The Crisis of the British State

We are living through a scandal that eclipses anything we have seen in the post-war era, a set of shocks to the British establishment from which it may not recover, explored briefly here: Britain, a festering shambles staggers on.

What we are witnessing eclipses the Jeremy Thorpe affair, Westland, Cash-for-questions, Peter Mandelson, part one (1998), Peter Mandelson part two (the Hinduja brothers), David Kelly and the Hutton Inquiry (2003), Cash for Honours (2006), News of the World royal phone hacking scandal (2006), “Piggate” (2015), Windrush (2018), the Dominic Cummings scandal (2020), Nathan Gill, shilling for Putin and so on and on and on.

But setting aside for a moment the revelations about the former Prince of Wales Andrew Mountbatten Windsor and the former Ambassador to the USA, Lord Mandelson, the challenges and the real crisis for Britain come in the timing of all of this.

In normal circumstances, the British establishment would hush-up such wrongdoings, promise a ‘full inquiry’, pay people off, or offer up some sacrificial lamb to assuage the public interest. But partly because in a global world we can see the fallout from the Epstein releases (such as they are – late and partial) spill across our timelines as the US blogosphere and independent commentators across social media digest and respond to the crisis in Minneapolis and the criminality of the Trump regime, this time is different. The problem for British elites that usually are able to ‘manage’ any such PR crisis is that these revelations come at a time when Britain is already facing a rolling constitutional impasse, with the forces of the far-right in the ascendancy and Britain’s government teetering in unpopularity.

But more than this, this series of scandals comes just weeks before crucial elections in Andrew, Gordon and Denton (Manchester) and at the Senedd in Wales and Holyrood in Scotland.

It’s in this context that the announcement from The Times that [John Swinney given election boost by Greens’ constituency retreat] comes:

“The Scottish Greens are expected to focus on the regional list, which could help the SNP meet the 65-seat target it believes it needs for an independence vote.”

The narrative from the Unionist media over the past few weeks has been along the lines of “Well yes the SNP may be on course to be returned to power and well yes there may well be a comfortable pro-indy majority but it’s not a mandate unless the SNP get a majority on their own.” This was the main narrative, other than the cunning plan to form a government with Farage’s party in Scotland [see Project Fear on Steroids – Bella Caledonia].

Daniel Sanderson reports:

He continues:

“The decision has significant ramifications. While there will be four candidates from major unionist parties for voters to choose from, Reform UK having said it will stand in every constituency, there will be only one pro-independence candidate in most seats.”

The problem is not just one for Labour party, or the government, it is one for the Union. Having established an entirely false narrative that only a majority for the SNP would prove a legitimate ‘mandate’ for a referendum, the media and political class will now be hanged by their own petard. Expect frantic spinning in the next few weeks.

The problem for Labour, and the Union is not just a crisis of legitimacy in Scotland, it is a crisis of legitimacy in England too, As Owen Jones notes: “Labour’s soul is being laid bare in the Gorton and Denton byelection campaign.”

“Being forced to compete with the left was never part of the plan. Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, “doesn’t have room for compromise with the hard left”, as a former associate put it, believing “they need to be eradicated from the party because they are so dangerous.” It’s as though the Starmerites assumed that once the left was vanquished inside Labour, it would simply vanish from politics altogether.”

“They did not anticipate a leftwing insurgency in the form of Zack Polanski’s Green Party. In Gorton and Denton – where Labour secured half the vote in 2024 – the party is haemorrhaging support to Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK and to the Greens. But it is the Green candidate, the charismatic local plumber Hannah Spencer, who is now the bookies’ firm favourite.”

Lord Mandelson was useful, pivotal even, when he could be utilised to scourge the Labour Party of whatever remnants of the Left remained. Now, as he is brutally exposed he is being reluctantly disposed of, though only on his own terms. If the Greens were to win in Andrew, Gordon and Denton it would be, concludes Jones: “Labour’s worst nightmare for a reason. It would expose its refusal to offer a genuine alternative to a broken economic order not as hard-headed pragmatism, but as a deliberate ideological choice.”

Likewise, in Wales, as Bethan McKernan writes:

“The Welsh have been Labour’s most loyal voters for 100 years – returning the party to government in Cardiff since devolution began in 1999. But poll after poll now says Labour’s base has collapsed. The party could come third or even fourth in May, finishing after the Greens.”

“The Green party, which was hoping for one to four seats, could go from zero MSs to an astonishing 11, delivering the Greens’ best election result, making a Plaid Cymru-Green coalition government a strong possibility, and putting the question of Welsh independence firmly on the Cardiff agenda.”

If the forces in Manchester, Edinburgh and Cardiff have a cumulative impact, so too does the collapse in legitimacy of the Royal family. This story has, as they say, a long tail. As Tom Nairn wrote (way back) in 1997 Ghosts in the Palace:

“Within less than half of her own reign the glamour of Monarchy has vanished. All that the Crown now accomplishes is to counterpoint and somehow exaggerate an ambient unreality: the new, motherless country left behind by its moral decease. Through Queenly spectacles the past looks at the shattered glass of Britain present, with a gaze already cold.”

The idea that the House of Windsor could regain its position in the public consciousness as a ‘unifying force’ or window dressing for the actual function of the British State is now both absurd and grotesque as the attendants and outliers frantically find some way to explain away Andrew and Fergie’s behaviour. Another day of bunting and Coronation Chicken as one more heave seems unlikely now.

If Labour loses badly in Manchester in three weeks time, then in Scotland and Wales in three months time it will deepen further the constitutional crisis we are already asleep in. Whether that is useful or played well will depend on the forces for self-determination and radical change in all three countries, and those forces are not confined to the political parties of the Greens, Plaid and the SNP.