Why that Coinbase ad mocking Britain has hit a nerve

American cryptocurrency firm Coinbase appears to have touched a nerve here in the UK with its new musical advert. Despite the ad not being broadcast due to Ofcom regulations around promoting crypto, it has still gone viral online.

And no wonder. For many in the UK, Coinbase’s satirical portrait of contemporary Britain rings a little too true. Entitled ‘Everything is Fine’, the two-minute-long ad sends up the UK as a rainy rubbish-strewn dump where people live in perpetual squalor, in the style of a number from Oliver!.

It opens in a freezing, leaky house with a crumbling ceiling. ‘We’re cosy here at home, even though it’s not our own, but wait a few more years, and who can say?’, sing the tenants as they shiver and trawl through a sea of bills. ‘Everything is just fine, everything is grand’, they continue. ‘Your life can get no better when you’re living by the letter in this pleasant land.’

We see actors dance their way down a rat-infested street piled high with discarded rubbish – a nod to the bin strikes roiling Birmingham earlier this year. And we listen to a woman at a supermarket checkout sing, ‘These fish fingers are a steal. Just a hundred quid a meal!’ – a reference to the deepening cost-of-living crisis.

The ad concludes with a tongue-in-cheek reference to the hordes of wealthy Britons taking the first opportunity to leave the country. ‘We’re doing our bit’, sing a smartly dressed couple in a convertible. ‘We’re off to Dubai. It’s time to jump ship.’

Though we Brits would normally bristle at such harsh mockery from across the pond, that’s not been the case here. That’s because, for many of us, the ad’s bleak portrayal of life in 21st-century Britain hits home. It certainly captures a widely held sense of national decline.

The soaring cost of living has left almost half of UK adults financially insecure, up from less than a third in the same position a decade ago. One recent survey revealed that nearly one in five people struggle to pay their bills each month, while nearly half have little to nothing left over to save or spend on leisure.

Thanks to a severe lack of investment, Britain’s public services, from bin collection to transport, are in dire straits. As the ad suggests, Britain today feels like a country fast approaching breaking point.

At the same time, Keir Starmer’s Labour government seems incapable of rising to any of the challenges facing us. Indeed, one can easily picture Starmer himself skipping down the street chanting ‘Everything is fine’, given his government’s unwillingness to face reality.

‘If everything’s fine, don’t change anything’ runs the ad’s wry strapline. This could have been written as the mantra of our clueless, complacent political class.

Georgina Mumford is a spiked intern.