05-25-2024, 08:08 AM
Since 2024 is now a confirmed as an election year in two countries, the United States and Britain, this is an appropriate time to revive my old speculation about election parallels between the two countries.
This was based on observing the way that British and American politics seem to have been running on parallel lines since the end of World War 2, switching from left to right and back again within a few years of each other.
The timing of the changes is partly governed by the fact that the U.S. operates on a fixed-term electoral cycle and the U.K. doesn’t. This flexibility means that a change in the political mood can sometimes be expressed first on the British side of the Atlantic (though it also means that an “old regime” might hang on for a while longer).
The pattern goes like this;
When Japan surrendered in 1945, both countries were under comparatively left-wing governments- a Democrat administration and a Labour government- which lasted beyond the end of the decade.
The Fifties were dominated by conservatism. There was the Eisenhower era (from 1952), and in Britain there was a time of Conservative government (from 1951), epitomised by Harold Macmillan’s observation that “Some of our people have never had it so good.”
The Sixties were ready for something a little more radical- the Democrats under Kennedy-Johnson (from 1960) and the Labour party under Harold Wilson (from 1964).
Nevertheless, at the end of the decade, they both gave way to more conservative individuals- Richard Nixon (from 1968) and Ted Heath (from 1970). (I swept to power myself in 1970 as the winning candidate in our school’s Mock Election).
Nixon and Heath were both forced out a few years later, but the change happened more quickly in Britain. Ted Heath was able to call an unnecessary election in early 1974 and get himself thrown out almost instantly. Whereas, even after Nixon resigned, the American Constitution kept the Republicans in power until 1976.
So, in the second half of the Seventies, there was, once more, a Democrat administration and a Labour government. Neither of them impressed people by the way they handled crises, and there was another conservative reaction in both countries. Once again, the change happened in Britain first. Maggie Thatcher was able to force an election in 1979 by winning a “No Confidence” vote in the Commons, while Ronald Reagan had to wait for the fixed election date in 1980.
The Reagan-Bush and Thatcher-Major years were a time of renewed conservative domination. The compatibility between Reagan and Thatcher was noted at the time. Leftists will fondly remember the famous film poster parody, with Reagan carrying Maggie in his arms;
“She promised to follow him to the end of the world.
He promised to arrange it”.
Finally, at the end of the century, conservatism gave way to Clinton and Blair. This time the American change happened first, partly because John Major won an election which nobody was expecting him to win.
Taken individually, all these changes can be explained by local factors, like the Vietnam issue on one side of the Atlantic, and strikes in the nationalised industries on the other. Nonetheless, when the pattern is taken as a whole, that’s a remarkable sequence of parallels.
I don’t know that the mechanism behind it need be anything more mysterious than having a similar culture with similar reactions to world affairs and economic issues. This would include being more resistant to Socialism than the European countries. Certainly British politics and European politics have not been running in parallel to anything like the same extent.
At first glance, the new century seems to have disrupted the pattern. The British equivalent of Clinton remained in power while America was moving from Left to Right and back again. Or did Tony Blair end up as the British equivalent of Bush Junior after all? Anyway, with the arrival of Gordon Brown and Obama, the two countries were apparently back on parallel tracks. At least, that was my impression in 2012 when this theory was first put forward.
Or were they? Gordon Brown had already been discarded in 2010 and replaced by David Cameron and the Coalition. From one viewpoint, this could be regarded as being six years in advance of the American shift to Trump.
An alternative theory, in retrospect, is that the comparatively liberal Cameron was just as much the British equivalent of Obama as Blair was the British equivalent of Bush.
This allows us to see Boris Johnson’s triumph in December 2019 as the British version of Trump’s triumph in 2016, and his dumping in 2022 as the British version of Trump’s defeat in 2020. This is an attractive theory because people see so many similarities, even in hairstyle.
We arrive in 2024 with both countries seeming to show an increasingly strong right-wing mood. However, that’s not going to translate into an election victory in Britain because the official right-wing party is falling apart.
As far as I can gather, not being in close touch with political events, the pro-Brexit side of the party are the ones who are pulling out and forming a new “Reform” party. Maggie Thatcher used to label the more liberal and pro-Europe side of her party as “wet”, so in the political language of the time the Thatcherites themselves were known as “dry”. On the whole, I think, “wet” has been in charge at least since the turn of the century, so that is the element that is now going down in flames.
If a right-wing surge is now bringing Trump back to power, that won’t be reflected in Britain until the right has had a chance to re-form itself and coalesce.
+++
In fact this could be an event in British political history with a significance like the collapse of the old Liberal party.
Victorian Liberalism had been a grand coalition against the power of the land-owners, formed of liberal-minded aristocrats (the old Whigs), business interests, radical theorists and the working-class. Once they came into power, they had difficulty in holding the coalition together. Gladstone began upsetting the business interests (e.g. restraints on drinking hours did not please the brewers). Then he shifted to a policy of offering Home Rule to Ireland, which cost him the Whigs and also Joseph Chamberlain, who was considered a radical at the time.
Those Liberals who broke away allied with the Conservatives, eventually getting absorbed. This group was the target of the political joke in “The Importance of Being Earnest”; “Politics? I don’t really have any. I am a Liberal Unionist.” “Oh, they count as Tories. They dine with us. Or come in the evening, at any rate.” By the time the film version was made, the Unionists had disappeared altogether, and the actor simply called himself “a Liberal”. So the social joke no longer applied, though arguably the “no politics” joke actually worked better on the Liberals of 1952 than when Oscar Wilde wrote it.
Joseph Chamberlain himself had an extraordinary career. Having split the Liberal party almost single-handed, on the issue of Irish Home Rule, he went on to split the Conservative Party almost single-handed on the question of re-introducing import tariffs. For example, that was when they temporarily lost Winston Churchill.
But then the Liberal Party got outflanked on the left by the rise of the Labour Party. In the long-term, this meant that they became a centre party and got pulled apart by the two parties on either side.
Before that, there was the First World War. The Liberals were obliged to allow the Conservatives to enter a wartime coalition. The manoeuvres of Lloyd George to make himself leader of that coalition had the effect of dividing his own Liberal party. As a result, the coalition ended the war and won the following election as a mainly Liberal cabinet supported by a mainly Conservative body of back-benchers (M.P.’s without a Cabinet post).
Then in 1922 the back-benchers rebelled. They threw off the old leadership and dissolved the coalition. This was the origin of “the 1922 Committee”, which still survives as the voice of the back bench. I was going to write a thread in the centenary year, but never got around to it. The pulling apart of the Liberals was consummated over the rest of the decade, as the working class and the intellectual radicals shifted to Labour, while Winston Churchill and anyone else who hated socialism went back to the Conservatives.
That may be happening to the Conservatives now, as the “wets” who are trying to hold the centre are being abandoned by the Brexiteers. Yet there is also, at the same time, a visible tension within the Labour party as the leadership tries to hold the centre against Islamists and others. Might we end up with a “National Emergency anti-extremist coalition” of Sunak and Starmer?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrQQAa6AARc
This was based on observing the way that British and American politics seem to have been running on parallel lines since the end of World War 2, switching from left to right and back again within a few years of each other.
The timing of the changes is partly governed by the fact that the U.S. operates on a fixed-term electoral cycle and the U.K. doesn’t. This flexibility means that a change in the political mood can sometimes be expressed first on the British side of the Atlantic (though it also means that an “old regime” might hang on for a while longer).
The pattern goes like this;
When Japan surrendered in 1945, both countries were under comparatively left-wing governments- a Democrat administration and a Labour government- which lasted beyond the end of the decade.
The Fifties were dominated by conservatism. There was the Eisenhower era (from 1952), and in Britain there was a time of Conservative government (from 1951), epitomised by Harold Macmillan’s observation that “Some of our people have never had it so good.”
The Sixties were ready for something a little more radical- the Democrats under Kennedy-Johnson (from 1960) and the Labour party under Harold Wilson (from 1964).
Nevertheless, at the end of the decade, they both gave way to more conservative individuals- Richard Nixon (from 1968) and Ted Heath (from 1970). (I swept to power myself in 1970 as the winning candidate in our school’s Mock Election).
Nixon and Heath were both forced out a few years later, but the change happened more quickly in Britain. Ted Heath was able to call an unnecessary election in early 1974 and get himself thrown out almost instantly. Whereas, even after Nixon resigned, the American Constitution kept the Republicans in power until 1976.
So, in the second half of the Seventies, there was, once more, a Democrat administration and a Labour government. Neither of them impressed people by the way they handled crises, and there was another conservative reaction in both countries. Once again, the change happened in Britain first. Maggie Thatcher was able to force an election in 1979 by winning a “No Confidence” vote in the Commons, while Ronald Reagan had to wait for the fixed election date in 1980.
The Reagan-Bush and Thatcher-Major years were a time of renewed conservative domination. The compatibility between Reagan and Thatcher was noted at the time. Leftists will fondly remember the famous film poster parody, with Reagan carrying Maggie in his arms;
“She promised to follow him to the end of the world.
He promised to arrange it”.
Finally, at the end of the century, conservatism gave way to Clinton and Blair. This time the American change happened first, partly because John Major won an election which nobody was expecting him to win.
Taken individually, all these changes can be explained by local factors, like the Vietnam issue on one side of the Atlantic, and strikes in the nationalised industries on the other. Nonetheless, when the pattern is taken as a whole, that’s a remarkable sequence of parallels.
I don’t know that the mechanism behind it need be anything more mysterious than having a similar culture with similar reactions to world affairs and economic issues. This would include being more resistant to Socialism than the European countries. Certainly British politics and European politics have not been running in parallel to anything like the same extent.
At first glance, the new century seems to have disrupted the pattern. The British equivalent of Clinton remained in power while America was moving from Left to Right and back again. Or did Tony Blair end up as the British equivalent of Bush Junior after all? Anyway, with the arrival of Gordon Brown and Obama, the two countries were apparently back on parallel tracks. At least, that was my impression in 2012 when this theory was first put forward.
Or were they? Gordon Brown had already been discarded in 2010 and replaced by David Cameron and the Coalition. From one viewpoint, this could be regarded as being six years in advance of the American shift to Trump.
An alternative theory, in retrospect, is that the comparatively liberal Cameron was just as much the British equivalent of Obama as Blair was the British equivalent of Bush.
This allows us to see Boris Johnson’s triumph in December 2019 as the British version of Trump’s triumph in 2016, and his dumping in 2022 as the British version of Trump’s defeat in 2020. This is an attractive theory because people see so many similarities, even in hairstyle.
We arrive in 2024 with both countries seeming to show an increasingly strong right-wing mood. However, that’s not going to translate into an election victory in Britain because the official right-wing party is falling apart.
As far as I can gather, not being in close touch with political events, the pro-Brexit side of the party are the ones who are pulling out and forming a new “Reform” party. Maggie Thatcher used to label the more liberal and pro-Europe side of her party as “wet”, so in the political language of the time the Thatcherites themselves were known as “dry”. On the whole, I think, “wet” has been in charge at least since the turn of the century, so that is the element that is now going down in flames.
If a right-wing surge is now bringing Trump back to power, that won’t be reflected in Britain until the right has had a chance to re-form itself and coalesce.
+++
In fact this could be an event in British political history with a significance like the collapse of the old Liberal party.
Victorian Liberalism had been a grand coalition against the power of the land-owners, formed of liberal-minded aristocrats (the old Whigs), business interests, radical theorists and the working-class. Once they came into power, they had difficulty in holding the coalition together. Gladstone began upsetting the business interests (e.g. restraints on drinking hours did not please the brewers). Then he shifted to a policy of offering Home Rule to Ireland, which cost him the Whigs and also Joseph Chamberlain, who was considered a radical at the time.
Those Liberals who broke away allied with the Conservatives, eventually getting absorbed. This group was the target of the political joke in “The Importance of Being Earnest”; “Politics? I don’t really have any. I am a Liberal Unionist.” “Oh, they count as Tories. They dine with us. Or come in the evening, at any rate.” By the time the film version was made, the Unionists had disappeared altogether, and the actor simply called himself “a Liberal”. So the social joke no longer applied, though arguably the “no politics” joke actually worked better on the Liberals of 1952 than when Oscar Wilde wrote it.
Joseph Chamberlain himself had an extraordinary career. Having split the Liberal party almost single-handed, on the issue of Irish Home Rule, he went on to split the Conservative Party almost single-handed on the question of re-introducing import tariffs. For example, that was when they temporarily lost Winston Churchill.
But then the Liberal Party got outflanked on the left by the rise of the Labour Party. In the long-term, this meant that they became a centre party and got pulled apart by the two parties on either side.
Before that, there was the First World War. The Liberals were obliged to allow the Conservatives to enter a wartime coalition. The manoeuvres of Lloyd George to make himself leader of that coalition had the effect of dividing his own Liberal party. As a result, the coalition ended the war and won the following election as a mainly Liberal cabinet supported by a mainly Conservative body of back-benchers (M.P.’s without a Cabinet post).
Then in 1922 the back-benchers rebelled. They threw off the old leadership and dissolved the coalition. This was the origin of “the 1922 Committee”, which still survives as the voice of the back bench. I was going to write a thread in the centenary year, but never got around to it. The pulling apart of the Liberals was consummated over the rest of the decade, as the working class and the intellectual radicals shifted to Labour, while Winston Churchill and anyone else who hated socialism went back to the Conservatives.
That may be happening to the Conservatives now, as the “wets” who are trying to hold the centre are being abandoned by the Brexiteers. Yet there is also, at the same time, a visible tension within the Labour party as the leadership tries to hold the centre against Islamists and others. Might we end up with a “National Emergency anti-extremist coalition” of Sunak and Starmer?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrQQAa6AARc
