Tens for the Tens: Politics

A ++Politics might be good. But we're apes with a thin veneer of language-based reasoning smeared on top. Some political systems are better that others, but they all involve politicians (or people who become politicians when they get inside the system).

Anyway, in the seventeen UK general elections since 1945, only one (1970) has involved a party of one political stripe with a working majority being replaced by a party of the opposite political stripe with a working majority. Of the two elections most like the 2010 one, in 1964 Labour was returned with a small working majority, and in 1992 the Tories were returned with a small working majority. My gut feeling is that Cameron will become PM this year, but likely of a minority government or with a small majority that could be eaten away at by-elections thus opening up the possibility that his stay in power might not be an extended one (with Hague becoming Leader again in the Australian style).

But, of course, four months is a long time in politics. If Labour (i.e. Peter Mandelson) can run and effective campaign - if it can make something of the Eton/Bullingdon Club/braying Tory Boy images - and that something does backfire, if some squalid scandal slithers out of the fetid pit of Cameron's or Osborne's past, if Brown can land a couple of punches on Cameron in the debates (and we haven't seen televised debates in a UK GE before, so their impact is unpredictable - if unlikely, in the final analysis, to be actually that significant), if enough voters still just don't trust the Tories (as they didn't Labour in 1992), maybe Brown could just sneak back in.

That would make 2010-2015 a rerun of 1992-1997 unless Something Happened. It is very difficult for a party to reinvent itself in power and it might preferable for Labour to lose now and perhaps under Alan Johnson or, more likely, James Purnell (an apparatchik, but of the NuLab apparatchiks, probably the one who possesses the closest approximation to an actual human personality, and certainly plausible as an all-purpose Cameron clone) reinvent itself as some kind of (radical, progressive) social democratic party for the Twenty-First Century. Yeah, yeah. I know, I know. But, the truth, it that one would still always prefer to have one's own team in power.

Cameron in power might cover himself with some Red Tory/Blue-Green rhetoric, but he will likely be in practice, a by-the-numbers social authoritarian/economic neoliberal. His mantra will be: (a) privatise what you can privatise (so the banks will sold for a song to private equity investors); (b) outsource what you can't privatise; (c) managerialise what you can't outsource. After thirteen years, being a public servant over the next half-decade might not be a terribly comfortable situation to be in. (As Irvine Walsh might put it, if you liked New Labour, you'll love the Tories!)

If Cameron is elected, the next few years are likely to be as dominated by the constitutional crisis as they are by the economy. Scotland could vote for independence as early as this November, although probably more likely in 2011 (assuming the Nats win a majority in the Scottish election that year). It's possibly that some - many? - Tories might look favourably upon the prospect of an England with a perpetual Conservative majority. But there is the issue of Faslane. Extraterritoriality seems a doubtful option. I suspect that Cameron would try and cut a deal offering the Scots full home rule expect for defence, foreign affairs and certain macroeconomic issues. But would this be enough for Wee Eck?

But all of this is politics more or less as usual. With the failure of the economic system and the failure of the political system to deal with it as well as its failure to deal issues such as climate change (consider the debacle of Copenhagen), we desperately need something fresh. Where is the new thinking (on the Left) going to come from? Will be be forced to dust off The State We're In? I suppose it would be a start. But in America, we have the very real prospect of a Palin candidacy in 2012. The 80s were the decade of Thatcher and Reagen and the 2000s the decade of Bush and Blair. Things may have to get worse - much worse - before they can get better.

Comments

[Paul M. Cray]

I agree with all of this. Its insighful and well written. Its a shame we see too little of this kind of thing in the nationals that actually take a longer view of politics.

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Much agreed. I'm not saying that Brown is doing a good job at the minute but I think England will be making a big mistake if the tories get back in power

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Much agreed. I'm not saying that Brown is doing a good job at the minute but I think England will be making a big mistake if the tories get back in power

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