The General Election and the ‘British’ Consensus

Who knew that when Rishi Sunak insisted he ‘had a plan’ it was to conduct the most inept political campaign in British electoral history? Shortly after his disastrous first week he left the D-Day commemoration early (for no discernible reason) and was forced to engage in a grovelling (sort of) apology. Such is the state of the importance of this week’s celebrations – it’s likely to be the last for many surviving veterans – and in a country still locked into a state of Spitfire Nationalism hauntology for the Second World War – this was political suicide. The British press didn’t indulge in the sort of maniacal coverage meted out to Michael Foot or Jeremy Corbyn around the Cenotaph, but Sunak was skewered by his or his teams stupidity.

Sunak’s short-lived reign was about to result in electoral oblivion – but now his, and his parties demise will be even more egregious as they burn in the next few weeks. Polling now shows the clear possibility of the Conservative vote collapsing below 15% and beneath the Liberal Democrats.

Things are looking no less bleak for his colleague north of the border, Douglas Ross. As Neil Mackay writes in the Herald: “The moral vacuum that is Douglas Ross has fashioned his own political ruin with the sickbed sacking of a man he dares call a ‘friend’. His behaviour has always been deplorable, but now he’s without honour. God knows how he can look at himself in the mirror.”

Sunak is a man-child, a rich boy with no discernible hinterland and precious little karma in the bank. He is suffering the shock of hard work in the full public glare, and in that sense, his slow demise is a sweet public spectacle, but little else. He will be replaced by another from his background, dabbling in politics, he, like David Cameron will leave the stage with platitudes, humming away back to the circles of obscene wealth that they come from.

The Austerity Consensus

But despite the glee at the Conservatives demise, they are only to be replaced by a party wedded to many of their same obsessions. The reason the Tories re-hashed ‘tax bombshell’ trick didn’t work this week is that there is no tax bombshell. Labour are bombproof. On spending, defence, immigration, Brexit (and most foreign policy) Labour are in lockstep with the Conservatives.

As Stephen Flynn put it, in a rare occasion the wider parties are allowed on your tv screens last night “After fourteen years of Conservatism there is £18 billion pounds worth of cuts baked-in” to both the main parties plans:

Austerity. Brexit.

Why do Labour sit silent? pic.twitter.com/h3AEXnJCxZ

— Stephen Flynn (@StephenFlynnSNP) June 8, 2024

This is a duopoly, cojoined twins of British politics presented to you by the media – in a complete distortion – as a presidential style race between Starmer and Sunak.

Look at this example of what George Osborne and David Cameron were saying in 2010, and what Labours Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury is saying now …

What George Osborne and David Cameron were saying in 2010, and what Labours Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury is saying now. pic.twitter.com/rSBbI9GqSV

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) June 6, 2024

Flynn is also spot-on when he points to the elephant in the room that we are not allowed to speak about, the self-harm that England engaged in as it descended into a crisis of self-identity and dragged us down with it: Brexit. The audience seemed stunned when someone steps out of the charade and states that Brexit is a disaster, the economy is in far more trouble that anyone is letting on and immigration is a net good.

An example of how Labour’s Austerity plans are not far different from the Conservatives is exposed in this exchange with Rachel Reeves here:

When certain borrowing and taxation commitments have already been made, how does Rachel Reeves, potentially Britain’s next chancellor, plan to fund public services like the NHS?

Spoiler – it gets heated 👀

Full interview available on our new Leading YouTube channel. pic.twitter.com/YqBX9vMtij

— The Rest Is Politics (@RestIsPolitics) June 5, 2024

I hate to say it, but Rory is right.

But pointing out the convergence of these two – or speaking out about the realities of immigration or Brexit – does not go down well with much of the British commentariat. Flynn’s contribution was denounced last night by the columnist Ian Dunn who said:

“And there’s Flynn’s bullshit right there, for all the decent talk on immigration and Brexit. When it comes to his government’s failure, he blames Westminster. The same message of grievance and pass-the-buck irresponsibility as the populists.”

In reality the parties outside the duopoly are allowed bit-parts on the carefully curated media show that is your election. They are the marginal, the periphery, allowed on briefly before being rubbished and attacked as holding a ‘message of grievance’. If at any time the true scale of grievance in society was unleashed then this whole charade would be washed-away in a moment.

This is an election with little choice, as elections in capitalist democracies are meant to be. The issues which fundamentally matter: who runs the economy, why can so few people afford to live in this society? are brushed aside. Issues like Continuity-Austerity, the Brexit Disaster or Foreign Policy are rarely allowed to be discussed, or if they are they are set in  such narrow and bizarre terms to follow the dominant narrative. That narrative is broadly that austerity is an unfortunate but necessary evil (sorry/not sorry), Brexit is just done and we don’t really want to talk about it anymore – ‘the people have spoken’ – no, not you, ‘Us’ – and in Foreign Policy, er, ‘Stop the Boats’ and ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’. That’s about it.

The Brexit Disaster

Ian Dunn’s tirade is indicative of the curtailing of debate and management of discourse. There are clearly marked acceptable tramlines of discussion points and areas which are now just out of bounds or you will be marked as having a ‘grievance’. Richard Haviland is a former civil servant. He writes (apologies for the long quote but its really useful):

“A close relative of ‘the politics of grievance’ is ‘Scexit is the same as Brexit’. Both are uttered routinely as truisms by otherwise thoughtful people. They come into the category of what I call ‘superficially profound but profoundly superficial’. Of course there are some similarities between Brexit and Scexit – not least in the massive disruption one has caused and the other would cause (the latter greater still). But there are also multiple differences – maybe the topic for another thread another day.

Suffice it to say for now that if you really believe Brexit and Scexit are identical you presumably also believe the nature of the UK’s relationship to Brussels when it was an EU member state was exactly analogous to the nature of Scotland’s relationship to Westminster today.

To take one small example, I can’t quite think of an instance where ‘Brussels’ took a decision above our heads which turned upside down the lives of millions of UK nationals, denying us our rights and decimating our economy. Actually, make that a whopping great big example.

I don’t say any of this as a lifelong or passionate independence supporter. As recently as 2014 my unquestioning sense of Britishness led to my unquestioning No vote in the Scottish referendum.

But at that stage Brexit hadn’t happened, I hadn’t yet lived in Scotland for long, and I still had a frankly naive view of the relative health of our democracy, underpinned by a Whitehall career.

I also hadn’t yet seen for myself the effect that progressive noises from the SNP – about refugees, about Brexit, about you name it – would make (some) Labour politicians spit with indignation at their ‘opportunism’ – as if no Nationalist could actually care about these things.

Especially when those noises were far more progressive and far more truthful than anything those Labour MPs were allowed to say by their own leadership.

To say all this doesn’t make me an uncritical SNP supporter. But when I read the transcripts of recent Westminster debates on refugees, it’s the SNP speeches not the Labour ones that remind me of the speeches Labour ministers would give 15 years ago when I worked for DfID.

There is a difference – as we are probably about to discover – between aspiring to independence and aspiring enough to it enough to want to overcome the multitude of barriers – as regards the politics, the process and the practicalities – of making it happen.

Swathes of Scottish voters will, I suspect, choose Labour at this election without losing the aspiration to independence.

In fact, anecdotally, talking to and hearing about the views of people far younger than me, it’s not even aspiration. It’s an assumption that independence is the natural order of things. Borne not out of anti-Englishness but out of a lack of affiliation to the UK.

Out of a sense that when your politics and your electoral system are as broken as this, there must be a better option. Especially if – unlike some of your elders – you’re unencumbered by long-held loyalty to the UK (and frankly, if you’re growing up now, why should you be?)

If all this makes me sound like a dyed-in-the-wool Nat, it can’t be helped. I’m not. I’m deeply conflicted, and I understand and empathize with both the cause of independence and the Union.

But what I am – and I know I speak for others – is someone who has lost my belief in the Union as a properly functioning entity, who fully gets what drives the aspiration for independence, and who sees through so much of the propaganda I probably used to believe myself.

And if I’m honest I find it hard to imagine myself in the voting booth at a future referendum – if that ever comes – and putting my cross against ‘No’ again.”

I quote Richard because he reveals several truths in this piece of writing. The first is that the profound sense of failure and disappointment with the Union is shared by some No voters too. I don’t know how widespread this is, but I’ve not seen it expressed as clearly as here. The second is the profound and deep generation sense that the Union is over and that ‘independence is the natural order’. But the third, and here’s the killer, is that “there is a difference – as we are probably about to discover – between aspiring to independence and aspiring enough to it enough to want to overcome the multitude of barriers – as regards the politics, the process and the practicalities – of making it happen.”

In this sense while it’s true that Stephen Flynn cuts-through the Westminster bubble, the careful framing and the strange political silo of mainstream English dialogue, what does it matter if, in reality, there is no way through? Having some kind of refreshing political intervention in a deeply dull, stagnant electoral process isn’t enough.

British Foreign Policy

While Stephen Flynn received a sort of stunned round of applause from the audience for making the positive case for immigration – “Migration is absolutely essential to our public services” – we are mired in a situation, pre-independence – where we have no control over any of this. Flynn can state the obvious, and Humza Yousaf can talk out a more principled position for Scotland on Gaza, but ultimately we are powerless.

Research from Declassified UK shows that one quarter of all British MPs have received funding from the Israel lobby. Declassified write: “Some 180 of Britain’s 650 MPs in the last parliament accepted funding from pro-Israel lobby groups or individuals during their political career, Declassified can reveal.

That includes 130 Conservative MPs, 41 Labour MPs and three Liberal Democrats. Three members of the DUP, two independents and Reform’s only MP complete the list.

The total value of the donations from pro-Israel groups, individuals, and Israeli state institutions amounts to over one million pounds. Between them, the politicians made over 240 paid-for trips to Israel, at a cost of over half a million pounds.”

This then is a political class, with few modifications between ‘parties’ which, as we have seen, have some moderate differences but are absolutely in tune with each other in all of the major issues of the day which affect you: the economic reality of your life, the wars and violence that are done in your name and that you pay for, and the propaganda that is foisted upon you to blame all this on foreigners and immigrants. For all its farce this general election is doing more than any I can remember to expose the failure of the Union and the uselessness of electoral democracy under capitalism.