Why do we have to shout so hard to be heard?

What shall we be hysterical about today? It could be the BBC, which is said to be systematically, stealthily when not blatantly, destroying our historic institutions, our regard for the royal family and our love of country. A typical one-two appeared in one of the Sunday papers yesterday. In the first section, we learnt that the BBC was "to air child abuse videos" and in the second, a columnist stated the following in quick succession:

The place is run by Tony's cronies. Today is like Pravda. The rest of Radio 4 is ghastly and, for good measure, The Archers, with its inserts by government spin doctors, is not just absurd but mad. And in another Sunday offering, we were told about the "blatant bias that's so insidious at the BBC. They don't even know they are doing it. And when you tell them, they deny it."

If we are not inclined to tear our hair out about the BBC, there are plenty of other issues. For students of national hysteria, Iain Duncan Smith provided a collectors' piece in an article published on Friday. For he managed to combine two rich examples in one diatribe. Sangatte provided him with the opportunity. Nightmares about asylum seekers, whose progeny can, as the Home Secretary hysterically put it, "swamp" our schools, can be linked with our constant and demeaning fear that, somehow, the French will generally outwit us.

Look at France, Mr Duncan Smith wrote, which is poised to close its largest refugee camp and send us its inmates while we, poor mutts, are to build three new centres in the heart of the British countryside. "The prospect of that will have the French laughing at us across breakfast tables all over the country this morning".

It is, indeed, a charming picture. The croissants, the baguettes, the jars of honey and jam, the coffee pot and the newspapers spread wide over the breakfast table. Chortle, chortle at a further example of British idiocy, serenely unbothered – one must suppose the French to be – by Jean-Marie Le Pen's success, by the re-election of a President known as super-liar, by daily strikes and street demonstrations and by the nightly torching of cars in their city centres. No, the French can forget all that and just sit back and laugh at us.

Or we could indulge in a new hysteria, the nation's growing fear of its own children. In recent weeks, a fresh phrase has entered our conversation – feral children. If the adjective is being used accurately, the prospect is, indeed, frightening. Feral describes animals descended from domesticated forebears but now living wild in savage and brutal style. We are regaled with tales of a failing youth justice system, with swaggering teenagers showing no remorse, with feckless parents, with bail bandits and with social workers who perversely make matters worse.

And if that is not enough, we can give ourselves nightmares about a National Health Service where drugs which cure cancer are withheld on grounds of costs, where more patients seem to be left on trolleys than put into beds, where the dead are transported by bin van and where, anyway, body parts are removed from corpses without anybody being the wiser.

All this alarm and confusion seems excessive for a nation which prides itself on its stiff upper lip and its pragmatism. We don't scare easily, we like to think. We are a feet-on-the-ground sort of people who take things as they come. Yet instead, we are constantly being invited to imagine the worst. Were Mr Le Pen to reside in Britain, he would receive great solace. For he would only have to read our newspapers to find ample reasons for the policies he advocates.

Why has this come about? On the face of it, we have scant reason to feel frightened, buttressed as we are by stable employment, subdued inflation and firm house prices. And the Queen has sat on her throne for 50 years. So why are newspapers trying to panic us?

It is a bit like trying to ask good questions. You can only find the penetrating query which suddenly engenders a stream of revelations if you are prepared to ask lots of bad questions, not on purpose, but because probing to find the truth inevitably requires a lot of failed attempts. So it is on a larger scale with the generation of newspaper stories which stimulate people's fears. You don't really know which of these nightmare descriptions is truly overblown; it is only by pushing all of them that we shall find out.

Furthermore, the government of the day nowadays is held to account by newspapers rather than by Parliament. And as a substitute for the checks and balances which Parliament should provide but no longer does, newspapers are necessarily as crude as they are vigorous. They have learnt, too, that in contemporary politics, controlled as it is, you have to shout. The politely expressed and well constructed argument doesn't change ministerial minds, but scare stories can have a big impact.

That is why, for the time being, national debate will be conducted in exaggerated terms. The end of the world is always nigh.

aws@globalnet.co.uk