The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Thinking about Boris Johnson as Mayor it struck me that my feelings were not dissimilar to those I had when John Major swept into power in 1992. Not so much that I loved Livingstone as that I loathed his successor. It’s not identical, beyond politics some good stuff is happening which ameliorates it hugely, but, on the political level there is now, as then, a certain sick feeling that history had gone awry. There are many, no doubt, for whom Kinnock represented all that was wrong with Labour, but, having lived on and off in the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s my only sense then (and now) was that Labour in power was vastly superior to the Tories in power. That election night was probably the worst I have ever sat through. The subsequent hangover exacerbated by the reality of, at least, five more years of Conservative rule.

A few years later when John Smith died there was a further sense of loss, a sense that once more a response, emotional, societal, left, progressive that had been shaped was pulled away. In retrospect I cannot but feel that Smith, again far from unproblematic politically, might well have been able to maintain a slightly more leftward tilt to the Labour party than that we subsequently experienced under Blair and Brown. Whether we would be where we are today is a fascinating, but essentially unknowable question. Would the responses to a myriad of domestic and international issues have been the same, or would we have seen a transition to a Blair-led government around 2002? With not dissimilar results?

And Brown? What next? What does he do to counter the events of this week? Because his task is monumental. A resurgent Cameron able to tour the country, a sort of pseudo-Blairism of the right somehow connecting with the British people (or more likely a weariness with New Labour) despite the reality of the genuine article over the past eight years. And here’s a thought, seems to me the British people liked Blair considerably more than they admitted, and considerably more than his party. There is relatively little time for Brown to staunch these troubles, many of his own making. For him time, the crucial element of political activity, is running out. He is unpopular, his party is unpopular, their lack of ideological clarity now hostage to precisely the same attacks that New Labour made upon Conservative territory in the early and mid-1990s. The ‘moderation’ of Cameron is the front end of a formidable party which has survived through many different periods by tacking one way or another. But its project is grounded in reaction. It is that simple.

And what of London, and more broadly the British people? I’m intrigued as to how this might impact on Scotland, indeed on the devolutionary project more widely. Yesterday it seemed possible that this might have negative effects upon Ireland, but counterintuitively it might also serve to further emphasise the distance between Scotland and London. And nationalism is a funny old thing. The political winds shifting might underscore the necessity for greater autonomy, if not quite independence. That could be quite a headache for a future Cameron administration. Good.

Repent at leisure. It’s a terrible phrase, at least in terms of its inherent meaning. The sense that events occur which require us to deal with them, that we have to endure them and that somewhere further on there is no guarantee of better. Odd really that some of those of us on the left in an Irish context should feel this way, since we’ve been perpetually denied a seat at the table, our projects permanently left on hold as our ‘betters’ shape the society to their own ends. But, perhaps that is a function of seeing some virtues, some improvements, whatever about neo-liberalism, the failings of Blair and so on and so forth in the left project(s) on the island to the East.

People live political lives vicariously, particularly on the left. A hint of the progressive and we’re in there, rooting for one candidate or another. I’ve sat on aircraft scanning columns of election returns in the Guardian about Italian general elections (this is back when such coverage was a fair bit more detailed in print than it is today), in cafes weighing up the respective worth of candidates for the Mayor of New York, fretted watching Channel4 News (and isn’t that getting just a tad tabloid these days - consider their coverage of the Austrian case) over the situation on the left in Chile. Who to give allegiance to? Even at three thousand miles? The larger left party or the smaller Marxist one? Or both? Or, rarely, neither? And the big paradox, as ever, is that while the heart may be with those smaller battalions, the splinter parties, the further left, the disciples of Lenin and Trotsky, the post-Marxists, the Green movement, and each seat gained is a triumph wrung in the face of adversity, that is not to deny that the victories of the larger left parties still mean something, still indicate some hope in a gloomy political world.

John Sullivan had it right when he suggested that:

In sum, political sects provide a refuge which many people need, either permanently or temporarily. They are the heart of a heartless world, and will disappear only when that world begins to change.

These days it’s not just the sects, is it? My biggest fear is that we will wind up in a world where the left isn’t crushed or annihilated, but is merely an irrelevance in the face of a centre and right wing hegemony. As significant politically as those who would argue for the restoration of the Scottish monarchy. A sort of US situation where the very terms of the debate are structured in such a way as to shut out the left. And the events of the last week assist that process incrementally, and the left space contracts just a little. Sometimes it’s good there’s more to life than politics.