Machiavelli, liberal decline, and Britain’s selfish elite

July 11, 2019Comment and Analysis, Politics BlogBritish politics, elites, globalisation, liberal decline, Machiavelliadmin

Niccolò Machiavelli, the sixteenth century Italian political theorist, saw history as a recurring pattern of decline and renewal. This stemmed from his view of human society and human nature. Society could never have a natural unity nor could it be based on a shared understanding of the common good. Instead, Machiavelli believed that society is always divided by conflicting interests and all we can hope for is an artificial unity, attained by balancing competing social forces. However, our innate tendency towards selfishness means that we are prone to pushing our own interests too far, undermining any equilibrium that may have been achieved. At this point, decline sets in.[i]

Machiavelli’s view of history can be applied to the contemporary UK. Britain’s political settlement of the last few decades, which can be broadly defined as a commitment to liberal globalisation, is on its way out. Leave’s victory in the 2016 EU referendum is the biggest indicator of this, though we can point to UKIP’s triumph in the 2014 EU parliament election, to Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader in 2015, and to the rise of the Brexit party as further proof. It’s too soon to say what form a new political settlement will take, but the direction of travel seems to point towards greater cultural conservatism and economic protection.

Machiavelli may also help us understand why this decline has come about. In this respect, it’s important to emphasise that Britain’s political commitment to liberal globalisation wasn’t inevitable. It was neither naturally ordained nor was it the result of a societal-wide agreement. Instead, this commitment reflected the historically constituted preferences of certain social groups.

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How culture replaced economics as the main political faultline

April 1, 2019Long Reads, Politics BlogAmerican politics, Brexit, British politics, culture, Donald Trump, economicsadmin

Until recently, elections were widely seen as being won or lost on economic grounds. Yet events such as the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s election as US president have challenged this conventional outlook. These results had more to do with conservative cultural values than with material interests. Likewise, the backlash against Brexit and Trump has been mainly focused on defending liberal cultural values, not the state of the economy. How did culture become more politically salient than economics?

Some say elite interests have prompted this shift. In this view, the right has politicised culture to manoeuvre poorer citizens into backing policies that favour the rich, such as tax cuts and market deregulation. This argument has some substance. Trump’s election and Leave’s success both depended on blue collar voters, and in each instance culture was used as a tool of mobilisation and concealment.

In the US, this sort of politicking has been going on for some time. The Republican party started provoking the cultural sensitivities of working class Americans following its victory in the 1994 midterms. During this period, high-profile Republicans like Patrick Buchanan began preaching about the “war for the soul of America” and the left’s threat to “the values of faith, family, and country”. But while the party talked up the kulturkampf, its policies continued to benefit economic elites.

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Information or ideology? Why most leavers still back Brexit

March 7, 2019Comment and Analysis, Politics BlogBrexit, British politics, leavers and remainers, second referendumadmin

The British Labour party’s decision to back a second referendum has raised the hope of ardent remainers. The latter claim a “people’s vote is now inevitable” and “remain can win”.

Their optimism may simply be a matter of political manoeuvring. They may be talking up the prospect of overturning Brexit to build support for this option. However, their view of Leave’s victory in 2016 suggests they genuinely think they will prevail. Many of them believe this victory stemmed from information deficiencies. They see leave voters as being misinformed, uninformed, or both, implying that had they been exposed to more accurate information, they never would have chosen to exit the EU.

Some aspects of the Leave campaign were undoubtedly misleading. The UK doesn’t pay £350 million a week to Brussels, for instance, and Vote Leave wasn’t in a position to suggest that the money Britain saved by exiting the EU would be spent on the NHS. To say this campaign dealt in “lies and false promises” is therefore true.

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What if Brexit doesn’t happen?

February 3, 2019Comment and Analysis, Politics BlogBrexit, British politics, globalisation, leavers and remainers, People's Voteadmin

What will happen to Britain if Brexit is cancelled? According to the writer Larry Elliott, the UK will return to the status quo of the last few decades. That is, the country will revert to a regime of liberal globalisation that has mainly benefited the metropolitan middle classes. Elliott makes this prediction on the basis that no-Brexit will dampen popular “demand for deep and urgent reform” and so “the real grievances of those who voted for Brexit will be quietly forgotten”.

Those who want to overturn Brexit have said it is necessary to “address the grievances of those leave voters who were protesting about the state of our politics and economy”. This suggests that, if Brexit is stopped, a reversion to the days before June 2016 isn’t necessarily on the cards. Yet there are grounds for thinking that Elliott has a point.

While ardent remainers typically cherish the economic and cultural openness of liberal globalisation, they often fail to appreciate this phenomenon’s impact on many leave voters. Since the 1980s this form of globalisation has decimated blue collar jobs and unsettled attachments to community and place. For working class northerners and so-called Middle Englanders in particular, these changes have to varying degrees been felt as losses of livelihood, esteem and culture. And that’s not all.

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Corbyn’s contradictions: which side of Labour’s political coalition will lose?

January 20, 2019Comment and Analysis, Politics BlogBrexit, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour, second referendumadmin

Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the British Labour party, says he wants to “do far more to give a real voice to working class communities who feel they aren’t heard in politics”. He also says the EU has weakened the British working class by enabling the “wholesale importation of underpaid workers from central Europe”. Given that Corbyn is steeped in the Bennite socialist tradition, it’s fair to assume that these sentiments are genuine. After all, working class political representation and Euroscepticism are cornerstones of Bennite ideology.[i]

Corbyn’s stance is close to the preferences of working class constituencies, particularly those in the post-industrial north of England. The EU referendum shows this. Politically, many people from this background saw this vote as an opportunity to have their voices heard after decades of being ignored by mainstream politics. And economic and cultural anxieties were major factors behind their large-scale support for Brexit.

Yet despite this apparent affinity, many within the working class don’t like Corbyn. In fact, at the last general election voters from this background swung towards the Tories. A key reason for this seems to be perception. The working class tend see Corbyn as the spokesperson for a middle class, metropolitan politics that says little for their material interests and typically more conservative values. And in a way they’re right.

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What’s wrong with British democracy?

December 17, 2018Comment and Analysis, Politics BlogBritish democracy, centre ground, depoliticization, First-Past-The-Postadmin

In Britain’s referendum on EU membership 52% of voters backed leave. Only 27% of the House of Commons favoured this option. Close to 70% of Conservative constituencies chose to exit the EU. Only 44% of Conservative MPs followed suit. Around 60% of Labour constituencies came down on the side of Brexit. Only 4% of Labour MPs supported this course of action. The Brexit vote revealed a deep chasm between the British people and their representatives.

This divide didn’t emerge overnight. The Brexit vote didn’t suddenly wrench citizens and politicians apart. Commentators have been talking for decades about the growing disconnect between society and the political elite (in the UK and the west more generally). What’s more, the decision to leave the EU hasn’t suddenly healed this division. Indeed, many leave supporters see the British government’s current Brexit deal as a conspiracy to thwart the popular will.

Yet this divide does present something of a puzzle. In a representative democracy like Britain it shouldn’t exist. There should be broad alignment between the governed and the governing. That’s what representative democracy is about. Parliament is meant to mediate political differences and pass laws that are by and large in tune with society. And parties are meant to aggregate the political preferences of different social groups and implement these by winning offices of state. But this isn’t how things have turned out. What has gone wrong with British democracy?

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