200 years ago, politics was simple. It was a battle between the Tories - the party of the aristocrats, the old social order, the Monarchy and tradition - and the Whigs, the party of the wealthy aspirational middle classes, often more powerful than the decaying aristocrats, who believed in 'progress'. It was a balance of two groups of people who between them had most of the money and power in Britain. The new industrial working classes did not yet have the vote or any political power; the Trade Unions were in their infancy.
At the end of the 19th Century, the Labour Party came into existence very largely informed by Nonconformist Christianity. Keir Hardie the first Labour MP was a Methodist minister. Labour in the UK has always been emotional and nursed a noble sense of solidarity with the downtrodden, alongside an ignoble tribal hatred of the moneyed classes. Which of course many of their grandchildren then became. The Whigs developed into Liberal Party which should have been the great unifying party with its values of individualism and moderation. Instead it gradually faded to nothing as the Labour Party grew and gradually became Middle Class and because Tories and Labour alike were and are obsessed with money and control and the Liberal party abdicated its duty to speak of freedom.
After the Second World War, there was a temporary cross-party consensus: the Welfare State was a good thing; the NHS was a good thing. Council Housing and a massive programme of home building were good things. Trade Unions grew powerful and notoriously took pleasure in screwing over the bosses, even to the detriment of the workers they represented. All this began to change in the 1970s when the combined effect of the Vietnam War, the rise of Eastern and Middle Eastern economies and the natural limits of the post World War 2 consensus meant 'growth' - that problematic entity - went into reverse. The dream was over. Margaret Thatcher won a historic victory in 1979 which she utterly squandered. Destructive economic neoliberalism instead of conservatism; funny money banking instead of industry; populist war instead of Great Britain. Her destruction of the post War consensus was enthusiastically continued by Tony Blair. As Thatcher destroyed all that was good about the Tory party, so did Blair destroy the Labour party.
And in voting terms he was right. How and why, you may ask? It's simple. There are three things that distinguish Left from the Right wing parties, globally. How do you like Government - Centralist and focused on power, or decentralised? How do you manage your economy - individualistically based on competition, or socially based on the quest for equality? What social values do you prefer - conservative or radical?
The first question identifies you on a continuum from Statist to Anarchist. The second, from capitalism to socialism. We will come to the third.
From the 1950s to the 1980s, the Labour Party favoured what might be called Left Libertarian views - as do I myself, with reservations. Closer to anarchism than Statism and closer to financial equality than yuppiedom. But after the New Labour revolution, all 3 British parties were virtually identical - they had accepted capitalism and Statist power. How then could Blair distinguish his brand?
Well, chances are many of us have all met students that have a poster of Bob Marley on their walls; that took a gap year to explore India; that are 'spiritual but not religious'; that think racist and sexist are the worst sins in history and thus useful words to use against each other in playgrounds and then in their journalism. They like safely revolutionary music; pictures of striking looking 'ethnics' without seeing their own racism in this; they think poor neighbourhoods are 'vibrant' and 'diverse' places to visit and score some dope, maybe even visit a squat! (Before squatting was made illegal). They may have had a Working Glass grandparent who was a union member, or their mothers may have been involved in feminism. They are among the most powerful people in Britain but they regard themselves as morally superior to 'the rich' because they disapprove of foxhunting. They are Blair's tribe. And they respond to the third distinguisher of politics - IDENTITY which is so easily commodified and sold.
Racism is real and despicable; so is sexism. However without an analysis of economics and the power relations that sustain inequality, trendy politics is worse than useless. It is easy to preach 'anti-racism' when you live in an all-white Upper Middle class part of London, safely insulated from the demeaning stuggle to work and live faced by working class people of many ethnicities. Now the problem about these communities is they are not quite as 'cool' as the trendoids might wish. They often make racist remarks themselves; do not like uncontrolled immigration even though their parents may have been immigrants; are more religious than the essentially atheist 'spiritual' types who govern them; may have traditional gender relations that may be called sexist. They are not progressives, because they have a culture they think is worth conserving. They don't regulate their lives by 'nannie'. They live the consequences of the social experiment that Right and Left wing centrist governments foist on all of us. 'Speaking nicely' and good behaviour; a duly reverential, cap doffing attitude to the Welfare State and the charities are not top of their priorities.
But 'Cool Britannia' won. While the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, while the people of England, the Mother of Parliaments become more and more disenfranchised, where austerity is the new normal, the political classes continue to chatter. In fact many charities were delighted when Labour lost in 2010 because, with vast hypocrisy, they could start blaming cuts on the evil Tories - virtually the same cuts Labour said they would make, and substantially necessitated by the idiotic ideological fanaticism of Gordon Brown whose destructive work is being continued by the equally ideological insanity of George Osborne. They kept utterly silent when their friends and paymasters were spreading global capitalism at top speed and killing Iraqis and Afghanis.
It is time to stop policing people's thoughts and language, to drop the slogans and self-righteousness and to actually give the disadvantaged money and power. Everyone. No one is better of worse for the colour of their skins or what lies between their legs. Time to come into the present. David Cameron thinks we are in St Mary Mead in 1910; the Big Society jumblesale is raising funds on the village green. Meanwhile the worthy charity types are living in 1947 where Mr Beveridge is going to give milk and free medicine to us all. We must never even suggest the NHS isn't functioning perfectly as it is and there will be plenty of jobs for British workers...and err, for our Commonwealth immigrant neighbours, won't there?
Modern finance and multinational business is destroying our politics and our country - but we can't criticise unlimited economic migration, because that's racism isn't it? Even when it is what leads to a factory employing 5000 workers to be closed and operations relocated across the world. Even when it means that businesses have no incentive to pay workers even a minimum wage, let alone a living wage.
The only political party voicing any actual grassroots socialist policies that might help people is the Green party. If you don't think you need real socialism rather than Labour Middle Class tax the rich to keep people on the dole, you may like to consider where your children or younger siblings can afford to live and whether there will be any jobs for them. If you don't like the Greens, you have options: join the Labour Party and force it to return to Old Labour genuine socialism without comfy slogans and convenient hate - though you will have an uphill struggle. I see no hope at all for the Tories or Lib Dems.
You may not like the Greens but I strongly suggest that short of a massive wave of civil unrest which will probably be co-opted by the same old organised Leftist, you might wish to spoil your ballot paper or form a federation of protest parties. Do something creative. Realise how politics works. This is not a game.
The non-English must find it hard to understand English society and politics. But then so do the English. We are a people who have never liked thinking clearly about ourselves. Science: yes. Religion: sometimes. But we are basically a people of instinct, of (sometimes benign) prejudice, of drowsy adherence to slogans and mob mentalities. Now we have three major political parties in the UK. All of them represent sectors of the Middle Classes fighting with each other.
I look forward to Scottish independence. Then the English will lose their inferiority/superiority complex, establish actual relationships with Scotland, Ireland and Wales and regain their soul.
"There is no future in England's dreaming" as Johnny Rotten sang. In the Name of Christ and in the power of Arthur, Albion Awake. We have done it before and we can do it again.
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