After the UK election, establishment commentators like Andrew Marr were talking about ten years of Starmer government. Content with the apparent resumption of normal service, they have dispensed with whatever critical faculties they once had.
Starmer was elected on the flimsiest of prospectuses. Barely a fifth of the population of England voted Labour and the party offered little more than a one word slogan as its programme for government. And since Rachel Reeves has outlined her spending plans, we’ve discovered that the change they’re going to deliver is change for the worse, especially if you’re a pensioner living in Scotland.
The real problem for Labour is that the UK can’t be changed by repeating incantations. You can’t just keep saying ‘change’ and hope for the best. The economic situation is dire and spending cuts will make the long term issues connected to lack of investment in infrastructure even worse. And that will only continue the cycle.
Decades of mismanagement have led to the UK having some of the worst levels of regional and personal inequality in the developed world. The tensions which that creates are almost guaranteed to result in the kind of scenes we have witnessed in England in the last week. There is simmering resentment about the way in which communities have been left to decay. On top of which there is the ongoing issue of England still not able to deal with its status as a former imperial power. These ingredients combine to make a situation which is never far from boiling over.
The concern is that Labour won’t be able to contain the problem because they aren’t capable of addressing the underlining issues that caused it in the first place. Until they do we will continue to see disorder in England. This coupled with the extreme volatility which is characteristic of politics in the UK means there is potential for a surge to the right. When the government is in power with such little popular support we could be in for a very unstable period.
Scotland decided in 2014 to continue with the present arrangement. Ten years on it’s increasingly clear that was a major mistake. The UK offers instability and disorder. We are cut off from our neighbours in the EU, we face even more austerity and the UK plans to plunder our resources. There’s a way out and we can still take it.