W inter is barely here, and already the ice is very thin. Keir Starmer may be manoeuvring delicately atop just 34 per cent of the electoral vote in the general election. But his new opponent as Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, has her job courtesy of a majority of only 12,000 Tories after a party membership turnout of less than three-quarters – and according to YouGov is viewed favourably by a grand total of 12 per cent of the public.
In the latest post-Budget polling Labour has fallen behind the Tories, but these are comparatively small numbers from a splintered, unconvinced electorate. Stable democracy, this is not. Whatever breed of shark inhabits icy waters (Greenland?), it bears an uncanny resemblance to Nigel Farage.
Thin-ice politics has consequences for the behaviour of both the government and the Tories under Badenoch. In recent days, however, the British political world has been hypnotised by the still greater struggle in the US, a fight that offers us a severe warning. What had been, more or less, a single polity, a discursive political civilisation, is now broken – perhaps irredeemably.
The historian Arnold Toynbee said that civilisations die from suicide, not by murder. That feels relevant. Thanks to the Washington fixation of the British media, we have been treated to more interviews with American voters than we ever had with our own. Amplified by US-saturated social media, the picture of two tribes who genuinely loathe each other is impossible to shake off. We have no idea about quite what follows now. But America’s enemies are watching avidly.
Let us, however, throw off any sense of smug Anglo superiority; the belief that by electing a social democratic government in July we have, in our genteel, milk-and-watery British way, avoided that kind of self-harm. No Maga hats here? No storming of Westminster Hall?
Yet almost everything Trumpian Americans say about Washington is drawn straight from British history. “Draining the swamp” may be an Americanism, but it echoes William Cobbett’s denunciation of “old corruption” in our earlier parliamentary democracy, and of London as the “Great Wen”, or pustular cyst, on the face of the nation. Cobbett – a farmworker’s son, soldier, radical, reactionary, editor, writer – was also, of course, a citizen of Philadelphia. It was telling that when the Trump campaign turned on Labour for aiding Kamala Harris, they began by quoting the tyranny of George III. Political history sleeps uneasily these days, and with vivid dreams.
But we do not need the history, perhaps, when we have such similar polling on immigration, economic confidence and dislike of political elites. We share the social media platforms with the US that promote vitriolic conspiracy theories and anti-Enlightenment thinking. It would not take much for the British, like the Americans, to divide into tribes who genuinely hate each other. Let’s not pretend otherwise.
So, back to that fracturing thin-ice politics. For both Labour and the Conservatives, survival comes from core arguments and avoiding cultural divisions that cannot be repaired. The Budget told us who Labour believes it is governing for, and that’s welcome. But many of us – I’m afraid, me included – argued that the Budget was everything.
Looking ahead at the struggle for growth, this is not true. There are at least two new fights ahead. The first is about building. After the Chancellor’s upcoming Mansion House speech on 14 November, Labour’s planning reforms will become increasingly controversial. They will be opposed first by Nimbys, then by Labour’s political opponents arguing that new housing is unnecessary and favours incomers, or immigrants – though Starmer has plans to prioritise local people – and finally by the big environmental organisations such as the RSPB and the National Trust, with their huge mailing lists.
Labour MPs are being told to look out for their tin hats. It is a big early opportunity for Badenoch. If you are wondering where politics is going post-Budget, this is certainly one of the answers.
The second fight will be the “Get Britain working” white paper early in the New Year. Getting more workless people back into the labour market will be controversial too. Starmer, Rachel Reeves and the Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall believe the latter’s department, described by one insider as “just a big data centre”, will need a complete overhaul.
They are also nervously aware that among the clinically depressed and genuinely sick, there are people of all ages who could work but choose not to, and that this is a part of the conversation the centre-left has been too fastidious to highlight. Again, big issues, hard arguments, but if this is really a government for growth, that’s what lies ahead.
The Treasury was genuinely disappointed by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR)’s forward growth numbers, as was No 10, but pleased that for the first time the OBR has acknowledged that planning reform can deliver higher output. The politics of one young parliament is also the politics of five years ahead, but to placate embittered voters, Labour needs tangible delivery next year.
Badenoch and the Conservatives cannot deliver, of course, but only talk. That is the misery of opposition. But how she handles the job matters very much.
It’s important for democracy that parliamentary opposition is not only strong, but relevant to what Whitehall does on planning, growth, tax, migration, health – the big stuff. And the leader of the opposition can, by carefully choosing her targets, shape the national debate.
Badenoch is a fascinating character who feels fresh in top-level politics. She is outspoken, provocative – she dislikes journalists – and brave. But “brave” can also mean eagerly criticising groups such as trans people, Muslim migrants, underperforming civil servants, people with autism and so on. Again and again, Badenoch has clarified, contextualised or modified what she first said. She is a natural shaker-upper.
But the trouble is, this kind of talk – find an “out” group, and go after it, albeit with an ironic half-smile – is, as we have learned from America, a lethal powder. It’s addictive and it’s newsworthy because it divides people, often in ways from which there is no easy way to reunite them. Badenoch is shrewd enough to know where it leads: judging by her most recent, more careful language she realises the dangers.
She must. A politics that harps on about elite, shadowy conspiracies against conservatism, about the foolishness of a few gender extremists and the behaviour of a platoon of disturbed migrants is exactly what the US has experienced, driving two tribes close to war.
We are not immune here in the UK. The easy politics of division catches our attention too, and always has done. It wakes up in the morning furious and sends us to bed at night, livid. Peddling it – from the extreme left as well as from the right – is a quicker route to political celebrity than the grind of policy. It may be where we are inevitably heading.
The deterioration happens not in leaps or at cataclysmic elections – they are just the final pages – but, like bankruptcy, slowly at first. It’s initially about the choice of words – liar, evil, Nazi, communist – and a half-conscious decision not to listen to unwelcome alternative voices; and those choices may feel refreshing at the time. But one small thing: as we glance west, it is becoming ever clearer that conspiracy, loathing and division are also, step by step, democracy’s primrose path to civilisational suicide.
[See also: Keir Starmer needs to stop prioritising trips abroad]
Content from our partners
Related
This article appears in the 07 Nov 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Trump takes America