Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Political argument in Britain has stopped when we need it most

You can see divisions hardening in Britain, like rigor mortis spreading through a corpse. Joints are stiffening everywhere you look. If you doubt me, turn your eyes to the right and notice how politicians and commentators speak as if they are reading from a script, which allows no debate or argument about detail.

No Brexiter says, for instance, they support Britain leaving the EU, but think we should stay in the customs union to protect the hard-won peace in Ireland. In theory, there are dozens of different ways of leaving. In practice, everyone on the right wants the same Brexit, even though with the clock ticking, now is the time when argument is needed more than ever.

No right-wing equivalent of the Vatican or Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party gives out the approved dogma. The crowd chants in unison – apparently of its own volition.

The British establishment was once described as ‘a committee that never meets’. It’s an umimprovable description of how conformism works in a country where party lines are spread by nods and winks rather than proclamations. There’s no list of prohibited thoughts or banned books. Peer pressure, which social media has amplified a thousand times, and groupthink ensure you know the party line without needing to be told.

Anyone watching Labour must have noticed that criticisms of the far left, which were everywhere a year ago, have vanished. Labour’s relatively good performance in the 2017 general election explains much of the silence. Doubtless, it quietened the worst type of Labour MP, who only ever had practical objections to the far left. When their argument that it couldn’t win fell apart, they could not turn to the more powerful point that it shouldn’t win. Their imaginative failure does not excuse the rest of us.

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