Things fall apart

Regular readers may have noted my prolonged silence of late but the seismic outcome of the May 7th elections in Great Britain has roused me from my Trump-induced torpor.

Rendered temporarily - and unchacteristically - speechless by the swirling madness of recent world affairs, I have been re-energised by the extraordinary turn of domestic poltical events. There can be little doubt in anyone's mind (apart, perhaps, from incumbent Labour Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer's) that the old 'two-party' system of politics in Great Britain (ie England, Scotland and Wales - Northern Ireland having a different party set-up and not being involved in this particular electoral cycle), where power has oscillated between the Conservative and Labour parties for a century, is finally at an end. It has limped on in Westminster politics since Tony Blair's half-arsed devolution project of the late-1990s, but in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, nationalist parties have been empowered and in Scotland the Scottish National Party (SNP) has been in power in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood for the past nineteen years. In 2011 it even gained an outright majority leading to it successfully demanding an independence referendum, which it sadly lost.

This time round the SNP failed to gain an outright majority of 65 seats but with 58, and the support of the Greens or Lib-Dems, will still be able to see off the combined forces of Labour, Reform and the Conservatives. In Wales, meanwhile, the nationalist Plaid Cymru (The Party of Wales), a presence in Welsh politics since its foundation in 1925, destroyed Labour's seemingly unassailable century-long dominance by winning 43 Senedd seats, making it the largest party in the enlarged 96-seat assembly. Although still six seats short of an outright majority, this historic result has sent shock waves through the Labour Party and the political commentariat. But almost as striking was the success of Reform UK, who came from nowhere to take second place with 34 seats, leaving Welsh Labour with a rump group of only 9.

It was widely-anticipated that the results of these regional and local elections would be, rather like the mid-terms in the US, a popular verdict on an increasingly unpopular national government. But few, even in their gloomiest or most ecstatic imaginings, could have predicted the rout that unfolded. Inevitably, the catastrophic trouncing of Labour at the hands of the SNP, Plaid, Reform and the Greens, will be taken as a judgment on Starmer's premiership. He has said he will not resign but it appears that only the lack of an obvious challenger is saving him now. As soon as Angela Rayner is fully-cleared by HMRC over her tax affairs (assuming she is), Andy Burnham finds a route back into Westminster, Wes Streeting summons up the courage to the sticking place after the Mandelson scandal, Ed Miliband decides on a second go having scuppered his own brother's 2010 leadership aspirations, or some other as-yet unidentified Brutus emerges to administer the coup de grâce, Starmer, now a dead man walking, is toast.

The long-standing two-party system has clearly given way to a multiplicity of players, with Reform and the Greens challenging Labour and the Conservatives' pre-eminent role in English politics, the nationalists triumphant in Scotland and Wales and even the Lib-Dems once again resurgent after their calamitous coalition with David Cameron's Conservative-led government of 2010-15. Labour hasn't historically had a propensity to defenestrate its leadership in the way the Tories do but they may develop a taste for ruthlessness if things continue much longer as they are. The only comfort for them right now - and it may be cold comfort - is that they still have another three years in government before the next general election has to be called; three years in which to get their act together under a new leader and for their opponents to screw up in the running of the assemblies, councils and mayoralties they now control.

It is often suggested that the United Kingdom is becoming ungovernable. Insofar as this is true I believe the fault lies not so much in the constituent structures of governance in the United Kingdom so much as in the Union itself. If that were to be dismantled I think we would find the three nations of Great Britain, along with a reunited island of Ireland, could manage their affairs perfectly well. While I can't say I relish the prospect of living in an independent England governed in perpetuity by Reform or the Conservatives, a risk inherent in English nationalism, that consideration shouldn't hold us back from doing the right thing now. The Union may have been instrumental in forming the British empire but that effectively ended with Indian Independence in 1947, before finally sputtering out ignominiously at the Suez Crisis in 1956. Seventy years on, it is high time to dissolve a Union based on oppression. 

An amicable divorce - or even an acrimonious one - is surely preferable to enduring a loveless arranged marriage.

Update: Labour MP, Catherine West, has now thrown down the gauntlet by calling on cabinet colleagues to challenge Starmer on Monday or she will, in a move known as being 'a stalking horse'.