The Strange Death of Liberal England
The title comes from a famous (or used-to-be famous) book written by George Dangerfield, and published in 1935. The book surveys the collapse of the Liberal Party after a resounding electoral triumph in 1906 when the Liberals formed the government of the most powerful nation on earth, yet within a few years the House of Lords lost its absolute veto over legislation, the Home Rule crisis brought Ireland to the brink of civil war and led to an army mutiny, the campaign for woman’s suffrage created widespread civil disorder and discredited the legal and penal systems, and an unprecedented wave of strikes swept the land.
The Strange Death of Liberal England, Again
Today, a similar collapse of status, prestige and meaning can be witnessed across England, but this time there aren’t the huge historical forces that raged through the era Dangerfield surveyed, there is just immense hubris, exceptionalism and xenophobia. If the first experience of The Strange Death of Liberal England was the result of a 19th C power failing to come to terms with the 20th, the second is the result of a 20th C power failing to come to terms with the 21st.
As the Cambridge University professor Nicholas Boyle wrote: “Brexit is the result of an English delusion, a crisis of identity resulting from a failure to come to terms with the loss of empire and the end of its own exceptionalism.”
Five years on from the Brexit vote it’s worth recalling what Boyle wrote in a memorable article (The problem with the English: England doesn’t want to be just another member of a team):
“There is a great lie peddled about the referendum: that it expressed the will of the British people. The pattern of voting showed up a colossal divergence between England, with its Welsh appendage, on the one hand, and Scotland and Northern Ireland on the other.
This was far more significant than any division between ‘metropolitan elites’ and ‘those left behind by globalisation’. Are there no elites in Edinburgh or Belfast? Is no one left behind in the Scottish or Irish hinterlands? Even if such a division is present across the UK, and indeed the whole of the Western world, and it plainly is, why only in England did it express itself as so powerful a revulsion from the EU?
To explain the referendum result as a ‘howl of pain at austerity’ is a pious flight from reality. It is to ignore, to cover over again, the wound, festering below the threshold of public consciousness for two generations, which the referendum opened up to the air.”

Not only that but we are seeing a process whereby the whole “take back control” narrative has been laid to rest by the fact that the UK government has officially handed over its powers of governance to corporations.Lord Livermore made clear that Number 10 sees this agenda as being driven by corporations, while the government is a secondary actor that “work[s] in partnership with business”.
Five years on, with the true (and widely anticipated costs) now laid bare, there is no resolution, there is no settled will, there is no quieting of the ‘festering wound’, instead, Reform UK and the ubiquitous Nigel Farage is an ongoing threat. None of the rage and mislaid sense of injustice is resolved, instead, Britain is dragged ever-further to the right, in a process that seems to have no end. ‘Liberal England’ is dead. The Conservative party has been hollowed-out and wholly captured by forces that would have previously only inhabited its conferences fringe and the back-room of pubs.
Brexit goes on and on and on, it has no end-point.
It’s true that we can whitewash the Tory past, who, don’t forget gave us the Enemy Within, the Falklands War, decimated Scottish industry and sold off the housing stock, whilst also propping up the apartheid regime for years before its eventual collapse. There’s no point in being dewy-eyed about Tebbit and Co. But the current incarnation of the Conservatives are of a different breed, unashamedly racist, touting a raft of far-right ideas and policies that would have been unheard of even twenty years ago.
There’s a case for a re-write of Dangerfield’s book in 2025, a neat ninety years on, as The Strange Death of Scottish Labour. But it is the demise of liberal England has a direct effect on the crisis of Scottish Labour, so let’s stick with the title ‘The Strange Death of Liberal England’.
Anas Sarwar’s party, or their end of it anyway, is being swept along in the aftermath of the unresolved Brexit revolution, England’s self-inflicted wound from which we all suffer collateral damage. They are now suffering horrendous polling, as Starmer’s new Labour government stutters and stalls at every turn.
It wasn’t meant to be like this.
A year ago your newspapers were festooned with endless op-eds championing the incoming Labour government. After what seemed like interminable Conservative governments, under the hapless Theresa May, the Idiot Prince Boris, the (very) brief spasm of Liz Truss, and then the calmly ineffective Rishi Sunak, Labour ascended into office on a wave of disinterest. Starmer was elected on the twin basis of Not Being the Tories and Not Being Jeremy Corbyn. This absence, this negative impression, was soon born out, at first as a Giant Nothing Burger, and increasingly as a new politics of its own. This is not Blairism Re-Heated but something further to the right as they articulate every day. This presents Sarwar’s Scottish Labour branch with an impossible task. Having initially said he would somehow, and for some unknown reason ‘protect Scotland from Starmer’ – he now has to kowtow to London Labour’s every quixotic policy manoeuvre.
Not only this, but as the now Dead Liberal England is pulled into the UKIP/Leave/Reform trajectory, English politics is dragged further and further rightwards, so that the Conservatives and Labour are in a loop of continual appeasement to the ‘populist’ right.
As John Swinney writes on the 5th anniversary of the Brexit vote (‘Scotland knows Brexit is holding Britain back. Why won’t Labour admit it?‘): “Today marks the fifth anniversary of the UK formally leaving this great project – in which countries come together on the basis of agreed values – to share and enhance sovereignty for the common good. For Starmer, however, it seems Nigel Farage is more of an influence on his decision-making than the interests of Scotland, where European freedom of movement in particular enriched our country in so many ways, culturally and economically.”
This puts Anas Sarwar in an impossible position, a bad hand that he has played badly.
Scottish Labour’s Death in Five Acts
It was not just UK Labour that was – until very recently – framed as the great new hope for Britain. After a tired and discredited shambles of a Tory party staggered out the door of Downing Street, the prospects of a new Labour government, the much-heralded ‘adults in the room’ were supposed to be so much better. But Scottish Labour was to have a very important role to play in delivering this. The ‘Scottish votes are essential’ card has played relentlessly, and the payoff we were told (over and over) was that, once again, Scots and Scotland would be at ‘the heart of government’.
This has proven to be not true.
If Labour was supposed to be a fresh new progressive force, so too was Scotland to be ‘rewarded’ for returning to the fold by influence and constitutional reform. Gordon Brown had been fiddling away for years on a constitutional blueprint that was ditched even before Sir Keir Starmer crossed No 10.
The silence from the hordes of editors and columnists that championed the coming constitutional reforms has been deafening.
But not just that, Scottish Labour have morphed and changed in their messaging and position about the Union. It’s worth doing some brief recent history as it’s all a bit of a blur to catch up on Scottish Labour’s demise. Theatrically it could be divided into four historical acts.
Act One was the ill-fated indyref campaign that saw them joined at the hip with the Tories. It was a calculation that many within the party regret, and would cast them into the political wilderness for years.
On 24 October 2014, Johann Lamont announced her resignation as leader. She accused Labour’s UK-wide leadership of undermining her attempts to reform the Scottish Labour Party and treating it “like a branch office of London.” The party’s 2014 leadership election was won by Jim Murphy, an MP who had previously served as Secretary of State for Scotland and been a prominent campaigner for the pro-Union side in the referendum. In his victory speech, Murphy said that his election marked a “fresh start” for Scottish Labour: “Scotland is changing and so too is Scottish Labour. I’m ambitious for our party because I’m ambitious for our country”. He also said that he planned to defeat the SNP in 2016, and would use the increased powers being devolved to Holyrood to end poverty and inequality.
Act Two Collapse
But Labour’s poll ratings in Scotland did not reverse, and the party suffered a landslide defeat in the general election in May 2015, losing 40 of their 41 seats to the SNP. It was the first time since 1959 that the party had not won the most votes in Scotland at a general election. On 16 May 2015, Murphy resigned as leader.
Kezia Dugdale beat Ken McIntosh to take over as party leader.
In the 2016 Scottish Parliament election, Labour lost a third of its seats, dropping from 37 to 24. Labour got its lowest percentage of the vote in Scotland in 98 years with 23% and fell into 3rd place, a position it last occupied in Scotland in 1910, behind the Conservatives.
In the 2017 local elections, Labour’s share of first preference votes fell from 31.4% to 20.2%, while it lost over 130 seats. This result meant the Party fell to third place in terms of both vote share and number of councillors. Labour also lost its Glasgow heartland.
In the 2017 general election election, the party managed to improve on its 2015 result and received 27% of the Scottish vote in a surprisingly good night for the party nationwide, and picked up 6 seats from the SNP in traditionally Labour areas such as Coatbridge, Glasgow, Kirkcaldy, and Rutherglen, bringing its Scottish number of seats to 7. Despite the positive result for the party, Labour remained in third place in Scotland, behind the Conservatives on 29%, and the SNP on 37%.
On 29 August 2017, Dugdale resigned as leader of the Scottish Labour Party.
She would be replaced by Richard Leonard a few months later.
But things did not go well for Leonard. He resigned as leader on 14 January 2021. Shortly afterwards, it was reported that Leonard had been pressured into resigning by wealthy donors, who told UK Labour leader Keir Starmer that they would not give money to the Westminster party unless Leonard quit.
And so here we are with Anas Sarwar, who has been leader since 2021.
Act Three – Recovery
In the 2022 local elections Labour finished far behind the SNP; with 282 seats overall, it was Labour’s second worst-worst result since 1977. But, swept on a tide of revulsion for the Conservatives the Labour Party won a landslide and Scottish Labour won 37 of the 57 Scottish seats contested at the election. Ian Murray was subsequently appointed to the cabinet as Secretary of State for Scotland
Scottish Labour attempted a re-brand changing its traditional red rose logo to a red and purple thistle.
.
Act Four – Collapse Again
But from this seemingly unassailable position, the trajectory has been only down. Polling a few weeks ago put Labour on track to take 24 seats at Holyrood, putting them into opposition, but a long way off the target of replacing the SNP.
🚨🆕HOLYROOD 2026 VOTING INTENTION
Seat extrapolation from Professor Sir John Curtice (assuming uniform movement):
🟡SNP 53
🔵Con 15
🟣Ref. 15
🔴Lab 24
🟠LD. 12
🟢Grn. 10@CalumAM | @geoffaberdein | @akmaciver pic.twitter.com/m9mopkOhec— Holyrood Sources (@HolyroodSources) January 15, 2025
Poor Anas Sarwar has had the look of a contortionist in recent months as he twists and turns. First he was sure that GB Energy would be based in Scotland and have a big impact on reducing energy bills (it won’t), then he was sure that the WASPI women would be recompensed (they weren’t), then he and his MPs were queuing up to keep the two-child cap in place – now he agrees it should be mitigated in Scotland as soon as possible.
It’s all a bit of a shambles.
This matters, because Sarwar was, like Starmer, the Union’s great hope. Look, “here comes change, real change” was the mantra. Writing in the Herald today about the rise in support for independence (‘The Union is on borrowed time: Yes camp must prepare for indy‘) Neil Mackay notes: “What matters …is the behaviour of the incumbent London government. Keir Starmer was a Hail Mary for many centre-left floating voters in Scotland. A forlorn hope.”
That change hasn’t materialised. Indeed, Starmer now repels many voters as much as the Tories. With the Tories you knew you’d get stabbed in the front; with Starmer, coming from a tradition of social democracy, it feels like he’s stabbing the country in the back.”
“Many of those Scottish floating voters, who were crucial to electing Starmer, voted Yes in 2014, or are what you might call Yes Curious, not because of flags or patriotism, but because they’re fed up to the back teeth with Westminster trashing the country.”
“Independence offers a rather undefined way out for them, an alternative to Westminster that has appeal precisely because it lacks clear delineation. When something lacks detail – like Brexit – voters can project almost anything onto it.”

🚨 NEW | Reform leads by 4pts:
🟣 REF 27% (+1)
🔴 LAB 23% (+1)
🔵 CON 21% (-2)
🟠 LD 11% (-1)
🟢 GRN 10% (-)Via @FindoutnowUK, 29 Jan (+/- vs 22 Jan) pic.twitter.com/CDagcMgOJd
— Stats for Lefties 🍉🏳️⚧️ (@LeftieStats) January 30, 2025
The argument that Scottish Labour, with a Labour government, would give Scotland a stronger voice in Westminster, is shot to shreds. At once Reform UK is on the rise and voters think Brexit has been a disaster. 62% (that number has a familiar ring to it) now think that Brexit has been a failure.
But Reform continues to rise as a manifestation of the Death of Liberal England, and with it, inevitably comes the Death of Scottish Labour. England’s turn to what can be only politely termed ‘right-wing populism’ has potentially lethal consequences for the Union.
The SNP have shown every facet of a Mafia. What did you expect and a majority of it’s followers are quite happy to go on with it. Branchform – ha!
“The SNP have shown every facet of a Mafia…” LOL!
Yeah, all them machine guns, bodies encased in concrete, drug cartels, murders, kidnappings etc.
Back under your bridge Mr Troll.
Britain…what a mess!
The centre ground in UK politics has moved so far right these last few decades it’s a push to call Starmer’s Labour ‘centre-left’. Aping the duopoly that dominates US politics, Labour are now centre-right and the tories are far-right – two parties representing corporate interests, albeit one with a kinder face.
The supposed progressive parties trying to woo voters with right-wing ‘lite’ policies won’t work – it’s never worked anywhere. All it does is give legitimacy to the policies of the far-right, leading to people voting for the real thing. It’s no mystery why fascism is on the rise when you’ve two parties who refuse to disrupt a status quo that disadvantages millions of ordinary people. A status quo the political class of all colours benefit from greatly. There’s your problem right there.
Interestingly, as Tim Watkins points out, the collapses of the liberal England marked in 1900-1914 and 1990s-2015 ish coincide with the native peak coal and peak oil/gas respectively.
It is clear social democracy only really works when there is an energy abundance, a phenomenem only possible due to fossil fuels. Where the elites (land and mill owning gentry back then, corporations now) can provide sufficient promises of growth and crumbs to the mass of workers to stop them revolting.
Parts of the north of England have been abandoned just as much as Scotland has. And now the Reeves-Starmer corporation is making wild promises that can never be met (lack of trained workers, lack of sand for concrete, lack of electrical grid, lack of surplus energy, insufficient water) for the southern university-city provinces, and not even promising anything to the rest of us.
Hubris it is called, and fear of loss of privilege.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/01/21/basket-loads-of-hubris/
(see Tim’s other posts too)
Prepare ye for independence
Not because they plan it at all
But because of their indifference
And lack of power (in the energetic sense)
Collapse always sees the peripheral provinces fall away
Prepare ye for independence
So that we may join you too!
As I posted that, a big part I missed was published: (that kind of synchronisity keeps happening these days)
peak steel has been passed:
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/peak-steel
A tad too doomerish in outlook.
The fact is the UK is in its present state because it’s ruled by corrupt, lying, cravens.
Who couldn’t fix anything even if they had the correct policies, in place of stagnating (turning rancid) neo-liberalism. The EU isn’t much better TBH either.
That’s why Reform can dodge the Brexit bullet. Farage can simply say it failed, because the Westminster oligrachy dooms everything to failure.
Which is essentially true. The UK is a horribly misgoverned country.
”The UK is a horribly misgoverned country ”…. as it always has been !
Reform have no policies or interest in Scotland because they are an AngloBritish party.
Brexit was rejected by electorate in Scotland by a margin of 2:1 and Farage was instigator and main supporter of Brexit.
Brexit failed the vast majority of people of UK because it was perpetrated by a small number of rich people for their own personal financial benefit. It has essentially made a bad economic situation for UK worse and majority of population are beginning to recognise it.
Politicians in UK are failing but Farage/Reform remind me of Rufus T Firefly song – ‘just wait ‘til I get through with it’.
Westminster and UK establishment got an enormous shock with how close Scotland came to voting for independence in 2014. They know that UK is highly dependent on resources from Scotland for future economic prosperity.
Post 2014 Westminster policy to Scotland has been more based on trying to restrict Scotland developing those resources whilst giving Westminster more control over them via UK Internal Market. This approach has had little to say about how being part of Union benefits Scotland but how to make it as difficult as possible for Scotland to become independent and future proof UK from impacts of Scotland becoming independent.
The slight anomaly to this approach was Westminster’s larger funding package for Holyrood this year though this hardly ameliorated cuts of last few years. Labour may well have agreed to this partly because they wished to build on their successes in Scotland at GE. If so Labour failed to appreciate that their improved performance was more to do with getting Tories out and disillusionment with SNP. Holyrood government have, rightly IMO, used some of the additional finance to mitigate the effects of Labour’s economic policies which has left Anas Sarwar in an awkward position.
Scottish Labour is a campaigning slogan rather than a party not unlike Scottish Conservatives. The outcome is that you have Scottish Labour MSP’s opposing policies supported by Scottish Labour MP’s often representing the same electorate. While devolution should allow a different approach in Scotland both Scottish Labour and Tories will look foolish and hypocritical until they become separate entities that are not answerable or controlled by UK parties.
Good article. A wee technical point – the EU referendum was in 2016. The event five years ago was us formally leaving the EU.
Thanks Hillary
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but the ‘unashamedly ‘rascist’ Tory party have just recently elected a black woman of Nigerian descent to be their leader.
Mmmm.
‘
Yes, it’s interesting that this happens, extreme right wing parties and patriarchal parties having women and people of colour as cabinet members or even leaders. I’ve often wondered why these people would even go there. And it doesn’t seem to tone down the party rhetoric though.
It does show that racist memes are silly, because afterall we all have the same DNA, the so-called English are a very mongrel tribe indeed – if you go back far enough we all have the same ancestors; that playing a ‘racist’ card is another form of othering that is just used to prevent revolt; and more importantly, it shows that power corrupts and that some people will do anything to get a taste of power and/or privilege. Which is kinda sad really.
Could it possibly be that politics in the modern west transcends ‘race’ and your political beliefs are of no consequence to your ethnic background?
In other words judge people purely on their opinions? How refreshing would that be?
It would be nice indeed. Trouble is politicians all over are so uneducated about overshoot and resource depletion that no party can deliver on any promises they might make, especially about growth, and their opinions seem to change every week (eg Trump). It is clear the Labour party that the largest minority voted for in 2024 isn’t the Labour party they are getting, which surprised no-one really.
I haven’t taken much notice of the Tory party recently, but from what I have seen they are merely in the game of blaming Labour for everything that isn’t quite working out right. Which is easy to do. If they do have policies I doubt they are relevant to the real world outside of the Westminster village. Or Versailles-on-Thames as Tim Watkins aptly calls it.
I don’t want politicians’ opinions. I want effective political action that mitigates the crises we are in, in a way that causes the least amount of harm to the environment, without which we could not exist. And one of the ways that can help is devolving power to the lowest levels possible. Hence me following a Scottish Independence blog.
I think it essentially true that political opinion is unrelated to ethnicity. This can be distorted by a minority group being oppressed in a society making it harder for them to side with that establishment in a general political sense, though some of that can be fear of your own community for sticking your head above the parapet. I think that fear has largely been broken in recent years with the rise of leading politicians on the right from black and Asian communities. I am no fan of the right but I actually think this a good thing. It is diversity and inclusion in action!
I am no expert but I suspect if you go to, say, Africa, the different wings of politics are in competition in black-dominated countries just as they are in the West.
Have you also noticed the new leader of the ICJ?
A rabid Christian Zionist – how did that happen?
Kemi Badenoch is a massive racist, is why.
‘ I don’t know if you noticed’ …… Badenoch is leading a rump of a party riddled with and hollowed out by racism.
It’s imploding as the far right elements jump ship to Reform because the Tories just arent far right enough for the populist voters in England.
Maybe you didn’t notice.
God Bella this historical nightmare has depressed me further to the bottom of every thing.
I cannot disagree with your take on the dark down-hill slide of Scottish souls since the EU referendum.
At the time of the result it was clear to me that people of the Union (much less so Scots) could not face the future, and gave into
a “let’s go it alone gamble” – the easy way out. Did they really believe the hype, and it was worth a gamble?
I haven’t the energy to fight the mess we are now in.
I just hope the kids have – the adults in charge have no idea where they are heading.
Didn’t Nicola Sturgeon Stop Brexit?
Very well expressed. And so depressing, not a glimpse of positive change around today….anywhere. Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. W B Yeats.