They’re off! Parliament dissolved, and the campaign commences, starting with a symbolic journey by the prime minister to, presumably, tell Her Majesty, rather than request her to do so, that by law the House of Commons has been sent home. And, that there are, at present, no members of parliament since the official dissolution just after the preceding midnight. Of such symbolic acts the governance of Britain comprises, as it has done for centuries.
But this election looks set to be one of the least predictable for generations, not least because of the political fragmentation that reflects the prospects for geographical fragmentation.
A lifelong Labour Party supporter myself, one who worked with a number of leaders of the party over nearly half a century, my own dilemma, perhaps, reflects that fragmentation. Disenchanted with the leadership of the Labour Party, and the direction of its political thrust, looking around, I find myself sympathetic to the growing Green Party, but I am resolutely opposed to the fragmentation of Scottish Independence, endorsed by the Green Party. My opposition to that independence rests, in part, on the almost permanent internal civil wars that preceded the 1707 Act of Union.
My Labour support, however challenged, means that it would be difficult not to vote for the Labour candidate; I have tempted myself to abstain, but know that would not be possible. As an enthusiastic young Labour activist, I lost count of the number of doorstep encounters in which I attempted to persuade people, especially older people, who intended to abstain, that the fight, originally, to obtain true universal franchise should, at least, be rewarded with a vote. Perhaps, today, I better understand that emotion, but without the excuse of absence abroad where no postal vote could be made to work, I know that when the local games room at our community centre opens on May 7 as a polling station, I will have to attend. And resist the temptation to repeat what was written on a ballot paper when I, myself, stood for parliament in 1979: “I wouldn’t vote for any of this lot if they were the last alive!” As yet, like, I suspect, so many of us UK voters, I have yet to decide how to vote.
Interestingly, many years ago, research suggested that a significant proportion of voters only finally decided where to place their cross when actually in the voting booth. Impulse shopping is a widely recognised phenomenon, but impulse voting!
The campaign has opened with a letter, on the front page of a leading Conservative newspaper, signed by 103 “business leaders”, including, as it happens, at least one who is a US citizen, and another with joint UK and Ivorian citizenship; both, like the rest, significant beneficiaries of the “favourable environment” for business. Tax avoiders, and major donors are also amongst these representatives of the leaders of over 5 million businesses. And, of course, within days, some of the signatories have disavowed their involvement. What the episode tells us, more than the complete predictability of the fact that business fat cats could be found who support the Conservatives, is that even ostensibly unbiased media are incapable of in depth examination of the real meaning of such stories.
Somehow, even the apparently neutral BBC has led news bulletins giving a great deal of publicity to this first salvo. The casual observer, however, might reasonably wonder just how much in love the business community is with the coalition, if this tiny, ramshackle representation of the genre is the best the Tories can do.
That business, however, certainly seems to have no great affection for Labour simply puts them in the same league as most voters. Daunted, it seems, by the nasal tones of a self confessed nerd, who leads them, matched by another, not, perhaps, so much “champagne socialist” as bull voiced bully as economic spokesman. Neither of these, by record, or presence, inspires the same kind of, apparent, muted respect that the smooth tongued Rolls Royce salesman and public schoolboy of prime ministerial candidate, Cameron, or the loud assertiveness of the public bar frequenting second-hand car salesman of neofascist/nationalist UKIP leader, all of whom seem to leave all but the blindest of followers rather cold.
The nub of the policy campaigns, however, seem, at present at least, to be focussed on the economy, perceived as Conservative strength, and the National Health Service, perceived, naturally, as the Labour Party’s strength. UKIP’s assertive certainty that Britain would be better alone … no one seems to have pointed out that English nationalism is not likely to hold the Union together … is not so much a policy, of course, as a fantasy of recovering past glories. Watch out Commonwealth, there could yet be demands for reparation, not to mention, presumably, an Idi Amin style repatriation of Asians.
Following the recent bizarre, non-confrontational, “encounter” between Cameron and Milliband, which, by common consent, was “won” by Jeremy Paxman, the dominant interlocutor, we have now been treated a theatrical representation of the political fragmentation, with seven leaders, all of them presently having parliamentary representatives, from which, for no apparent reason, Northern Irish parties were excluded. That exclusion, of course, may yet lead to the strange prospect of England, and this Irish rump, being what is left of the “United” Kingdom by the time politicians and voters have finished considering their own, immediate, interests, taking no particular thought for time beyond May 7.
Certainly, both Scotland and Wales may seek to rewrite history back to the 11th century; and we should not be surprised, either, to find the ancient kingdoms of England, such as Northumbria, reasserting both their own interests, and pointing to the irony that, in the IT age communication between London and its remoter regions seem less effective than it once was. The lingering effects of Harold Wilson’s decentralisation of government ministries in the 1960s and 70s, that unsurprisingly produced a burst of rail, air and road linkage development led by reluctant civil servants thus exiled from London, seem to have finally vanished; another potentially useful lesson for Bangladesh?
These, of course, are all lessons that Bangladesh might well study. If a “nation” united under one political leadership, in stages over five centuries, culminating in the 1707 Act of Union can be faced with a realistic prospect of breaking up, and fading, necessarily, into international obscurity, then, perhaps, so can any “nation.”
The flawed strategy of the Thatcher years of abandoning a manufacturing base in favour of services, unbalanced Britain in so many ways, socially, culturally, economically, politically, amongst them, seems, now, to be coming home to roost. But there is no evidence of any of the politicians lining up for votes in the upcoming election, having any other perspective than the immediate priority of obtaining the keys to Downing Street. Just as in the worldwide financial markets, and, of course, driven by them, short termism has become unmovably entrenched in governance. And, for such minority parties as the various regional nationalists, working out how to maximise their opportunities to fragment the nation through power broking horse trading.
Perhaps the next four weeks may produce signs of realisation of these greater threats, but, meanwhile, politicians seeking votes seem to be dancing on short-term pin heads, debating the distribution of wealth, rather than its creation, and what measures might be taken to either share up the Union, or break it up, depending on point of view.
A bit like tipping rocks on eroding banks of the great rivers of Bangladesh, rather than planning the bunds for better protection in a longer term.
Winston Churchill once said of the USA: “They can be counted on to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else.” We are hoping that some such still epitaph may be possible for the Union of the United Kingdom.
