Steph Paton: Our bland political centre cannot hold amid UK’s decline

The economic crash of 2008 was a definitive shifting point for most of us, and the rapidity with which the hallmarks of late-stage capitalism have come to define these years is, even now, still a little destabilising – soaring wealth inequality, exploitative labour practices, environmental degradation and the over-commodification of the necessary and unnecessary alike.

It is an injustice only compounded by the absolute ignorance of some on the material changes in circumstances that meant “giving up lattes and avocados” was never going to be even close enough to escaping exploitative rental contracts and gig economy jobs. The Britain we all know has, to us, only ever been one in a state of terminal decline.

It’s bitter to me then that, at a time when we should be sharing hope and optimism for the new year ahead, instead we enter 2024 knowing that any serious challenge to those excesses of capitalism is entirely absent from the political sphere – not only in Westminster’s increasingly authoritarian agenda but at Holyrood too.

Compared to the current Labour and Conservative leaderships, the SNP obviously stand out by a country mile in their rhetoric around immigration, geopolitics and economic inequality. But on paper they still tack close enough to the centre as to keep meaningful change at such a distance as not to spook the landowners and oil barons too much.

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We enter a year where the question of a General Election is not “if” but “when”, already knowing that our votes will be most likely guided not by policy nor personality but by finding the least worst option.

Voters are left with needs and wants that no political parties are willing to step up and address; fears that can be exploited to turn a righteous anger against those filling their pockets at our expense to be directed instead at the useful innocent: immigrants, the unhoused, those working full time on such poor wages that shoplifting is the difference between caring for their children or not.

It is a position that feels inescapable with the options on offer at Westminster – a hard-right Conservative party riddled with fascist pretenders to the throne and an ineffectual Labour Party that has absolved itself of the organisation’s core principles, Keir Starmer’s long-abandoned socialist pledges now quietly deleted from his website.

Wherever we turn, it’s more flavours of the same poison.

Where we need solutions to the NHS crisis, Labour are instead talking about opening the doors further to the private sector. Where oil and gas giants need reigning in, the Conservatives wave through record payouts to shareholders even as ordinary people struggle to heat their homes. Where we need funding and care for local councils, the SNP slash budgets.

A General Election won’t even touch the sides of these issues. At best the roadmap for 2024 feels like a forerunner for malaise – an election that will likely see one political beast replaced by another, alike in guise albeit with less sharp edges. And then it’s another half decade of bland mis-managerialism and the burning question: why aren’t things getting better?

Perhaps the wildcard element here that presents an opportunity for something better comes in the sheer degree of political change on the near horizon. Yes, the long-promised General Election, but change also in the names and faces of those leaving politics behind; the good and bad alike.

Many have announced their departure this year, and that in itself presents an opportunity. Though that might just be my eternal optimism for the new year desperately trying to break through.

What I believe is clear, however, is that milquetoast party politics cannot survive another year in contemporary Britain. Too much feels on the edge; too many beloved institutions on the brink of collapse; too much greed and wealth extraction to the super-rich.

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We need politicians to stop fiddling around the edges while living standards plummet; and more importantly, to stop playing the Big Tent Politics game that only ever seems to cede power from the left and hand it to the right.

That’s the means by which Starmer took power, and it’s the reason that regressive conservatives within the SNP have managed to take such bites from the party with liberty. Appeal to everyone, and deliver for no-one.

This isn’t just a problem for Scotland or the UK, of course. Looking across the West in general, we can see it too in America; where the non-conformity candidate Trump still wields great power despite everything that has happened, while Biden takes America through the motions.

Everyone knows something is deeply, fundamentally misaligned, and tyrants like Trump are always the first to offer “solutions”, inhumane and unworkable though they may be.

But in our communities and comrades, we can continue planting the seeds of what comes next; of actual solutions to real problems. The centre cannot hold, and it behoves us all to be building what will follow. The political landscape may be bleak, but I believe we can still create beautiful things. That’s the 2024 I’m choosing to commit myself to.