Denis MacShane / May 2024
Image: Shutterstock
First Boris Johnson was forced out of 10 Downing Street and then Liz Truss left after just 43 days in office. Now it is the turn of the Scottish First Minister, Hamza Yusef, to be forced out of power.
Both the crisis of the politics in Scotland and the crisis of politics in England reflect the failure of 21st century nationalism to offer a convincing political story or a competent system of government in two of the oldest most settled nations in Europe.
Fifteen years ago David Cameron walked out of a European People’s Party, a broad alliance of conservative and centre-right parties in Europe, to throw in his lot with the European Conservatives and Reformists, an apparently harmless title for a new grouping of nationalist identity parties based on historic nostalgia for pre-war anti-semitic Poland, a softened version of Mussolini’s autocratic Italian nationalism and a belief that Franco’s four decades of Catholic authoritarian rule in Spain had been good for the Iberian peninsular.
Some thought that the entry of pragmatic, tolerant, live-and-let-live English conservatism would widen the group’s appeal and let them take over from the Christian democratic and moderate conservative parties that had ruled successfully in Europe since 1950.
The opposite happened as we know. The Conservatives became obsessed with leaving the European Union which all their new sister parties mocked and criticised using language that Boris Johnson had deployed in the Daily Telegraph since the 1990s.
But only far-out fringe elements called for busting apart the EU. On the contrary the Polish, or Bulgarian, or Swedish nationalists wanted more Europe that would be much tougher on immigrants and much more generous with taxpayers’ money for small farmers.
They looked with interest and initially some enthusiasm for Britain’s nationalist Brexit plebiscite experiment. But as the doors shut in England against their own citizens, and the economic difficulties associated with leaving the world’s largest trading block became apparent, no-one in nationalist parties in Poland or Greece called for Polexit or Grexit.
Flemish nationalist parties now in alliance with the nationalist Conservatives certainly wanted to end the influence of the French speaking Walloon Belgians but again this was not thought to be advanced by leaving the EU.
In Scotland, nationalism took over much of the political space. First Conservatives and Liberal Democratic and then Labour were eliminated from the political arena.
A problem with nationalist ideology is that it is never written in the singular. There have been 16 different rightist nationalist groups in the European Parliament since direct elections were introduced in 1979.
Italy has two such parties – Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and Matteo Salvini’s Lega. Giorgia and Matteo hate each other and nationalist passions rarely result in compromises and intra-party team work necessary for democracy to function well.
The other problem can be seen in England and Scotland.
When the Tories won in 2017, and then after in 2019, they had a big majority for their English nationalist ideology but were unable to deliver clean, competent, government or successfully grow the economy and ensure ever higher standards in health and education.
The same is true about Scottish nationalist politics. In effect a one party state emerged obsessed with identity – the identity of what being a Scot means and then the descent into the sump of gender identity ideology which animates SNP MPs but few if any Scottish voters.
The United Kingdom was the first experiment in creating a European Union as four distinct peoples – the English, Scots, Welsh and Irish each with their own nation – managed to sink enough of their differences to have a common parliament, a common currency, a single foreign policy, and freedom of movement between the different nations.
There were complaints of course. Scottish nationalist politicians talked about the all-powerful, interfering Whitehall bureaucracy much as Nigel Farage or Jacob Rees Mogg talk of Brussels.
But nationalism was not pushed too far until the Tories went into opposition in 1997 and decided that Europe was a stick to beat or trip up Tony Blair.
William Hague made the absurd point in 2001 that if Tony Blair was re-elected “Britain would become a foreign land.”
It was a stupid remark unworthy of an intelligent man. But once Hague opened the door to Tory nationalism the virus infected the party at all levels. In the end the nationalist revolution devoured its children in both Scotland as can now be clearly seen, and in England with the endless prime ministers and senior cabinet ministers as the nationalist virus felled a generation of top Tories to no profit for their party.
Now nationalism in Scotland has collapsed in on itself just as English nationalism is a failure. This paves the way for a return of a Labour Party and likely next government to represent all the peoples in the European Union of the 4 nation United Kingdom.
