SUPRIYO CHATTERJEEMediocre clowns ruin British political circus

, 27/7/2022

Supriyo Chatterjee, a post-graduate in Political Science from the University of Kolkata (Calcutta), worked as a journalist with a leading English-language newspaper in India before coming to the U.K. He is now a freelance writer who translates from and to Spanish. He has been published in various websites. Author of the book Blowback: Chavez, Oil and Revolution in Venezuela (The Glocal Workshop, 2022)

First came the scorching Indian summer as the temperature breached 40^oC in England. And in the summer haze appeared a seriously rich ethnic Indian who wants to be the next Prime Minister. Be as it may, he will probably be defeated by a home-grown Margaret Thatcher clone as dull and dreary as the regular English sky. In perfidious Albion, roast beef could still trump chicken tikka.

Boris (the malevolent clown) Johnson survived the scandal of breaking Covid rules he had imposed on others only to be taken down by the sexual escapade of one of his closest political enforcers. As Jose Steinsleger has observed, the end of Conservative governments in the United Kingdom is usually heralded  by the comet of a sex scandal. All the ministers who abandoned Boris at the very end, when it was clear that he had become a liability for the party, knew from the beginning that their boss, like them, was never hindered by ethics or personal morals. Nevertheless, they acted out their rehearsed surprise and outrage in television appearances and newspaper interviews. The ritual morality play, which everyone knows is as false as a Christmas pantomime, serves as an invisibility cloak for striking deals during a change of guard.

Rishi Sunak, whose Indian parents came to Britain from Africa, faces Liz Truss in the Conservative Party leadership race. Both are Oxford educated, both started their working life in the corporate world, both are millionaires, and both are Thatcherite believers in low taxes, a small state, privatisation of public assets, foreign military adventures and as little human rights and political freedoms at home as possible. In Sunak's case, his Indian wife, a billionaire's daughter and fabulously wealthy in her own right, does not even pay taxes in Britain. The couple are on the Sunday Times Rich List. Liz Truss, who has grown richer every year she has been in politics, thinks there is unacceptable envy of wealth in Britain. The glue that holds the ruling Conservative Party together is no longer so much white privilege as the worship of big money.

As with the economy, the two candidates appear equally blindfolded on Britain's place in the world. If Lizzie snorts that she will bring Russia and Putin to heel on Ukraine, Rishi exhales fire against China and the CPC, threatening to show them their place. All this with an army at their command that fits into a football stadium. Liz Truss has a particular talent for words: she will not rest till she makes British apple the top of the tree; with the Chinese she will wag her fingers and talk big on pig. She delivers these lines with a fierce scowl, pauses for the briefest of moments which still feels far too long, and then a thin crooked smile breaks out as she glances anxiously at the audience for applause which never comes. Sunak is smarter, but the voters are 160,000 or so Tory members, mostly old, almost all white, all Little Englanders whatever the colour of their skin and all comfortably off. Will Liz Truss actually get their vote because she is white and properly English, even if the Establishment is furiously telling them to vote Sunak because he's less dumb? We'll never know and who will ever admit to it?

This sad spectacle has few takers outside the media-political bubble. Inflation is hurting and railway workers are on strike every other week. Postmen, call centre workers, telephone engineers, teachers and even barristers have announced strike actions. Britain's economy is in long-term decline, hovering close to recession, its energy supplies have become more expensive and uncertain, domestic energy bills are rising sharply, petrol prices have reached record levels and many small businesses are heading for closure. Real wages are falling, and poverty is rising visibly. The famed health service has been brought to its knees by disinvestment. The spectre of an economic and energy freeze this winter is real but neither the Tories nor the Labour opposition, which has disowned Jeremy Corbyn and Socialism, have the appetite for bold reforms.

Neither has the country found an antidote for its war appetite, joining whichever adventure the United States begins. Britain lives off arms exports, selling its military expertise to the Gulf monarchies, and serving as a U.S. intelligence listening post in Europe. It is chained to Washington's security-military-espionage apparatus and will keep diverting money, material and energy for foreign wars and destabilisation projects even as the domestic crisis becomes critical. The security-intelligence apparatus is so trapped in the U.S. orbit that it is barely under national control. Of late, they have begun to emerge from the shadows to involve themselves in domestic politics like when a serving Army General anonymously briefed the media against Jeremy Corbyn and a military intelligence unit set up a fake charity to defame him when it seemed he might become Prime Minister.

The British ruling elites are shedding legitimacy. Social defiance is expressing itself through strikes and sections of the middle class are starting to join in the industrial and environmental action. There is little public appetite for forever wars. But the ruling classes cannot and will not substantially change course.  Instead they will double down on old certainties. They will try to ride out the crisis with bribery, repression and by dividing the people. The political awareness of the British public is hindered by their individualism, the island is insular and provincial and the population is aged. A wave of popular unrest is possible but a full-blown upsurge is improbable. The chance of a radical political change is negligible for now, bordering on nil. Whoever the next Prime Minister, the system will go on auto cruise and play for time.

But the mighty British lion whose roar was once heard across the globe can now only let out stinky little farts.