A Great Nothing: Election 2024

“I am the nothing around which all this spins, I exist so that it can spin, I am a centre that exists only because everything circle has one… I am the centre of everything surrounded by a great nothing.”

– Fernando Pesso, The Book of Disquiet

IN 1997, a few weeks before Tony Blair’s New Labour won its historic victory, the American writer Gore Vidal found himself in his natural condition, i.e. demonstrating that in him, the United States maintained a strategic reserve of aristocratic disdain Britain could never hope to match.

Swarmed by the press after one of Blair’s speeches, a reporter asked Vidal whether the UK was becoming more ‘Americanized’. “Well,” he said, “you do resemble us in that you now have a single party with two right wings.”

The reporter pressed on: “Which wing is more to the right?”

Vidal replied sternly: “One does not bring a measuring rod to Liliput.”

As ever, few were smart enough to take Vidal’s advice. Much our national press – what remains of it – have been reduced to professional measuring rod-wielders, and following Keir Starmer’s landslide-by-default on Thursday, the days and years to come will no doubt keep them busy assessing the distance between the deposed Conservatives and an unassailable Labour in nanometres.

However, 2024 is not 1997. You might not think anyone would need to be reminded of this, yet there are some bent on pretending otherwise. Writing in the Guardian on the day of the election, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett recalled the jubilation of 1997, and made the case for celebrating once again: “Good things were going to happen, we believed, because that it what many of our parents believed.”

Cool story – what happened next?

If one does wish to draw similarities between then and now – beyond establishing that the credulity of Guardian columnists is an inexhaustible commodity – there is one worth bearing in mind. To the far-sighted, the quickly revealed nature of Blair’s government was no surprise; the architects of New Labour were, uncharacteristically, quite explicit in their intentions even before taking power.

Despite the efforts of the UK’s right-wing press, which still vainly persists in trying to paint Starmer as some kind of crypto-Marxist demagogue poised to expropriate everything that looks at him funny – a strategy they attempted with Blair, and has failed just as utterly today – Labour under Starmer have been clear about what they stand for… Which is to say, not a lot. 

Counting the casualties

The wreckage left in the wake of Labour’s victory now litters UK politics, and plenty are already picking through the rubble trying to establish how it happened – that’s strange, why did the people of Pompeii decide to build all these statues of people lying down…

First and foremost of the many obvious points that oddly went unspoken throughout the campaign: A great many people died in 14 years of Tory government – you will never convince me that, in many cases, it was not entirely intentional – and no apology was ever offered for that. So far, no guarantee has been given that such deaths will decrease under the new one. Such is the art of managing expectations.

Though unable and unwilling to share the optimism of Cosslett et al, I can understand taking some satisfaction in the sheer scale of the Conservative obliteration – people can have a little schaudenfreude, as a treat. That said, any dark glee is rather undercut by the fact that Rishi Sunak is out, with nothing but £651 million to fall back on; that our former prime minister can now cry himself to sleep on a bed made of money is not the satisfying of political defenestrations.

Other notable losses were useful, in that they should disabuse us of a few myths. For example, the idea that Joanna Cherry enjoys a mass of supporters separate from and more powerful than ordinary erstwhile SNP voters has been proven a fiction, and revealed that her personal constituency is (and arguably always was) largely restricted to the country’s most superannuated columnists. It does not take the Oracle of Delphi to know that majorities are not built on these foundations. 

Similarly, Alba’s hope that its coalition of embittered cranks could get anyone elected anywhere has been dashed yet again on the rocks of reality. As Cameron Archibald has already pointed out, Scotland’s motley troupe of social conservatives will be loath to accept that their grim obsession with rendering the lives of marginalised minorities untenable has failed to protect even the most prominent among their number. It will, of course, be somebody else’s fault – it always is. 

Meanwhile, the election of several independents but not one George Galloway, late of Rochdale, has shown that tolerating a self-aggrandizing, multi-decade project of repugnant personality is not a prerequisite to opposing genocide in Gaza. Wherever the UK’s anti-war, anti-imperialist left go from here, it is both possible and likely that the movement will do so with greater ease and success now that Dundee’s most notorious exile has been shunted to the sidelines once more. 

The Hindenburg

Even before the party’s Westminster contingent was reduced to the size of a sparsely attended pub quiz, the commentariat were busily erecting a ‘death of the SNP’ thinkpiece-industrial complex; hacks know when they’re onto a good thing, and confidently explaining the cause of the disaster, along with their own modest prescriptions for what should happen next, may well sustain them for years to come.

Independence is buried, we are told – a verdict which might carry more weight if this were not the third or fourth time we were hearing it. Optimists who still tend to the flame will argue that roughly half the nation still favours independence, and that ideas are far more difficult to kill than parties. This is perfectly true – but you cannot eat an idea nor pay your rent with one, as I suspect those who deserted the SNP this week know all too well. Besides, those who once presented themselves as the only ones capable of bringing that idea to fruition have shown as much talent for praxis as a Labrador with a banjo. 

The British state, ramshackle and replete with baked-in contradictions though it may be, is explicitly designed not to feature mechanisms by which it may be dismantled. The SNP have absolutely failed to overcome this, but the more messianic amongst its critics are kidding themselves – as is their habit – if they think any of the back-of-a-napkin ‘Plan Bs’ which have been floated since 2014 would have done better. There is no One Neat Trick for achieving a second referendum – the independence movement will need to grapple with that truth going forward, while the SNP’s present position can partly be attributed to their refusal to do so.

That obstinance, coupled with the carefully nurtured delusion that British ‘democracy’ can deliver a mandate worth a damn for the break-up of Britain itself, had some roots in the SNP’s terror of being perceived as a mere ‘party of protest’. They may put their minds at rest on that score – after this election campaign, no one would mistake the SNP as an entity with any interest in or talent for protest… Not that they were alone in that.

See no evil, hear no evil

On the day of the General Election, the Gaza Health Ministry reported that the Palestinian death-toll at the hands of Israeli forces had surpassed 38,000. At the time of writing, the ministry reports that number has grown by at least 29 within the past 24 hours, including five Palestinian journalists.

Following John Swinney’s slapdash coronation as leader of the SNP in May, I noted that the beleaguered party was nevertheless distinguished by its position on Gaza – alone within mainstream British politics, it advocated a ceasefire without caveat or apology. 

True, reports that Scottish Enterprise has provided ungodly sums to arms companies supplying Israel since its assault on Gaza began, in spite of Humza Yousaf’s demand for a cessation of Israeli arms sales, arguably reveals that position as a sham. Yet Gaza was and is the defining political test of our time, one which the SNP – if they had possessed the barest minimum of courage and honesty – could have used to define themselves amidst an international movement of millions, just as they once did over Iraq, and stand in opposition to the most monstrous and bloodthirsty forces operating in the world today.

Instead, they pretty much whiffed it. 

Gaza was not a central part of the SNP’s election campaign – as for why, you would need to ask them. Labour were also keen to push the small matter of an ongoing genocide out of sight and mind, but their reasons were a little easier to deduce.

In the days since the election, much has already been written concerning the rare challenge posed to Labour by voters justly enraged over Starmer’s craven stance on Gaza; that this anger was key in securing victory for Jeremy Corbyn as an independent, along with four others, seems self-evident. 

Intelligent and well-intentioned people have understandably looked to these outliers a source of hope; writing in Jacobin, Daniel Finn expressed his belief that “[the] vote for antiwar and Green candidates suggests the potential for a left-wing movement that combines a domestic reform agenda, both social and ecological, with a foreign policy based on peace, human rights, and climate justice.”

There is nothing wrong with hope – indeed, defeatism is an unaffordable luxury for the left, especially in the hardest of times. Nevertheless, I cannot help but remember the words of Kurt Vonnegut, who recalled the movement against the Vietnam war in typically caustic fashion: “It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turned out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.”

The great, cross-party success story of the 2024 general election was to completely sideline a genocide, and electorally neuter the mass-movement it has inspired. In this negative triumph, the mindset of the Starmerite project becomes terrifyingly clear.

The Old Deal

In his acceptance speech outside Downing Street (think Michael Rimmer, minus the warmth and charm), Keir Starmer promised the peoples of the United Kingdom “a government unburdened by doctrine” – or, if you prefer, principle – and “guided only by the determination to serve your interest.”

Taken to its logical conclusion – always a dangerous place to go – a naïve appraisal could conclude the incoming government believes nothing is off the table if there is a chance it will materially improve our lives; the speech was, I would bet, tailored specifically to give this very impression. If so, we may consider it Starmer’s first official lie as prime minister.

Throwing absolutely everything at the wall in order to see what will stick, untrammelled by conventional wisdom or ideology, has historical precedent; much romanticised though it may have subsequently been, this was essentially the desperate logic behind the New Deal under the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Given licence by the unprecedented crisis of the Great Depression, the New Deal – though as often as not, a series of half-measures and sticking plastics on capitalism’s inherent flaws – was nevertheless able to push through sweeping public work projects, social programs and state interventions that would have previously been unthinkable.

Starmer, few will be surprised to learn, is not proposing any kind of New Deal – unlike FDR, his government, even before taking power, has been defined far more by what it won’t do than what it will. This is why incoming Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves’ first act was to emphasise that “there’s not a huge amount of money” and reiterate Labour’s plan to let BlackRock strip-mine the country. 

As Christopher Silver wrote in the National prior to the election: “Even the most basic steps to lift children out of poverty, like removing the two-child benefit cap, is dismissed because it would acknowledge the victims of 14 years of austerity that haunt contemporary politics.”

This is the extent of our new government’s vision, and in it, one can hear the dread words of a bygone monster echo through eternity:

“There is no alternative.”

Refu/sons le dialogue avec nos matraqueurs

Though our political class prefers we ignore it, there is a world beyond the UK, developments within which offer lessons for we inhabitants of Starmer’s Britain.

Those attempting to find a bright side to look upon might consider France, which at the time of writing stands perilously close to a government of whitewashed fascism, or the United States, where the last line of defence against Trumpism re-entering the White House is an incomprehensible octogenarian whose remaining shreds of coherence have been devoted to articulating a refusal to stand aside. Surely, one might think, the grass is a little greener on this side?

Unfortunately, relief is unmerited and unwise: both France and the US have been led, once again, to the brink of the far-right seizing power thanks to the pig-headed conviction that centrism is the only credible bulwark against it, despite the fact it startles, bends and buckles in response to the far-right’s every whim and spasm. 

Over the course of the campaign, Starmer has shown he is no exception, whether through pandering to anti-immigrant bigotry, dog-whistles over benefit scroungers, or by prostrating himself before a plutocratic children’s author and promising to ensure no child need ever be aware of trans people’s existence. With the presence of an invigorated and unhinged Reform UK in parliament, the possibility of Starmer somehow developing a backbone seems somewhat distant.

The reptilian instincts which animate Le Pen, Trump and their followers are hardly alien or absent from British politics – as proof, you may look to the Spectator, which has over the past few weeks been less the house journal of British conservatism, but instead a National Rally fanzine. It would be nice is we could also look internationally for means by which it might be combated, but sadly it is not that simple.

France – not for the first time – has an organised, anti-capitalist left worthy of the name that leaves its British and American counterparts in the dust. While the survival of Jeremy Corbyn offers small comfort to the survivors of his own failed project, and Bernie Sanders ages into a disappointment that was a long time coming, the New Popular Front offers an opposition to both the far-right and the centrism which has emboldened it that is far from symbolic.

It is no small task to try and imagine how anything close to a genuine alternative on these shores might be built – the history of the British Left is, if anything, a history of failures to do so. Yet the unspoken message of the UK’s new government is that we must all understand certain things are impossible, and that they set the terms. The election did little to disprove this.

What – if anything – will?