Exiting the Impasse

It is exactly three years since the referendum. Three years since the slim 52/48 margin decided the vote for the UK in favour of leaving the EU …

It really feels as though the world is rapidly redefining itself at the moment. And it’s changing in a way which my younger self is finding hard to comprehend. I say ‘younger self’ because I’m increasingly realising how ossified my sense of optimism has been throughout the course of the last two and a half decades, I feel like Rumpelstiltskin waking up – or is it simply that this extreme pendulum swing since 23 June 2016 has happened far faster than anyone would have thought reasonably possible only a short time ago?

What has happened to that sense of hope and optimism which seemed so ripe with potential at the close of the twentieth century? Where are our present day Nelson Mandelas (truth and reconciliation), our Václav Havels (living in truth), our Aung San Suu Kyis (freedom from fear)? – Now we have Putin, Trump, Xi, Bolsonaro, Erdogan, Orban. And, even more unfathomably, Aung San Suu Kyi has of her own accord now joined their ranks! … It’s the new norm. Politics by personality cult. Populism providing sustenance for a rising sense of blinkered nationalism. Globalisation on the brink of imploding, and globalism about to atomise itself.

For a long time a lot of people I know here in the UK bemoaned our identikit plastic politicians, groaning at the lack of choice and the apparent inevitability of the outcomes of our elections. Our major political parties all seemed intent on occupying a safe middle ground, seemingly for the sake of their own careers first and foremost, massively fiddling their expense claims as a requisite perk of the job. But, bizarrely, that galling status quo now seems like some strange lost halcyon era.

A friend and I were discussing the current deepening division which is developing in the UK. Thinking about the gap that’s only widening and getting wider whilst the uncertainties of our nation’s situation remain unresolved, wondering how this crisis has ostensibly manifested itself out of nowhere. I’m sure the reason it all seems so obscure is because it’s not such a simple thing in and of itself. It’s more complex and probably runs far deeper than we can readily perceive on the day-to-day surface of things. I’m sure it’s due to a combination of factors.

The economic disparities within society at large sit at the root of all of this in the shape of the growing distance between those who have and those who have not. The divide between the wealthy and the poor is deepening perhaps because the system itself is not self-sustaining. Continual growth is probably an unrealistic and impossible aim, but rather than believing boom and bust is a natural, self-regenerating cycle, can we not seek to realign our society to different aims? – New Zealand is trying to do just that – This though is perhaps an eternally difficult circle to square. It seems as though human nature will always part between two extremes, and there will be those who will always want and seek to steer things off a middle way. How to improve upon this self-confounding conundrum? – I’ve no idea what to suggest.

The political ideologies which overlie our economic and social systems are a significant factor, simultaneously driving and hindering these changes. A quaquaversal conundrum at the core. The fact that so much is now in direct contention with itself within our Government, within Parliament, and even within the main political parties themselves, suggests that we are perhaps at a point of genuine transformation – surely whatever comes of this, no matter how bad or divisive it might get – change is now genuinely possible. But how are we to gauge the magnitude of what could as opposed to what should, or more importantly, what will happen?

I can’t help feeling that our collective discontent and antagonism is only going to grow over the next few months (or even years), fuelled by the deracinated ‘democracy’ of social media, egged on by the echo chambers of the mainstream-media-manipulated bubbles in which we are all cocooned – but how will this rising discontent eventually manifest itself? – Are we headed for discontent on a par with the Poll Tax riots, the Miners’ Strike, the anarchy of August 2011? – Or are we headed for a General Strike, an economy in free fall or meltdown? – The break-up of the United Kingdom? – Or will we see a slow emergence of a ‘Brexit Spring’ whereby some sort of social rising occurs which galvanises us all and demands a revolution in our political system, throwing out the two party, ‘first-past-the-post’ system which has hitherto prevailed for so long?

Whatever happens I think one thing is for sure – it won’t be quite what any of us want. More likely than not, we are all destined to have our expectations disappointed. Whatever compromise is arrived at – it won’t be a consensus. It’ll be a fudge made to seem like a consensus. But as ever, some of us will win (probably a few), some of us will lose (probably quite a few) – and in the long term it will only serve to be a massive missed opportunity.

If the systemic trend of rising nationalism is a response to the increasing imbalances of capitalist globalisation over recent decades, what will be the eventual outcome? – If nationalism means this world system is no longer sustainable and it really does begin to breakdown, what do we think might reasonably replace it? – Or is it too big to fail?

I have no idea. I can’t even begin to fathom it. But neither can I foresee it playing out without some recourse to violence somewhere along the way – small scale and/or potentially large scale. From civil disobedience and rioting within our own borders (stemming from social and economic discontent), to full scale military conflicts between nations (from the tensions of rising nationalism, punitive tariffs and petty trade wars). I hope I am proved wrong, but it all seems possible, and most scarily of all it maybe even seems to be becoming increasingly inevitable as each day passes with all of these uncertainties perpetually hanging over us, unresolved.

What I deplore and despair of the most is the absolute mindless stupidity of it all. Particularly in the UK the rising xenophobia and increasingly overt racism, made all the more shocking for its official endorsement in the form of the Government’s repugnant and bluntly implemented “hostile environment” policy, which is demonstrably aimed far wider than simply targeting illegal immigrants. None of this needs to happen. If only we could dispense with our partisan self-interest (for we are all, wittingly and unwittingly, complicit) and focus ourselves instead on the greater whole and the greater good. We’re painting ourselves into an ever diminishing corner. But sadly I suspect no one who has any kind of clout in these machinations is truly interested in finding an equilibrium which is the most optimum for all of us; there are too many petty agendas constantly in play. Too many pockets to line, too many nests to feather. Too many people to keep down and keep in their place. And too many of us all too willing to play along, willingly hoodwinking ourselves, swallowing the panacea, or alternatively raging against the machine in a way which is simply self-detrimental or playing straight into the hands of those manipulating the odds. United we are corralled, but divided we stand. Milksops or Militants. Milkshakes or Molotov cocktails. It’s all an almighty mess.

No matter how much I think about it, no matter how much I talk about it with family and friends, people on both sides of the present divide – I can’t see an exit. We seem to be oscillating unendingly between tragedy and farce. If ‘all the world is a stage’, then clearly we are stuck firmly in the theatre of the absurd. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (the more it changes, the more it's the same thing) – the dissident-playwright-turned-politician, Václav Havel’s alter ego, Ferdinand Vaněk, was right, “It’s all fucked up.”