Chaos in the kingdom

Look at the UK beyond Buckingham Palace. Its airports, economy, and quality of life are plummeting. Its Scotch has been losing ground to Indian whisky too

- VIR SANGHVI

Nothing tells you what a country is like as reliably as the state of its major airports.

The decline of Heathrow, once one of the world’s most glamorous airports, is an appropriate symbol of the rapid decline of London. Power breakdowns, failures of computer systems, chaos in luggage delivery, immigration queues that spill out of the arrival hall: These are weekly if not daily occurrences in Heathrow.

London is now a city where many of its residents face economic hardship, while the obscene wealth of a lucky (usually non-British) sliver at the top is celebrated. Heathrow epitomises that. The airport makes huge profits while providing terrible services. Everyone complains. Nothing changes.

Not all wealth in London is immediately obvious. The British royal family has long shunned the sort of ostentation that characterises many Middle Eastern monarchies. But behind the scenes, its wealth makes most global billionaires envious.