John Harris - It’s not just Scotland where politics as usual is finished
nothing is going back in its box. Anxiety and excitement abound in equal measure... Only one thing seems clear: politics as usual suddenly seems so lost as to look completely absurd.
In some parallel universe, the British autumn of 2014 is opening in the usual way. The rituals of party conferences loom, with the added bonus of an imminent general election. The supposedly central questions are old and tired, but being parroted again: what of Ed Miliband’s approval ratings? If Dave falls, does the crown pass straight to Boris? If the idea that politics is reducible to such games has long been in decline, what’s happening in Scotland has surely put paid to it. Even before the two polls that sparked this week’s panic, it was obvious that the referendum campaign – indeed, the huge upturning of Scottish politics over the past seven years – was highlighting the broken state of Westminster orthodoxy. But the past couple of days have felt like a kind of collective Ceausescu moment, as London politicians’ attempted stilling of the crowd has threatened to demonstrate only their irrelevance.
Last Sunday I made another visit to Scotland, where I’ve been working on a series of Guardian films titled Britain’s in Trouble, which will appear online next week. I started in Falkirk, at a yes meeting on an out-of-town housing estate. The star turns were the pro-independence actor Elaine C Smith, and Alan Bissett, a loquacious playwright and author who grew up locally. The event drew well over 300 people.
Meanwhile, my inbox continued to fill up with the kind of missives from the no side that speak of a politics so mired in tedium and arrogance that it starts to be funny. Today, for example, came news of an event in Kilmarnock, and glad tidings indeed: “Gordon Brown will be joined at the rally by local Labour MP Cathy Jamieson and shadow pensions ministerGregg McClymont MP.” That should do it, eh?
In the broadcast media in particular, there is an implied assumption that “the Scotland moment” is something confined to that country. But the reality across the UK suggests something much deeper and wider, and a simple enough fact: that what is happening north of the border is the most spectacular manifestation of a phenomenon taking root all over – indeed, if the splintering of politics and the rise of new forces on both left and right across Europe are anything to go by, a set of developments not defined by specific national circumstances, but profound social and economic ruptures.
Here, Labour and the Conservatives have recently been scoring their lowest combined share of support. Organisationally, they are both hollowed out and increasingly staffed by wet-behind-the-ears apparatchiks who only compound the parties’ distance from the public. Whether justifiably or not, millions of British people have passed through holding politicians in contempt and now treat them with cold indifference. Let’s face it: the only thing keeping all this alive is the electoral system.
People on the left tend to look at dysfunctional sets of circumstances and, à la Marx and Engels, conclude that impossible contradictions will somehow come to a head. But for a long time British politics did not feel like that.
In my more miserable moments I would turn to the work of the British academic Colin Crouch and his theory of so-called post-democracy, a development seen “when boredom, frustration and disillusion have settled in after a democratic moment … [and] where political elites have learned to manage and manipulate popular demands”. Looking at, say, the more deadened aspects of politics in the US, it seemed perfectly plausible to imagine post-democracy taking root in the UK.
Out in the fields it doesn’t really look like that any more. Perhaps only Wales – where Labour remains superficially dominant, but apathy and disconnection have long since hacked down its majorities – comes halfway near to being a convincing realisation of the post-democratic model. And even there, there have long been signs of the demise of old certainties – witness Plaid Cymru’s fleeting breakthroughs in supposedly safe Labour territory and now, new threats from Ukip.
What has been happening in Scotland speaks for itself. And in England, a whole swath of the country – the east mainly, but also parts of the old industrial north – is clearly gripped by a tangled mixture of resentment, insecurity and a besieged sense of identity and belonging, all of which feed into support for a party that many now see as the de facto opposition. Never one to miss a trick, Nigel Farage is trying to fuse all this with what’s happening in Scotland – and when he bangs on about the yes campaign being “anti-English”, he knowingly taps into an anger that translates as a simple enough question: what about us?
In among all the noise, there are more common themes than some people would like to admit. There is more talk about immigration and the EU in England than elsewhere – and it gets ugly, a lot – but in such diverse places as Clacton-on-Sea, the Rhondda valley and the central Scottish industrial belt, I have recently heard exactly the same stuff: anguished talk of insecurity, the decline of people’s towns (a massively overlooked aspect of the public mood), their fears for their children’s futures, and the sense that cosseted politicians know nothing of their lives, nor ever will. Younger people tend to this last point as the natural state of things and either talk about the new alternatives, or admit to no interest in politics at all; older people voice their feelings with a profound sense of betrayal.
What with every conceivable threat being thrown at the pro-independence side, let us assume Scotland narrowly decides to remain in the UK, that the three main parties stumble through their conferences and we get to May next year. Whoever wins will do so with only the flimsiest of mandates and, particularly in the case of a Labour party uncertain of its mission and committed to austerity, the backlash would set in early; indeed, mid-term blues might arrive well inside the first year. Ukip could easily end up on yet another roll, while the consequences of increased powers for Holyrood ripple through the whole of the UK, with unpredictable results, as evidenced by increasing interest in the kind of nationwide devolution floated today by Nick Clegg.
Some in the political class have evidently come to the conclusion that decentralising power might be an answer to the current tumult, but such moves might just as well accelerate the demise of normal politics as reverse it.
In short, nothing is going back in its box. Anxiety and excitement abound in equal measure, which is what happens when uncertainty takes over almost everything. Only one thing seems clear: politics as usual suddenly seems so lost as to look completely absurd.
