Brexit was a revolt against liberalism

The past decade has witnessed profound cultural and economic changes in Britain — welcome, now, to the post-liberal age

ix weeks ago, the British government unexpectedly turned down the dimmer switch on the Hinkley Point nuclear power station project. On Thursday, it insouciantly turned the switch right back up again. The deal — colossal in terms of its £18 billion (Dh87 billion) cost, United Kingdom’s energy needs and relations with sovereign investors like China — is still exactly the same in most of its essentials as it was in July.

Yet, while it now turns out that there will be no U-turn over Hinkley, the delay has involved something a bit more substantial than a governmental summer screen break. In Thursday’s announcement, the Business Secretary, Greg Clark, highlighted that the go-ahead for Hinkley was subject to two conditions. One is that the UK government keeps a golden share in Hinkley and similar projects; the other is that ownership of key national assets will be subject to a national security test.

These conditions should be seen as more than mere window dressing. True, similar conditions are the norm in many other major economies. True also, the British government possesses some powers of this kind already. Most people are likely to see them as utterly sensible. What is different, however, is the new political saliency given to such thinking, which accords to the government an ineradicable place to act in Britain’s national interest. This suggests something bigger and deeper is changing in our politics.

The insistence that government needs the power to exercise judicious control over the ownership of an industry in Britain’s national interest may seem sensible and moderate to most people. Yet, it also seems revolutionary and radical. It is a break from a recent past in which global market forces have routinely been treated as the only secure basis for ownership decisions.

Much the same goes for a requirement that a national security consideration be given to large infrastructure projects. This too sounds like common sense. Yet, it needed saying. The UK’s appetite for inward investment is now so large that even national security is being increasingly relegated to the margins.

The re-examination of Hinkley is actually less important in terms of the substance of the deal than for these wider signals. It is one sign among many that the economic liberalism of the political Right, which has been in such ascendancy since the 1980s, no longer eclipses all other considerations, including the human cost. Clark didn’t bury George Osborne’s wish to be open for business — what a vacuous phrase it is — even in sensitive sectors last week. But he drew a line under it and, in a limited way, began to push back.

Not before time, many will say. Not yet enough, lots will add. Both observations are right, but Britons should nevertheless see this moment in their history for what it is. At the end of the 20th century, the triumph of capitalism and democracy seemed at one stage so complete that an era of global economic liberalism appeared to beckon. Today, the folly of that delusion has been made obvious by the financial crisis and its political consequences.

Challenge of extremism

But it is not just the economic liberalism of the 1980s that has hit rough water. So too has the socio-cultural liberalism of the 1960s, with its belief in universal rights and the meaninglessness of difference. That form of liberalism has not been able to withstand the challenge of extremism, with its denial of any universality except its own dogmas. The impact on liberal politics and liberal nationstates continues to be immense, visible in Britain in everything from Brexit to the rise in state investigatory powers.

Liberalism is a Hydra-headed and extremely resilient creature. There are also few words in the political dictionary that mean so many different things in different contexts. Most of us consider ourselves liberals in some respects, but not in others. Adherents of 1960s social liberalism are not necessarily adherents of 1980s economic liberalism, or vice versa. Nor is either liberalism quite as absolutist as is sometimes claimed. Most people are somewhere on a spectrum of views, whether on social issues or economics.

We should not pronounce the death of liberalism prematurely. Just because it is full of contradictions and cannot solve the problems of the age, it does not follow that liberalism is ignoble or that it is doomed to collapse — still less that there is some selfevidently superior alternative. Most people, at least in Britain, still seem prepared to support the liberal democratic order and many of the important liberal social and economic ideas on which it rests.

Nevertheless, it is becoming increasingly useful to see Britain’s not as a liberal age but as a post-liberal one. There has been a rumbling discussion about post-liberalism for some years, triggered not least by concerns about the weakening impact of migration on national social democracies.

In Britain, the arrival of Prime Minister Theresa May in Downing Street in the wake of the Brexit vote is the most striking example of this shift. May is not an economic liberal like Britain’s former prime minister Margaret Thatcher or a social liberal like former prime minister David Cameron. In fact, liberalism of any kind seems almost a marginal consideration in May’s thinking and her policy-making. These are still early days, but May’s speeches, both before and after becoming prime minister, are unified by post-liberal thinking.

All of this poses a particular problem to the one party in British politics that proudly defines itself as liberal. The Liberal Democrats have more immediate hand-to-mouth concerns as they gather for their conference in Brighton than whether liberalism is in terminal eclipse. Nevertheless, in government between 2010 and 2015, the Lib Dems were the victims both of the crisis of economic liberalism, in the shape of austerity, and the crisis of social liberalism, in the rise of anti-migrant feeling articulated by United Kingdom Independence Party. Liberals need to get real as well as feel sorry for themselves.

Brexit is in part a revolt against a set of characteristics of modern liberalism. Britain has a new political agenda that no political party can afford to ignore. Whether it considers itself liberal or not, it increasingly inhabits post-liberal times.

Martin Kettle is an associate editor of the Guardian and writes on British, European and American politics, as well as the media, law and music.