As a child I remember my Mum warning me and the adults, “No politics and no religion” before any family gathering. Our house isn’t like that. We encourage our kids to know what’s happening and to have opinions. Accordingly, my children have become heavily engaged in the Brexit debate, angrily citing their lack of a vote in the referendum which will have a far greater impact on their future than the older electorate. They’re right. Never mind the economic uncertainty or the impact upon the perception of their country (and by implication of them) from European friends and neighbours, never before have a generation had a form of rights and citizenship removed from them following a democratic vote by others. They instinctively know the big global problems facing theirs and the next generation – climate change; the economic power shift from West to East and North to South; increased mechanisation in an data and processing age; and resulting migration of peoples and work – cannot be solved unilaterally and yet their country is relegating itself (and them) from the global Premier League after suffering a socio-political psychiatric episode. Their values and sense of place are so far removed from those of Farage & Co it is as if they live in a different time or world.
Which got me reflecting. In many ways, they do.
At the next UK General election my 19 year old son will be offered essentially the same binary choice that his great-Grandparents faced in the historic 1945 General Election, when they voted for the first time. It’s a choice between a Government led by a right wing imperialist Tory Party or a left-wing big State Labour Party. Both intend standing on pro-Brexit tickets, backing the “will of the people” as expressed in the 2016 referendum when for every 17 people who voted for a multitude of reasons to leave the EU, 16 voted to stay.
The 16 out of 17 still don’t have a national leadership – unless your post-rationalism extends to believing the Lib Dems and SNP/Plaid/Green alliance will sweep to a majority. Rationally, new political parties would form with both main parties deeply divided. A natural alliance of small “l” social and economic liberals with a focus on internationalism, the environment and broadening democratic accountability by further devolution should be emerging but so far it isn’t – at least not publically. Confined by a polarising electoral system, memories of the failed SDP experiment in the 1980’s and divided by tribalism the irrational situation lumbers on. The strongest rumours centre on Tony Blair and serve mostly to highlight how unlikely, in the short term, a third-way party is… Labour and Tory Remainers’ separated by their contrasting views of Thatcher and Blair – the Tories admire both whilst most Labourites continue to hate both almost equally.
1945 to 2045
If change doesn’t happen soon it is plausible that my son’s children will still be faced with a version of this binary choice when they vote for the first time, possibly around 2045 – a century after their great-great grandparents first went to the ballot box. Reflect on that for a second. If someone had said to my grandparents in 1945, “I know you’ve read Beveridge. I know you like what Nye Bevan has been trying up the road in Tredegar around free community health. I know all of that stuff. But come on, this election, like all of before those in living memory is essentially about the Corn Laws…” they’d have got a very short and choice answer. And yet, the world will have changed arguable far more between 1945 and 2045 than it did even during the previous century but we’re still gearing up to offer the same narrow, binary political choices in pretty much the same system. That’s absurd.
The change has to start at some point and somewhere. My sense is that the change is already happening and a huge political storm is coming, with those of us who are engaged in the system currently sitting oblivious in the calm eye of the coming storm.
The political climate change started some time back. There were three political events in my youth that started conversations in schools that helped shape my generations values that provided a different perspective from our parents:
- The Miner’s strike ended the old world, acutely felt growing up in a New Town in South Wales
- Band Aid and Live Aid got all of us running to Feed The World, starving children being our problem as well.
- Footage of Apartheid on the news every night set a humanitarian boundary.
This combined with wider socio-political factors, for example:
- the end of the 11 Plus exams allowing more of us to go to further and higher education and leave our tribal homelands;
- at least knowing people who went to foreign places on their holidays; and
- more people who came from somewhere else and looked a bit different living amongst us (even Cwmbran had some Vietnamese boat people and the odd black family who’d been relocated from Cardiff)
Our sense of our globe being closer and smaller was profound. Not everyone agreed about the outcome of these issues but the discussions – the resonance and tone taken – shaped a divide with the clear majority taking a liberal, humanitarian, global view of what our futures should be based upon and what Britain’s role in shaping a world should be.
Our kids, whether their parents vote Labour, Tory or tactically took on these values. “Oo, he’s a bit UKIP” is their shorthand for creepy racists and paedophiles. Homophobia seems absurd, as my daughter’s class have sleep overs to watch the final of “Rue Paul’s Drag Race”. If Britain really was the 52nd State then it would have overwhelmingly voted Democrat and saved America from itself.
Politics has got more three dimensional with a horizontal economic axis wrapped around a vertical liberal scale, like a magnet keeping the thing spinning, powered by polar opposite values. Where you sit on this political sphere is less fixed by place and dependent upon the big issue under consideration – the reason why after more than 30 years in a social-democratic party I found myself having more in common with the leader of the German CDU on Brexit than the leader of the Labour Party; and on migration than some trade union colleagues. It’s also part of why the older generation of tribalists, even more rooted in the eye of the storm than I am, seem to sound more alike the louder they shout at each other.
New natural alliances will inevitably emerge and have already formed in classrooms, churches, social clubs. The change will, if those at the eye of the storm don’t wake up and realise what is going on, hit hard – sweeping them away.
This could be terrifying and devastating. At time of uncertainty, when the state is failing in its core purpose of making citizens feel safe and secure, populist forces can easily drive the storm. It could be that only from devastation can new systems be built.
Or I could be that if socio-political climate change is recognised and enough of those near the eye of storm come together and prepare for the storm, its effects can be minimised and new, better, more secure models put in place once the populist storm has passed – the next generation dong the heavy work around the rebuilding founded upon their values and world view rather than one built in the 1800’s. Recent Olympics and football World Cups have used technology to moderate and divert weather fronts. Maybe, by being brave and coming together the worst of the coming political storm can also be moderated or diverted. Emotionally charged storms can be rationally defused.
This option isn’t easy or necessarily immediately optimistic – but Beveridge and the new world offered in 1945 couldn’t have become a reality without the upheaval and horror that proceeded it. Brexit should be a final act of self-harm from a country that has been deluding itself since 1945. No-one need die in the devastation this time around but don’t waste your energies shouting at the storm or trying to defend the current systems and structures. That way you may even be feeding the beast.
Whatever it eventually looks like, change is coming.
LOOKING UP! 