goon There are two ways this claim is mounted. On the one hand, conservative pundits reassuring workers they've got nothing to lose voting Tory, or encourage a form of nihilism, like this Sunday Telegraph thing. On the other, left wing pundits wring their hands at the lack of domestic mass politics since the demise of the labour movement.
I'd claim there is less content to domestic politics nowadays. The greater part of the reason is "neoliberalism" … under its aegis, legislation is commonly one-off and not based on durable policy, and more of what durable policy there is is parameterised, meaning that the laws made concerning it aren't decisive about its implementation.
There has been a steady and premeditated transfer of power from the legislature where "political representation" is best expressed, over to the executive whims of Cabinet and the technocracy of public administration.
It is all very well to say "Labour will be better", but if Labour is not building strong institutions with policy fixed by legislation secured by a public mandate, the quality of its management will only matter as long as Erik Ten Hag's FA Cup victory.
Anti-political feeling shapes the emergent farce, leading to stuff like the misbegotten policy of Rwanda asylum transfers, to Sunak's "national military service" thought bubble, the dour and managerialist outlook of the parties of labour, and to empty mouthfuls like Cameron's "Big Society".
The points-based system introduced for UK migration (which is based, like the Rwanda scheme, on long-established Australian policy) is a good example. Back when Brexit was voted in, I told a few people that it wouldn't result in reduced nett migration, because the intake would be contoured by policy detail according to the preferences of state and capital, just as it is here.
Down under, we've had a decisive lurch to racist, isolationist rhetoric on migration and asylum across the Parliament since around 2001, but it has happened at the same time as steadily high nett migration. No matter how racist the rhetoric has become or its highly variable impact on public polling, only extrinsic shocks like the pandemic have hit the numbers.
A good chunk of the annual movement is temporary workers from SE Asia and the Pacific, who are exploited by a visa-designated list of about 300 labour hire companies—which all whinged and moaned through the border closures of the pandemic because they couldn't access their fruit-pickers.
After Brexit, the UK has similarly recorded high nett migration, adjusting for the various historic shocks that have occurred. The "Red Wall" was sold a pup on freedom of movement. When you consider the broader meaning of Brexit for the UK, that was an appalling blow to democracy, whatever your take on migration.
If you investigate the shifts in UK public sentiment on migration over the last two decades, I bet you'll see what we see here: an extraordinary mobility, with the public shifting its views by 30% in response to press narratives and parliamentary scaremongering. This is what I mean by "anti-politics", the less representative a democracy becomes, the more neurotic voters become, all with little basis in the political economy for their vacillations.
If people want to say their choices at the polls are still very significant, that is true. There has still been a contraction of the scope of domestic politics and a decline in democracy across the OECD.
