After Brexit

Scottish separatism is another baleful consequence of the wider void in British party politics. British democrats urgently need to develop a new democratic politics that can reconstitute the British nation and defeat the Scottish National Party.

Since the Iraq War, the British government has resorted increasingly to covert means of intervention and warfare to evade democratic scrutiny and debate - with disastrous consequences. We urgently need to democratise foreign policy.

The UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement still tries to tie the British government’s hands. A strategy is needed to maximise sovereignty and defy international law wherever democracy requires it.

The UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement does not represent a decisive breakthrough for popular sovereignty. Indeed, it contains some of the elements of Britain’s member-statehood, which could continue to limit democratic control over our society and economy. But it does eliminate some of the worst aspects of EU membership, and extend legal and political space for the emergence of a real alternative to the neoliberal order.

As talks with the EU drag on, many are asking: was Brexit worth it? Any true democrat must answer unequivocally: yes, absolutely.

The enthusiasm of Remainers for the election of Joe Biden should convince British democrats that, if Brexit is to deliver its democratic potential, we need to support Ireland’s reunification.

Britain will shortly follow Germany and France into a second national lockdown intended to curb the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a colossal political failure, caused by the hollowing out of the state. There is a void where we need there to be a relationship of trust and authority between government and citizens, and amongst citizens themselves.

Labour’s 2019 election defeat was simply a one-off result caused by Brexit. It was the result of decades of abandonment of working-class people and class politics, and the party’s lamentable turn to neoliberal identity politics.

As government spending surges and the economy contracts, the right says the poor must eventually pay through austerity; the left counters with proposals for higher taxes. But the true answer to “who should pay?” is: the government.

The British government’s lacklustre response to coronavirus pandemic is not due to being caught off-guard by an unexpected disease, Tory incompetence, or even austerity. It is a crisis of an entire way of governing society: the post-political, regulatory state.

The Corbynite left has actively cheered on a Tory police state that they earlier claimed was racist, fascist, and “worse than Nazis”. What does this tell us about them?

As coronavirus ravages the world, quarantined citizens are clearly not in control – but nor, despite appearances, are political elites or experts. The hastily assembled Tory police state has a hollow core where an active citizenry should be.