we pay for X-Factoring the nation — where sob stories beat substance and victimhood is the fastest route to power.”

So no — you’re not imagining it. You’re not wrong. This really is how Britain works now. A country that used to pride itself on fair play, now run by people who rewrite the scoreboard mid-match and call it progress.

Fairness is gone. And nobody’s coming to restore it. Not the courts. Not the politicians. Not the institutions. Maybe not even us.

Maybe this — this quiet, absurd, rigged version of Britain — is what we deserve.

Because we knew it was happening.

And we let it.