Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[celedhring]

So, I didn't learn until today that Burnham is Catholic.

300 years ago that would've been enough for a couple beheadings and a protracted Civil War. You guys are losing your touch.

[Sheilbh]

So, I didn't learn until today that Burnham is Catholic.

300 years ago that would've been enough for a couple beheadings and a protracted Civil War. You guys are losing your touch.

A Northern Catholic descending on London - very Pilgrimage of Grace.

Of course, absurdly, technically our first Catholic PM was Boris Johnson... And I Tony Blair was definitely basically a recusant. He had to be told by the Pope to stop taking communion at Westminster Cathedral, had a long private meeting with the Pope in his resignation tour and basically immediately converted on leaving office.

[Razgovory]

So, I didn't learn until today that Burnham is Catholic.

300 years ago that would've been enough for a couple beheadings and a protracted Civil War. You guys are losing your touch.

A Northern Catholic descending on London - very Pilgrimage of Grace.

Of course, absurdly, technically our first Catholic PM was Boris Johnson... And I Tony Blair was definitely basically a recusant. He had to be told by the Pope to stop taking communion at Westminster Cathedral, had a long private meeting with the Pope in his resignation tour and basically immediately converted on leaving office.

How is it you keep getting Catholic prime ministers?  Catholics are like 10% of the country.

[Sheilbh]

How is it you keep getting Catholic prime ministers?  Catholics are like 10% of the country.

I wouldn't read too much into it But generally we're quite religiously plural. So the largest single group is Christianity at about 45% followed by no religion at 35-40%. But obviously that Christian group contains lots. The Catholics are about 7% of the country - but the Church of England is only 12% (and in terms of attendance Catholics definitely have the lead).

Burnham is very much a cultural Catholic - from the most traditionally Catholic part of England, with Irish ancestry (and the most Irish bit of England too). In part it maybe just reflects the fact that Labour (and befor them, the Liberals) were traditionally the party of all forms of non-conformism and their heartlands traditionally overlapped with non-conformist areas. I don't think there's much more to it than, say, Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan were PMs for 12 years of the 60s and 70s and both came from Baptist backgrounds (except that those "chapel" other protestant traditions have largely died outside migrant communities). Liverpool, Lancashire, Irish heritage bits of the North-East and (before the rise of the SNP) Glasgow provide a fairly solid stream of Labour MPs.

I think it's fair to say Johnson's Catholicism (baptised Catholic, confirmed Church of England, third marriage in a Catholic Cathedral) is fairly lightly worn Blair is the outlier in both being deeply religious and a convert.

Although religion doesn't play a big part of our politics (though historically it's absolutely central including in how it's structured). As Tony Blair's spin doctor used to say in interview that threatened to touch on question of faith: "we don't do God". So I think Burnham is culturally Catholic - from a particular tradition - in much the same way as I think Cameron was culturally Church of England and not really a person "of faith" like Blair or Sunak (of recent PMs).

[Sheilbh]

Key thing there though, is go back 50+ years and if you were growing up in a working class family then no matter how talented you were university was likely closed off to you.
These days, despite some challenge and backsliding, we live in a far more meritocratic society.
Odds are if you've got a head on your shoulders then you wouldn't have stayed working on the shop floor and would have gone to uni but instead.

Maybe times will change again. The uni system is screwed up and lots of chatter if you want a decent job in the age of AI to become a plumber.

But when comparing the current crop of adults to those of a century ago we cant forget this.
Talented young people for the past few decades have been herded a certain way.

Yeah - obviously there's been profound changes in the last century. But I think it is worth pointing out the giants of the Labour movement that Starmer is standing on when he's telling his cabinet they're the "most working class ever" because it's nonsense

I'd add two other things. One is that I think there's a bit of an ellision of proletarian and working class when I think they're slightly different. I think Britain in the twentieth century until the 70s was probably the most proletarian society that has ever existed (basically no peasants, tiny fraction of workers in agriculture and huge industrial workforce) whcih those early Labour leaders reflect. It is no longer a society with a significant proletariat, but there is still a working class but the nature of their work has changed.

Given the way that Angela Rayner, and arguably on the Tory side Nadine Dorries who also never went to uni and was nurse before she opened her business, have been covered and discussed in different bits of the press (as a total aside - I've heard that both were, despite their very different politics, hugely popular with their civil servants/departments). I absolutely think there would still be a lot of shock and horror at wild men and women who came from the professions of over half the country in retail, hospitality, care, call centres, transport etc. And I think the absence of those voices is a bit problem in our society - just as the absence of the voice of the more proletarian working class at the turn of the twentieth century was (arguably more so because they're in industries and sectors more difficult to unionise so the unions don't even play that role).

The other point is just around meritocracy which I think is worth handling with care. There's a really interesting study of social mobility in the 50s and 60s which was profound - and the traditional story was often around grammar schools pumping out an incredibly talented pipeline who were able to go to the top. The study basically notes that actually it was not solely but in large part because of the effects of the Second World War - a combination of an expanded state and media, plus the second generation in a row of the traditional elites getting mangled in war, which meant there was space at the top for the talented to break into. I don't think that exists any more. In part because we're in an era of certain forms of social mobility in certain areas/sectors (and particularly for people from London) but also in a lot of other areas like media and politics I think there's actually been a re-ossification. See what I was saying earlier about the family trees within the Labour Party - or the presence of relatively low or unpaid entry roles in a very expensive system, or the general nepotism in those sectors.

The other point is that "meritocracy" comes from a slightly dystopian satire (from that 1950s moment) and part of what it warns about is that meritocracy is pretty heartless, like any other "rational" or "objective" measure. And I think you see this in the discourse of a society. If you truly live in a meritocracy - then people's social position is the position the deserve to be in. They had the chance to rise and didn't. I don't think we are in that frictionless meritocratic world but even if we were I think that thinking has to be rejected and talent and ability is equally distributed including in the 50% who don't go to university.

I also slightly question what that route is selecting for in any event. I don't agree with much that he says nowadays but Blair has a fantastic line that as he got older and more experienced in office he learned to value intelligence less and judgement more. I don't think this is the smartest cabinet ever either - but I've no doubt it's one filled with people (and supported by people) who are fiercely smart and intelligent. I'm not sure they've all been blessed with judgement. I think that goes across many recent governments and actually the infrastructure of the British state, such as the civil service. So even if we did have that frictionless meritocratic society with university as a gateway I'm not sure it would necessarily be providing us with a governing class that have the skills that are important in politics like judgement, communication, empathy, intuition etc.

[Sheilbh]

Sometimes terms make sense. I can't image that turnstile of leaders in the UK helps with voter fatigue and turn out.

For voters, we've only had 3 general elections (rest of those PMs were chosen by party) in past 10 years when if stuck only to terms, should have 2 in a 10 year span?

It still beginning to look a lot Belgium a few years ago.

Never thought to see Belgium leading the way in anything much... 

Just wanted to come back on this as interesting column by Daniel Finkelstein on it last week.

As I say the average term of a British PM is 3-4 years - so on average they don't serve a full-term and we've recently had a period of extraordinary stability between 1979-2007. That is, broadly speaking, the pattern of British politics. I think we often think in terms of thirty year cycles (which I think mainly comes from American politics and a bit of "history started in 1945" presentism) - and there is something there.

But in the history of our system the way it tends to go is periods of stability followed by fairly short dense periods of instability/political chaos - so post-Cameron, Burnham will be our sixth PM in 10 years (including Cameron, our 7th in 16 years). So Pitt the Younger serves for 17 years and we then cycle through 6 ministries in the next 11 years. Lord Liverpool is PM for 15 years ending that cycle, when leaves office there are seven different ministries inn the following eight years. There's a period of stability which ends in mid-19th century when, over 16 years, there are eight different ministries (between five men on rotation). Then in the inter-war years we have five Prime Ministers in 24 months between 1922 and 1924.

In each case there is a change in social, economic and media conditions that cause a political rupture or realignment. The existing party coalitions fall apart and new ones emerge or become possible. The turmoil/instability ends when someone (or some group) emerges on the scene with the creativity, organising ability and political invention/nous to create a new political settlement or alignment. Whether that's the creation of the Conservative Party, the Peelite split from it establishing the Liberal Party, the emergence of Labour or whatever else.

I think we're in that period and I think it's interesting because I think there's a misdiagnosis of it being caused by Brexit, when my read would be that the same economic, social and media shifts that lead to Brexit are also leading to this instability. FWIW I think historically the 1980s was a period when this could have happened but for Margaret Thatcher who reinvents the Conservatives and does the re-alignment from within (I think you'd have seen a breakdown of that party system had it been, say, a divided Heathite Tory Party v very split and drifting left Labour Party. And it is a common question of whether we're in the 20s or the 80s in relation to new parties emerging (Labour and the strange death of Liberal England), or the established ones re-asserting themselves (the rise and fall of the SDP).

I think Boris Johnson was the closest we've had to a leader who could end it in that I think he saw the potential realignment on the right and was able to deliver it politically in the 2019 election. But didn't have the genius necessary to manage those inherent tensions and, I think, because of his character flaws was always doomed to fail in government in a fairly squalid way as he did. I think the question is whether Burnham is the person with those skills to build a new message, a new coalition and take advantage of the kaleidoscope being shaken. I'm not confident - but I think he's underestimated and I think in my view, of the leaders we've had (May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer), him and Johnson are the only ones with the imagination to do it - and I think Burnham doesn't have Johnson's character flaws and has a better more interesting record in government.