Oh No, Our Nation, It's Broken
October 22, 2021 9:16 AM Subscribe
Breaking Britain: With growing rifts between its regions, how much longer can the UK survive? From the economic to the constitutional, Novara Media explores the divisions and contradictions within the union today.
The series includes long reads, features and analysis on the following regions:
UK-wide
⦿ Dismantling Britain is One Thing. Dismantling Britishness is Another
⦿ What Might Britain’s ‘Break-Up’ Actually Look Like?
Scotland
⦿ The SNP Won’t Deliver a Radical Independence for Scotland
⦿ Scottish Independence Can Be a Blueprint for Social and Climate Justice Across Britain
Wales
⦿ ‘Fuck You, It’s Class’: How Welsh Pride Went Mainstream
⦿ Leanne Wood: ‘Dyw Ond Eisiau Annibyniaeth Ddim Yn Ddigon. Rydyn Ni Angen Strategaeth’ (Leanne Wood: ‘Just Wanting Independence Isn’t Enough. We Need a Strategy’)
⦿ A Allai’r Blaid Lafur Arwain Cymru at Annibyniaeth? (Could Labour Lead Wales to Independence?)
⦿ Is Welsh Independence Really on the Cards?
Cornwall
⦿ Cornish Nationalists Are Calling for an End to Westminster Rule. Here’s Why
Northern Ireland
⦿ Can the Good Friday Agreement Survive?
England
⦿ Worldmaking in Peterborough: How Battles Over England Are Rooted in Place
⦿ The Deindustrial Divide: Why Northern England is a Political Problem
The series includes long reads, features and analysis on the following regions:
UK-wide
⦿ Dismantling Britain is One Thing. Dismantling Britishness is Another
⦿ What Might Britain’s ‘Break-Up’ Actually Look Like?
Scotland
⦿ The SNP Won’t Deliver a Radical Independence for Scotland
⦿ Scottish Independence Can Be a Blueprint for Social and Climate Justice Across Britain
Wales
⦿ ‘Fuck You, It’s Class’: How Welsh Pride Went Mainstream
⦿ Leanne Wood: ‘Dyw Ond Eisiau Annibyniaeth Ddim Yn Ddigon. Rydyn Ni Angen Strategaeth’ (Leanne Wood: ‘Just Wanting Independence Isn’t Enough. We Need a Strategy’)
⦿ A Allai’r Blaid Lafur Arwain Cymru at Annibyniaeth? (Could Labour Lead Wales to Independence?)
⦿ Is Welsh Independence Really on the Cards?
Cornwall
⦿ Cornish Nationalists Are Calling for an End to Westminster Rule. Here’s Why
Northern Ireland
⦿ Can the Good Friday Agreement Survive?
England
⦿ Worldmaking in Peterborough: How Battles Over England Are Rooted in Place
⦿ The Deindustrial Divide: Why Northern England is a Political Problem
I, for one, have been surprised class riots didn't break out after the Grenfell tower fire, and it really seems like it has only gotten worse from there.
posted by deadaluspark at 9:42 AM on October 22, 2021 [13 favorites]
posted by deadaluspark at 9:42 AM on October 22, 2021 [13 favorites]
I've now read a few of these. I thought the ones on England are pretty good, I have friends who live in many of the places mentioned. No political party currently seems to have any real understanding of recently de-industrialised towns. Labour have not adjusted to the loss of unionisation there and are disadvantaged by incumbency in local government, who just don't have the cash or power to improve the lot of their residents. The Conservatives make a lot of general promises but don't seem to know what to actually do except hope that a broken red wall gives them a majority again next time. FWIW I think in terms of looking at political power there, there's a lot to be said for looking at the difference between who lives in a place and who votes. The same things can be said of Peterborough. As the article argues, it is more cosmopolitan than it is portrayed by most, but I would say that its voters are not
The article on Northern Ireland felt like a spot on summary of the position the DUP has gotten itself into, but I don't live on island of Ireland and others may know better.
The article on nationalism in Britain went nowhere. But it's a difficult subject.
posted by plonkee at 10:47 AM on October 22, 2021 [4 favorites]
The article on Northern Ireland felt like a spot on summary of the position the DUP has gotten itself into, but I don't live on island of Ireland and others may know better.
The article on nationalism in Britain went nowhere. But it's a difficult subject.
posted by plonkee at 10:47 AM on October 22, 2021 [4 favorites]
No political party currently seems to have any real understanding of recently de-industrialised towns.
Forgive an outsider's question, please: has there been any area or industry that benefitted from Brexit in terms of seeing an uptick in business? You know, with imports more difficult, did any production shift "home"?
posted by wenestvedt at 11:53 AM on October 22, 2021
Forgive an outsider's question, please: has there been any area or industry that benefitted from Brexit in terms of seeing an uptick in business? You know, with imports more difficult, did any production shift "home"?
posted by wenestvedt at 11:53 AM on October 22, 2021
Novara founders look solid, certainly on message for me. I too was (a litt) surprised Grenfell was laughed off by elites but it is a structurally racist place and at this point they will spin or weaponize anything.
I grew up in England in some flavour of lower Middle class, dad an accountant poss ecomist too, mum Romany. Dad brought me up to be racist, sarcastic, from mum I learned to be more open, but cunning. One thing stands out though; dad warned/ taught me that there would come a point where ^ class would seek to weaponize anything against everyone else, especially signal events. I left UK at 16, but am seeing this play out now. There are no limits to what this govt will do, on bad days I darkly imagine German soldiers storming English beaches to deal with the threat wrought by Boris and his puppetmasters.
The class system has to go - IMO it is the total cause of all this, but I can't see how that will be peaceful.
France is different because it dealt with class / elites. Modern British need the same state, but how to achieve? Functional media ie NM and the current rise of angry, non-racist music and other media offer / suggest change is in-train. Thanks for posting this TCHD I wouldn't have seen otherwise, I will read more later in the week.
posted by unearthed at 12:04 PM on October 22, 2021 [6 favorites]
I grew up in England in some flavour of lower Middle class, dad an accountant poss ecomist too, mum Romany. Dad brought me up to be racist, sarcastic, from mum I learned to be more open, but cunning. One thing stands out though; dad warned/ taught me that there would come a point where ^ class would seek to weaponize anything against everyone else, especially signal events. I left UK at 16, but am seeing this play out now. There are no limits to what this govt will do, on bad days I darkly imagine German soldiers storming English beaches to deal with the threat wrought by Boris and his puppetmasters.
The class system has to go - IMO it is the total cause of all this, but I can't see how that will be peaceful.
France is different because it dealt with class / elites. Modern British need the same state, but how to achieve? Functional media ie NM and the current rise of angry, non-racist music and other media offer / suggest change is in-train. Thanks for posting this TCHD I wouldn't have seen otherwise, I will read more later in the week.
posted by unearthed at 12:04 PM on October 22, 2021 [6 favorites]
France is different because it dealt with class / elites. Modern British need the same state, but how to achieve?
I think this is what the elites need to realize. If they don't start to pull their heads in, they will be dealt with the same way France dealt with its class / elites.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 12:21 PM on October 22, 2021 [10 favorites]
I think this is what the elites need to realize. If they don't start to pull their heads in, they will be dealt with the same way France dealt with its class / elites.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 12:21 PM on October 22, 2021 [10 favorites]
wenestvedt: Forgive an outsider's question, please: has there been any area or industry that benefitted from Brexit in terms of seeing an uptick in business? You know, with imports more difficult, did any production shift "home"?
Ha ha nope. Brexit seems to have made everything universally worse.
Take food, for example. The UK has a pig farming sector. We used to export pork products. But since Brexit we can't get enough vets to supervise slaughterhouse operations, so a total of 120,000 pigs are currently being killed and bulldozed into landfill because they can't be legally slaughtered and sold—and meanwhile, despite the logistics cock-ups, Danish bacon and ham imports are rising.
Actually, I tell a lie: there is one group who have benefited! There's such a huge shortage of truck drivers (especially HGVs—articulated container trucks) that wages are skyrocketing as companies compete to fill their needs. However the supply isn't growing anything like fast enough—training took a rain check during COVID19. So we are now seeing rubbish go uncollected (bin lorry drivers are getting pay rises by switching to HGVs), bus companies are having problems retaining drivers ... and Waitrose are now paying their truck drivers as much as solicitors (attorneys) just to keep their supermarket shelves filled.
posted by cstross at 1:23 PM on October 22, 2021 [24 favorites]
Ha ha nope. Brexit seems to have made everything universally worse.
Take food, for example. The UK has a pig farming sector. We used to export pork products. But since Brexit we can't get enough vets to supervise slaughterhouse operations, so a total of 120,000 pigs are currently being killed and bulldozed into landfill because they can't be legally slaughtered and sold—and meanwhile, despite the logistics cock-ups, Danish bacon and ham imports are rising.
Actually, I tell a lie: there is one group who have benefited! There's such a huge shortage of truck drivers (especially HGVs—articulated container trucks) that wages are skyrocketing as companies compete to fill their needs. However the supply isn't growing anything like fast enough—training took a rain check during COVID19. So we are now seeing rubbish go uncollected (bin lorry drivers are getting pay rises by switching to HGVs), bus companies are having problems retaining drivers ... and Waitrose are now paying their truck drivers as much as solicitors (attorneys) just to keep their supermarket shelves filled.
posted by cstross at 1:23 PM on October 22, 2021 [24 favorites]
It has been kind of funny to watch how the Tories keep trying to imply they want Ireland to leave the single market and basically rejoin the UK and the EU pretends to act like this option (rightfully) just doesn't exist.
I mean this whole dog and pony show is basically because boomer gammon thought they'd get The British Empire™ back while the rest of the Commonwealth has moved on, developed other partnerships, has moved closer to other trading blocs and wants nothing to do with that shitty little island in the North Sea on the other side of the ocean/world.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 2:00 PM on October 22, 2021 [5 favorites]
I mean this whole dog and pony show is basically because boomer gammon thought they'd get The British Empire™ back while the rest of the Commonwealth has moved on, developed other partnerships, has moved closer to other trading blocs and wants nothing to do with that shitty little island in the North Sea on the other side of the ocean/world.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 2:00 PM on October 22, 2021 [5 favorites]
It has been kind of funny...
I don't disagree, but I think it's probably funnier from the opposite side of the world than it is living in it.
posted by plonkee at 3:07 PM on October 22, 2021 [10 favorites]
I don't disagree, but I think it's probably funnier from the opposite side of the world than it is living in it.
posted by plonkee at 3:07 PM on October 22, 2021 [10 favorites]
So Ireland's getting united, right? I mean it'll take awhile but what are the chances that whatever system they patch together for Northern Ireland lasts more than a decade or two?
posted by goingonit at 5:14 PM on October 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by goingonit at 5:14 PM on October 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
shitty little island in the North Sea on the other side of the ocean/world.
It's a beautiful little island. It's just run by a really shitty government.
posted by jb at 8:31 PM on October 22, 2021 [16 favorites]
It's a beautiful little island. It's just run by a really shitty government.
posted by jb at 8:31 PM on October 22, 2021 [16 favorites]
> Queen Elizabeth is 95 and in an uncertain degree of health.
TIL HER "OFFICIAL TITLE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: Her Majesty Elizabeth II, By the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of Her Other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith."
posted by kliuless at 12:06 AM on October 23, 2021
TIL HER "OFFICIAL TITLE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: Her Majesty Elizabeth II, By the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of Her Other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith."
posted by kliuless at 12:06 AM on October 23, 2021
France is different because it dealt with class / elites. Modern British need the same state, but how to achieve?
We absolutely need to deal with hereditary privilege as a matter of urgency (getting rid of the public (confusingly, paid for) schools would be my preferred first step).
But that comment does not match my experience (2 years of university 20 years ago). Sure, the situation in France is very different in it’s particulars but the idea that it has “dealt with class/ elites” is absurd.
posted by tomp at 12:33 AM on October 23, 2021 [9 favorites]
We absolutely need to deal with hereditary privilege as a matter of urgency (getting rid of the public (confusingly, paid for) schools would be my preferred first step).
But that comment does not match my experience (2 years of university 20 years ago). Sure, the situation in France is very different in it’s particulars but the idea that it has “dealt with class/ elites” is absurd.
posted by tomp at 12:33 AM on October 23, 2021 [9 favorites]
Talking Politics podcast did a series of episodes over the last year about the topic of the union. Well worth a listen if you’re up for a deep dive…
1. What is the Union?
2. Northern Ireland past, present and future
3. Wales, England and the future of the UK
4. Union at the crossroads
5. England, their England
6. Q & A With Helen and David: UK Politics and the Union
posted by tomp at 12:46 AM on October 23, 2021 [7 favorites]
1. What is the Union?
2. Northern Ireland past, present and future
3. Wales, England and the future of the UK
4. Union at the crossroads
5. England, their England
6. Q & A With Helen and David: UK Politics and the Union
posted by tomp at 12:46 AM on October 23, 2021 [7 favorites]
I live in inner city London - the area has always been poor but intensely vibrant, endlessly stimulating. It's a 'metropolitan entry point' for wave after wave of migrants, beginning, if we take only the last couple of hundred years, with the Irish who built great swathes of north London and stayed, thru the violent ripples and ramifications of imperial decline, (I used to 'joke' that whenever there was an upheaval, a coup, a revolution any place in the former British empire we'd get new neighbours), waves of economic migrants (when I moved in the street was all Italians from the deep South where work was scarce and life was hard, Greek Cypriots and harmoniously Turkish Cypriots and second generation 'Windrush' citizens from the Caribbean), to the present in which the houses are gentrified, outrageously expensive and owned by middle class public sector professionals from the UK and EU, interspersed with multiple occupancy, hideously impoverished 'housing' peopled by Syrians, Somalis, Eritreans, Ethiopians, in a Sheik by Jowl chess board chequer.
We've always been governed but only infrequently by the British state. In the 70s, it was the IRA ( networks of invisible safe houses and arms dealers and a sympathetic local population made this a valuable area), worst in the 1990s when newly redundant Albanian and Kosovan militias moved in and went to war with the entrenched old white working class gangs, perhaps 'best,' ( ok in this context 'best' is a tricky notion), in the first decade or so of the 21st century when the Turkish drug cartels took over, ( they wanted peace on the streets so the police weren't attracted and they could do business - funnily enough, their peace triggered the gentrification wave - I often wondered if our newcomer neighbours, no longer waiters but hospital consultants and barristers, knew why ours was 'such a charming street, an oasis of peace and quiet' in Norf Lunnun). The miracle is that somehow or another, it worked. It really worked. OK there were good times and less good. But it worked. It was liveable. It was often brilliant. Wonderful. Fun. Lord have mercy, we even brought up three happy kids here who are now happy adults.
It no longer does. I can hardly believe it. There's a sense of crumbling social cohesion. The loss of personal social skills without which 'civilisation' is barely possible. OK you could get mugged if you weren't lucky but nobody pissed up against the wall or crapped on the pavement. Fragmentation too. Anomie on stilts, steroids and crack.
Mental illness. Wow. Wow. Wow. Old ladies wandering down the street screaming. Homelessness, begging, bodies stretched out and jerking on the pavement torn asunder by some drug that works too well or is too badly. Drugs, drugs and more drugs.
And a hideous sense that nothing is being done - we have no government, neither formal nor informal. Our local 'shadow state' has gone (the drug money has been white washed and the cartels have disappeared into legit business). The human waste, pain and neglect accumulates like so much sewage and there are no engineers. Seemingly no interest in it from central government. Even if it was interested, years of rolling back the state have left it without the arms and legs, without the reach to do anything even if it wished. (If I live to see a Labour government again - their ambitions may well founder on this rock 40 years in the making). Local government has empty pockets and massive obligations. Problems stockpile. The mountain gets higher and still nothing. There is scant public recognition that there even is a problem here in the first place.
It's not all bleakness. And perspective helps. I was moaning in Specsavers to a friendly old boy from East Africa. He listened patiently, smiled, then reassured me that, "It's a lot better than Mogadishu." I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I laughed. Sometimes you have to.
I am not sure quite how my experience here intersects with the issues raised by the poster and frankly, I barely have the moral and intellectual courage to trace them but intersect they do.
posted by dutchrick at 4:22 AM on October 23, 2021 [33 favorites]
We've always been governed but only infrequently by the British state. In the 70s, it was the IRA ( networks of invisible safe houses and arms dealers and a sympathetic local population made this a valuable area), worst in the 1990s when newly redundant Albanian and Kosovan militias moved in and went to war with the entrenched old white working class gangs, perhaps 'best,' ( ok in this context 'best' is a tricky notion), in the first decade or so of the 21st century when the Turkish drug cartels took over, ( they wanted peace on the streets so the police weren't attracted and they could do business - funnily enough, their peace triggered the gentrification wave - I often wondered if our newcomer neighbours, no longer waiters but hospital consultants and barristers, knew why ours was 'such a charming street, an oasis of peace and quiet' in Norf Lunnun). The miracle is that somehow or another, it worked. It really worked. OK there were good times and less good. But it worked. It was liveable. It was often brilliant. Wonderful. Fun. Lord have mercy, we even brought up three happy kids here who are now happy adults.
It no longer does. I can hardly believe it. There's a sense of crumbling social cohesion. The loss of personal social skills without which 'civilisation' is barely possible. OK you could get mugged if you weren't lucky but nobody pissed up against the wall or crapped on the pavement. Fragmentation too. Anomie on stilts, steroids and crack.
Mental illness. Wow. Wow. Wow. Old ladies wandering down the street screaming. Homelessness, begging, bodies stretched out and jerking on the pavement torn asunder by some drug that works too well or is too badly. Drugs, drugs and more drugs.
And a hideous sense that nothing is being done - we have no government, neither formal nor informal. Our local 'shadow state' has gone (the drug money has been white washed and the cartels have disappeared into legit business). The human waste, pain and neglect accumulates like so much sewage and there are no engineers. Seemingly no interest in it from central government. Even if it was interested, years of rolling back the state have left it without the arms and legs, without the reach to do anything even if it wished. (If I live to see a Labour government again - their ambitions may well founder on this rock 40 years in the making). Local government has empty pockets and massive obligations. Problems stockpile. The mountain gets higher and still nothing. There is scant public recognition that there even is a problem here in the first place.
It's not all bleakness. And perspective helps. I was moaning in Specsavers to a friendly old boy from East Africa. He listened patiently, smiled, then reassured me that, "It's a lot better than Mogadishu." I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I laughed. Sometimes you have to.
I am not sure quite how my experience here intersects with the issues raised by the poster and frankly, I barely have the moral and intellectual courage to trace them but intersect they do.
posted by dutchrick at 4:22 AM on October 23, 2021 [33 favorites]
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One extra complication (which, in fairness, may be covered) may be the passing of the monarch. Queen Elizabeth is 95 and in an uncertain degree of health. I'm not sure what the ramifications of her passing will be (apart from Nicholas Witchell being insufferably everywhere on the news, reason enough to leave the country for a while), especially on constitutional and union issues.
posted by Wordshore at 9:30 AM on October 22, 2021 [10 favorites]