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This Is Not
Normal
This Is Not
Normal
The Collapse ofLiberal Britain
William Davies
To my mum
First published by Verso 2020
© William Davies 2020
The chapters in this book draw on the following publications: Chapter 1: ‘Initial Ruptures’, Political Economy Research Centre (24 June 2016); ‘What Sort of Crisis Is This?’, openDemocracy (30 June 2016); ‘The Crisis of Statistical Fact’, see ‘How statistics lost their power – and why we should fear what comes next’, Guardian (19 January 2017); ‘Strong and Stable’ see ‘Theresa May’s vapid vision for a one-party state’, New York Times (11 May 2017). Chapter 2: ‘The Corbyn Shock’ see ‘Reasons for Corbyn’, London Review of Books (13 July 2017); ‘The Riddle of Tory Brexitism’ see ‘What are they after?’, London Review of Books (8 March 2018); ‘The Revenge of Sovereignty on Government’ see ‘Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Rise of Radical Incompetence’, New York Times (13 July 2018); ‘The Lure of Exit’ see ‘Leave, and leave again’, London Review of Books (7 February 2019); ‘The Demise of Liberal Elites’ see ‘Why we stopped trusting elites’, Guardian (29 November 2019); ‘Comedy or Demagoguery’ see ‘The funny side of politics’, openDemocracy (9 April 2019). Chapter 3: ‘Democracy without Representation’ see ‘They don’t even need ideas’, London Review of Books (20 June 2019); ‘The Conservative Selectorate’ see ‘A fanatical sect has hijacked British politics’, New York Times (25 June 2019); ‘England’s New Rentier Alliance’, Political Economy Research Centre (1 August 2019); ‘The Johnson Press’ see ‘How the Johnson campaign is bringing Trump’s media tactics to Britain’, openDemocracy (13 June 2019); ‘The Blizzard of Lies’ see ‘Reasons to be cheerful’, London Review of Books (18 July 2019); ‘Why Everyone Hates the “Mainstream Media”’ see ‘Why can’t we agree on what’s true any more?’, Guardian (19 September 2019); ‘Mutations of Leadership’ see ‘How to be prime minister’, London Review of Books (26 September 2019); ‘The Party of Resentment’ see ‘The Tories have lost their ideology. Now they are merely the party of resentment’, Guardian (1 October 2019); ‘The Berlusconification of Britain’ see ‘How Boris Johnson and Brexit are Berlusconifying Britain’, Guardian (4 December 2019); ‘The Johnson Victory’ see ‘For Johnson’s Tories, the collapse of public trust isn’t a problem – it’s an opportunity’, Guardian (13 December 2019).
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
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Verso
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Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-83976-090-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-83976-101-0 (US EBK)
ISBN-13: 978-1-83976-100-3 (UK EBK)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Typeset in Fournier by MJ & N Gavan, Truro, Cornwall
Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays
Contents
2. Quagmire
3. ‘The People’ versus ‘Politics’
Afterword: In the Wreckage of Liberalism
Acknowledgements
Notes
In the spring of 2016, Britain was a nation still broadly convinced of its own normality. It provided a standard for how constitutional democracy should work. It possessed a media that, while far from perfect, seemed committed to giving a factual account of the key events in public life. Political power was ostensibly held to account by the scrutiny of opposition and a sceptical media. Despite the tremors of the 2008 financial crisis and the pain of austerity that followed, it appeared that economic policymaking still operated within the bounds of a technocratic consensus. When it came to political procedures, the conduct of the media and the governance of the economy, the liberal centre was still – just – in command.
The subsequent four years destroyed this self-image, rendering the ideology of liberal norm-keeping incredible. Over a period that witnessed one historic referendum, two general elections, three prime ministers, and one chaotically handled pandemic, one liberal convention after another was openly tossed aside. Gradually at first, then at an accelerating pace, basic assumptions and constraints that had governed public life and policy were discarded. The pursuit of Brexit destroyed the liberal assumption that the job of governments is to maximise economic welfare, and threw the primacy of international markets into question. Boris Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament in September 2019 was declared unlawful by the Supreme Court, which provoked the Conservative Party to include a cryptic pledge in its subsequent manifesto to review ‘the relationship between the government, parliament and the courts’.
The Daily Mail declared high court judges to be ‘enemies of the people’, after they ruled that Parliament would need to consent to the triggering of Article 50, which initiated the Brexit process. After their disappointment with Theresa May, pro-Brexit newspapers repurposed themselves as propaganda sheets for the Johnson administration, relishing the fact that the government was now led by one of their own celebrity columnists. Favours were returned, and media outlets were soon designated either friends or enemies of the government. While one set of journalists was being granted spurious ‘exclusives’ with a character they dutifully referred to as ‘Boris’, another set – Channel 4 News, the Daily Mirror, the Huffington Post, Radio 4’s Today programme – was being denied access to government ministers and press briefings. Downing Street began issuing political threats to public service broadcasters whenever they appeared to be enjoying too much critical autonomy. One senior government source promised that they would ‘whack’ the BBC and radically reduce its power.
A new set of political arts was introduced into democracy along the way. In addition to the widely discussed threat of targeted online advertising and misinformation – which is alleged to have played such an important role in the 2016 referendum – political strategists grew increasingly accomplished at using comedy, confusion and distraction to undermine reasoned debate. The 2019 general election saw the Conservative Party go all out on troll tactics, such as rebranding their Twitter feed ‘factcheckUK’ and disseminating false rumours about Labour activists to broadcasters. The kind of political lying and propaganda that was considered shocking in June 2016 has since become viewed with weary familiarity, raising the prospect that the damage to fact-based political argument is now terminal.
Frightening evidence emerged about the attitudes and values of the newly triumphant political demographics.