In the spring of 2014, political scientist David Runciman wrote an article in this newspaper that suggested we needed more politics, not less.
Runciman was writing about the rapid change technology brought to the lives of billions, compared to the relative lack of change the world’s political leaders could take credit for. It sounds like the premise of an Adam Curtis documentary, but it was a sentiment that had echoed through British politics for years.
For a lot of people in Britain, Tony Blair kicked off a process that would see the country’s two main parties coalesce into what felt like a huge, amorphous blob. When New Labour took up the reins that spring in 1997, they began a battle for the centre that would last until the morning after the Brexit vote last year. When David Cameron announced his resignation, that battle seemed to end.
Fast forward almost exactly a year, and it feels like we’ve been transported back in time to an era of genuine ideological difference. We’ve got our Thatcher, with her strong and heartless leadership, albeit with a failed centrist rebrand and penchant for turning, and we’ve got our Michael Foot, a Worzel Gummidge for 2017, who, unlike his rival, seems to 1) be a human, and 2) care about the wellbeing of other humans.
With these two battling it out, it’s easy to feel like we’ve gone back to that fabled age when the difference between government and opposition was sufficient to motivate a walk to the polling booth. For millennials (sorry to use that word), this is the stuff of legend.
I was a child when Blair won his first landslide, and the only kind of party I was aware of involved candles and a cake. Almost two decades later, centrism (and that includes the full gamut from the 1997 manifesto to the wholesale acceptance of austerity) is the only thing my generation have ever known. That’s why when Jeremy Corbyn came out of nowhere in Labour leadership contest number one, so many of us were shocked into semi-euphoria by the idea that we could get involved in something that attached meaning to the political process.
We had been desperate for “more politics” for most of our admittedly short adult lives. And we got it, in spades. From Corbyn to Nigel Farage at home, to Bernie, Trump, Le Pen, Podemos and Syriza abroad, politics seemed to explode into something we could finally sink our teeth into.
So are we, or should we be, happy that we got what at least some of us wished for? The answer to that question depends hugely on how many of the young people energised by Corbyn’s campaign can be bothered to cast a ballot. If YouGov’s as yet untested claims turn into reality, and the 82% of young respondents who intend to vote materialise, it will mean an almost doubling of the 43% turnout at the last general election. That is a pretty substantial silver lining to an otherwise desperate political landscape.
Things are not good, and no one would wish for the situation we’re in today. But we did want more politics, and that, for better or worse, is what we got. And we’ve got a lot more of it to come. If the generation that has just been jolted out of its ennui loses heart and gives up (again), we’ll be squandering a huge opportunity.
Go out and vote.
