Gerry Hassan argues that Labour and the Left uncritically adopted conservative ideas of Britain
UK politics is filled with talk of crisis and decline. Less explored is the extent to which both the Left and the Right’s lack of understanding about the nature of the UK and the British state makes a major contribution.
One problematic take is presenting “Westminster as Britain”, entrenched now as one of the dominant ways of portraying politics, despite Scottish and Welsh devolution and the occasional reference to English regional mayoralties. This prominence is partly because such a perspective on politics represents power, performative theatre and ease of access for media, while allowing any coverage to fall back on tradition, personalities and widely known reference points.
“Westminster as Britain” shrinks politics to being about one primary place, marginalising other places and communities, and making the public into spectators rather than active participants. The power of the place and concept of Westminster over UK politics has been strengthened by 24/7 broadcast media reporting from London, and alongside this, politics has been reduced to personalities and process.
The experience of devolution has not challenged this but instead has paradoxically strengthened it. This is because Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish devolution has not altered the fundamental structures of the UK, but rather is seen as an arrangement for these territories, not a change like power and politics in the UK. This has allowed the political centre to view devolution as solely about the Celtic nations, rather than its relationships with these territories or how the centre governs the UK.
“Devolution” to the political centre is a job done, box ticked and about far-off provinces. It is not about remaking the UK and its central authority. This Westminster view has contributed to a twin-track process of devolution, reinforcing a narrower politics focused on the political centre, which presents a version of the UK increasingly at odds with how politics happens.
The second dimension reinforcing the above is “England as Britain”, where too often the experience of England is extended to cover Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and has a distinct Labour version. Take the example of how the party portrays the establishment of the NHS. This is presented in Labour statements as the product of a single NHS Act in 1946, when there were in fact three acts for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and there is now no single NHS but four separate, distinct NHS systems.
The above are not technical points. Rather, the NHS is a key element of the foundational story of Labour, its achievements in office and its narrative of the difference it has made to the UK. Considering its importance in Labour folklore, it reveals something afoot in how the party understands Britain, the power of the centre, and the multinational nature of the UK.
The myth of a unitary state Britain
To the Westminster classes, the UK is a unitary state. This has become a totem of the everyday political classes from left to right and draws upon the conventional Whig history of Britain. It just happens to not be true. The UK is a state formed from four territories and different unions: 1707 and 1801.
The idea that the UK is a unitary state comes up against the inconvenient fact of the nature of the 1707 union between Scotland and England and what came after. Scotland was not subsumed in England (in the way Wales was) and continued to exist as a legal entity with its own separate legal system, laws and institutions,: the basis of which formed the framework upon which Scottish devolution was built.
Unitary state Britain believes that the political centre and parliamentary sovereignty can do nearly anything they like – unrestricted by the rule of law, courts and judicial review. This perspective has aggressively come to the fore in the light of Brexit and the assertion of an omnipotent centre supposedly able to sweep away obstacles in the way of what it wants. The trouble with unitary state Britain is that it is a statement of how some see power from the centre and how they would like the centre to do things, but it is at odds with the complex nature of the UK.
Too often, the spatial notion of power is ignored in Labour and left accounts of British politics. Power is seen as singular, abstract and indissoluble across the UK, while also missing a sense of the territorial dimensions of UK politics. It is almost as if the different strands of the centre-left, whether traditional Labour, the radical left or left academia, have uncritically bought into the conventional accounts of Britain, leaving any anti-establishment unexplored.
Bought into this story of Britain
There is a long tradition of this. Ralph Miliband’s “Parliamentary Socialism” is a pivotal key left critique of Labour and labourism. However, as a book, it comprehensively ignores the makeup of the UK, ideas of Britain, and the nature of the British state. The multinational nature of the UK is completely absent in what is in effect a left version of “England as Britain’. One example of this is that the actual territory of the UK was fundamentally changed with the creation of the Irish Free State in 1921-22. This is passed over by Miliband without mention, despite it being a subject of debate at Labour Annual conferences.
This is not an isolated event but found across numerous accounts of how Labour understands itself and Britain. Recent biographies of Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson have presented a world of “Westminster as Britain” and “England as Britain”, ignoring the multiple NHS acts or the multinational nature of the UK.
Such a perspective can be seen in books on Starmer’s Labour. “The Starmer Symptom‘, for example, brings together an impressive array of left thinkers, commentators and activists. Nowhere does it try to understand the multinational character of the UK, spatial notions of power, territorial politics, or the problematic nature of the British state. Despite having a historical critique of labourism, the book reinforces the left belief in a homogenous Britain and the idea of enlightened central state power pushing through radical change –: the traditional idea of a Labour left government.
In a different way, Andy Beckett’s “The Searchers” aims to show the connections and lineage of the Labour left from Tony Benn to Ken Livingstone and Jeremy Corbyn. However, in so doing it offers a study of the inner workings of the London Labour left across the decades, with the rest of the country reduced to Tony Benn’s weekly excursions to his Bristol constituency until he lost his seat in 1983.
The above has for years been seen as marginal to the big issues: how to win elections and hold power. The allure of British state omnipotence and Whitehall-ism has held Labour and much of the left in its grip for most of its history. Major supports in this have been the hold of Fabianism with its uncritical take on state power and belief in technocrats and experts, reinforced by the weakness of anti-state socialism.
In the era of Ralph Miliband’s thesis, the homogeneous account of Britain was hegemonic and mostly uncontested, but even then, it wasn’t accurate. Rather, the left, including radicals, bought into the conventional elite version of Britain. Today, the position is different. The country is defined by crisis, paralysis and a political class out of its depth. The once impervious confidence of British institutions has more than taken a hit. Yet despite the state of Britain, the multiple failings of mainstream politics, the systemic shortcomings of the British state and more, the political narrative clings to the wreckage of a Britain that does not exist and never did.
For a Labour and left political perspective, this matters because both are meant to be about challenging the status quo and aiding the forces of change. Instead, on the interpretations of what Britain is, where power sits, and the nature of the British state, they have consistently sided with the forces of reaction and conservatism – across Labour and the left from Gordon Brown to Jeremy Corbyn.
The UK has always been a more complex mosaic and tapestry of power than that presented in unitary state Britain with its all-encompassing political centre and belief in parliamentary sovereignty. This will now come more to the fore as the forces of the right in the Tories and Reform want to use Brexit and the challenges the UK faces to further centralise power, empower the executive and strengthen absolutism. The cover they will use to legitimise this will be rooted in the mythology of unitary state Britain.
Labour and the left face a choice. They can, as they have done historically, go along with this conservative version of Britain which has so failed the left. Or they can dare to chart a different course, which challenges this account and attempts to devise a different idea of power and authority. This would include a different, more pluralist and codified notion of political power at the centre, along with calling time on the imperial notions of grandeur which have defined that centre for too long.
Such a political project is not an afterthought to that of radical change. Rather, it recognises that the ideas of Britain, power and state, which have defined politics, have been used to concentrate and entrench vested interests and privilege and not further progressive change. As the crises of Britain, its governance and state deepen, it would be healthy if significant voices in Labour and the left began to question their deep-held assumptions about Britain and think about the possibilities of challenging the dominant conservative accounts which have ill-served them for so long.
