Politicians fleeing the stage as old certainties collapse

The National

2 days ago

The Deputy First Minister, however you view her politics, has been held in high regard by many as a hard-working minister and committed MSP. In more stable times, a career in politics would have offered a variety of long-term attractions.
Today, though, the appeal of a quieter life beckons, as the retreat into private life provides respite from the manifold crises which present themselves in politics, economics, international affairs and society writ large.
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Of course, there have always been wicked issues to consider. But in this era, it is the confluence of many fissures and dilemmas at once which generates the kind of environment in which things unravel rather more sharply.
Simply put, there isn't a roadmap for how to get out of the mess, or to escape the dogmas which got us here in the first place.
As a result, the rate of attrition increases. Jackie Baillie says that it is notable that the SNP's 'former rising stars are abandoning the stage'. This is true.
And it is also not exactly controversial to suggest this indicates that independence is not on the horizon, or that there exists a compelling and inspiring strategy around the issue that might entice lifelong nationalists to stay the course a little longer.
But this is to miss the wider point: it is a tale that can be told of the UK establishment too. Between Margaret Thatcher coming to power in 1979 and Tony Blair leaving office in 2007, only John Major came in between. That is close to three decades of relative stability as far as the leadership of the British state is concerned.
Over those years, we saw the miners' strike; great showdowns between strikers and police; riots over the poll tax; mass protests against war in Iraq; Black Monday and much else.
At the same time, those upheavals also entailed a level of state coherence and political infrastructure which doesn't exist in the same way now.
The Conservative Party, the essential instrument of ruling class power, pursued a strategy and vision for British capitalism as a whole, coinciding with the Reagan administration in the United States.
This set about dismantling the trade union movement and embarking on a process of privatisation, deregulation and financialisation known as neoliberalism.
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Yes, there were challenges. But at the same time there was a plan for how to resolve the immediate questions posed around how to secure new economic growth and to discipline the working class into the bargain.
But this arrangement could only ever overcome the accumulation of problems bound up with the system for a relatively short period.
As Martin Wolf of the Financial Times writes: 'Indubitably, a serious government would be devoting vast intellectual resources to the question of how to raise the growth rate. None has, including this one. A starting point, in my view, must be recognition that the Thatcher experiment failed: it did not transform the underlying performance of the economy for the better. This must now be admitted.
'Too much of the post-Thatcher performance was unsustainable. This was, in good part, because it was the fruit of a global credit bubble, in which the UK was a leading actor.'
Thus, after the 2008 financial crisis, the condition of politics changes. As it bled into society through austerity and bailouts for bankers, the rotation in leadership advances at pace.
By the time David Cameron leaves office in 2016 after the Brexit referendum – itself an outgrowth of the divisions over the future among a once united status quo – the rot has set in. We then have Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak in quick succession.
(Image: Lucy North/PA Wire) That's four Tory prime ministers in a span of eight years. One of these, Truss, lasts only 49 days. This is abnormal and a reflection of the deep-seated problems built up in a period where living standards went into decline, as the wealth of the super-rich grew to unfathomable levels.
Gone too are old certainties, like the permanence of the European Union, or indeed the Conservative Party itself.
Keir Starmer has been in the job for a year and is already widely reviled. Doubtless the chatter around his replacement will increase, as a hapless Kemi Badenoch attempts to revive the fortunes of a once semi-invincible organ of the British establishment in the face of new challenges in the shape of Reform.
Labour also face a test from their left too, in the form of the nascent new lefty party. The political system is cracking up under the pressures of a failed economic model and the projects of blame displacement and scapegoating attendant to it.
This further shreds the social fabric, creating a polarised and angry populace, increasingly alienated from official politics.
Authoritarianism, then, is an inevitable but futile resource from which those in power will increasingly draw upon.
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All of this is set against a global backdrop in which the norms, rules and conviviality once handed down as tablets of stone have been shattered. The post-war order is over, and finished for good, alongside many of its institutions.
This is a new, multipolar age for which the vast majority of politicians are simply not trained for and do not understand.
These epochal shifts combine with the fact that there is no obvious route to meaningful economic growth or an end to domestic volatility.
It is little wonder, then, that many are asking themselves why on earth they should take up such a poisoned chalice at all.