Alex Niven's Blog, page 2
July 15, 2020
Why it's time to stop talking about English identity | Alex Niven
Countering conservative patriotism with a liberal version is almost impossible unless England becomes independent
Never underestimate the surreal wisdom of the great British public. That is the message to be gleaned from a recent YouGov survey, which showed that over a third of adults living in England would vote yes to the question, “Should England be an independent country?” if a referendum were held tomorrow (the figure rises to nearly 50% among the over-65s).
These findings point to a key problem with the seemingly endless recent debate about English patriotism. Some participants no doubt held nuanced views about the uncertain future of the UK. But framing the question as one of “English independence” shows how hopelessly confused the discourse of nationalism has become over the last few years. Which imperial yoke would these hypothetical yes voters be throwing off in an English independence referendum? The United Kingdom — a nation state centred on, led by, and overwhelmingly dominated by England over the last three centuries? Or some other, imagined oppressor?
Related: Boris Johnson accused of plan to 'emasculate' UK devolution
Related: A Scottish independence crisis is on its way – and English politics is in denial | Rafael Behr
Continue reading...
March 5, 2020
Forget the ‘red wall’, Labour can win by appealing to a new demographic | Alex Niven
The next leader should focus on building support among young people, families and precarious workers around urban centres
The candidate who secures the mandate of the Labour membership in April will require humility and subtlety. Humility, because the size of the Tory majority is formidable; subtlety, because the electorate is changing in ways that suggest there is no easy path to revive Labour’s vote share.
To win the most seats at the next election, let alone form a majority government, the new leader will need to engineer a breakthrough in several parts of the country simultaneously, from politically ambivalent Cornwall to the new SNP strongholds in Scotland. Along the way, of course, large chunks of support will need to be clawed back in the so-called “red wall” areas of the post-industrial north and Midlands, which turned so decisively blue in 2019.
Related: Labour doesn’t need to shift right – it needs to get creative | Tom Kibasi
Related: This leadership race is starting to unite the Labour party | Sienna Rodgers
Continue reading...February 18, 2020
Carrie Symonds’ influence only goes so far – green Toryism is a hollow dream | Alex Niven
Love of nature may be a party tradition, but the urge to exploit is strong. Boris Johnson is unlikely to go beyond minor tinkering
The nature of our new political consensus – call it Johnsonism if you must – is still hard to figure out. Will we see the rise of an authentic populism with a northern face, or just a nipped and tucked version of the same old Thatcherism? As we try to parse what this government has in store, all eyes are on Boris Johnson’s inner circle. The opinions of certain advisers seem to matter far more to the prime minister than those of Conservative MPs in his ultra-centralised regime.
A key player is Johnson’s partner, Carrie Symonds, whose controversial role in shaping government policy will be tested by a court probe into the cancellation of a cull on badgers in Derbyshire in the last months of 2019. As her opposition to the cull suggests, Symonds is an animal rights activist and patron of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, which will raise hopes in some quarters that Johnson’s government can find a special place in its heart for environmental issues.
No Tory government would countenance doing anything to risk losing the party’s bedrock of support in rural communities
Related: Alok Sharma can make Cop26 a success – but does he have the will? | Chaitanya Kumar
Continue reading...December 22, 2019
The north has changed. To win it back, Labour must recognise that | Alex Niven
There is no getting away from the fact that Labour suffered a northern rout last Thursday. Big urban centres such as Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle remain Labour strongholds – as, more precariously, do smaller cities such as Sunderland, Hull and Bradford. But they are now isolated islands in a sea of Tory blue.
Related: This Labour meltdown has been building for decades | Aditya Chakrabortty
Continue reading...November 19, 2019
‘Englishness’ was never enough to build a nation on | Alex Niven
With the union under unprecedented strain, it’s time for a radical new vision that goes beyond narrow nationalisms
During his brief tenure as prime minister, Boris Johnson has flaunted his disregard for the tenets of Tory traditionalism. In an eventful few months, he has misled the monarchy and belittled the judiciary. But the bigger surprise has been his indifference to Conservative unionism. While Theresa May’s Brexit strategy faltered partly because she believed in the inviolability of the United Kingdom, Johnson seems relatively relaxed about the prospect of his party surrendering nearly all its seats in Scotland – and, in theory at least, about sacrificing some of Northern Ireland’s statutory Britishness if it will smooth the passage of a Brexit deal.
All of this suggests that Johnson’s vision for government, if it can be called that, is a specifically English one. There is underlying logic here. With Scottish independence and Irish reunification now looming somewhere in the middle distance, it makes sense for Johnson to view unionism as a hopeless cause, and to think about ways of governing England after the United Kingdom crumbles.
Having sacrificed its sense of self, England renounced its entitlement, perhaps once and for all, to a coherent national identity
Related: Boris Johnson has shown why Britain’s constitution must be reformed | Meg Russell
Continue reading...April 13, 2014
Forget Cool Britannia – we should reclaim the subversive spirit of 1994 | Alex Niven
Given that we seem to have made appallingly little social or political progress since the mid-1990s, there is something very apt about the current obsession with revisiting the highlights and lowlights of 1994. It's difficult to move without coming up against an elaborate retrospective or 20th anniversary features dedicated to the death of Kurt Cobain or the birth of Britpop, those twin pop-cultural milestones that have been endlessly eulogised over the years to the point that their meaning is now as elusive as their status is iconic.
But for all that the current nostalgia fest can be cloying, its underlying motivation – the desire to work out what on earth happened to our collective psychology in those dazed, febrile mid-90s years – is surely not misplaced. Once we have swept aside the Britpop stereotypes and the hipster paraphernalia, what is the real legacy of that bewildering micro-era?
Continue reading...June 10, 2013
This cosy Surrey-Oxbridge link exposes Britain's geographical apartheid | Alex Niven
The news that Surrey contained almost as many successful Oxbridge applicants last year as Wales and the north-east of England combined is as predictable as it is saddening. Those of us who don't subscribe to the post-Thatcher myth of progress – the idea that the UK has been somehow "rescued" by Margaret Thatcher and her successors over the last three decades – can only sigh at this new instance of staggering inequality in the pro-money, anti-poor nightmare that is modern Britain.
But these education statistics offer a new twist to the inequality narrative. They make plain a truth that millions of people all over the country have known for some time: in economic, social, and political terms, Britain is partitioning. On the one hand is the flourishing city-state of London and its pastoral commuter belt – places like Surrey and its fellow home counties. On the other hand, increasingly, is everywhere else.
Continue reading...April 15, 2013
This football violence points not to a subculture but the lack of one | Alex Niven
At the end of a long week of simmering anger, the mood turned truly sour in Britain's marginal fringes this weekend. Despite rumours in the rightwing press that they were planning to confront anti-Thatcher demonstrators in central London on Saturday, supporters of Millwall Football Club ultimately turned against each other at Wembley, as violent clashes marred their FA Cup semi-final defeat to Wigan Athletic. In the north-east on Sunday the internecine violence was even worse: 29 Newcastle United supporters were arrested for violent disorder following a miserable 3-0 defeat to local rivals Sunderland.
It should go without saying that there is no excuse for pissed-up thuggishness in this vein. However, while we shouldn't try to apologise for the behaviour of a minority of idiots, we should at least try to explain why there has been a resurgence of football-related violence. It seems that something is stirring on the fringes of popular culture, an atmosphere of inchoate rage, confusion and bewildered fury, of which the violence this weekend was merely an extreme expression. We dismiss these smoke signals at our peril.
Continue reading...February 22, 2013
A vapid Brits highlights the need for a countercultural response | Alex Niven
Wednesday's Brit awards set a new benchmark for coma-inducing tediousness. Telegraph music critic Neil McCormick hailed the event as a "triumph of the bland", while Alexis Petridis complained in the Guardian that the Brits merely replicate the sales-based hierarchy of the Top 40. When outgoing Brits chairman David Joseph claimed that he'd given the event "gravitas", he was fighting a losing battle against a high tide of public indifference.
Watching the Brits, you can't help feeling that pop culture in the 2010s is suffering from a massive energy deficit. What's surprising, however, is not the torpor of these PR pageants or the awfulness of their star players. It's the fact that intelligent people have come to take them seriously.
Continue reading...November 5, 2011
Florence and the Machine feed a bourgeois fantasy of 'folksiness' | Alex Niven
The music world is buzzing with excitement this week. Against a backdrop of seemingly immovable industry pessimism, the release of the second Florence and the Machine album, Ceremonials, has occasioned widespread hope that its magic formula of style and kooky indie eclecticism might stem the tide of haemorrhaging sales and anoint a new PJ Harvey-style icon in the process.
Yet there is something profoundly odd about the hyperbolic championing of Florence Welch. At a time when a climate of burgeoning radicalism should be reorienting our culture so that hitherto suppressed voices from the margins might be heard, why is the Great British Hope of 2011 a fashion-obsessed, privately educated young woman from a family of privileged metropolitan movers and shakers? In fact, shouldn't the red carpet treatment afforded to Welch make us question the extent to which we are all complicit in a top-heavy system that no longer has any qualms about poshness and ostentatious consumer decadence?
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