The signs are all there that Britain's political elite are running out of road, Theresa May in particular.
The whole issue of "Brexit" became Farage's own vehicle for his career advancement, going back to the first "breakthrough" that Farage had with UKIP in the 1999 European elections. The financial crisis was the real turning point, however, which saw the Conservatives come to power through supporting a policy that surrendered the narrative to Farage: by Cameron committing to the impossible of reducing migration into Britain to the tens of thousands in 2010, it soon became open season within Cameron's own party on the whole issue of "migration" and the EU.
We know where that led; by surrendering to those forces within his party, with Farage and UKIP threatening, Cameron quickly became a hostage to events, forever responding to the narrative that Farage had established. In this sense, Cameron was barely a leader in a real sense of the word - it was Farage who was the main personality behind the whole agenda to get Britain out of the EU. Farage and UKIP, it can reasonably be claimed, effected the downfall of one Prime Minister (Cameron), and in his new "Brexit Party", Farage seems likely to able to claim the destruction of his successor (May).
It is now twenty years since UKIP and Farage's first encounter with the European Parliament. What is now clear is that UKIP was used by Farage as a vehicle for his own brand of personality politics; in his various spells as leader, he ran the party almost like a personality cult, allowing little time for other individuals to challenge his domination of the party.
After winning the EU referendum, he stepped back from the leadership. It could be argued his reasoning was as highly-strategic as personal; in his mind, perhaps Farage would have liked to think of himself as "retiring" from the public sphere to see how events panned out (and rightly predicting the high likelihood of Brexit being mishandled by the political elite). In this way, while he stepped back to allow Westminster to slowly destroy itself over Brexit, it would provide him with the right kind of reason to step back into the spotlight at the right time; in the manner of a "Shakespearean hero", able to maintain his own sense of honour, returning to save the day, victorious and all-conquering.
The smartest man in the room, or just the last man standing?
The narrative above sounds absurd, or at best a silly flight of fancy, but the current status of events in Westminster gives an astonishing amount of legitimacy to the narrative described.
As said above, Farage seems to have been able to predict the mess that would gradually transpire in parliament. With Theresa May having her own self-destructive and anti-social brand of "leadership", she has succeeded in making herself both poisonous to her party and her party's image poisonous to much of the public (and even to its own members).
Meanwhile, Labour has lost all sense of direction, and the groups that are clearly pro-Remain are as divided as they are lacking in proper leadership of their own. While the Liberal Democrats have recently had a strong recovery in support when in comes to local government, when it comes to Brexit, the pro-European votes are split between them, the Greens and "Change UK". A 1980s-style "alliance" of some sort might make more sense electorally between these groups, but the clash of egos and the narcissism of small differences seems to get in the way.
In the meantime, there is Farage's new political bandwagon: "The Brexit Party". As said earlier, when he was in charge of UKIP, he led the party almost like a personality cult; given that this new "party" doesn't even technically have any members (it has "supporters" that financially contribute), it is an unashamed personality cult in all but name - the "Farage Party".
Farage timed its launch to perfection, seeing the way that Brexit had been so dismally handled. After stepping back from front-line politics, he allowed UKIP to be taken over by the "culture war" narrative that has led to Tommy Robinson's involvement - allowing them to say overtly what Farage had always implied covertly. In this way, Farage would be able to claim that the party had been taken over by extremists and giving him a reason to create a newly-honed identity for the Farage brand.
However, UKIP without Farage would still serve a useful function for the wider agenda, in extending the earlier "culture war" narrative that Farage had initially exploited. In the new form that UKIP took, a more raucous and dangerous form of Populism would be harnessed, while this would allow Farage - free of UKIP's awkward mantle - to exploit the political ground vacated by the self-destructive Tory Party. He could claim to be "above the fray", while still being able to exploit it for his own advantage.
The Farage "brand" (2019) could therefore be seen as a highly-strategic (and highly opportunistic) form of personality politics more usually seen in authoritarian cultures.
This is the divisive "betrayal" narrative that has been gaining traction. Given that Trump's appeal is fueled by the narrative of a "conspiracy" against his supporters, Farage and Trump are politically peas from the same pod. This explains Farage's links to Bannon and Trump, and the selfsame wider global agenda that they share.
With the self-destruction of the Conservative Party now seemingly just a matter of time, and with Labour seeming almost as clueless, Brexit's esoteric power seems to be to destroy the old order that has ruled Westminster. A party that didn't exist three months ago and is led as a charismatic personality cult is almost certain to win the most seats in the Britain's European elections, and is currently even second on opinion polls for Westminster elections.
Apart from the timing of the launch of Farage's new "project" early this year so that it gains attention just as things are falling apart in Westminster (and with the original leave date being imminent), the simple imagery and the principles behind it, are what seem so attractive to the layman.
With a name like "The Brexit Party", there can be no doubt to the onlooker what it represents. Apart from the simple clarity of the message (like the famous "Take Back Control" of the leave campaign), is also the implicit message that this party represents "the will of the people" (i.e. those that voted to leave) and that others, like the Conservatives, have shown themselves to be insincere at best and Machiavellian at worst.
Another smaller issue, but one worth mentioning, is the imagery of Farage's party itself: a rightward-pointing arrow on a pale blue background (itself formed out of the space between the "E" and "X" in "Brexit"): this seems to suggest a borrowing of the colours of the Conservatives (but in a more soothing tone); meanwhile the arrow can have both an overt meaning ("Forward"?), and a covert meaning (pointing to the right, implying the real political agenda). In this sense, the real Libertarian agenda of Farage and his financial supporters is hiding in plain sight.
Few people will look that deeply into things, of course. Farage's new vehicle for self-promotion is still perfectly timed to take advantage of the meltdown of leadership in Westminster; the "betrayal" narrative has taken little nudging to gain traction given the abject failure of the political elite to deal with the Brexit negotiations with any intelligence or rationalism.
All it takes is an extraordinary set of events and the right kind of person able to exploit them, and you have the makings of a political earthquake. Farage possesses all the necessary political tools and the right set of circumstances to make it happen. All the indications are that Britain is but a few missteps away from a fundamental collapse of the political order.
Events are ideally poised for Farage to take absolute advantage; to what end, no one is quite sure.
Showing posts with label UKIP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UKIP. Show all posts
Sunday, May 12, 2019
Saturday, November 24, 2018
The rise of Tommy Robinson: the far-right, UKIP and modern-day Populism in Britain
The rise of English far-right activist Tommy Robinson to that of global "cult" status has now been cemented with news that he is likely to be made a millionaire thanks to support from well-heeled, like-minded extremists across the Atlantic.
While his entry to the country is still being discouraged by US authorities, his fame at both the "grassroots" level, and with those high up in the right-wing political food chain, is well-established. As part of Steve Bannon's grand scheme ("The Movement"), Robinson is now central to Bannon's plans for a co-ordinated effort to bring together Populist movements across Europe. In spite of the fact that Bannon's plans are illegal in many of the countries he's targeting, this has had no effect on Bannon's overall plan, and the central role that Robinson can be seen to play in it.
Robinson's notoriety was established with the high-profile events organized when he led the English Defence League (EDL). This group's agenda was openly Islamophobic. While its adherents would claim that their ire was not aimed as Muslims as a whole but rather its extremist elements, in practical terms the group's followers have openly Islamophobic views. It is clear that large numbers of the EDL's followers see Islam as a cultural threat to British identity, and therefore see Muslims as an inherent "threat" to them.
By focusing in particular on the cases of Child Abuse "rings" in various Pakistani communities that have come to light in recent years, the EDL have seen their cause as a kind of moral mission. Comparisons to how in the early years of the Nazi Party, their "brownshirts" would target Jews and Communists as a plague on German culture, are plain to see.
Robinson himself claimed to have become disgusted with the EDL's lurch into blatant prejudice, which caused the end to his association with the group. However, by then becoming involved with other similar movements like the British offshoot of "PEGIDA" in Germany, his motivations became hard to miss.
Robinson was "reinventing" himself as a kind of social justice warrior. His notoriety continued with his violent conduct involving brushes with the law, while at the same time he was now claiming himself to be a victim of police harassment and a supporter of free speech. This then culminated in his prosecution and imprisonment for contempt, which played directly into his narrative as a victim of the establishment's curtailment of free speech.
It was this that gave him international "cult" status, and cemented his high-profile reputation with people like Steve Bannon. Since then, Robinson's popularity has been shown to include serving members of the armed forces (no surprise there). More significantly, he has attracted the support of UKIP's leader, Gerald Batten.
This is significant for a few reasons. While UKIP had become largely an irrelevance since Theresa May stole many of their clothes after the EU referendum two years ago, the way in which she has managed to turn almost everyone in her party against her "deal" can only be a boon for UKIP.
If May's deal gets though parliament, those in the Tory right would accuse her of betrayal. This will naturally lead to a surge among the grassroots back towards UKIP as the "natural" party of Euroscepticism and nativism, as it was before 2016. On the other hand, if we get a "no deal" scenario, UKIP are likely to prosper in the longer-run as they can claim that it was through trusting the Tories that caused the situation to become so chaotic - so the accusation of "betrayal" can be used again. Finally, if somehow the end result is that Britain remains in the EU for wont of any better alternative, UKIP can again blame the Tories for making the issue so toxic, leaving their party as the last "honorable" bastion of English nationalism.
Batten's strategy of bringing Robinson under his wing might be cynical, but it makes a fair amount of political sense in some ways. Nigel Farage, the original charisma behind UKIP's rise, has savaged Batten's strategy of allowing UKIP to flirt with the far-right. But Farage himself may well be misreading how the political climate has changed since the referendum.
This is partly Farage's own fault. The author recently read a report into UKIP's electoral strategy from twenty years ago, when Farage was advocating for the party to make a breakthrough in Westminster. Farage's strategy was to focus on getting UKIP MPs elected into the British parliament. As a strategy, it was a complete failure. Meanwhile, from 1998 onward, UKIP's representation in the EU parliament went from strength to strength, leading to them becoming the largest UK party in Brussels in 2014. And while this surge in EU representation was happening, UKIP's representation in Westminster only ever came to two MPs out of more than six hundred (both of whom were Tory defectors).
In this way, we can see that Farage's strategic understanding of the reality of British politics is weak. By misunderstanding the correct method to bring about UKIP's success all those years ago, today he misunderstands the motivations for people now supporting UKIP.
Farage took UKIP in the direction towards being a Libertarian party. While this is a simplification (and there were many inconsistencies), Farage's motivation seemed to be about making UKIP support a broadly Libertarian agenda, very similar to that supported by the "Brexiteers" in the Conservative Party (e.g. the ERG) today. This explained the overlap in much of their ideology.
The inconsistency was about marrying this with the inevitable "nativist" rhetoric than underlined the English nationalism of UKIP's core message. This was why UKIP attracted a range of support, from right-wing Libertarians that wanted Britain to become a "free trade paradise" outside the EU, to traditional cultural Conservatives from places as eclectic as Clacton, Keighley and Camarthen. This was how UKIP was able to bridge the class divide, by appealing to the innate petty prejudices of the "common man". This was how Farage created his "people's army".
Those "petty prejudices" are the core root of Populism. Its ideology, almost by definition, is about appealing to people's petty prejudices. UKIP grew in strength on the back of explaining events like the migration crisis, growing domestic inequality and the Conservative government's austerity agenda through the prism of prejudice. By arguing that the government were more interested in housing and financially supporting Europeans and migrants, UKIP fed into a toxic atmosphere, culminating in the referendum result of 2016.
A "natural" alliance?
By this point, Farage seems to have been unaware (or delusional) about the nature of the monster he had created.
Farage seems to have believed he had made UKIP a Libertarian party, while in reality it had only grown in mass support by using Populist rhetoric. So when he stepped down after the referendum, he left a party that was Populist in nature. Meanwhile, with Theresa May turning the governing Conservative Party into one that simply copied wholesale much of UKIP's pre-referendum agenda, Farage's party had nowhere else to go but further to the right. Jeremy Corbyn has done much the same with the Labour Party, taking the party of the official opposition into territory that was once filled by George Galloway's hard-left "Respect" Party.
The logical conclusion of UKIP's shift to the Populist right is Gerald Batten now endorsing Tommy Robinson. As mentioned earlier, Farage misunderstands the motivations of those that now support UKIP, because the party now represents more than a mere Libertarian fantasy; it now represents the Populist mood that is more cultural than political. Farage's disgust at what is happening to UKIP feels more like private self-loathing at the monster he belatedly realizes he created.
Robinson's place in this as a "social justice warrior" is that UKIP are exploiting the cultural overlap between his Islamophobic agenda and UKIP's own agenda of base Populism. With the issue of Brexit now reaching a point where many of its supporters are bound to feel a sense of betrayal, Batten's strategy seems to be to ensure the party are well-placed to hoover up those disillusioned with the Conservative Party's bungling of Brexit. With the mood towards immigrants and "the other" hardening since the referendum, Batten's strategy may well be to follow this poisonous mood to its logical conclusion. He has seen the direction that the national mood has taken, and sees UKIP as being in the primary position to take advantage when the time comes.
Whether UKIP will ever reach the levels of support they had before the referendum is pure speculation at this point; it depends on what the actual outcome of Brexit will be. But Theresa May's own cynical strategy of copying UKIP's agenda after the referendum forced UKIP further to the right. With her then doing such a disastrous job of the Brexit negotiations, there are bound to be a lot of angry people: the end result may well be the eventual resurgence of UKIP as a far-right party. In the febrile climate of Britain post-Brexit, who can say how radicalized the political landscape could become? This is what Gerald Batten's alliance with Tommy Robinson seems to foresee.
In this way, Britain could currently be called one of the most unstable democracies in the developed world. The alliance of Tommy Robinson with Gerald Batten, under the wider tutelage of Steve Bannon, might seem like a fringe movement at the moment, but it's clear that these people are also biding their time, planning their strategy, and waiting for the right moment. Their "moment" may well come.
While his entry to the country is still being discouraged by US authorities, his fame at both the "grassroots" level, and with those high up in the right-wing political food chain, is well-established. As part of Steve Bannon's grand scheme ("The Movement"), Robinson is now central to Bannon's plans for a co-ordinated effort to bring together Populist movements across Europe. In spite of the fact that Bannon's plans are illegal in many of the countries he's targeting, this has had no effect on Bannon's overall plan, and the central role that Robinson can be seen to play in it.
Robinson's notoriety was established with the high-profile events organized when he led the English Defence League (EDL). This group's agenda was openly Islamophobic. While its adherents would claim that their ire was not aimed as Muslims as a whole but rather its extremist elements, in practical terms the group's followers have openly Islamophobic views. It is clear that large numbers of the EDL's followers see Islam as a cultural threat to British identity, and therefore see Muslims as an inherent "threat" to them.
By focusing in particular on the cases of Child Abuse "rings" in various Pakistani communities that have come to light in recent years, the EDL have seen their cause as a kind of moral mission. Comparisons to how in the early years of the Nazi Party, their "brownshirts" would target Jews and Communists as a plague on German culture, are plain to see.
Robinson himself claimed to have become disgusted with the EDL's lurch into blatant prejudice, which caused the end to his association with the group. However, by then becoming involved with other similar movements like the British offshoot of "PEGIDA" in Germany, his motivations became hard to miss.
Robinson was "reinventing" himself as a kind of social justice warrior. His notoriety continued with his violent conduct involving brushes with the law, while at the same time he was now claiming himself to be a victim of police harassment and a supporter of free speech. This then culminated in his prosecution and imprisonment for contempt, which played directly into his narrative as a victim of the establishment's curtailment of free speech.
It was this that gave him international "cult" status, and cemented his high-profile reputation with people like Steve Bannon. Since then, Robinson's popularity has been shown to include serving members of the armed forces (no surprise there). More significantly, he has attracted the support of UKIP's leader, Gerald Batten.
This is significant for a few reasons. While UKIP had become largely an irrelevance since Theresa May stole many of their clothes after the EU referendum two years ago, the way in which she has managed to turn almost everyone in her party against her "deal" can only be a boon for UKIP.
If May's deal gets though parliament, those in the Tory right would accuse her of betrayal. This will naturally lead to a surge among the grassroots back towards UKIP as the "natural" party of Euroscepticism and nativism, as it was before 2016. On the other hand, if we get a "no deal" scenario, UKIP are likely to prosper in the longer-run as they can claim that it was through trusting the Tories that caused the situation to become so chaotic - so the accusation of "betrayal" can be used again. Finally, if somehow the end result is that Britain remains in the EU for wont of any better alternative, UKIP can again blame the Tories for making the issue so toxic, leaving their party as the last "honorable" bastion of English nationalism.
Batten's strategy of bringing Robinson under his wing might be cynical, but it makes a fair amount of political sense in some ways. Nigel Farage, the original charisma behind UKIP's rise, has savaged Batten's strategy of allowing UKIP to flirt with the far-right. But Farage himself may well be misreading how the political climate has changed since the referendum.
This is partly Farage's own fault. The author recently read a report into UKIP's electoral strategy from twenty years ago, when Farage was advocating for the party to make a breakthrough in Westminster. Farage's strategy was to focus on getting UKIP MPs elected into the British parliament. As a strategy, it was a complete failure. Meanwhile, from 1998 onward, UKIP's representation in the EU parliament went from strength to strength, leading to them becoming the largest UK party in Brussels in 2014. And while this surge in EU representation was happening, UKIP's representation in Westminster only ever came to two MPs out of more than six hundred (both of whom were Tory defectors).
In this way, we can see that Farage's strategic understanding of the reality of British politics is weak. By misunderstanding the correct method to bring about UKIP's success all those years ago, today he misunderstands the motivations for people now supporting UKIP.
Farage took UKIP in the direction towards being a Libertarian party. While this is a simplification (and there were many inconsistencies), Farage's motivation seemed to be about making UKIP support a broadly Libertarian agenda, very similar to that supported by the "Brexiteers" in the Conservative Party (e.g. the ERG) today. This explained the overlap in much of their ideology.
The inconsistency was about marrying this with the inevitable "nativist" rhetoric than underlined the English nationalism of UKIP's core message. This was why UKIP attracted a range of support, from right-wing Libertarians that wanted Britain to become a "free trade paradise" outside the EU, to traditional cultural Conservatives from places as eclectic as Clacton, Keighley and Camarthen. This was how UKIP was able to bridge the class divide, by appealing to the innate petty prejudices of the "common man". This was how Farage created his "people's army".
Those "petty prejudices" are the core root of Populism. Its ideology, almost by definition, is about appealing to people's petty prejudices. UKIP grew in strength on the back of explaining events like the migration crisis, growing domestic inequality and the Conservative government's austerity agenda through the prism of prejudice. By arguing that the government were more interested in housing and financially supporting Europeans and migrants, UKIP fed into a toxic atmosphere, culminating in the referendum result of 2016.
A "natural" alliance?
By this point, Farage seems to have been unaware (or delusional) about the nature of the monster he had created.
Farage seems to have believed he had made UKIP a Libertarian party, while in reality it had only grown in mass support by using Populist rhetoric. So when he stepped down after the referendum, he left a party that was Populist in nature. Meanwhile, with Theresa May turning the governing Conservative Party into one that simply copied wholesale much of UKIP's pre-referendum agenda, Farage's party had nowhere else to go but further to the right. Jeremy Corbyn has done much the same with the Labour Party, taking the party of the official opposition into territory that was once filled by George Galloway's hard-left "Respect" Party.
The logical conclusion of UKIP's shift to the Populist right is Gerald Batten now endorsing Tommy Robinson. As mentioned earlier, Farage misunderstands the motivations of those that now support UKIP, because the party now represents more than a mere Libertarian fantasy; it now represents the Populist mood that is more cultural than political. Farage's disgust at what is happening to UKIP feels more like private self-loathing at the monster he belatedly realizes he created.
Robinson's place in this as a "social justice warrior" is that UKIP are exploiting the cultural overlap between his Islamophobic agenda and UKIP's own agenda of base Populism. With the issue of Brexit now reaching a point where many of its supporters are bound to feel a sense of betrayal, Batten's strategy seems to be to ensure the party are well-placed to hoover up those disillusioned with the Conservative Party's bungling of Brexit. With the mood towards immigrants and "the other" hardening since the referendum, Batten's strategy may well be to follow this poisonous mood to its logical conclusion. He has seen the direction that the national mood has taken, and sees UKIP as being in the primary position to take advantage when the time comes.
Whether UKIP will ever reach the levels of support they had before the referendum is pure speculation at this point; it depends on what the actual outcome of Brexit will be. But Theresa May's own cynical strategy of copying UKIP's agenda after the referendum forced UKIP further to the right. With her then doing such a disastrous job of the Brexit negotiations, there are bound to be a lot of angry people: the end result may well be the eventual resurgence of UKIP as a far-right party. In the febrile climate of Britain post-Brexit, who can say how radicalized the political landscape could become? This is what Gerald Batten's alliance with Tommy Robinson seems to foresee.
In this way, Britain could currently be called one of the most unstable democracies in the developed world. The alliance of Tommy Robinson with Gerald Batten, under the wider tutelage of Steve Bannon, might seem like a fringe movement at the moment, but it's clear that these people are also biding their time, planning their strategy, and waiting for the right moment. Their "moment" may well come.
Sunday, February 11, 2018
Brexit and the Conservative Party: a political nervous breakdown
There's a perceptible "last days of the Roman Empire" feel to Britain's governance under Theresa May and the Conservative Party.
Brexit seems to the Tories like the political equivalent of a nervous breakdown: some kind of unresolved psychological trauma that has been haunting the party's psyche ever since the UK joined the EEC, pushed to the back of the collective party's mind, until it was forcibly brought to the front of their attention by UKIP and David Cameron's referendum.
The issue could have been ignored, I suppose; UKIP would have won the European elections in 2014 regardless of whatever Cameron decided to do. That fate was settled with the unique result of the 2010 election, that kicked out the Labour Party, but neither gave a ringing endorsement to the Tories either. So we had the "coalition", with the result that Britain's three main parties were either in government, or had just been tarnished by it. It was this landscape that gave UKIP its opportunity.
As UKIP were really just the outside "radical wing" of the Conservatives, with many Tory MPs having views that were barely distinguishable from UKIP itself, the result was a "militant" arm of the governing party, with "moral support" from UKIP. This was the landscape that Cameron had to deal with after the 2010 election. The decision to give in to these pressures, rather than "ride out" the storm until the next election, tells us a lot about Cameron's personality. As well as appeasing this dual threat from his own party's radicals and the guerrilla tactics of UKIP, he also called the referendum for other, more vain, reasoning; he called for it simply because he assumed he would win.
Once the referendum was "lost", Cameron effectively handed to moral authority of his party (and the government) to his party's "militant wing", and the agenda of UKIP. The result of this was that Theresa May copied much of UKIP's rhetoric as well large parts of its social agenda, in order to appear on the side of the 52%. Apart from leaving the EU, May went even further with her radical envisaging of Britian's role outside the EU: to leave leave not only the single market, but the customs union as well; something that not even many UKIP supporters had considered feasible. Thus, in May's over-zealousness in want to appear on the side of the 52%, she went down a path that only a fraction of her own party's backbenchers (represented by the "European Research Group") followed.
In this sense, May's course of action since the referendum has been to place the government into the hands of the radical agenda of a faction in her party. She has disavowed any hint of moderation, and doggedly pursued an agenda that to any reasoned person's eyes looks completely unhinged. Although she has been able to keep her cabinet and her party's divisions from bringing down the government, this has only been achieved through her and her ministers' pronouncements that are feats in nonsensical semantic waffle. The government and its party are only held together by their fear of allowing Jeremy Corbyn become Prime Minister if they should fall. On Brexit, the Conservatives are impossibly divided.
As Michel Barnier has said, the clock is ticking. As well as the "clock ticking" on Brexit, the clock may also be ticking on the fate of the Conservative Party. Because the party has brought its own European psycho-drama out into the open, as it once fatefully did in the late '80s and early '90s, any observer can see that the party's differences are intractable. Now that the "clock is ticking", sooner or later, Theresa May, or her successor (more on that in a moment) will have to decide. If they don't decide, the EU will decide for them.
Theresa May so far has kept the government together simply by not dealing with the central issue, but putting it off repeatedly at each juncture with more useless waffle. The central issue is Britain's future relationship with the EU, and what the government's agreed position is. The problem is that the government doesn't have one. As the party is really a coalition of ideas, with the radicals in the ascendancy, everyone has a different opinion, as can be seen by ministers giving contradictory views on Brexit, even on the same day.
None of the options look good for the Conservatives.
If Theresa May somehow manages to get the government to have an agreed position that is somehow agreeable to the EU, this implies that a compromise would be involved, which would infuriate the radicals. The result of this could well be May losing confidence of her backbenchers and a new (radical) leader being selected, leading to a retraction of any previously-made agreement. Therefore Britain would likely leave the EU without any agreed terms (i.e. WTO). The result of this on the British economy is likely to be catastrophic, with the Conservative government getting the blame.
If May continues to procrastinate (as expected) and fails to reach an agreement on a transitional deal with the EU, the Tories will do badly in the local elections in May. This is likely to precipitate a leadership challenge and a new (radical) leader. Therefore Britain would likely leave the EU without any agreed terms (i.e. WTO). The result of this on the British economy is likely to be catastrophic, with the Conservative government getting the blame.
If May continues to procrastinate (as expected), fails to reach an agreement on a transitional deal with the EU, but the Tories don't challenge her leadership, then May will continue through the rest of the Brexit process until next year, when she can then be safely replaced and any mess can be blamed on her. The difficulty this would bring, and the likelihood of leaving the EU without a deal before March 2019, is that the Conservative Party's inner contradictions on Britain's future may well reach a point of detonation.
A last option (for the sake of brevity I've reduced them to four) is that the government somehow falls completely later on this year as a result of an impasse in the talks with the EU, or the government being forced to make a choice on Brexit that is simply impossible for some parliamentarians to accept; they would rather Labour take the heat for any future Brexit fall-out than themselves.
With the clock ticking, the EU will soon force the government to choose, or the EU will choose for it. If the government chooses a "soft" of "hard" Brexit (which will be indicated by how the transition talks pan out), it will anger one of the sides of its party, as just said. If the government doesn't decide, the EU will assume that the UK wants a "hard" Brexit, for the lack of receiving any other instruction from London. Ditto result for the Conservative Party.
Put it these terms, the Conservative government is quickly running out of time. They will face their fate, regardless of what they say or do. It is unavoidable. For now, they are running around like headless chickens, talking about Brexit "blue sky" thinking for how to make their contradictory and nonsensical ideas become a reality.
But Brussels will give the hammer blow of reality to the Conservative government sooner or later. What will be the state of the Conservative Party after that is anyone's guess. This fatalistic "end of days" narrative that seems to apply to the Tories reminds me of an article I wrote several years ago about the film "The Dark Knight Rises" and the psychology of the antagonist, Bane: it feels as though the Tories are in hock to their own ideological "league of shadows" - the "radical" Brexiteers - who are hell-bent on completely severing Britain's relationship with Europe, regardless of its impact on Britain or even their own party.
The looming threat of "hard Brexit" (like in the plot of "The Dark Knight Rises") feels a lot like the slow countdown of an economic time-bomb; the radical Brexiteers are either blindly-ignorant to this fate, or seem to implicitly welcome it, for their own reasons. "Hard Brexit" seems as the economic equivalent to Gotham's nuclear bomb, where the only people who hope for "zero hour" are the ones that either hope to get rich from Britain's carcass, or have a violent, millennarian agenda that requires the collapse of British society.
In this real-life "Gothic tale", the only saviour seems to come from the voices of the sane, who are being ignored.
Brexit seems to the Tories like the political equivalent of a nervous breakdown: some kind of unresolved psychological trauma that has been haunting the party's psyche ever since the UK joined the EEC, pushed to the back of the collective party's mind, until it was forcibly brought to the front of their attention by UKIP and David Cameron's referendum.
The issue could have been ignored, I suppose; UKIP would have won the European elections in 2014 regardless of whatever Cameron decided to do. That fate was settled with the unique result of the 2010 election, that kicked out the Labour Party, but neither gave a ringing endorsement to the Tories either. So we had the "coalition", with the result that Britain's three main parties were either in government, or had just been tarnished by it. It was this landscape that gave UKIP its opportunity.
As UKIP were really just the outside "radical wing" of the Conservatives, with many Tory MPs having views that were barely distinguishable from UKIP itself, the result was a "militant" arm of the governing party, with "moral support" from UKIP. This was the landscape that Cameron had to deal with after the 2010 election. The decision to give in to these pressures, rather than "ride out" the storm until the next election, tells us a lot about Cameron's personality. As well as appeasing this dual threat from his own party's radicals and the guerrilla tactics of UKIP, he also called the referendum for other, more vain, reasoning; he called for it simply because he assumed he would win.
Once the referendum was "lost", Cameron effectively handed to moral authority of his party (and the government) to his party's "militant wing", and the agenda of UKIP. The result of this was that Theresa May copied much of UKIP's rhetoric as well large parts of its social agenda, in order to appear on the side of the 52%. Apart from leaving the EU, May went even further with her radical envisaging of Britian's role outside the EU: to leave leave not only the single market, but the customs union as well; something that not even many UKIP supporters had considered feasible. Thus, in May's over-zealousness in want to appear on the side of the 52%, she went down a path that only a fraction of her own party's backbenchers (represented by the "European Research Group") followed.
In this sense, May's course of action since the referendum has been to place the government into the hands of the radical agenda of a faction in her party. She has disavowed any hint of moderation, and doggedly pursued an agenda that to any reasoned person's eyes looks completely unhinged. Although she has been able to keep her cabinet and her party's divisions from bringing down the government, this has only been achieved through her and her ministers' pronouncements that are feats in nonsensical semantic waffle. The government and its party are only held together by their fear of allowing Jeremy Corbyn become Prime Minister if they should fall. On Brexit, the Conservatives are impossibly divided.
As Michel Barnier has said, the clock is ticking. As well as the "clock ticking" on Brexit, the clock may also be ticking on the fate of the Conservative Party. Because the party has brought its own European psycho-drama out into the open, as it once fatefully did in the late '80s and early '90s, any observer can see that the party's differences are intractable. Now that the "clock is ticking", sooner or later, Theresa May, or her successor (more on that in a moment) will have to decide. If they don't decide, the EU will decide for them.
Theresa May so far has kept the government together simply by not dealing with the central issue, but putting it off repeatedly at each juncture with more useless waffle. The central issue is Britain's future relationship with the EU, and what the government's agreed position is. The problem is that the government doesn't have one. As the party is really a coalition of ideas, with the radicals in the ascendancy, everyone has a different opinion, as can be seen by ministers giving contradictory views on Brexit, even on the same day.
None of the options look good for the Conservatives.
If Theresa May somehow manages to get the government to have an agreed position that is somehow agreeable to the EU, this implies that a compromise would be involved, which would infuriate the radicals. The result of this could well be May losing confidence of her backbenchers and a new (radical) leader being selected, leading to a retraction of any previously-made agreement. Therefore Britain would likely leave the EU without any agreed terms (i.e. WTO). The result of this on the British economy is likely to be catastrophic, with the Conservative government getting the blame.
If May continues to procrastinate (as expected) and fails to reach an agreement on a transitional deal with the EU, the Tories will do badly in the local elections in May. This is likely to precipitate a leadership challenge and a new (radical) leader. Therefore Britain would likely leave the EU without any agreed terms (i.e. WTO). The result of this on the British economy is likely to be catastrophic, with the Conservative government getting the blame.
If May continues to procrastinate (as expected), fails to reach an agreement on a transitional deal with the EU, but the Tories don't challenge her leadership, then May will continue through the rest of the Brexit process until next year, when she can then be safely replaced and any mess can be blamed on her. The difficulty this would bring, and the likelihood of leaving the EU without a deal before March 2019, is that the Conservative Party's inner contradictions on Britain's future may well reach a point of detonation.
A last option (for the sake of brevity I've reduced them to four) is that the government somehow falls completely later on this year as a result of an impasse in the talks with the EU, or the government being forced to make a choice on Brexit that is simply impossible for some parliamentarians to accept; they would rather Labour take the heat for any future Brexit fall-out than themselves.
With the clock ticking, the EU will soon force the government to choose, or the EU will choose for it. If the government chooses a "soft" of "hard" Brexit (which will be indicated by how the transition talks pan out), it will anger one of the sides of its party, as just said. If the government doesn't decide, the EU will assume that the UK wants a "hard" Brexit, for the lack of receiving any other instruction from London. Ditto result for the Conservative Party.
Put it these terms, the Conservative government is quickly running out of time. They will face their fate, regardless of what they say or do. It is unavoidable. For now, they are running around like headless chickens, talking about Brexit "blue sky" thinking for how to make their contradictory and nonsensical ideas become a reality.
But Brussels will give the hammer blow of reality to the Conservative government sooner or later. What will be the state of the Conservative Party after that is anyone's guess. This fatalistic "end of days" narrative that seems to apply to the Tories reminds me of an article I wrote several years ago about the film "The Dark Knight Rises" and the psychology of the antagonist, Bane: it feels as though the Tories are in hock to their own ideological "league of shadows" - the "radical" Brexiteers - who are hell-bent on completely severing Britain's relationship with Europe, regardless of its impact on Britain or even their own party.
The looming threat of "hard Brexit" (like in the plot of "The Dark Knight Rises") feels a lot like the slow countdown of an economic time-bomb; the radical Brexiteers are either blindly-ignorant to this fate, or seem to implicitly welcome it, for their own reasons. "Hard Brexit" seems as the economic equivalent to Gotham's nuclear bomb, where the only people who hope for "zero hour" are the ones that either hope to get rich from Britain's carcass, or have a violent, millennarian agenda that requires the collapse of British society.
In this real-life "Gothic tale", the only saviour seems to come from the voices of the sane, who are being ignored.
Thursday, January 18, 2018
An ABC of immorality: From Austerity to Brexit and Carillion
Morality is a political issue, and different sides of the political spectrum tend to see what is "moral" and "immoral" in a different way. To say that something is "immoral" is to make a judgement on another person's behaviour i.e. that what someone else is doing is "wrong" and harmful.
Politics enters the equation when you answer the question: "wrong" to who? For example, conservative morality (what many would call "traditional values") teaches us that homosexuality is "immoral", while capital punishment is not. Liberal morality would consider the former to be neither moral nor immoral (as it is private behaviour and not "harmful" to anyone else), while the latter (capital punishment) would be immoral as a form of state-sanctioned murder, apart from its ineffectiveness as a deterrent. In this way, liberals would see the traditionalists' view of morality as more emotional that rational: capital punishment is "moral" because it makes traditionalists "feel good"; likewise, homosexuality is "immoral" because it makes traditionalists "feel bad". For moral traditionalists, it is not about what is better for society, but what makes them feel better themselves. It is a form of moral imposition of their perspective on the rest of society. While traditionalists always couch their morality in the perspective of what is meant to be better for everyone, the reality is that they are imposing their morality, in dictating what they think others must and must not do. This "moral imposition" has been displayed in its most sadistic form in the territories controlled by ISIS.
Traditionalists in Britain see the liberal changes in social policy, such as the legalisation of gay marriage, to be a sign of the country's immorality. It is not coincidence that there is a large overlap in the same people who oppose gay marriage also being against EU membership, and against policies such as foreign aid, while also believing that a large proportion of welfare recipients are "scroungers".
From a liberal perspective, what traditionalists see as "wrong" are nothing of the sort; meanwhile, the real problems that exist in society (such as poverty, crime and social disparity) are explained by traditionalists as being down to individual decisions; choices that people have decided to make. Those at the top of the pile are there on merit, and therefore their behaviour is automatically considered more "moral" than those at the bottom.
Put in this perspective, both liberals and traditionalists in contemporary Britain may well think that the country has entered a pit of moral lassitude and denigration, but for very different reasons.
The symbolism of decline, decay and a rotten state slowly falling to pieces seems to run through Theresa May's government.
It was the Grenfell Tower fire that seemed a physical symbol this. The fact that this fire happened due to a careless attitude towards the rules, as well as a careless attitude towards residents' safety, epitomises all that is morally wrong with modern Britain. The rules, so it seemed, were only there "for show": the many loopholes in the system in place demonstrated how little those in charge of the systems in place really cared. What mattered was the appearance of safety, the appearance of following the rules. Then there are other examples related to Grenfell, that demonstrate the sheer "fuck you" attitude prevalent in some of the elite towards those less fortunate than themselves.
The immorality of those in the elite in Britain is now becoming more and more transparent. There was a time when their views were expressed in private, knowing that they would face a rightful barrage of criticism if they were ever leaked out to the wider public; now these immoral ("non-PC") views are expressed openly. In this way, the immoral elite are lauded by some parts of the press for "saying it how it is".
"Moral regression"
The liberalisation of society and the progress towards a more moral (i.e. considerate) view of dealing with others such as minorities is now facing a strong push-back from traditionalists, who support the regressive agenda driven by UKIP. The financial crisis seems to have been the hinge point on this "moral regression". Up to that point, David Cameron had supported many aspects of the progressive social agenda of the governing Labour Party, including its stance on public spending. But the financial crisis saw him opportunistically support "austerity" as a way to differentiate his party, and create a real "moral" difference between their visions.
Put in this perspective, "austerity" was labelled as a "moral" act, as a way to restore the traditional values of society. Aside from his progressive agenda on issue like gay marriage, on the issue of "austerity" and its wider social effect, Cameron became almost puritanical in his use of this agenda as a way to remodel the morality of British society. However, the reality of this agenda, in meaning to reduce public spending as a deliberate act to change society, was to make society more unequal.
As "austerity" has now caused councils to radically scale back on the kinds of services they can provide, the day-to-day reality has meant less money to maintain street lighting, clean the streets and collect rubbish. And that's just the things that can be seen on the surface. When the same agenda is applied to the criminal justice system, the result is more crime. When it is applied to the welfare system - such as through "reforms" like Universal Credit and changes to other benefits - the result is more poverty; poverty that means that some people cannot even afford to properly eat, or afford to live in proper accommodation. The visible effect of this is a huge spike in homelessness and rough sleeping. The effect of "austerity" has been to make some parts of the country resemble a "failed state".
This is the real "moral" effect of austerity, and this agenda is pushed even further by those who support Brexit. The case for leaving the EU was put into words that made it seem like a divine cause ("Take Back Control!"); the EU was seen as an "immoral" institution that was undemocratic and destroyed Britain's ability to manage its own affairs. The EU was seen as the reason for many of Britain's ills; the reason that many parts of the UK felt ignored was (apparently) because of the EU.
This campaign was based on deceit and exploitation of people's genuine fears to further the agenda of an immoral few. After David Cameron had used his position as Prime Minister to gamble the future of the country on a party dispute, Theresa May grabbed hold of the "Brexit Agenda" to cement her own place in power.
A moral nadir?
Theresa May has presided over perhaps the most immoral British government in living memory. At a personal level, May's only quality as a politician seems to be able to disseminate, abusing the use of the English language in order to communicate garbage. All of her apparent "strengths" are merely a sign of her lack of empathy, while she sits in Downing Street as the "zombie Prime Minister". In the first phase of her premiership, the day-to-day running of her office was done by two advisers who everyone else was terrified of and who seemed to be ones really in charge. After losing the election she called, they were sacked, and her government continued only due to a billion-pound payment (in effect, a "bribe") to the DUP. As this was a payment whose effect was simply to keep May in power, the moral denigration of government had thus reached new depths.
This was going on at the same time as the Grenfell fire, while the Brexit negotiations that went on through the latter half of the year were being ran from Britain by a government whose strategy seemed designed to madden its European partners in its incoherence, double-dealing and dishonesty. Meanwhile, the government was treating parliament with contempt over its handling of Brexit.
By the time that three ministers had resigned (or been sacked) in the space of seven weeks due to various personal and professional failings, nothing seemed surprising any more. Even the fact that in the first of those resignations, the Defence Secretary was succeeded by a man who kept a pet tarantula in his parliamentary office, felt like something that was to be expected of a former Chief Whip. The "freak show" of personalities that now run the government, while parliament legislates in a building that is literally falling apart (and is a fire hazard) is emblematic of the moral collapse at the heart of the country.
Apart from the slow-motion train-wreck that is Brexit, the news about Carillion's collapse explained how broken the government-backed system of "crony capitalism" really is. This is a system that literally makes no economic sense to the government, other than to give the appearance of private sector success, while appearing to save the government money. Like with the fake system of health and safety in place at Grenfell, PFI is another "fake" system. Carillion ran its business like a Ponzi scheme, with each new contract paying for the last one. This follows the same path as has happened in other sectors, like energy and transport.
Lies and the facade of following the rules are what runs through how contemporary Britain seems to be ran. The housing market in London is supported by dirty money from Russia, the Middle East and elsewhere. The tax system is there only "for show", as the rich know all the loopholes they can use to avoid it, leaving it to the "little people" to be the ones that follow the rules. The only "moral" people, it seems, are those not rich enough to know how to exploit everyone else.
Politics enters the equation when you answer the question: "wrong" to who? For example, conservative morality (what many would call "traditional values") teaches us that homosexuality is "immoral", while capital punishment is not. Liberal morality would consider the former to be neither moral nor immoral (as it is private behaviour and not "harmful" to anyone else), while the latter (capital punishment) would be immoral as a form of state-sanctioned murder, apart from its ineffectiveness as a deterrent. In this way, liberals would see the traditionalists' view of morality as more emotional that rational: capital punishment is "moral" because it makes traditionalists "feel good"; likewise, homosexuality is "immoral" because it makes traditionalists "feel bad". For moral traditionalists, it is not about what is better for society, but what makes them feel better themselves. It is a form of moral imposition of their perspective on the rest of society. While traditionalists always couch their morality in the perspective of what is meant to be better for everyone, the reality is that they are imposing their morality, in dictating what they think others must and must not do. This "moral imposition" has been displayed in its most sadistic form in the territories controlled by ISIS.
Traditionalists in Britain see the liberal changes in social policy, such as the legalisation of gay marriage, to be a sign of the country's immorality. It is not coincidence that there is a large overlap in the same people who oppose gay marriage also being against EU membership, and against policies such as foreign aid, while also believing that a large proportion of welfare recipients are "scroungers".
From a liberal perspective, what traditionalists see as "wrong" are nothing of the sort; meanwhile, the real problems that exist in society (such as poverty, crime and social disparity) are explained by traditionalists as being down to individual decisions; choices that people have decided to make. Those at the top of the pile are there on merit, and therefore their behaviour is automatically considered more "moral" than those at the bottom.
Put in this perspective, both liberals and traditionalists in contemporary Britain may well think that the country has entered a pit of moral lassitude and denigration, but for very different reasons.
The symbolism of decline, decay and a rotten state slowly falling to pieces seems to run through Theresa May's government.
It was the Grenfell Tower fire that seemed a physical symbol this. The fact that this fire happened due to a careless attitude towards the rules, as well as a careless attitude towards residents' safety, epitomises all that is morally wrong with modern Britain. The rules, so it seemed, were only there "for show": the many loopholes in the system in place demonstrated how little those in charge of the systems in place really cared. What mattered was the appearance of safety, the appearance of following the rules. Then there are other examples related to Grenfell, that demonstrate the sheer "fuck you" attitude prevalent in some of the elite towards those less fortunate than themselves.
The immorality of those in the elite in Britain is now becoming more and more transparent. There was a time when their views were expressed in private, knowing that they would face a rightful barrage of criticism if they were ever leaked out to the wider public; now these immoral ("non-PC") views are expressed openly. In this way, the immoral elite are lauded by some parts of the press for "saying it how it is".
"Moral regression"
The liberalisation of society and the progress towards a more moral (i.e. considerate) view of dealing with others such as minorities is now facing a strong push-back from traditionalists, who support the regressive agenda driven by UKIP. The financial crisis seems to have been the hinge point on this "moral regression". Up to that point, David Cameron had supported many aspects of the progressive social agenda of the governing Labour Party, including its stance on public spending. But the financial crisis saw him opportunistically support "austerity" as a way to differentiate his party, and create a real "moral" difference between their visions.
Put in this perspective, "austerity" was labelled as a "moral" act, as a way to restore the traditional values of society. Aside from his progressive agenda on issue like gay marriage, on the issue of "austerity" and its wider social effect, Cameron became almost puritanical in his use of this agenda as a way to remodel the morality of British society. However, the reality of this agenda, in meaning to reduce public spending as a deliberate act to change society, was to make society more unequal.
As "austerity" has now caused councils to radically scale back on the kinds of services they can provide, the day-to-day reality has meant less money to maintain street lighting, clean the streets and collect rubbish. And that's just the things that can be seen on the surface. When the same agenda is applied to the criminal justice system, the result is more crime. When it is applied to the welfare system - such as through "reforms" like Universal Credit and changes to other benefits - the result is more poverty; poverty that means that some people cannot even afford to properly eat, or afford to live in proper accommodation. The visible effect of this is a huge spike in homelessness and rough sleeping. The effect of "austerity" has been to make some parts of the country resemble a "failed state".
This is the real "moral" effect of austerity, and this agenda is pushed even further by those who support Brexit. The case for leaving the EU was put into words that made it seem like a divine cause ("Take Back Control!"); the EU was seen as an "immoral" institution that was undemocratic and destroyed Britain's ability to manage its own affairs. The EU was seen as the reason for many of Britain's ills; the reason that many parts of the UK felt ignored was (apparently) because of the EU.
This campaign was based on deceit and exploitation of people's genuine fears to further the agenda of an immoral few. After David Cameron had used his position as Prime Minister to gamble the future of the country on a party dispute, Theresa May grabbed hold of the "Brexit Agenda" to cement her own place in power.
A moral nadir?
Theresa May has presided over perhaps the most immoral British government in living memory. At a personal level, May's only quality as a politician seems to be able to disseminate, abusing the use of the English language in order to communicate garbage. All of her apparent "strengths" are merely a sign of her lack of empathy, while she sits in Downing Street as the "zombie Prime Minister". In the first phase of her premiership, the day-to-day running of her office was done by two advisers who everyone else was terrified of and who seemed to be ones really in charge. After losing the election she called, they were sacked, and her government continued only due to a billion-pound payment (in effect, a "bribe") to the DUP. As this was a payment whose effect was simply to keep May in power, the moral denigration of government had thus reached new depths.
This was going on at the same time as the Grenfell fire, while the Brexit negotiations that went on through the latter half of the year were being ran from Britain by a government whose strategy seemed designed to madden its European partners in its incoherence, double-dealing and dishonesty. Meanwhile, the government was treating parliament with contempt over its handling of Brexit.
By the time that three ministers had resigned (or been sacked) in the space of seven weeks due to various personal and professional failings, nothing seemed surprising any more. Even the fact that in the first of those resignations, the Defence Secretary was succeeded by a man who kept a pet tarantula in his parliamentary office, felt like something that was to be expected of a former Chief Whip. The "freak show" of personalities that now run the government, while parliament legislates in a building that is literally falling apart (and is a fire hazard) is emblematic of the moral collapse at the heart of the country.
Apart from the slow-motion train-wreck that is Brexit, the news about Carillion's collapse explained how broken the government-backed system of "crony capitalism" really is. This is a system that literally makes no economic sense to the government, other than to give the appearance of private sector success, while appearing to save the government money. Like with the fake system of health and safety in place at Grenfell, PFI is another "fake" system. Carillion ran its business like a Ponzi scheme, with each new contract paying for the last one. This follows the same path as has happened in other sectors, like energy and transport.
Lies and the facade of following the rules are what runs through how contemporary Britain seems to be ran. The housing market in London is supported by dirty money from Russia, the Middle East and elsewhere. The tax system is there only "for show", as the rich know all the loopholes they can use to avoid it, leaving it to the "little people" to be the ones that follow the rules. The only "moral" people, it seems, are those not rich enough to know how to exploit everyone else.
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Brexit and The English Civil War: Populism versus "Papism"?
It could be argued that the seeds of Brexit go back five hundred years.
British Euroscepticism is an old creed which has usually been a mask for English Nationalism, of one sort or another. But at its heart is a paranoia against Europe, and a particular conspiracy theory that centres on an all-powerful, trans-national ("papist") elite.
The paranoiac, Eurosceptic conspiracy theorists of today (i.e. the zealot "Brexiteers") seem to echo with the same kind of dark delusions as those of 16th and 17th century England. The same could well be said of the ancient roots of modern Anti-Semitism, but that's another story.
The Reformation of Martin Luther five hundred years ago was in many ways about "taking back control" from a over-mighty, corrupt and centralizing elite, based in Rome. This movement also crossed the channel to England. It was the personal whims of Henry VIII rather than Martin Luther that eventually brought about the "English Reformation", and he came to see the power of the papacy in England as a direct threat to his own. One direct result of this was the dissolution of the monasteries, an act of barbarous, monarchical thievery masked behind faith. The febrile atmosphere in the country led to Protestant paranoia against Rome and its ally, Hapsburg Spain, and by the reign of Elizabeth, war.
By the time the Stuart kings came to the throne in the first half of the 17th century, Protestant paranoia had to be tamed. "Splendid Isolation" was also self-destructive. This resulted in a more nuanced and pragmatic approach by the Stuarts towards Catholic Spain and the "Papist" threat; it was a period of English "detente" towards Europe, where relations were improved and connections made. This went so far as leaving some English Protestants into thinking that James, and Charles in particular, were Papists in all but name. Their autocratic actions also fed the view that the Stuart kings were behaving far more like the Papist autocrats on the Continent than the more consensual rulers they had been led to believe in (regardless of the past reality of Henry VIII's reign).
It was this atmosphere of Protestant paranoia over a "Papist", foreign-minded king that led to the English Civil War. The king's forces, the Cavaliers, were seen as foppish, condescending autocrats, while parliament's forces, the Roundheads, were portrayed as sober-minded reformers. The resulting "Commonwealth" of the victorious Roundheads, however, rapidly turned into a virtual Puritan revolution. While the purpose of the Civil war was the restoration of parliament, it actually turned into the autocracy of Oliver Cromwell and his fellow Puritan Protestants where parliament was sidelined; a hard-line faction of parliament had taken control of the country and hijacked its fate. In the end, this situation couldn't last, and we had the Restoration not long after Cromwell's death.
The "new Puritanism"?
We seem to be repeating a variation on the same story centuries later.
Four hundred years ago, while Protestants in England were becoming fed up with James' indulgence of Hapsburg Spain, the seeds were also sown for the Thirty Years' War. This saw Hapsburg (and fellow-Papist) Austria fight against Protestants across the Holy Roman Empire. This Protestant "insurgency" against a centralizing autocracy devastated the heart of Europe.
Ironically, the Hapsburgs also had a part to play in Europe's coming-together after the Second World War. The Treaty Of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War and created a peace in Europe that lasted for generations; The Treaty of Rome created the framework for European peace and co-operation after the Second World war.
The Eurosceptics of today wouldn't have missed the historical irony (or implicit symbolism) of the framework for a centralised, European administration being signed in Rome. For the paranoid conspiracy theorists, the whole thing reeked of centuries-old autocratic "Papism", re-imagined in a modern setting. For the paranoid conspiracy theorists, Hapsburg hands even seemed be on the choice of Brussels (and Strasbourg) as its administrative centres; both cities that once were at the heart of "Papist" Austrian and Spanish Hapsburg lands. Belgium is still staunchly Catholic. Eurosceptics' paranoia that the European Union was simply a reconstituted Holy Roman Empire assailed against "democratizing" Protestantism would have been undimmed.
My point is not to argue if these ideas are based in fact (and regardless of any wider symbolism, European integration is a well-established fact); it is that these ideas have been used by paranoid Eurosceptics for the purpose of their own agenda. That agenda seems to be a form of economic and ideological "Puritanism": a kind of 21st century "Commonwealth", with all the potential upheaval that entails.
As with Protestants' suspicion of the allegiance of the Stuart kings of four hundred years ago, Eurosceptics of today would have had their paranoia fueled by the administrations of Blair and Cameron, who were both innately Euro-phile (and ironically, like James and Charles Stuart, both of Scottish stock). Like how Protestants of four hundred years ago would have yearned back to the times of the staunch Protestantism of Elizabeth, today's Eurosceptics yearn back to the certainties of the Thatcher era; another strong woman, they would say, who did not shy from battling Europe.
Like King James, Blair's fate seems to have been to repair relations with Europe, strained after years of quasi-isolation. He otherwise left a long legacy of mixed fortunes during his time in power. James's successor, Charles, took James' autocratic tendency even further, but with far less tact.
Cameron's political fate as the "heir to Blair", in a manner of speaking, also seemed to have gone the way of Charles'. Some of the historical parallels are striking. Foppish and condescending like Charles, Cameron's career at the top was a series of misjudgments. It was trouble with Scotland that started Charles' troubles with parliament in England; after recklessly thinking he had solved the trouble north of the border, Charles thought his troubles with parliament would as easily be solved. They were not, and neither were his troubles with Scotland. The same could be said of Cameron, when his "victory" over the Scottish referendum led him to think he could as easily solve the problem his own faction had with Europe. By acting in a condescending way towards his enemies and behaving like a reckless autocrat, Cameron's fate came to a messy political end.
After being defeated by the "Puritanical" Eurosceptic faction, Cameron was succeeded by Theresa May. The daughter of a vicar, she seemed to match the Brexit Puritans' demeanor for a mean-spirited, petty-minded form of government. In allowing a hostile political environment for the Eurosceptics' paranoia to grow unchecked, she seems to be continuing this inadvertent "reprise" of the mid-17th century narrative: as a female Cromwell, symbolic head of the Puritan "Brexit" revolution that sought to seek out and destroy the remaining vestiges of "Papist" Pro-Europeanism. For these modern Puritans, "Hard Brexit" is their version of the rapture, with their foreign-minded "Papist" enemies rightly deserving of their fate in the rhetorical flames.
The "Brexiteers" of today share the same paranoia towards the continent that the Protestant Puritans had four hundred years ago. The themes are the same, even if the European institutions they attack are different; once it was Rome that was the enemy, while now it is Brussels. As mentioned earlier, the sharper-eyed (and more conspiratorial) Eurosceptics may point to the symbolic "Papist connection" between Brussels and Rome.
Four hundred years ago, the Puritans' allies in Europe were to be found in the Lutheran states of Northern Europe, as they allied against Rome and its Hapsburg allies in Spain and Austria. Today, the "Brexiteers" find their allies in the Populist anti-European movements. These are ideological descendants to the anti-clerical Lutherans that fought against a centralizing Rome, except now their "centralizing" enemies are based in Brussels, with the support of Berlin and Paris.
This is the narrative that has overtaken Britain's politics. These are the "culture wars" that have been fought in the minds of Britain's population, on behalf of a "Puritan" Brexit agenda. The new "English Civil War" has already been fought in the form of the EU referendum: to continue the analogy, the foppish Pro-European "Cavaliers" lost, and the stern-minded Eurosceptic "Roundheads" won.
For the Brexit "Puritans", a new "Commonwealth" beckons; though what it means for everyone else, only time will tell.
British Euroscepticism is an old creed which has usually been a mask for English Nationalism, of one sort or another. But at its heart is a paranoia against Europe, and a particular conspiracy theory that centres on an all-powerful, trans-national ("papist") elite.
The paranoiac, Eurosceptic conspiracy theorists of today (i.e. the zealot "Brexiteers") seem to echo with the same kind of dark delusions as those of 16th and 17th century England. The same could well be said of the ancient roots of modern Anti-Semitism, but that's another story.
The Reformation of Martin Luther five hundred years ago was in many ways about "taking back control" from a over-mighty, corrupt and centralizing elite, based in Rome. This movement also crossed the channel to England. It was the personal whims of Henry VIII rather than Martin Luther that eventually brought about the "English Reformation", and he came to see the power of the papacy in England as a direct threat to his own. One direct result of this was the dissolution of the monasteries, an act of barbarous, monarchical thievery masked behind faith. The febrile atmosphere in the country led to Protestant paranoia against Rome and its ally, Hapsburg Spain, and by the reign of Elizabeth, war.
By the time the Stuart kings came to the throne in the first half of the 17th century, Protestant paranoia had to be tamed. "Splendid Isolation" was also self-destructive. This resulted in a more nuanced and pragmatic approach by the Stuarts towards Catholic Spain and the "Papist" threat; it was a period of English "detente" towards Europe, where relations were improved and connections made. This went so far as leaving some English Protestants into thinking that James, and Charles in particular, were Papists in all but name. Their autocratic actions also fed the view that the Stuart kings were behaving far more like the Papist autocrats on the Continent than the more consensual rulers they had been led to believe in (regardless of the past reality of Henry VIII's reign).
It was this atmosphere of Protestant paranoia over a "Papist", foreign-minded king that led to the English Civil War. The king's forces, the Cavaliers, were seen as foppish, condescending autocrats, while parliament's forces, the Roundheads, were portrayed as sober-minded reformers. The resulting "Commonwealth" of the victorious Roundheads, however, rapidly turned into a virtual Puritan revolution. While the purpose of the Civil war was the restoration of parliament, it actually turned into the autocracy of Oliver Cromwell and his fellow Puritan Protestants where parliament was sidelined; a hard-line faction of parliament had taken control of the country and hijacked its fate. In the end, this situation couldn't last, and we had the Restoration not long after Cromwell's death.
The "new Puritanism"?
We seem to be repeating a variation on the same story centuries later.
Four hundred years ago, while Protestants in England were becoming fed up with James' indulgence of Hapsburg Spain, the seeds were also sown for the Thirty Years' War. This saw Hapsburg (and fellow-Papist) Austria fight against Protestants across the Holy Roman Empire. This Protestant "insurgency" against a centralizing autocracy devastated the heart of Europe.
Ironically, the Hapsburgs also had a part to play in Europe's coming-together after the Second World War. The Treaty Of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War and created a peace in Europe that lasted for generations; The Treaty of Rome created the framework for European peace and co-operation after the Second World war.
The Eurosceptics of today wouldn't have missed the historical irony (or implicit symbolism) of the framework for a centralised, European administration being signed in Rome. For the paranoid conspiracy theorists, the whole thing reeked of centuries-old autocratic "Papism", re-imagined in a modern setting. For the paranoid conspiracy theorists, Hapsburg hands even seemed be on the choice of Brussels (and Strasbourg) as its administrative centres; both cities that once were at the heart of "Papist" Austrian and Spanish Hapsburg lands. Belgium is still staunchly Catholic. Eurosceptics' paranoia that the European Union was simply a reconstituted Holy Roman Empire assailed against "democratizing" Protestantism would have been undimmed.
My point is not to argue if these ideas are based in fact (and regardless of any wider symbolism, European integration is a well-established fact); it is that these ideas have been used by paranoid Eurosceptics for the purpose of their own agenda. That agenda seems to be a form of economic and ideological "Puritanism": a kind of 21st century "Commonwealth", with all the potential upheaval that entails.
As with Protestants' suspicion of the allegiance of the Stuart kings of four hundred years ago, Eurosceptics of today would have had their paranoia fueled by the administrations of Blair and Cameron, who were both innately Euro-phile (and ironically, like James and Charles Stuart, both of Scottish stock). Like how Protestants of four hundred years ago would have yearned back to the times of the staunch Protestantism of Elizabeth, today's Eurosceptics yearn back to the certainties of the Thatcher era; another strong woman, they would say, who did not shy from battling Europe.
Like King James, Blair's fate seems to have been to repair relations with Europe, strained after years of quasi-isolation. He otherwise left a long legacy of mixed fortunes during his time in power. James's successor, Charles, took James' autocratic tendency even further, but with far less tact.
Cameron's political fate as the "heir to Blair", in a manner of speaking, also seemed to have gone the way of Charles'. Some of the historical parallels are striking. Foppish and condescending like Charles, Cameron's career at the top was a series of misjudgments. It was trouble with Scotland that started Charles' troubles with parliament in England; after recklessly thinking he had solved the trouble north of the border, Charles thought his troubles with parliament would as easily be solved. They were not, and neither were his troubles with Scotland. The same could be said of Cameron, when his "victory" over the Scottish referendum led him to think he could as easily solve the problem his own faction had with Europe. By acting in a condescending way towards his enemies and behaving like a reckless autocrat, Cameron's fate came to a messy political end.
After being defeated by the "Puritanical" Eurosceptic faction, Cameron was succeeded by Theresa May. The daughter of a vicar, she seemed to match the Brexit Puritans' demeanor for a mean-spirited, petty-minded form of government. In allowing a hostile political environment for the Eurosceptics' paranoia to grow unchecked, she seems to be continuing this inadvertent "reprise" of the mid-17th century narrative: as a female Cromwell, symbolic head of the Puritan "Brexit" revolution that sought to seek out and destroy the remaining vestiges of "Papist" Pro-Europeanism. For these modern Puritans, "Hard Brexit" is their version of the rapture, with their foreign-minded "Papist" enemies rightly deserving of their fate in the rhetorical flames.
The "Brexiteers" of today share the same paranoia towards the continent that the Protestant Puritans had four hundred years ago. The themes are the same, even if the European institutions they attack are different; once it was Rome that was the enemy, while now it is Brussels. As mentioned earlier, the sharper-eyed (and more conspiratorial) Eurosceptics may point to the symbolic "Papist connection" between Brussels and Rome.
Four hundred years ago, the Puritans' allies in Europe were to be found in the Lutheran states of Northern Europe, as they allied against Rome and its Hapsburg allies in Spain and Austria. Today, the "Brexiteers" find their allies in the Populist anti-European movements. These are ideological descendants to the anti-clerical Lutherans that fought against a centralizing Rome, except now their "centralizing" enemies are based in Brussels, with the support of Berlin and Paris.
This is the narrative that has overtaken Britain's politics. These are the "culture wars" that have been fought in the minds of Britain's population, on behalf of a "Puritan" Brexit agenda. The new "English Civil War" has already been fought in the form of the EU referendum: to continue the analogy, the foppish Pro-European "Cavaliers" lost, and the stern-minded Eurosceptic "Roundheads" won.
For the Brexit "Puritans", a new "Commonwealth" beckons; though what it means for everyone else, only time will tell.
Thursday, October 19, 2017
Brexit: the result of accumulated incompetence? Parallels with "Atlas Shrugged"
Following the government's strategy and "progress" with the Brexit negotiations, I was reminded of the plot to Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" (the author wrote a series of articles on this novel's symbolism).
Ayn Rand's original working title to this mammoth novel was "The Strike". The premise behind the story being: what would happen if all the smartest people refused to work? So the story follows as, one by one, various stalwarts of industry and other brains of American society begin to disappear, as the government of the day slowly takes greater and greater control of the economy. The process becomes self-reinforcing as the government takes up more of the slack left behind as more and more of the "best and brightest" disappear from public life. In the end, left with an over-bearing government led by a mass of collective incompetence, accidents become commonplace as the country literally begins to fall apart. The "best and brightest" finally reappear to save the nation from itself when the government loses control of the situation completely. The reader is left with the implication that these "best and brightest" will then restore the country under a new system where the government is entirely absent from any role in the economy and the public sphere.
The story reads as an indictment on "government" as a whole, as an autocratic system which feeds incompetence and inefficiency; the opposite to how the private sector is meant to be ran. While I'm no fan of Ayn Rand, following the government's handling of Brexit, it's hard not to draw (ironic) parallels with their rank incompetence and descent into chaos, and that of the government portrayed in "Atlas Shrugged". In the same way as the "best and brightest" fled from their posts in light of the fictitious government's actions, the same seems to be true of various parts of industry in the UK during the Brexit process.
Most of industry warned during the referendum campaign that to leave the EU would be bad for the British economy; now that the government seems to be lurching towards leaving the EU with no deal at all, some giants of the economy are reminding the government in stark terms of their own economic interests. If the government pursues this course to leave with no deal in March 2019, they will be forced to make their own "contingency plans": put simply, they will up sticks and leave the sinking ship as quickly as possible. While the UK will leave the EU in March 2019, big business - and the financial sector in particular - need clarity far sooner: no later than the end of this year, to give them time to make adequate preparations. Similarly, Britain's airline industry needs to know what the "deal" will be no later than March 2018, to make suitable preparations. The government's incompetence and incoherence has been given very short shrift, and will result in real consequences much more quickly than they think. The initial effects of Brexit on the economy may be only a few months away; a harbinger of what is to come.
Since the referendum, it also feels as though all those who supported "Remain" (i.e. much of the intelligentsia) have been quelled into silence by the febrile and menacing feel in the public sphere; like how many "captains of industry" are making contingency plans to flee with their assets, large parts of the intelligentsia have seem to have gone AWOL. It's no coincidence that some of those have also applied for (Irish) EU passports, perhaps to better enable their own flight after Brexit. While the intelligentsia have absented themselves from the discourse (perhaps seeing how impossible it is to reason with incompetents), the country descends into madness. It seems as though industry and the intelligentsia are getting their excuses in early, as if to say "we warned you; you didn't listen. It's not our fault".
The irony here is how the government's agenda is being guided by those who are huge supporters of Ayn Rand's ideology; it is almost as if they want the government to be led by incompetents (as in the plot of "Atlas Shrugged") - to bring about the economy's collapse, and allow them to take over.
A failure of government
The EU can see how badly the country is being ran, and its strategy now with Theresa May seems almost one of pity. Unfortunately this seems as doomed to fail as any other strategy, for as much as May and her government completely misunderstand how the EU works, the EU seems to equally misunderstand how the Conservative Party works. The EU tries to "make nice" with May over the possibility of a deal (by - wrongly - thinking that this positive mood music will encourage May into making the necessary concessions); meanwhile, May is encouraged to see any sign of "flexibility" on the EU's part as a sign that they are willing to make concessions, so sees no need to give ground. So both sides seem to be feeding each other with false hopes of a deal, to encourage the other to make the kind of concessions which may well be politically impossible. Both sides are in a bind - a kind of "Gordian Knot" of epic proportions.
May may well go down as one of the worst Prime Ministers the country has ever known, certainly in modern times. Her personal characteristics seem to work against the process gaining any momentum at home. To begin with, she has autocratic tendencies, to the extent that any serious debate over the issues is knocked down. This has led to the extraordinary situation where there has been - now sixteen months on from the referendum, and nearly seven months on from invoking article 50 - still no proper debate in government about what its actual Brexit aims are. All that has been said so far is woolly rhetoric to paper over the vast differences in government. The EU doesn't know what the UK government wants because the UK government itself doesn't know what it wants. It is truly astonishing that May could trigger article 50 for the start of negotiations without her government having a clue what its final position was.
This is partly due to the weakness of May's position as well; even when her government had a majority, she was loathe to start a proper debate on Brexit that would lead to open differences in government. The result is that the open differences have surfaced anyway, because she has done nothing to diminish them. Now her government doesn't even have a majority, this has made those differences even more apparent, with the loudest voices from the "Hard Brexiteers" carrying the most sway. In the same way that the intelligentsia have largely gone AWOL in the country at large, in the Conservative Party, the most rational voices have been silenced by the headbangers. And while this goes on, Theresa May sits in Downing Street and does nothing, as she is too weak to act: a hostage to fortune.
It is May's position as a mere "caretaker" presiding over this chaos that fatally diminishes the prestige of the role of Prime Minister of the UK.
This all feels like the inevitable result of the gradual degradation of the quality of political discourse in Britain.
There was a time when politics was inhabited by people of intellect, with ideas and (some) moral standing. John Major may not have been an intellectual giant, but he at least seemed to possess an aura of integrity. Tony Blair may have had an ambiguous moral compass (e.g. Iraq), but at least he was smart, and improved the state of the nation overall. (Doctor) Gordon Brown may have had his flaws, but when the financial crisis happened, he did the right thing at the right time, by saving the economy from imminent implosion.
David Cameron was a sign of the things to come. He treated politics as a game, even to the point of playing with his country's own future. He thought he was smart, but he was merely "lucky"; until his luck ran out. He filled his cabinet with similar chancers like George Osborne, and the rest with people whose loyalty or affiliations were more important than their rank incompetence. Theresa May was so long-standing in her position as Home Secretary for the same reason.
It is this gradual but self-evident decline in the quality of Britain's politics that led to Brexit in the first place: it's what happens when the establishment is left to rule though passive compliance. UKIP's incoherent ideology was allowed to take over the political discourse; the result now is that the government has copied its core agenda almost in its entirety and it's treating our democratic institutions as a complete joke. The government now thinks that democracy is a system where you can ignore the opinions of the people you don't agree with; they think the judgments of experts can be ignored if they disagree with their own prejudices.
If you're not worried, you're not paying attention.
Ayn Rand's original working title to this mammoth novel was "The Strike". The premise behind the story being: what would happen if all the smartest people refused to work? So the story follows as, one by one, various stalwarts of industry and other brains of American society begin to disappear, as the government of the day slowly takes greater and greater control of the economy. The process becomes self-reinforcing as the government takes up more of the slack left behind as more and more of the "best and brightest" disappear from public life. In the end, left with an over-bearing government led by a mass of collective incompetence, accidents become commonplace as the country literally begins to fall apart. The "best and brightest" finally reappear to save the nation from itself when the government loses control of the situation completely. The reader is left with the implication that these "best and brightest" will then restore the country under a new system where the government is entirely absent from any role in the economy and the public sphere.
The story reads as an indictment on "government" as a whole, as an autocratic system which feeds incompetence and inefficiency; the opposite to how the private sector is meant to be ran. While I'm no fan of Ayn Rand, following the government's handling of Brexit, it's hard not to draw (ironic) parallels with their rank incompetence and descent into chaos, and that of the government portrayed in "Atlas Shrugged". In the same way as the "best and brightest" fled from their posts in light of the fictitious government's actions, the same seems to be true of various parts of industry in the UK during the Brexit process.
Most of industry warned during the referendum campaign that to leave the EU would be bad for the British economy; now that the government seems to be lurching towards leaving the EU with no deal at all, some giants of the economy are reminding the government in stark terms of their own economic interests. If the government pursues this course to leave with no deal in March 2019, they will be forced to make their own "contingency plans": put simply, they will up sticks and leave the sinking ship as quickly as possible. While the UK will leave the EU in March 2019, big business - and the financial sector in particular - need clarity far sooner: no later than the end of this year, to give them time to make adequate preparations. Similarly, Britain's airline industry needs to know what the "deal" will be no later than March 2018, to make suitable preparations. The government's incompetence and incoherence has been given very short shrift, and will result in real consequences much more quickly than they think. The initial effects of Brexit on the economy may be only a few months away; a harbinger of what is to come.
Since the referendum, it also feels as though all those who supported "Remain" (i.e. much of the intelligentsia) have been quelled into silence by the febrile and menacing feel in the public sphere; like how many "captains of industry" are making contingency plans to flee with their assets, large parts of the intelligentsia have seem to have gone AWOL. It's no coincidence that some of those have also applied for (Irish) EU passports, perhaps to better enable their own flight after Brexit. While the intelligentsia have absented themselves from the discourse (perhaps seeing how impossible it is to reason with incompetents), the country descends into madness. It seems as though industry and the intelligentsia are getting their excuses in early, as if to say "we warned you; you didn't listen. It's not our fault".
The irony here is how the government's agenda is being guided by those who are huge supporters of Ayn Rand's ideology; it is almost as if they want the government to be led by incompetents (as in the plot of "Atlas Shrugged") - to bring about the economy's collapse, and allow them to take over.
A failure of government
The EU can see how badly the country is being ran, and its strategy now with Theresa May seems almost one of pity. Unfortunately this seems as doomed to fail as any other strategy, for as much as May and her government completely misunderstand how the EU works, the EU seems to equally misunderstand how the Conservative Party works. The EU tries to "make nice" with May over the possibility of a deal (by - wrongly - thinking that this positive mood music will encourage May into making the necessary concessions); meanwhile, May is encouraged to see any sign of "flexibility" on the EU's part as a sign that they are willing to make concessions, so sees no need to give ground. So both sides seem to be feeding each other with false hopes of a deal, to encourage the other to make the kind of concessions which may well be politically impossible. Both sides are in a bind - a kind of "Gordian Knot" of epic proportions.
May may well go down as one of the worst Prime Ministers the country has ever known, certainly in modern times. Her personal characteristics seem to work against the process gaining any momentum at home. To begin with, she has autocratic tendencies, to the extent that any serious debate over the issues is knocked down. This has led to the extraordinary situation where there has been - now sixteen months on from the referendum, and nearly seven months on from invoking article 50 - still no proper debate in government about what its actual Brexit aims are. All that has been said so far is woolly rhetoric to paper over the vast differences in government. The EU doesn't know what the UK government wants because the UK government itself doesn't know what it wants. It is truly astonishing that May could trigger article 50 for the start of negotiations without her government having a clue what its final position was.
This is partly due to the weakness of May's position as well; even when her government had a majority, she was loathe to start a proper debate on Brexit that would lead to open differences in government. The result is that the open differences have surfaced anyway, because she has done nothing to diminish them. Now her government doesn't even have a majority, this has made those differences even more apparent, with the loudest voices from the "Hard Brexiteers" carrying the most sway. In the same way that the intelligentsia have largely gone AWOL in the country at large, in the Conservative Party, the most rational voices have been silenced by the headbangers. And while this goes on, Theresa May sits in Downing Street and does nothing, as she is too weak to act: a hostage to fortune.
It is May's position as a mere "caretaker" presiding over this chaos that fatally diminishes the prestige of the role of Prime Minister of the UK.
This all feels like the inevitable result of the gradual degradation of the quality of political discourse in Britain.
There was a time when politics was inhabited by people of intellect, with ideas and (some) moral standing. John Major may not have been an intellectual giant, but he at least seemed to possess an aura of integrity. Tony Blair may have had an ambiguous moral compass (e.g. Iraq), but at least he was smart, and improved the state of the nation overall. (Doctor) Gordon Brown may have had his flaws, but when the financial crisis happened, he did the right thing at the right time, by saving the economy from imminent implosion.
David Cameron was a sign of the things to come. He treated politics as a game, even to the point of playing with his country's own future. He thought he was smart, but he was merely "lucky"; until his luck ran out. He filled his cabinet with similar chancers like George Osborne, and the rest with people whose loyalty or affiliations were more important than their rank incompetence. Theresa May was so long-standing in her position as Home Secretary for the same reason.
It is this gradual but self-evident decline in the quality of Britain's politics that led to Brexit in the first place: it's what happens when the establishment is left to rule though passive compliance. UKIP's incoherent ideology was allowed to take over the political discourse; the result now is that the government has copied its core agenda almost in its entirety and it's treating our democratic institutions as a complete joke. The government now thinks that democracy is a system where you can ignore the opinions of the people you don't agree with; they think the judgments of experts can be ignored if they disagree with their own prejudices.
If you're not worried, you're not paying attention.
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Brexit, British identity and English Nationalism: a short history
The author was reading an excellent article about the "Gordian Knot" of the Irish Question and Brexit, and how the issue of Northern Ireland became lost in the EU referendum last year. This article also reminds us that Brexit was, at its heart, about English nationalism.
As I've said elsewhere, the reasons for Brexit are complex and multi-faceted, but one undeniable factor is the emotional and insidious draw of English nationalism. Part of this is due to the idiosyncratic nature of Britain and its history. By its nature, Britain is a multi-national state, yet dominated by England's size and much larger population.
A history of "Britishness"
The term "Britain" only really became to have proper political meaning when James I of Scotland became joint ruler of England and Scotland at the turn of the 17th century, uniting "Britain" under one crown for the first real time, and with a shared flag, the "Union Jack". While England had dominated Britain and the Isles through its political might, Scotland (in alliance with France) had always resisted. British identity became something more formal under James I, even if Scotland formally retained its independence from England for another hundred years. The Civil War in the middle of the 17th century was as much a "British Civil War", as it affected all nations of the land with waves of anarchy and uprisings.
Britain's status became formalised with the legal union of Scotland with England in 1707; but unlike how Wales had been conquered by England centuries earlier, Scotland's union with England was consensual - a treaty more like a "contract between nations". It was only after an economic crisis that Scotland decided to submit powers to Westminster for equal access to its economic might, seeing in this "contract" its own self-interest.
This formal union coincided with the beginning of the Golden Age of Britain's colonial expansion. With Scotland now tied in with England, both kingdoms enjoyed the fruits of Empire; from Colonial North America to the burgeoning interests developing in India. Scotland began to thrive from this new relationship, and from an English point of view it began to feel the case that England was Britain and Britain was England. The terms seem to become interchangeable. North of the border, this sense of "Britishness" overcoming national identity became so strong that some Scots even referred to themselves as "North British" and their homeland as "North Britain".
In this way, "Britishness" came to be tied inextricably with the British Empire; and as England was its power base, English identity became merged with that of the British Empire, and English self-esteem became sub-consciously tied with the fate of the British Empire.
From the British Empire's point of view, its peak of power was arguably at the end of the Nineteenth Century; implicitly, this was also the peak of British (and thus English) self-esteem. Up to this point, after the trauma of losing the rump of Colonial North America, Britain had thrived, going from one success to another: settling Canada and Australasia, making India its "jewel in the crown" of its Empire, and later on expanding into Africa in the 1880s. Meanwhile, Britain had punctuated this with smaller strategic prizes, from Malta to Cyprus and Suez to Aden.
From the end of the Nineteenth Century, however, there would only be a series of events that would gradually punctuate its decline. This began with the Boer War which, while ending ultimately in victory, was a precursor to the kind of troubles that lay ahead. How close this came home (literally) was shown with the "Easter Rising" in 1916, in the middle of the First World War. When this led to Irish independence several years later, it was a sign that "Britishness" and the integrity of the British Empire was much more fragile than its English advocates thought. It was a combination of arrogance, intransigence and complacency on behalf of some English nationalists that had fuelled the Irish crisis: a mood that would punctuate the rest of the British Empire's life, contributing to its loss of most of its colonies little more than forty years after Irish independence.
Gaining the Middle East "mandates" for the British Empire was a pyrrhic victory, for Britain was incapable of ruling them effectively. This was a trend that spread across all its colonies after the First World War, in India most of all. Once the colonies began to be lost to the Anti-Colonial movement after the Second World War, the question for Britain became: what next?
"What next?"
Like some other European powers, Britain held on to some of its colonies into the 1970s (and a few - such as Belize - into the 1980s). What remains today - officially called the "British Overseas Territory" - is the last shadow of the Empire. This has resulted in a few idiosyncratic entities, such as a segment of Cyprus remaining British for military purposes. Gibraltar is another legacy of England's earlier foraying into European politics.
The "what next?" question was answered, as we know, by Europe. In the same way that Scotland joined England through a combination of political expediency and financial self-interest, Britain joined the EEC for similar reasons. In short, it was a way to make money, with the minimum of trade-offs.
At the same time that Britain was joining the EEC, Scottish nationalism was on the rise north of the border. Again, this was partly about money and self-interest: oil discovered in Scottish waters in the North Sea. The chance for Scotland and Wales to gain some autonomy was lost at the end of the 1970s, and for a time Scottish nationalism seemed little more than a temporary fad tied with gaining control of Scotland's oil. The moment passed with the the coming to power of Margaret Thatcher's administration, as English reactionaries in the governing Conservative Party killed the idea of devolution and any possible risk of ceding control away from London.
As the government in London centralised authority further in the 1980s, Thatcher also bridled at the realisation that the deal to join the EEC was beginning to involve granting more powers to Brussels. This was the time when "Euroscepticism" began to become a real force within the Conservative Party. This movement was also indistinguishable from what some would nowadays recognise as "English Nationalism".
Euroscepticism or "English Nationalism"?
The term "English Nationalism" is problematic as it was for so long associated with the far right and hate groups. The term began its gradual "rehabilitiation" by the onset of the 1990s, when the "Eurosceptics" that had initially lost their focus with the forced resignation of their idol, Margaret Thatcher, only to quickly rediscover their sense of purpose with their opposition to the Maastricht Treaty. Apart from the "bastards" that were causing Thatcher's (more moderate) successor, John Major such worry in parliament, Maastricht's effect was to create UKIP.
UKIP have also been called the "English Nationalist Party", and with good reason. While the party itself might not think of itself as intrinsically Anglo-centric or innately nationalistic, its support base certainly is. UKIP's support base has always been at by far its strongest in the English shires and parts of the deindustrialised North of England.
UKIP's rise, and the more general rise of English Nationalism in the last twenty years, can be lined up with several historical "punctuation marks". UKIP first came on the radar in the 1999 European Elections, gaining more than 6% of the vote and its first three MEPs. Tellingly, this coincided with the devolution process by the Labour government in the Scotland and Wales (whose nationalist parties also gained MEPs). In the European Elections five years later, UKIP's MEP representation had leaped to 11. By this point, devolution in Scotland and Wales was a fact of life, and there was another important point: a number of East European countries had joined the EU not long before, and their people were give open access to live and work in Britain. Added to this the financial crisis of 2008, and "English Nationalism" was given even more fuel to add to its fire. In the 2009 European elections, UKIP had gained more MEPs, and even the BNP - an avowed Fascist party - had a presence in Brussels. In this way, "English Nationalism" had become almost a fashionable form of protest in some parts of the country.
From this point onward, the story is familiar: the issue went mainstream after the combined factors of the lingering effects of the financial crisis and the (seemingly highly-visible) increase of European immigration. On the back of this, UKIP became the largest British party in the European Parliament in 2014. The unofficial "English Nationalist Party" had taken control of the agenda, and we know the result of that: Britain is leaving the EU.
UKIP started out a little more than a single-issue party; a fringe group that acted as a maverick entity of the "Eurosceptic" element of the Conservative Party. Over time, their agenda evolved and crystallised into something more structured. While this was a chaotic process, the end result was a Libertarian agenda that sees Thatcherism taken to its logical conclusion. The "English Nationalist" aspect of the agenda seems to have been a by-product of the nature of its support base; while this might be shared by only some of those in the hierarchy, all of those at the top can see its ultimate use as a platform.
All the talk of leaving the EU in order to restore connections with former colonies is innately nationalistic in tone, as it harks back to a time when England, though Britain, controlled a quarter of the globe. Seen in another light, even when part of the EU, it seems that many people saw it merely as another projection of Britain's footprint abroad. The EU acted as a psychological substitute for the Empire; using the continent as an excuse for cheaper holidays and sunshine. Psychologically, it was treated as no different from going to Australia, except that it was only a hop across the Channel. This less about engagement with Europe as a cultural trashing of it. After years of this arrogant attitude becoming ingrained within a segment of the population, it's difficult to be nationalistic without being Anti-European. So we can call the EU referendum result also a victory for English Nationalism, as well as a result of English Nationalism.
While there is a lot of talk of reshaping Britain to make it more equitable, the actions so far are all autocratic and centralising in nature: about the government (i.e. London) acting as the sole arbiter of Britain's fate, with little sign of dialogue with Scotland or Wales (let alone the thoughts of England's regions).
The schizophrenic part to this is (as mentioned the initial linked article at the start) London is probably is the least nationalistic and least Euro-sceptic part of the UK; the government's agenda is that of "England-outside-London". Put like this, the "Brexit government" feels like an occupying power in the capital. It would be more fitting if they moved the "capital" back to Winchester, say, to have a "real" Anglo-Saxon hub; or one of the "Brexit bastions", such as Peterborough.
Such talk is as fantastical as it is nonsensical, but it is little more than what we've come to expect from the people running the government, or those that have the government's ear. But such talk is what you get when you let nationalism set the agenda.
As I've said elsewhere, the reasons for Brexit are complex and multi-faceted, but one undeniable factor is the emotional and insidious draw of English nationalism. Part of this is due to the idiosyncratic nature of Britain and its history. By its nature, Britain is a multi-national state, yet dominated by England's size and much larger population.
A history of "Britishness"
The term "Britain" only really became to have proper political meaning when James I of Scotland became joint ruler of England and Scotland at the turn of the 17th century, uniting "Britain" under one crown for the first real time, and with a shared flag, the "Union Jack". While England had dominated Britain and the Isles through its political might, Scotland (in alliance with France) had always resisted. British identity became something more formal under James I, even if Scotland formally retained its independence from England for another hundred years. The Civil War in the middle of the 17th century was as much a "British Civil War", as it affected all nations of the land with waves of anarchy and uprisings.
Britain's status became formalised with the legal union of Scotland with England in 1707; but unlike how Wales had been conquered by England centuries earlier, Scotland's union with England was consensual - a treaty more like a "contract between nations". It was only after an economic crisis that Scotland decided to submit powers to Westminster for equal access to its economic might, seeing in this "contract" its own self-interest.
This formal union coincided with the beginning of the Golden Age of Britain's colonial expansion. With Scotland now tied in with England, both kingdoms enjoyed the fruits of Empire; from Colonial North America to the burgeoning interests developing in India. Scotland began to thrive from this new relationship, and from an English point of view it began to feel the case that England was Britain and Britain was England. The terms seem to become interchangeable. North of the border, this sense of "Britishness" overcoming national identity became so strong that some Scots even referred to themselves as "North British" and their homeland as "North Britain".
In this way, "Britishness" came to be tied inextricably with the British Empire; and as England was its power base, English identity became merged with that of the British Empire, and English self-esteem became sub-consciously tied with the fate of the British Empire.
From the British Empire's point of view, its peak of power was arguably at the end of the Nineteenth Century; implicitly, this was also the peak of British (and thus English) self-esteem. Up to this point, after the trauma of losing the rump of Colonial North America, Britain had thrived, going from one success to another: settling Canada and Australasia, making India its "jewel in the crown" of its Empire, and later on expanding into Africa in the 1880s. Meanwhile, Britain had punctuated this with smaller strategic prizes, from Malta to Cyprus and Suez to Aden.
From the end of the Nineteenth Century, however, there would only be a series of events that would gradually punctuate its decline. This began with the Boer War which, while ending ultimately in victory, was a precursor to the kind of troubles that lay ahead. How close this came home (literally) was shown with the "Easter Rising" in 1916, in the middle of the First World War. When this led to Irish independence several years later, it was a sign that "Britishness" and the integrity of the British Empire was much more fragile than its English advocates thought. It was a combination of arrogance, intransigence and complacency on behalf of some English nationalists that had fuelled the Irish crisis: a mood that would punctuate the rest of the British Empire's life, contributing to its loss of most of its colonies little more than forty years after Irish independence.
Gaining the Middle East "mandates" for the British Empire was a pyrrhic victory, for Britain was incapable of ruling them effectively. This was a trend that spread across all its colonies after the First World War, in India most of all. Once the colonies began to be lost to the Anti-Colonial movement after the Second World War, the question for Britain became: what next?
"What next?"
Like some other European powers, Britain held on to some of its colonies into the 1970s (and a few - such as Belize - into the 1980s). What remains today - officially called the "British Overseas Territory" - is the last shadow of the Empire. This has resulted in a few idiosyncratic entities, such as a segment of Cyprus remaining British for military purposes. Gibraltar is another legacy of England's earlier foraying into European politics.
The "what next?" question was answered, as we know, by Europe. In the same way that Scotland joined England through a combination of political expediency and financial self-interest, Britain joined the EEC for similar reasons. In short, it was a way to make money, with the minimum of trade-offs.
At the same time that Britain was joining the EEC, Scottish nationalism was on the rise north of the border. Again, this was partly about money and self-interest: oil discovered in Scottish waters in the North Sea. The chance for Scotland and Wales to gain some autonomy was lost at the end of the 1970s, and for a time Scottish nationalism seemed little more than a temporary fad tied with gaining control of Scotland's oil. The moment passed with the the coming to power of Margaret Thatcher's administration, as English reactionaries in the governing Conservative Party killed the idea of devolution and any possible risk of ceding control away from London.
As the government in London centralised authority further in the 1980s, Thatcher also bridled at the realisation that the deal to join the EEC was beginning to involve granting more powers to Brussels. This was the time when "Euroscepticism" began to become a real force within the Conservative Party. This movement was also indistinguishable from what some would nowadays recognise as "English Nationalism".
Euroscepticism or "English Nationalism"?
The term "English Nationalism" is problematic as it was for so long associated with the far right and hate groups. The term began its gradual "rehabilitiation" by the onset of the 1990s, when the "Eurosceptics" that had initially lost their focus with the forced resignation of their idol, Margaret Thatcher, only to quickly rediscover their sense of purpose with their opposition to the Maastricht Treaty. Apart from the "bastards" that were causing Thatcher's (more moderate) successor, John Major such worry in parliament, Maastricht's effect was to create UKIP.
UKIP have also been called the "English Nationalist Party", and with good reason. While the party itself might not think of itself as intrinsically Anglo-centric or innately nationalistic, its support base certainly is. UKIP's support base has always been at by far its strongest in the English shires and parts of the deindustrialised North of England.
UKIP's rise, and the more general rise of English Nationalism in the last twenty years, can be lined up with several historical "punctuation marks". UKIP first came on the radar in the 1999 European Elections, gaining more than 6% of the vote and its first three MEPs. Tellingly, this coincided with the devolution process by the Labour government in the Scotland and Wales (whose nationalist parties also gained MEPs). In the European Elections five years later, UKIP's MEP representation had leaped to 11. By this point, devolution in Scotland and Wales was a fact of life, and there was another important point: a number of East European countries had joined the EU not long before, and their people were give open access to live and work in Britain. Added to this the financial crisis of 2008, and "English Nationalism" was given even more fuel to add to its fire. In the 2009 European elections, UKIP had gained more MEPs, and even the BNP - an avowed Fascist party - had a presence in Brussels. In this way, "English Nationalism" had become almost a fashionable form of protest in some parts of the country.
From this point onward, the story is familiar: the issue went mainstream after the combined factors of the lingering effects of the financial crisis and the (seemingly highly-visible) increase of European immigration. On the back of this, UKIP became the largest British party in the European Parliament in 2014. The unofficial "English Nationalist Party" had taken control of the agenda, and we know the result of that: Britain is leaving the EU.
UKIP started out a little more than a single-issue party; a fringe group that acted as a maverick entity of the "Eurosceptic" element of the Conservative Party. Over time, their agenda evolved and crystallised into something more structured. While this was a chaotic process, the end result was a Libertarian agenda that sees Thatcherism taken to its logical conclusion. The "English Nationalist" aspect of the agenda seems to have been a by-product of the nature of its support base; while this might be shared by only some of those in the hierarchy, all of those at the top can see its ultimate use as a platform.
All the talk of leaving the EU in order to restore connections with former colonies is innately nationalistic in tone, as it harks back to a time when England, though Britain, controlled a quarter of the globe. Seen in another light, even when part of the EU, it seems that many people saw it merely as another projection of Britain's footprint abroad. The EU acted as a psychological substitute for the Empire; using the continent as an excuse for cheaper holidays and sunshine. Psychologically, it was treated as no different from going to Australia, except that it was only a hop across the Channel. This less about engagement with Europe as a cultural trashing of it. After years of this arrogant attitude becoming ingrained within a segment of the population, it's difficult to be nationalistic without being Anti-European. So we can call the EU referendum result also a victory for English Nationalism, as well as a result of English Nationalism.
The schizophrenic part to this is (as mentioned the initial linked article at the start) London is probably is the least nationalistic and least Euro-sceptic part of the UK; the government's agenda is that of "England-outside-London". Put like this, the "Brexit government" feels like an occupying power in the capital. It would be more fitting if they moved the "capital" back to Winchester, say, to have a "real" Anglo-Saxon hub; or one of the "Brexit bastions", such as Peterborough.
Such talk is as fantastical as it is nonsensical, but it is little more than what we've come to expect from the people running the government, or those that have the government's ear. But such talk is what you get when you let nationalism set the agenda.
Monday, September 11, 2017
The "Brexit Agenda": Immigration, the economy and the "small state"
A reminder of what Brexit really means for Britain is demonstrated in an article looking at the sharp rise in immigrant deportations. The intent by Theresa May to create a "really hostile environment" for illegal migrants has now spilled over to mean all migrants, including those from the EU. Another article highlights how this "really hostile environment" has now seeped through to employers and landlords, with some jumping the gun on the issue (or, looking at it more charitably, creating certainty for themselves on the issue when there is none from the government). The facile response from the government to this alarming trend tells us how, deep down, many of them see this as a "win-win" situation.
While whose that voted to leave the EU may applaud this, it would also be useful to think about what it means to prospective foreign workers. Simply, they will be strongly discouraged from wanting to come.
Again, those that voted to leave the EU may applaud this too: more jobs for British workers, supposedly. So let's look at the "Brexit Agenda", and what the "Brexiteers" ultimately aim to achieve.
In my last article we looked at what is happening to British politics: in truth, the hijacking of the political agenda by a small group of extremists. We looked at "how"; now, let's look at "why".
Turning back the clock
In the previous article, I mentioned EFTA, which Britain joined in 1961, about ten years before we joined the then EEC. With the government making clear its intent to leave the EFTA as well, we can literally say that the government wishes to turn back the clock on Britain's relations with Europe; more exactly, we can say it wants Britain's trading relationship to be as it was during the days of the 1950s, when Britain had the Empire.
Since winning the referendum last year, the hard-line "Brexiteers" (perhaps better called "Brextremists") have done everything they can to take the lead on setting the agenda, not only on the terms of "Brexit" itself, but also trying to seep their ideology into other facets of political discourse. This was why what is happening could be called a kind of "soft coup" or "coup by stealth". This can be especially seen in how they have been keen to press on with their agenda in spite of the government losing its majority since the June election. In spite of being a small faction of a party without a majority in parliament, they are acting as though they have untrammeled power and a huge popular mandate.
But back to the main point. What do they want to achieve?
By turning back the clock on Britain's relations with Europe (and by implication of this new immigration regime, the world), it is about "British jobs for British workers". On the face of it, it is a harmless-sounding (even laudable) idea, until you look into the detail of what that really means.
Britain's job market is currently already running at close to "natural" levels of full employment, which, obviously, includes British workers. In other words, there is no problem with British workers finding a job. And if that is true, then it can't be true that immigrants are taking away jobs from British workers.
So this straightaway destroys the fallacy of foreign migrants taking away jobs from natives. And if this is the case, then what is the point of making it much more difficult for foreigners to live and work in Britain?
If there is no real economic case for this agenda, then it must be something else. And here we are in danger of "over-intellectualizing" a fundamentally-unintellectual agenda. Brexit was never really about economics; it couldn't be, when almost everybody who understood the economics couldn't understand the logic of leaving the EU. Brexit was about power.
One of the main reasons for leaving the EU was to "take back control". While this was said to mean returning powers from Brussels to the Westminster parliament, as mentioned in my previous article, it is clear that it is really about a government power grab. And again, this is a "power grab" by a faction of the governing party that supports UKIP's agenda.
So while this faction is doing its best to gain quasi-autocratic control over vast areas of law previously ran by the EU, their agenda on immigration is really a red herring. Whether or not this faction really believe in their own rhetoric about immigration being the bane of the British worker's life is hard to tell. If they do believe it, then it is a sign that they are dangerously deluded; if they don't, then then are truly callous in their attitude to the fate of the British economy. The evidence points to it being a mixture of the two, with some "Brextremists" being bonkers in their "vision" for Britain, while others are simply sociopathic in their outlook. Theresa May seems to exhibit a little of both.
In this way, it becomes clear that "taking back control" was really about the "Brextremists" taking autocratic control of Britain. They were horrified of the idea that the EU could dictate law to the UK, regardless of the fact that those laws were designed to improve many aspects of life in the UK, as the UK was part of the EU. While the EU, as in any huge bureaucracy, has its problems, the benefits for most people clearly out-weigh the drawbacks. The problem for the "Brextremists" was about feeling powerless. As with any Populist movement, Brexit was driven on the idea of the "losers" of the current status quo rising up against a distant, uncaring elite. However, we have seen how this lie can be used by the real, home-grown elite that supports a return to to earlier age when they ruled the country in a much more autocratic fashion. The "Brextremists" of today are simply using time-honored strategies to turn the clock back to a time they look back on with wistful nostalgia: the Britain of the British Empire, before its disintegration, when the establishment ruled with an invisible hand.
Put in this context, the idea of turning Britain into a place hostile to immigrants may then serve a double purpose. First of all, it gives the "losers" who voted for Brexit a real sense of there being an identifiable change to the make-up of the country; of the country becoming more visibly "British". In this way, it makes them feel as though their vote truly "made a difference", and thus cements their connection (i.e. loyalty) to their "Brexiteer" rulers. This manipulative use of "culture war" then gives greater leeway for them to take their agenda to its conclusion (see below).
Put in this context, the idea of turning Britain into a place hostile to immigrants may then serve a double purpose. First of all, it gives the "losers" who voted for Brexit a real sense of there being an identifiable change to the make-up of the country; of the country becoming more visibly "British". In this way, it makes them feel as though their vote truly "made a difference", and thus cements their connection (i.e. loyalty) to their "Brexiteer" rulers. This manipulative use of "culture war" then gives greater leeway for them to take their agenda to its conclusion (see below).
If the economy thrives or fails as a result of this strategy is not a real concern for this "Brexit elite". In any case, they wouldn't be the ones that suffered. As we have already seen, some that voted for Brexit believe that an economic downturn is a price worth paying if they "take back control" (regardless of how horribly deluded they are in this). This mentality of "groupthink" makes it even easier for the "Brextremists" to charge ahead with their autocratic agenda.
Those that do suffer from any self-inflicted economic mess will be given the sinister, outside forces of "Europe" to blame. Like with the dog-whistle use of immigration, the scapegoating of "foreign powers" that don't want to see Britain succeed would be the next part of the plan. As with the earlier example of employers nowadays that are "jumping the gun" on immigration, this is a "win-win" situation for those in charge. This is simply another version of the strategy of "divide and rule".
Those that do suffer from any self-inflicted economic mess will be given the sinister, outside forces of "Europe" to blame. Like with the dog-whistle use of immigration, the scapegoating of "foreign powers" that don't want to see Britain succeed would be the next part of the plan. As with the earlier example of employers nowadays that are "jumping the gun" on immigration, this is a "win-win" situation for those in charge. This is simply another version of the strategy of "divide and rule".
"A bonfire of red tape"
The other main reason given for leaving the EU was due to the stranglehold that European "red tape" was apparently having on business. Regardless of the fact that few people who supported Brexit could actually point to any particular regulations they found so onerous, the "red tape" was there to improve the conditions of life in Britain, as a member of the EU. Of course, some of the regulations led to absurdities, but the vast majority left people's lives better, such as through safer products they used or safer living and working conditions.
The "Brextremists" resented these regulations as they reduced the amount of power they had. Using accusations of the "nanny state" is as old as the hills, and this loss of power to the EU ties in with the theme of "taking back control" that we looked at earlier. Again, the motivation of the "Brexit Agenda" is to have fewer controls on business, giving them greater powers to exploit their workers and reduce costs (such as by relaxing safety standards). In this way, "Brexit Britain" will more closely resemble the working conditions found in developing countries, with things like" Zero Hour Contracts" becoming ever more commonplace, and more and more companies compelling their workforce into being an army of the self-employed. Likewise, this "race to the bottom" would result in fewer protections for workers, leading to more and more unstable social conditions.
This is the vision of the "small state", as the "Brextremists" see it: a kind of Libertarian dystopia. Apart from the "reforms" they would like to see to working conditions, there is the vision they have of the welfare system (and have already partially implemented thanks to Iain Duncan Smith). This is making "welfare" seem more like a punishment than a human right, where the individual is devalued and dehumanized at every opportunity, and a callous system that finds any small reason to withdraw its support, leaving them to fend for themselves. As the government only has respect for money and success, it follows that this philosophy makes the poor and the vulnerable feel like social failures. This is a system of "Social Darwinism" that punishes those on the lowest rungs of society, regardless of the reason. The government isn't there to help the weak, but to make them suffer for their weakness. The same strategy has already been applied to other areas of policy, such as immigration and the settling of the government's own subjects.
Is the ultimate aim here the destruction of social fabric of civilised society? Like with their vision for the economy post-Brexit, it is either bonkers or callously-brutal. It is like they literally do not care, and are so off-the-wall they cannot see how mad their ideas really are. Taken to its logical conclusion, such policies would result in chronic deprivation among the working class, like hasn't been seen since before the Great Depression. And with deprivation and gross inequality comes social breakdown and crime, providing the "Brexiteer" elite with yet another set of scapegoats to use.
But as we have already seen, their "Brexit Agenda" seems to be the restoration of the socio-economic order of Britain prior to 1945, regardless of its effect on society. It about the destruction of the "post-war settlement" for good; a "Counter-Reformation" of the establishment against the welfare state, masquerading as a social revolution.
But as we have already seen, their "Brexit Agenda" seems to be the restoration of the socio-economic order of Britain prior to 1945, regardless of its effect on society. It about the destruction of the "post-war settlement" for good; a "Counter-Reformation" of the establishment against the welfare state, masquerading as a social revolution.
Brexit is simply the way they seek to achieve it.
Friday, September 8, 2017
Brexit: A Very British Coup, and how UKIP subverted democracy
It's now clear in which direction British politics is heading.
Several months ago I wrote about the rightward direction that the government under Theresa May seemed to be heading in. Now that the Brexit negotiations are in full swing, and parliament has returned from summer break to discuss its implications, it's ever clearer that we don't really have a Conservative government in power: we have a UKIP government, under another name.
The Home Office leak of its immigration plans, timed to coincide with parliament's return to session, looked to all intents and purposes identical to UKIP's immigration plans for an Australian-style points system. In some ways, it looked even more draconian, in the way that bio-metric technology would be used to keep a track on EU immigrants and the restrictions placed on the duration of their stay.
Apart from immigration policy, it's also clear that the repatriation of powers in the "Repeal Bill" is meant to act as a way to radically increase autocratic power to the government, away from parliament, so it can unilaterally change the law. There's a reason these are called "Henry VIII powers": because no government since then has succeeded in circumventing parliament in such a way. Charles I tried; Oliver Cromwell succeeded, for a time. These are not good comparisons the government should be wanting to be compared to, and it should be sending chills down the spines of our sitting MPs.
But for many on the government benches, it doesn't. Why?
A Very British Coup
What we are witnessing is the emasculation of parliament.
Apart from the intent contained inside the "Repeal Bill", the government are also seeking to subvert the committee process that is used to amend (i.e. improve) parliamentary legislation. By doing this, it again seeking to silence opposition to its own interpretation of the law, making passage through parliament nothing more than a "rubber stamp".
To be fair, there are plenty of Conservative MPs who are as appalled at the government's "power grab" as on the opposition side. In the same manner, there are a number of Conservative MPs who are appalled at the government's Brexit plan, which, again, seems indistinguishable from UKIP's original plan. If those Conservative MPs actually voted with their conscience, they could easily prevent the government from carrying out its "power grab" into the realm of quasi-authoritarianism. Similarly, those MPs could easily deny the government a majority in parliament to carry out its plan for a "Hard Brexit" that would see Britain cut off from all free trade with Europe. But those MPs seem to be emasculated; more like sheep than parliamentarians.
The reason for this is simple, and appalling: fear.
A small clique of hard-line MPs - who represent less than 15% of the party's cohort - demand the most extreme form of exit from the EU. This would mean leaving the free market and customs union on Day One of Brexit, in March 2019, without any kind of meaningful transition period. The Brexit Secretary, David Davis, seems to agree (well, maybe - his idea seems to change from day to day). Apart from the maddening incoherence of this point of view, is the fact that this outcome was not what the referendum was about. The UK voted to leave the EU; the vote said nothing about EFTA, for example, which the UK has been in since 1961, long before Britain joined the then EEC. The Brexit Secretary seems to be acting of his own accord, deciding what Britain's relationship with Europe will be, without any regard to parliament's point of view, or indeed, those of the actual electorate. The only points of view whose his seem to coincide with are the hard-line clique mentioned earlier.
While there is a "debate" in parliament about the government's policy, the government's strategy of dealing with parliament is a) to avoid answering any questions at all, b) imply that they "the government knows best", c) to suggest that opposing the government is to betray "the will of the people". This is the language of authoritarianism. There is no meaningful "debate" on Brexit in parliament at all, for the government seems to have no intention of paying any attention to it. It is just "going through the motions", turning parliament into a toothless talking shop.
What makes this all even worse is that those hard-line MPs (who now have the ear of the government) have even less of legitimate platform for their agenda than before the general election. Before the election, Theresa May said she had called it in order to strengthen her hand in the negotiations. The implication was that the larger the mandate she received, the freer she would be to carry-out a "Hard Brexit". As we know, the opposite happened: she is still in government, but only thanks to the DUP. The rational conclusion to reach from the election was that those who wanted a "Hard Brexit" lost. And yet they are the ones still dictating policy. Counter-intuitively, it is thanks to the government's precarious position in parliament that allows these hard-liners to blackmail the moderates into silence. In the same way that the DUP were able to demand a ransom from the government as its price for power, the party's hard-liners are able to do the same over Brexit.
Those Conservative MPs concerned about this process have been emasculated by fear. While a hard-line cohort of MPs seem able to dictate government policy, those concerned by this subversive take-over have been silenced into submission by the even greater fear stoked from the thought of losing an election to Jeremy Corbyn. In other words, the party's moderate MPs really are being held hostage: by the fear of losing power, they are ready to hand the fate of the nation over to extremists.
In a "First-Past-The-Post" electoral system, an "extremist" government was meant to be virtually impossible. It looks like some of them have found a way. And now, using authoritarian tactics, we are on the cusp of a quasi-autocratic government.
History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
What happened in Germany in 1932 is held as a warning to all of us. It's also worth remembering that the reason Hitler gained power was thanks to a "deal" with the mainstream Conservatives. It was the threat of Communism that had helped to focus minds in the Conservatives to do a deal with the Nazis: rather Hitler than the hammer and sickle. He was technically meant to be the junior partner in a coalition: although he was Chancellor, he was meant to be held in check by his deputy, the mainstream Conservative, Von Pappen; mainstream Conservatives also held the vast majority of government posts. But very quickly, it was the tail that was wagging the dog.
The same cowardly mindset seems to in today's "moderates" in the Conservative Party.
How To Subvert Democracy
Let's remember how we got here.
Currently, UKIP are polling around five per cent in the polls; not much more than they were in 2010. And yet, as we have seen, the Conservative government is now carrying out wholesale UKIP policy. Why?
As it is the threat of losing power that is keeping "moderate" Tory MPs subservient to the "hard-line" agenda today, it was Cameron's worry of losing power that made him cave in to demands for an EU referendum.
This is how extremists are able to control the agenda in a "First Past The Post" electoral system: by blackmailing the governing party into backing extremism. A handful of hard-liners thus make the fear of conceding power to the opposition greater than the fear of conceding the agenda to extremism. David Cameron began the precedent; Theresa May has taken it one stage further.
As Cameron's 2010 government was a coalition, it left him in a precarious position. With UKIP rising in the polls, and a cohort of his own MPs sharing that party's Euroscepticism, Cameron thought he was being clever to try and deal with the issue by promising a referendum. But the reason for this decision was one borne from weakness and cowardice: thanks to not winning the 2010 election outright, it gave a disproportionate power to the "hard-liners" in his own party. This was one reason why the 2010-15 parliament was one of the most rebellious for decades.
He could have stood up to the "hard-liners" in his party, by "calling their bluff" (such as telling them if they didn't like the Conservatives' pro-EU policy, they were free to join UKIP). As it happens, two of them did just that, but that was eighteen months after after Cameron's "Bloomberg Speech" in which he promised an EU referendum if his party won the next election. They left the party after Cameron had already partly caved-in on their agenda.
So by not standing up to the "hard-liners" in the Conservative Party to begin with, he allowed them to set the agenda on Europe. And in the end, this cost him his job. The fear of losing the next election (by shedding support to UKIP) made him cave-in to their agenda, and thus once the sharks smelled blood, they went after him to finish off the job. The irony here is that the referendum was probably never really meant to have happened even after Cameron had made the promise, because he wasn't expecting his party to win the election in 2015 outright. As it was assumed another hung parliament would be the most likely result again, it was equally assumed the referendum idea would be dropped in the post-election talks with the pro-European Liberal Democrats. That "plan" went down the toilet when the Conservatives won a majority, forcing Cameron into carrying out the promised referendum - one which he never expected to lose. Such things can happen when you try to be too clever by half; like with Von Pappen's plan to "tame" Hitler by making him Chancellor.
Even before Theresa May decided to implement the UKIP agenda, that party had already cost one Prime Minister his job. Now we see that she saw a cynical opportunity to destroy UKIP by becoming UKIP. Except that you don't destroy an ideology by implementing it under a different name. There were signs of her nationalistic and authoritarian leanings when she was Home Secretary; now it is clear that her own personal inclinations are much closer to the "hard-liners" in the party than the "moderates".
For those in UKIP this must be a bitter-sweet moment: in their moment of triumph, a government is implementing entire swathes of their agenda, and the party isn't even in power. All they had to do was scare the Prime Minister a bit.
For more on the "Brexit Agenda", and what it means for Britain, look at the following article.
Several months ago I wrote about the rightward direction that the government under Theresa May seemed to be heading in. Now that the Brexit negotiations are in full swing, and parliament has returned from summer break to discuss its implications, it's ever clearer that we don't really have a Conservative government in power: we have a UKIP government, under another name.
The Home Office leak of its immigration plans, timed to coincide with parliament's return to session, looked to all intents and purposes identical to UKIP's immigration plans for an Australian-style points system. In some ways, it looked even more draconian, in the way that bio-metric technology would be used to keep a track on EU immigrants and the restrictions placed on the duration of their stay.
Apart from immigration policy, it's also clear that the repatriation of powers in the "Repeal Bill" is meant to act as a way to radically increase autocratic power to the government, away from parliament, so it can unilaterally change the law. There's a reason these are called "Henry VIII powers": because no government since then has succeeded in circumventing parliament in such a way. Charles I tried; Oliver Cromwell succeeded, for a time. These are not good comparisons the government should be wanting to be compared to, and it should be sending chills down the spines of our sitting MPs.
But for many on the government benches, it doesn't. Why?
A Very British Coup
What we are witnessing is the emasculation of parliament.
Apart from the intent contained inside the "Repeal Bill", the government are also seeking to subvert the committee process that is used to amend (i.e. improve) parliamentary legislation. By doing this, it again seeking to silence opposition to its own interpretation of the law, making passage through parliament nothing more than a "rubber stamp".
To be fair, there are plenty of Conservative MPs who are as appalled at the government's "power grab" as on the opposition side. In the same manner, there are a number of Conservative MPs who are appalled at the government's Brexit plan, which, again, seems indistinguishable from UKIP's original plan. If those Conservative MPs actually voted with their conscience, they could easily prevent the government from carrying out its "power grab" into the realm of quasi-authoritarianism. Similarly, those MPs could easily deny the government a majority in parliament to carry out its plan for a "Hard Brexit" that would see Britain cut off from all free trade with Europe. But those MPs seem to be emasculated; more like sheep than parliamentarians.
The reason for this is simple, and appalling: fear.
A small clique of hard-line MPs - who represent less than 15% of the party's cohort - demand the most extreme form of exit from the EU. This would mean leaving the free market and customs union on Day One of Brexit, in March 2019, without any kind of meaningful transition period. The Brexit Secretary, David Davis, seems to agree (well, maybe - his idea seems to change from day to day). Apart from the maddening incoherence of this point of view, is the fact that this outcome was not what the referendum was about. The UK voted to leave the EU; the vote said nothing about EFTA, for example, which the UK has been in since 1961, long before Britain joined the then EEC. The Brexit Secretary seems to be acting of his own accord, deciding what Britain's relationship with Europe will be, without any regard to parliament's point of view, or indeed, those of the actual electorate. The only points of view whose his seem to coincide with are the hard-line clique mentioned earlier.
While there is a "debate" in parliament about the government's policy, the government's strategy of dealing with parliament is a) to avoid answering any questions at all, b) imply that they "the government knows best", c) to suggest that opposing the government is to betray "the will of the people". This is the language of authoritarianism. There is no meaningful "debate" on Brexit in parliament at all, for the government seems to have no intention of paying any attention to it. It is just "going through the motions", turning parliament into a toothless talking shop.
What makes this all even worse is that those hard-line MPs (who now have the ear of the government) have even less of legitimate platform for their agenda than before the general election. Before the election, Theresa May said she had called it in order to strengthen her hand in the negotiations. The implication was that the larger the mandate she received, the freer she would be to carry-out a "Hard Brexit". As we know, the opposite happened: she is still in government, but only thanks to the DUP. The rational conclusion to reach from the election was that those who wanted a "Hard Brexit" lost. And yet they are the ones still dictating policy. Counter-intuitively, it is thanks to the government's precarious position in parliament that allows these hard-liners to blackmail the moderates into silence. In the same way that the DUP were able to demand a ransom from the government as its price for power, the party's hard-liners are able to do the same over Brexit.
Those Conservative MPs concerned about this process have been emasculated by fear. While a hard-line cohort of MPs seem able to dictate government policy, those concerned by this subversive take-over have been silenced into submission by the even greater fear stoked from the thought of losing an election to Jeremy Corbyn. In other words, the party's moderate MPs really are being held hostage: by the fear of losing power, they are ready to hand the fate of the nation over to extremists.
In a "First-Past-The-Post" electoral system, an "extremist" government was meant to be virtually impossible. It looks like some of them have found a way. And now, using authoritarian tactics, we are on the cusp of a quasi-autocratic government.
History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
What happened in Germany in 1932 is held as a warning to all of us. It's also worth remembering that the reason Hitler gained power was thanks to a "deal" with the mainstream Conservatives. It was the threat of Communism that had helped to focus minds in the Conservatives to do a deal with the Nazis: rather Hitler than the hammer and sickle. He was technically meant to be the junior partner in a coalition: although he was Chancellor, he was meant to be held in check by his deputy, the mainstream Conservative, Von Pappen; mainstream Conservatives also held the vast majority of government posts. But very quickly, it was the tail that was wagging the dog.
The same cowardly mindset seems to in today's "moderates" in the Conservative Party.
How To Subvert Democracy
Let's remember how we got here.
Currently, UKIP are polling around five per cent in the polls; not much more than they were in 2010. And yet, as we have seen, the Conservative government is now carrying out wholesale UKIP policy. Why?
As it is the threat of losing power that is keeping "moderate" Tory MPs subservient to the "hard-line" agenda today, it was Cameron's worry of losing power that made him cave in to demands for an EU referendum.
This is how extremists are able to control the agenda in a "First Past The Post" electoral system: by blackmailing the governing party into backing extremism. A handful of hard-liners thus make the fear of conceding power to the opposition greater than the fear of conceding the agenda to extremism. David Cameron began the precedent; Theresa May has taken it one stage further.
As Cameron's 2010 government was a coalition, it left him in a precarious position. With UKIP rising in the polls, and a cohort of his own MPs sharing that party's Euroscepticism, Cameron thought he was being clever to try and deal with the issue by promising a referendum. But the reason for this decision was one borne from weakness and cowardice: thanks to not winning the 2010 election outright, it gave a disproportionate power to the "hard-liners" in his own party. This was one reason why the 2010-15 parliament was one of the most rebellious for decades.
He could have stood up to the "hard-liners" in his party, by "calling their bluff" (such as telling them if they didn't like the Conservatives' pro-EU policy, they were free to join UKIP). As it happens, two of them did just that, but that was eighteen months after after Cameron's "Bloomberg Speech" in which he promised an EU referendum if his party won the next election. They left the party after Cameron had already partly caved-in on their agenda.
So by not standing up to the "hard-liners" in the Conservative Party to begin with, he allowed them to set the agenda on Europe. And in the end, this cost him his job. The fear of losing the next election (by shedding support to UKIP) made him cave-in to their agenda, and thus once the sharks smelled blood, they went after him to finish off the job. The irony here is that the referendum was probably never really meant to have happened even after Cameron had made the promise, because he wasn't expecting his party to win the election in 2015 outright. As it was assumed another hung parliament would be the most likely result again, it was equally assumed the referendum idea would be dropped in the post-election talks with the pro-European Liberal Democrats. That "plan" went down the toilet when the Conservatives won a majority, forcing Cameron into carrying out the promised referendum - one which he never expected to lose. Such things can happen when you try to be too clever by half; like with Von Pappen's plan to "tame" Hitler by making him Chancellor.
Even before Theresa May decided to implement the UKIP agenda, that party had already cost one Prime Minister his job. Now we see that she saw a cynical opportunity to destroy UKIP by becoming UKIP. Except that you don't destroy an ideology by implementing it under a different name. There were signs of her nationalistic and authoritarian leanings when she was Home Secretary; now it is clear that her own personal inclinations are much closer to the "hard-liners" in the party than the "moderates".
For those in UKIP this must be a bitter-sweet moment: in their moment of triumph, a government is implementing entire swathes of their agenda, and the party isn't even in power. All they had to do was scare the Prime Minister a bit.
For more on the "Brexit Agenda", and what it means for Britain, look at the following article.
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