Is it just that we're against government? The constituency that 'should' have been Labour's at the election stayed with the party that it's most comfortably against? Dear Diary, I don't think it matters which of the candidates gets the leadership of the Labour Party, any more than the internal politics of the Privy Council matter to the outside world. It's not that Labour is failing to articulate its message, or get across that it cares, blah, blah, but that opposition no longer needs to be channelled through a generalist political party.
There's something narrow and specific about nationalism, for example. The same could be said of fundamentalism, which thinks religious but acts political, and of the aims of (for example) the Women's Equality Party and the Green Party. But the broader opposition to government policy that would once have been led by a political party, by Labour against the Tories or vice-versa, no longer happens that way.
We may all be against the government, and let's say for the sake of argument that we're all against the cuts, the austerity, immigration policy, any change to the BBC or the NHS, migrants drowning in the Mediterranean, milk being bought too cheaply from farmers, the whole nine yards. But the big change is: we don't flock to the largest opposition party, and seek to effect change by voting in, well, Labour.
We do something that seems to be more effective than that. We go on Facebook. We stop shopping. We organise mass movements around narrow and specific objectives. Not in the 'Arab Spring' sense of being summoned to a demonstration by Twitter, and not with much drama. We just make our presence felt. When Amazon changed its policy on paying UK tax, it was going from doing something legal and cheap, and defensible in an argument with HMRC, to doing something more expensive and less immediately beneficial to its shareholders. Supermarkets and milk producers aren't talking prices because David Cameron has chaired a COBRA meeting on the subject. In both of those cases, we wanted change because the status quo wasn't fair - and that was enough for change to happen.
Politics in the UK may be dominated by a 'silent majority' of 'shy Tories', and it's striking how much political discourse is focused on resisting change - to the licence fee, to the BBC, to the NHS, to weekend tube services in London, and hey, in a sense perhaps also to the unpopular government - but I don't think that's really the point any more. Without picking on a particular candidate, I'd say that this leadership election is exposing the weakness of politician-speak. I'd say Jeremy Corbyn is popular not because we want Clause Four reinstated (he retracted, didn't he?), but because he talks in common-sense English sentences. He's specific about what he wants.
The present government will eventually defeat itself. The present electorate is ungovernable and the unpopular moves will accumulate. When the present government falls, we might just possibly elect 'the other lot', in the old sense, or we might repeat a version of what we've just done and have done before: Tories defeat Coalition; New Labour buries Labour; Thatcherism trounces old-style Conservatism. The Union might fall apart, because we've voted for nationalist parties and/or pushed for devolution and thus brought politics closer to the people where it belongs. Or we may do something that expresses a new approach to politics.
We may continue to oppose, in the cause of fairness. We may continue to make our presence felt. We are, after all, empowered to "speak truth to power", or at least to express ourselves forcefully to the people who nominally hold power, much more 'loudly' than ever before. The vocal wing of the electorate votes every day, through Facebook, comments, blogs. It may not happen soon, but at this rate, if we're not careful, we may end up running the country by opposing the government.
There's something narrow and specific about nationalism, for example. The same could be said of fundamentalism, which thinks religious but acts political, and of the aims of (for example) the Women's Equality Party and the Green Party. But the broader opposition to government policy that would once have been led by a political party, by Labour against the Tories or vice-versa, no longer happens that way.
We may all be against the government, and let's say for the sake of argument that we're all against the cuts, the austerity, immigration policy, any change to the BBC or the NHS, migrants drowning in the Mediterranean, milk being bought too cheaply from farmers, the whole nine yards. But the big change is: we don't flock to the largest opposition party, and seek to effect change by voting in, well, Labour.
We do something that seems to be more effective than that. We go on Facebook. We stop shopping. We organise mass movements around narrow and specific objectives. Not in the 'Arab Spring' sense of being summoned to a demonstration by Twitter, and not with much drama. We just make our presence felt. When Amazon changed its policy on paying UK tax, it was going from doing something legal and cheap, and defensible in an argument with HMRC, to doing something more expensive and less immediately beneficial to its shareholders. Supermarkets and milk producers aren't talking prices because David Cameron has chaired a COBRA meeting on the subject. In both of those cases, we wanted change because the status quo wasn't fair - and that was enough for change to happen.
Politics in the UK may be dominated by a 'silent majority' of 'shy Tories', and it's striking how much political discourse is focused on resisting change - to the licence fee, to the BBC, to the NHS, to weekend tube services in London, and hey, in a sense perhaps also to the unpopular government - but I don't think that's really the point any more. Without picking on a particular candidate, I'd say that this leadership election is exposing the weakness of politician-speak. I'd say Jeremy Corbyn is popular not because we want Clause Four reinstated (he retracted, didn't he?), but because he talks in common-sense English sentences. He's specific about what he wants.
The present government will eventually defeat itself. The present electorate is ungovernable and the unpopular moves will accumulate. When the present government falls, we might just possibly elect 'the other lot', in the old sense, or we might repeat a version of what we've just done and have done before: Tories defeat Coalition; New Labour buries Labour; Thatcherism trounces old-style Conservatism. The Union might fall apart, because we've voted for nationalist parties and/or pushed for devolution and thus brought politics closer to the people where it belongs. Or we may do something that expresses a new approach to politics.
We may continue to oppose, in the cause of fairness. We may continue to make our presence felt. We are, after all, empowered to "speak truth to power", or at least to express ourselves forcefully to the people who nominally hold power, much more 'loudly' than ever before. The vocal wing of the electorate votes every day, through Facebook, comments, blogs. It may not happen soon, but at this rate, if we're not careful, we may end up running the country by opposing the government.
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