Existential Politics: How Competing Crises Are Fragmenting UK Politics

Just the other day I was speaking to someone who considered themselves far right, and listening to what they said, a key takeaway was the belief that demographic collapse was the largest threat the UK is facing, pointing to examples like Japan or South Korea as to the negative consequences of said collapse. They said that any government should prioritise making having children easier, and that this should be the key objective. Whilst I found myself disagreeing with much of what they said, it is however true that demographic collapse is arguably an existential threat to the UK and many Western nations.

Similarly, listening to those on the left of politics such as Gary Stevenson, he talks about how wealth inequality is central to the countries problems and how any government that doesn't confront it is destined to fail. Seemingly another existential threat to our country (perhaps not quite existential but something of the sort). Whilst I don't wish to push my political views in this article, I will say that I feel there are some strong arguments that suggest wealth inequality has gotten to be out of control in its scale and a problem to our economy. Therefore, many believe that reducing inequality should be the fundamental basis for any government policy.

Other sections of society may point to climate change as an existential threat (which it is) and say that all government policy should stem from that fact. Others claim immigration is the largest threat to the country (not an existential threat but seemingly treated as one) and that policies must focus on reducing it (certainly it can be said that at a peak of almost 1 million net immigration to the UK only a few years ago, that level of immigration is largely unsustainable). Others talk about AI like it is the key to the future and all other policy must be secondary to that of policy regarding AI advancements and integration into our economy (AI likely will make or break the future of the UK and its economy).

What point am I trying to make here? Well, many different ideologies take these seemingly existential threats to the country (much of which have at least some elements of truth to them) and then they use this to justify their positions because, at its heart the ideology stands for something critical to the country. This perhaps explains why people get so passionate in their disagreements.

Furthermore, this realisation got me thinking about how this is reflected in our political system, and I came to an ugly conclusion: our system encourages politicians and parties to focus in on just one or two of these issues as they promote such emotive responses. Oftentimes, these key threats where policy agendas originate from can be somewhat lost and as a result the shouting match that can be observed in recent years has emerged. Yet, everyone clings to their moral superiority as fundamentally, they are fighting an existential threat, meaning they don't need to compromise. Seemingly only the governing party has to make any effort to reconcile these conflicting objectives, with the polarisation simply being unhelpful.

What can be done, you may ask? Truthfully I, do not fully know. What I do know however is that it is critical that we as citizens appreciate the nuance to issues, appreciate that a number of existential threats are equally as valid, and we must work towards solutions founded in logic, cooperation and compromise rather than rhetoric from people unwilling to even try considering an idea not coming from their comfortable position of moral high ground. This is not me telling you where to place your vote, only asking you to demand better from our politicians, our political system and ourselves in our efforts to truly understand the world around us in order to avoid these threats coming to pass and to forge the path to a better future.