I’ve been reading about the upcoming British elections. Unlike in America, British elections seem to go on forever. It seems that they have been talking about this election for years! I’m kidding, of course, but British election shows are following the same arc as American election shows. As soon as one ends, a new one starts up. I guess it keeps the political consultants off the streets.
For Americans, British elections are a good indication of where things are going in our own lands. Thatcher became the head of the Tories in ’75 and Reagan became the de facto leader of American conservatives in ’76. Thatcher became PM in ’79 and Reagan won the White House in ’80. It’s not a perfect bellwether, but it is useful. We elected the vulgarian Bill Clinton and the Brits followed that with the execrable Tony Blair.Sometimes America is the trend setter.
Even so, it’s worth noting what is going on in the mother country. The fraying of the political parties in Britain cannot have an analog in the US due to our system, but the general disgust with the political class is something we’re seeing on both sides of the Atlantic. That’s the point of this piece in the Guardian last week.
Public mistrust of government is high in Britain, and deference to the political elite has also collapsed as economic woes erode living standards. Amid all that, voters are deserting the Conservatives and Labour, Britain’s two main parties of the right and left since the 1920s, in droves.
In the 1951 election, Labour and the Conservatives – or Tories – shared 96% of the vote. By 2010 they could only manage 66% between them.
At the last election in 2010, Cameron – the first Tory leader since the 1960s to be educated at Eton college and Oxford University, an upper-class combination somewhat comparable to the Ivy League – successfully ousted Labour after 13 years of Blair and then Gordon Brown, but his 306 seats to Labour’s 258 left him 20 short of an outright majority.
The Conservative leader was forced into the first peacetime coalition since the Great Depression, his partners the middle-of-the-road Liberal Democrats who had staged a revival since near-extinction in the 50s and had won 57 seats. A coalition of some kind – or a minority government, rule by a party that does not have a majority of MPs – seems likely again this year.
From where I sit, the Tories look a lot like the GOP in that they have run out of reasons to exist. When you have caved on all of the important cultural arguments, what argument can you offer to voters other than you will wear a tighter fitting eye shade whilst managing the custodial state? How is Cameron different from Blair, other than being taller?
The other issue, of course, is the national question. That’s always the topic when discussing UKIP. It is the thrust of the party and the tool they are using to dig out the innards of the Tory party. I suppose you can add in a healthy bit of economic nationalism as well as economic populism. No national figure in the US has picked up this issue yet, but it is looking like Walker and Cruz are working on their conversion stories, in the hope of repeating what worked for Dave Brat.
It’s convenient to dismiss UKIP as the party of yahoos, just as it has been easy to dismiss Tea Party types in the US. The thing is, I wonder if the appeal of the Scottish Nation Party is really just a veiled and uniquely Scottish protest against immigration. There’s no economic reason for Scotland to break away. There’s not a language or cultural barrier that is big enough to warrant a split.
I looked up SNP’s position on immigration and it is nonsensical, therapeutic state gibberish.The national appeal is by definition exclusive and they make clear they intend to restrict immigration. On the other hand, they moan about being victims and having their feelings hurt by the mean men of Westminster. My hunch is the average Scot hears “Scotland for Scots” when he thinks of SNP.
Demographics certainly plays a role as we see in the US. Scotland is white, very white. The latest demographics say 96% white as a matter of fact. England, in contrast, is 85% white. In America, pasty regions up north love talking about diversity, while diverse parts of the country are more restrained. Diversity romanticism does not sell very well in the Southern states, for example, as everyone there has more than their fill of diversity.
I suspect something similar is at work in Britain. The SNP can wax romantic about immigration and pretend they are treated like foreigners by the English. They can afford such loose talk. Their brothers to the south have to navigate through Londonstan and have a very different view of the rainbow coalition. A couple of muzzies saw off the head of a Scottish soldier in Glasgow and I suspect we get a different tune from SNP.
The old divisions in the Anglosphere were mostly about economics. The Left embraced Fabian socialism and the Right embraced free market capitalism. Today, everyone agrees on economics. Global capitalism is the economic foundation of the ruling elite. Where they differ is on biological reality. The cultural globalism espoused by a Jeb Bush assumes nurture is everything and nature is nothing. At the heart of the nationalist appeal is the implicit assumption that nature, not nurture, is what defines us.
The nurture crowd still controls the high ground in the West. They press on with their program, despite the rumblings of discontent. The fact that these issues are part of the public debate is progress of sorts. I suspect American pols are watching what is happening in the UK with great interest. Gains by UKIP and SNP could change a few minds on this side of the Atlantic.
Ukip in local elections, tory in national. best of a bad job.
Not sure, UK’er, that avoiding collapse is the way to go.
British elections aren’t a fixed term, though they cannot exceed five years. It is possible for a government to ask the Monarch to dissolve parliament before the term is up. Disastrously for the Tories in 1974, Edward Heath misjudged the timing for an election and let Labour in to run a minority government. Cameron clearly decided he wouldn’t make that mistake and has taken the current term to the limit.
Anyhow, be that as it may, we may well here be faced with yet another coalition government when the shambles is sorted out. The general feeling is that UKIP despite their popular appeal won’t get enough seats to replace the Limp Dumbs in a coalition and anyway they are too toxic for the ‘I’m almost a socialist Dave’ to link up with.
Miliband, often referred to here as Beaker for his unfortunate resemblance to one of the Muppets, is desperate for power (aren’t they all?) and is apparently wooing the SNP largely as the the vote on which Labour traditionally relies in Scotland is likely to go Ms Sturgeon’s way. Beaker would happily sacrifice the UK’s small nuclear defence ability by shooing the vital submarines out of some Scottish loch, because that’s what Sturgeon wants and the strange man needs her in a coalition. The Limp Dumbs by the way would almost certainly flock to Liebore’s side as socialism is their natural bent. It’s been hard for them cosying up to an almost-left-of-centre Tory party. Meanwhile Wales rumbles on about wanting to be independent and a swing to the Grok-speakers would ruin Liebore’s traditional vote in the vallies.
The Toadies would find themselves without any friends other than what Norn Iron can rustle up.
I don’t know whether the SNP really want independence. Whitehall coughs up a lot of cash to keep them happy and now that oil is not the gold it once was then Sturgeon needs the hated English money to realise her vision of Venezuela-On-The-Clyde.
In the meantime while there have been the odd muzzie trouble north of the border I am not sure the Scots have any great feelings towards immigrants. The Scots, as one of them once said to me, only care about money and London has it for the moment.
UKIP wants us out of Europe, but every other party wants us in. That means that even if UKIP managed to get enough seats to prop up Cam’s probably minority government he and the rest of the Eurofans won’t want to split from Brussels. That leaves little for UKIP to build a deal around, and promised referendums come and go without ever seeing the light of day. Mind you, it could be like the Paddys who had to vote again because they inadvertently pressed the ‘leave the EU’ button a few too many times in their referendum. Bizarrely I recall one Liebore politician insisting the original vote for no in Eire was actually a cry for more EU rule and was merely dissatisfaction of the slim rule coming from Brussels. More was better, she said, and that was what they got. Funny how our leaders see things…
You are right the Toadies have run out of reasons to exist. The other day Dave weirdly announced a plan for businesses to grant paid leave to workers wishing to do ‘community work’ and other socially joyful things instead of their job. Business, once the cornerstone of the Cons, wanted to know who pays for this largesse (councils would embrace it because, hey, who cares about the people they serve?) but business — who might want to make a profit to carry on — would have to stump up the cash. The Toadies also didn’t know how this could be enforced. No doubt the police will be told to go round and arrest bosses refusing to allow their workers to slope off and pick litter for a few days.
All this makes it hard to vote for any of the parties come election time. The tragedy of politics now is that it has become a sort of lumpen blob of fuzzy feelings and sparkly unicorn wishes. They all love us, all have plans for us to be happy and wealthy and none of them have any real idea what makes the world tick. Money is just numbers to be bounced round and so what if the proles don’t like mass immigration and all the huge costs involved?
When UKIP’s Farage said in a TV debate that the majority of the HIV treatment in the UK was for health tourists, not UK residents, there were horrified gasps from the gathered lefties. So what in our feel-good world if we aren’t treating diseased people from all over? UKIP’s argument it is a national health service and not an international one has fallen on disbelieving ears.
Just as sadly so will all the promises in this coming general election fall on deaf ears because they are all vague promises and unreal dreams. Unless you think one lot will give your bit of the rabble more than another lot will, there is little point in voting. My interest in this election will be just how many people think it is actually worth getting out of their armchairs and trying to have a say in the tumbling collapse of the nation. It will be interesting.
One of the benefits of Americans watching BBC coverage of the UK elections is we see that we are not the only people who have lost their minds. Your elections are just as tedious and inane as our elections. I just snapped on the tube and the BBC was yakking with some American nobodies about Hillary Clinton’s campaign. I’m getting rid of TV for the next 18 months. There’s simply no way I can stand watching election coverage for a year and a half.