A Howl of Tory Terror

Cameron and his assorted hangers on are ramping up their rhetoric over the SNP. John Major, a Grammer School oik, previously assigned court jester status by the Bullendon boys, gave a speech in Birmingham (21 April) denouncing the SNP as
'A clear and present danger.'
He obviously thinks that he's being Churchillian. It sounds more 'Hollywood' to the rest of us. But it was  Cameron who fired the starting gun.

Most of the media and the Labour leadership, see all this as Tory tricks designed to sink Miliband's chances and increase the Tories' vote. In Scotland (a strange, uncomfortable territory for Tories) this will increase, goes the media analysis, the local Nationalist venom and help topple Labour seats. In England, it will warn doubters that they need the Tories to win to prevent being 'taken over' by the Scots - as any Labour government will depend on them!

The story of the mistakes made by the Tory strategists in this election campaign is deeply interesting. But in the case of their attack on the SNP, there is more to this than has so far met the media's eye.

This election has, for the first time since the 1970s, a deeply strategic significance for Britain's ruling class. Important figures in Britain's political and economic establishment are sorely concerned by the turning point that the British political crisis has produced. Ex military leaders, key (both Dom and non-Dom) bankers and corporate scions are speaking out. They are not stupid (or at least not as stupid as most of Britain's political class.) Like the working class in the UK they see that Parliament has long been a very shrunken force in the actual direction taken by the country. They know that if the election 'goes wrong' in their eyes that will only be the beginning of a potential disaster. Great resources and forces remain to be mobilised in the ruler's interests, should Parliament start to prove a problem.

Nevertheless a critical thing has happened in this election campaign. The post Thatcher political consensus has broken open. There is something to vote for; and something to vote against. And that is a deep problem.

Our rulers do not blame Miliband or the Labour Party. On three absolutely critical issues Labour continues, albeit more and more desperately, to toe the line. On Scottish independence and the 'break up' of Britain (ie should Britain be composed of small and medium sized nations with the ambition to serve their people); on the question of austerity and, most significantly, on the issue of Trident, Labour and Miliband do their level best to suggest that we should not even be talking about such things. They sincerely believe that such truths are this Island's inheritance. Bigger than politics and unavailable to the voter these questions constitute our unwritten constitution. What our real rulers object to about Labour is their failure to banish from sight any controversy on such decisively important matters.

Because all of the the main Westminster parties are still hanging on to yesterday's elementary common sense, the access to voters to real change in Parliament is limited. And there has been some muddy thinking on the left in response to that situation. Inside Labour, from left to right, there is visceral hatred of the SNP, Plaid and the Greens. But what has been busted open will not be simply healed. There is a hint of the argument over which deckchair as the Titanic founders, about all this.

There are some far left parties and fronts that have approached the problem by standing their own candidates that represent very little to most people. With the odd possible exception in the case of personalities with a known history, whatever the intention, such efforts go little beyond exercises in recruitment to the particular group involved; the only exception being independent representatives of particular struggles and campaigns.  Others have puzzled over knotty tactical assumptions, ending with a broad appeal to vote Labour and to prepare the battle outside Parliament: Which, in effect, abstains from the battle now being fought out, albeit in the half light of Britain's fading democracy.

For sure the political crisis will not come to its fruition on May 7. Nevertheless, it is now crucial to call on all to support the four anti-austerity parties; the SNP in Scotland, Plaid in Wales, Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland and the Greens in England. In England, the Green candidates may suffer some of the same personal anonymity as their far left counterparts, but the number and proportion of votes cast directly, across Britain, for all the nationally known anti-austerity, anti-Trident  parties, will have deep significance in the legitimacy of various actions taken within Parliament after the elections, including inside the Labour Party itself.