15 November, 2016 by alharron

Cresting The Rising Tide

There’s a running theme going on here, that the No vote in 2014 was an anomaly – a rare victory of progressive, internationalist, inclusive politics over the anti-establishment, isolationist, separatist politics we’re now seeing in the wake of the EU referendum and now the election of Donald Trump. This was the case back even before and just after the independence referendum, where the Scottish Independence movement was being compared to the far-right populist movements of England, France, and the Netherlands:

At the beginning of this essay, we outlined that populism can be seen as a corrective if political parties see it as a signal to address the representative gap that has developed between citizens, public institutions and mainstream politics. However, it was acknowledged that this effort is hampered by the extremely difficult task of bridging ‘representative’ and ‘responsible’ government in a more complex era…
…These dilemmas all takes place against the backdrop of movements for Scottish independence, for the UK to leave the European Union and the steady rise of UKIP. If the economic and political status quo is maintained, populists look set to continue to prosper from the growing gap between representative and responsible government, presenting a clear and present danger to the established order.
– Michael McTernan & Claudia Chwalisz

Most commentary has been focused on UK politics. This is too parochial. The real significance of the No lies at European level. The result dents the hopes of other separatist movements in Spain, Italy and Belgium. The less obvious point is that we have witnessed another defeat for populism at the hands of the emergent Europe-wide grand coalition…
… Populism has been popping up all over Europe since the financial crisis. England’s version is the United Kingdom independence party. Last Sunday, the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats doubled their share in the national parliament, while the anti-European Alternative for Germany party won seats in two more regional parliaments. In France, opinion polls suggest that the National Front’s Marine Le Pen has a serious shot at the presidency in 2017. The Dutch have Geert Wilders. Greece has Golden Dawn.
What all these different populists have in common is nationalism – along with a rather fishy admiration for Vladimir Putin, the Russian President and a model for the chauvinism-plus-authoritarianism combination that is the essence of populism in power.
– Niall Ferguson

Everything of course changed just a few years later. Now, as Europe’s crisis has moved from modifier to modifier – financial and economic becoming firmly political – its effects have spread outward and upward. Discontent takes various forms. There are familiar if updated manifestations of nationalism – UKIP in the United Kingdom, France’s National Front – and the pitch of anti-immigration leaders such as Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. There are protest parties such as Beppe Grillo’s Five Stars Movement in Italy that corral the contempt of younger voters who feel left behind by the ruling class.
The Scottish vote amalgamates both these currents. Listening to the Yes voters and reading the placards still pinned up around Edinburgh, you don’t get the sense of a single unifying platform: The referendum for many became the chance to issue a catch-all protest vote.
– Joel Weickgenant

Of course, the alternative view is rather simpler – that perhaps the forces that won the EU referendum and 2016 presidency also won the independence referendum.

(WARNING: While I’m not going to reproduce any of the material or quotes from some of the individuals or groups listed below on the site, I will be including archived links. While I disagree with many of the views to the most profound degree, neither do I wish to pretend they do not exist: I also want to provide sources for my conclusion as to where they stand on any of the three campaigns. Keep this in mind before you click.)

From Right to Far-Right: Gerry Gunster, Arron Banks, Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Andy Wigmore, Raheem Kassam.

From Right to Far-Right: Gerry Gunster, the US analyst who ran the Leave campaign; Arron Banks, major UKIP donor & co-chair of Leave.EU; Donald Trump; Nigel Farage; Andy Wigmore, major UKIP donor & Director of Communications for Leave.eu; and Raheem Kassam, UKIP leadership hopeful & Breitbart London Editor in Chief. Many of these individuals have been on UK news programmes multiple times in the past few days: Farage, Gunster, & Kassam were all on yesterday, while Trump dominated the news. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Let’s have a look at some of the individuals or organisations who were involved with, or supportive of, the winning side in the Scottish independence referendum, EU referendum, and Trump presidential campaigns.