Western politics is in a dangerous mess. A wild set of half-way indications are breaking out from the previous post WW2 settlements. It has created political melees. As yet nothing is permanently settled. But forceful trends are competing and are at loose.
Biden has not managed to blow Trump away. Trump remains supported in a solid third of the electorate. And the overwhelming structure of the Republican Party is still attached to Trump. They calculate that there is nowhere else to go. Trump has established his place as an oligarchic in the US and the Republican Party as his personal popular movement.
Germany is about to lose Merkel, which is facing the widest uncertainty for the coming elections since the fusion with East Germany. France's mini-Bonaparte, Macron, has failed regarding his plans with the EU and with the technical, de-classe future that he offered to France's 'new' population. He launched his attack and produced a revolt as a result of his Thatcherite labour policy. His party is expiring as quickly as it was born. Sweden's navigation is diminishing - even the shared history of what is now its empty social-democracy is melting away. Denmark and the Netherlands are soaked in the immigration farrago — apparently without any alternative future to offer. Spain has recently developed a new political 'national defence' which is reducing the impact of the left's model for the future across the country. Italy may still have the worst political chaos of all the West, competing with proto-fascism and mounting corruption, but now it is threatening to rock the most coherent European society. Italy has generally managed its social coherence by broadly by-passing its politics. That is becoming the past.
UK politics exposes the deepest change in the new type of potentially dangerous politics, second only to the US.
There is much debate in the West about social media causing the rumpus in politics. Many, indeed almost all correspondents that study politics offer the idea that it is the social media that has changed the nature of Western politics. Certainly huge proportions of the population, especially of the young, believe that. The whole argument appears to have become a stereotype. 1. Everybody can now say what they really thought; 2. Everybody can make up their own mind by deciding that others are liars or 'on their side'. 3. Politics is an instant right and is based on perks.
We can all agree that Western politics is in trouble. What follows is a revolutionary perspective of one country, the UK.
The increasing decline of most people's lives in the UK has been obvious for decades. The main political parties in Britain have hung on to their supposed principles while they are unable to change life circumstances for most people in the British nations. The changing character of Capitalism after the 1970s did not allow social reform. The capacity to distribute gains in society became almost entirely channeled into successful wealthy global corporations and their owners. In the case of the British, especially the English and the Scottish, traditional politics had less and less purpose.
New politics began to emerge as answers to the failures of the traditional parties. The first came out of the decaying Labour Party, with the exciting proposal of a rise of a new economy. A second, non-traditional party arose, initially around immigration and then tied itself to Brexit. And it was this step outside Parliament that reorganised the nature of the Tory Party. The Tories broke off their traditional ruling class domination and instead created a right-wing populist party mainly constructed around Brexit.
Brexit was presented as the means to restore or rebuild money and resources from the EU to be returned and delivered to the working class in the UK - especially in the north of England and the NHS. The Tories maintained racist policies, but the importance of a democratic vote over Brexit became the more significant means to get Brexit for sure. Radical Labour's policy seemed less obvious and unsure of the Brexit offer. The ruling class also organised a huge attack on Corbyn, which reduced his credibility further.
The Tory Party have subsequently kept a populist front, but the Tory leadership are now stressed by the lack of their promised perks in the north of England, plus the turn taken in Scotland (and increasingly Wales) to build different countries - as their answers to the decline continue to face most of their people. Additionally, a ruling class layer based in Britain is now forced to move more than ever, connecting up to a wavering US. The new Tory Party is as fragile as their empty schemes that they claim to make better for the working lives in the UK. Consequently, their enormous majority of Tory MPs and their constant nonsense about the future of the UK will blow away with any one of their major crises. The question is not how the Tories can possibly keep 'winning' (or indeed if Labour can ever win again). This is also not a social media resolution. The new politics will break through by decisions that most people across the UK believe are the most potent to raise their living standards.
A new country designed already as a single radical Ireland, is moving close. Scottish independence has two exceptional bases for its future, away from the declining England, which is only just beginning to realise that they have won nothing and are going nowhere. Renewables met 97% of Scotland's electricity demand in 2020. This is the second, and now ecological, North Sea abundance that Scotland will demand. Additionally, the Scandinavian block, although under the pressure of the general capitalist decline, is still supporting much higher social conditions, managing close to 50% corporate taxes and having high level welfare more than anyone else in Europe, including Germany. As far as Scotland is concerned, Scandinavia is a much more promising future than an attachment to England, which is in rapid decline.
Such developments in Ireland and Scotland will not be determined by nationalist arguments in supreme courts and the decisions of the divine Westminster; they will be bitter fights and struggles. This is the beginning of the revolution. The will to fight will need to be led by the young, not lawyers, in fights with the state, mainly in direct action against the police; those who want the nukes out and those who don't; those who want an end to the UK's history of imperial wars and tax havens, and those who don't; those see a future of small nations bent mainly on social objectives and those who don't. In other words the new revolution has to show its positive future to the people in its majority.
Brexit was a fake in terms of building a positive future for ordinary people. But the Brexit millions made what was a huge decision. New parties sprung up. Movements forced their views against the media. Traditional parties either melted or were changed utterly from their historic foundations. Immense politics like these will inevitably get larger. Already Manchester and London are fighting the Tory Parliament without care of the large number of Tory MPs. And the cities, particularly Manchester and Liverpool, are designing their own conditions. The political shocks will come fast. The new revolution will show the action of the Brexit and Grenfell type - and more. To win, beyond the Brexit story, the revolution must act again - on the basis of a clear, new future, which all can see and understand. To succeed it must be direct. Westminster is secondary.
The £2 Trillion debts that are owned by the Tories in Westminster will drastically demonstrate the collapse of wages, of labour rights, of free education, of health and welfare. The decline for most of the British population described earlier will drop like a stone. Movements and parties, in the recent memories, can split up to defend rights, re-establish the local utilities, take over banks and deny the debt until the wealth of the country and those who own it, distribute it for all. The UK, led by an Etonian mini Trump, will not hold. A different future has to be formed and acted upon. A revolutionary perspective has begun to emerge in the wavering UK.
Building the new futures in Northern Ireland, in Scotland and in England and Wales; for the new Ireland, overthrowing Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, starting from the radical Sinn Fein; in Scotland winning the Scots to a future that throws out Westminster's domination in politics and in action; in England, learning the lesson that new politics can win in action and a new economy must be built to survive on all fronts. This is the start of the new revolutions. It is the future.
When a slave master had his statue thrown in the river, that was the future. It was connected to 'Black Lives Matter' which British politicians insist is not political. Why? Because it is political. It is the political necessity of bringing down the police and its total reorganisation. It was the direct action of millions to drastically change something that has always been vile. Together, with the developments of new futures, the new revolution begins.
There are (at least) two versions of hegemony. Coming out of western politics in the 1920s and 1930s, the analysis of the Italian Communist Party, made by studying Antonio Gramsci in his prison writings, saw the West as developed states and societies that meant it was possible to 'win' these elements, socially and practically and overcome capitalism. This crude analysis required endless arguments over Gramsci's works. Now a second variant has 'naturally' born.
When the Grenfell fire (14 June 2017) created a movement about how wretched their condition was; the deep inequalities; the total failure and fear of the parliament and the government over Grenfell for weeks; the main features of the cities and the emerging momentum of 'the ordinary people' Grenfell became the leadership of society. Grenfell was a few hundred people. But they led the country and inspired the feelings of millions. In the context of flash-bang social media, of endless political humbug, of unconnected politics, the 'big ordinary' became dominant. This is the hegemony of the new revolution.
Brexit had elements of it, even to the extent of the final decision on Brexit, which became the right of democracy rather than immigration or the UK's glorious past. The NHS are about to enter a battle that will, if the rank and file take the lead, do the same. From these concrete, risen moments comes the new revolution. The next step of the revolution is the combining of the new hegemony
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