This blog first appeared as a column in The Andersonstown News
If you’re a stout supporter of the United Kingdom, you may long to press the reset button and delete the last couple of weeks, because the creaking joints and alarming ping-sounds coming from the political world suggest that the UK is more K than U.
Take England. The results of local council elections last week were even worse than the Labour party expected.
Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour Party leader, has said he’ll carry the can for all results, but that’s poor consolation. Tories now control councils where once their name alone triggered spitting and swearing. The by-election in Hartlepool reflected the shambles of the Labour Party. Since the creation of the seat in the 1970s, Labour had always held it. This time the Tories romped home.
The dust of the results had barely settled before Keir Starmer had a memory lapse about carrying the can for all results and fired Angela Rayner, who was supposed to defend the northern red wall against the Tories. Annaliese Dodds, the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, found herself shunted sideways. The Corbynistas blame Starmer for his wishy-washiness; Starmer blames the damage done to the Labour Party by Jeremy Corbyn during his leadership. Rarely has the red flag looked so bedraggled.
But the Tories have their weaknesses too. Johnson may be bullish at present, but there are many Tory-minded people who believe his advocacy of Brexit has led to instability in the British economy and instability between the different parts of the UK.
Take the different parts of the UK. In England, the Tories are firmly on top. In Wales, last week’s election showed Labour firmly on top. And Scotland? Well, there Nichola Sturgeon is really on top. Her party came within one seat of winning an outright majority of MSPs. But not to worry: she has the support of the eight Green SNPs, and she has made it clear that as soon as the wrecked economy has been repaired, there will be an independence referendum in Scotland. Boris Johnson has declared he won’t sanction any such referendum, but every word out of his lying mouth adds muscle to the case for Scottish independence.
And here, in our little colonial outpost of the United Kingdom?
Oh dear. To lose one unionist leader is unfortunate; to lose two begins to look like carelessness. The DUP tumbril cart came out of nowhere and collected Arlene Foster for swift decapitation as party leader. The leadership of the UUP has sprung a leak, ex-submarine commander Steve Aitken will be spending more time with his family, and the party he led also has a vacancy for a new leader.
So let’s recap on the state of the union. In England, UK-ness appears to have been swapped for English Toryism and Make England Great Again (MEGA) is the unspoken rallying cry. Labour is a basket case and almost certainly will lose the next general election in two, three, four years time. Mind you, a party which claims to represent the ordinary working man and woman yet is led by a guy with ‘Sir’ built into his name is asking for trouble.
The Tories rule in England, Labour rules in Wales. In Scotland, Labour is in a sorry state, with Scottish Conservatives overshadowing it. And Scottish conservatism itself a puny thing under the shadow of the SNP, which has twice as many MSPs as the Tories. Plus Nichola Sturgeon has promised to hold a referendum so Scotland can leave the UK and join the EU.
Here in the North, unionism is having a fit of the head-staggers and has decapitated not two party leaders. No party does a public dumping of its leader just for fun. It is an indication of the panicky state of unionism that both major unionist parties have opened the trap-door on which their leaders were standing.
Glum little unionist faces all round then, watching as their political parties tear themselves apart and their forever friends, the Scots, get ready to abandon Brexit Britain and head for Europe. Oscar Wilde’s judgement on Dickens’s Little Nell seems relevant: “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.” Having been shafted by Boris Johnson, the DUP is now intent on shafting itself. You may not laugh but you gotta smile.
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