English Nationalism
If the austerity project is a relatively old inroad of reaction into popular consciousness, a newer one is a revived English nationalism. I spent polling day and the previous day in Thanet South. The broad left anti-UKIP campaign there did well, and it is fantastic that Farage didn't get elected. However, what Gerry Adams once said of the Provisional IRA applies to Farage's outfit: they haven't gone away you know. The UKIP phenomenon is real. Labour voters switched to UKIP there, elsewhere, and in particular in a number of northern seats, where the party is now in second place. The talk is now of UKIP's 2020 strategy, with the inroads made last night paying dividends in MPs at the next election.
It's entirely possible that UKIP won't exist in five years time. The British right is famously division-prone; the party has lost its leader, and its solitary MP is a loose cannon. Never the less, the UKIP phenomenon will certainly persist. Populist reaction, with a social base combining abandoned working class communities, the insecure middle-class, and elements of the bourgeoisie proper, is here to stay. Its ideological suture is the standard resentful premise that they are out to get what we have, or had. They want our money, our homes, our culture, our history. Underneath, on suspects, is the nagging fear also that they might being enjoying themselves more than we are.
The nature of them is flexible. They could be the European Union, migrants in general, Eastern Europeans, metropolitan liberals, hippies, benefit claimants, the Rothschilds, the Muslims, or the Scots. As is so often the way with ideology, whether or not they are, in fact, screwing us over is entirely independent of the ideological effectiveness of this pattern of thought. Metropolitan liberals are, as it happens, guilty as charged; Muslims, as it happens, are not. But that is not the point. The scapegoat provides a focus for political opposition, and thereby, like its biblical forebear, carries the sins that justice attributes to another - in this case, capital.
The Scots are the latest lucky targets; English nationalism is on the rise. The Scots, you see, want your money. The SNP, in particular, in a startlingly impolite move want political power. Will the subaltern never learn? UKIP both contributed and tapped in to a simmering English resentment, evident already during last autumn's election campaign. It was the Tories, however, that brought an English identity constructed against a Scottish threat into the mainstream. Indeed, as thought to prompt the political slow-learners who deny that anti-Scots racism exists, Boris Johnson warned of a coming Jockalypse.
The genie of English nationalism has been let out of the bottle. There's a lot of talk of 'English votes for English laws', a proposal which in current political context could only mean a shift rightwards south of Alnwick. There will, inevitably, be noise from Billy Bragg and other elements of the eclectic left about the need to resist the politics of English reaction with a 'progressive' English nationalism. This is premised on a basic misunderstanding of the ideological function of Englishness within the current politics of the UK. The nationalism of the dominant nation of a historic imperial power, currently defined in opposition to national autonomy movements within the same state, cannot be won for socialism by a bit of Morris Dancing. What is needed is a different politics altogether. At the time of writing that is nowhere to be seen.
Labour and the crisis of labourism
Which brings us belatedly to Labour. Labourism is dead in Scotland. It is at crisis point in England and Wales. Labour cannot rely on the votes of even a stable proportion of the working class, and that is only likely to get worse as generational profiles shift. Already the Blairite knives are out; journalists are being briefed that Labour lost because it pitched too left (a theory that, to put it mildly, has difficulty incorporating the data of Scotland), and that a move back to the centre-ground is the only way to restore Labour's electoral fortunes. The Labour left is institutionally weak, dispirited, and increasingly afflicted with cynicism. Intellectually, its Marxist elements are often hopelessly in thrall to a vulgar determinism, for which everything is to be explained by the 'low level of class struggle' (as though this were something independent of human agency) and which counsels riding out the tide, preserving 'the movement', by which is understood the Labour Party and the union link.
This last element is likely to come under attack in the wake of a near inevitable Blairite resurgence. Already the implementation of the Collins Report threatens the link. Meanwhile, the leader of Britain and Ireland's biggest union has openly supported Lutfur Rahman and threatened to form a new workers party in the event of the Labour loss that is now a reality. In any case, if the labour movement doesn't break with the party, it may be that the party breaks with the movement. The link has always been a target for the Blairite right.
Only a fool would take any delight in this. The Labour Party, for all its contradictory nature and in spite of the multiple betrayals of its leaders, is a substantial achievement of the British working class. If labourism were finally to die, even though the more excitable leftists will no doubt wax lyrical about 'great new opportunities', over a century of struggle would be laid to rest. Whether that happens, or whether another narrative plays out, the task that falls immediately to the left is the difficult one of at the same time resisting the assault of the Blairites within the party, whilst looking outwards to unions, the new community-based groups, and the extra-Labour left (the unpreparedness of Labour leftists to work with left groups outside the Party has been a serious brake on the British left). It has to become less white, less male, and less prone to mood swings between despair and pollyannaism.
I have to say, the current Labour left is not well equipped to carry this burden. But then we can never make history in circumstances of our own choosing.
