The Disunited Kingdom Radical federalism and the search for a new common-wealth – Morning Star Online

DO NOT underestimate the scale of the democratic crisis facing Britain.

Dont kid yourselves either that it isnt going to get a lot, lot worse.

Brexit opened up wounds that will not easily heal. Mythical claims, wrapped up in sovereignty and identity politics, looked a lot different when viewed from the rotting mounds of fish that could not be exported from our sovereign lands.

They looked no better from the lorry queues, hard borders and paperwork mountains that have all come with Britains new notional independence.

And after that, the disappearance of unrestricted rights to move, study, drive and access healthcare in Europe seem to have taken many by surprise What are they thinking of, for Gods sake, dont they know were British?!?

But if Brexit opened up awkward wounds, Covid-19 and climate change could prevent them healing.

We are on an existential roller coaster like no other. Surviving it requires a new politics a new democratic settlement that goes well beyond the fanciful claims of micronationalism and identity politics.

Thats what makes the radical federalist We, the People pamphlet such an interesting starting point (it can be found at http://www.radicalfederalism.com).

Any post-Covid economics able to survive the coming climate upheavals cannot look remotely like the economics that took us into them.

And a new democratic settlement cannot replicate the old one. This presents huge challenges to both left and right.

It requires a complete rethink of what tomorrows meaningful democracy and sustainable economics must look like.

One without the other would become another unstable illusion.

Jihadi libertarians

If such a rethink is difficult, it will be made all the more complicated if George Monbiot is correct.

Monbiots contention is that we now have a Conservative Party at war with itself.

Like the Republicans in the United States, Britains Tories are locked in a civil war between old-style patricians (happy with the benevolent dictatorship that limited democracy offers) and jihadist libertarians who would dump democracy in favour of a corporately dominated free-for-all.

Britains tidal wave of patronage contracts handed out during the pandemic suggests that the jihadists are winning.

If so, then expect the Tories to play division and fragmentation cards in much the same way that Donald Trump did.

Instead of a radical recasting of democratic rights and accountability, libertarians will fan the tides of resentment and hostility.

One obvious ploy would be to use the LSE study claiming that independence would cost Scottish taxpayers an extra 2,000-3,000 a year.

The right wont care how this goes down in Scotland. Their target would be English resentment.

Why pay for Scottish freeloaders? If the Scots want to go, let them pay their own way.

Scotland may say fair enough, but Englands drift into corporate feudalism will insist on writing all the rules about Scottish participation in the UK economy. It is how their Uncommon-wealth works.

Those who see Scotland rejoining the EU, with a wider/fairer market to play in, should look carefully at the Irish debacle over the North Sea border and the fish fiasco.

Dont think that a Trump wall is beyond the dreams ofjihadist Conservatives.

Stoking the fires of northern English resentment and hostility might be their ploy for holding onto English seats taken at the last election. It worked well enough for Brexit. Why not Scotland?

Jihadist libertarianism would happily run with English jobs for the English, English healthcare for the English, English vaccines for the English, etc.

Anything that avoids structural transfers of wealth from the rich to the poor would suit them fine.

And setting the poor against the poor is so much easier, especially when helped by your enemies.

Before the first cheers of a new democracy debate had died down, a host of charlatan claims sought to narrow the choices on offer. Nationalists want to chase nationalism.

Yesterdays Establishment calls for a royal commission on the constitution to overhaul and oversee change; a long, slow process in which the great and the good would review centralised power without letting go of it.

Both are remote from the radical federalist proposals advocated by the We, the People pamphleteers.

Picking the wrong fights

Labour lost the Brexit debate because it allowed the Tories to set the terms.

Arguments that should have been about austerity got dressed up as issues of sovereignty.

Naive nationalism won because corporate capitalism went unchallenged.

The chasms dividing Britains richest and poorest barely figured. As rooted in New Labour legacies as in David Camerons platitudes, short-term, deregulated capital effectively owned both.

Casino economics in the south (systematically pricing the young and poor out of decent housing) never even bothered to get on a train up north.

There, people whose lives looked out on hardship, abandoned shops, empty factories, crumbling schools and underfunded hospitals just wanted someone to blame.

Brexit copped it. Now that it has resolved nothing, someone else must be blamed.

Democracy was always going to be next in line and with good reason. Britain is the most centralised state in Europe. Its illegitimacy needed to be thrown into question.

Politicians who sheltered behind the facade democracy claims of the Westminster wonderland now face tidal waves of public scepticism.

But unless wealth redistribution comes hand in hand with power redistribution, all reforms would end in tears.

Restructuring the House of Lords, the Privy Council, constituency boundaries, the Bank of England and the judiciary are all important at some stage.

But right now, the more pressing question around the nations dinner tables be they in Blackburn, Bannockburn, Bangor, Barnsley or Barry is do we have any dinner?

This isnt a question that troubles the rich. Those who profited most before the pandemic have profited most from it.

In October 2020, Forbes magazine reported that, in three months, US billionaire wealth had increased by 27 per cent(!), largely thanks to government stimulus packages.

It was much the same in Britain. Not once has Britains Chancellor suggested that the richest often banking offshore and paying zero British taxes should pay for the chasms dividing the rich from the rest in our disunited kingdom.

A democracy that sustains such divisions cannot survive. Patronage contracts handed out for public services are a path from democracy to kleptocracy.

Were it not for the pandemic, and the death of Parliament, we would have been comparing Boris Johnsons Britain with Boris Yeltsins Russia.

An era of the oligarchs unfolds before our eyes. Fresh fish no longer make it out of British ports but dirty money and patronage slosh in and out of the economy (tax-free) as they choose. No wonder democracy itself is being challenged.

Synthetic solidarities: the community of communities

Those seeking a more meaningful and inclusive democracy, however, need to start from somewhere else.

It is here that the elements of a serious reset can be found. In reality, all states are synthetic constructs. Our vulnerabilities and shared interdependencies are what hold us together.

Cultural separatism chases these into divisive cul-de-sacs. Climate emergencies demand the opposite. Mutuality and inclusion become the glue that matters.

You could see this when Covid-19 first struck; in the ways people shopped for each other, phoned to check the neighbours were OK, and (indirectly) when people volunteered for vaccine trials that might (eventually) keep others alive.

You could see it too when Germany sent a planeload of doctors to help Portugals hospitals cope.

And in Oxfords insistence that, in developing nations, their vaccine cannot be sold for a profit. It is also the social solidarity that has underpinned our NHS and Blood Transfusion Service for over 70 years.

The next set of climate crises will force us to build on these lessons, rather than on the mess preceding them.

Politicians have already been told that centralised policies alone cannot deliver the scale of carbon reductions needed to meet Britains climate targets.

Environmental stability demands far greater decentralised powers, duties and resources.

The localisation of our interdependencies must then be turned from a crisis measure to a source of strength.

Such solidarities will matter far more than national boundaries. Westminster, Holyrood and the Senedd can hold the gates open to this process, but they cannot be allowed to own it. Maybe Wales grasps this better than Scotland or England.

In a thoughtful piece in Planet Digital, Selwyn Williams argues that we should follow the lead of Community Movement Cymru, thinking of ourselves more as a community of communities than a set of divided nations.

Internationally, the model he draws on is of the Swedish Rural Parliament. This biennial gathering of 1,000 representatives from towns, villages and communities makes its own representations directly to the Swedish government and parliament.

It offers a more coherent framework (of both accountability and continuity) than the ad-hoc citizens conventions Britain has dabbled in.

The bloody English

Such a parliament of the communities would also help us get past the English problem.

In truth, only the far right really hankers after an English parliament. Englands divisions run much deeper.

North-south hostilities are everywhere. So too are tensions between metro mayors and elected leaders of the councils within their domain.

Then theres the resentment of major cities excluded from the metro club and the angst of rural areas excluded by everyone.

And, if were being brutally frank, most elected authorities have lived in austerity bunkers for so long that the idea of opening the door to their own communities counts as more of a threat than an invitation.

Yet it is within such limitations that the building of a new democracy must begin.

The climate emergency will force us to live within rapidly reducing carbon budgets.

Localising (and cutting) our carbon footprint will become the new security norm.

Covid-19 forced us to live within a contagion-reducing economy. Climate will do so in a carbon-reducing one.

The difference is that community involvement will become part of the answer, not the problem.

Of course, grassroots democracy will get things wrong. Communities will do things differently. Some will work, some wont. The best lessons will be shared, the worst abandoned.

European examples of such federalism display it as a strength, not a weakness. So, in the words of Leonard Cohen:

Ring the bells that still can ringForget your perfect offeringThere is a crack, a crack in everythingThats how the light gets in.

This is the challenge facing those wanting a new democratic settlement. Put communities before capital, climate restoration before exploitation. Forget your perfect offerings. Just be the way the light gets in.

Alan Simpson is a former Labour Party politician who was the MP for Nottingham South from 1992 to 2010.

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The Disunited Kingdom Radical federalism and the search for a new common-wealth - Morning Star Online