The meaning of Britain's political crisis.

The mechanics of Britain's blossoming political crisis are becoming more obvious. Lord Ashcroft, who funds the candidates in Tory marginals, doesn't think the Tories will win the next election. Pundits have decided that the next government will be another coalition. UKIP snaps at the heels of both Labour and the Tories. The Scottish referendum won't lie down and die. With whatever shade of government we get, there is an enormous crisis over Europe built into the first two years of the new Parliament. And we cannot forget the farce of the 700 plus House of Lords that represents nothing but itself and individual member's and parties' corruption. Finally there is the most vital consideration of all, the deep contempt, derision and alienation felt by millions for all MPs and for Parliament itself. 

This is a ruling class political crisis. But its mechanics do not tell anything like the whole story. As it is a ruling class crisis, it effects all of the society that they dominate. All classes, all sectors are touched, even violently perturbed, by its impact. The British economy, dominated by an overblown global-facing finance industry, will feel the tremors undermining Britain's much vaunted political stability. Scottish independence is not now off the agenda for 30 years. It has instead been firmly located on the political agenda for the next 10. As we examine all the main aspects of politics, economics and the wider society then we see that the Britsh ruling classes' political convulsions and decay mark everything and change everything for all classes in society.

The British labour and trade union movement experienced a deep crisis of direction in the late 1970s and 80's. It was an expression, albeit partial, of the political crisis of the working class at that point (which was itself a product of a new period of heightened class struggle after WW2.) In the event the labour movement bureaucracy was able to defeat, just about, the emerging class-struggle based left wing of the movement. And then Thatcher did the rest. Today it is absurd to imagine that Blair and now Miliband's Labour Party would be the fulcrum of such a key battle (although inevitably even the modern Labour Party would feel some impact should such a battle arise.) The Labour Party therefore is also part of this story. But what has brought about the weakness of Britain's main political institutions today? What has caused the British ruling classes' current political crisis? 

The political collapse in Britain is a result of the general crisis of political representation. This may be a common observation in the debate inside those political agencies that purport to argue for a working class position - but it is actually true of the whole of society. As parliament has expanded, as PM's question time has become more raucous, the actual power of Parliament and its leading parties, and their leaders, has diminished, under peacetime conditions, to a greater degree than at any time since the late 17th century. Globalisation, represented in Britain most exquisitely by the satiric title of 'The City of London' but underpinned by the slogan of all the mainstream parties that 'Britain is open for business', has torn away even the shreds of parliamentary power that was left after WW2. Political power, at least that part traditionally based on the popular vote and Parliament, has little current function in Britain. Of course the ruling class rules. Of course its networks and corporate alliances manage most of our world. But not much is left for elected politicians. 

It is true that Labour does not represent working class people. But In the wider scheme of things that is only a part of a greater totality which could be described (in large areas of the so called democratic west) as traditional 'demcratic' politics not representing society as a whole. Western democracy is failing. And so it becomes a show. Its participants become actors. The media platform is where the show is performed. On all decisive matters and now many subordinate issues, there are, in reality, huge arcs of agreement between main parties - if it is only the agreement that nothing can be done. Certainly nothing of the slightest strategic importance is decided, or mostly even debated, in Parliament.

There are partial reactions to this state of affairs all over the place, between and within different classes. UKIP is one. 'Let's do something! Anything to assert ourselves!' they cry. But these convulsive reactions to our dying democracies are, with the rare exception of the new left formations that are emerging directly from anti-austerity class struggle as with Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain, full of dangerous baloney. They get nowhere near the main issue. They signal a ferocious step backwards to a place that never was.

When Parliament was reorganised as the instrument for a new ruling class in England at the end of the 17th century, secure in its compromise with the aristocracy and its new constitutional monarchy and its 'freedom' to trade, it was absolutely necessary for its real debates and for the decisions it had to make on the real and decisive issues, to express the united will of the whole new ruling class. The repeal of the Corn Laws; Imperial preference; working class franchise; all these matters were decisive for the whole of society and had to be organised politically through Parliament and by the ruling class. Latterly, the emergence of the working class, the Russian revolution, anti colonial struggles and women's suffrage meant that Parliament had to become the cockpit regulating key class relations in society. As it was in 1945 to 48 when it gave reform 'or they will give us revolution!' (Quinton Hogg 1943.) 

Today these historic functions have almost dwindled to nothing in Parliament. Repressive law is still relentlessly rolled out and that is a product of a desperately weakened organised labour movement. Parliament and its parties nod through wars with the odd honourable exception but never otherwise address the key issues in society. And at the margins, and always repressively, they still 'manage' outbreaks of domestic social and class struggle through their control of the police. Objectively the ruling class no longer needs Parliament (except to allow its more punitive actions some legitimacy) and the working class, in large part, no longer believes that Parliament and the main parties represented there can change anything important. 

Consider the two decisive issues of our time; the West's wars defending its industrial/military dominance in the world and, since 1978, the massive increase in social inequality. Neither of these questions are frontally addressed by Parliament. Neither of them are presented as the key issues of our time by any of the main parties. None of the mainstream parties have any serious difference on these questions with the others. Parliament and its parties are unable to decide on any aspect of ruling class behaviour in these fields (which is directed more from the Pentagon and the board rooms) and Parliament promotes nothing for the advance of the working class either. It seems that a shaky and rapidly eroding status quo is all that is available to the overwhelming majority in our society - at least from today's Parliament and its mainstream parties. This is the crisis of ruling class politics which has such an effect on both of society's major classes. 

We need some representatives who will speak for the working class and a new democracy.