When leftist Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour party in 2015, many commentators mentioned the Mullins book as a viable account of what could happen. In fact, in 2019 the plot against Corbyn thickened pushing him to resign and Keir Starmer took over the leadership of the opposition.
After years of turmoil during Conservative rule over Britain, Labour won the elections in 2024 and Starmer became Prime Minister (PM). Since then, Labour has been struggling with a string of losses in the polls. A part of this can be attributed to Keir Starmer’sinability to delivery on the changes he promised.With the rise of far-right, led by Nigel Farage, the Labour government has taken a ‘reactionary’ position, leaning on populist slogans rather than focussing on core issues that the British people elected it to tackle.
Contrary to Mullins ‘fictional reality’ book, the plot against Starmer is from within his party. This is a repeat of what previously occurred from 2017 to2024.
When David Cameron resigned as PM in 2016, the conservative party elected Theresa May. Then in 2019 she had to resign, and again the party elected Boris Johnson. The majority of the British public were not that happy to be governed by PMs they had not chosen in a general election. May and Johnson came to power through votes of a few thousand party members and not the public.
Aware of this, Johnson called a snap election achieving a big victory that gave him public mandate. But again, as problems of his government – mainly due to his behaviour – escalated, Johnson resigned in 2022.
Following that chapter, conservative party members chose Liz Truss to replace him as leader and PM. She was a disaster and her ‘emergency budget’ sank the British economy. She lasted only six weeks and had to step down. Party members voted to have Rishi Sunak as leader and PM till he lost the general election that brought Labour and Starmer to power.
If the Labour party pushed Starmer to step down, he’ll then be replaced by a new leader elected by party members and not the British people at large. A new PM will be the seventh leader in a decade, when it was supposed to be only two as elections are every five years.Moreover, the two would have been duly elected by British people rather than a select number of party members.
Local elections in England and regional parliament elections in Scotland and Wales were disastrous for the two main traditional parties in UK: governing Labour and opposition Conservatives. They lost heavily to Farage’s Reform UK party on the extreme right and Zack Polansky’s Green party on the left.
Many commentators focussed on clichés like ‘the end of two-party politics’ and a ‘paradigm shift to the right’ and so on. Yet, the problem is more than that and impacts people’s perception of ‘representative democracy’ in the whole western world and not only Britain.
Western democracy has been in decline since the end of the cold war late last century. People’s trust of the ‘system’ as the best way to govern them is deteriorating. Mainstream parties, and the traditional political scene of right, left and centre is disintegrating.
Half a century ago, as Mullins portrayed in his novel, plots and internal-coups were based on those traditional fault lines of right and left. It is no longer the case now, as since the last decade of the twentieth century almost all political power has slowly drifted and become concentrated in the centre.
That, by default, led to splintering towards the extremes and the centre has becomeincreasinglyhollow. New generations are losing confidence in democracy, and those among them who bother to vote in an election do not care much for political programs or manifestos.
Even markets are adapting to this sort of continuous political instability, and some speculators make fortunes out of it.
Some might call it ‘populism’ to differentiate from traditional politics. In fact, it is not a ‘popular’ choice; it is a negative by-product of the disintegration of traditional politics. It’s reminiscent of dull and slow movies that were produced in the eighties. Some called it ‘commercial cinema’ with producers focusing on profits by making pictures to ‘the taste of the audience’.
We ignore that this ‘popular taste’ is the product of what used to be called ‘formation of public opinion’. That formation depended on media, and now social media, along with politicians’ behaviour and statements. That political culture is no longer there, and so nothing is ‘populist’ in contemporary politics.
Britain could bewitnessing a long period of political turmoil, similar to that of the last decade of Conservative rule. There is a high probability that this might lead to the far-right governance the country, and it won’t be a plot by the ‘establishment’ or the Americans. This may well result in what could be described as ‘a very British politics’. As one cannot imagine the establishment to be self-destructive to bring to power extremists whose aim is to get rid of what is ‘established’.
Though what is happening in the UK is peculiar in a way - i.e. different than the rise of Trumpism in the US and other far-right factions in Europe – its impact would be wider in scope. As the rest of the West used to look at Britain as a ‘reference’, especially in democracy, the impact of democracy’s disintegration would spread like contagion.
Political instability in the UK now is truly due to internal and local issues, but in a deep sense it reflects that something has gone wrong with the ‘system’. That system that kept western democracies sustainable for decades is decaying and has probably disintegrated beyond repair.
For a new system to emerge, painful years will likely ensue, alongside frequent instability and acute swings in politics and government.
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