Politics
There are reasons to be cheerful. These are the dying days
of a rancid old order
Will Hutton
In the UK and the US, the political wind will soon change in
favour of those demanding good government
Sun 11 Aug 2019 05.59 BST
Don’t despair. We may be living through an attempted
rightwing revolution, but its foundations are rotten. There may be a
counter-revolution, as there is after every revolution, and it will be built on
much firmer ground. The charlatans may be in control in both Britain and the
US, but their time is limited. Their programmes are self-defeating and
destructive and they do not speak to the dynamic and increasingly ascendant
forces in both our societies.
What has happened in the US after the atrocities in El Paso
and Dayton is instructive. It is a tipping point. The National Rifle
Association may tell Donald Trump repeatedly that any attempt at gun control
will not fly with his political base, but Trump can read the runes. For the Republicans to become the party in
de facto defence of what has suddenly become crystallised as white supremacist
terrorism would be electoral suicide. The president has to move, not
least because, faced with this reality, even his base is shifting. Too many
Americans now fear becoming the victims of random murder.
Few can dispute that, astonishingly, while the US has 5% of
the world’s population, it has 35%-50% of civilian gun ownership, a trend that
simply has to be reversed. Within a decade, I am sure, the debate will move on,
as white supremacists continue their killing spree, from hardening background
checks to debating the constitutional right to bear arms. This must and will
happen and it will highlight the marginalisation of rightwing republicanism.
And when the political wind changes in the US, it also changes in Britain.
Trump in the US and Boris Johnson in the UK are the extreme
culmination of what Reagan and Thatcher began 40 years ago. It started as a legitimate if contestable desire
to reframe the postwar settlement, limit the state, promote business and
individual self-reliance. But as the great political scientist Samuel Beer
famously argued, it was, paradoxically, supported culturally by the
individualism, anti-state instincts and nonconformism of the Woodstock
generation.
Forty years on, continued rightwing political ascendancy has
morphed into today’s menacing rightwing ideologies. The role of US
republicanism as the libertarian champion of guns is matched by the descent of
the Conservative party into English nationalism, with a no-deal Brexit as its
talismanic policy, even if it means breaking up the UK. But a no-deal Brexit will become an inflection
point for a parallel fightback in Britain. The devastating economic and
political consequences – a long recession, a broken housing market, collapsed
sterling, chronically unfair trade deals – will inevitably raise the question
of how it ever happened. Suddenly, the British constitution, the long sleeper
issue in British politics, will become the new political battleground.
Britain is almost alone in having no written constitution. Whoever commands a majority in the House
of Commons can do what they like without constitutional constraint – hold a
referendum transforming Britain’s treaty obligations with no requirement for a
super-majority or ignore a no-confidence vote in the House of Commons for long enough
to deliver a no-deal Brexit. The constitution does empower the monarch
to assert fair play and the pubic interest, but a non-elected head of state can
never actually act.
This is no longer
sustainable. We needed the Queen to insist that a referendum as important as
that on EU membership required a super-majority; we will need her to sack Boris
Johnson if he tries to stay in office after losing a no-confidence vote or to
time a general election for after 31 October, so bypassing the Commons to
effect a no-deal Brexit. But she knows she can only act politically
once. If she sacks Johnson she makes enemies of the English nationalists; if
she doesn’t, she makes enemies of everyone else. Either way, her legitimacy is
ruined. Only an elected head of state has the legitimacy to hold the ring at
times like these – facing electoral consequences if they get it wrong.
The case for the EU will be as an agent for
Europe-wide sustainability
The question of how we want to be governed is no longer
abstract: it goes to the heart of giant new cultural forces that want good
government. The generations championing individualistic hedonism and social
atomisation – the unwitting cultural accomplices of the right – are being
succeeded by the Extinction Rebellion generation who are rediscovering
collectivism. As the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last week
spelled out, how we all collectively behave, in particular the food we consume,
will be crucial in determining the future of life. Livestock are
environmentally dangerous. Around the world, there is a boom in substitutes for
meat, as consumers switch to plant-based diets – including 39% of US consumers.
Nor is it just eating. Decisions on everything from the use
of plastics to the frequency of flying have a collective and awesome impact on
everyone, particularly those young enough to expect to see the end of the
century.
Companies are
finding their record on sustainability is under the microscope as never before.
Whether public utilities or global multinationals in the fossil fuel or food
businesses, no one escapes the new requirement to do business sustainably. This
dynamic is driving the imperative to reshape capitalism around stakeholder
principles.
But only so much
can come from pressure from below: governments must act from above and how we
are governed is moving to the centre of the political debate. Wise and activist
government – checked, balanced, accountable, sufficiently federal to
accommodate the demands of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and serviced by
an impartial civil service – is going to be crucial in creating a greener
society, a reformed capitalism and reduction of disfiguring inequalities.
The need for such
governance will extend internationally. The case for the EU will increasingly
be as an agent for Europe-wide sustainability: the ESU – European Sustainable
Union. Its actions will become the global standard-setter for the
environment. If we leave the EU, at the heart of the case for rejoining will be
the need to make the greening of our continent a common cause.
So don’t despair. The no-deal Brexiters do not have the
force behind them, any more than does Trump. They are losers, on the wrong side
of history. Better people will enter politics. Old parties will be rejuvenated:
new ones take life. There will be a counter-revolution – it’s already in the
making.
• Will Hutton is an Observer columnist
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