Turning Ugly

Ben Wildsmith

When things start falling apart, events tend to accelerate. As we panic over the consequences of one wrong decision another is made that provokes a third, and so on. It gathers pace.

That’s been the UK experience at least since Brexit and probably since the 2008 crash. We’ve been careering down a scree slope together, watching successive governments plunge to their deaths as we go.

Labour’s appeal to the electorate last year was that it could stop all this. Sensible, boring people like Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper were going to make everything safe and beige again.

The psychedelic dreamscapes of Johnson and Truss were an anomaly that the grown-ups would put right.

How’s that going for ya, huh?

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Ungovernable

It may be that the UK is ungovernable now. Perhaps the diversity of opinion here has become so wide as to be beyond democratic expression. Or, perhaps, this is just the latest dud government in a long line of them.

It certainly isn’t doing what it said on the tin. U-turns over benefits and Palestine speak of an administration that has no guiding principles. Watching Jeremy Corbyn smiling seraphically through interviews this week, it was clear how vulnerable this government is to any politician who is perceived to hold authentic positions.

Corbyn said Labour MPs had told him that Starmer had agreed to recognise Palestinian statehood without conditions before heading off to see Donald trump.

Four hours later that had been amended into a threat to Israel. Either a ceasefire is called, or we’ll recognise a Palestinian state. This is a matter of principle, surely? Imagine telling Russia that if it doesn’t stop bombing Kyiv, we’ll recognise the territorial integrity of Ukraine. It’s as confusing as it is ethically unmoored.

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Judicial review

Yesterday, Palestine Action was granted judicial review of Yvette Fielding’s recent terrorist designation. Here again, the government gives the impression of being lost in the moral maze. Grannies in their 70s are being arrested and charged for holding signs objecting to the deliberate starvation of children.

Has anybody, ever, placed a cross next to a Labour candidate expecting that?

Our Labour MPs voted in concert to deny Cymru the receipts from Crown holdings without so much as an explanation. They act more like bailiffs than our representatives in Westminster. Their contempt for our nationhood is palpable.

All of this, though, is ancillary to the primary fault with this government. It came to power as the nation had been brought to chaos by the relentless pursuit of crackpot Chicago-school economics over a period of decades. Instead of appreciating the urgency of our situation, this collection of unserious party loyalists continued the economic status quo.

The ruins of neoliberal vandalism are being addressed by politicians who understand nothing but neoliberalism. As our rivers and coastal areas fill up with excrement, they tell us we ‘can’t afford’ to take the water industry into public ownership. As our doctors flee to better lives Down Under, Wes Streeting challenges them to a war over pay. As the country recoils in horror at Israel’s genocide, Starmer endorses it, and then prevaricates at every turn as that position crumbles beneath him.

Basic

Nobody expected this government to be anything other than basic and competent. It has failed at that, both in reality and perception. We are left with four years to go of an administration that is despised by all shades of the political spectrum aside from its direct beneficiaries and some straggling fanatics.

I imagine that Starmer will be jettisoned at some point. Watching him cringe and acquiesce at the Court of King Donald suggested that even he must realise he’s not cut out for this.

Who would replace him, though? If Labour do not put forward a drastically altered vision for the next four years, I see serious unrest ahead. With Farage, Robinson, Lowe, and the rest of the populist agitators breathing poison at the populace, this could turn ugly sooner rather than later.