I'm beginning to lose faith in the omniscience of George Soros. He's miscalled the pound's exchange rate. Now he says Theresa May "will not last" He's right to say "she's got a very divided cabinet, a very small majority in Parliament" but very wrong not to see that her government is impregnable because Britain is becoming a one party state.
When I was an academic I preached the virtues our two party system in keeping up a continuous critique of the executive and providing for easy changes of government. Now all that's gone. Social change and the opposition's decision to opt for suicide as a political strategy make Britain's a one and assorted bits party system which keeps Theresa's government secure.
The old system was dying. The proportion voting for the two main parties fell from ninety percent to around two thirds. Party membership dropped. Fewer people bothered to vote,more were open to change. Sudden vote surges to the SDP,then Clegg showed that people were voting like consumers not party loyalists.
Labour then decided to throw membership open to anyone who could afford a raffle ticket with a prize of electing the party leader.This brought in a flood of members who weren't prepared to do the hard party work, and felt Labour governments had sold out but supported Corbyn, the one candidate in an uninspiring leadership field who talked their language. Sadly not one spoken by the people Labour needs to win. Result? A leader as impregnable as he's incomprehensible was saddled on a Parliamentary Party which could neither follow him nor get rid of him.
This commits Labour to swimming against the tide of the new politics. The old and still basic division between the two parties was about class and equality but Labour's manual working class base is shrinking as the middle class base of the Tories grew. Now, that old, left-right division is becoming less important than the social- liberal versus traditional-conservative gulf, which emerges over feminism, race, homosexuality, the environment, globalisation, immigration and other symptoms of modernity.
Both parties struggle with this, witness Cameron's failed attempts to get the Tories to hug hoodies and huskies but Labour's struggle is harder. It's core support is more traditional, snobs would say less enlightened, its leadership more middle class and liberal. Career politics have almost eliminated manual worker MPs. Their replacements are middle class kids on the make who are more liberal, even passionate about new causes those at the bottom of the social ladder were less bothered about.
Labour stopped talking the language of the people but took the support of "our people" for granted and set out to win support in the south and from higher up the social ladder. The Blair government never deliveried enough to its people or its regions,but did too much for the City, for Finance and for the liberal cause pushers. UKIP began to pick up votes in Labour seats The SNP took Scotland
This is now been compounded by an almost religious argument over membership of the EU. Kinnock and Blair had brought it round to a vacuous enthusiasm but the conversion process didn't reach down to the party's base There people were more nationalistic and harder hit by the immigration, the wage stagnation and the de-industrialisation membership had led to. So the party which rushed to campaign for the EU was astonished to find that a third of its people voted the other way and most MPs were on the opposite side to their constituents.
First reactions were to blame the hapless leader. Long opposed to membership Corbyn was bullied into supporting it but too unenthusiastically for Europhiles who promptly blamed him for the defeat Second reaction was to proclaim the intention to use Parliament to block people's wishes in Parliament and Blair,Hain and perhaps thirty MPs still adhere to this but the bulk of the party don't know what to do. So they clamoured for government to declare its negotiating objectives without being able to say what Labour's are because it's divided on the single market and immigration .They can't decide whether to have a free vote on the start of Clause 50 negotiations or face a rebellion.
Parties are more factional and fissiparous, but the Conservatives can cope better. Loyalty remains their secret weapon and power their overriding priority. The others face futility. Marshalling them into an effective opposition is impossible .They can huff and puff against the government but none of them wants an election. Futility is better than unemployment , Indeed Labour doesn't dare risk anything which might threaten the government because in their present state an election would be a Labour massacre. Humiliation in the Clause 50 negotiations may endanger the government but is more likely to generate electoral anger than any surge to Labour.
Labour will stagger on but become less relevant with an exodus of the able and ambitious which has already begun. It can't offer prospects to rising ambitious youngsters, the new Blairs. Spluttering on the back benches or devoting their lives to petty social work and insoluable problems in the constituency are no great attraction. People on the make will see that they can't make it in Labour which must come to resemble Beau Geste's fort with the dead propped up on the ramparts, the living few dashing round firing their rifles for them and the new recruits more likely to bayonet the defenders than the enemy
Labour will fight back in Scotland but to be effective there it must preach Brexet not try to outbid the SNP in its Euro-enthusiasm. Elsewhere Labour's impotence may drive up support for the Lib-Dems, from both Euro-enthusiasts and protesters. Meanwhile the division between the socially liberal and the more traditional will gape even wider. All that tolls the death knell of the two party system.
Proportional Representation could allow Britain to cope by articulating the divisions but incumbant politicians have closed their minds against this. It would require a referendum and winning that is unlikely. So the odds are that we face a future which may be fascinating for the commentariat , political scientists and other perverts but depressing for everyone else, particularly for idealists. That's my prediction. The two forthcoming by-elections will give us the first indication of whether its right.
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