Tell you what, I haven’t half enjoyed all this stability that former British prime minister David Cameron promised at the last election. “Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice,” he tweeted solemnly, “stability and strong government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband”.
Who needs The Walking Dead: If you ever want to scare yourself for kicks, imagine the chronic instability Britain would now be living through if Miliband had become prime minister. Close call, eh? Thankfully, Britain is now one never-ending rendition of REM’s Shiny Happy People. Britain could have ended up like Miliband’s bacon sandwich, am I right?
The Conservative party has plunged this country into existential crisis. Britain’s internal divisions may not have been invented by Cameron — the sense of abandonment, decline and general disillusionment felt by many of Britain’s communities long pre-date the Cameroons — but both Cameron and his successor are chief architects of Chaotic Britain. And even that name may have to change if a significant portion of the population opts to flee the union.
Cameron’s government opted to deal with a crisis caused by the financial sector with the most severe cuts for a generation, ensuring the longest squeeze in workers’ wages since the Victorian era. That only served to exacerbate the anger and disillusionment, felt particularly by ex-industrial communities which went on to decisively vote for leave. Cameron perpetually framed immigration as a problem, helping to make it the central issue of British politics, and pledged to reduce net migration to the tens of thousands. When that impossible target wasn’t met, endemic distrust of politicians collided with growing nativism. Cameron called the European Union (EU) referendum not because he felt it was in the national interest, but rather to assuage his own Tory backbenches. Predictably, his Tory ‘Leave’ colleagues opted to wage their campaign in poisonous, xenophobic terms.
And look where Britain is now. Because of these calamitous decisions, for the next few years, British politics is going to resemble a shouty Tory party conference fringe event on the EU. National newspapers spitefully denounce 48 per cent of the population as “remoaners” who are part of some sort of sinister conspiracy, while judges defending the sovereignty of Britain’s parliament are venomously smeared as “enemies of the people”. Forms of xenophobia and racism that had been sidelined have been granted new legitimacy. The hard-won Northern Ireland peace process is endangered.
We are on course for deeply acrimonious talks with EU countries who are increasingly fed up with us and in no mood to give us good terms. The possibility of no deal is real, turning Britain into a tax haven stripped of social provision. And the wages of Britain’s workers are yet again set to fall.
The Conservative and Unionist parties could very well preside over the destruction of the union. The decision to wage a Scottish referendum campaign on the basis of fear and blackmail may have succeeded in the short term — though support for independence was far greater at the end of the campaign than the beginning — but the scars it left are deep. The Tories’ 2015 general election campaign was based on warnings against the sinister influence that would be wielded by the chosen representatives of the Scottish people, while Tory-backing newspapers tapped into anti-Scottish resentment. And since Theresa May became Prime Minister, she has played hardball with Scotland, making it clear that a nation that voted against leaving the EU would suffer the same hard Brexit as everybody else. There are a lot of people in Scotland who are pretty angry.
What a mess. No wonder the thoughtful right-wing commentator Alex Massie wrote: “In retrospect, you know, I think I could have coped with five years of prime minister Miliband.” Britain’s immediate future is of bitter division, officially sanctioned bigotry and potential disintegration. So yes, just think of the sheer chaos that would have enveloped these islands if the Tories had lost in 2015. It’s not even worth thinking about, is it?
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Owen Jones is a columnist and the author of Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class and The Establishment — And How They Get Away With It.
