2020: The year that things fell apart
For the last five years politics has been many things, but it has rarely been dull. Despite the rollercoaster of unexpected twists, turns and sudden jolts of the last five years, I didn’t expect 2020 to be such an extraordinary year. Words like “extraordinary” “unprecedented” and “challenging” have been so overused in the last 12 months that they have ceased to have any meaning, but that is because this has been an “extraordinary” year and it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on all the unbelievable things (most of them bad) that have happened.
At the start of the year, when Jeremy Corbyn was still Labour leader and Britain was still in the EU, almost no one had predicted the impact that the novel coronavirus, aka Covid-19, would have on the world. However, from mid-March onwards people worldwide have been subjected to lockdowns, event cancellations, periods of isolation, travel bans and endless discourse about the R-rate. In some countries the health service has been driven almost to the point of collapse and several times this year it looked touch and go for our beloved NHS.
Covid-19’s impact has been such that it has divided politics into the old, pre-pandemic politics and the new pandemic politics. Years of slow, anemic growth since the 2000’s great recession was brought to an end this year, when the UK experienced its sharpest economic contraction ever. Last year I pointed out that we were overdue a recession and that the “impact of a second recession after years of anemic growth could be devastating.” At the time I didn’t know how much of an understatement this was. Even if the UK can roll out a Covid-19 vaccine next year, we’re likely to be looking at many years of a painful, slow recovery.
Covid-19 made everything worse
In many ways Covid-19 has changed everything. Rishi Sunak, a fiscally conservative Chancellor, has embraced massive borrowing and massive government intervention into the economy to keep Britain on life support, in the hope of making it through the pandemic. For this he briefly enjoyed immense popularity, but now the old politics of austerity and large public debts is rearing its head again, and Sunak’s commitment to balanced budgets during a time of economic hardship and health uncertainty has caused his start to wane.
Covid-19 has rubbed salt into the wounds of this country’s already battered social fabric. Inequality has become worse during the lockdown, as has child poverty, housing uncertainty and almost everything that can be made worse by the combination of a health crisis and an economic recession has been made worse. There’s even talk of a “K shaped recovery” where certain regions or sectors of the economy rapidly bounce back and others do not.
There is almost nothing that is bad about Britain that Covid-19 hasn't made worse, from the brunt of the pandemic being born by overstretched health workers, to people on zero hour contracts working in manual labour or in the care profession being the ones most likely to get sick, to the fact that Covid-19 has become the subject of misinformation and culture wars.
Spreading the virus and spreading misinformation
People like Laurence Fox - a perpetual attention seeker, stirrer of internet outrage and spreader of dangerous ideas about the severity of the virus - who would have been considered too crude to be shock-jocks in the past have become household names by railing against the common sense precautions of staying home and wearing a mask during a pandemic.
The fact that sane, rational people - people who don’t see signs of a conspiracy behind every health briefing - don’t have any effective counter-arguments to use against the people who have the deadly combination of not much knowledge about the virus, but loud views about how we should handle it, and that social media platforms spread disinformation with wild abandon, is an indictment of the human race’s ability to communicate in the age of unlimited communication.
New depths of incompetence
The virus has thrown a wrecking ball at the already crumbling facade of British society and any government - especially one only a few months into its term of office - would have struggled with this challenge, but Boris Johnson’s Tory government has managed to plunge new depth of indecision, incompetence and corruption, that even the last four years of continuous political disaster didn’t lead us to expect.
Each month has brought along what would have once been a regime ending fuck up. From not locking down quickly enough, to unlocking too soon, to failing to deliver a test and trace system despite spending billions on it, to not providing enough PPE for health workers and then, of course, the government saying we would unlock for Christmas and then canceling Christmas at that last minute.
On top of all that, there was Dominic Cummings shredding the little remaining credibility the government had with his misadventure to Barnard Castle over the summer. I’m sure I have forgotten some other titanic disasters, which appeared to be career ending at the time, but have since been forgotten. This year no one was held accountable, made to resign or even look publicly ashamed in the never-ending parade of screw ups that the government presided over.
Forensic opposition
This seemingly endless carnival of mishandlings, including the UK having the highest number of excess deaths in Europe, has not led to a dramatic change in the polls. The Labour Party, despite offering “forensic opposition”, has not been able to exploit the government’s serial failings or present itself as a credible alternative government. During the summer they ceded the position of official opposition to Marcus Rashford, the country’s only successful political operator, who managed to get some food to hungry children, whilst everything fell apart.
Labour’s inability to make a breakthrough happened despite repeated government failures, a new Labour leader and a new style of constructive opposition. The Tories won 44% of the vote in last year's general election and at the end of a disastrous year they are polling at around 40%, which is nothing short of a disgraceful performance from the Labour leader. Surely, any other Labour leader would be 20 points ahead when faced with the worst government ever.
Trump and Biden
The left managed to perform a little better in America this year, which offers some hope. The year began with the Democrats’ failure to impeach Donald Trump, before Covid-19 swept through the country and changed everything. Trump’s re-election campaign was set against the backdrop of rising Covid-19 fatalities and his indulgence of his own worst instinct to sow confusion, spread misinformation and fuel culture wars at a time when his country needed clear leadership.
America managed a spectacularly disastrous response to the pandemic, which made the British government look almost competent. Joe Biden and the Democrats were able to eke out an electoral victory and the world breathed a sigh of relief that by mid-January, we could at least be reassured that the end of the world wouldn’t be brought about someone saying means things to the President of the United States on Twitter.
By choosing Biden, the Democrats rejected the chance of offering a radical alternative to Trump's nationalism early on in the year and decided to run on the platform of a return to normality. In a year where everything fell apart, I can see why this appealed to many voters. However, Biden won some key states by only a percentage point or two, the Democrats lost seats in the House and the Senate remained in Republican control.
Not a repudiation of Trumpism
This wasn’t the repudiation of Trumpism that the world wanted. Despite the virus killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, the economic ruin it produced, riots on the street and his obvious unsuitability for the job of President, Trump still managed to win over 74 million votes and many believe the lies Trump is spreading about the election being stolen from him.
Even if Trump leaves The White House peacefully in January - which is still undecided - Trumpism will continue under Trump or another leader. The left doesn't have a counter narrative to halt the spread of Trump’s violent nationalism, which even won over a reasonable amount of minority voters in the November election. The US election doesn't offer any help in resolving the left’s ongoing post-2008 identity crisis.
Brexit rumbles on
The UK is ending the year with the possibility that Brexit will be over, now that Johnson has negotiated a trade deal with the EU. The usual Brexit intransigence over issues of sovereignty and fishing led us to yet another cliff edge, which once again we were only saved from at the last minute. Brexit is still a bad idea and there is still no way of stopping the slow roll towards belligerent nationalism that David Cameron began over five years ago.
Despite the many failures of Brexit, those opposed to it have consistently failed to present an argument that offers an alternative that voters actually want. This year saw hardcore Labour Remainers abandon their crusade against Brexit and finally declare that it is a losing issue for Labour. The country is still split along Brexit lines and nothing has managed to heal this divide and bring either the left or the country together. Not even the fight against Covid-19.
Now certain sections of the right are planning the next round of divisive, culture war politics by starting a campaign for a referendum on the reintroduction of the death penalty. Apparently, the country isn’t divided enough, angry enough and we aren’t directing enough spite at each other for the professional outrage merchants of the right. We have the resurfacing of this issue to look forward to.
The Labour Party
This lack of clear direction of progress for the left can be most clearly seen in the Labour Party. Keir Starmer won this year’s Labour leadership election by a huge margin, but has had little success against this monstrously incompetent Tory government. There is no uniting line of attack or narrative. Labour is not a party of economic populism, or pragmatic centrism, or liberalism, or social democracy, or socialism.
The Tories are still polling at around 40%, despite everything. Most voters don't blame the Tories for the virus or its effects. They see other countries with large numbers of cases and struggling health systems, and don't see how the situation is worse in the UK. This is a failure of the opposition to articulate a narrative about the government mishandling the outbreak of Covid-19.
On the 27th of February this year, it was the 120th anniversary of the founding of the Labour Party. A sobering thought is that Labour has been in power for only 32 of those 120 years and currently the party looks a long way off winning power. Labour won’t win an election if one happens next year. The party still has no way to bridge the divide between Bolsover and Bethnal Green. Labour are also struggling in Scotland and have no hope of forming a majority government without winning back a significant volume of seats north of the border.
Why isn’t the left doing better?
What story could unite the country? A vision of economic radicalism? Patriotic left economic populism? Biden style return to normality? I don’t know, but Labour (and the left more broadly) need to decide the story we want to tell, if we want to start winning again. As this year has shown, saying “we’re not the Tories'' isn't enough. The Tories are handling everything terribly, yet this hasn’t led to a huge swing towards Labour. Labour needs a story to tell to win voters over.
After a year of disasters for right-wing governments worldwide, why isn’t the left doing any better? We are still adapting to the post-2008 crisis world, let alone figuring out where we need to be for the post-Covid-19 world. A new Labour leader and the US election didn’t answer the question of what does a vote for a left-wing party mean in the 21st century?
What story are we telling that voters can believe in? What does our movement stand for? What will we change when in power? These are the questions we urgently need answers to as the world needs a left alternative to the status quo quickly.
New challenges for 2021
The environment is getting worse. This year started with bushfires in Australia that showed the danger we face from the looming environmental disaster. The Tories have committed to a program of environmental policies, which doesn’t go far enough and has opened up a new front of the culture war. Nigel Farage, Laurence Fox and a host of other far-right personalities are ready to make resistance to environmentalism a right-wing populist issue. We can see how this will play out with the battles that are already happening over cycle lanes in Kensington and Chelsea. The left needs to be ready for this fight.
Next year offers a series of challenges to the left. There will be Holyrood elections and the SNP are likely to win by a lot, which will put the issue of Scottish Independence back on the agenda in a big way. This offers problems for Labour whose position on Independence is at odds with the views of many of their target voters. Labour needs an effective story to tell in Scotland, quickly.
Labour will also need to make sure that the vaccine is rolled out fairly and effectively. I’m confident that the government will find a way to screw that up as well.
The roaring 20s
Then what? People are talking about another “roaring 20s”, of hedonism and indulgence after the vaccine is rolled out. However, we all remember how the last roaring 20s ended up: with economic collapse and the rise of fascism.
The future contains some huge challenges for the left, from the environment, to threats to the union, to far-right nationalism. The left hasn’t been able to use Covid-19 and the failure of right-wing governments to win popularity this year. We need to think about why this is, what we want differently in the future and what story we want to tell to win over voters. And we need to do this quickly.
