The British government under Prime Minister Theresa May believes — or appears to believe — that with sufficient delay, muddle, and obfuscation, the voters will mutter and grumble but in the end do nothing. David Betz and MLR Smith believe differently:
What do you get when you have a Conservative party that doesn’t conserve, a Labour party that doesn’t represent the interests of the working class, and a Liberal Democrat Party that is neither liberal nor democratic?
The answer is, a pretty accurate description of the current British political landscape. Here are different kinds of political ice cream for sale, but when licked they all turn out to have roughly the same unpalatable taste: a bland, socially progressive, anti-traditionalist, globalist, corporatist flavour. And, you the people, don’t ask for anything else! We know how to make ice cream. You don’t.
Of course, it is Brexit and the reactions of the political classes to it, that most clearly reveals the startling democratic deficit in the United Kingdom. Brexit is, though, not the cause of political strife. It is merely the symptom that has brought these latent anti-democratic inclinations to the surface. Arguably, they have always been there in one form or another since ancient times.
In November 2016, Nigel Farage told the BBC’s Andrew Marr: ‘Believe you me, if the people in the country think they’re going to be cheated, they’re going to be betrayed, then we will see political anger the likes of which none of us in our lifetimes have ever witnessed in this country’. It was an obvious point and true. Yet the striking thing about such a warning has been the degree to which national politicians and media have tried to ignore it.
How, we might wonder, has it all come to this and, just as vitally, what are the possible long-term consequences?
The government is gambling that reaction will be fierce, but localized and short-lived, and that the establishment can ride out the storm with little or no real problem. They may be seriously underestimating the anger and resentment of a voting public who are being explicitly denied the outcome they chose. But will there be serious outbreaks of violence?
Cumulatively, over the past three decades, then, the empirically demonstrable lesson is that violence and threats work. Crudely, there is simply no arguing with the fact that violence is the deus ex machina for changing the way people think and act. Physical force is a method of political communication, and when it is sustained it invariably succeeds in changing minds and changing policies.
Under the threat of violence, it is often easier for governments to knuckle under for the sake of maintaining a semblance of peace, to wax piously about societal cohesion and resilience, and to climb onwards as though the status quo ante were not crumbling beneath them. The progressive factions of academia, culture, and media cheer them for it. So, if the populace don’t really react in the face of such threats and actual violence, and merely light candles and hug teddy bears, then the bet of the political classes is sustained. They have gambled correctly.
But do enough people feel that violence is their only resort when the government refuses to do what the voters want? Might things go beyond mere loud, angry protests and transition towards rioting? Worse?
Thus, we come to the ultimate gamble of the political class, one that appears strongly to be operative in the minds of many in Parliament, namely, that Britons do not rebel and, therefore, faced with a fait accompli they will lump it even if they do not like it. Unlike the French, Italians, or Germans each of which nation is prone in its own way to violent mass spasms of political passion, the British are a phlegmatic people given to the sensible path. So the cliché goes.
It is true to an extent that revolution is a continental phenomenon that does not travel well across the English Channel — British governments have been better at responding to incipient uprisings, sometimes deflecting them, betimes co-opting their leaders, but mostly muddling through by accommodating their demands within the parameters of the status quo. This is a system that has succeeded precisely because parliamentary democracy, for over 300 years now, is able to internalise the will of the people, even when faced with threats of violent revolt, be it in the demands of Chartists, Irish nationalists or suffragettes.
Should we be so sanguine to believe that the British political system, for so long a beacon of stability, is immune from the turbulence that has afflicted other societies? As Remainers are so keen to remind us, we are not an island whose fortunes and follies are separate from those of our near-neighbours. If people, goods, and ideas flow freely across the borders of Europe why should not the concept of the Yellow Jackets too? White Van Man voted strongly for Brexit, after all. Why should there be an Alternative for Germany movement but not an alternative for Britain, even though the people were asked to choose one and did?
