British politics suddenly feels small – and the old order is ‘taking back control’ | Julian Coman

The insurgencies of Brexit and Corbyn are over, and a kind of restoration politics has overtaken both the Tories and Labour

The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci has become an oft-quoted point of reference for commentators struggling to read the signs of these turbulent times. During the political turmoil of the 1930s – we have read more than once – Gramsci observed that: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” During the 2010s, the startling rise of the Scottish independence movement, the shock of the Brexit vote and the unexpected election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader cumulatively lent themselves to a similar style of diagnosis.

It seemed plausible to maintain that in various ways a 40-year settlement, inaugurated by Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and broadly accepted by successive Labour and Tory leaders, was breaking down. From resurgent nationalism on the right to a renewed commitment to nationalisation on the left, a realignment away from an era of economic liberalism and high globalisation has challenged orthodoxies across the spectrum. Something new was struggling to be born. But as 2021 draws to a close, it might be advisable to put the Gramsci away and look up the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s doctrine of the Eternal Return of the Same.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/333DOiO