Content area
Full Text
The resounding victory of 'Boris' Johnson's Conservative Party in December 2019 has already had shattering consequences: causing upheaval in political parties (Labour, Liberal Democrats, the Brexit Party Ltd), reigniting the stalled negotiations with the European Union and deepening fractures in the unity of the United Kingdom. It is a result whose effects are likely to be felt over a longer span, reconfiguring the British polity, economy and state. Much of the commentary in the days after the election has focused on what might be called immediate causes: was it Brexit or Corbyn that drove the catastrophic collapse of the Labour vote? Or was it all about the working class?
Such questions are certainly important, since they will - or should - inform a longer-term strategy for the future. But we also need to ask how to reconcile the immediate causes with the longer-running shifts and fracturings that have unsettled ways of life, livelihoods, identifications and affiliations; and make an effort to understand the complex interplay of processes that has produced this moment. One difficulty in such moments is how to think - analytically and politically - about the different timescales, the different temporalities and forces, that are in play in bringing the moment to life. Each temporality brings with it sets of unfinished contradictions, crises and conflicts, and they combine in complicated ways to give shape to the present. This article is my attempt at exploring some of these puzzles by starting to disentangle some of these different processes and their timescales so that we can trace their complex interplay While I don't doubt the emotional satisfaction of being able to name a single cause for the Johnson victory, I don't think it is helpful analytically or politically Both Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn's leadership were regularly referenced in the way people talked about and justified their voting choices, but the longer histories of the Brexit vote, the trajectory of the Labour Party (at least since the first Thatcher victory of 1979) and the long undermining of the foundations of the 'Red Wall' also demand some attention.
A final introductory point: at election times, we are particularly prone to obsess about the national focus, pushing wider framings (global and transnational dynamics) into the background. But keeping...