If you think your political class is desolate, it’s no better in Britain
Patrick Cockburn is the author of War in the Age of Trump (Verso)
Cross-posted from Counterpunch
Photo by Hello I’m Nik
At the height of the row over Brexit, I tried to find precedents in earlier periods of British history for what was happening. I felt that I had hit the jackpot when I discovered that in Britain in about 410 AD, it was the Britons who may have ended the connection with the Roman Empire and not vice-versa as I had previously supposed.
I had always been taught that the final withdrawal of the legions from Britain was the result of civil wars and barbarian invasions threatening other parts of the empire. But a Byzantine historian called Zosimus had written in the early sixth century that the Britons, fed up with the chaotic state of things, “revolted from the empire, no longer submitted to Roman law and reverted to native customs”.
Getting back control turned out to be a dangerous illusion from the point of view of the Britons as they were swiftly targeted for ethnic cleansing by incoming invaders.
The Tories of the day
Zosimus may not be entirely reliable, but I relished the idea of the Tories of the day denouncing the tax-hungry Roman bureaucracy and claiming that the local inhabitants would be better off without it. They might even have suggested outsourcing defence to those Angles, Jutes and Saxons who were putting in cheap bids for security contracts. As for the economy, who needs the Romans, when we can trade with distant but enterprising peoples like the Vandals and Goths?
These thoughts came back to me while watching Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and former Chancellor Rishi Sunak try to out-Thatcherise each other in seeking the Tory Party leadership by promising that they would bid defiance to the EU, Russia, China and anybody else they took a dislike to. They would take no nonsense from Britain’s largest trading partners, and great benefits would flow from closer ties with countries like Australia and New Zealand on the other side of the world.
The crude wishful thinking which inspires national separatism today has not much improved since the last days of Roman Britain. Truss and Sunak exude synthetic xenophobia, presumably believing that it will resonate with the 160,000 Tory activists, whose votes they seek. This bombast is unlikely to be abandoned whoever becomes Prime Minister since, as the former Conservative party chairman Lord Patten has said, the modern Conservative Party has converted into “an English nationalist party”.
A symptom of inner uncertainty
This article is not a rant against English nationalism simply because it is nationalistic. A sense of loyalty to a single national state or grouping is the bond uniting most societies, proving stronger as a link over the last century than social class or religious belief. In this, England is no different from other countries, though the English sense of national identity used to be more self-confident and less vocal than in other countries. Its current vociferousness and appetite for nostalgia is surely a symptom of inner uncertainty.
Such fixations on past glories are damaging, not so much because they are unfulfillable dreams, but because they divert attention away from real and attainable national objectives. Instead, Conservative defence of national sovereignty is more usually focused on phoney opponents, like statue-removers at home or the European Court of Human Rights abroad.
Real world challenges to British control of their own lives, such as their inability to find out what has happened to their passports – their physical proof of national identity – is somehow ignored as a national issue. Yet this has happened to 550,000 people seeking new passports this summer, because the answering of phone calls and emails was outsourced by government to a private French company that was overwhelmed by the work.
A ‘meltdown’ at the Passport Office
The Home Secretary Priti Patel, so bellicose but impotent when it comes to stopping asylum seekers crossing the Channel, has been truly effective in stopping Britons travelling in the opposite direction to Europe because they cannot get their passports issued or renewed in time for their journey.
Patel was reportedly told in May 2021 that the failings of a French company called Teleperformance were leading to a “meltdown” at the Passport Office, but she did nothing. A whistleblower was quoted as saying that staff at the Passport Office were having to pick up the pieces: “By the time customers come to us, they’re saying they have been cut off, had the phone put down on them, been told that they’ll just have to wait for someone to get in touch and then no one gets in touch. They’re really angry.”
Last week the bosses of Teleperformance even failed to turn up to give evidence at the House of Commons home affairs select committee, saying that the non-delivery of passports was nothing to do with them.
Yet there is no reason why English nationalism should not be a positive force, if it had not been handed over as a political vehicle to reactionaries, crackpots and opportunists. A problem is that Labour and the left in England traditionally view home grown nationalism as a mask for racism and imperialism, though they are happy to support national self-determination in Algeria, Vietnam and Ukraine. Liberals of different stripes see nationalism as outmoded in a globalising world and have been caught by surprise when it turned out to be an unstoppable force.
Revel in friction
In power, the modern English Conservative version of nationalism is proving an increasingly self-destructive instrument. Its isolationist tenets contradict the historic tradition of the British state which is to create and work through alliances with other powers, as it did during the First and Second World Wars. Within the British Isles, Conservative nationalists seem to revel in friction with Ireland, Scotland and increasingly Wales.
This does not necessarily mean the break-up of the UK, but it has already weakened it as Conservatives and their allies become a permanent minority in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Even the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement, probably the greatest achievement of British diplomacy since 1945, is now at risk as the Government in Westminster moves to dismember the Northern Ireland Protocol.
The referendum of 2016 was the turning point because the declared aims of the pro-Brexit politicians were delusory and unattainable, so that they need to divert public attention from their failure. The incoherence of the Brexit coalition ensured that Britain would have a succession of weak governments along the lines of Italy under Silvio Berlusconi, so similar in personality and career to Boris Johnson.
The turnover rate of British prime ministers is beginning to approach that of Italy and political turmoil has likewise become the norm. British instability is here to stay regardless of whether Truss or Sunak become the next prime minister. Pander though they may to the prejudices of Conservative activists, both candidates come across as shallow and on-the-make.
Theresa May famously warned that the Conservative Party was in danger of becoming known as “the nasty party” and its political opponents periodically repeat the charge. But they would be more accurate, and do more damage to the government, if they labelled the present Conservative Party “the unpatriotic party”.
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Interesting but not in my opinion a justified fact based analyses.The Conservative Party has its roots in capitalist,backward looking politics.It is building trade and other alliances with our Commonwealth Partners which makes more sense in some ways, to alliances which helped to cause the two world wars.Independence movements and self determination in the United Kingdom have been brought about by many factors and equally opposed by the Labour Party.There are strong democratic forces working in the EU which are similar to these.Coalituon governments in Germany and political systems elsewhere are more democratic than UK which drastically needs reform.That is the problem.We have a weak undemocratic political system which is often at odds with the majority of the electorate and it is monopolised and controlled by money, corporate interest and exploited by those who are self serving politicians invariably London centric