William Higham on a shameful week in British politics

Sometimes – like today - I wish I could find a big jar of gloopy political apathy in the supermarket, placed between the toothpaste and aspirin on the shelf. I would go home and smoother myself in it, sleep better and live a happier life. But people like me are well-named political junkies. Politics sits on the centre spot on the heart’s mantelpiece where better adjusted people might store their affinity for their football team, their hobby or their passions.

There are great highs, but they are few. Most of the time party politics brings a grinding sense of moral strain, as you sign up to the collective line. And most of the time is haunted by failure, compromise or the fear of failure.

And how do you explain what’s going on within British politics? If you don’t care about party, but feel politics should be rising to the challenges facing the country, is there any explanation that could excuse the sheer self-indulgence and navel-gazing we’ve seen out of Westminster?

These are tough times in Britain. There are some 600,000 people more unemployed than last year. Last year 40,000 homes were reposed and bankruptcies rose from 15 to 20 thousand. It’s hard to comprehend these numbers – even before you add the ripple effect of families, partners and dependents who find their security, prospects and standards of living dragged down too. But politics seems to have turned in on itself, indulging in introspection, faction and at picking its own scabs formed by the Telegraph’s devastating expenses scoops.

There is something incorrigible and toxic in the way that the Labour party seems only able to fight about its own leadership and itself. Like a doomed couple who pledge each time to be civil and get on, but find each evening together ends up in a hissing fight. And behind all the conflict lies hope or blame about what a leader can actually do for a party or a country– each equally superstitious, even mystical. The would-be assassins of Brown remind me of a passage in the Golden Bough about the itch to sacrifice kings and gods to bring back fertility and serenity to the land: “a dying god should be chosen to take upon himself and carry away the sins and sorrows of the people”.

The plotters are neither united in their grievances or their alternatives. Hanging over them seems to be the redemptive promise of spilt political blood. Of course, we might ask whether the resignation (or ritual sacrifice) of the Commons Speaker has raised the stock of parliament? But that’s far too reasonable a question. That is like asking the last Mayan priests why just one more blood libation will stop the jungle closing around their cities. And really, despite years of engagement with politics, I can give no better explanation of what is hoped for by the plotters than that – a semi-magical catharsis. And then a new king to replenish the joint stock of political mojo.

Well last night, the dagger halted in its arc – Brown was spared.  But if you read the columnists today discontent rumbles on, or is delayed to the autumn.  Meanwhile the Conservative’s spend most of their public utterances mocking the Labour party’s troubles. At the heart of today’s politics is introspection, ringed by derision. We can and must do better.

William Higham will be teaching The School of Life’s Politics course starting Monday 15 June. For more information or to book a place click here.

Photo by Nils Jorgensen