At the same time, this period witnessed the unprecedented exposure and recognition of political injustices, further contributing to the demolition of the liberal centre. The shock of Jeremy Corbyn’s electoral surge in the summer of 2017, which deprived May of her parliamentary majority and set the stage for the political gridlock of the following two years, represented an overdue public affirmation that austerity was socially and politically unsustainable. It was followed immediately afterwards by the horror of the Grenfell Tower fire, which offered the most harrowing demonstration of just how unequal individual lives had become. The Windrush scandal of 2018, which saw black British citizens being terrorised by government bureaucracy and threatened with deportation (an effect of the ‘Hostile Environment’ immigration policy introduced in 2014), revealed a disregard for judicial norms that few had imagined the British state was capable of, at least within its own borders.
Within two months of Britain’s departure from the European Union, the political establishment had been engulfed in the unprecedented chaos and horrors of the coronavirus pandemic. Johnson was forced to rein in his jocular nationalism, in an effort to look statesmanlike, serious and deferential to experts. But even then, the government couldn’t resist resorting to deceptive communications tactics, as the prime minister struggled to adopt the necessary gravitas. While the crisis emerged with little warning, ultimately to do far more economic damage to Britain than Brexit, it arrived at a time when trust in the media and politicians was already at a dangerously low ebb. The National Health Service was one of the last remaining unconditional commitments that the state made to society, on which all political parties agreed. While the symbolic reverence for the NHS was ratcheted up further thanks to coronavirus, the assumption that the state could and would protect lives – so fundamental to liberal philosophy – was unable to hold.
The health crisis also did unprecedented damage to the economic institution that is more important to liberalism than any other: the labour market. For centuries, labour markets have been integral to how liberal economies meet human needs and establish social peace. For decades, welfare reforms have sought to use work (and active job-seeking) as a way of inculcating independence and greater activity. The upheavals of 2020 rendered that project utterly impossible, offering the most public and undeniable demonstration that poverty and dependence are not simply a ‘choic’. This triggered the surreal spectacle of conservative politicians and newspapers debating the merits of unconditional cash transfers. In the context of rentier capitalism and what Jodi Dean terms ‘neo-feudalism’, the credibility of the labour market was already in decline, as the middle classes turned increasingly to assets in search of security and income.3 The coronavirus ensured that, however the crisis of liberalism was to be resolved, it would not be built upon the familiar bedrock of the wage relation.
This litany of crises and scandals spoke of a nation and a state that no longer trusted in the liberal ideals of procedural fairness and independent judgement, and was scarcely pretending to. And yet, the status quo was not abandoned all at once; there is no single date or event that can be pinpointed as a turning point. Rather, what we can witness over the course of 2016–20 (in particular, the forty-three months that elapsed between Britain’s vote to Leave and its leaving) is a series of increasingly desperate measures to harness and contain the forces of reactionary nationalism within mainstream political institutions.
In this book, I break this series down into three phases. Phase one, which lasted from the referendum through to the 2017 general election, set the template for what would follow: witnessing the populist groundswell of Brexit, Theresa May sought to hitch her leadership and party platform to it. Unable to represent (or perhaps even recognise) the full extent of the anti-political, anti-liberal anger that had fuelled Brexit in the first place, May failed to convert this into electoral success, despite her rhetorical attacks on the ‘citizens of nowhere’.
Phase two lasted until March 2019, when May was forced to request an extension of Britain’s membership of the European Union beyond the original two years stipulated in Article 50. In Westminster, this phase was characterised by a quagmire of government defeats in Parliament, and a steady trickle of ministerial resignations, producing an increasingly disruptive and vocal right-wing. What this phase eventually confirmed was that the centre could not hold: however the political crisis was going to be resolved, it would not be via normal representative democracy or normal political leadership. Something unusual and dangerous would be required instead, which is what the third phase witnessed. From the new Brexit Party’s stunning victory in the April 2019 European elections, through the proroguing of Parliament, the December general election and Britain’s successful departure from the EU in January 2020, it was clear that an abnormal type of politics had arrived.
The turmoil of phase three was eventually calmed by Johnson’s electoral victory, achieved on the back of the mesmerising anti-political mantra ‘Get Brexit Done’ and an absence of many clear intentions beyond this. It is scarcely surprising that the populist, court-baiting, demagogic madness of those months has not been sustained as a paradigm for government. But that does nothing to suggest that the crisis is over, or that liberal normality has been restored. What was revealed in the months and years leading up to Johnson’s electoral victory was that the ‘liberal elites’, against whom Brexit and nationalist movements are pitted, have been toppled. Or rather, more accurately, that in order for those elites to retain their power, they must be willing to sacrifice any residual commitment to liberalism, and to do so publicly.
Thus, in September 2019, the Johnson administration made the spectacular gesture of purging twenty-one anti-Brexit Conservative MPs from the party, including the ‘father’ of the House of Commons, Kenneth Clarke, and Sir Nicholas Soames, Winston Churchill’s grandson. Others resigned from the cabinet out of concern at the direction the government was taking, including Johnson’s own brother, Jo. What was revealed during these periods is something that remains true even when the turbulence has subsided; namely that, as occurred with the GOP and Donald Trump, most of the conservative establishment is willing to dump its principles for political advantage.
Meanwhile ostensibly centrist cabinet ministers, such as Matt Hancock and Nicky Morgan, turned out to be entirely comfortable with a reckless, even lawless, administration. The sometime establishment ‘paper of record’, The Times, backed Johnson in the 2019 general election, on the basis that he should be free to act however he pleased and without warning. Its leader enthused that ‘A Tory majority would free Mr Johnson to act boldly in other areas. For electoral reasons the manifesto steered clear of setting out policies on many issues that will need to be addressed in the next parliament.’4
The escalation of the crisis, from the referendum of 2016 through to the prorogation and propaganda of 2019, served as a useful X-ray of the once-liberal establishment. It revealed what figures such as Hancock and Morgan, and papers such as The Times, were prepared to stand for. The answer being: pretty much anything.
To the extent that it survives, liberalism exists now as an ethical persuasion or a cultural identity. To be sure, this makes it something that can be rallied around and identified with, as was seen with the impressive anti-Brexit marches, but liberalism loses its defining claim to universal legitimacy and consensus-formation in the process. Once institutions and norms are of only pragmatic, cosmetic, affective or instrumental value, they cease to function as institutions and norms, and become resources to be exploited. This being the case, we need to consider whether 2016 was indeed generative of such a crisis, or whether in fact it was a symptom – and a delayed one at that – of a much older crisis. How might we place 2016–20 in a longer and larger historical context? What were the underlying preconditions of this liberal collapse? How was the ground laid?
Accumulation by Distrust
The two inventions that have