Not long ago you may remember there was a vote in the United Kingdom. Nothing too significant, just a general election. That is, the system by which we elect local party members to parliament who, if a sufficient majority of voters agree, form a government that will represent the popular mood of the electorate. This is often referred to as democracy, in one of its many guises, as it ostensibly establishes a direct connection between the needs of the population and those who govern it on their behalf; in contrast to, say, an oligarchy, or a monarchy, or a theocracy, or at any rate a system where a governing class serves only the special interests of a certain group or class of people. The ‘will of the people’, or something similar, is often invoked by such ceremonial governments to reinforce the illusion that the power for change is contained within the suffering masses, that democracy is alive and well; and is in safe hands. As Orwell noted, ‘in the case of the word democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides.’
The recent general election was won by the Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer, who said: “we can see that the British people have voted to turn the page on 14 years.” Democracy! “A changed Labour party ready to serve our country. Ready to restore Britain to the service of” – you guessed it! – “working people.” The British people, working or not, for anyone wondering, means 34% of the 52% adults who voted. And in this version of democracy – the oldest in the world, you may have heard – such a pathetic share of the votes is enough, on this occasion, to give 411 seats in parliament, a majority of 172. (On other occasions the same vote share can result in enormous losses.) In the post-1688 form of the British-Constitution-that-doesn’t-really-exist (in which a political compromise was made by landed men, in their own interests, to transfer the power of an absolute monarch to the ‘elected democracy’ of parliament) what this means is almost total control of the political system.
This alone might go some way to explain why there was such a pungent apathy towards the recent election. It is democracy as defined by those who dispense it, the result of a glacial ceding of rights from above over centuries (always to appease the volatile middle classes against an antagonistic working class movement) rather than their growth from the nutrient-rich ground of popular struggle: you can vote for whomever you like, but only one of two parties can win. That’s the way it has always been, so that’s democracy. Granted, in the days before the Americanisation of the British system, a vote cast was for a local representative, not a party; but any doubts that we now vote for primarily for parties and leaders rather than members, already on their way out since Blair, departed for good when Johnson arrived.
But this can’t explain everything. As Rachel Cunliffe notes in The New Statesman, “people may complain about first-past-the-post – but everyone knew the rules”, arguing that the political parties whose voter share to seat ratio was wildly disproportionate (such as Farage’s Reform Party and the Greens) should have been more savvy and “focused on making the party electable under the current system.” This is merely a truism. “If you want to do well, play by our rules.” Moreover, it assumes that political opinions should be dictated and dispensed from above rather than arising organically from the needs of popular movements below. It also suggests
(the not entirely untrue notion in the age of the consumer) that political views are little more than a product, susceptible to the whims of the market and the influence of a good advertising campaign. Thus when Keir Starmer emphasises his ‘stability and moderation’ and promises his government will “end the era of noisy performance [and] tread more lightly on your lives”, he is asserting his duty as a politician to give you, the faithful 32%, exactly what you want and need. Never mind the impending climate crisis and the extinction of our species; forget about the millions of children across the country falling into poverty, going hungry; ease your mind about workers’ rights and the continued destruction of communities in the name of economic growth and efficiency. Have faith in Father Keir and His Politicians. Trust in Moderation and Stability.
It is true that what Cuncliffe calls this “monstrously unfair” system (you might even say “undemocratic”) has in the past produced moments of genuine optimism: the postwar government of Atlee and Bevan; the Thatcher years; whatever Blair was. On those occasions the feeling is that, owing to the potentially totalitarian nature of our political system, change is possible. The Atlee government was going to produce the egalitarian society that the solidarity of the war years had fostered; Thatcher’s Britain offered freedom and opportunity, and a damn good time, to anyone willing to work hard; Blair would usher in the new post-Cold War Utopia that Francis Fukuyama promised.
But as Kenneth O. Morgan’s study Britain Since 1945 shows, each wave of optimism is followed by general disappointment; and we read a history in which the two political parties (the only two worth voting for, remember) gradually coalesce to form little more than two wings of the same establishment, making concessions to the middle classes to preserve the networks of class and privilege on which our representative democracy is built. Rather, meaningful progress comes in spite of this system, not as a direct result of it. Universal suffrage, workers’ rights, the welfare state, a minimum wage, national healthcare, the right to strike: all are the result of generations of political activism against the better interests of the entrenched class ideology. And each victory stripped away a layer of power which, once gone, could never be returned. Thus, for example, despite years of Tory rule after the Atlee government, they could not justify renationalisation, or the stripping back of the welfare state, or the restriction of union rights.
Neoliberalism
Since the late 1970s this consensus has been grounded in neoliberal ideology. As David Harvey outlines in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, a ‘coup by the financial institutions’ in the west, particularly in the US and UK, led to the destruction of the working class movements that had flourished over the previous century. In the UK this was followed by the privatisation of almost every aspect of life and the opening up of the country to foreign competition and investment at the expense of traditional British industry. Communities were wiped out to make way for the age of the individual, of consumerism, and the new ‘debt culture’ brilliantly epitomised by Martin Amis in his novel Money.
Thatcher, Harvey writes, “forged consent through the cultivation of a middle class that relished the joys of home ownership, private property, individualism, and the liberation of entrepreneurial opportunities… middle class values spread to encompass many of those who had once had a firm working-class identity.” A momentous shift towards greater social inequality followed, along with “the restoration of economic power to the upper class”. But class power had “not so much been restored to any traditional sector but rather had gathered extensively around one of the key global centres of financial operations.” Political systems will represent the interests of those they serve. In a popular democracy these are working people. Since the neoliberal assault on our institutions, this has been financial institutions and corporate power. This has created institutional structures “that tangled subsequent politicians in a web of constraints from which they could not easily escape”. And subsequent leaders, no matter how well-intentioned they were as individuals (or not, the individual is irrelevant), “could do little more than continue the good work of neoliberalisation, whether they liked it or not.”
This is the broader context in which the feeling towards the recent general election should be analysed. For forty years enormous amounts of wealth have shifted from the bottom 95% to the top 1% (trickle down economics does work if you look at it the right way round, I guess). Along with this trend, the unions in the UK have become the least free in the ‘democratic’ world; workers’ rights have diminished; wages have decreased and rents have increased; landlords have become more powerful as the position of the tenant becomes more tenuous; house prices are out of reach for most working people; council housing is decades behind yet rents are unaffordable for many; food banks use is growing; record numbers of children are living in poverty. Not only that, but much of the work being done in the neoliberal economy is, as David Graeber put it in his titular book, ‘bullshit’. That is, most of societal work is pointless and even psychologically destructive when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth. A result of the advance of automation which has led to mass unemployment masked by ‘dummy jobs that are effectively made up’ and supported by ‘a combination of political pressure from both left and right, a deeply held popular feeling that paid employment alone can make one a full moral person, and finally, a fear on the part of the upper classes, already noted by George Orwell in 1933, of what the laboring masses might get up to if they had too much time on their hands.’
Not much change
The result of all this is the lowest voter turnout since universal suffrage. Outside of corporate class interests ‘change’ is a mere illusion, a marketing gimmick that has been used once too often. So, when Andrew Marr writes about the “new political era” in the New Statesman, probably sincere in the belief that he is an independent, free-thinking individual, he really means it. From the perspective of the mainstream media, a member of the corporate class, it means something new to write about, and it really is a change from the pornography of the recent governments.
But to the average person the difference is essentially negligible. It means more
pseudo-fascistic talk about immigration and security and patriotism and the working people, and probably something about the need to increase defence spending. And when genuine popular movements do arise and begin to influence the establishment, such as the case with Corbyn, they are beaten down by those same class interests; or when the left behind masses find an outlet in charlatans like Johnson and Farage, it is they who are belittled and marginalised, and told by politicians and journalists that what they really need is ‘stability and moderation’.
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