There is a great unsaid in British politics: an arcanum which has dominated the politics of the last 50 years, though it is never stated openly. But it is about to be revealed to the British public. There have been signs that the dam is about to break. It is almost inevitable because we have the imposing example of the United States before us, where the cat is out of the bag, the horse has bolted, and all hell has broken loose.
What has happened in the United States? Well, we have an election between two candidates for President, coming on the November 5th, where the candidate on the right is male, and the candidate on the left is female. In case you do not know: Donald Trump, Republican opposes Kamala Harris, Democrat.
American and British politics have an odd relation, since the former is a sort of avoidance, a sort of inheritance and a sort of abstraction of the latter: though the break happened in the 1780s, which is a long time ago: however it was late enough for us to bestow on the United States a taste for constitutional politics and for opposed political parties. However, American politics has remained open in a way that British politics has not. The House of Commons and its system (sometimes called Parliamentarism) is an elaborate machinery for allowing criticism of proposals to be heard during the process of enactment in such a way that it is possible to prevent anyone opposing a proposal after it has been enacted. This is a great thing, on one side: and we can sing hymns in Diceyan manner about it. But it is also a great triangulation (since it has three elements: neutral monarchy, ministers responsible to parliament, party politics): and a great triangulation which has the effect of dragging politics into Westminster and away from the populace: who remain interested only if they have Victorian habits of deference, respectability and reading newspapers.
What is the great secret of British politics? It is:
- Leaders of the Right can be female, but leaders of the Left cannot.
I know. It is not exactly a secret. But everyone supposes that it just happens to have been the case that the Tories have had Thatcher, May and Truss as leaders while Labour have had, er, exactly no one (unless you count Margaret Beckett, who was a caretaker leader in between John Smith and Tony Blair). But it is not that it has just happened to be the case. Nay. There is a rule. It is part of the logic of the system. And once the rule is broken, if it is broken, all hell will break loose.
Let me make exact predictions.
- Labour will only ever have a female leader if the Tories also have a female leader.
This will at least conceal the secret. But:
- If the Tories have a male leader and Labour has a female leader then all hell will break loose..
All hell will break loose? Yes. Our politics will come to resemble that of the United States as it is at this exact moment. All hell has broken out in America. Both sides consider themselves to be the saviours of democracy. Both sides convict the other of being a threat to democracy. The old political agreement whereby everyone acts or speaks within the pale of the constitution appears to be in tatters. Kamala Harris says Donald Trump is a fascist, a Nazi, Hitler – and so say all of the others on her side. They seem to believe it too. On the other side, Donald Trump says that the problem is not Kamala Harris or Joe Biden or any individual – the analysis is different – but that the system, the established order, the swamp, the military-industrial complex, the corporate elites, DC, New York and Hollywood, all of them, are locked into a path which is leading to the demise of the republic. Now, I do happen to favour one of these analyses over the other. Why? Well, it is more amusing, it is more intelligent, it is arguable rather than abusive, and it is also masculine. It is not ad hominem, but, I don’t know, ad imperium or something: against the system, not against the man, or, in this case woman. Notice how the woman Harris attacks the man Trump, but the man Trump attacks the system the woman Harris represents.
In the United Kingdom, our entire system is struggling to avoiding letting the cat out of the bag, letting the horse bolt, letting all hell break loose. A few years ago Keir Starmer was asked what a woman is. He answered in some grey and of course mealy-mouthed and mockable way, but in a way that nonetheless left the unsaid unsaid. What he could have said, if he had been an honest man, is the following:
- INTERVIEWER: What is a woman?
- KEIR STARMER. I can answer that. A woman is someone who can never be leader of the Labour party.
In archetypes – if Jung were still alive we would all be willing to admit that – right is masculine and left is feminine. The Labour party in England and the Democratic party in America are the parties of ostentatious care and justice combined with a fairly unscrupulous preferentiality and no uncertain capacity for survival-necessary hypocrisy. The Conservative party in England and the Republican party in America are parties of low-level criminality, boasting, neglect, derring-do, go-it-alone, and occasional capitulation to the hypocrisies of the fairer sex. I defy anyone to dispute this analysis. As I say, male archetype and female archetype. Left is anima, right is animus.
And so, and here is the great secret: we are not supposed to know this, or to be too aware of it. For then all hell would break loose. Marital discord. Unleashed feminism. Unrestrained patriarchy. The hell hounds of misogyny and misandry would be let loose: though I pause to observe how weak a word ‘misandry’ is. I leave you to supply a sharper word. Well, all hell is breaking loose in America: and why? Because it is the battle of the sexes. Not genders. The genders are all on one side. And in the United Kingdom, with our long traditions of fog and myth and empiricism (= the refusal to think which made Guizot in France and Hegel in Germany so jealous in the early 19th Century since they thought our political achievements depended on it), we want to keep the whole thing in the closet, under the carpet, behind the curtain.
The Labour party can be stuffed full of Rayners, Reeveses, Phillipsons, et al. It has always had its Webbs, Castles, Falkenders, Williamses, Harmans, Becketts, Mowlams, etc: but always a bit of ‘old unreconstructed’ in the central position: some stubborn little bit of grit like Wilson, Blair or Brown. What is Starmer but such a similarly reassuring sight? Labour can never be an unrestrainedly female party. For then the Tories will rise like Osiris after being awoken by Isis (on the despatch box, perhaps), and become the fully phallic political party that, presumably, Tate, Farage and Brand would like it to be. And the Labour party will be nothing but a repressive and bitter scold wondering why no one thanks it for free school meals, heat pumps, wind turbines, levelled universities and censorship.
Beware!
The selection of Badenoch over Jenrick, if it happens, is likely going to conceal the secret for another political generation in the United Kingdom. It is difficult to know whether to applaud, or despair over, the fact that politics, at the moment, is less invigorating than it is in the United States.
Dr. James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.
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