Ivan Horrocks (who will be familiar to some as a long term contributor to this blog) had a post on the Progressive Pulse blog yesterday in which he argues that right wing hegemony in the UK means that it is very unlikely that a right wing coup will happen post-Brexit to enable the establishment to maintain law and order.
As I read it, Ivan's thesis is that any post Brexit scenario threatens unrest because of the disruption it will give rise to, whatever is said now. He then challenges the suggestion from some commentaors - including his fellow Progressive Pulse contributor, Sean Danaher - that this might be expected to result in a right wing coup to suppress that disorder, Howver, that, he thinks is unlikely in the UK, even in the event of turmoil arising as an election is in the offing because, as he puts it:
I suspect that if we have economic upheaval combined with emerging social unrest — or even the obvious sniff of both — politics may take a nasty turn. [But] personally I doubt there'll be a right wing coup. My reason for saying that is that the degree of hegemony enjoyed by the Tory party and its associated entities (e.g. so called ‘think tanks'), supporting media and other institutions (i.e. the ‘Right' in general) in the UK is such that a call for a ‘national government' and the suspension of the 2020 elections will be sufficient.
He adds:
I think it highly likely the majority of the public will go along with that and they will be aided in coming to this conclusion — and then maintaining it — by the Brexit supporting/right wing media — including I have to say (sadly) the BBC.
I think this an interesting idea. I know there are many who think that civil unrest post Brexit is possible, and even probable. I have long said I do. I am also aware that some think that this could lead to the suspension of normal politics. But Ivan's thesis adds an interesting twist. What he suggests is that a minority government might seek to create a National Government and suspend elections as if we were in a wartime environment where the normal processes of democracy have to be put on hold for ‘the duration of the crisis'.
Is this possible? With the current government I think anything possible. And whilst I can see no reason for the SNP and, by then, the DUP to support such a call, what of Labour, and even the LibDems who could help hold the balance of power in such a situation? I really can't call that. Given how frightened most English politicians are of the right wing media Ivan might be right.
If so we are really heading for dark times. The ‘duration of the crisis' could be very protracted on this basis.
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Oh dear. I remember back to the mid seventies when people like Stirling were calling the country ungovernable and openly talking of military coups. Suspension of elections in peacetime? I think not. The right wing media couldn’t win it in 2015 and 2017 so I think the backlash would be enormous. But all of this is a little bit like that chicken that thought the sky was going to fall in. The anti Brexit campaign is getting a little bit hysterical.
In a world that tolerates Trump?
I don’t think so
‘The anti-Brexit campaign is getting a little bit hysterical’….I didn’t see nor hear anyone hysterical on the 3h long march on Saturday, and I didn’t watch it on TV, I was marching too.
The anti-Brexit articles I read in the press are, in their vast majority, totally reasonable and cautiously informative, and if a few hysterical voices are raised on Twitter or elsewhere in the media, as expected in any campaign, they are by far in the minority.
Quite frankly, I’m astounded at how subdued many anti-Brexit voices are, considering what is at stake in the UK.
I don’t think the stiff upper lip attitude will save us from this mess.
I’m not sure we’ll be saved by reasoned and stubborn protests either, but we can try.
Giving up is just not an option.
Rod, given the hysterical, irrational fanaticism of the anti EU campaigners, your comment has to be one of the most absurd I’ve yet seen in this whole ghastly, ludicrous mess.
Politics has already taken a nasty turn. The right wing coup happened years ago.
British exceptionalism and its supporting unconscious insularity is much deeper-seated than is easily understood or acknowledged. Brexit has had the salutary effect of suddenly ‘cutting to the political quick’, and has revealed of Britain that which is hidden or unspoken; and only by being hidden could have acquired the disguise of an almost mystical British high-mindedness, and that favourite term of the exceptionalists, ‘impartiality’. It is not ‘high-minded’ or ‘impartial’ (still less, disinterested), but on inspection British exceptionalism turns out to be crude, raw and self-interested: the Emperor has no clothes. The loftily detached ‘observor’ is discovered to be just part of the experiment after all.
British exceptionalism has no foundation on which reason can purchase, nor is it intrinsic to the origins of the British state; it is an article of faith and it requires total blindness to be believed. It is not shared by all, and it is considered merely perverse by many; hence the Union itself may indeed be in jeopardy.
I think there’s more likelihood of civil unrest and suspension of democracy if we somehow have a second referendum and narrowly vote to remain or parliament somehow blocks Brexit.
Think about who is more likely to take to the streets – middle-class, remain voters with assets and careers to lose or the people left behind by globalisation with precarious jobs, no assets and the belief Brexit will fix everything.
On the other hand the Tories will do whatever it takes to hold onto power after Brexit but it won’t take more than a judicious mix of populist policies and propaganda. They’ll even turn on the fiscal taps if needs be.
Yes, their ultimate ‘weapon’ is the economy. Historically the driving force behind serious social unrest was absolute poverty. But today in the west relative poverty is the issue. Hence, so long as a government can maintain some semblance (illusion?) of economic stability via ANY means at its disposal, the majority of the public will remain acquiescent. There’s still quite some mileage left with the neo-liberal matrix, especially in the hands of the shape-shifting English Tories.
If the economy tanks to a level that threatens ‘national security’ then I think Ivan’s scenario is possible. Indeed, troubling times ahead for progressives everywhere and democracy in general. What is that light at the end of the tunnel? It’s still a bit too soon to tell.
My take on the “coup” idea is that it is happening now and was always the end game for brexit. There is “blinkered and stupid” and then there is “deliberate” when avoiding the reality of a situation and we are now in “deliberate” territory. Once the drawbridge goes up, are we in for Adolf Reece-Mogg or Jeremy Stalin?
ROFL The voices in this thread are verging on the hysterical. Calm down everyone.
Jacob Reese Mogg is no Hitler, Jeremy Corbyn is no Stalin, Britain in 2018 is neither the Russian Empire in 1917 nor the Weimar Republic in 1933 and Brexit is neither a coup nor a revolution.
What Brexit is is utterly insignificant by comparison to rapidly terminal climate change and ecosystems collapse. Our civilisation has mere decades left in it but I promise you leaving the EU isn’t going to be what does for us in the end.
If you find that catastrophising Brexit somehow distracts you from the deeper and far more intractable ecological and social sustainability issues then great but I prefer not to be distracted by the total nonsense that is Brexit.
Let’s face it – when we leave, which we will – the EU is highly likely to fragment further. Italy will probably be next out the door and then the rest will leave in short order after that. There’s inevitably going to be some upheaval but if we’re lucky we’ll be able to set up a better system that focusses on what matters: transitioning to a low carbon economy and rebuilding ecosystems so that some small fraction of our species can survive through the coming collapse with a hope of preserving our knowledge and thriving in the new world to come.
Its all likely to be far too little far too late but I’d prefer to go down fighting for a better world than either cowering in a corner cursing my luck or fretting pointlessly about something of no consequence.
Brexit can do one, I don’t give a shit 😉
I have for well over a decade feared the rise of the Right
And I think you misread the situation
Adam sawyer says:
“….but if we’re lucky we’ll be able to set up a better system that focusses on what matters: transitioning to a low carbon economy and rebuilding ecosystems ….”
Ah! Now I see the underlying motivation for Brexit. It all becomes clear.
What are you smoking Adam ? Can you spare some. ? 🙂
Richard,
I accept the rise of fascism is a clear and present danger. Like you I’ve been moaning about it ever since the GFC in 2008.
However I perceive Brexit and any potential rise of fascism as symptoms not causes. The ultimate cause is our failure to devise a socially fair and ecologically sustainable civilisation.
Stopping Brexit may do more harm than good on the social stability front and won’t do much of anything for ecological sustainability. Therefore I’d prefer to focus entirely on the practical steps required to directly address these underlying causes.
Maybe the Brexit crisis is an opportunity to preach MMT and green economics to unlikely audiences whose eyes and ears are normally closed to such ideas?
We have to keep trying that
Andy Crow,
I don’t have an underlying motivation for Brexit. I voted remain.
No smoking here – born this way 😉
I’m afraid we are just going to have to endure it until such a time that the consequences of it are unbearable and the penny drops. At that time we or what society there is then will no longer wish to endure. I think this is how a progressive movement started many moons ago and could well start again.
I have no idea when and how that will be given the ability of our rulers to obfuscate the issues – we are presently in the hands of politicians who know how to divide and conquer.
The Tories divide us and conquer the formation of a coherent alternative path amongst the electorate and (even worse) the stupid Labour party are hell bent on dividing each other thus denying a place in a sovereign Parliament for that alternative path to gather momentum and seize the day.
wait, so his hypothesis is that there wont be a ring wing coup because it will be temporary? His alternative scenario sounds exactly like a coup to me
It is a coup
But won’t look like one
I suspect Ivan thinks Labour will be co-opted
I do indeed, Richard. There are enough Labour MPs who are solidly part and parcel of the hegemonic system in which we live to make that a done deal.
I acknowledge in the blog that some would see my ‘alternative scenario’ – the suspension of elections and the formation of a national government – as a coup. However, as I also make clear, this is not a coup in the sense that we normally understand that term.
Brexit is divisive, may well turn out to be stupid (though probably not nearly as bad as keen remainers fear) and is definitely being exploited to further the agenda of a narrow clique in the British elite.
But brexit is definitely not a coup. I know it’s a term that’s habitually stretched in political discourse (e.g. the recent Labour Party attempted “coup”) but when applied to the nation as a whole I think it’s dangerous to misidentify normal political activity as violence because in future political opponents who actually are violent will be able to dismiss any legitimate calling out of their violence by reference to all the times we falsely accused people of it in the past.
The other day I referred to the potential use of the potential fallout from Brexit as a potential example of the Shock Doctrine. I think that’s wiser than calling Brexit a coup. An ostensibly democratic government can use Shock Doctrine type tactics while falling far short of anything we’d legitimately call a coup.
I think you underestimate the political shocks to come
What I wonder is whether Scotland will go the path of Catalonia? Will Nicola Sturgeon and her colleagues be held in the Tower of London? Will the SNP become a banned political organisation? As I understand it, we have already a law that if the Scottish Parliament votes against a Westminster decision, this shall be deemed to constitute consent.
I rule nothing out….
When we can have laws of the type you already note anything is possible from this government
In addition…………….
We have to remember that human beings are very resilient – we put up with all manner of bad things.
We just don’t seem to be very good at coping with change – even if that change is for the better (change leading to the possibility of living in a courageous state for example).
‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t’ – even if the Devil is Theresa May, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson all rolled into one in a Hell called BREXIT. And we only voted for it because we were lied to. And perhaps as a result a certain percentage of the population won’t allow ourselves to dream anymore.
Tow Waits sums it up very well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq-84Y1EviE
Everybody row!
Politics is personal, and the new normal is exactly where you would expect it to be, if the ‘institutional’ politics are headed for a de facto single-party state without effective democratic accountability.
Yes, it’s personal.
A friend of mine is looking to return to Poland, as it has been made clear to him, and to his wife – and very clear indeed to their children at school – that this is not their home and they are not welcome here.
Fortunately they are white enough to escape the upsurge in racial violence accompanying the rise of UKIP and the less respectable ‘street politics’ movements of English nationalism.
The people I grew up among in a Midlands rag town, back in the days when the National Front could do as they damn’ well pleased, are not so fortunate.
Some of the thugs, with or without swastika tattoos, have uniforms.
I do not look forward to the Home Office and the UK Border Agency ‘taking the gloves off’ when the nation is free of the European Convention on Human Rights.
They will be cheered by a substantial fraction of the public when they do so: the only question is by how many of us, and how far the thugs can go – mass deportation? Detention without trial? Stripping people of citizenship and expelling them? Children in cages? – before there is sufficient public backlash to force a pause, and a slight dialling-back to the publicly acceptable level of institutional violence and xenophobia.
The mass media are and will be wholeheartedly behind this: and I do not doubt that ‘benefit cheats’ ‘scroungers’ and ‘migrants eating stealing our food’ will dominate the news when the food shortages kick in.
That, and headline news about the Traitors and Remoaners who are all to blame for this, and secretly collaborating with the tyranny of the EU and their punitive arrogance.
I do not look forward to seeing fellow-Europhiles’ photographs and phone numbers being passed on to the English Defence League and online hate groups.
That’s becoming ‘normal’ politics, already. What was it that you thought might be ‘suspended’?
Also: I’m not joking about food shortages. Thirty percent of farmers’ income is from exports and a hard Brexit halts them all immediately. Even in a ‘soft’ Brexit with the ports jammed and their labour force expelled will cost them enough, with their razor-thin margins and precarious finances, to drive half of them into bankruptcy.
Whatever promises the farmers hear about replacing subsidies, I don’t believe that any of it will be paid before they’re all forced to sell up and leave their crops and livestock to rot in the fields.
If you’re looking for a ‘state of emergency’ to justify a special regime, there it is, waiting for the ration cards to be printed, and for the food banks to be nationalised and handed over to benefit officers with a hit list for their ‘sanctions’ .
Nile,
I thought I was pessimistic and tended to over catastrophise things – I feel much better now 😉
Alternatively to your pessimistic outlook:
Maybe the Tories will just continue as they are – muddling through, being a bit nasty at times when they think it helps them in the opinion polls, bending to public pressure against austerity a little for same reasons and generally treading the fine line between order (allbeit an unpleasant one for some) and chaos.
I don’t believe there’ll be food shortages because of brexit. There may be some substitution of foodstuffs as price changes play out but people aren’t using food banks because of food shortages now. They do that because of low aggregate demand causing significant unemployment and underemployment while government cuts reduce the social safety net.
If the Conservatives want to stay in power and get what they want out of brexit then they’ll have to move quickly to forestall any disasterous job losses and shortages of imported products. I predict they’ll do that even if the policies required go against their austerity agenda. Better to back off on austerity and keep power to implement the long-term changes you want than go for gold in short order and risk upsetting the balance of power completely. That way lies chaos and for all their many, many faults the British establishment have a very long track record of avoiding total chaos and have so far resisted various opportunities for a plunge into fascism. I think British Liberalism runs deep and won’t be overthrown so easily as you think.
I’m not saying it’s impossible that the worst comes to pass – just that I’m not convinced it’s very likely. Either way the best we can do is to call out the worst right-wing populist moves, keep the pressure on for sensible macroeconomics and hope for the best.
Look on the bright side – we may see the immediate fallout from brexit FORCE the British Tory party to tacitly embrace some demand side Keynsianism for the first time in half a century.
I think that you underestimate the way modern supply chains are very much ‘Just in time’. It will only take one clogged up port or labour shortage at a packing factory to cause a severe ripple effect throughout the UK.
Remember that we already have a food shortage, for the bottom decile of the working population.
Food banks aren’t a ‘lifestyle choice’, and the last figures I saw show that forty percent of foodbank users are from households with at least one adult in paid employment.
Forty percent of the milion or so households who resort to food banks repeatedly.
That’s structural food insecurity, ready – or rather, dangerously unready – for even a small disruption in the distribution chain.
But my main point is that British farmers, who work on razor-thin margins with far too little liquidity in their businesses, are facing four major economic hits: rising labour costs and labour shortages that amount to ‘outages’ and lost harvests; loss of access to their export markets, which won’t magically be replaced by domestic demand in time to save their perishable and time-sensitive output; the loss of their subsidies; and a double-digit rise in input costs on their imported fuel, fertiliser, and machinery.
In short, at least half of them are going out of business, in a country that imports significantly more food than it exports, and a lot of land will go out of production – possibly for years – until the inevitable market consolidation works itself out.
A cursory review of DEFRA’s ineptitude in recent crises – and their malign incompetence in paying subsidies on time or at all – will tell you that their efforts to manage the disruption will be worse than ineffective.
Nevertheless, you are surely right to say that we will probably muddle through without mass starvation; but we will see empty shelves in the news, even if we do not see them personally; and panic-buying,; and profiteering out of sight on ‘sink’ estates with an unacknowledged food poverty problem.
Think how that will play out when, not if, Brexit’s mass unemployment meets the increasingly-frequent occurrence of a major city with every foodbank empty.
The truth, as always, is that nobody who matters will go short of food; and anyway, the media will convince us all – or at least, everyone it’s useful to convince – that anyone who claims they’re hungry is a liar and a scrounger, and deserves everything that happens to them anyway.
Call me cynical, but that aspect of managing food shortages is something we are doing very well already; and the appallingly effective liars who created Brexitstan will carry it with some panache.
A shorter answer: where, in any of this affair, has there been any hint that the Conservative Party can be ‘FORCED’ by morality, necessity, or even threats and bribery, into doing the right or rational thing?
Stop making the ‘chess’ error: if they are rational at all, their goals and their view of the world – and their logic – differ from our own in ways that we have so far failed to model and manipulate effectively.
Nile says:
“Stop making the ‘chess’ error: if they are rational at all,…..”
Difficult to discern the rationality when it is so deeply obscured by dissent and disagreement within the party ranks.
I’ve heard from both sides of the Brexit fence that the establishment/deep state …whatever are actually manipulating the process.
I don’t think the ‘professional’ politicians know whether they are coming or going. I’m not even convinced many have a clear preference as to what sort of relationship we have with the EU. And of course quite a few can afford not to care; ether way they’ll be fine.
They think. There’s not much you can’t buy in a market economy if you have enough moolah.
@Nile, thanks for all those excellent points you make below. I no longer rely on the MSM for ‘news’ or unbiased analysis, in fact for several years now I no longer watch the BBC current affairs/news output. You have to do it all for yourself these days.
Thank heavens for the internet (until they censor that of course!).
As Samuel Johson said in 1775 “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel!” (referring to false patriotism) and so accordingly “Extremism is the last refuge of the intellectually challenged!” as we’ve seen in spades with Brexit. The state of Britain now is paralysed by the Brexit crisis. Something has to give but what will it be? The omens are not looking good!
Wasn’t May’s, “vanity,” election an attempted coup by any other name?
Now that they know they can’t be guaranteed control of the country through an election, a, “National government,” (run by themselves and the Lab/LibDem, “moderates,”) may seem quite appealing.
Doesn’t appeal to me.
We’ll be alright as long as the ATMs are working.
When the ATMs go down all bets are off.
That was why the banks were bailed out in 2008
And that’s what the Hammond new BofE arrangements are for . Yes ?
Yes
Will cards work though or is it all part of the same structure?
Cards may work
But no cash = no confidence
I have been appalled at this stream of panicked nonsense. As I see it you have spent a long time at odds with the present situation regarding macroeconomics and neoliberalism. The EU is a pure embodiment of the neoliberal idea right down to its flawed currency which will fail sooner or later. Here you are though arguing that the only way to defend democracy is to cling onto neoliberalism. Every benefit in our society had been fought for by the working classes and here you are – a bunch of middle class intellectuals – preferring to cling onto an idea that is destroying the poorer people. All I can say is – yes, it will be nasty but it’ll be even nastier if the middle classes do what they always do and side with the elite. That is what you are doing. All those people who voted for this in the old industrial areas of Britain did so because the system wasn’t working for them. To have another vote would tell all those who voted leave what they always suspected- that voting changes nothing. We have to make this work not wring our hands like Prince Charles. Some good can come out of this but it’ll be harder if the middle classes continue to do what they’re doing. As I’ve said before – I voted Remain but what I’ve learned since the referendum tells me that things are going to be bad whether we’re in or out.
So your logic is that we should pursue insanity come what may?
And there is nothing inherently neoliberal about the EU, although it is at present
All organisations can be changed – that is my assumption
The question is how best to change them
My argument is that quitting will not help
With respect, your abuse is wholly misplaced
I don’t see any wish for change in the EU. The attitude appears to be – this is the way it is, like it or lump it. The only help going to the Greeks goes straight past them into the banks. I don’t like Cameron but he went to the EU with a list of changes and was effectively told to go away. So the EU is not neoliberal. But for ages you have been writing that it is. How do we change things? The answer is that we can’t. Change seldom occurs by asking politely. I’ve been involved in enough decision making committees to realise that Newtons First Law applies in politics too – a body remains in a state of rest or uniform motion unless acted on by a force.
Oh come on…the appetite is obvious across the EU
What there is not is the environment to deliver
I’d be more worried about this were Labour currently led by Owen Smith or any of the earlier leadership contenders – Cooper, Burnham and Kendall would lap it up just to show that they were one of the adults in the room. Corbyn would have no problem taking it back to the country — he did, after all, accept May’s challenge for the last one when he didn’t have to and when all the polls and pundits were telling him not to.
As for the Scots there would be then, as there is now, nothing to stop them simply declaring themselves independent — the UN rules on UDI are well established and Scotland as ‘a people’ have a very strong case indeed. Whether they’d have the bottle is another matter.
An alternative view from Grace Blakeley at Novara Media: http://novaramedia.com/2018/06/24/financial-globalisation-has-been-a-disaster-brexit-gives-us-a-chance-to-resist-it/
I find this very convincing.
I know and like Grace: we have not seen it each other since last Monday. And I like the vision. My question is more basic, and is it deliverable in isolation? It is a question she does not address in my opinion