EXPERT COMMENT: Where Are We Now - Old, New and Anti-Politics in Britain Today

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2016 has been a political rollercoaster - both the Brexit result and the Trump victory are leading many to question what is happening in our politics and where we go from here. Professor Dave Richards has tracked the rise of the populist ‘anti-politics’ sentiment that has delivered two unprecedented political upsets, and calls for a new efforts to map the opportunities and obstacles facing demands for a new political settlement in Britain today.

These are undoubtedly times of uncertainty, no more so than in the way modern democratic politics conducts itself and for the traditional institutions of the liberal-democratic state which aggregate our individual political impulses. With the after-shocks of Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidential victory freshly reverberating across two of the world’s oldest, modern democracies, our political class must account for their repeated promises to create a ‘new politics’ that works for the people and their failure to deliver anything like it once safely in power. We must also seek to understand the extent to which the failure to create a ‘new politics’ from within the political class has contributed to the notable rise in support for non- and anti-establishment leaders.

‘Anti-Politics’ – The Rising Tide of Discontent

An increasingly prominent feature in the current climate is the so-called rise of ‘anti-politics’. It is a somewhat slippery term covering a multitude of pathologies concerning power, democracy, legitimacy, participation and accountability. One of its more popular caricatures is reflected in a perceived growing public disenchantment with the way politics is done, expressed for example in the disengagement with traditional forms of arena politics e.g. voting, joining a mainstream party etc. Another is in the depiction of the so-called ‘left behind’, of those who are: ‘on the wrong side of social change, are struggling on stagnant incomes, feel threatened by the way their communities and country are changing, and are furious at an established politics that appears not to understand or even care about their concerns’. One response has been to vote [sometimes for the first-time] for the increasing number of ‘insurgent’ or ‘populist’ parties who seek to offer an alternative to the failings associated with traditional mainstream, party politics.

In the context of the UK, as elsewhere, studies have shown that anti-politics is by no means a new phenomenon, though it has gained fresh traction in more recent times. The political class are of course not immune to this live issue, given their reliance on claims to legitimacy as the lodestone of the democratic-representative process. And it is here that an intriguing paradox has emerged in recent decades. A pattern of leaders of mainstream opposition parties calling for a ‘new politics’, but then when in office adhering to the established ways and means of governing.

‘New Politics’ – History of a broken promise

In surveying the calls for change in the last twenty years, while the context behind them may vary, they are bound by a familiar ring in their rejection of the old ways of doing politics and the need for an alternative. In May 1997, Tony Blair argued his government: ‘…will govern in the interests of all our people…and restore trust in politics in this country. That cleans it up, that decentralizes it, that gives people hope once again that politics is and always should be about the service of the public.’

In April 2010, David Cameron observed that the UK electorate had been: ‘…betrayed by a generation of politicians, by an elite that thinks it knows best. People have lost control. The politicians have forgotten, the public are the master, we are the servant. That’s what needs to change in our system…Blow apart the old system. Overthrow the old ways. Put people in the driving seat.’ His Coalition partner, Nick Clegg in a similar vein mused: ‘This government is going to transform our politics so the state has far less control over you, and you have far more control over the state,…break up concentrations of power and hand power back to people…This government is going to persuade you to put your faith in politics once again.’

Fast-forward to the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum and Alex Salmond asserted that: ‘Whatever else we can say about this referendum campaign, we have touched sections of the community who have never before been touched by politics….I don’t think that will ever be allowed to go back to business as usual in politics again.’ Finally, and most recently, there is Labour’s own careerist insurgent turned Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who saw his elevation to Leader of the Opposition as: ‘…a vote for change in the way we do politics…Kinder, more inclusive. Bottom up, not top down. In every community and workplace, not just at Westminster…Something new and invigorating, popular and authentic, has exploded.’

What binds all these leaders’ narratives together is the way in which they are implicitly seeking out a position not wholly removed from that of an anti-establishment platform. One that is committed to taking on vested powers and interests, challenging the status quo and in so doing, changing the way politics is done. Theirs is an offer of a new, more devolved, deliberative, bottom-up and participatory approach, one that is capable of listening and being receptive to the needs of the electorate. It is hard not to ignore the obvious link between such calls being made and a rising climate of anti-politics. It is ostensibly a search by an elite wishing to burst its own bubble by offering a new social contract of renewal and re-legitimation for the governing class.

Yet, if we survey the political landscape of reform in the UK during these same two decades, reform has been limited and where it has occurred, for example Scottish devolution and most recently Brexit, it appears more as an unintended consequence, rather than the culmination of government strategy, even less so a new politics.