This is – to put things bluntly – not a happy time for Scottish and UK society. All around, our politics, politicians and public life seem to be failing us, seeming unable on any measure to rise to the occasion and to address the big questions which face us as societies and citizens.
This is an age of huge questions: the environmental catastrophe we face; the march of artificial intelligence; the algorithm power and weapons of mass disruption such as Facebook, Goggle and Twitter, and the instable, unequal nature of capitalist power in the UK and internationally.
At home, we face our own turbulent brew of challenging issues: the cost of living crisis; broken public services; exhausted, demoralised public service workers; and a discredited UK political system and political class. And if that were not enough, there is the hollowing out of the main political parties and philosophies that are reduced to soundbites and cliches, while still paying allegiance to the political and economic consensus of the past 40 years that has contributed to the UK's ongoing mess.
All of the above leads us to question how deep a mess is the UK and Scotland in? Can we at least begin to reframe our political and public discussions to start talking about the fundamentals? And if we try to do this, how do we begin to take the first steps?
No-one remotely sensible disputes that the state of Scotland and the UK is not in a good place. That is, however, where agreement ends. Some right-wing perspectives want to kick back against what they see as 'declinist' arguments about the UK. Instead, the most strident voices in this worldview believe that the UK's current problems are mostly short-term and cyclical, and can be alleviated by further supply-side changes (such as deregulation) and by restoring 'confidence' in the market.
This is increasingly a minority position. A much more persuasive view is emerging across the centre-left stressing the long-term problems of the UK. These include the dominance of finance capitalism, power of speculative interests, and a disinterest in long-term investment and innovation. These behaviours have prevailed in the UK since the 19th century, but grew more pronounced due to Thatcherism when they were unleashed across the economy and society – making a small group rich, but not embarking upon 'the economic renaissance' its supporters claimed.
A large part of the malaise and mess the UK is in stems from Thatcherite believers in the Tories, Labour, media and think-tanks who have bought into, and become imprisoned by, the hype of the 1980s. This perspective believes as gospel that Thatcherism remade the UK in the 1980s, that it 'put the Great back into Britain' and turned the clock on the UK being 'the sick man of Europe'.
This mindset's lack of imagination can be seen in the here and now. Hence, the present Tory Government proposes as a manifesto for the future the religion of privatisation and outsourcing; deregulation including a hyper bonfire of EU rules and more anti-trade union legislation restricting the right to strike. This political dispensation is completely rooted in the 1980s and unable to create anything original or relevant to current challenges.
How we talk honestly and openly about the above has to involve challenging the insider classes and vested interests in politics, business and media who embrace this worldview. It has to call out the corporate class take on the UK and the world; the increasingly hysterical right-wing prejudice of some of the press; and the rise of a virulent, intolerant ultra-right who seem no longer interested in the economy but want to fight endless 'culture wars'.
One manifestation of the current cowardice of mainstream party politics is the wilful refusal of the Tory and Labour parties to confront the problems of Brexit. We just passed the 50th anniversary of the UK joining the EEC on 1 January 1973 – a moment which should have been one of celebration but which passed mostly in silence (but not everywhere). And the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU on 31 January 2020 is coming up shortly and one huge problem in Brexit is the vague nature of the original, narrow 52:48 mandate of 2016.
Since that ill-fated vote, Britain has become a prisoner of a hard, ideologically dogmatic Brexit obsessed with an undiluted, unattainable sovereignty; whereby 'Take Back Control' has become synonymous with an all-powerful Westminster and Whitehall unambiguously centralising power across the kingdom.
This has dragged the Labour Party under Keir Starmer into Brexit territory, vocalising such vapid ideas as 'making Brexit work' and using the 'Take Back Control' mantra to advance decentralism. At the same time, Labour have been unwilling to confront the hard Brexit project for what it is, and even more have had a self-denying ordinance about talking about the cost and damage Brexit has done and any idea of proposing an alternative course. Thus, Labour will go nowhere near proposing UK membership of the single market or customs union; this when the UK populace by significant numbers now regret Brexit – with a recent poll showing 58:42 support for the UK rejoining the EU.
Scotland is in a different place on this having voted 62:38 to remain in the EU. But while a sizeable majority support Scotland's EU membership (72% in the latest poll), there is no mechanism for this to be advanced beyond Scottish independence. This leaves Scotland in a strange halfway house – one deeply dissatisfying to Scotland's democracy.
Scotland voted 55:45 in 2014 to remain in the UK union (and explicitly the EU) and in 2016 by nearly two to one to remain in the EU. That is two votes for two unions – the UK union and the EU. Yet by remaining in one, the UK, we have been dragged from the other against our democratic will. Worse, we have been told by the UK Government and Brexiteers that there is nothing we can do about it. They state that the 2016 vote was an 'all UK vote' and that if Scotland had voted for independence in 2014 it would have had to leave the EU. None of which deal with Scotland's democratic wishes not being taken into account and respected.
How we begin to address this sorry state involves first challenging the right-wing narrative of the past 40 years in the UK, that somehow in this period the country was turned around compared to the immediate decades after 1945. It entails understanding the hollowed-out nature of nearly all our political parties and philosophies: an embittered, entitled Conservatism; a cautious, unconfident social democracy around Labour; and in Scotland, a defensive, unimaginative Scottish nationalism and even more defensive, retreating British nationalism – unionism being a form of nationalism.
All of the ideologies which shape our mainstream parties are products of the late 19th and early 20th century – of the processes of industrial capitalism, the rise of an organised working class, emergence of the state, and modern nation-state development, as we have come to know it.
The challenges of the 21st century involve having to deal with some which have been with us for some time: finance capitalism, the lack of responsibility and obligation of the super-rich, the scale of poverty and hardship in societies of plenty. But some are very new – the ecological crisis, AI, the power of algorithms – and require new answers, thinking and political solutions. Across the past five decades, only the emergence of the Greens as a political force has been a response to this different dispensation.
In the daily storm of UK and Scottish politics, the failure of the Tories and the inadequacies of Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister tell us something. As does the rise of Keir Starmer's Labour Party. Similarly, the continued dominance of the SNP and Nicola Sturgeon reflects the ability of both to articulate themselves as defenders of Scotland's interests.
But none of these political leaders, parties and outlooks represent and say anything which is relevant to the predicaments we face. This needs to be said and understood. Rather, we are living through an age of turbulence and disruption where the best our political leaders seem to be able to do is pose as forces of transition and technocratic management, and ameliorate the worst of some of the malign forces we face. None of them – Sunak, Starmer, Sturgeon – are facing up to, and capable of, shaping the forces of the future.
In the midst of all the noise, exchange and counter-charge, this glaring gap has to be recognised. Our politics, their mainstream traditions and our political systems are failing us.
At the minimum and as a start, we have to have the courage to stand up and say this. And then look to identify and encourage the forces who will look to and shape the future.
