A sea change in UK politics is brewing
Forty years ago this week Margaret Thatcher came to power – and 20 years ago this week Tony Blair was catapulted into Downing Street. Both marked a seachange in voter mood. Now we look set for another one just as convulsive.
Whatever else the postbrexit era may bring, voters look poised to signal a desire for change that goes far beyond a rejection of the politics that brought the Brexit stalemate.
Earlier this week, shadow Chancellor John Mcdonnell talked of his desire for an economic revolution. The possibility of a Labour-snp coalition cannot be ruled put.
An independent Scotland with a separate currency “as soon as practicable”? Far from inconceivable. There is a restive if not sulphurous mood across the electorate,
one far from confined to the SNP and the Labour left.
“It looks to me,” says
Jim O’neill, a former Conservative Treasury minister, “the message from the British public is: enough.”
And Treasury Chief Secretary Liz Truss said: “I do think there something is happening, something big… We went through a few years – the Blair years, the Cameron years – where it was all about managerial politics. Now we are having a more fundamental debate about our economy.”
Having to settle our Amazon purchases via a drop-down menu of three currencies including the Sturgeon Groat begins to look the least of it.