“Mr Biden’s here,” his friends yell across the room when Herman walks in. He’s the only self-proclaimed Democrat who’s a regular at the western Pennsylvania club, and they make sure everyone knows it. Luckily, Herman is about the most likeable person you could ever meet, and he’s more than capable of holding his own, including by giving his friends their own set of nicknames.

In industrial or ex-industrial towns and their surrounds in the Midwest, union retirees such as Herman are more likely today to vote Democrat than their younger, working counterparts. And even though they don’t stand to gain much any longer, they’re still likely to believe that unions are important for society. Despite long-standing endorsements of Democrats by union executives in Washington, D.C., today’s rank-and-file members aren’t convinced. Many view the Democratic Party as out of step with their way of life and reflective only of the urban, coastal elite.

But how did unions cultivate such loyalty among members, and what can Democrats learn from it? The answer, I suspect, lies in understanding that how we vote is based on a lot more than a candidate’s stance on a particular issue. More often than not, the powerful nature of community attachments comes into play.

Perhaps predictably, then, the presidential tickets are fighting desperately to court the votes of union families in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. But while union presidents were primetime speakers at both conventions, the parties’ strategies have differed markedly. On one side, the Harris-Walz ticket is playing up its commitment to unions and the right to organise, distributing “Union Yes!” signs to audience members at the Democratic National Convention. The Trump-Vance ticket, in contrast, is stressing the failed free-trade policies of previous administrations and proposing protectionist policies toward domestic industry, such as a 60% tariff on goods imported from China.

Who will prove the more convincing? Union voters have a high likelihood of showing up to the polls, but it’s unclear who they’ll favour and by how much. Aggregate exit polling data shows that Joe Biden ran away with the union vote in 2020, with 56% to Donald Trump’s 40%. But aggregate exit polling data is misleading. Most union members today live in solidly Democratic states. Those are not the union voters who could decide the 2024 presidential election. Rather, the union population being sought by Harris and Trump are workers, retirees, and families in industrial or building trade unions in those key Rust Belt states.

It’s hard to overstate how much of a departure from mid-20th-century union loyalty it is that Trump has a very good chance of winning the vote among these union members. Although it may seem unimaginable today, these voters — prototypically white men without college degrees who worked in the trades or heavy industry in the Midwest — used to be a reliably Democratic constituency. As one union retiree told me, most blue-collar workers in the mid-20th century “figured there wasn’t a Republican in the world who took care of the working guy”.

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But things have changed. In the employee parking lots of unionised western Pennsylvania steel mills, the most frequent type of bumper sticker relates to guns. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Trump stickers abound as well. The licence plates of the cars in the employee parking lots are not only from Pennsylvania but also from West Virginia and Ohio. In contrast to the mid-20th century, when workers lived around the mill in the same several communities, these workers came from all over the region.

At the executive level, union loyalty to the Democratic Party is largely intact, despite leadership being aware of the chasm between them and the workers. At election season, union leadership sends members pamphlets and candidate information, and many unions make endorsements. But union members have never liked being told by the leadership how to vote. Polling data from 1955 show that, even back then, the majority of United Steelworkers (USW) members didn’t think their union should even be making endorsements. And yet the vast majority of those members voted in line with the union’s endorsements for Democrats.

In the days of the solidly blue union vote, workers viewed being a member as a core piece of their identity. Just as people display allegiances to sports teams by wearing jerseys and caps, they often had rings or pins. One retiree I spoke with, for example, proudly wears a ring with the engraving “USW Retiree” and the union’s logo. And if you go digging through the bins of small metal items at antique stores in the Rust Belt, you’re likely to find some United Mineworker rings or United Autoworker pins.

Unions in the mid-20th century were deeply embedded into family and community life. Brick-and-mortar union halls were used for more than just union meetings: they hosted banquets and dances, Christmas parties and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Beyond the physical halls, local unions hosted sports leagues for members, provided community services, and circulated information via newsletters to members and their families about local and national happenings. Unions were woven into the community fabric and being a “union family” had a great deal of personal importance.

Back then, local unions were much more than collective bargaining units or political action groups, and that’s why they had so much power. We don’t vote based on purely economic metrics or a dispassionate calculus of policy pros and cons. If that were the case, most college-educated people would be irrational actors — they’re less likely to use government-provided social services and more likely to pay higher tax rates. We vote based on who we are. Being a union man or union family — or even living in a union town — meant being part of a shared identity, and that shared identity was inextricably connected to voting Democrat.

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When people receive political cues, we make both conscious and subconscious decisions about what to filter out and what to hold onto. Our subconscious decisions about what to hold onto are informed, in part, by our social identities. For example, a union steelworker voting for Trump may cite the fact that Trump signed an executive order to protect the domestic steel industry by putting tariffs on steel imports. It is simultaneously true, however, that as president, Trump made it easier to fire striking workers and harder to organise. What made that worker overlook the anti-union actions that Trump took as president? Perhaps because that worker does not have a strong stake in his union. I would venture to guess that if that worker’s friends were all fellow union members, and if they had a union hall that they frequented every so often for parties and gatherings, and the union sponsored his son’s Little League team, the answer might be different.

Because multiple messages can be true, it’s a matter of which messages are being listened to. What we spend our time on, the places we spend our time in, and the people we spend time with are how we subconsciously prioritise information we receive. Unions used to be, and to a lesser degree still are, central places where people would get messages from trusted sources — not necessarily from union executives in Washington, D.C., but from fellow workers and their families. The bumper stickers in the union parking lots indicate that, today, this process of prioritisation no longer favours unions.

Gun clubs, like the one that Herman frequents, aren’t new in western Pennsylvania. But their function as community gathering spaces has increased in importance as other institutional spaces have shrivelled. Just as union halls used to be built in part to be social spaces, so too are gun clubs. Today, they are some of the most vibrant civic associations in smaller towns and cities in western Pennsylvania and other electorally important regions of the Midwest.

Consolidated churches and megachurches are other civic associations that are thriving in these areas. One union retiree told me that her grandson is deeply involved in his megachurch. “It’s like a choose-your-own-adventure,” she said. “They have groups for everything. You like rock music? There’s a group for that. Punk music? A group for that.” The backdrop of this community atmosphere, she said, is an intense form of traditionalism and conservatism — “anti-abortion and stuff like that, for sure”.

Unions used to balance out some of the conservative forces at play in predominantly white, Christian regions of the industrial Midwest. A former mine inspector even told me a story about how a United Mineworker (UMWA) member joked to him that he didn’t join the Ku Klux Klan because he was a UMWA member — “and we believe in equality and all that”, he had said. Now, the union counterweight in many of these communities is largely gone.

But while union halls may no longer exist in all of these places, people are still getting together somewhere. And the Democrats, if they’re smart, should try to locate those places. Every community is different. Maybe it’s a café or a bookstore that hosts workshops and events. Maybe it’s a Boys and Girls Club or a Lions Club. It might be a knitting club. Once those places are identified, a smart Democrat strategist could scope out friendly players. Someone in a leadership position at the Boys and Girls Club, for instance, may be open to the Democrats using the space to coordinate door-knocking events. The knitting club might in fact be an excuse for women who were part of the anti-Trump “Resistance” movement in 2016 to get together to chat about local happenings and politics. Using the existing, informal community infrastructure can help get more people involved. And it’s more likely to be effective for people who wouldn’t otherwise get involved but will, because their friends are. That’s how mobilisation often happens — through friends.

When it is not election time, the model of the Democratic Party on the state and county level should be long-term investment in building community in towns and localities. Having brick-and-mortar locations, hosting events, organising community service initiatives or block parties, and having volunteers show up at every local parade, fair, or festival (and, at least in western Pennsylvania, there’s a lot). This is a long term project. Its goal would not be to politicise everything. Indeed, similar to union community life, organising efforts would not have to always put the Democratic Party in the foreground. When a union hall hosted rare-coin trading events, for example, it didn’t have people going around the room telling attendees about the benefits of joining a union. It was enough that the event was there, in that space, to convey that the union was present and committed to the community. Building a hub for community information and happenings would begin to build two-way relationships between community members and the Democrats. On Election Day, there will be a huge effort to drive community members to the polls. Maybe, year-round, the county Democratic Party could coordinate a volunteer system to deliver food to elderly community members.

There’s been a lot of talk about civic decline and the loneliness epidemic in America. In the industrial Midwest, there is no speedy remedy for the sense of loss that many people have experienced as a result of regional economic decline and the toll that addiction has had on many communities. But it starts somewhere. Unions didn’t have banquet halls for collective bargaining purposes, and, likewise, gun clubs don’t have clubhouses so members can become better shooters. To rebuild support — and for the more important goal of creating stronger communities — the Democratic Party should take note.

But this sporting oddity is only a pale reflection of the UK’s political and constitutional complexity. While it is one sovereign state with one King, it has two established churches, three judicial systems, four home nations, and a whole host of crown dependencies and overseas territories which form part of its single, royal realm. (Are you following at the back?) And that’s before you consider the fact that the King of the United Kingdom (not England) is also king of lots of other countries with lots of other titles, which were once also part of the UK’s single royal realm but are no longer. 

To some, the impenetrable complexity of the UK and its royal family is part of its strength. Nations aren’t “rational” constructs but the products of history and human imagination; old trees which suit the soil in which they grow, not brutalist modern buildings rising from concrete. In fact, often the more arcane a country’s political order, the better. The Holy Roman Empire was impenetrably messy but gloriously superior to many of the Germanies which followed its violent destruction. 

This is the Burkean conception of constitutions, anyway: organic orders which contain much that cannot be justified in simple rational terms but nevertheless provide the shelter under which nations live freely and in harmony — often more freely than those constantly forced to cut down and rebuild their societies based on some abstract principle. As T.S. Eliot wrote, art does not “improve” with time but simply changes to reflect the new material. So, too, with constitutions.

While I agree with much of this Burkean analysis, it also seems clear to me that the British constitution today is not some glorious old oak left to grow naturally, but the product of half-arsed topiary. The UK has been robbed of much of the organic strength of a traditional constitutional order without gaining the simplicity of a revolutionary constitution; we have the constitution of Ted Heath, not Edmund Burke or Napoleon Bonaparte. 

Nothing better illustrates this reality than our impenetrable local democracy. Occasionally, someone or other tries to call Britain’s local elections our “midterms”, but they are nothing of the kind. In the United States, every seat in the House of Representatives is up for grabs every two years — as well as a third of the Senate. The midterms are a chance for the American public as a whole to grant or deny the President legislative control. They are an important moment in the life of the nation, part of its ever evolving story. In Britain, meanwhile, local elections happen every year in some form or another and are so arcanely complicated that almost nobody understands what is going on. Today, for example, around 8,000 councillors will be elected from around two thirds of our 300-plus local authorities in England. Why some councils vote in this four-year pattern and not another is largely just chance. Scotland and Wales will not be voting; Northern Ireland will vote in a couple of weeks.

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The map of British local democracy makes the principalities in the Holy Roman Empire look positively geometric. In some parts of England there are “county councils” and “district councils”; in others “unitary” authorities; and in others metropolitan boroughs. Some of these hold elections for a third of their councillors each time, some for half. Some parts of the country also have “metro mayors”, some of whom double up as local police and crime commissioners. There are fire and rescue authorities, sui generis councils such as the City of London and the Council of the Isles of Scilly as well as the Greater London Authority and, of course, the devolved parliaments and assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Each body has different powers and responsibilities, each funded according to different formulas described by the House of Commons library as “extremely complex”. Meanwhile, voting systems differ across the nations.

The problem is not so much the complexity of Britain’s political order, but the fact that it just doesn’t hold together: partly the product of tradition and partly of supposedly modernising reforms which have just been bolted on here and there. The result is a whole array of competing bodies with criss-crossing lines of responsibility and legitimacy, a mishmash of incohesion that robs the country of shared national moments, customs and stories. A country needs more than an army and king to hang together. 

Roger Scruton wrote that most beliefs necessary for the functioning of society are both “unjustified and unjustifiable” in purely rational terms; try to rationalise them, and you’ll end up losing them. National customs are justified not through reason but rather “as an anthropologist might justify the customs and rituals of an alien tribe”.

The House of Lords, rationalised to the point of illegitimacy, illustrates this perfectly. It once represented the landed interests of Britain, a national class stretching from Orkney to the Scillies, bound in a physical connection to the parts of the country that they owned and ran. In 1999, Tony Blair’s reform seemed necessary because much of this class’s old power and authority had gone. But what replaced it has made the Lords even more absurd: a House of inherited privilege has been replaced with an instrument of political corruption shorn of all power, responsibility and justification. The body which fused the powers of state more than any other — king, church, law, legislature and executive — is now a dead and rotting organ at the heart of Britain’s constitution. 

Something similar has happened with local democracy, which lost much of its autonomy and connection to the traditional boundaries of Britain with the local government reform act of 1974. This did away with many of the old county boundaries, replacing them with new more “rational” ones which might have looked good on a map, but did not plot onto the real-life loyalties of the people actually living on the land. The old counties of Britain could easily have formed the basis of a new class of elected peers for the House of Lords — or for a layer of English local democracy to match the parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Instead, new ones were created and crowbarred into the old system, neither rational nor traditional. 

There is something of the ancien regime to Britain’s local democracy. In pre-revolutionary France, there were more than 300 different legal codes. By the time Napoleon began reforming the system there were still over 40. And by the time he’d finished reforming the system there was one. “Napoleon instinctively understood that if France was to function efficiently in the modern world, she needed a standardised system of law and justice,” wrote Andrew Roberts. “Uniform weights and measures, a fully functioning internal market and a centralised education system, one that would allow talented adolescents from all backgrounds to enter careers according to merit rather than birth.”

Like post-revolutionary France, paradoxically, we are also in need of someone who can make sense of it all over again — a Napoleon to reinvigorate the British political order, to prune it back to give it life. Napoleon created a strong, unified nation state from a place even more diverse than the UK today. From a population of 28 million, some six million could not speak a word of French and another six million could only just understand it. After the chaos of the revolution, the population wanted conservatism, and Napoleon gave it to them. 

Today, Britain also needs a reforming state to once again bind the country together, to protect the things we have — nation, state, constitutional freedom and prosperity. We need more shared rituals, irrational or otherwise; more shared institutions; and more shared endeavours in order for us to keep telling a national story and not multiple little sub-national novellas that are unintelligible to the other. The old oak needs cutting back to be able to grow again. Vive L’Empereur! 

A New Zealander, previously secure in his oceanic British identity, Pocock worked through the implications of the moment in his 1973 lecture, “British History: a Plea for a New Subject”, composed, he would later note, immediately “after the great divorce which occurred when you told us that you were now Europeans, which we, as New Zealanders, were not”. It was a conceptual reordering which meant “you cared as little for our past as for our future”.

Yet, Pocock observed, the implications for Britain were just as great as for the home archipelago’s imperial cast-offs. For after all: “if it has been psychologically possible for them to annihilate the idea of the Commonwealth…it is not altogether beyond the bounds of possibility that ‘United Kingdom’ and even ‘Britain’ may some day become similarly inconvenient and be annihilated, or annihilate themselves, in their turn.”

Without a grand overseas project with which to occupy itself, the centre itself, focused on Westminster, may not hold. Future historians may find themselves writing of “a ‘Unionist’ or even a ‘British’ period in the history of the peoples inhabiting the Atlantic Archipelago, and locating it between a date in the 13th, the 17th or the 19th centuries and a date in the 20th or the 21st.”

What evidence for this prediction can we find, a half-century later, in the collapsing British state of 2023? It is self-evident that the act of leaving the EU was an act of self-definition, a great inward turn to force the questions of what Britain is and what it should be back to the heart of national politics. Support for Brexit was closely aligned in the minds of its voters with a return to an economy of domestic industrial production, and to a drastic reduction in the historically unprecedented levels of inward migration to which the British political class had committed itself.

Yet the Brexit we got was another Brexit entirely: a vision of Britain as a global trading power entirely unmoored from the realities of its position, a product of the fact that our politicians, for all that effective governance of the UK remains beyond them, find our islands too small a stage for their talents. Johnson, Truss, and Sunak are each in their own ways exemplars of how the ideology of global Britain has made the British governing class incapable of running a small northwest European archipelago, prisoners of a delusion that Britain must always strive to be world-beating, even as it struggles to maintain parity with its closest neighbours.

For the Welsh political philosopher and former Labour MP David Marquand, writing in 1995 in a collection of essays engaging with Pocock’s grand conceptual reordering of our island story, such global pretensions were baked into Britishness from the start. As he observed, “for most of its history, the identity embodied by the British state was quintessentially global, oceanic, imperial and, by virtue of this, non- or at least extra-European”. The new British state’s justification was the consolidation of the various kingdoms of these islands in a grand imperial project, with the result being a vision of the British state and people which Marquand termed “whig imperialist”. And at its heart, he said, “lay the twin themes of globalism and constitutionalism. The British state was, by definition, a global state; and the British people, by definition, was a global people.”

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As Marquand observed, “the Whig imperialist vision of the British state helped to shape the mentality of the entire political class, left as well as right”. Whig imperialist Britain was Britain. “The British state was the child as well as the parent of empire. Its iconography, its operational codes, the instinctive reflexes of its rulers and managers were stamped through and through with the presuppositions of empire.” Even as the empire fell away, its ghosts still haunt Westminster, in inverted form, as a needy internationalism and an aesthetic distaste for the homely and familiar. Unlike our European neighbours, whose revolutions and wars of national independence helped clarify a secure sense of nationhood, Britain’s relentless focus on the periphery left a hollow void at the centre, at least for its rulers. As Marquand, now a convert to Welsh nationalism, observes, “shorn of empire, ‘Britain’ had no meaning”.

This interpretation does much to explain the strange pathologies of the 21^st-century Westminster class, and elucidates the strange mystery of why Britain, more or less uniquely in Europe, possesses a markedly anti-national commenting class (intelligentsia is not quite the right word), whose European pretensions, like the continental affectations of a Hyacinth Bucket, are simply those of the provincial petit bourgeois, repelled by the drab simplicities of home. It explains why Britain, for a European country, is uniquely at risk of self-dissolution by global economic forces, and why its governing class’s sense of national identity, as far as can be judged from its citizenship tests, is such thin gruel, entirely indistinguishable from vague internationalist norms of liberal tolerance. It explains the compulsion towards mass immigration, entirely inconsistent with the demands of British voters: for as the empire folded in on itself, sucking the empire’s global children in along with it like a collapsing star, it became easier to remake Britain in the image of the world than to shape the world in a way congenial to British desires.

Such an interpretation also explains the extraordinary ease with which Britain’s governing class has reduced the country to a powerless factotum of America’s global empire, and the degree to which such total self-abnegation of sovereignty is presented and experienced, not as a humiliation fetish but as the natural order of things, and the bedrock of Britain’s security. To maintain its global pretensions, the Westminster class has been forced into a posture of what Perry Anderson termed “hyper-subalternity to the US in an era when America had become the sole super-power”. It explains why our Right-wing populists are enamoured of globalised free markets even as they rail against “globalism”, why our state broadcaster functions as a vector of America’s new ideological fixations, and why our royals as well as our politicians look longingly at the better opportunities to be found in California. It explains, too, why our sole national institution, the NHS, sucks both staff and patients from around the world, finding its merely national mission too paltry for its dignity, and the humanitarian obligations of the British taxpayer too bountiful to be shared only among the British people.

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For the British governing class, and its taste-making hangers on, Britain as a small European country is simply too small a stage to bother with. Yet instead of addressing these tensions, surely the underlying cause of the failures of British governance which drove Brexit in the first place, the result of Brexit has only been to heighten them: more immigration, the Indo-Pacific tilt, the endless attempt to summon a Global Britain into being in a post-imperial world. The contradictions between Britain’s world-leading pretensions and shabby material realities are now becoming too sharp for the state to effectively manage. If Brexit has foregrounded one essential fact of British politics it is that the problems facing the country are rooted in its governing class: a class which swooped together with organic solidarity after Brexit to prevent any democratic attempt to redirect its course, and frittered away the country’s economic sovereignty on dreams of global relevance.

As Pocock observed, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms which accelerated the consolidation of the British state in Westminster were the result of England’s governing class attempting to resolve their own political divisions through the incorporation of their neighbours in a greater, shared project. For “the English did not want such a war, but found that they had to fight it with each other; and they hated it so much that they imposed it on Scotland and Ireland in the attempt to resolve it. The imperial sovereignty they imposed on other nations was an effect of the imperial sovereignty they had imposed on themselves.”

Britain’s entry into the EC was itself, likewise, a failed attempt to recapture a greater stage on which Britain could play a global role, and foundered on the same tensions, the inward-looking domesticity of the British electorate rebelling against the outward-facing cosmopolitanism of its governing caste. Always the foil of other nations’ acts of self-definition — a process now continuing, with Scotland, even in the home islands — Britain never saw the need or found the occasion to do so for itself. In the collapse of Britain’s empire, then, the only anti-imperial project that failed was that of liberating Britain from its own rulers.

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But is it possible to liberate Britain from Westminster while maintaining the Union? The Union’s collapse would surely only leave us stuck with the same governing elite on a smaller and more claustrophobic scale, just as the cosmopolitan pretensions of the various Celtic nationalisms are, if anything, even more hysterical and absurd than those of the Union as a whole. Yet any attempt at a British Meiji restoration similarly falters on the unavoidable fact that the British governing class has very little interest in the governance of Britain itself — instead it recoils from it, as a distraction from the glittering possibilities of the wider world.

Such an elite makes a shaky foundation for a project of national renewal, yet without a total overhaul of Britain’s governing class, the remaining time in which to advance such a project is rapidly slipping away, before the nation dissolves itself with an affected smirk of enlightened tolerance. The revolt against Brussels then, was always just the opening salvo, on a continental front, of a far more difficult campaign: to become a prosperous European country, Britain must still liberate itself from the self-defeating foibles and global aspirations of the Westminster class.

The factory workers constructed and inscribed the black granite for the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. They created a national monument at Arlington for the Pentagon victims of the September 11 attacks, and they did the same for the heart-stopping 9/11 monument to New York City. They do it too for individual men and women who have been killed in action. When I was there, the Iraq war was raging and they were busy.

Two things struck me about Granite Industries and its place in US life. The first was how remote America’s beating heart can be. Vermont is mainly forest. In winter, it glistens in gorgeous silence as the snows come and go. This company plays a central part in American life and yet exists in an unexplored, unpopulated corner of the nation.

The second thing was how corners of the nation can be not just unexplored but genuinely separate from the rest. Yes, America is a collection of states, and yes, the constitution does not refer to a single nation. But the lived experience of these facts is still somewhat alien to those of us who come from centralised nations, and frankly alien to some Americans, particularly on the Left, who have convinced themselves in recent decades that the Unum is more important than the pluribus.

It’s a fascinating fact that the very same people who value diversity seem not to be keen on it in an area of American life where it has traditionally existed: the relationship between the states and the central federal government. There is evidence aplenty that this diversity is growing to an extent that is unavoidable, occasionally dangerous, but in some ways positive.

To state the obvious first: American states are hugely different even in areas where the geography, the weather, the feel to a visiting Martian, might be similar. Vermont and New Hampshire are good examples. When I drove to see the headstones that day, we crossed from New Hampshire. There’s a sign, “Welcome to Vermont” — but there doesn’t have to be. The last thing you see on the New Hampshire side of the interstate is a Walmart and dozens of other large stores and car parks and accompanying tat.

Then just trees. This is because New Hampshire has no sales tax. So no big stores see the point of basing themselves on the Vermont side of the border where you have to pay a hefty 6% on anything you buy. In theory Vermonters have to declare stuff they bring home but, well, that’s in theory.

There is otherwise little difference between the states — both mainly trees perched on granite. But New Hampshire is a proto-libertarian paradise whose state motto is “Live Free or Die” (there used to be a Free State Project that tried to get libertarians to live there) and Vermont is one of the most taxed and regulated states in the Union whose most famous politician is a self-described socialist, Bernie Sanders.

Good luck to them both. That’s the kind of difference that all America can cope with, even celebrate. What happens now though if the differences become even wider and extend into areas of life that touch everyone?

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One of the greatest political victories of recent times in America was that of the Federalist Society founded at Yale Law School in 1982. Its aim was “checking federal power, protecting individual liberty and interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning” — in other words, upholding the legal concept of “originalism”. It set about its business of changing the judiciary and advancing its own members with gusto and guile and, via the Supreme Court justice picks of Donald Trump, has won its battle, indeed for a generation, won its war.

But coverage of the victory has concentrated on the wrong aspects of that core mission statement. Yes, originalism and individual liberty have consequences for law, but what of the first part, the checking of federal power?

This is what the court has begun to do and this is what might change America: de-nationalise it to an extent that goes far beyond the odd tax difference. The court may pull it apart or allow it to come apart gradually, but either way points to a new dispensation with some basic rights that all Americans can enjoy, but not nearly so many of them.

It’s worth stressing that the nationalisation of so much of American life was a bipartisan affair even if the Republicans rhetorically railed against it. The prominence of business regulatory issues on the GOP’s agenda meant that in some areas they were the keenest of federal regulators. Large companies tend to prefer comprehensive standards to a hodgepodge of local rules. But now of course the party has largely said goodbye to big business and howdy to the mom-and-pop world of low tax and local regulation. This change allows state control to be a genuine aim.

Individual states will be where the action is in this new world. The end of Roe v. Wade made no difference to the rights of women to have abortions in those states that want those rights protected. Indeed, in Kansas it may well have reinvigorated a local sense of the importance that abortion should remain legal. But what the court undoubtedly did is check federal power.

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The idea of national progress — an idea that extends back to FDR and the New Deal — may well be coming to an end. American history is rightly seen as a series of broad periods of consensus with one party or tendency in overall power. The most recent is the post-war welfare state, which not only improved the lives of Americans in material ways but also gave them the right to a decent life. This helped to forge a sense of national destiny, as such rights must be for everyone or else they don’t count as rights. That is what is threatened now. How odd if Trump — flawed in so many ways — goes down in history as the bringer of such profound change.

Of course, there are dangers. “States’ rights” used to mean rights for racists: a rallying cry for the slave-owning South. Might it again? Might states that don’t care much for national democracy go their own way? In Arizona, the Republican candidates for Governor and Secretary of State are both refusing to commit to accepting potential defeat in the midterm elections next month. They seem to be suggesting that Arizona opts out of democracy as it is currently understood. In the event of them winning office, it is difficult to see Arizona accepting anything other than a Republican victory at the next presidential election.

Unilateral secession is not permitted of course under the post-Civil War settlement. But what about plain rogue-ness? The Supreme Court is about to hear a case that would give added power over federal elections to state legislatures and might encourage them to refuse to certify results they didn’t like. It’s freedom for states to be sure, but is it democracy?

None of those threats is easily dismissed. But nor should the potential upside be ignored in a situation where — as a matter of simply empirical fact — Americans have grown apart and done so with some enthusiasm on both sides. Some will see federalism as a rescue mechanism: a multi-speed America where California can press ahead on climate change, Florida can cut tax on business, some states can decriminalise marijuana and some not. In the battle over trans rights some might favour natal females, perhaps in girl’s sport, and some might back the rights of trans women. Choices, choices, choices. Above all this becomes an America where you might want to do something, ban something, enforce something, but in my state we tell you to sling your hook. And the Supreme Court backs me.

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America is huge. You can get a U-Haul truck and move. Millions do. You can also write home from where you have gone and tell folks how much better things are where you live. If you are convincing, they may press for change where they are too.

In 1968, Vermont became the first state in the continental USA to ban advertising billboards. You need a clear view of the trees, they decided. Some thought it was the beginning of communism, and would soon beenforced nationwide. In the end a couple of other tree-filled states joined in, but most of America is still a billboard heaven.

The point is this: you have no right to billboard-free life in America. But you do have a right to live in a state that bans them. If you feel strongly about universal billboard rights you are going to hate this: but you might have to live with it, and in time you’ll settle down.

The midterm elections next month will lead — via Democratic Party losses in the House and possibly the Senate — to more talk of the end of American democracy. Election deniers will be on the march. Yet although America is indeed troubled, there are still options short of conflict. Perhaps that’s the way to see the new federalism: as balm, in troubled times.

Not only are they powering growth in membership, they are to the fore in campaigns, organising and policy. And while it’s always dangerous to ascribe special moral properties to women bosses as against their male equivalents, it may be that their growing number could mark a difference.

The leaders of the two largest unions are women — Christine McAnea of the public sector based Unison, with 1,369,114 members and Sharon Graham at Unite with 1,291,017 members, together accounting for half of UK union membership. In Graham’s case, she won the general secretaryship in August this year after a tough election battle with sometimes angry men.

Graham is a tough agitator. She was only 17 when, as a waiter, she led a walkout to demand higher wages, and won. She was ready to send strikers to picket the homes of company directors in a planned strike at the Grangemouth refinery, in 2013, and to lobby directors of British Airways over an action — badged as “BA Betrayal” — to stop the airline firing staff and re-hiring at lower salaries in the summer of 2020. She remains a leftist radical: but unlike her predecessor, Len McCluskey, a passionate supporter of Jeremy Corbyn when he was leader of the Labour Party, her insistent message has been that it is the members, and not an alliance with a Labour Party in opposition, who will dictate policy and action.

McAnea has also signalled that she has little interest in Labour’s internal battles – in contrast to her three more left wing male competitors. Graham is even more outspoken: in an article in the Financial Times soon after her election (Len McCluskey would have given his views to the Morning Star) she wrote that “our political demands must come from the workplace up, not the top down… I believe that ordinary members who are interested in the union’s affairs are fed up with the political tail wagging the industrial dog”. This would seem to open the way to a different sort of leadership than most unions have known.

Female trade union membership rose to 27.2% of the UK workforce in 2020, from a low of 25.6% in 2017. Male membership, by contrast, fell from 21.0% in 2017 to 20.2% in 2020. No mystery as to why: public sector unionism approaches twice that of the private sector, at 4m last year (an increase of 228,000) to the private sector’s 2.56m (a loss of 110,000); the high labour areas of health, education, social work and administration are heavily feminised and unionised. It was in the private sectors that the great industrial citadels of mainly male labour stood, many now no longer.

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With women the rising force, a different approach to organising is emerging. Jane McAlevey, a US labour strategist and one of Graham’s influencers has written, “power for ordinary people can be built only by ordinary people standing up for themselves with their own resources, in campaigns where they turn the prevailing dogma of individualism on its head”. Mary Harrington recently speculated that, if typical female approaches to institutional life were to increase as more and more women climb the various ladders of power, there “might be a shift away from overt hierarchy within institutions – something that has indeed been a trend in corporate life over recent decades.”

Ordinary people now have a better shot at being heard, and their problems addressed, than before the pandemic. Labour MP John Cruddas has warned, in his book The Dignity of Labour, against globalisers’ tendency to show “derision for home, work and community”, areas where representatives have “particular moral obligations to an electorate”. He rejoices that, during the pandemic, the TUC found a rare national role in negotiating furloughs, arguing that “the idea of an alliance between the nation and the working class is not yet dead”.

A political movement which has seen limited female participation may now follow the lead of the two new women leaders. They are likely to eschew the heavily politicised cabal approach, as in previous eras, in favour of a more inclusive one. Organised labour will require varying mechanisms within communities as well as nationally in order to again find a role after the imperious heights of influence they once commanded. But to settle into that role, and to use it to the benefit of their members and the nation, the broadening of, and popular control from the mass of the membership must construct a framework for that membership now more feminised, more diverse and more varied in their political choices.

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How far they will feel willing or able to fundamentally change their unions’ culture is to be seen: but they are more likely to consider it, or to recognise the need for it, than their male predecessors. They know that many tens of thousands of union members in the North of England have voted Tory, and tens of thousands in Scotland will have done the same for the Scottish National Party. Why should these members, in unions like Unison and Unite, follow policies produced by left-wingers in a union still supportive of Labour, still intent on funding it?

How much more would the unions’ members benefit if a range of political, economic and social views were represented on the unions’ top policy-making councils, and arguments this way and that were made public and open? Radicalism could and should win when members are threatened with pay cuts on a “fire and rehire” basis, as in the British Airways case (cuts dropped to get agreement). Conservatism could and should win when an action seems badly thought out, and doomed to fail.

It is likely that, as Cruddas puts it, “the pandemic has forced us to re-engage with the dignity of labour.” Unions have displayed many faults, and will again – cheating and greed, at times, among them. But they are composed of men and women who work, who in that work earn a place in society, and should have a means of discussion and argument which is more meaningful, more part of the communities in which they live and work, a vital component of a re-energised civil society. With women to the fore, the change may be possible.

I have worked in a government department for the past 33 years, but it was only in 2008 that I became aware that the unions not always on the side of their members. HR had sent round an intimidating email urging us all to complete our online diversity data: if we didn’t complete it by a specific date, we were told that out names would be added to “a list of non declarers”. That list would then be passed on to senior management. “In addition,” it said, “HR may contact non declarers by phone to update their details on the system there and then.”

Many of us immediately forwarded the email to our union, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), both to complain about the threatening tone of the email and to ask why the department needed to know such things as our “sexual orientation” or “religious belief”. Many of us also logged into our online HR profile and removed any existing diversity data we’d already completed.

The majority of us heard nothing in response. But one regional union rep in our building not only received a reply — that essentially this was voluntary data management which then union would also like us to complete — but the message also contained some of the disparaging emails being sent between senior union officials.

One exchange read:

“Clarification does need sending out as soon as possible. The members who have raised this with me are, at the moment, quite adamant that they will not supply this information especially given the way the e-mail was worded. This attitude will obviously soften with time especially when the “non-compliants” are interrogated over the phone by HRS.  If a reasoned argument can be provided by us as to why they should freely give the required information, but explaining that you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, then HRS will still get their answers. But at least we don’t look like we are supporting the way they’re carrying out this caper which is the impression people are getting…”

Once the email came to light, our HR department apologised and emphasised that the data grab was voluntary. But in many ways, that was only the start. Fast forward to 2014 and the roll-out of unconscious bias training (UBT) throughout the civil service. This, as with the supplying of diversity data, wasn’t mandatory, though many were led to believe it was. Again I contacted my union to complain that management was forcing some kind of Orwellian thought-training upon us, that I was refusing to do it, and to ask them if they would back me if I faced pressure to complete it or was threatened with disciplinary action for refusing.

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In response, a PCS official phoned to tell me that the union backed the introduction of UBT. I was told the union’s officials had completed it, didn’t see my issue with it and would not support me if I faced any action from management. To which I replied: if that was the case, then he and the union were part of the problem.

But it was only after searching through the PCS website that I realised how much of the problem the union really was. I quickly came across several articles and even a conference motion from 2013 that demanded UBT be made mandatory for all staff. In effect, PCS were demanding intrusion into our very thought processes and, in the process, handing employers a means of disciplining us based on highly politicised, subjective and flawed evidence of “unconscious bias”.

Then, fortunately, in December last year it was announced that that UBT was to be scrapped throughout the civil service in England, after a Government Equality Office investigation found that it can actually “backfire” and reinforce stereotypes and biases. In any normal world, the scrapping of UBT would have been praised by those who value freedom of thought and conscience in the workplace.

Not so the deputy general secretary of Prospect, a union for civil service professionals, who told the Guardian: “While there is a debate as to the effectiveness of unconscious bias training, simply scrapping it without setting out alternative ways to combat discrimination in the work place is not acceptable.” His concern was shared by the assistant general secretary of the senior civil service FDA union, who told the BBC’s Politics Live that “to remove it without replacing it with anything seems absolutely illogical”.

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But the story doesn’t end there. Perhaps in anticipation of UBT being scrapped, or aware of its discrediting, the civil service unions were busy behind the scenes collaborating on a replacement — in the form of a new Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) eLearning module, which was rolled out to us in September 2020. However, unlike with its predecessor, at least this time the collaboration between the unions and management was stated openly; we were informed that we had until the 31 December 2020 to complete it. (I am yet to do so.)

No doubt HR thought that highlighting the unions’ collaboration would give the training greater credibility. But to me it was evidence of our unions’ insultingly low opinion of their members and the wider workforce. That is, rather than seeing us as a collective solution to workplace problems, including in tackling discrimination, we are made to feel like would-be bigots who need to be saved from ourselves.

So, to return to the UCU’s disgraceful lack of support for Kathleen Stock, I would have been more shocked if her union had supported her right to think what she likes and express those opinions freely. But until the unions overcome their own conscious prejudices against the workforce, and stop collaborating with management to impose increasingly discredited diversity initiatives upon us, don’t expect them to defend freedom of thought and conscience in the workplace anytime soon.

What I did not expect is that I would have to start the event by reading out a statement from one of the speakers because she had been advised that it might not be safe for her to leave her home and appear in person.

The speaker, as you may have guessed, was Kathleen Stock — a Professor of Philosophy who has been subjected to a campaign of harassment by anonymous trolls claiming to be students at Sussex University, where she teaches Philosophy, demanding for her to be sacked for her alleged views on transgender rights.

I say “alleged” because I have read her recent book, Material Girls, and it’s hard to see how it could be described as transphobic. “Trans people are trans people. We should get over it,” she writes. “They deserve to be safe, to be visible throughout society without shame or stigma, and to have exactly the life opportunities non-trans people do.” Certainly the book hardly amounts to “transphobic shit”, the term written on stickers that were recently plastered across Stock’s university building.

At the Battle of Ideas event, we did achieve an exchange of reasonable views about free speech and hate speech. Some contributions were critical of Professor Stock, and some were critical of the idea that more freedom of speech is always a good thing. Those on the panel and in the room who asserted that untrammelled debate is generally positive were forced to justify their views.

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It would have been better, of course, if Professor Stock had been able to take part in the debate, rather than send a written statement. I think the people who attended in order to criticise her views felt somewhat cheated by her absence, as well as those who were more sympathetic to her position.

Since the campaign against her gathered momentum last week, University of Sussex has issued statements in support of academic freedom of speech and expression, and of challenging one’s own ideas by listening to others. Vice Chancellor Adam Tickell said the university would not tolerate harassment and intimidation, or be pressured by calls to sack Professor Stock.

But not everybody has been so quick to defend academic freedom, free expression or the right not to be fired for holding unpopular views. Sussex University Students’ Union has issued a statement saying it does not support the University’s stance, and expressing disappointment “that our Vice-Chancellor is lending support to views which have been causing severe distress to students, and that the University did not reach out to our trans and non-binary community.”

In today’s climate, perhaps we should not be surprised by the decision of yet another student union to disavow the importance of academic freedom. What was striking, however, was the decision of the Sussex branch of UCU — the trade union representing academics in the UK — to follow suit. Yesterday, it issued a “statement In Support of Trans And Nonbinary Communities at Sussex”, in which it called on the university to enshrine “the dignity and respect of trans and nonbinary staff and students”.

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“We urge our management to take a clear and strong stance against transphobia at Sussex,” it warned. It later clarifies its authors “oppose all forms of bullying, harassment and intimidation of staff and students” — and that they “do not endorse the call for any worker to be summarily sacked”. The statement then goes on to endorse the Students’ Union support for the protesting students, who by Stock’s account have been largely menacing.

It is, of course, important to defend the right to protest, though harassment and intimidation of individuals — as experienced by Stock — clearly goes beyond the free expression of dissent. Freedom of speech, after all, is important precisely because it underpins all other freedoms: without being able to say what you think, freedom of thought is impossible. In Professor Stock’s words, which I read out on her behalf: “Young people are frightened to say what they think. In a weird reversal of the suffragette motto “deeds not words”, on campus and in middle-class life more generally there is an intense corrective emphasis on words not deeds.”

But the union’s statement was not just a defeat for free speech — it was a stark sign of how far union politics has fallen in recent decades. Like freedom of expression, employment rights were won by centuries of collective action. Because most of us need to earn a living, there is generally a power imbalance between employer and employee, and joining together in a trade union is a way to counteract that imbalance. It’s easy to replace one unruly employee, but not so easy to replace an entire workforce who have walked out in support.

Solidarity, then, is a very simple idea. But it seems to have gone out of fashion — or, even worse, been forgotten. The point of defending a fellow employee’s right to keep their job is not that you agree with their ideas, or that you like them. The point is that you have more power by standing together than as individuals. You will, you should, differ from your workmates in all sorts of respects — sex, gender identity, race, age, political views, tastes and habits. What you have in common is a shared interest in protecting each other from abuses of power by those who have power over you.

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And so UCU’s behaviour, in refusing to side with Stock, is a tragedy in itself. What you lose by calling on employers to discipline or sack your workmates for their opinions is power. Suddenly, something that unions were created to deter can be used against those whose views are deemed intolerable. Once you have handed over the control to decide which opinions may be expressed, or even thought, not just in the workplace but on social media or perhaps in private, it will be near-impossible to reclaim.

It used to be a maxim of union politics that dignity and respect cannot depend on handing more power to those in power. At best, the prize will be a constrained respect from your peers, policed by fear of punishment from above. At worst, it will end in the indignity of powerlessness, and the shame of knowing that you willingly chose that dependency on the powerful, because you preferred it to solidarity with those such as Kathleen Stock whose ideas were different from yours.

Putin aside, Scottish voters are now having to contend with the return of two Scottish political heavyweights of yesteryear: Galloway and Alex Salmond, two RT hosts who now find themselves leading two new political parties.

Each is attempting to outflank their former tribes on the constitutional question, playing to their respective unionist and nationalist bases as strongmen who will hold the current crop of MSP’s feet to the fire. But in doing so, both risk doing more damage to the cause they claim to support. North of the border, there’s more than a lingering suspicion that both are using their creations as a vehicle for their respective egos, rather than as a genuine attempt to shake up the body politic.

The comparisons don’t end there. For while Galloway and Salmond are not quite the opposite of each other, they represent, in a phrase favoured by the former, “two cheeks of the same arse”. They are both, in effect, attempting to game the Scottish electoral system.

Unlike the House of Commons, where an MP simply has to record one more vote than their nearest challenger to win a constituency, the Scottish Parliament — as well as the Welsh Senedd — is elected using the Additional Member System. In Holyrood, there are 129 seats, of which 73 are elected using the traditional first-past-the-post system. Scotland is then divided into wider electoral regions, where 56 further MSPs are elected on a proportional basis. This “list” is designed to ensure that parties are not penalised for recording their support evenly across the country, rather than seeing it pooled geographically in a number of individual seats. Or so goes the theory.

But when the architects of devolution were deciding on this modified “d’Hont system”, there was a general assumption that the same parties competing on the list would also choose to stand candidates in the constituencies; this matters, because the number of constituencies a party wins is ratio’d out of their list returns to make the result more proportional.

Both Galloway’s party, All for Unity (also, confusingly, called Alliance4Unity), and Alex Salmond’s vehicle, Alba, are standing solely on the list. And at least in tactical terms, that may make electoral sense.

In Galloway’s plan, the SNP will likely take the overwhelming number of first-past-the-post seats, but with less than half of the vote. So if pro-UK voters simply cast their wider politics aside and vote for the leading unionist candidate in the constituency vote and the Alliance4UK candidate in the regional list vote, the SNP would be crushed. Nicola Sturgeon would be out on her ear and there would be no more talk of independence referendums.

Salmond’s offer to independence supporters is the inverse of Galloway’s claim. Because the SNP records so many first-past-the-post wins — and will likely do so again in May — they return very few MSPs from the regional list. In effect, goes the Alba narrative, thousands of true believers in independence have their list votes cast aside. But, says Salmond, if they decided to split their vote — SNP in the constituency and Alba on the list — Scottish nationalists could record what he calls a “supermajority” for independence. With so many pro-independence MSPs in Holyrood, Boris Johnson would be forced to capitulate and offer another independence referendum immediately.

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On paper, there appears to be a logic to both arguments. But in reality, they are to varying degrees a combination of sleight of hand, misdirection and utter cobblers.

Both Salmond and Galloway fail to appreciate that Scottish voters are unlikely to put all other considerations to one side when they cast their ballot. Yes, there is tactical voting between Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem voters — Conservatives sweep up thousands of Lib Dem votes in the borders, many Tory voters in West Dunbartonshire are happy to vote for their local Labour MSP to keep the nationalists out and a fair whack of both Labour and Conservatives will cheerily vote for the avuncular Scottish Lib Dem leader in his NE Fife constituency.

But there is no wholesale transfer, nor would you expect there to be from such diverse political traditions. Indeed, because Scottish councils are decided on multi-member wards and with a single transferrable vote, where voters rank their choices, it is easy to track their second and third preferences. In the glut of council by-elections we have seen following the lifting of Covid restrictions, it is clear that as many  — and sometimes more — Labour voters would rather give their second vote to the SNP than to the Conservatives, even if the Tories are best placed to keep a nationalist out of office.

Moreover, as the vast majority of pro-union MSPs are elected on the list system, rather than winning constituencies outright, adding another unionist party such as Galloway’s and splitting the vote four ways, rather than three, is likely to reduce each party’s share and allow more nationalists in through the middle.

I suspect that George Galloway — whose itinerant political career has taken in the Labour Party, The Respect party, the Workers Party of Britain and now All For Unity — probably knows this. This is not, after all, the first time he has stood for Holyrood; in 2011, he managed to record 3.3% on the Glasgow list.

Fast forward to today, and the most recent three Scottish polls have All For Unity failing to cut through. But while it looks unlikely that Galloway will return any MSPs, he could still gather enough votes to keep some pro-UK members out. For a man who refused to join the Better Together campaign at the 2014 independence referendum because “I hate the Union Jack”, who has previously called for a United Ireland and last week saw a clip resurface of him calling on the UK government to deliver a second independence referendum, it is almost as if his new party is just another grift to keep himself in the public eye.

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For Alex Salmond, however, even his most devout opponents accept that he believes fervently in Scottish independence. It is a cause to which he has committed almost his entire adult life. Whether, though, he is fully invested in seeing his protégé, Nicola Sturgeon, be the one to deliver it is another matter.

The fallout between the two former allies has been seismic. It centres on a complex and unedifying series of events, involving Salmond winning a civil battle over Sturgeon’s government over the way it investigated allegations of sexual assault against him, and culminating in Salmond being acquitted of multiple allegations of the same nature. Along the way, Ms Sturgeon traduced the character of her former boss, mentor and friend of 30 years — and she has carried the attacks into this campaign, highlighting his gambling habits and suggesting his new party was about putting “self-interest first”.

For his part, Salmond appears to have buried the enmity he showed throughout the investigation into the Scottish Government’s handling of the harassment complaints, during which he accused a group of Sturgeon’s allies (including her husband) of colluding to have him removed from public life and jailed. He now claims he simply wants Alba representatives to help get the SNP over the line with a majority that the UK government can’t ignore.

But is this likely? While a new nationalist party throws a spanner into some of the statistical modelling of polls and results, the general rule of thumb is that you need 5% of the regional vote to start taking seats. Get more than 5% of the vote and Alba begins doing damage to the pro-UK cause by displacing some pro-UK MSPs; receive less than 5% and the damage is mostly inflicted on the nationalist side by taking SNP and nationalist-supporting Green votes without anything to show for it.

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The most recent three polls, in which Alba has recorded between 2-3% of the vote, suggest the latter scenario is increasingly likely. Indeed, it’s hard not see Alex Salmond’s power play as anything other than a revenge mission. When he stepped down in 2014, he handed his deputy a parliamentary majority. Nicola Sturgeon promptly squandered it in the 2016 Scottish election — a setback which allowed the UK government to deny all claims that an independence referendum should be rerun.

But even if Alba does somehow manage to return the sort of “supermajority” Alex Salmond claims to be hoping for, there’s nothing to say that it will pay off. The UK Government would be well within its rights to point out that gaming the system isn’t the same as gaining support. After all, in recent polls a majority of Scots have not been in support of separation. It would also, I suspect, be easier to counter a fractured nationalist Scottish movement composed of squabbling splinter groups than an SNP majority.

Come election day, though, far more important will be the fact that voters simply don’t like the sense that they are being played; that so-called big beasts think the political stage is theirs for an encore even if there’s no applause.

Having been a Labour party member for the best part of a quarter of a century, I want my party to win the next election. So I take no pleasure in saying that Labour’s current strategy (such as it is) around Brexit is a half-baked, shambolic mess.

The party’s plan, should it win power, is to return to Brussels and secure a better withdrawal agreement than the one negotiated by Theresa May. But, having achieved this, it may then decide that remaining in the EU is the preferable option after all, and thus campaign to reject its own deal in a second referendum.

Of course the strategy is a complete dog’s breakfast which doesn’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny. You don’t have to be a genius to recognise that the EU – which remains desperate to prevent Brexit – would be under no pressure whatsoever to deliver any further concessions in talks with a Labour government. It would know, first, that that government had already ruled out no-deal and, second, that the worse the deal on offer, the greater the chance of its being chucked out by the British public – and thus of there being no Brexit at all.

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Labour frontbenchers brave enough to defend the party line are being mauled and spat out – Richard Burgon and Emily Thornberry the latest victims. This is not the consequence of any unique personal failing on their part; instead it’s because the Party’s ridiculous policy has rendered them helpless in the face of any serious inquiry.

The approach of putting your name to a deal which you then campaign to reject is novel in the extreme. It is certainly not something I have ever witnessed in many years of activity in the trade union movement. Surely the leaders of Labour-affiliated unions – who know a thing or two about how negotiations work – ought to intervene and warn party leaders of the absurdity of their position. Regardless of individual views on Brexit itself, the current incoherence does nobody any favours.

Labour’s stance ultimately derives from the fact that most sections of the party are vehemently anti-Brexit while knowing that to alienate their working-class Leave-voting heartlands would be to risk losing millions of votes. So it has tried for three years, through a tactic of ‘constructive ambiguity’, to keep both sides on board. When the coin was tossed, Labour, rather than call heads or tails, willed it to land on its edge. But having served to persuade both sides that the party doesn’t really speak for them, this approach has failed dismally. That’s because, in the end, Brexit is a binary issue: we either leave the EU or we don’t.

If Labour thinks it can win an election from a position of campaigning to subvert the Brexit vote, it should think again. The recent European and local elections were a demonstration of how the party’s failure to convince working-class communities that their Leave votes were safe in its hands resulted in the haemorrhaging of support among its traditional base.

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Too often, the priorities of the party are determined by those who cannot see a world beyond the M25. The UK Labour party is, in practice, the London Labour party – witness, for example, the fact that the most senior positions in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet are filled by MPs representing constituencies in the capital: McDonnell, Starmer, Thornberry, Abbott and, of course, Corbyn himself.

This London-centrism manifests itself politically in the kind of liberal cosmopolitanism that has done so much to drive a wedge between Labour and the post-industrial areas which were once the bedrock of its support and where a more rooted, patriotic, communitarianism exists. Unless Labour begins to reconnect with these voters, and quickly, it risks losing them for ever.

A step towards this would have been to pledge from the very outset to honour the EU referendum result, come what may, deal or no deal. This would have been the right approach not only as a matter of simple democratic principle, but also because Labour cannot win without Leave voters. The facts are stark: over 60% of Labour constituencies voted Leave, as did 35 of the 45 target seats in England and Wales which Labour needs to win if it is to return to power. At the other end, 16 of the party’s 20 most vulnerable seats also voted Leave.

The party’s vacillations on Brexit have allowed its opponents to make ground in traditional Labour territory. The latest message from Nigel Farage – that Labour speaks for Dalston, not Doncaster – will undoubtedly strike a chord with many. Some kind of non-aggression pact between the Tories and Brexit party at the next election could see Labour become an also-ran in these places.

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If Labour wants to be sure of holding on to them, the party needs to swiftly rediscover the spirit of Euroscepticism that was once mainstream within its ranks – articulated by such giants as Clement Attlee, Hugh Gaitskell, Tony Benn, Michael Foot and Barbara Castle. These luminaries believed passionately in the principles of democracy and self-government, and weren’t afraid to voice their opposition to proposals for deeper political and economic integration throughout Europe. Euroscepticism was also a dominant theme throughout the wider Labour movement, including trade unions, many of which saw the EU – correctly – as an institution whose values and laws were explicitly anti-socialist and therefore inimical to many of their own objectives.

But I fear the party has left it too late, and the tribal loyalty that once existed towards Labour in these working-class communities – call them small-town Britain – may have disappeared for good.

The past week may have been a nightmare for Boris Johnson, but the real losers in the long run may be Her Majesty’s Opposition. A rambling, shambling policy on Brexit, coupled with its sudden aversion to a general election – preferring instead to go around shouting nonsense about a ‘coup’ – will do nothing to propel the Labour party to power or win back the hearts of minds of its one-time core vote.

Labour should not make the mistake of assuming that victories in parliamentary procedure equal success at the ballot box. Whatever happens at the Palace of Westminster in the coming days and weeks, the real struggle – that for the soul of the country – has really only just begun.

One of the best, and most carefully listened to speeches, was the one delivered by Paul Embery, on behalf of Trade Unionists Against the EU. In it, he reiterated his position on the Brexit debate – that democracy must be defended.

I have known Paul for a number of years: he is a firefighter and member of the National Executive of the Fire Brigade’s Union and I chaired the FBU’s Parliamentary group. I also know him as a long-standing Labour Party member; he has spoken at Labour Party conference fringe meetings for many years. He also writes compellingly for this website.

He is a socialist with deeply felt principles and an active supporter of Blue Labour — a grouping that wants to return the Party to its original roots and values of work, family and community. He is also passionately and vocally pro-Leave. At the rally when he was introduced, no mention was made of his elected office or even his membership of the FBU. He spoke in his own time and not on behalf of the FBU.

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Nonetheless, shortly after the rally, Matt Wrack, the General Secretary of the FBU, issued a statement which said that it was outrageous that so-called Trade Union officials and Labour MPs attended joint rallies with Nigel Farage and others on the nationalist Right. In no uncertain terms, he stated: “They are a disgrace to the traditions of the Labour movement.”

His statement so angered me, that I immediately resigned from chairing the FBU Parliamentary group. In my resignation statement I pointed out that to imply that people such as Claire Fox and Brendan O’Neill, both of whom were at the rally and had spoken, were nationalist Right was an outrage.

Matt Wrack, undeterred, went on to make a formal complaint against Paul. This was duly investigated by the Vice-President of the FBU, Andy Noble, and Paul was suspended from the executive council. A few weeks later, at an internal disciplinary hearing, Paul was removed from his position and banned from holding office for two years. The executive council ruled that in criticising anti-Brexit Labour movement leaders during his speech, he had undermined the union’s own stance on the issue and thus acted in a way “prejudicial to the interests of the union”.

Last week, he lost his appeal by a narrow margin of just six votes out of 112.

Matt Wrack has personally led the charge against Paul. It’s odd, given that he has spent his career publicly championing freedom of speech, that he should take such a stance.

Suggested reading

Why does the Left sneer at the traditional working class?

By Paul Embery

This is the same Matt Wrack who in the past has said:

“To address the huge challenges our movement faces today, we need to build a culture of debate and democracy which accepts that there will be different views and sharp difference of opinion. Democracy must include the right to express those differences.”

It is disappointing, too, given that Wrack has always argued that genuine political disagreements should never be resolved by resorting to the rule book. So why would he take against Paul in this fashion?

There has certainly been much support for Paul and his writings and tweets over the past year, who was seen as one of the only credible challengers for the position of General Secretary when it is up for re-election next year.

But Wrack’s vendetta against such a stalwart campaigner for the rights of the worker has done huge damage to the reputation of the FBU. There has been an outpouring of anger against the leadership from outraged grassroots members. One member Tweeted: “I would say it’s the union’s loss, but it’s the members that ultimately suffer when decisions like this are taken, because they no longer have people to represent them fully.”

In an unprecedented intervention, the Deputy Commissioner and Director of Operations at the London Fire Brigade, Tom George, said: “I never interfere with union affairs but occasionally it doesn’t hurt to share one’s opinion. I feel the way Paul Embery has been treated recently by his own Union is appalling and dare I say it scandalous.”

Paul’s supposed crime was to oppose the FBU’s Brexit position – but this is no longer an issue about views on the European Union. The treatment of him is not about Leave or Remain. In fact, it has united Leavers and Remainers who believe in the principles of freedom of expression and the right of everyone to hold to their personal beliefs. Paul himself has stated the conduct of the union’s leadership throughout this episode has been deeply worrying.

I spoke to Paul before I sat down to write this. He was resolute and quietly furious:

“The investigation into me by the union’s vice-president was particularly disgraceful, and worse than anything I have ever seen by any employer. It can only be described as a shameless political witch-hunt,

It deviated wildly from the original complaint about my speech at the rally, and even sought to intrude into personal areas of my life, such as demanding information relating to my private income. It amounted to a blatant dig for dirt in an effort to blacken my name. Without a shred of evidence, the vice-president accused me of misusing union funds – a grave and sinister accusation which, in the end, collapsed when it was found to be utterly baseless. It was an indication of how far some people were prepared to go in an effort to discredit me.”

Matt Wrack’s spiteful actions on behalf of the Union represent an attack on democracy itself, not just one heroic firefighter. Nor will this be the end of the matter. I am certain the majority of the union’s membership will condemn what has happened to Paul and ultimately Wrack will be answerable to them. Paul served the union proudly for 20 years; it should be ashamed of this despicable betrayal.