No. 108 - A Great Night for Democracy - A Disaster for Governance?

Dear James,

Last night was a great night for democracy. With unwavering accuracy it identified the central problem of our nation with pinpoint accuracy. Bolsover, Bishop Auckland, the Don Valley and Workington in Cumbria are just a few of the prime Labour seats, some dating back to well before the second world war, that have gone to the Conservatives. The Tories have won 45% of the national vote. Labour crashed to 32%. The great ‘left behinds’ are angry and rightly so and they have expressed that anger through Brexit even though Brexit is ‘not about Brexit’. Choosing Brexit will be seen as a historic, strategic mistake, failing to address our underlying problems but doing one very important thing beyond identifying the problem. It puts the responsibility for correcting the central problem on to the shoulders of one man. Boris Johnson. Is he up to it?

After hiding in a fridge, avoiding Andrew Neil and pocketing the i-phone of an incredulous ITV reporter, Boris looked weak and panicky but has emerged supreme. He has a majority of 76 seats as I speak. That represents a massive challenge to the Tories. Their populist message killed off the Brexit Party (down to a 2% share of the vote and no seats) but will now be tested to possible destruction. Boris may want to tack back towards the centre but that seems unlikely since the ERG is still in control of its right wing. The party that promised 40 new hospitals, 50,000 nurses and 20,000 more police officers will now have to deliver. But it will have to deliver on the basis of a paltry 1% growth rate over the next few years compared with considerably more if it had stayed in the EU. Before he starts on rebuilding the north, Boris will have to overcome the drop in GDP due to Brexit. He will then be faced with the need to reinvigorate the north, by investing in schools, infrastructure, health and local government in that impoverished region. But even if he succeeds here, the current Tory dominance hides the unchanged reality of our nation. As John Lennon said in ‘Working Class Hero’, ‘As soon as you’re born, they make you feel small.’ And that remains the major fault line in our nation. Income mobility is the usual measure of mobility in our nation. Social mobility is very different and a much harder nut to crack. A country led by the Boris’s of this world only continues the old hierarchies of privilege and patronage. It will be more of the same for decades to come.

But I am not disheartened. At least we now know where we stand. Much of the future now depends on what happens to the Labour Party. It was Corbyn who refused to cooperate in a Remain Alliance, kidding himself that the 2017 ‘victory’ would lead to great gains in 2019. That dream has been dashed. Corbyn is going but if the Corbynista faction continues to control the Labour Party, the usual in-fighting will go on. So expect a big battle here. As long as the ‘Remain’ alliance is hobbled by Labour it will fail to get traction. However, Labour has lost its ‘red wall’ in the north and so the argument for sitting on the fence has gone. It therefore has the potential to join a pro-European alliance.

For the moment Boris has won. His victory has been achieved on the basis of a EU deal which threatens splitting Northern Ireland from the UK. Last night the SNP won 48 out of 59 Scottish seats. It is already politically independent. The price for Boris’s ‘new deal’ and yesterday’s victory may well be the break up of the UK. Expect the next few years to be tumultuous in terms of the dismembering of our once united country.

So congratulations James. Your party is now a party of the neglected north, not just of the leafy south. It is therefore, your party’s responsibility to span that gap while hobbling us with exit from the biggest single market in the world. Don’t worry though, Donald Trump promises a massive deal with the US with all the dire implications that has for food and environmental regulation and workers’ rights. The coming months and years are going to be rocky. Added to this is the now infamous Page 48 of the Tory manifesto whereby you promise to ‘look at’ judicial review over the political process. That smacks of the Nazi Ermächtigungsgesetz – the so-called ‘Enabling Act of 1933 - whereby Hitler suspended the law to enable him to destroy the opposition.

Your party has huge challenges ahead of it James. Sir John Curtis, the pollster has said today that, 'the proportion of the electorate that has voted for either the Conservatives or the Brexit Party, at 47%, is rather less than the percentage of the electorate that voted for parties that are in favour of a second referendum’. You have won a major battle James. But you have not won the war.

Kind regards,

BNH - Your Concerned Constituent