Britain has opened the door to autocracy |
This is Dispatches with Patrick Cockburn, a subscriber-only newsletter from The i Paper. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.
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The sweeping successes of Reform UK in the local elections mark a dangerous new stage in the decade-long struggle since Brexit in 2016, between those offering snake-oil remedies for Britain’s troubles and those – notably Sir Keir Starmer and Labour – who timidly and ineffectually tinker with a failing system.
The outcome of these elections is an ominous pointer towards a fragmented and divisive future for Britain. But the result is not an immediate change in the balance of power between parties. Britain’s grotesque administrative over-centralisation in the hands of the Treasury means that local authorities, desperately short of money and collectively owing some £122bn, have little real authority, whichever party controls them.
The elections just past are more like an opinion poll made flesh, with real people voting rather than telling their preferences to pollsters. Comparisons are made with the US midterm elections in November, but the outcome of these, such as the Democrats winning a majority in the House of Representatives, has a real impact on who holds power in Washington.
The Reform landslide, and the strong showing by the Green Party of England and Wales in votes if not in council seats, may be viewed by political scientists of the future as a decisive and irreversible transformation of the British political landscape.
But these changes are still in the making, as the old two-party politics is replaced by five-party politics which probably means a coalition before or after the next general election. What might be the relationship between Reform, Conservatives, Labour, Greens and Lib Dems, and will progressives and conservatives coalesce behind the candidate and party most likely to win in different parts of the country?
The election results are more like the snapshot of a horse race still under way, with the finishing post the next general election, still three years off. During this period, a Labour Government which has just suffered crippling defeats in every electoral battleground will cling to power but most likely be wracked by internal struggles for the leadership.
The 10-year-old British political crisis which began with the Brexit referendum will intensify. Apocalyptic expectations are not purely the stuff of nightmares, because exaggerated talk of “Broken Britain” is self-fulfilling. Reform and the Conservatives will indulge in threat-inflation against migrants and minorities, just as President Donald Trump used disaster-mongering to twice persuade American voters to put him into the White House. The playbook of nativist populist demagogues worldwide is to pose as saviour of the nation, rescuing it from ruin and........