This August has been the serious season. Ukraine, Israel-Gaza, Isis, Syria have all reminded us of the perils of an unstable world, while domestic extremism and child abuse have forced us to think about what sort of society we are.
These issues have darkened the summer, and as these are subjects that don’t respect party boundaries or offer clear advantage, the political response has been muted and cautious, perhaps leaving parties hungering to engage in the fights they feel most comfortable with – jobs and taxes, spending and cuts, schools, hospitals and houses. Tories and Labour, Lib Dem and Ukip.
It might feel an unexpected relief, then, to be presented with a political event so clear and well lit that it turns eyes away from the shadowy corners we have been forced to examine this summer and instead focuses on a single, bright, certain event. Douglas Carswell’s decision to defect to Ukip and cause a by-election fits with this urge: a political move that is unusual but entirely comprehensible and which is appears to be all about party politics – a nightmare for the Tory leadership, a possible triumph for Ukip, and an unexpected fillip for the Labour party.
After all, what is Carswell’s defection? A maverick, thoughtful MP, with a passionate interest in the European Union and democratic accountability defects to a party, whose stated aim is to leave the EU and whose self-image is of a party holding an out-of-touch elite to account for their failures and complacency.
This anti-establishmentism, European and domestic, is a problem for David Cameron most of all. The prime minister is the personification of the complacent elite, a man whose purpose in life is appears to simply be prime minister, to look prime ministerial and to remain in No 10.
Worse, this desire to remain in office leads Cameron to make concessions to his ideologues for which he gets no credit in return.
Consider: Cameron has marginalised his standing in Europe to please his Eurosceptic members. He has used his veto. He has promised a referendum on EU membership. Yet his internal opponents demand more. Carswell is leaving, in part, because he fear that Cameron may have the temerity to argue that a deal he hopes to secure would be good for Britain. Why such ever-increasing demand? Because they know he is merely paying the danegeld he feels he must, which neither gets rid of the Danes nor reduces the demand for the geld.
No wonder then that a Carswell, a signpost of a man, his causes and issues emblazoned a foot high, has found Cameron’s retreat impossible. On Europe, Cameron has retreated so far that to push further and to remain in the Tory party makes no sense. So Carswell chose to leave, in order to push him to a further retreat.
Of course, we want to see Cameron stagger, and we want to beat him at the next election.
The chance of his humiliation at Clacton is great, so it would be impossible not to smile at it, hoping that Labour might gain from his travails, but there is a worry there too. Cameron is the whipping boy now, but this mood of distrust, this hunger for populism, this appeal of the simple and the clear are not confined to the right.
Like our global problems, they cut across party lines.
The question might be is our response to the demand for certainty in a complex fractious world any greater than Cameron’s? Is our critique of distrusted institutions any more effective than Cameron’s? Do people trust us, more than they trust Cameron? If we say yes, do we expect the discontents of England to float to us, not Ukip?
If we suspect the answer is no, then how do we build the trust with the electorate we will need to guide the country through the dark issues we have spent the summer nervously contemplating?
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Hopi Sen is a Labour blogger who writes here, is a contributing editor to Progress, and writes a fortnightly column for ProgressOnline here
Nothing distracts from Labour’s need to vigorously defend the UK economic, business and jobs case for staying in the EU as the Far Right UKIP and the Near Right Tories monopolise the wrong headed agenda of preparing for exit – covered simplistically by the Tory Tabloids be it the Sun or Mail or Express or Telegraph & Murdoch’s Times papers and the poodle dog BBC. The case ‘for’ staying disappeared form Labour’s agenda before last May as it misdiagnosed how far this once nutty stuff had gone mainstream.
I say Lapdog BBC even before I saw their News at Ten broadcast last night using the phrase the ‘Bad’ immigration figures – which is a value judgement if ever I saw one. The BBC have decided that immigration from the EU has become ‘Bad’ – no alternative views, no Labour or Lib Dem input just sheer wall to wall coverage of Farage and his ilk.
What wonderful news! As so many have pointed out before me, there has at last been a glimpse of “silly season” amidst all the bloodshed. Roll on the bye-election! In the same way that Labour has so often suffered from the Lib Dems splitting the progressive vote at council and by-elections and letting in the Tories when they fail to govern properly, maybe this will let Labour in as the seat-winners in Clacton.
A serious misjudgement on your part. The populist Essex vote will go rightwards aided by the media seeking a sensationalist story. The only thing you will not hear especially on the BBC in all of this is the pro-EU and economic case as the whole thing is drowned in East European immigration issues. You underestimate how far the anti-EU ideology has embedded itself -with Labour’s counter message AWOL on this.
It wont be all smiles for Labour(us) with the Ukip defection as in other seats a problem for us as our voters defect as they no longer see Labour as the party to defend their interests. I am not sure that Ed Miliband and his advisors have a clue about those at the bottom of the pile and their lives. We need to reconnect again with ordinary people and their aspirations in the way that Callaghan and Wilson did otherwise we are in for a shock. Problem with professional politicians today they live in a bubble surrounded by sycophants ,and somehow that bubble must burst and other voices heard. Over to you Ed?