Parties as vehicles for change

Watching Jeremy Paxman’s investigation of the US election the other day set me to thinking, just as Paxman was asking, how things had descended to such a low level. He was certainly asking the right questions but not receiving many cogent answers. Still, it was enjoyable watching his facial expressions as they moved from amusement, to horror to incredulity. Only one of his interviewees attempted a definitive answer by saying that the problem was leadership, or rather the lack of it. Well, yes, we didn’t really need an expert to tell us that. There must be something deeper. A parallel thought was entering my head as I pondered this. It occurred to me that, in the UK at least, periods of important political, economic and social change happen in twenty year cycles. There was the forties, of course, with the development of the welfare state and the bringing into public ownership of many industries; this was followed by the sixties with economic re-structuring together with social and cultural reform; then the eightees and the Thatcher transformation; finally the New Labour wave arrived at the end of the last century. Four cycles separated by twenty years a piece. If you are ahead of me you will realise that the next cycle should arrive at the end of this decade. Certainly change is long overdue. Society is being de-stabilised by the large and growing proportion of the population who have been left behind by globalisation and the prosperity it has brought to the majority. Inequality is threatening the cohesion of society and public services are coming under increasing pressure as policy makers seek to bear down on the fiscal deficit. It is certainly not an original thought that the large vote for Scottish independence, the EU Leave vote and the rise of UKIP are al cries for help rather than genuine expressions of policy preferences. But why have they been needed? Paxman’s interlocutor who replied ‘Leadership’ when asked what the problem is was right, although the dissatisfied elements in society have found individuals to latch onto – Trump, Farage, Corbyn and Saunders are the obvious examples, but Europe is also littered with them. Yet these populist leaders are not realistic catalysts for change because none of them will ever win elections (I am writing ahead of the US election, so I am taking a chance of Trump losing – surely he must). No, the normal historical experience is that a political party will emerge with a programme of reform that can galvanise the nation and drive through reform. I am looking towards the horizon and there is no sign of such a party. There are only a few years to go before that cycle comes round. Can anyone imagine a party in the 2020 UK general election being ready to weep to power and save the country from further unhappiness? The awful thought has occurred to me that the days when parties were effective vehicles for change has passed. In their place there is a dangerous vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum, the saying goes, so it will be filled for sure. By whom? Well, by the kind of populists we are now seeing on the political stage. It is not a pleasant thought.