Add my "what went wrong" take to the pile

[Emrys]

40. Never imagine you're alone in this sort of soul-searching

Last edited Fri Nov 8, 2024, 11:03 AM - Edit history (1)

My own circumstances are trivial in the grand scheme of things, but they rhyme.

In the UK, we just went through an election where a Tory Party that had proven itself functionally worthless, corrupt and worse over more than a decade was supplanted by a Labour Party that had been too long ossified in opposition and caught up in dismembering itself of any radicalism, spurred on by corrupting outside interests and finance, and even in the aftermath of its victory (and please believe me when I say we have our own problems with an electoral system that often throws up over-flattering results for the victor, leaving many unrepresented) is depressingly predictably flat-footed, gobsmackingly lacking in vision and empathy, in the pocket of Big Money, and terrifyingly setting the scene for a rightist takeover as this new electoral cycle plays out.

I live in a part of the UK, Scotland, that has a comparatively functional government. It's not perfect by any means, but it's streets ahead of what Westminster offers. It's penny-poor at the level of party funding and the money sloshing around its officeholders, and all the better for that. It faces an almost universally hostile media that downplays its successes and its worthwhile initiatives that could set a positive model for the UK as a whole, and overplays its glitches and failings. And yes, by any meaningful measure, it's woke, and unashamedly so. This in a country whose international image is superficially dominated by macho gruff maleness and illiberal use of the C-word.

The SNP, of which I'm a member, had a serious setback in terms of Westminster politics at the last general election. The Labour Party in Scotland was given free passes that are low-key Trumpish in nature - getting away with many, many lies unchallenged and airy handwaving at unworkable policy commitments they abandoned just as airily once elected, all because they painted a "reality" that was less complex than what's really happening, and hence more palatable to too many.

What I see around me in the UK as a whole is a not insignificant body of people who are bloody sensible and well-intentioned and see through a lot of the nonsense that fills our airwaves and media on a daily basis. They are clear-eyed despite the noise. But there are many who are just plain lazy.

Lazy. Ripe for the picking by those with glib answers to whatever problems they are afflicted by, easily distracted by the latest scandal or just so caught up in the grind of their daily lives (which excuses some of my charge of laziness) that a grander picture is not something that interests or is urgent to them unless it's to spill and share simplistic bigotry yadayada in their social settings.

As I think may happen with Trump this next time around, Labour here has had no meaningful honeymoon period, and polls of favourability ratings so far have been atrocious. We do have, lurking in the wings, a force which is downright sinister in Nigel Farage's latest grand scam, the Reform Party, which finally gained a handful of elected seats in the last election. Skipping conveniently over Brexit - Farage's main mission in life - which has proven and is still proving to be as much of a disaster as we opponents of it always warned it would, they've been allowed to just handwave it away, and they've cornered Labour to the extent that it dismisses any idea of meaningful rapprochement with the EU, without which we're economically fucked, and even more so with Trump ready to wage protectionism on a grand scale. The fear is that if Labour screw up as badly as they're shaping to at the moment, they will open the gates for Reform and its fellow travellers to take power in the next general election.

Meanwhile, in my country, Scotland, many of us have a vision for a small, modern standalone state with its own distinct internationalist and social democratic values that could shy away from this rightward shift. But we're not going to be given the chance to make that choice again in the foreseeable future.

Trapped as we feel - and we're going to be as subject to the baleful transatlantic winds from the next Trump regime as anywhere else, no doubt with Labour waqging its tail abjectly in its wake, as it has done before - I wouldn't trade our place for yours, though I absolutely feel sympathy and solidarity.