Labour’s only way back is through the Union Jack
A post-Brexit progressive project to save the country
Introduction
The battle for the Labour leadership is finally nearing its send, and questions of identity have proved a contentious point. Whilst debates over gender identity has attracted the headlines[1], it is national identity and the related constitutional issues which will engulf this parliament, and to which Labour must find its voice.
Rebecca Long-Bailey kicked off her campaign with a call for ’Progressive patriotism’. Those who scoffed that there was no content behind this nice turn of phrase were proved correct in recent hustings where she made probably the most remarkable made by a recent senior UK politician, and one that in any sane world would end her career. In hustings in Cardiff, she said that Wales should have the right to devolve across all policy areas, specifically including foreign affairs and defence (footnote). Presuming the same was to apply to Scotland, England and (somehow) Northern Ireland, this would result in the UK having four separate foreign and defence policies, unprecedented in a nation-state and logically leading to separation.
Keir Starmer at least recognised the long-standing inconsistency in English regions not having same powers as Wales, Scotland, London and Northern Ireland, and called for ‘radical federalism’ as the solution. Such devolution to English regions would be the logical continuation of New Labour’s reforms and are thus the easiest way of devolving political power away from Westminster. By ending the ‘special status of Wales, Scotland, London and N.Ireland’ in our country, it could also help weaken recent separatist sentiments which have partly arisen from the distinct treatment they receive within our constitutional set up.
Lisa Nandy came closest to hitting the spot, continuing to demonstrate she’s a much-underrated operator, with a punchy and decisive answer to a question on Scotland which managed to wind up all of the right people.[2] As with many tough but accurate comments by politicians, it was widely (if wrongly) reported as a ‘gaffe’. In fact, Nandy displayed that she has the attitude that Labour will need if it is to fight for Britain, an attitude to challenge and conquer the separatists and end our shameful decades-long appeasement.
A Constitutional Crisis Parliament
The approach of the next Labour Leader to these issues matters enormously for this parliament is likely to be the most important parliament for constitutional issues in British history. Our formal departure from the EU is just the beginning of a period of turmoil in UK politics. The real fight in this parliament, one with more passionate emotions and one with far greater implications for the UK as a nation-state is the one developing with the SNP.
5 years after their ‘once in a generation’ referendum, where the SNP shocked the world by achieving 45% support for independence, up from 25% in polling when the referendum was called, the SNP are demanding a replay. Their game plan is clear — demand Boris Johnson gives them ‘Section 30 powers’ for a new referendum or declare foul play. Whilst constitutionally the SNP cannot do anything if Johnson rightly continues to refuse a referendum, from a public relations perspective it is their dream scenario. The SNP thrives on any perceptions they can engender as victims of a UK Government, the legitimacy of which they contest.
The bitterness of SNP politics is best exemplified by a recent vile tweet by SNP MP Joanna Cherry, which subtly deployed the provocative phrase ‘another country’:
The atmosphere in @HouseofCommons today is truly repellent. I feel trapped in the parliament of another country whose concerns & obsessions are utterly alien to me & my constituents & where doublespeak is rife. It’s time for #indyref2 #ScotlandsRightToChoose
Such highly sectarian language is carefully cultivated to stoke division and rancour. Those who have suspected that the actual SNP strategy is to provoke the rest of the country into hating the scots are having their suspicions confirmed.
This is just a particularly extreme example of the sectarianism which is the SNP’s blood. What is more worrying is what has happened to the so-called Conservative and Unionist Party, with its very English dominated leadership and capitulation over Northern Ireland in the Brexit talks. Having allowed Northern Ireland to become separated from the rest of the country, this government has tacitly accepted that avoiding a border between the UK and the Republic of Ireland is more important than avoiding internal borders within the UK, something which would have brought down any previous Prime Minister and still might bring down the Johnson regime once the implications begin to be revealed.
This is the time most in British history when a government strongly committed to maintaining the UK as an integrated nation state is needed. Amongst Westminster political and media elites, the integrity of the country is taken for granted, and the possibility of separation is not something they are psychologically equipped to even consider. Having been born in Bromley but brought up in Cardiff, to a mother from north-west England and a dad from south wales, the UK’s survival as a country is not a political issue but a fight over my identity and who I am.
Labour’s Northern Ireland Opportunity
Johnson’s betrayal of Northern Ireland and the desperate need for Northern Ireland unionism to develop a liberal and inclusive plank provides an opportunity for Labour. Labour should formally end its alliance with the Social Democratic Labour Party, which explicitly desires the separation of Northern Ireland from the rest of the country. A very big issue facing Corbyn’s credibility as PM was his attitude to Northern Ireland, and Labour won’t and shouldn’t be taken seriously as a party to govern the country again until they aggressively disavow such separatism.
Given the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats don’t actually stand in Northern Ireland, Labour has the chance to become the only true ‘one-nation’ party standing candidates nationwide. This could emerge through an electoral alliance or even a merger with the Ulster Unionist Party, which could form a moderate unionist alternative to the highly conservative DUP. Separately, Labour should also look to cooperative effectively on pan-British Isles issues through a formal arrangement with the Irish Labour Party.
The next Labour Leader has a God-given opportunity to humiliate Johnson at every turn, as he betrays the view held by every British PM of the post-war era that ‘Northern Ireland is as British as Finchley’. Ultimately, Johnson’s acceptance of an internal border within our country will not be accepted by many of his backbenches when the next stage of the Brexit negotiations reveals the likely implications. Northern Ireland will be one of the stormiest issues of this parliament and Labour has the early opportunity to nail its colours to the mast and lead popular opinion.
The UK’s mistakes with the Ireland question early in the last century provides lessons for British statesmen on the handling of the Scotland issue.
The Scotland challenge
Make no mistake about it, the SNP are the IRA of our generation. In the everlasting words of the IRA bombers who failed to kill Margaret Thatcher in the 1984 Brighton Bombing, they ‘only have to be lucky once’. If you are unsure about the appropriateness of this comparison, ask yourself this question: Do you really think a ‘yes’ vote for separation would lead to a call for another referendum a few years later, just as the ‘no’ vote did in 2014?
SNP may well do a ‘Sinn Fein’ at some point by refusing to take their seats, and UK politics should be prepared for this. Labour should pro-actively sponsor legislation saying that if MP’s refuse to take their seats then there is either a by-election in which that party is not allowed to take part or the candidate of the second placed party automatically assumes the seat. This will bring overdue fairness to non-republican voters in Northern Ireland, who have no means of effective representation guaranteed to voters in the rest of the country.
Over the coming years of a likely unpopular conservative government, there will be a substantial body of voters in Wales and Scotland who are anti-government but firmly opposed to separating from the United Kingdom. Labour’s revival in Scotland and increasingly their success in Wales depends on establishing themselves as the most effective defenders and promoters of the UK and not for a second being tempted to go separatist-lite.
How Labour should lead the fight for the UK as the true ‘one-nation’ party
Just as Blair and co realised that the 90’s Labour Party required rebranding, so this generation will (sadly probably later rather than sooner) realise the same. In the post-Brexit vacuum, there is space for a political project and Labour can fill the vacuum with a positive nationalism, a ‘Cool Brittania’ for a new generation. So just as in the late 90’s, Labour was rebranded as ‘New Labour’, and the Red Flag replaced with the Red Rose, Labour needs another rebranding, ideally with the Union Jack in its logo, and a formal renaming to the UK Labour Party, shortened to UKLP.
Re-establishing Labour as the most pro-UK party can help Labour recover from its mistake in the late 90’s when it left an uneven constitutional settlement across the country. Whilst Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London received welcome devolved powers, such decentralisation was not implemented in the rest of the country. Although some decentralisation was long overdue, it should have been done as part of one great constitutional reform, with power devolved from London on an equal basis across the country. As a result of New Labour’s bungling inconsistency, the present UK looks a bizarre and inconsistent patchwork of assemblies, parliaments and mayors with vast swathes of the country being directly run by Westminster.
Westminster, unlike equivalents in France, Germany and US has greater powers over some parts of the country than others. One consequence is the farcical situation where the Secretaries of State for Education and Health sit in the UK cabinet but only have responsibility for parts of the UK. Conversations in cabinet must move from nationwide issues such as foreign policy, the economy etc to England-only issues such as education and health. Under the last Labour government, it led to complains that capable and experienced Scottish MP’s such as John Reid were not able to fulfil certain cabinet positions since their remit was restricted to England. The obvious implication from this logic (which now appears a quasi-official position) is that Scottish and Welsh MPs are basically second-class MP’s, with different and inferior career prospects.
The clumsy devolution of the 90’s established in UK law clear constitutional inconsistencies between different parts of the UK, allowing much of the country to forget about events in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Devolved decision-making has led to partially separate political cultures, particularly between Scotland and the rest of the country. This has thus led to increase feelings of separation, continuous process. Many highly intelligent activists appear stunned when told that health and education are treated differently in Scotland and Wales, and so Labour’s promises had no input there. Labour (and the Conservatives too) were proposing policies to benefit the ‘whole country’, when they did nothing of the sort.
Rather than killing separatism ‘stone-dead’ as was foolishly promised by leading Scottish Labour politician of the 1990’s George Robertson, devolution has partially legitimised it by providing a focal point for a Scottish political culture and identity distinct from the rest of the country. Holyrood has since used its powers to deviate from the rest of the country in particular respects which thus increase the sense of separation, in a vicious circle which shows no sign of stopping.
This is best seen in the case of university policy, where Holyrood has used its powers to relief ‘Scottish’ students only from tuition fees at ‘Scottish’ universities. To introduce this, the Scottish Executive even had to introduce rules to distinguish UK citizens between those that are ‘Scottish’ and the rest of the country, the first time any UK authorities have made such a distinction. Such rules are based on residency, meaning any UK citizen resident in Scotland for three years is entitled to free tuition at a Scottish university. Rather than Scottish students travelling around the country and expanding their horizons, they’ve made the logical financial decision to restrict themselves to Scotland. This has probably helped to develop a separate ‘Scottish’ identity instead of the broader ‘British’ identity.
I could only imagine bizarre conversations amongst students at Scottish universities:
‘So you’re technically from the Scottish part of Britain, you don’t have to pay?’
‘Yes, that’s right, it is free for me. Why? Is it not for you?
‘No sadly, I’m from a different part of Britain from you so I have to pay’.
‘Oh, how weird’.
Devolution has thus led to a separate university system within the UK, the result of which is a generation growing up divided, with unprecedented (at least in recent centuries) distinctions between national identities within the UK. The scandal has produced feelings of separation where none existed before, not replicated at universities elsewhere in the country where Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish students would just be considered natives.
What makes this situation even more remarkable is that due to EU ‘non-discrimination’ rules, Scotland must also ensure that students from other EU countries do not pay tuition fees even whilst charging fees to students from the rest of the UK. The horrifying consequence is that there is more discrimination within the UK then there is between the UK and the EU. The EU believed it was wrong to treat EU citizens differently, despite feelings of common citizenship and identity within the disparate nations of the EU being not a fraction that within the country of the UK. An interesting side-note is the implication that the EU interferes into right of Scottish Executive to take decisions more than the UK does.
Correcting our devolution mistake
A good argument exists for clearing out this middle tier of government altogether and empowering traditional councils with greater powers, most particularly greater tax and spend powers. Abolishing the regional assemblies for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London could only realistically be done through referendums, a risky approach even if Labour pushed aggressive decentralisation to council level as the alternative.
Another approach, and proposed by Starmer, is for regions of England to have similar powers to those of Scotland, London, Wales and Northern Ireland. This could form part of a broad constitutional reform whereby the House of Lords is converted into a house for nations and regions. Such a reform would help decentralise power within England and thus tackle the regional inequalities which afflict the UK.
Long-standing objections to the regionalisation of England revolve around a lack of clear regional identities, obvious regional boundaries and subsequent lack of popular will for such assemblies. Decentralising all the way down to local councils is one possibility, although some would say they are often too small to be handed substantive powers. A mixed alternative would be for regional assemblies and governments to be built up from local councils, with such regional bodies having a similar relationship to constituent counties as the EU Commission and Parliament does to EU states.
The very worst idea imaginable, and one Labour should reject with full force, is that of an English Parliament. This would be a travesty which would likely end the UK in less than a decade. One obvious glaring problem is the lack of logic in having a unit of government for 55 million people just below a unit of 65 million. However, the principal problem is that it will just accelerate the growing sense of distinction between different parts of the country and the decline of a common British identity, as has resulted from the failures of Scottish and Welsh devolution.
The potential risk to British identity arising from devolution was foreseen by Tony Blair, the Prime Minister who oversaw devolution when he expressed support for a nationwide Premier League. In an interview in the Scotsman in 2013, Blair said[3]:
People used to think it was a bit trivial when I used to say we should put the football leagues together. It’s just you need to find ways in which people are realising they have a lot in common, as well as space for the diversity of the UK. I’d do a lot more of that.”
He added: “I was very struck by the fact that once you did devolution and then you separated, even institutions like the BBC became separated in a very clear way. You just lost that sense of a common agenda that you are waking up to every day”.
Resurrecting Blair’s idea of one national Premier League is a cost-free and attractive policy Labour should adopt.
How Labour can win and not lose at Identity Politics
There are lots of legitimate criticisms made of progressive politicians and parties getting ‘identity politics’ horrifically wrong. This is a gifted opportunity for them to get it right and become the UK’s only one nation party. The problem is not the existence of identity politics, but that Labour has got it so badly wrong. There is no contradiction in Labour continuing its proud tradition of protecting minority rights whilst recapturing its traditional support for the majority. We can continue to protect and advance the rights of minorities whilst defending British culture, identity and statehood.
The centre-left desperately needs a positive political project to rally around. This cannot under any set of circumstances be to rejoin the EU, a backward-looking ambition which will limit our appeal to a vocal but limited number of middle-class voters in cities, already too dominant in the Labour Party and who are best left to the Liberal Democrats.
Our new project, and our pathway back to power, is to launch and lead a ‘UK Movement’, mirroring the European Movement launched after the second world war 2 to unite the people of Europe. Whilst European integration never captured the imagination of a British people disinterested in a continent-wide political union, a UK movement to reform and strengthen the UK as a unified nation state is the way to save the country and Labour’s route back to power.
Within the Labour movement, only ‘Blue Labour’ has really grasped the importance of nationhood to social democracy. Sadly, Labour facilitated the collapse of our nationhood with the botched devolution of the late 90’s and are now experiencing a justified backlash as no one feels they stand for them.
The first step is to fight back against the recent adoption of the word ‘union’. I was obviously left off the email distribution list when the change from referring to the UK as a country to a ‘union’ was announced, but this surrender to separatist language must be challenged through every medium.
However, Labour should also be on the front foot, developing plans for a federal UK with a new constitution, correcting the mistake of the late 90’s when such an imbalanced constitutional set up was created. Sadly, Labour show worrying signs of going in the opposite direction, with apparently serious talk of Scottish Labour becoming a distinct legal entity, and already the ludicrous creation of the post of ‘Scottish Labour Leader’.
A UK Movement: Labour’s Rallying Cry
In addition to fighting against separatism, Labour must distinguish itself by leading efforts for increased integration within the UK. Such a ‘UK Movement’ would act as a positive civic nationalist agenda, or progressive patriotism as some would call it.
A major part of such a platform would consist of identity and cultural issues, an area where Labour has generally failed. Firstly, we need a UK national anthem, so that the English Anthem (the awful ‘God Save the Queen’) doesn’t have to be played at nationwide events. Patriotic but Progressive songs such as Rule Brittania, Land of Hope and Glory or Jerusalem are all options and could capture the epitome of the liberal and welcoming ‘British’ patriotism shown at the Last night of the Proms.
Economically, there is both the need and opportunity for increased economic integration within the UK. The long overdue renaming of the Bank of England as the Bank of United Kingdom or Bank of Britain. Free ports overlapping England and Scotland could enhance economic interdependence within the UK and pose a critical challenge for any future Scottish separatist campaign.
Given the fragile constitutional situation, the priority for high speed rail should be Edinburgh to Newcastle and Leeds, or Glasgow to Manchester and Liverpool, rather than linking the north with the south. It may hurt to write these words, but Boris Johnson is right to examine the feasibility of a tunnel between Northern Ireland and the rest of the country, and Labour should firmly back the plan.
A further policy Labour should urgently push is to create an Erasmus scheme within the UK. Scottish students staying in Scotland rather than travelling across the country may be one reason why support for separation, rather than being the preserve of embittered old people (as is commonly assumed) has grown so much amongst the young.
On a broader constitutional reform basis, Labour should get behind the draft Act of Union Bill developed the cross-party constitutional reform group.[4] This foresees the House of Lords reforming into a house of nations and regions. Not everything in the draft bill is perfect but Labour would do far better to pick up the baton and try to shape it, with stronger role for counties and a weakening of the powers of devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Outside parliamentary manoeuvring and legal delicacies, Labour needs to lose its London-centric aura and reassert itself in the different English regions by acting as cheerleaders for increased regional autonomy. Whilst previous generations in previous Labour strongholds may have voted Labour on tribal basis due to unions and class, this generation must be won through Labour championing regional identities and regional powers. Labour should look to defeat Boris Johnson with the wonderfully ironic use of ‘Take Back Control’ as a campaigning slogan, with clearly established plans for increased regional autonomy.
Such a message, backed up by detailed and eye-catching policies, will still require a change in mood for it to be successful. This occurs via the immediately rebranding of Labour as the one true national party, with the UK in its name and Union Jack in its logo. No future Labour Leader should repeat Ed Miliband’s election-costing mistake in 2015 of not saying loud and clear, in response to threats of a SNP-backed Labour Government, that he’d rather have a conservative government for a thousand years than one day of a fragmented United Kingdom.
If we want the chance to govern the country, we need to prove we believe in it. The first lines of the inauguration speech of our newly elected Leader must be emphatic:
‘The UK is one country and we will never surrender. We will defeat separatism by any means necessary. Any means necessary means any means necessary’.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/12/labour-leadership-row-over-support-for-trans-rights-charter
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-51139519 https://www.thenational.scot/news/18209133.labour-mp-lisa-nandy-claims-snp-excluded-uk-wide-debates/
[3] https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scottish-independence/hard-brexit-could-push-scottish-independence-over-line-warns-tony-blair-547465
