The tectonic plates have shifted beneath the political landscape, and whilst some factions are being thrown together and upwards by subterranean energies, others are caught legs akimbo on rapidly moving continental shelves. On team volcanic rise are the populists, represented in Britain by the Reform party, now regularly leading in the polls. One team swallowed by the abyss are the political Left, variously embodied by the struggling Labour government, and the increasingly confused efforts of the Lib Dems and the Green party.
This new geological eon in British politics is part of the “vibe shift” — a secular shift away from the overt progressivism that seemed to dominate every aspect of life only five years ago. Whilst cynicism about how the extent to which deeply entrenched ideological prejudices in major institutions have really shifted is certainly merited, something is happening. The fastest adapting politician in this heated climate is the man in the pilot seat, Keir Starmer, who has, in the course of less than a year, gone from locking up a mum for tweeting about Southport, to paraphrasing Enoch Powell and forcing migrants to learn English.
Whilst some are sprinting to keep up, the British commentariat is largely plodding well behind. The consensus position is that the left is sensible and coherent, but failing to cut through and explain itself, whilst the right is mad, hateful and contradictory, but telling people what they want to hear and offering easy answers. Yet on one point especially this narrative is not merely wrong, but perhaps the opposite of the truth. Whilst populist politicians are light on policy, the populist right is perhaps the most coherent ideological movement in modern politics. They argue for the relative priority of democracy over human rights, and the absolute priority of the national interest over international agreements and law. Though split between two identifiable “wings”, respectively a free market and economically nationalist faction, with the former leaning closer to the centre right, and the latter more radical on a number of issues, this is not really a sign of overall incoherence; nor does it seem to stop populist parties winning elections and making policy.
On a whole range of policies, even the most incoherent individual politicians find themselves moved into certain positions by the gravity of their own place on the political spectrum. Farage, very much a man of the 80s, is nevertheless moving left on economics and public spending. The issue of a burqa ban came from nowhere, seemed to threaten to split the party, but was resolved within the week, with the party signalling its sympathy towards such a move. Something is pushing even the most disorganised and disagreeable individuals on the populist right upwards in the polls and together into a single platform.
So what is this mysterious force? It is perhaps not so mysterious after all — it is the growing political consciousness of Britain’s native population, especially its most marginalised and disadvantaged members. As Ledru-Rollin may or may not have said in similarly revolutionary circumstances, “there go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.” Under the pressure of mass migration, an unequal economy, regional inequality and a racialised culture, law and politics, a politics of ethnic self interest has emerged amongst the British, of a kind recognisable from colonial cultures like Australia and America.
A confident nationalist identity … is far from unappealing to many minority groups
This politics is recognised as nativist, but not really well understood by liberal opponents. In the first instance they are unable or unwilling to admit the culpability of progressive politics in creating the context for such politics. In the second, they race to identify it with fascist or white supremacist ideas. But the reality is obviously more complex. A confident nationalist identity that insists on cultural pride, the removal of “positive” discrimination, and a firm policy of immigration restriction and integration is far from unappealing to many minority groups. As Trump’s multiracial coalition of disaffected young men in the US shows, legal migrants who have or wish to join what they see as a successful civilisation see a place for themselves in this new nativist politics. Despite the tensions evident in the burqa ban, the presence of Zia Yusuf shows that Reform can be a party of native self-interest while attracting minority supporters.
Because the coalition of populist parties is potentially the entire native population, plus quite a few other ethnic groups and individuals that are unhappy with the status quo, their natural share of the vote can balloon upwards very quickly as a sense of ethnic consciousness and disaffection increases, as happens whenever matters of immigration and integration become more salient. This puts traditional parties of Left and Right in a bind. If they argue over the old political territory, they are bound to get swamped, dividing a dwindling share of the vote. Instead, political gravity, as we saw with Macron in France, tends to lump together all the centrists and leftists in a single anti-populist voting bloc. Whilst at least temporarily effective in France, where it has both a politician of genius in Emmanuel Macron, and a run-off Presidential election that naturally agglomerates the anti-populist vote, it has a far more mixed result in Britain.
In the First Past the Post system, populism remains a phantom menace right up until it doesn’t. We have had multiple general elections where UKIP and Reform’s success should have set off alarm bells but didn’t, because too few MPs and councillors broke through. This lid on the boiling saucepan model is obviously unsustainable, but is only worsened by the de facto rather than de jure consolidation of centrist parties. Whilst superficially opposed, the striking similarities of Labour, Lib Dem and Tory policies when in government has lent credence to the accusation of a single “omniparty”, working against the popular will and the national interest. This is in a sense worse than an actual “omniparty” would be, as it leaves the anti-populist vote divided, whilst draining legitimacy away from mainstream politics.
Yet uniting anti-populist forces is a doomed venture. There is no natural coalition or voting bloc that it represents, but rather a whole series of disparate factions being pulled increasingly far apart. Whilst populists are converging, and willing to be pragmatic in the name of fundamental priorities, a very different picture is emerging on the Left. At the last election one of the few exceptions to Labour’s electoral sweep was the rise of the independents. Twice as many independents stood compared to the 2019 election, and whilst none succeeded in 2019, last year six independents entered parliament. Of these six, five took seats from Labour. One of the independents was Jeremy Corbyn, standing against his old party. The other four — Iqbal Mohamed, Shockat Adam, Ayoub Khan, and Adnan Hussain — were all Muslims, and ran in heavily Muslim areas and on platforms that strongly emphasised foreign policy issues like Palestine and Kashmir.
Increasingly, the causes championed by the far Left are blind alleys pointing in opposite directions
Much of that new dissident Muslim energy, no longer content with being represented by tame and carefully screened party insiders, also went to the Green Party. Election night saw the bizarre spectacle of a party previously known for gender diverse people with piercings and worthy middle aged ladies on bikes electing thickly bearded Middle Eastern gentlemen shouting Allahu Akbar. Whilst I am the last person to criticise unruly beards and public praise of our Creator, it was without doubt an image alienating to those anxious about immigration and integration. It also pointed to the growing instability and incoherence of the progressive left.
Increasingly, the causes championed by the far Left are blind alleys pointing in opposite directions. There is no obvious and natural unity underlying concern with climate change, open borders, Palestine/Kashmir, LGBT rights, NIMBYism, secularism, post-colonialism and republicanism. Many are flatly contradictory, and almost all are readily detachable. The weak gravitational attraction that binds together the miasmic unity of the Left has its source in not one, but several disparate groups. There are young progressive graduates, concentrated in university towns. There are middle aged suburbanites and villagers who like the countryside and don’t like new development. There are highly educated and well paid elites who embrace cosmopolitan radicalism in an institutional context. There are Muslims and other ethnic minority groups who feel alienated from (historically) conservative institutions like the army and the police, and want to pursue their ethnic self-interest within a leftwing political coalition.
Not only is this coalition incredibly fragile and fractious, it will only become more so whenever it gets closer to power. Labour bled Muslim votes to the Greens and independents at the last election, just as the Lib Dems lost students and young people following their brush with governance. Groups united only by their marginality simply can’t survive contact with real political power.
The old Left was effective at offering a uniting ideological creed for the working classes and the urban middle classes, but this coalition was effectively fractured in the 1980s. Today, leftwing intellectuals still attempt to tread this old Marxist path of creating a dissident political consciousness, but amongst this now far more diffuse coalition. This creates a dangerous feedback loop in which not only are the factions involved disparate, but so too is the guiding ideology. Fanonesque fantasies of postcolonial struggle are improbably applied to the cuts, and no less unlikely and esoteric connections are drawn between “climate justice” and the push for immigration liberalisation. One can be dissident by being a lesbian anarchist, but no less dissident as a conservative Muslim. A working class identity may be regarded as progressive, but so too is the sexuality of a wealthy businessman who puts on a skirt. It doesn’t add up, and when this ideology was at the height of its power, it saw the most vicious sort of intersectional infighting.
At this point it is hard to even call this form of progressive politics recognisably left-wing, at least in any familiar sense. If by left wing we mean redistributive economically, and solidaristic in its political organisation, neither now clearly apply. Increasingly progressives emphasise a form of “social justice” that disregards or minimises class inequality, and at the same time this politics is pursued, in practical terms, through competing identitarian self interests. Whilst populism is identitarian, because it is also majoritarian, it tends towards a solidaristic model, insisting, at least rhetorically, on reciprocal duties and questions of common sense and fairness.
In this strange, topsy turvy world, nativist politicians are the ones calling for equality before the law and solidarity, whilst cosmopolitan universalists defend special interests and two-tier justice. Could a new kind of left emerge? Denmark demonstrates that a canny centre left, responsive to emerging national sentiment, can see off nativism by restoring the legitimacy of national politics and controlling immigration strictly. But unlike nimble Denmark, ancient, proud and unwieldy Whitehall may struggle to show this kind of agility, for all Starmer’s rhetorical contortions. There will be no civil war, no storming of the Bastille. But make no mistake — Britain is due another political revolution of the scale of 45’ or 79’, in which every rule will be changed, and our culture set on a new course.
