Just Another "Westminster" Party

Underneath the facade of being anti-Westminster, the SNP is just another "Westminster Party" (Credit: Jim Trodel via Flickr cc; Modified by Wesley Hutchins).

     Throughout the independence campaign last year and the general election campaign this year, the SNP talked a lot about how it represented a “new form” of politics, and that this was diametrically different from that of the Conservatives, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats (a.k.a., the “Westminster parties”) – characterized by cronyism, use of public office for personal gain, and political favoritism.

     Eventually, they and their acolytes went along to claim that this was not just an ethical difference between the politics of the SNP and the other parties, but a difference of moral and political cultures between Scotland and the rest of the UK. Scottish politics, we were told, was egalitarian-based, transparent, and emphasized doing right on behalf of the people. It was characterized by men and women who were honest, upstanding, trustworthy, and – most importantly – incorruptible. UK – or rather “Westminster” – politics was all about using the public trust to extract personal benefit, tightly-knit cliques, inherent corruption, and cronyism that made even saints and angels swear in disgust.

     Not so with Scottish-based politics, so this was presented as yet another reason of how Scotland and the rest of the UK were so incompatibly different, and why therefore, Scotland should have voted to separate from the rest of the UK and break up the Union. (And if you voted No, you obviously supported - according to the more fanatical Yessers - pedophilia, illegal wars, and throwing sick people off of benefits).

     In short, the politics of “Westminster” was the politics of sleaze and helping yourself, whilst the politics of Scotland (and especially the SNP) was the politics of cleanliness and helping others.

     This was a message which chimed in well with a massively cynical public that was fed up with politics and the political establishment following – among other things – the parliamentary expenses scandal and the sense that politicians looked out for themselves and their close associates and family. The SNP successfully conflated this with Westminster as an institution – as if to say this was representative of the UK as a whole – and has massively benefited as a result.

     But recent events have called this image into question.

     First, is the issue of Michelle Thomson, MP for Edinburgh West, who came to prominence during the referendum as the managing director of the pro-independence group Business for Scotland, and then became the SNP’s candidate for the Edinburgh seat in the House of Commons, which she won in the general election last May.

     She was glowingly touted within the party, not least because of her business background, which helped to give the party a pro-business image despite its increasingly left wing rhetoric to gain Labour voters. Indeed, she was portrayed – not least by herself – as the sort of business person who managed to combine commercial success with a sense of community and social justice. As such, she became the party’s Westminster spokesperson on Business, Innovation, and Skills, and was seen as a rising star.

     However, it turns out that part of her more recent success came from her and her husband purchasing properties from desperate sellers at knock-down prices in the aftermath of the financial crisis and Great Recession – people who were almost certainly facing dispossession and needed properties taken off their hands in the face of economic hardship. In one case, the Thomson’s bought an apartment from a pensioner couple for £73,000, even though the market valuation according to the Land Register was £105,000. Another person sold his property to the Thomson’s for £60,000, even though it was valued for £25,000 above that amount.

     Taking advantage of these below-market prices, the Thomson’s eventually built a property portfolio estimated to be around £2 million with 17 homes, which has probably grown in part because some properties were sold for massive profits which then went toward purchasing more expensive ones, and therefore increasing their personal wealth substantially.

     The controversy surrounding this had its seeds in May 2014 when Christopher Hales, the solicitor (lawyer) for the Thomson’s, was struck off for professional misconduct by a disciplinary tribunal which concluded that he “must have been aware that there was the possibility he was facilitating mortgage fraud” in relation to the work he did for some of his clients, including the Thomson’s.

     It finally came to light when the Sunday Times featured a report on the Hales affair and his links to Michelle Thomson, which has sparked a police investigation, the resignation of Thomson as an SNP frontbench spokesperson, and her suspension from the party, which means that the SNP has 55 MP’s at the moment (down from 56) as Thomson is now an Independent MP (in similar fashion to Labour’s Eric Joyce (Falkirk) during the 2010-2015 Parliament).

     Now, some people may say that Thomson was not an MP at the time, and that this had nothing to do with official conduct, such as using public office for personal gain – either for yourself or for close friends and relatives.

     Fair enough, but then, what about the brouhaha surrounding the T in the Park music festival and the Scottish Government’s decision to spend £150,000 of public money on it? The reason – ostensibly, at least – from Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop was that the money was needed because if it was not given, the festival may have moved out of Scotland, with a huge cost to the economy. But from all accounts, the festival was a profitable concern backed by private sponsors, so why the need for public spending here, when it could have been used to build houses or provide college places?

     The answer may have to do with the fact that the concert promoters had obtained the lobbying services of Jennifer Dempsie, a former special advisor to former SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, as well as the partner of Angus Roberston – the party’s leader in the Commons.

     Now there is nothing to suggest that Dempsie or the concert promoters did anything wrong or illegal, or indeed, that T in the Park would not have received the funding from Holyrood if Dempsie was not lobbying in its behalf. However, it goes without saying that having Dempsie on board certainly did not hurt in the pursuit of the funding, and it may not be a stretch to think that her close connections to senior party leaders helped along to ensure funding for the festival.

     In the same vein with regard to Michelle Thomson, there is nothing illegal about purchasing property at below market rates from people in a desperate situation – economic or otherwise. It must also be noted that at this point, Thomson has not been convicted of anything, much less formally accused or charged with a crime. Therefore, there is no need for her to resign her seat, and it will be for the proper authorities to decide if there is evidence that she had engaged in mortgage fraud, and if she is formally charged, it will be a court of law which decides her legal fate.

     On this note, it is now known that Law Society of Scotland “informally” raised her now-disgraced former solicitor Hales’ case with the Crown Office, but only “officially” brought it up in July this year after Thomson had become an MP. This has brought about speculation that the delay may have been due partly to the fact that Law Society committee secretary responsible for disciplinary tribunals was a member of the pro-independence group Lawyers for Yes and an admirer of Michelle Thomson. On top of that, it has been confirmed that the head of investigations at the Law Society had received the tribunal report naming the Thomson’s and their business partner, and that the Crown Office had asked for detailed case files in December 2014 and in April this year – just before the general election – but only received them in July.

     The Law Society has rushed to defend its staff from any accusation of impropriety, but the rushed press conference on Thursday appeared to raise more questions than answers – chief among them being, why did it take a year for the Crown Office to receive the case files from the tribunal investigation? At this point, there is no evidence that anyone from the Law Society acted improperly and sat on this case, so as not to endanger the independence campaign or the SNP’s – and especially Michelle Thomson’s – general election campaign. But the whiff of impropriety – that an investigation was stonewalled for political purposes – does not look good.

     In the court of public opinion, it may already be too late for Michelle Thomson, for even in the case of Thomson as a non-public official at the time of her property dealings, it brings into to question her commitment to social justice and gives a bad image for a party that claims to be standing for ordinary people against predatory interests that seek to profit from their misery.

     Between this and the T in the Park affair, you may cynically say these things happen without regard for politicians of any political party. Certainly, some Nationalists will say that “Westminster politicians” do this all the time. Nothing to see here; move along, citizen. (Furthermore, we have our own issues with cronyism in the States.)

     But, is that not the point? The SNP has gained traction by portraying itself as something unique and in another world from the “self-serving Westminster eite.” Without this distinction, what else does the SNP have going for it (aside from wanting to break up the UK)?

     However, the reality is that the SNP has never really been Ms. Goody-Two-Shoes. It will play politics and play dirty when necessary. It is a ruthless and well-oiled political machine that is not above doing whatever is required to suit its political ends. By the end of last week, Sturgeon was effectively throwing Michelle Thomson under the bus for the fact that she is no longer – at least for now – an SNP member, and Jennifer Dempsie is no longer a Holyrood candidate. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is The Cause.

     As for First Minister Sturgeon, what do we make about her claims that she and others in the party had no clue about Thomson’s business dealings in the course of being vetted to stand for election to the Commons? In a party supposedly as disciplined as the SNP, one would think that some sort of thorough background investigation would have raised a few red flags.

     Perhaps this can be excused by the fact that the party experienced a tremendous growth spurt following the referendum – climbing from around 30,000 members to over 100,000 in less than eight months, and making it the third largest political party in the UK. During that time, it may be believable that the SNP simply did not have enough staff at the time to handle all of their business from the referendum to the general election, and that they had little choice but to take Thomson at her word that there was nothing that could even remotely blacken her name and cause embarrassment for the party.

     Nonetheless, serious embarrassment has been caused, not least because the words “mortgage fraud” has appeared alongside pictures of Sturgeon and Thomson together in newspapers, online articles, and other media. Similarly, the praise that she received from other senior SNP figures (during the referendum and leading up to the general election) has been plastered about to underscore just how much of a rising star she was, in part because of her business experience. For that matter, if they did not know what that business experience was, why did they take it at face value and make her the spokesperson for Business?

     But if Sturgeon can claim deniability with regard to Thomson, how does she square away with the decision to sanction to public grant for T in the Park? Her chief of staff, Liz Lloyd, was aware of the request for taxpayer money and even offered advice on how agencies of the Scottish Government could assist in the funding. The Culture Secretary and member of Sturgeon’s cabinet, Fiona Hyslop, has come under fire for signing off on the grant without rigorously looking into the finances of the event, and it is now known that grant was not paid out until after the event had occurred.

     Then, what about Sandy Adam, an independence supporter who had given almost £100,000 to the SNP and the Yes campaign over the last three years (as well as £5000 to Michelle Thomson for her campaign)? His property company had been given a Scottish Government loan of £1 million, and selected to take part in a lucrative scheme where mortgages for new houses are guaranteed by the government.

     Perhaps this is a bit too harsh, because after all, we are all human and seek to use connections whenever possible to achieve personal ends, and this is not always illegal. Nor is it illegal to take advantage of certain opportunities when they arise.

     This isn't to say that we ought not expect more of our politicians and other public servants, because of course, we should. However, we should not be fooled into believing that any political party has a monopoly on morality, for all of them have good apples as well bad ones. And, let's be honest: who wouldn't at least try to take advantage of the fact that they have friends in high places? That's been going on since time immemorial.

     But again, we are talking about a political party that been quite sanctimonious in placing itself on a pedestal as a paragon of clean politics free of cronyism, dubious expense claims, breaching the public trust, and other characteristics of big bad “Westminster.” In the process, it won 56 Commons seats and almost won the referendum at least partly based on this message of them being the “good” politics that was only available in Scotland, and the other “Westminster parties” being the “bad” politics that was un-Scottish.

     Now it seems that the SNP has a few things in its own house it must attend to, and that it has more than its fair share of cronyism and other behavior that many people find reprehensible in politics. This may not be enough to bring down the SNP overnight, but if the current issues continue to persist, and/or if more problems like Thomson or T in the Park arise, the party may well find itself in the same position as the “Westminster parties” it so routinely criticizes for just such behavior.

     At the very least, it exposes their empty rhetoric and takes some of the shine off of their popular, carefully-crafted, focus group tested, and made-for-media image. The mask is beginning to slip.

Are Labour and the LibDems committed to the Union?

Image Credit: The Laird of Oldham via Flickr cc

     That’s the question being asked by supporters and opponents of both political parties after their leaders in Scotland – first Kezia Dugdale of Labour, and then Willie Rennie of the Liberal Democrats – announced that members and parliamentarians (MP’s, MSP’s, and MEP’s) were free to campaign for separation in the event of another independence referendum. Dugdale in particular stated that she wanted to “lead a party that is comfortable with people who voted Yes and No” in the last referendum (which was held last year) in which Labour fought for a No vote and Scotland’s place within the United Kingdom.

     The party had participated in the Better Together campaign – the cross party effort to save the Union – which featured Labour campaigning alongside the Conservatives (Tories) and the Liberal Democrats, the two other mainstream pro-Union and UK-wide political parties, and when the referendum was held on September 18th, 2014, the No side won with 55% of the vote. This meant that the United Kingdom was kept together with Scotland affirming its part in the 300 year old Union.

     However, this victory came with a heavy price.

     Throughout the emotionally-charged campaign, the SNP under Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon had appealed to traditional Labour voters by portraying a Yes vote for independence as the only way to achieve a “fairer society” for Scotland. The alternative, they claimed, was continued “Tory governments which Scotland didn’t vote for” – a reference to the fact that while the Conservative-led coalition UK government (with the Liberal Democrats as junior partners) at the time had a majority of seats in the House of Commons throughout the UK as a whole, it only held a minority of seats in Scotland (one Tory and eleven LibDem), and therefore in the eyes of the SNP, had “no mandate” to govern Scotland (even though Scotland is part of the UK).

     Labour was therefore portrayed as standing in the way of Scotland being “free” of Tory rule from the British Parliament at Westminster (where Scotland elects MP’s like the rest of the UK), and as such, it was also portrayed as part of the “Westminster Establishment”, where it along with Tories and LibDems were virtually indistinguishable from one another. Being part of Better Together only confirmed this image, which was played to the hilt by the SNP and other independence campaigners.

     Even after they were defeated, the Nationalists saw a spike in popularity as the message about Labour being no different from the Tories resonated in places such as Glasgow and West Central Scotland, Lanarkshire, and Dundee, which had been voting Labour for generations, but now felt disillusioned and taken for granted by a party which had (supposedly) abandoned its traditional working class and left-wing values in pursuit of chasing swing votes in Middle England to win UK-wide general elections, and had been standing “should-to-shoulder” with the Tories during the referendum – leading to pejorative of “Red Tories.”

     The result was that around a third of traditional Labour voters abandoned the party during the referendum, as well as during the general election in May of this year, where it lost 40 of its 41 Scottish seats to the insurgent SNP – ending the promising careers of Scottish Labour’s most talented politicians of this era, and contributing to Labour’s stinging defeat throughout the UK as a whole. Among those who lost his seat in May was Jim Murphy, whose resignation as leader of Scottish Labour ignited an election to replace him, which was won by his deputy Kezia Dugdale, who has been tasked with the awesome duty of recovering the party from its deep political nadir.

     This has led to Dugdale extending an olive branch to the hundreds of thousands of Yes voters who either voted Labour in the past or would be otherwise inclined to vote Labour were it not for the SNP.

     In response, Labour’s commitment to the Union has been brought into question, not least by many of its supporters who vigorously supported a No vote last year, and remain strongly supportive of Scotland being part of the UK. Members and supporters of the Scottish Conservatives (officially the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party) have taken the opportunity to promote themselves as the only party that can stand up to the SNP and truly support the maintenance of the Union, and party leader Ruth Davidson has claimed that she no longer knows what Labour’s position on the Union is anymore, but that her party will always argue for Scotland within the UK.

     Indeed, on its face, it would appear that Labour is retreating on the Union by trying to invite the very people who rejected its stance on the constitutional question and the arguments it had put forward in support of that stance. After all, why would these people want to vote for a party that is pro-Union?

     On the other hand, upon closer examination and thought, it appears that there is more to Dugdale’s positioning than meets the eye.

     Indeed, I believe that Dugdale is trying to put the constitutional questions aside by saying that Labour need not be completely and entirely defined by being a pro-Union party, and instead should be known for what it wants to do to achieve better social and economic outcomes for people in areas such as health, justice, education, and policing, where the SNP are vulnerable after eight years in government, having won the elections to the devolved Scottish Parliament at Holyrood in 2007 (as a minority government) and in 2011 (as a majority government).

     It was that record combined with the questionable economic basis for independence which helped Dr. Scott Arthur to make his decision to back the Union and a No vote through participation in Better Together. He later joined Scottish Labour and campaigned to help re-elect Ian Murray, who is now the only Labour MP from Scotand.

     In response to CyberNats who deluged him with abuse for asking SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon on live television why her government voted against a living wage five times, Dr. Arthur wrote some commentary which eventually made its way to the pages of the Daily Record and his own personal blog. In it, he says that Labour must not fall into a trap whereby it can be portrayed as putting the Union before everything else, whilst it is the SNP whose own constitution outlines its first aim as “Independence for Scotland” and the “furtherance of all Scottish interests” in the secondary.

     In contrast, it is Labour whose constitution outlines aims such as ensuring opportunity, publicly accountable (or owned) public services, and the deliverance of “people from the tyranny of poverty, prejudice and the abuse of power.” To this end, he further states:

“Labour must change Scotland’s political narrative by sticking to its values. It must promote itself as the party of social justice. The party which fights inequality and defends public services. Sure it wants Scotland to stay in the UK, but this is because remaining in the UK, even when we have a Tory government, is the best way to deliver social justice in the long-term.”

     In addition:

“The arguments for Scotland staying in the UK are legion. They range from a shared history to a common culture and a collective love of a good curry. These arguments of the heart, and many others like them, have great resonance for many Scots.  However, Scottish Labour’s argument must be about standing in solidarity with the rest of the UK.  It must be about pooling and sharing resources – an easy argument when Scotland’s per capita deficit exceeds that of the rest of the UK.”

     Furthermore, Dr. Arthur adds that in the SNP’s obsessive drive toward independence, it bangs on for more powers while almost refusing to acknowledge the powers it already has at its disposal at Holyrood, and less still, the new income tax and borrowing powers on the way via a Scotland Bill at Westminster – the contents of which were negotiated by the Smith Commission in which the SNP took part and signed off on (before continuing to complain that it wasn’t enough).

     From this vantage point, the SNP only discusses the constitution and demands new powers as a means distract from what they can already do, with the long-term aim being to achieve independence gradually, regardless of if it actually makes Scots better off, or if it provides greater opportunities to those who need it.

     In response, Dr. Arthur cites Sun Tzu and his seminal work, The Art of War, as the way forward for Scottish Labour, for the Chinese military strategist believed that the key to victory was the ability to choose the battlefield, and that for Labour, the battlefield it must dominate is social justice and in developing a narrative about how it will use Holyrood’s powers to achieve it.

     In other words, being pro-Union won’t be enough for Labour to recover, not least because there are not enough No voters to go around for the three main parties. Yes, it is true that the No side won with 55% of the vote on nearly 85% turnout, but in terms of elections, this does not compare favorably with the fact that in the 2010 UK general election, the three pro-Union parties amassed 77.6% of the vote between them and held 53 of the 59 Scottish seats in the Commons. In this year’s general election (with a lesser turnout than the referendum), that share collapsed to around only half of the vote, and along the way, the SNP got 56 out of 59 seats.

     Arguments over electoral reform and proportional representation aside (partly because some of us had no problem with the current system when the pro-Union parties were dominant), this is simple math and brute electoral reality, and Labour must win over people on ideas and policies that can improve the day-to-day lives of themselves, their families, and the greater society at large.

     Remember, the SNP almost buried its nationalism to win at Holyrood in 2007 and 2011 on a platform of governmental competence (in contrast to the 1999-2007 Labour-LibDem administrations) and popular policies having nothing to do with independence, and this resulted in winning over people who at the time were not (and in some cases, still are not) minded toward independence. They got themselves into power by playing up having an alternative with regard to bread-and-butter issues that affect people’s lives on a daily basis, and because they knew that banging on about independence alone was not a vote-winner.

     The old-school fundamentalists in the party did not like this out of concern that independence would be lost in the agenda, but the SNP under Alex Salmond, and now Nicola Sturgeon, has learned and played well the politics of gradualism and the long game. They convinced people to vote for them based on issues relating little to independence, and then worked toward cultivating such people towards supporting independence – a process that has taken place over weeks, months, and years – perhaps all the way to Referendum Day and beyond.

     So far, this method has paid massive dividends to the SNP as a political party and for their cause of separation. They know that not all of their members and voters want independence, but that does not matter so long as they get the votes they need to win seats at Holyrood for a pro-independence majority and therefore claim a mandate for another referendum. At the same time, they will continue to make an appeal to people based on policies outwith independence and cultivate them towards agreeing with the SNP’s first and foremost aim.

     The trick for Labour is for it to do the same thing in reverse to the SNP – challenging its record in government and offering a viable alternative that can get the support of those who voted Yes as well as No. Furthermore, just as there were some people who voted SNP, and only came around to supporting a Yes vote over time because they liked what the SNP was doing in government, perhaps the long-term strategy of Labour is to convince such people to see what it can do in government – both at Holyrood and Westminster – and hope that it will convince them to vote No should another referendum ever be held. Perhaps by that time, the policy of allowing parliamentarians and members to campaign for a Yes vote will be moot.

     Are their risks to this strategy? Yes. It will almost certainly be anathema to Labour voters who have stuck with the party through the referendum and vigorously fought to save the Union, and may serve to exasperate tensions within an already divided party.

     But at this point, and in the face of brute electoral reality, what else can it do? It can’t dream up 300,000 left of center pro-Union voters to replace the ones it lost.

     In many ways, is Labour is paying the price for complacency and taking voters for granted long before the white-hot heat of the referendum. In some parts of Scotland, Labour’s grip was so tight, it was joked that votes were weighed, not counted, and this complacency was ripe for the SNP to exploit as they made overtures to disillusioned and disaffected people in areas that had been habitually voting Labour for generations. Indeed, the referendum and general election may have exposed the difference between committed Labour voters and habitual ones, and the habitual ones were successfully picked off by the SNP for the referendum and general election.

     Some may say that this is Labour’s problem which they brought on themselves with devolution and taking their traditional voters for granted. Tough on them.

     Fine, but Labour’s problems today will be all of our problems tomorrow if they don’t succeed in winning back those voters, for if the party had not lost them (or if the Tories had more seats in Scotland) we would not be having this issue. But alas, this is the situation in which he find ourselves.

     Going forward, Labour must offer an alternative that emphasizes its ambitions which have little to do with the constitutional issues and which emphasizes solidarity – economic, social, and cultural – with the rest of the UK. It needs to expose the SNP as constitutional and separatist obsessives while people starve, can't get a proper education, or can’t get timely medical care eight years after their first day in power.

     With Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the UK Labour Party, the SNP’s claim to being the only true anti-austerity and “progressive” party in the UK has been blown out of the water, and all they have now to beat is the secessionist drum, which explains why they have repeatedly raised the prospect of another referendum in the hope that disenchantment with “Westminster” – to some extent manufactured – will drive Scots to demand another one.

     In the face of this, Labour, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats must change the framing of the political debate from the constitution to real bread-and-butter issues where the SNP are vulnerable when such issues (like policing, education, and health) are afforded the much-needed scrutiny given that the SNP has been running Scotland since 2007, and they won back then by saying that they would do a better job than Labour. It’s high time that the pro-Union parties adopt this mantle of doing a better job, and use it against the SNP.

     For too long, the SNP have been successfully playing the long game in their path to independence, and the results have been on display for all to see.

     Therefore, there must be a long-game strategy for the pro-Union parties. Each of them must play to their own strengths and values to pick off people from the various factions of the SNP – left, right, and center. They must appeal to these people based on issues that matter to them outwith the constitutional questions, and persuade them to vote on that basis. Over time, this may lead to the cultivation of more pro-Union voters should there be another referendum. So yes, this is about emulating the SNP – in terms of tactics and long-term strategy.

     After all, in order to prevent another referendum, there needs to be a pro-Union majority at Holyrood. On this point, some people may claim that Labour is more concerned about power than the country, but the thing is, having Labour in power at Holyrood is massively better than the SNP. The same goes for the Tories and LibDems, because they all played a part in keeping Britain together, and it is hard to see any of them making a referendum on separation part of party policy.

     Bringing in Yes voters may be the first step of what needs to be a long-term effort to get Scotland away from the dividing line of being Unionist or Nationalist, or as some Nats would erroneously have it – “for or against Scotland”, and I certainly do not wish to see Scotland descend into becoming another Northern Ireland.

     All three parties need to recover themselves in Scotland, if for no other reason than there still remains a right wing and a left wing. The Right is almost exclusively occupied by the Conservatives, whilst Labour and the SNP are fighting over the Left, and the LibDems are somewhere in the middle of all this.

     For their part, the LibDems troubles stem from their involvement in the coalition government at Westminster with the Tories after the Tories had failed to obtain an outright majority following the 2010 general election. They were therefore vilified for propping up the Tories and enabling them to go through with policies such as the the increase in tuition fees (which they had opposed in the election), the privatization of Royal Mail, and controversial changes to the welfare system. The result was that they were heavily punished by voters throughout the UK, but especially in Scotland, where the Tories have been unpopular (and seen as anathema to Scotland) since the 1990's. In this year's UK general election, the LibDems lost all but one of their 11 seats in Scotland - having lost many of their voters to the SNP like Labour, and losing a generation of their best talent.

     Only the Tories emerged more or less unscathed, though that's not much to go by given that they have only had one seat in Scotland since 2001 - which again, leads to the charge of "Tory governments we didn't vote for!" However, the Conservatives are almost solidly behind the Union, and few of their 400,000+ voters sided with independence in the referendum or switched allegiances to the SNP in the general election.

     With the Labour and LibDem statements about letting in Yes voters and allowing free votes on separation, the Tories have begun promoting themselves as the only true party of the Union, with the hope that this will help achieve some sort of electoral revival for the party. However, my personal fear is that if the Right claims ownership of the Union, and the Union is seen as a right-wing entity, then where does that leave the Left? Some may undoubtedly come to the conclusion that the if the Right naturally supports the Union, then the Left naturally supports independence, and that is a charge I have been fighting against for the past three years, along with the notion that the United Kingdom is an inherently big bad “right wing” country from which little goody two-shoes “left wing” Scotland must escape.

     The Union can only survive in Scotland if it has natural supporters on the left and right of society, and the last thing we need is people on either side feeling as though they are unwelcome, and at any rate, I feel that there is much that can be learned by people from different political thoughts working together and overcoming their differences, prejudices, and stereotypes.

     Scotland needs to get back to the politics of solving problems that effect people on a regular basis, and each party has something to offer. The Tories can make an appeal being the party of low taxes, property rights, and free enterprise; the LibDems can take the lead on appealing to real concerns about the SNP centralizing Scotland’s polices forces and other civil liberties issues; and Labour can be the party what wants to deliver social justice. Along the way, they must also hack away at the false promises and empty rhetoric of the SNP and spell out clear reasons for why separation is not good, and why there is strength in the unity of the United Kingdom.

     (For my part, I was just as happy to see Labour winning a council by-election, as I was to see the Tories win the first preference round of another by-election, before (closely and so unfortunately) losing  to the SNP in the second round.)

     For Labour, the Liberal Democrats, as well as the Tories and individuals and groups not aligned with any party, the winning message is not “Support the Union, end of story.” Rather, it is: “Support the Union because we believe our values and goals are best achieved within it, and we believe the Union confers enormous benefits and advantages, not just for us, but for all of the UK, with whom we should all firmly stand in solidarity and common purpose.” And as Dr. Arthur said, the arguments in favor of the UK are legion.

     All three parties are committed to the Union because they see it as a means to achieve greater ends which separation cannot deliver, and they believe that this is the best for Scotland and the UK as a whole. They must make this case with repeated vigor and confidence while also outlining their agenda for Scotland if they wish to improve their electoral fortunes, and by extension, secure the future of the Union.

      Strong and effective leadership will be needed by Dugdale, Davidson, and Rennie, so that these three parties – battered and wounded by the experience of the referendum and its aftershocks – can be comfortable in their own skin as parties that have a positive vision for Scotland within the UK, and have a positive and viable alternative agenda from that of the SNP. Some people will never come back to these parties, but with a coherent and realistic intellectual and emotional case fit for the 21st Century, I believe many will.

     The next Holyrood election is less than eight months away. It is time to use our imaginations and think outside the box; time get cracking on our long-game.

Transatlantic Discontent

The establishment of British and American politics have been shaken up in recent years by people such as (from left to right) Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Nicola Sturgeon, and Nigel Farage.

Image Credits: Corbyn: See Li via Flickr, Sanders: Marc Nozell via Flickr cc, Trump: Michael Vadon via Flickr cc, Sturgeon: Ninian Reid via Flickr cc, Farage: Euro Realist Newsletter via Flickr. Modifications and montage by Wesley Hutchins.

     In the United Kingdom, the winter of 1978-1979 has been known as the Winter of Discontent, a phrase coming from the opening line of William Shakespeare’s Richard III: “Now is the Winter of our Discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York”. It describes a period of economic and political malaise in the country which resulted in the election of the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher and the greatest sea change in British politics since Clement Attlee’s Labour government following World War II.

     Over 35 years later, it can be said that with regard to Britain, “the isle is full of noises”, and this is borrowed from another line by Shakespeare – this time, from The Tempest. Certainly, it does describe the rapidly changing and seemingly restless nature of British politics and society today. The improbable rise of the Scottish National Party (SNP), the UK Independence Party (UKIP), other political and social movements, and the once unthinkable notion of a politician like Jeremy Corbyn leading Her Majesty’s Opposition have rocked the political establishment.

     All of these movements speak to the disenchantment with mainstream politics and the embrace of what are considered to be the fringes on both the left and right ever since the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the subsequent Great Recession. The economic downturn combined with austerity measures and the general feeling that the establishment is not adequately responding to the needs of the people has made for a vastly cynical populace that no longer wishes to take its cues from the establishment and now listens to, and supports, whatever and whoever speaks to them.

     This has resulted in the fracturing of British politics as the broad consensus shared by the main political parties – Labour, Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats – appears to be coming undone, and even though the “center” did hold in the recent general election with a (slim) majority Conservative government being returned to power under Prime Minister David Cameron, it appears that the current political upheaval has not yet run its course, and there are parallels across the Pond in America.

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     The election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the opposition Labour Party on September 12, 2015 was nothing less than a repudiation of the centrist establishment that had been running the UK’s leading left-wing party since the election of Tony Blair as leader in 1994. Blair had led the party to three straight general election victories in 1997, 2001, and 2005 – ushering 13 years of a Labour government with him as prime minister, and making him the most successful leader of the party and the longest-serving Labour prime minister.

     But there has always been an undercurrent of Labour supporters and sympathizers who believed that the party had drifted to far to the right in order to capture the center ground of British politics and win elections, and when Blair’s successor Gordon Brown lost the election of 2010 and resigned as party leader, one of his protégés, Ed Miliband, won the leadership – helped along with the backing of the trade unions who preferred him over his Blairite older brother David. Under Miliband’s leadership, the party edged to the left, but struggled to present a clear and viable alternative to the coalition government of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron, which emerged after the electorate had produced a hung parliament with the Tories as the biggest party but with no overall control of the House of Commons.

     Indeed, it was felt that the party had become “Tory-lite” – merely going for changes along the edges of what the Tory-led government was doing, and not vigorously opposing its agenda of austerity, which the Tories have said was due to Labour spending too much and racking up huge budget deficits. All of this came against the backdrop of the financial crisis and Great Recession, during which Labour under Gordon Brown had bailed out failing banks and engaged in extra spending to stave off a deeper crisis. But Labour’s credibility on the economy was heavily damaged by all this, which resulted in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government.

     That government engaged in a program of fiscal austerity, which proved very controversial because it involved cutting benefits and housing payments to the unemployed/underemployed, implementing welfare reform, increasing tuition fees for universities, privatizing the Royal Mail, and expanding the use of private delivery of public services (including the National Health Service), and other measures designed to reduce the deficit and put the country back on track.

     But for many, these were nothing less than going after the poorest and most vulnerable in order to pay for the financial calamity brought about by lightly-regulated banks, and as the economy struggled to bounce back with austerity measures in place, the government became very unpopular.

     The Liberal Democrats, as the junior partners of the coalition government with party leader Nick Clegg as deputy prime minister, suffered the most from a backlash by some of those who had voted for it as an alternative to both Labour and the Tories in 2010. Most significant among younger voters was its acquiescence to the increase in tuition fees, which it had pledged to oppose during the election, and this became emblematic of a party more concerned about power than its promises.

     Ideally, it was Labour that should have reaped the rewards of this discontent, but the party suffered from three major problems. One was that while people were willing to support a Labour government in the abstract, they could not imagine Ed Miliband – lampooned as Wallace from Wallace and Grommit in the press – as prime minister. Second was the sense that Labour – not wanting to abandon the center ground – was not putting forth a distinct and viable vision from that of the coalition government and the Tories in particular. This leads to the third issue: the rise of left-wing alternatives.

     In Scotland, the SNP under Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon had portrayed Labour as part of the “Westminster Establishment”, where it along with Tories and LibDems were virtually indistinguishable from one another, and also complicit in the recent parliamentary expenses scandal, and other – real and imagined – “Westminster misdoings.” This was played to the hilt during the independence referendum campaign during which all three parties participated in the Better Together campaign to keep the United Kingdom together. Even after they were defeated, the Nationalists saw a spike in popularity as the message about Labour being no different from the Tories resonated in places such as Glasgow and West Central Scotland, Lanarkshire, and Dundee, which had been voting Labour for generations, but now felt disillusioned and taken for granted by a party which had (supposedly) abandoned its traditional working class and left-wing values in pursuit of chasing Tory votes in Middle England, and had been standing “should-to-shoulder” with the Tories during the referendum – leading to pejorative of “Red Tories.”

     In England and Wales, the party was treated on similar grounds by the Green Party and the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru, but it was in Scotland where the energies of referendum campaign had spilled over to general election this year and resulted in Labour losing 40 of its 41 Scottish seats to the SNP, including that of Jim Murphy, the leader of the party in Scotland. Overall, Labour was defeated across the UK and a majority Tory government emerged, helped along with an economy that was showing signs of life, which boosted the Tories economic credibility and prevented Labour from overcoming the economic baggage associated with it during the financial crisis.

     Ed Miliband resigned, and the party was in search of a new leader. The initial three candidates – Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, and Liz Kendall – were establishment figures who were more-or-less committed to keeping Labour in the center in the belief that a lurch to the left of Miliband would do the party no favors. Nevertheless, just enough MP’s nominated the obscure backbencher and left-winger Jeremy Corbyn, the 66 year old MP for North Islington, to be placed on the ballot in the leadership election. Many of them nominated him not such because they wanted or expected him to win the leadership, but because they hoped he would broaden the debate within the party and show that there was at least still a place for left-winger like Corbyn.

Jeremy Corbyn - the party republican rebel-turned-Leader of Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition. Image Credit: David Holt via Flickr cc

     But as the other candidates failed to impress, Corbyn tapped into an antiestablishment sentiment throughout the UK, and was soon on the rise. He was helped along by hundreds of thousands of new members to the party and many more who paid £3.00 ($4.60) to be a “registered supporter” of the party and voted for him. Establishment figures such as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown warned against his election as leader and emphasized the need to be in power, but increasing numbers of Labour members and sympathizers – many of whom had been disillusioned by the rightward direction of the party – were in no mood to listen to who they saw as unimaginative dinosaurs from another era that had the party ever farther away from its traditional roots as a party that stood up against vested interests and demanded radical action to improve society for everyone – especially the disadvantaged and working classes.

     The result was that Corbyn was elected with nearly 60% of the vote – a huge popular mandate larger than Blair’s in 1994 – on this tide of antiestablishment feeling to become the most left-wing leader of the Labour Party since the 1930’s.

     Among other things, he is a republican who believes that the British monarchy ought to be abolished (though he has said that this is not a priority). Corbyn would like to see Britain give up its nuclear deterrent in the form of the sea-based Trident program, and by extension, wants to terminate membership of NATO, which is after all, a nuclear-tipped military alliance. For that matter, he wants Britain to reduce its military commitments and stay out of military interventions. He has shown a lukewarm attitude toward the UK’s membership of EU – partly out of concern for worker’s rights and the economic bloc’s negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the United States. Corbyn favors higher taxes – especially on the wealthy, and wants to reverse the current course of austerity with increased government spending, alongside the Bank of England printing more money as part of what he calls a “people’s QE” – a reference to the quantitative easing (QE) provided to banks during the financial crisis and recession. Most significantly, he favors the renationalization of industries and public services that have been privatized over the last four decades, such as railroads and energy companies.

     Taken together, this amounts to a complete reversal of everything that has characterized Labour in the last generation or so – away from moderate social democratic thinking, rejecting the politics of the Third Way, definitively dispensing with the “New Labour” brand, and returning to socialism.

     Much ink has already been spilled on, and hot air released about, the death of not just New Labour, but the Labour Party as a significant political force in the United Kingdom which strives to be viable and competent alternative to the current government, and more crucially, actually wishes to be in government and hold the reins of power.

     Indeed, with the collapse of the Liberal Democrats following their involvement in the coalition with the Tories, it would seem that the Tories are on their way to perpetual rule. But they have a majority of only 12 in the Commons, and even though this can be bolstered to around 30 with the support of Democratic Unionist (DUP) and Ulster Unionist (UUP) MP’s and the exclusion of the abstentionist Sinn Fein MP’s from Northern Ireland , the reality is that the Tories have their own problems.

     Before the election, they were most concerned about a threat from the right in the form of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which wants to terminate the UK’s membership of the European Union (EU). Under party leader Nigel Farage, the party had succeeded in campaigning against the increasing influence of the EU over British internal affairs, thanks to the Lisbon Treaty, which was signed off by the last Labour government. It also exploited public anxieties and concerns over immigration – mostly from the EU (with its policy of freedom of movement among member states) and especially after restrictions to some former Eastern Bloc countries were lifted in the last decade as they acceded to EU membership. This too was done by the last Labour administration, and indeed, it was perceived as out of touch with the public on immigration, especially after former Prime Minister Gordon Brown had called a voter “bigoted” after she asked him questions on immigration during the general election campaign on 2010.

     Meanwhile, David Cameron of the Tories had called on his party to stop “banging on” about Europe, for even though it was the Conservatives who took Britain into what was then the European Economic Community (EEC) under Edward Heath in 1973, ever since the Maastricht Treaty which formally created the European Union, the party has struggled with divisions over the issue of whether to be a member. Indeed, those who started UKIP were former Tories like Farage who disagreed with Maastricht, which was negotiated and signed off by John Major in 1992, because they saw it as a sell-out of Britain’s sovereignty. Fast-forward to more recent times, and the issue of immigration – among others – has animated those who are “Eurosceptics” and wish to see the UK control its borders. This includes many Tory MP’s, especially those elected in 2010 and in this year, who were elected partly on the basis of getting tough on immigration and reversing the influence of the EU on Britain, especially on British laws.

The colorful pint-drinking leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), Nigel Farage, who wants to see Britain terminate its membership of the European Union. Image Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr cc

     During the last government, support for UKIP – which Cameron once dismissed as “fruitcakes, loonies, and closet racists” – increased dramatically as immigration numbers went up (despite David Cameron pledging to keep them down), as more EU laws applied to Britain, and as Britain’s participation in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) seemingly made it virtually impossible to deport foreign criminals and radical clerics.

     In the face of this and more than a few backbench rebellions over Europe, Cameron in 2013 announced that should his party win the next general election, he would seek to reform the terms of Britain’s existing membership of the EU, following which he would hold a referendum on that reformed membership by 2017. In the local elections of 2013 and the EU parliamentary elections in 2014, this did not seem to help Cameron or his party as UKIP made major gains in these elections, and in particular, topped the EU poll last year. Later on, there were two UK parliamentary defections from the Tories to UKIP, and the threat of several more as UKIP appeared to be gaining strength at the expense of the Tories heading into the general election.

     As it was, the Tories held themselves together to win the election outright – their first such election victory in 23 years – by campaigning hard on the notion that voting for UKIP would result in taking votes from the Conservatives in critical constituencies and result in Labour winning the election (or even worse, a minority Labour government at the beck-and-call of the SNP), and that only a Tory government could deliver an referendum on reformed membership of the EU.

     However, as much as that strategy worked, it masked the divisions within the party which will likely become increasingly apparent as the referendum gets closer. David Cameron, his Chancellor of the Exchequer (and potential successor) George Osborne, and many others are almost certain to campaign on a vote to keep EU membership – mostly in agreement with business interests which want unabated access to the 500-millon strong common market of the EU, but there are also others – possibly led by London Mayor Boris Johnson (another possible Tory leadership contender) – who may reject the reformed terms and campaign to terminate membership. The current refugee/migrant crisis in continental Europe may tip the balance in favor of leaving the EU because of the EU’s policy of free movement among member states.

     David Cameron may hope for a united Tory front on Europe, but this appears increasingly unlikely, and he may find himself campaigning against his own MP’s, and possibly members of the cabinet as well in a referendum campaign. Despite moving to the Right to hold things together, the issue isn’t going away for the Prime Minister, and may result in a fracturing of the Right, as is currently the case with the Left.

     In addition, there has been a sense that the Conservatives have become more “metropolitan” by supporting initiatives such as the legalization of same-sex marriage. This was an example of the influence of the Liberal Democrats in the last government, but also of the Tories themselves taking a page out of the New Labour playbook and modernizing to become more acceptable to a wider electorate (and to shake off being the “Nasty Party”). It was no wonder that David Cameron was referred to as the “heir to Blair” among some sections of the press during the early years of his leadership.

     Nevertheless, this modernization – among other things – has angered some in the more traditionalist base of the party, and threatened to detail the party’s chances of winning this year. That did not happen, but if there are further ruptures among the different factions of the party and Cameron is unable to contain them, British politics will definitely be a whole new ball game if the center is indeed, unable to hold.

     Across the Pond in the United States, politics has not entirely fractured in this way, for we still have tightly-knit two party system between the Democratic and Republican parties. But there are and have been antiestablishment undercurrents in recent years which may have an effect on the trajectory of the parties and American politics.

     Among the parallels with politics in the UK, there is a feeling that the government is not doing enough to protect the interests of ordinary people since the onslaught of the financial crisis and Great Recession, and that instead, they serve special interest groups and wealthy campaign contributors to the detriment of everyone else.

     As with Britain, the financial crisis prompted the US government – then led by Republican President George W. Bush – to spend vast sums of money bailing out banks that were deemed “too big to fail”. As the economy went into recession and hundreds of jobs were lost, the American public punished the Republicans and elected Illinois Democratic Senator Barack Obama in 2008 as the nation’s first African-American president, and strengthened his party’s command of both houses of Congress, which meant that for the first time since 1995, all elected parts of the US federal government – both houses of Congress and the White House – were controlled by the Democratic Party.

     As Obama and the Democrats went forward on stimulus spending in the hope of helping the economy to recover and not just bailing out financial institutions (mortgage companies, banks, investment houses, insurance companies, etc.), but also the American automobile industry. The President also successfully pushed through health care reform legislation (known popularly and pejoratively as "Obamacare") to achieve nearly universal health insurance coverage for all Americans.

     However, there was a backlash against what was seen as too much spending and too much bailing out, particularly on political cronies and interest groups. On the right, the Tea Party movement rose in robust reaction to President Obama’s policies and was embraced by the Republican Party, who were able to ride on a wave of anti-Obama sentiment and wrested control of the House of Representatives – though not the Senate – from the Democrats in the 2010 mid-term elections.

     Since then, the Republicans have had to contend with the antiestablishment rhetoric being turned on them, for the establishment – for all of their use of bluster and rhetoric against the Democrats – want to get things done and know that in order to do so, they have to work with the Democrats and make compromises. However, the new intake of Republicans has been in no mood to compromise. They believe they were given a strict and solid mandate to oppose Obama’s policies – not least “Obamacare” – and wanted nothing more than to bring the President down to his knees and force him to agree to their demands.

     Their opposition to Obama was based on a general and ideological belief in small government, and that Obama’s policies were increasing the size and scope of government beyond what the Founding Fathers intended when they wrote the Constitution. So they therefore saw themselves was standing up for a strict interpretation of the Constitution, which would see the federal government shrivel up to something vastly different to what it is now. In addition, there have been – as in the UK – a myriad of social issues that animate religious fundamentalists, such as abortion and same-sex marriage, and several Republicans were elected on the basis of opposing those things.

     Over time, this has manifested in government shutdowns and threats of government shutdowns as some of the more ideologically-pure Republican members refused to even support their own party’s leadership on passing budgets to fund the government and raising the debt ceiling in the hope that doing so would force Obama’s hand. None of these attempts have really succeeded in doing anything to force the President on a u-turn of his major policies, and have actually hurt the Republicans, as they have been seen as sore losers who did not accept the Obama’s victory in 2008 or his reelection in 2012. In addition, the military ban on openly homosexual soldiers has been lifted, and the Supreme Court has struck down the state-by-state bans on same-sex marriage.

     Nevertheless, this strain of Republican politics hasn’t gone away, as is obvious by the rise of real-estate developer and celebrity television host Donald Trump, who has successfully tapped into the disillusionment among grassroots Republicans who feel that the party has been inept in confronting Obama and that whole political establishment is rotten to the core. As a candidate for the Republican nomination for the presidency in next year’s general election, Trump has reignited the flames of the issue of illegal immigration as he has made controversial remarks about immigrants and questioning the long-established legality of birthright citizenship. He has also made a name by showing condescension and contempt for the establishment. In turn, he has shot up in the polls as the unexpected frontrunner for the nomination as a populist straight-talker who is not connected to the Washington establishment or the well-heeled donor class.

Controversial, outspoken, and unchained to anybody but himself, Donald Trump has emerged as the unexpected front-runner for the Republican Party's presidential nominating contest. Image Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr cc

     The result has been that established figures such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush – son and brother of two former presidents – Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and Ohio Governor John Kasich are now in single digits in most polling, with Trump and another outsider, Dr. Ben Carson, leading the pack with former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina making a recent surge thanks to an unhappy base within the party that views many in the establishment as just as bad as Obama, if not worse.  Some of them had problems with George W. Bush and his brand “compassionate conservatism”, which to them resulted in making government bigger, spending more money, running bigger deficits, and promoting immigration reform with some form of amnesty or pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants already in the country – all of which has resulted in the term “RINO’s” (Republicans In Name Only) to describe moderate or liberal Republicans.

     Meanwhile on the Democratic side, the landscape is not as fractious or acrimonious, but there are still signs of restlessness towards the establishment in the form of Hillary Clinton.

     Like the Labour Party in the UK, the Democratic Party in the US had to moderate from its more left-wing stances to become electable to an electorate that gave two landslide victories to Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, and another one to George H.W. Bush in 1988. Four years later, Arkansas Democrat Bill Clinton won the presidency and won reelection in 1996 as a “New Democrat” who was pro-business, pro-military, and deficit-conscious, while still extolling the virtues of the New Deal (which brought Social Security) and the Great Society (which brought Medicare, Medicaid, and civil rights reforms).

     But Clinton also got flak from the left flank of his party for signing anti-crime legislation which they claim has resulted in a disproportionate number of poor people and ethnic minorities going to jail and giving America the highest prisoner population among advanced economies. The liberal left has also criticized Clinton-era welfare reforms, which were made as a compromise with the Republican-controlled Congress, and have seen tougher limits on the availability of welfare benefits, which they see go against the spirit of the New Deal and the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt. On top of all this was the sense that the Democrats had gotten too close to big money and Wall Street in particular, and also supported the Bush-era wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (which were contentious issues as well against the Labour Party in Britain).

     Enter Barack Obama, who challenged President Clinton’s wife Hillary, then a US Senator from New York, for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 and won on a platform of being antiwar and took on the orthodoxy of the centrist establishment that had been running the party since the Clinton era.

     But even under Obama, some of the more strident left wing voices – while applauding him for healthcare reform and overseeing progress on LGBT rights – have criticized him for not doing enough and being too cautious in the White House with regard to poverty (especially in urban areas), taking on the criminal justice system (with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement), gun control (as his presidency has witnessed several mass shootings), more forcefully taking on banks and corporate interests, and doing something about the increasing gap between rich and poor.

     Now Hillary Clinton, who served as Obama’s first Secretary of State, is running again for the nomination, and as a person who is to the right of Obama, some grassroots Democrats looked elsewhere for a candidate who appealed to them.

     Enter Bernie Sanders, the independent, self-described “democratic socialist” senator from Vermont, who has become a serious contender for the Democratic nomination by running to the left of Clinton (and even Obama) and appealing to those who have felt left out by the more centrist establishment, in a similar fashion that Jeremy Corbyn is doing with regard to the Labour Party in the UK. So far, Clinton is still the prohibitive front-runner for the nomination, and it is expected that most Democrats will support her if she wins. However, there will likely be an expectation that she (or anybody else) takes the party in a more left-wing and “progressive” direction on a variety of issues, and effectively overturn some of the legacy of her husband’s presidency and the steps that Democrats took to become electable on a national basis.

Hillary Clinton has been feeling the "bern" because independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has electrified that left wing of the Democratic Party in his run for the presidential nomination. Image Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr cc

     But if the Left in Britain and America wishes to succeed electorally with people like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, it has a lot to prove in order to win. Most importantly in my opinion, it has to provide a definitive answer to whenever images of 1970’s malaise are shown on both sides of the Atlantic – high interest rates, stagnant economies, back-to-back strikes, energy crises, trash piling in the streets, and etc. There are many people – including members and supporters – who lived during those times and don’t remember them fondly, compared to some on the Left who look back at those days as the golden era of the Post-War Consensus (Keynesian economics, high taxes, high regulations, a generous welfare state, and in the case of Britain – nationalized industries) that had dominated transatlantic politics regardless of party since the end of World War II.

     When that consensus started coming undone by forces beyond the control of governments (i.e., globalization, the rise of competitive overseas economies, etc.) and people suffered as a result, the Left had no adequate or credible answer for the electorate, who in response, elected right-leaning governments in the form of Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the UK, who had a simple answer: government was the problem, not the solution. They successfully challenged the Post-War Consensus – saying that it resulted in the crises of the 1970’s – and pushed for a new direction of liberalized markets, less regulation, lower taxes, free trade, and shrinking the government in domestic affairs. In the process, they forged a new establishment consensus that has been in place ever since and hardly challenged.

     The Left has to challenge that consensus of our time with a credible and sustainable alternative, just as Thatcher and Reagan challenged what was the consensus in their time with something that – for better or worse – has so far outlived both of them, and has (it had to admitted) resulted in overall greater prosperity since the 1970’s on a macroeconomic level.

     Corbyn and his supporters believe that there millions of would-be voters who did not turn out last time around because Labour did not distinguish itself enough from the Tories, and that if Labour tapped into those voters and expanded the electorate, Labour will stand a chance to gain power under Corbyn. Leftist Democrats in America believe in the same thing – getting more people out and voting by being more radical and getting away from the center.

     However, just as former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once said that you have to work with the army you have, not the army you want, political parties of all persuasions have to work with the electorate they have as opposed to the electorate they wish to have. So often, people who say they will vote don’t actually vote – usually because they don’t think their votes will a difference, and even if they believe it can, they are skeptical of the party that offers sweeping change because they don’t believe that change can be delivered.

     Now to be fair, Barack Obama did manage to expand the electorate to people you had not voted before by engaging them with an inspiring vision of hope and good change for the future. At the same time however, that vision had to be a realistic one that could be bought into by moderate centrist voters, not least by some people in his own party. By doing this, he was able to assemble a broad coalition of voters which allowed him to win the Democratic nomination in 2008 and become a two-term president by winning in the North, South, East, and West.

     Some people believe that Obama has changed the trajectory of American politics to the left, and that with America’s demographic changes, the Democrats will be able to offer a more progressive and leftist vision for the country, especially at a time when the Republicans seemingly have a shrinking base and a dilemma on how to move forward in the face of that. Only time will tell.

     As for the Labour Party in the UK, it seems destined to take a left turn under Jeremy Corbyn, and the conventional wisdom is that it will not be in government again for another decade because the party has made itself unelectable with people more concerned about ideological purity than obtaining power. On the other hand, Corbyn has said that despite his personal views, he wants to see debate within the party on a variety of issues – making it more about what the membership wants rather than what he wants. So perhaps there can be an opportunity for the Blairites and other moderates within the party to have their say and influence party policy in a way that suits them, but is also agreeable to the rejuvenated left wing elements. Perhaps it is possible that Labour under Corbyn will have an inspiring and realistic vision for the UK that can unite the party and make it electable throughout Britain.

     In Scotland, the party faces a particularly difficult dilemma. It was beaten over the head by the SNP during the referendum and general election for “abandoning” its left-wing progressive principles in the pursuit of power, and lost almost everything on the basis of that rhetoric. After all, a common refrain from some former Scottish Labour voters is: “I didn’t leave Labour; Labour left me”, and “I’m not a nationalist; I’m a socialist!” But with the election of Corbyn as UK Labour leader, SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted that unless Labour quickly becomes a credible alternative to the Tories and win a UK general election, many Scots will conclude that independence is the only way to get a left-wing government.

     However, the SNP itself – despite what its most fervent supporters say – is not a socialist party. For the past 15 years or so, it has portrayed itself as a moderate social democratic party that has largely accepted the post-Thatcher consensus – so much so, that it once placed an emphasis on dropping corporate taxes to stimulate economic growth. The Nationalists attracted the support of “Middle Scotland” with popular polices such as the Council Tax freeze and “free” university tuition, and with the “Red Tory” rhetoric, has made inroads into the once dominant Labour areas of Central Scotland. But it has yet to enact anything particularly radical or redistributive with the powers already devolved to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, in which it has an outright majority, and Nicola Sturgeon knows that Scotland is not as radical as has been made out to be, and that the SNP would not be where it is without the support of politically moderate Scots.

Having served as Deputy First Minister under Alex Salmond since 2007, Nicola Sturgeon succeeded him as First Minister of Scotland and leader of the SNP following the rejection of independence by Scottish voters, but her party has enjoyed a surge of support that allowed them to win all but three of Scotland's 59 seats in the UK House of Commons. Image Credit:  Christine McIntosh via Flickr cc

     Nevertheless, her party has gained traction on the idea that progressive thinking is a hallmark of Scottish politics, while English – or rather “Westminster” – politics can be characterized as reactionary, conservative, and therefore, “un-Scottish”, which again shows the need for breaking up Britain in her world view. Kezia Dugdale, the party’s leader in Scotland (and the eighth in 15 years), knows that up to a third – if not more – of her party’s traditional voters abandoned it during the referendum and general election, and that getting a substantial number of them back will be key for Labour to win power again, both in London and Edinburgh.  For this reason, perhaps one benefit from Corbyn is that he may be able to broaden the debate and show that British politics throughout the United Kingdom can be a place for left-wing thought, and that “Westminster” is not a monolithic entity.

     At the same time, the Scottish Conservatives – under leader Ruth Davidson – have to find some way of making their party more acceptable to the people of Scotland. Once the dominant party as late as the 1950’s, they went on a gradual decline and then lost all of their MP’s in the Blair landslide of 1997, and have only had one MP since 2001. This was partly due to Margaret Thatcher and some of her more unpopular policies such as the Community Charge (Poll Tax), which was rolled out in Scotland one year before the rest of Britain, and Thatcher – even in death, and having been out of power since 1990 – has been a four-letter word there, and has become a massive liability for her party. The sooner the Scottish Tories can make people seriously think about their policies and what they can do for the people of Scotland (and put Thatcher to one side), the better chance they have of winning.

     Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats, having been reduced from over 50 MP’s to only eight at the general election, are now making overtures to moderates in the Labour Party, who may become – if they are not already – disaffected by the leftward tilt of the party, and especially if they are completely shut out of debate and discussion over the party’s future and do not see at least some moderation from the unreconstructed Bennite that is Jeremy Corbyn.

     All of this means that more coalition governments may be in store for the UK going forward as more people on the left and right vote for niche parties rather than large “broad-church” parties with various factions. Compromises will still have to be made, though not in the parties, but in government among the parties that form coalitions. This then calls into question the UK’s first past the post (FPTP) electoral system, which worked when the Tories and Labour received over 90% of the vote and the system all but guaranteed one-party governments. But the decline of the two major parties to just 65% of the national popular vote (and with the Tories able to govern the UK with just 36% of it) has prompted debate on the need for electoral reform, which I have written about.

     Perhaps this is the new normal, and that the current Tory majority will prove to be a blip in the long-term view of things, and that some form of proportional representation – whether in the Commons or Lords – will be needed. Only time will tell.

     Meanwhile in America, our two-party system is still strong, but there are significant forces on the left and right that wish to see the parties move away from the center and take on a more ideological bent. Three months ago, I could have easily predicted that Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush would be the respective nominee’s of their parties for next year. Now, I genuinely cannot tell what is going to happen.

     Indeed, the big political story in America and Britain through the last several months is that the pundits have been proven wrong on so much. Few predicted that the Tories would have an outright majority of seats in the House of Commons in May, nobody gave Jeremy Corbyn a chance at winning the Labour leadership, and the rise of Trump and Sanders was on no one’s radar until recently.

     Right now, politics is going to be interesting to watch on both sides of the Atlantic. However, I do hope for what is best for our two countries, the United States and the United Kingdom, and that for all the rhetoric that gets thrown around, the current tide of antiestablishment politics, and the frustrations of people on a variety of issues, people can have a reasonable and civil debate about the future going forward for the benefit of generations to come. Anyone who believes in our hard-fought democratic traditions ought to agree with that, and have faith that the citizenry will make the right decisions in this period of noisy discontent.