The end of Britain/the end of democracy?

In 1999, the conservative commentator Peter Hitchens published a book called 'The Abolition of Britain' that described the constitutional changes taking place under Tony Blair's first government as a 'slow motion coup d'état'. 

I haven't read the book myself, but the theme and title come to mind now that it seems clear that Brexit will only happen in name only, if at all. The Establishment forces have been organising for two years now, and they have just about made it. When the Irish government and the EU in concert work to exercise a veto over British constitutional arrangements and the British Establishment shrugs its shoulders or eggs them on as they have been, the game would seem to be up. 

The idea that a 'hard border' on the island of Ireland as a result of Brexit will somehow 'cause' violence to break out is a political device invented by politicians and spin doctors. It is an assertion which serves a crucial political purpose (as well as stamping all over any serious notions of causality and agency). 

Sinn Fein is certainly using the issue to stir up trouble, with Leo Varadkar's government a happy accomplice, but from what I have seen and heard there is no desire from the ex-IRA to go back to shooting and bombing people. Rather, the EU together with the Irish government and anti-Brexit campaigners have been using the IRA as a silent threat to influence public - and political - opinion in Britain. You might say they have been employing the IRA as their armed wing - in the name of peace.

(We could even call this the first instance of an EU Army being used, even if it is an old terrorist army that doesn't officially exist anymore.)

I don't see much point in getting too angry about this. This is political power in operation. Everything about the anti-Brexit movement, from their concerted and successful efforts to dominate the airwaves to their work in Parliament and Whitehall - has screamed political power. The winners get to describe what is happening and what happened and what will happen, and that is the case now. It only goes to show how much they want to keep Britain in the EU and unable to control its own destiny as a sovereign democracy.

The question is: what next? Things will never be the same again, that is for sure. I certainly have no crystal ball, but a few thoughts have been leaping to mind (with the emphasis on 'leaping'), including the following:

  1. This is the end of British democracy; 
  2. This is the end of the United Kingdom as a notionally independent state; and
  3. This will give a big push to renewed independence efforts, c.f. what has happened with the SNP in Scotland.

I wouldn't say any of those things with any certainty, but I think they are worth reflecting on.

On the first question, there is no such thing as a perfect democracy, and the United Kingdom has never been that. What the anti-Brexit efforts have shown is that our elites are alive and well and aren't willing to let democracy prevail if it doesn't match their own wishes and interests. On one level you could say, 'fair enough' to them - though it'd be nice if they didn't disguise their own will and preference behind ideas of absolute, rational good for everyone. 

When I was thinking about this the other day, it brought to mind an essay by a Bulgarian political scientist called Ivan Krastev. In this essay, written well before Brexit, Krastev wrote "Elites approach elections as opportunities for manipulating the people rather than listening to them (Big Data makes voting marginal as a source of feedback)."

But with the EU referendum vote, they struggled to do that. The question asked, Leave or Remain, went beyond our normal 'managed democracy' into the realm of existentials, asking us a fundamental question about who we are and where we see our destiny. The likes of David Cameron, George Osborne, Tony Blair and Nick Clegg did their best to manage us, but we got away from them, just.

Not for long though. It looks as though will have to get back in our box again. But how long until we pop out again? What organisations will appear looking to renew this democratic revolution of sorts?

We will have to wait and see (and get busy).

Comments

  1. Da3 May 2018 at 19:53

    Abolished in more ways than one... open borders was always about making democratic politics impossible

    White British children in British primary schools:

    Coventry 49%
    Bedford 49%
    Bradford 47%
    Blackburn: 47%
    Wolverhampton 46%
    Nottingham 46%
    Reading 44%
    Sandwell 43%
    Manchester 37%
    Birmingham 31%
    Leicester 29%
    London 26%
    Luton 21%
    Slough: 16%

    ReplyDelete
  2. henry the fifth9 June 2018 at 08:58

    Interesting. I read somewhere about how Brexit is highlighting the constitutional issue of whether Parliament is sovereign or "the people". Those arguing that the Referendum was "advisory" are clearly in the first camp, along with those MP's and Lords who think they know better than the "people"....which means they are no longer our representatives.
    I think it depends on how Brexit turns out. The more hostile the EU appears the more entrenched Leavers will be...if the Govt cant spin the humiliation of kow towing to the EU as a positive result for Britain you might see a revival of UKIP and English nationalism. Your guess is as good as mine though.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

All comments, however critical, will be accepted as long as they are not personal and/or abusive.

Popular posts from this blog

Schopenhauer on Hegel: "A flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan."

There's nothing like a good insult or two, and if you're looking for insults in philosophy, you need look no further than Arthur Schopenhauer's comments on his German contemporary, the much more popular and successful Friedrich Hegel.  Schopenhauer suggested as a motto of Hegel’s philosophy some words of Shakespeare: ‘s uch stuff as madmen tongue and brain not’. He added : " Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan, who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. This nonsense has been noisily proclaimed as immortal wisdom by mercenary followers and readily accepted as such by all fools, who thus joined into as perfect a chorus of admiration as had ever been heard before. The extensive field of spiritual influence with which Hegel was furnished by those in power has enabled him to ac
Read more

Why Islamists and feminists avoid confronting each other

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of our system of diversity is the way feminists and Islamists avoid directly confronting each other. Their ideologies are utterly opposed to each other, but within the system they are allies, so maintain distance and attack others. We can see this in how feminists resolutely avoid picking up on specifically Islamic-related instances of actual misogyny and discrimination in action. They nearly always stick to generalities and abstractions about the world or society as a whole, as Fawcett Society chief executive Sam Smethers does in telling Owen Jones that , “We have a very misogynistic culture in the UK.” In this version of reality, there is a single culture – or at least all the cultures we have come from the same root - and it is ‘very misogynistic’. This is the ‘patriarchy’ theory that is remarkably popular in the upper echelons of the liberal-left, just as it is among young feminists coming out of their Gender Studies courses at universit
Read more

Immigration: our public debate misses the main point

Our public debate on immigration in Britain almost always focuses entirely on money and thereby misses the main point, a point that our political-media class finds difficult to deal with and that many regard as almost illegitimate. This is how people feel . It is emblematic of the state of democracy in Britain that any sort of negative opinions about immigration routinely get shouted down and lambasted as ‘wrong’ by the siren voices of people and institutions, most of which are on the supposedly ‘liberal-left’ side of politics. It is particularly disturbing the way that anyone who talks about negative effects of immigration is routinely attacked (often by hordes of lefty people on Twitter) as ‘racist’. These voices have a huge and in my view poisonous impact on the debate, forcing anyone who wants to make some nuanced points about immigration and identity into defending themselves against charges of racism, which is well established as one of the the worst offences one
Read more