As I have regularly predicted, Brexit is trundling along towards the most banal of beginnings. Instead of dramatic No Deal chaos or immediate obvious changes I believe the damage will be long and slow. Nothing much will happen on day one because May is on schedule to get the votes of the DUP and the Rees Mogg mob. They know that winning any kind of exit is a huge win for reactionaries and a huge defeat for progressives. She is also on schedule to buy enough votes from Labour Remainers to counterbalance any sensible rebels in her own ranks. I therefore expect her to win a vote for a bad cobbled together fudge that kicks all the problems further down the road and for the 29th March to be a complete non-event. Consequently, we’ll have to put up with a lot of daft Leavers proclaiming that it was all project fear. Whilst the car firms gradually dismantle their plants and the factory workers who voted for their regions to be better protected see them head further into decline.
One of the most appalling aspects of this is the behaviour of Labour MPs representing neglected regions. The sight of John Mann telling a Conservative Prime Minister to “show us the money” and he’d deliver his vote was sickening enough. Now we know the price of the bribe it beggars belief. His vote is to be bought for £1.6bn. Which sounds a lot. Until you hear that the money is spread over six years. Which means £260m. And then you hear that it is less than each of the areas in question are losing from central government funding for their local council. And you also hear that the EU’s European Social Fund would have entitled the UK regions to receive much higher pay outs. So a Labour MP is offering to sell the country’s future for a reduction in funding. And a Conservative Prime Minister has had over two years to come up with a workable plan to help regions that voted heavily to Leave as a cry of protest over neglect – and she comes up with a plan to increase that neglect.
Then we have the sight of the Labour Party trying to deal with The Independent Group. Instead of trying to work out how to collaborate across party lines to defeat the reactionaries the party has shown an incredible lack of understanding of the new realities. Whatever anyone thinks of the creation of a Blairite party, one thing is now almost certain. Labour is going to find it incredibly difficult to win an election on the basis of a first past the post electoral system and insults and confrontation towards smaller parties. Polls vary but, essentially, they are showing that the majority of this country is in favour of some kind of progressive political party. They are also showing that in a straight fight the Conservatives will win. Despite utter incompetence they are ahead of Labour in the polls. The only solution most Labour folk can think of to this problem is to tell us all loudly and often that we must get behind the one true party of the working class or else we are dangerous splitters. If that advice had been given to the Independent Labour Party when it was first formed there would be no Labour Party. Many of us simply don’t trust Labour to see through actions on environmental issues in power. The track record simply doesn’t evidence it. Instead it shows that whenever a trade union saw an opportunity for jobs and an environmentalist saw a problem it was the jobs that won out.
So the Green Party simply isn’t going away. Nor are the Lib Dems. Particularly after the pathetic performance of Labour over explaining consistently and honestly the problems with Brexit. Nor is The Independent Group. You don’t put at risk your own seat on a whim. It means you intend to stick around and build an alternative centre left party. Until Labour gets its head around that reality and starts to collaborate across party lines it is doomed to lose every election. More particularly it now badly needs to get behind proportional representation because it can’t win without it. Where is the sign of the remotest understanding of that reality? We have entered the era of multiple small parties competing, collaborating, and changing. Labour hasn’t left the era of the block vote.
In the midst of all this chaos and confusion Caroline Lucas has stood out as one of the few clear thinkers who has kept her focus. So have many of the SNP and Plaid representatives and a sprinkling of folk from all the other parties. After two years of pressure Caroline finally managed to get a debate in the House of Commons on the Climate Crisis. The UK smashed its way through past winter temperature records by nearly two degrees. Australia is in the midst of record high temperatures and another year of fierce fires. The Arctic Ice is hovering around record low levels. Yet when the debate finally took place the Chamber was virtually empty. A couple of Government Ministers turned up to tell us how well they were doing. Whilst out there in the country local authorities were powerless to stop the latest application to start a new fracking well from getting started. Whilst new housing estates were being built without solar panels or heat exchange units or even electric vehicle charging points. Whilst onshore wind power was virtually banned and the solar industry was again being damaged by sudden changes in government policy – this time to scrap the feed in tariff for new customers.
The gap between where policy needs to be and where it actually is has become massive. In the States progressives are starting to articulate the need for a Green New Deal as the centre stage for the opposition campaign to unseat Trump. In Germany the Greens are standing at 20% in the polls and look odds on to form the core of the next government. In Britain the only areas where action is happening is where consumer pressure has forced the hand of government or business and where there are very low costs.
Somehow, we need to shift the whole debate. What we need is sharply focused intelligent discussion about what this country invests in and what policies we need to implement in order to deal with the environmental crisis. We need to understand how the economy is going to have to change and how we ensure that Britain gains from those changes. It needs to be Britain First. But first in invention, first in design, first in implementation, first in enterprising use of new ideas, first in changing our infrastructure, first in scientific investment, and first in vision. We need to establish a sustainable economy, a sustainable environment and a sustainable society.
What we are going to get instead is another two years of sterile debate about how we trade easily with the EU without obeying every rule of the EU and not making any of them. I can see the darkness. Just at the moment I am having a bit of a struggle seeing enough of the dawn!