Welcome to 2010, a year which is pregnant with doubt and uncertainty. The western world has moved from the certainty of recession to a fear and acceptance of stagnation, the ‘flat is the new up’ mentality derided by Martin Sorrell. In the UK we have a general election contested by three parties which is shaping up like a contest between weak boxers. Every time they land a punch on each other they weaken their opponent without strengthening themselves.
There is a general mood of cynicism and disgust towards the political process which means that whichever party or parties win the election then nothing can really change. Mick Hume has accurately summed up the state of modern politics as dominated by;
..the politics of fear, with many apocalyptic warnings, but little analysis of the underlying causes; the politics of behaviour, with attempts to blame the crisis of the system on the greed of individuals; and the politics of low expectations, with efforts to persuade us that the most we can hope for in the future is no/low growth in a stable/stagnant capitalism on a life-support machine of state intervention.
We have reached the end of a political cycle which began with the collapse of communism in 1989. Just to remind ourselves, the collapse of the Soviet Union created an initial surge of optimism that history had ended with the triumph of western liberal democracy. In the East new democracies arose. In the west the third way concensus politics of Bill Clinton, adopted by Blair and others, replaced class based politics. It is very hard now to remember the enthusiasm which accompanied the election of Blair’ s New Labour in 1997. Many people welcomed what they saw as a decisive break with the past and the opening of a new chapter in history. We can now see that the idea of a new era of peaceful and stable capitalism which dominated the twenty years since the end of communism has come to a political dead end.
The upcoming defeat of Gordon Brown in the general election here will mark the final eclipse of New Labourism in the UK. What we are left with is a severely confused and disoriented western elite which is struggling to tackle the major changes taking place in the world. During the credit fuelled boom years of the noughties the absence of any clear economic and political blueprint for the future did not matter so much as it does now. The best that any politician can do now is to try to navigate the future without a map. On the economic front there is just as much confusion. While there are some commentators who wish to paint a rosy picture the general view is one of foreboding. The underlying problems facing western capitalism, which have been extensively debated in this blog over the past year, have not even begun to be addressed. The lack of a plan means they will fall back on restraint and cutbacks in public spending rather than bold policies for economic growth.
Elsewhere the triumph of liberal democracy is looking very hollow. The most dynamic economies in the world now pay lip service to democracy in general if at all. The recession has played its part in deepening the crisis of western politics by accelerating both a shift in global power eastwards and by undermining the western model of (supposedly) free markets plus democracy.
All of this means that the stakes are even higher for anybody who can come up with a better idea of how to run things. The depths of cynicism amongst the elite and the general populace will prove a huge barrier to any ideas of change, but there are always some people who will not want to give in to these widespread negative sentiments. Uncertainty can be a good thing if it leads to broader questioning and wider debate. there are those, such as Martin Wolf, who accept that we have reached a ‘hinge in history’. Whether this leads to a turn for the better or the worse is up to us.
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