Peace Babies, Generation Yes and the End of Britain

A brief New Year series of posts where I expand on the six themes laid out here and give some more detail. Here looking at some of the generational forces and demographics driving the break up of Britain.

For the past ten or twelve years the independence movement in Scotland has seen itself as the lead or most advanced part of any one of the nations that might cause the break-up of the British State. We were in some ways the most developed and the most articulate in putting the case for independence, or so we thought. Another way to look at these relations, in the light of the foundering of part of the project north of the border, is to look at the wider cracked edifice of the UK. The idea is to look at ourselves with less self-regard and instead look at the whole of the UK and Ireland. To look less at a binary Scotland-England relationship and more at the wider systemic constitutional failing.

The cracks and fissures of the Union lie from Inverness, currently trying to rid itself of its Earl, down south to Dundee, the city that voted Yes and bristles with potential (even if it is overshadowed by its urban big brothers). From the Tay across the Debatable Lands – that strange territory that coughed up Alister Jack and down south to Liverpool and across to Snowdonia. Wales is a new front on the constitutional question, where years of economic neglect, cultural appropriation and social disregard have fed a political movement that less than twenty years ago wouldn’t have been treated seriously.

Across the Bristol Channel and out across the Irish Sea to Wexford and up the east coast to Dublin we go where we face the high probability of Mary Lou McDonald becoming Taoiseach. Again, such a thing to say twenty years ago would have been unthinkable. In Belfast, the DUP is playing electoral electoral hara-kiri.

For the most of 2014 and beyond – the SNP and most of the independence movement wouldn’t talk about Ireland, less it ‘frightened the horses’. But as has been said many times before the days of keeping the horses calm have long since gone and the shifting sands of constitutional change do not wait for permission from Gordon Lamb House. As Emma DeSouza wrote last year (‘Why would we want to be part of the UK?‘), the Welsh figures (above) are mirrored in Northern Ireland:

“A recent Lucid Talk/Sunday Times survey showed that 57% of 18 to 24-year-olds in Northern Ireland would vote “yes” to reunifying Ireland if a border poll were held today, despite there being no official campaign or unity plan in place. More than 600,000 people have been born in Northern Ireland since the signing of the Good Friday agreement, and they have grown up during a sustained period of peace that has given rise to a new set of priorities. This is a generation that wants more rights, more progressive change – and to confine the division of the past to the dustbin of history.”

As DeSouza explains Jeffrey Donaldson’s recalcitrance has made a rod for his own back: “The DUP has enabled a stasis in which Northern Ireland’s devolved assembly has been non-operational for 70% of the past six and a half years, and repeatedly blocked attempts for more devolved government. This has forced many younger people to advocate for constitutional change as it feels like the only route to a functional political system.”

Unionism in the North’s stance of always saying ‘No’ – always being the brave opponent to change – always being the staunch defender of whatever – worked in the era when they had an eternal conflict and a majority on their side. In an era of relative peace – in which something akin to ‘normal politics’ is struggling to find its way – these old tactics are completely redundant and alien. Finding peace has benefitted nationalists and progressive forces in Ireland.

The Big Three Factors Driving the Break-Up of Britain

There are at least three other factors, or variables, driving the break up of the UK, or the acceleration of the break up of the UK. All of these, interestingly, play particularly badly with younger people, the Yes Generation here, the Peace Babies in Ireland. The first is the ongoing consequences of the Brexit settlement, (‘a cohort of older, middle-class, grievously nostalgic voters demanded Brexit, and they got it’). The second is the prospect of a Starmer government, and the third is the ongoing crisis in the Royal Family of the individual formerly known as Prince (Andrew).

The Brexit fallout has ongoing repercussions in Scotland where it remains a democratic sore, a reminder that we were told in 2014 that “the only way to stay in the EU was to vote No” (I think by Colonel Davidson). But it’s not just the democratic deficit of Brexit (you’ll remember that (as @williemillersm1 has pointed out): “Both Labour and the Tories insisted separate Brexit deals were impossible, entirely excluded Scotland from the process and used it as an excuse to hamstring devolution. Then went about negotiating bespoke arrangements for NI, Gibraltar, and the City of London.”

It is the Brexit result that has undermined devolution more than anything with the creation of the ‘internal market’ and the clawback of powers to Westminster. Those on the left who hate the EU and have been cheerleaders for Brexit populism can’t ignore that our removal from Europe is a major driving force for people supporting independence, but more than that there is a lack of any real tangible benefit for Scotland from being removed against our will from both the EU and the huge European Single Market …

‘Have you heard anything positive about Brexit for Scotland?’

Watch @STVColin interview @RuthDavidsonMSP at Tory party conference in Birmingham. pic.twitter.com/vyVbAQ5wO6

— Dan Vevers (@DanVevers) October 1, 2018

The Brexit settlement (despite ironically the DUP’s duplicitous role in achieving it) is what is stymieing the Northern Ireland Assembly functioning and is another element that makes up for a generational dimension to the British crisis. Young people are excluded from free movement, ease of travel and education, and the Erasmus programme by a political phenomenon they voted in huge numbers against.

The second factor is perhaps counter-intuitive, but the expectations built upon the incoming Starmer government have the united commentariat in a gleeful froth, particularly north of the border. The story is this. Labor are back, Scottish Labour is back. It’s back to basics. Bread and Butter issues. The Nationalist Fox has been shot (again). Normal order has been resumed. We can forget about that unfortunate last decade as if it didn’t happen at all. But putting such great expectations onto the shoulders of such a figure as Keir Starmer and his programme is deeply problematic for the media class and their supporters in politics. As Liz Loyd writes (‘The path to independence is longer than the SNP would like – but it will lead there in the end‘):

“The belief that Scotland should be independent is a sticky one. Continued high levels of support are not just a consequence of Brexit or Boris Johnson, but a mark of a longer-term evolution in the underlying thinking of the Scottish population. Importantly, that is not unique to those who voted 10 years ago. Two-thirds of under-25s, all of whom were too young to vote in 2014, support independence. Equally, the enthusiastic young voters of 2014 have not become significantly more pro-union or conservative as they have entered their 30s. For them and many of the under-50s who consistently produce a polling majority in favour of independence, two ideas have been normalised: first, that Scotland should be independent; and second, that patience is a virtue.” She continues:

“For new young voters, the belief that Scotland should be independent is now the prevailing norm. The idea strikes a chord with a generation growing up in a political context that gives them more confidence in Scotland and less in the UK. A change of UK government may temper support for a while, but unlike previous generations of Scottish voters, this generation will always know there is an alternative.”

In editorial after editorial, in column after column, our writers and gatekeepers tell us the same message: Labour is coming and will deliver for Scotland. Today it promised us – like a child – a ‘seat at the table’.

Labour MPs will give Scotland ‘a seat at the table’ in Westminster, Anas Sarwar has said https://t.co/uD2HAmuC9u

— Holyrood magazine (@HolyroodDaily) January 8, 2024

This is Labour’s dilemma, if it succeeds (as looks likely) in winning across SNP voters to vote for them for the first time, or to return to them, it will have to deliver. But the ‘change’ movement that it claims looks distinctly blurry. Not a day goes past without Starmer or his team explaining bravely what they won’t do, what they can’t deliver, and what they can’t promise. The stagnant and festering decline of the Conservative government (s) is a powerful motivation to vote for an alternative, but the prospects for change of the scale required to meet our social, economic, ecological, and constitutional crisis seem dim at best.

The third and final driver for the break-up of Britain may seem less obvious than the previous, but it is a story that is being unsuccessfully suppressed by pliant media. The ongoing fallout of the new batch of unsealed documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein has devastating consequences for the royal family which we are barely beginning to take note of. With the removal of the useful side-story of Harry and Meghan to detract attention from Prince Andrew’s past, the new revelations have pushed Andrew back into the glare. Reports are that he is squatting in the Royal Lodge – and that he is ‘devastated’ at being named in newly published court documents linked to the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and has locked himself in a room as the fallout grows.

You might think this salacious or a sideshow but it is more important than the tabloids – and the Royal Broadcast Fluffers – would have you think. While it’s all couched as titillation and gossip the political consequences are ignored. The residual goodwill for the monarchy in post-Elizabethan Britain has evaporated as recent polling out this week shows support for the monarchy has dropped below 50% for the very first time:

Again there is a generational dimension to these changes. Young people have no loyalty or faith in Charles, Camilla or Andrew – and there is no ‘folk memory’ (however contrived it was) of World War Two and the Blitz to protect them. Much of the respect (or toleration of the monarchy) was bound up with the individual of Elizabeth and bound within a deferential society that has gone. As the royal historian and commentator Ed Owens points out: “An important poll from Savanta showing growing disaffection with monarchy. While influenced by recent news re. Andrew, there’s a deeper downward trend at work here, especially among GenZ & Millennials.”

Owens has said: “There’s no way back for Prince Andrew despite recent efforts to rehabilitate him. The court documents released this week again highlight how unsuited he is for public life. The king must act now and exclude him permanently.”

That’s not going to happen. Instead, we will have the Prince in the Tower glowering away until such time as further revelations expose his involvement further. The significance of this is hidden behind the way the tabloids frame the narrative as tittle-tattle and red-top fodder: ‘Randy Andy’ and ‘Harry the Nazi’ and endless coverage of Piers Morgan’s feud with Meghan. The political is excluded. But speaking for Republic, who commissioned the poll, Graham Smith said today: “This is huge. Royalists have spent years saying the monarchy has the support of the country. That’s clearly no longer the case.”

Significantly too the Savanta poll shows the monarchy is rapidly losing support, with fewer than half in all age groups under 55 preferring the royals.

So here we have three major factors driving the Break-Up of Britain, each with its own generational aspect: the Brexit debacle which young people opposed; the Starmer government which promises to do nothing and the collapse in support for the monarchy which in previous times acted as a social-cultural glue to unite people. In this respect a key aspect of the ‘United Kingdom’ has gone.

Perhaps there will be justice for Andrew and it will all go away. Perhaps everyone will forget the promises of constitutional change (‘blueprints’) made by Gordon Brown then quickly dropped. Perhaps Brexit will come good and we will enter the Sunlit Uplands soon? Perhaps the DUP will see sense and Stormont will re-convene?

All is possible if extremely unlikely.

What I think is less likely if not impossible is for the incoming Starmer government to meet the needs and demands of young people facing a dire housing crisis, problems in education (access and cost), the reality of the cost of living and the exploitative and precarious gig economy. Nor are there any signs of Starmer’s government confronting the existential threat of the climate crisis that haunts the younger generation like none before.