ShareThis
~ “ There is a world of the citizens and a world of the politicians and parties, and the interaction between them steadily diminishes. Citizens change from participants into spectators, while the elites win more and more space to pursue their own particular interests.” ~ Peter Mair, 2013
~ “It’s far easier to view Scottish independence as Alex Salmond’s personal obsession and his party’s landslide majority in 2011 as a form of mass hypnosis. It’s not so easy to regard the plodding Scots as a revolutionary vanguard destined to challenge Britain’s centralized, class-riven, unequal society. But who else will? “ ~ Lesley Riddoch, 2013
~ “The Scots supported Salmond because he seemed the most capable person for the job. They responded because he emphasized the positive qualities of Scotland and talked up the prospects of the country at a time when the opposition were warning Scots their country could not be economically viable without English subsidies.” ~ Iain Macwhirter, 2013
~ “Another wave of uncontrolled immigration comes from the EU. Yet the political class tells us the EU is good for the UK. A gulf has been opened between the ruling elite and the public. Because they must all follow Brussels diktats, the establishment parties are so similar voters have no real choice.” ~ U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) Manifesto, 2014
~ “A large number of voters want to see more powers devolved to the Scottish Parliament. If Scotland is to stay in the UK in the longer term with the majority of people content with the constitutional arrangement, something needs to be done to meet these aspirations.” ~ Gavin McCrone, 2014
I am currently in the U.K. visiting family and catching up with friends. It’s a good time to gauge the public mood and how society is faring, now that ostensibly the economy is picking up. It is particularly poignant right now following the political earthquake of last week’s European and UK elections. In almost every country in the European Union, and the U.K. is no exception, extreme right-wing populist parties with strong nationalist, anti-immigration agendas made massive gains in the European Parliamentary elections. And ever sharper tremors are being set off by the impending September referendum when Scotland votes to decide on independence from the UK after a union of over three hundred years. In Europe, political establishments – having remained aloof and insulated for years – are being tested as never before.
Key Questions : Like me, you may well be wondering what underlying forces are driving these potentially wrenching changes? Are they more fundamental or simply a passing mood – an angst heightened by the past decade of economic turmoil and political insecurity since 9/11 and the 2009 Great Crash? Europe – and notably the UK – is a long-standing major U.S. trading partner with whom Americans share deep cultural and political ties. How will major changes in Europe affect America? Do they mirror similar mood and changes in our own society?
Paths of Change – Economic Forces: Back here in Europe and in Britain, where I grew up, you sense strong lingering popular uncertainty and insecurity about the future. Even more than in America, the 2009 Great Recession cut a deep swath of high unemployment, achingly slow recovery, and mounting debt caused by stringent austerity including massive cuts in public spending. Ominously, the main source of sudden resurgent growth in 2014 has been a new housing market boom – raising strong concerns about another boom-bust cycle. As in America, this comes on top of rising inequality, greater concentration of wealth, reduced opportunities caused in good part lessened access to key public services, notably education since the 1980s. Recent reports document how, in the UK, a highly selective, underfunded public education system has added to inequality by reducing life chances of second-tier secondary schools’ students, compared to elitist grammar schools given priority by the current U.K. government. Meanwhile, more egalitarian comprehensive schools give more equal access substantially reducing inequality. In Europe, notably in France and U.K., but not in Germany and Italy, increased immigration is helping grow the working population and the tax base needed to finance long-term future public services and social benefits.
Since the 1980s, Scotland’s economy has strengthened greatly overall, due to the rise of oil and gas, electronics and finance, but with continued inequality and regional disparities. Scottish incomes are still well below those of London and the South-East of England, which have benefitted from U.K. tax policies favoring financial services, defense and other service industries. Scotland has lagged behind in terms of enterprise start-ups, despite world class universities, and unemployment remains high. These are key challenges the SNP white paper for independence lays out programs to address.
Paths of Change – Political Forces : Since the 1980s and the Thatcher “free market” reforms, there has been a growing divergence in political philosophy between Scotland and England. Scotland has its own distinct education and healthcare systems, based upon predominantly state-run schools schools with a tradition of high quality free education. In healthcare, Scotland has resisted the efforts by both Labour and Conservative governments to introduce greater private provision of services. Since the devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament from 1999, and particularly since the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) won a landslide in 2011, Scottish government policies have diverged substantially from those in England led by the Conservative/Lib-Dem coalition. Where the latter has championed austerity policies that have slashed public services, Scotland has pursued an opposite course. The lack of Scottish Parliament control over welfare reform has caused considerable distress to Scots who have been widely impacted. The Conservative Party today has barely ten per cent representation in Scotland, where the majority SNP and Labour combined have over 80%. This reinforces Scottish sentiment that unpopular policies are being imposed from outside.
The combined forces of prolonged recession, high unemployment, job insecurity, stagnating wages, and increased immigration have given rise to a strong political backlash across Europe against all establishment political parties. In the UK, this was most vividly shown by the sudden wave of success of the outsider United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in last week’s UK elections. UKIP topped polls in European Parliament elections, taking over a quarter of the vote, pushing the two largest establishment parties into second and third. UKIP will now have the single largest group of MEPs in Strasbourg – the Parliament’s seat. As the quote above shows, UKIP ran on a platform of economic and cultural nationalism – severely restricting immigration, taking back public policy control from the EU. By overtly endorsing ending multiculturalism and stoking fears aimed at immigrants, especially Muslims, and gays, UKIP is appealing to an increasing number of Brits who feel deeply economically insecure as well as ones with reactionary views. Beyond that, many UKIP voters are expressing deep dissatisfaction with the two main establishment parties and their inability to address the country’s economic challenges. UKIP is not alone in Europe in having rapidly rising success with an anti-Europe, anti-establishment, extreme nationalist – even racist – agenda. UKIP leads a block of right-wing EU parties with similar goals and messages. In a very real sense, prolonged austerity and recession have heightened feelings of personal insecurity and lack of trust in government.
Scotland : Devolution or Independence? In Scotland, as it prepares for the September referendum on independence, polls show a narrowing gap between the No and Yes votes. In April 2014, only 56% of Scots said they wold vote No while fully 46% would vote Yes. Even though this till gives the Better Together forces a lead, it is much reduced from before. Both major political parties have since turned on the screws, raising the stakes in event of Scots declaring for independence from Britain. The Chancellor of the Exchequer , George Osborne, has said Scotland could not stay within the pound sterling currency. Similarly tough negotiations would have to be held between Scotland and the UK government over division of oil and gas rights and revenues, and of the national debt. In a sign that the EU establishment elites are ganging up against the SNP, top EU officials have said Scotland could not apply to join the EU in its own right. On the other hand, UK Treasury officials have been sent recently to assure Scots they would be £1400 a year better off staying in the UK. That compares with the £1000 better-off the SNP says Scots would be with independence. But the basis for both claims are unclear!
Political Establishments Caught Off Guard? The strength of pro-independence sentiment seems to have taken the UK political establishment by surprise, just as the surge in UKIP popularity inside the rest of the UK has done. So far, the UK political elite’s response appears to be overwhelmingly defensive – reflecting a state of deep denial, or at the least detachment, over the insecurities and concerns of a sizable and growing number of Brits. While many academic and media papers have been written about the challenge of Scottish independence offering detailed proposals for greater devolution – such as Gavin McCone’s quote above – little concerted attention has been paid by either the UK Government or the two major parties. In effect, they have no concrete proposals for greater devolution of political power that might meet Scottish aspirations.
The current coalition government is deeply unpopular in Britain because of its harsh austerity policies and the increasing perception that, if made permanent, they will further aggravate poverty, inequality and division in British society. Yet it has made little effort to rethink its approach in the interests of greater social harmony and stability. In some parts of Britain, massive cuts to welfare payments have already removed over 60% of poor women and children from benefit. This together with reduced education and health care access risks further exacerbating long term inequality. A sad irony is that the major base for UKIP support – and for Scottish independence too! – has been the poorer regions of the West and North of England and Wales, and impoverished inner cities and urban areas in Scotland. As British journalist Iain Macwhirter, himself a Scot, says – see above quote – SNP leader Alex Salmond’s support comes as much from giving Scots a strong positive outlook for them and their future. This clearly both major parties have failed so far to do – even Labour which is still strong in Scotland.
Lib-Dems Impending Flame-Out : A further sad irony is that, by joining the coalition government with the Conservatives in 2010, the Liberal Democrat Party (LDP) which in the past was the UK’s most staunchly pro-European and public service modernization party, has lost credibility massively with the British electorate. In the process, no independent political voice is now present to make the important positive case for active and full British membership in the EU. The LDP took the biggest shellacking of any major party in last week’s election. Much was due to a widespread perception it had betrayed its core values and policies by staying in coalition with a Conservative Party that has adopted radical pro-market policies and drastic spending cuts in areas such as education, healthcare, and welfare.
Europe’s Complacent Establishment : The powerful serendipity of these different rising forces in British politics in the past few years has taken it to where it is today. But as Peter Mair has noted – see quote above – increasingly in Europe establishment political parties are detached from and unresponsive to their citizens as voters. They respond largely to major corporate interests – big business, banks, trade unions. In another strange irony, the creation of the EU and the two-tier political system it has ushered in have added to this dynamic. By maintaining the predominance of the European Commission (EC) run by unelected bureaucrats over the comparatively weak European Parliament (EP), Europe’s political establishment parties have made it much easier for them to manage the EU with far less accountability to their national electorates. They even disingenuously try to claim publicly that the powers of the Europe they themselves run needs to be “reined in” because it has become “too bossy”, as UK Prime Minister David Cameron said last week .Yet the crisis still facing Europe : economically due to the failure of austerity policies, and politically due to the predictable backlash to them – can only be overcome once public trust is restored in both national and EU governments.
Europe Is Vital for UK’s Future : This is now of vital importance for Europe’s future in the next few years. As one indication of this, after over sixty years, the EU has grown to play a vital role in the prosperity of the UK economy, as it has changed UK society. Today, almost half UK trade is with other EU members. Almost 20% of Britons live and work permanently in other EU countries, paying taxes to them and obtaining education, healthcare and other social benefits from them. Any major effort to cut back UK involvement in the EU or trade and labor movements with it would have potentially devastating effects on UK prosperity. Yet, not a single major UK political party seems willing to come out and make the case politically for strong active UK leadership in Europe.
Conclusions : The UK needs a fundamental change in its political system and political culture – as do other major states in the EU. Political elites need to become far more attentive and responsive to their broad electorates. The system by which voters have become progressively more disempowered both within nation states and within Europe needs to be overhauled. Failing this, it will be very difficult for the UK and the EU political parties to win consensus for policies needed for sustained faster growth and reduced inequality.
I, for one, hope that the UK’s and the EU’s political leaders will heed the latest wake-up call they have been sent by their disenchanted voters in the last few days!