That creaking sound? It’s the United Kingdom
starting to break apart
George
Monbiot
Westminster’s self-serving rule is bolstering the
cause of independence across the union. Democracy will be the winner
Illustration:
Sébastien Thibault
Illustration: Sébastien Thibault/The Guardian
Wed 5 May
2021 14.20 BST
Any
residual argument for Scotland to stay within the United Kingdom meets its
counter-argument in Boris Johnson. Westminster politics has always been the
preserve of a remote enclave, on average massively richer and more privileged
than those they claim to represent, especially in Scotland, Wales and Northern
Ireland. But now that they’re dominated by a prehensile ogre grabbing all that
his donors will give him while queues at the foodbanks lengthen, why should
anyone north of the border consent to be ruled by his insouciant decree?
We have
never been closer and never further away. Remote technologies open up our
living rooms to each other, but what we see behind the doors are different
worlds: flaking plaster in one, £800-a-roll wallpaper in another. In
Westminster, a hereditary elite treated the pandemic less as a crisis than as an
opportunity to enrich its friends. By granting unadvertised, untendered
contracts to favoured companies for essential goods and services, many of which
were either substandard or never arrived, it actively encouraged the sort of
profiteering during a national emergency portrayed in The Third Man. A number
of Harry Limes have become exceedingly rich as a result.
In
Westminster, where the emblem of parliament is a portcullis surmounted by a
crown and surrounded by chains (translation: keep out, plebs), the powers
symbolically vested in the crown are routinely abused by prime ministers. But
none, in the modern era, has exploited the absence of a codified constitution
as effectively as Johnson. Now he can choose whether or not his own failures
and excesses should be investigated. He has stuffed the House of Lords with a
bizarre assortment of cronies and creeps who owe everything to his patronage
and nothing to the electorate.
Though he
anointed himself “minister for the union” and claimed that “wild horses” would
not prevent him from visiting Scotland before tomorrow’s elections, last month
he dropped his plans to do so. He has labelled devolution a “disaster” and
“Tony Blair’s biggest mistake”. His Internal Market Act wrenches back devolved
powers from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. He has launched a challenge
before the supreme court to two Holyrood bills (on children’s rights and local
government) designed to enhance the welfare of the Scottish people. He
intervenes only to suppress.
Keir
Starmer seems scarcely interested in Scotland as anything other than an
electoral calculation – and it’s not always clear which election he’s
considering. Last month he made the weirdest campaign video I’ve ever seen in
the UK. It began with a British Airways jet landing at Edinburgh airport.
Starmer came down the steps like a visiting dignitary, mumbling “Remind me
which country this is again?”, strode around the empty airport with a phalanx
of sinister-looking men, inveighed against the lack of flights and announced
that he wanted to put economic recovery “above all else”, presumably including
life on Earth. Then, it seems, having alienated his remaining Scottish voters
and anyone under 40, he flew out again.
It was
incomprehensible, until you remember that British Airways is a touchstone and
crucial battleground for the Unite union, Labour’s biggest donor, and that
future remissions depend on the outcome of its leadership elections, for which
nominations begin tomorrow, just as Scottish voters go to the polls. In other
words, he seems to have been using Scotland as a backdrop for an entirely
different contest. That’s what Scotland is to Westminster: a backdrop.
I have long
struggled to understand the liberal enthusiasm for the UK. To me, it looks like
a mechanism for frustrating progressive change and crushing political
aspiration. The number of people in the three devolved nations who are reaching
the same conclusion is rising at astonishing speed.
In
Scotland, the three parties that favour independence (the SNP, the Greens and
Alba) are on course between them to win a clear majority this week. If
Westminster permits a second referendum, and allows it to be conducted fairly,
the likely result is the end of the union.
Until a few
years ago, Welsh independence looked like an eccentric hobby; those in favour
tended to peak at about 10%. But a poll in March showed that, of those who
expressed an opinion, 39% of Welsh people said they would vote to leave the
union. Plaid Cymru and perhaps the Greens, both of which favour independence,
should make some gains tomorrow.
Northern
Ireland’s centenary this week is almost certain to be its last. Reunification
is likely to happen slowly: it could be disastrous if rushed. But, prompted by
the chaos of Brexit and a customs border in the Irish Sea, it has begun to look
inexorable. A poll last week showed that a small majority of those with an
opinion in Northern Ireland believe reunification will happen in their
lifetimes. That creaking sound? It’s the ship of state starting to break apart.
The slow
collapse of the United Kingdom creates an opportunity in all three nations to do
things differently. An independent Scotland and Wales could cast aside the
culture of corruption enabled – perhaps necessitated – by the UK’s outrageous
campaign finance rules. They could reclaim their politics from Westminster’s
gross subversions of democracy, its royal powers and the pompous rituals
designed both to glorify and to conceal them. They could – and there are plenty
of people in both nations with this ambition – create 21st-century governments
built on proportional general elections, participatory democracy and continuous
policy adjustment, distributive economies and an ethos of public service.
The
reunification of Ireland would necessitate the political renewal of both parts
of the island. It would create a new nation, built on new constitutional
principles. It would require a massive exercise in participation, recognition
and reconciliation. We could all do with some of that.
So what
about England? At first sight the collapse of the UK leaves progressives here
with a problem: a giant Tory majority coupled with all the old dysfunctions,
untempered by the demands of the other nations. But this is our problem, and we
should face it without recourse to the princes over the border.
I don’t
believe England will address its manifold corruptions while our leaders can
carry on like colonial viceroys, governing the four nations with ever
decreasing consent. As the former nations of the UK embrace meaningful
democracy, our preposterous, antiquated system will become ever harder to
justify. It seems to me that political regeneration is impossible without the
breakup of the union. We will begin to be good only when we stop trying to be
great.
George
Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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