OPINION: Are we at the end of a death cycle, or the end of an opportunity?
- Jon Walder Stanecross, Liberal (Reform) AM from Lyssett and Underreeve for Water and the Landsyield (2020-2023)
(left) My Liberal party won the argument that it should form government, but the gains it attained from embarrassing Labour so definitively in 2022 were squandered on moralising debates and policies without meaning, and we now stare down the barrel of certain defeat. If we learn from the past, we may prepare for the future.
It is no secret that conservatism has never had the easiest time in Sutherland, and its representatives have had an extraordinarily tough tiding of convincing the folks that vote for us that we are worth the cross in the box on polling day. As a liberal-conservative, I believe that my perspective offers a unique crossroads to many international observers, particularly those whose centre-right is far less liberal-coded.
From the fall of King Frederick the Last, to the rise of Liberals and then Labour in the 19th century against the old National party, to the post-Richeist political settlement, and even to the last and current elections, the right of Sutherlander politics has been somewhat more blurred, and in many ways less impactful, than its counterparts abroad. Many of my colleagues, especially in government, as well as those in the Civic Democratic Alliance - ironically, a party that historically eschewed conservatism for so-called "moderatism," if such a thing were a real ideology rather than an approach to ideology itself - and Progress, which observers and our own media alike may not quite be able to decide whether it classes as the first truly conservative party separate from political liberalism, or a desperate attempt by the far-right to jump over the firewall that separates us from the wrongs of the past as of yet.
I don't believe that the Sutherlander situation betrays a death cycle, or at the very least that the situation is a lot more complex than merely that were are on the spoke of a wheel facing down but certain to rise again in due course. I think the "anti-conservative," if you like, climate we are now experiencing is something of a reversion to a situation Sutherland has spent the majority of its democratic life inside of. This is not one where conservative voices are deafened, but one where they are too intimidated - by whatever cause, we may cross that bridge when we get to it - by the consequences of identifying as a vehicle of the political right.
The beginning of the left and right in Sutherland
As in some nations, Sutherland's left and right have underpinnings in the era where the Enlightenment, and generations of increasingly liberal-minded, democratic populations and cohorts, were all attempting to exert their pressure through what were drastically traditional institutions. The undulation of the Crown's ideology in the wake of this tsunami of change is not to be underestimated; the approaches of the pre-Enlightenment King Alstan II, a man impassive to identifying with either tendency but a clear preference for the legislature to defer to him before all else, to the King who immediately succeeded him in Edmund VI, by all accounts Sutherland's only "true liberal" monarch, are seriously altered. However, history tells that Edmund's work was nothing more than superficial, at least to the extent that it could be ripped out, root and stem, by his son Frederick IV, given the ominous epithet "the Last" for what he would see occur during his reign.
This isn't to be a hit piece on King Frederick. The man had his flaws, I'm sure, but it is a fairly undisputed fact that he was kind, generous, polite and that his manners of undoing Edmund's legacy were naught of malice, revenge or even particular harshness. The problem was simple - he was a man out of his era, professing an ideology that had died before he was born, in a system that could not accommodate it, although I am ultimately sure that many of my colleagues who are more proudly conservative and less proudly liberal would take issue with my blunt assessment of his short reign. It was only a matter of time, nevertheless, until Frederick's reign resulted in the permanent splintering of Sutherland ideology; those on the King's right hand, who agreed with his assessment that the legislature's creeping influence needed subduing, that the King retained whatever of his divine right could be manifested in an era beyond the Enlightenment and the powers that come with it, and that state institutions were characterised by control, not provision. This last detail may feel small, but it underpins what has been a repeated stumbling block in Sutherland to convincing the people to vote for conservatism, and other (often far less tolerable) ideologies of the right, as it rises and falls here.
The post-Richeist settlement
Forgive me as I jump from the early 19th century to the early 20th. Godfred Roscow and Richeism is fortunately a long-forgotten memory to the populations of the modern day, just as the King Frederick and his contemporaries were to the populations who were dragged through the horrors Richeism unleashed, in many ways; but not all. While I take issue with those few on the left who proclaim that Richeism's defeat was leftism's victory (such a quid pro quo, cynical approach to history betrays how much the progressive left has the same issue as the rest of our ideologies with bad faith actors at a minimum), it is very clear that the immediate effect on the political climate of Sutherland was one that had pruned the right. Richeism had been the ideology of the middle-classes, voted for again and again in greater numbers in large part by those afraid of the excesses of what was an extremely radical-left Labour party, even for the time, flirting with communist ideology and ideas of a revolutionary takeover of the institutions of government. The petty irony of what would happen to those voters who feared authoritarian revolution in politics is eclipsed by the horrors no man did deserve, as has occurred time and time again when an anti-democratic party captures a democratic nation. Its defeat saw, above all else, the unfreezing of the time capsule from the turn of the 20th century unleashed two decades later - an insurgent left-wing party unafraid to pride itself on class conflict and widespread "democratisation" (you can be the judge of how democratic their ideology is, but I won't take this tortured debate any further than the last century of historians and political scientists have), an old-guard liberal party still deeply troubled by its declining fortunes and its conflicts between classical and modern liberalism, and then... nothing.
The National Party was possibly the largest death of an institution that was not resurrected from the pre-Richeist order. Many of its contemporaries had aligned with, attempted and failed to control as a junior partner to itself, sympathised with, or outright joined the insurgent Richeist party during its various stages of bad faith politicking, in the vain hope that its foul ideology was one that could be put on a line from here to there, and that it was a lot closer to whatever arbitrary point "here" was for Nationals at the time than any of the opposition were. While the complicity of most of the National Party was not active (notwithstanding the significant amount that was), it is undeniable that the National party attempted to facilitate its own rise to power by accidentally opening the floodgates - in part to prevent the floodgates from the left being opened - and the terror that followed was a large part their making. Fast forward to 1925, and the vast majority of the National party's ranks have disappeared in shame, no party willing to resurrect its tarnished identity in their own name. The future for the right in Sutherland was even bleaker before the formation of the Civic Democratic Alliance, or VDA as it is known in Atlish circles, a moderate-right big-tent party that had moved beyond the Nationals' obsession with appealing to Amendists above all else, and whose leader was a proud, and undeniable, opponent of Richeism and all that Roscow stood for. Even so, his party begins identifying as "moderatist" ("midstish", for those unfamiliar with the term, which is also the modern name for the unrelated, small, but ideologically compatible Moderate Party) rather than any historic term for "conservative" or "of the right." Sutherlander politics had become one of three poles - the left, the centre, and the third pole we do not touch or speak of that lays further to the right. For decades, politicians of the right stressed that they were moderate, of the centre, liberal-minded, anti-Richeist, anti-extreme, and so forth, even into our own living memory. The spectre of Godfred Roscow lives on, in the smearing that Progress - fairly or not, although the large-scale harbouring of neo-Richeist NFP members cannot exactly go unnoticed - receives as a crime of association, haunting all who step right rather than left. If there has been any hand in the Labour party's dominance in the reconstitution of our nation, it is not only that, but that it also got the first say in exactly what our nation would be reconstructed in the image of, and forced liberals and conservatives alike to work together to gain a pole strong enough to offset Labour alone. I would argue this final point is exactly what we saw in the 2019 and 2022 elections - liberals and conservatives co-habiting to lock a leftist government out, even in spite of their own ideological differences, in a system that simultaneously provides Labour with enough votes and seats to govern almost alone when it is on an upswing.
This is one of the two reasons why conservatives in Sutherland look to nations like Scalvia with envy for their conservatives' effects on society, and why many of my colleagues grumble when they hear of a representative from a conservative force who has spent the best part of a century dominating the conversation of its nation's politics, with much the same fervour and call to action from past heroic generations as Labour gets to have in Sutherland after the defeat of Godfred Roscow, complaining of their incapacity. The other? What is conservatism in a nation where the institutions usually called upon for voters to conserve have been shaped by the left's arguments and representatives for three to four generations, longer than any of us may remember? Is it an opposition to radicalism, preventing the further entrenchment of already strongly-entrenched left-wing, collectivist and progressive ideologies in our daily life? Is it a selective approach to conserve, and expand the role of, those institutions subjectively viewed as "not left-wing" or not as "affected" by this sea change Sutherland began undergoing in 1919 with the rise of Roscow and never truly finished undergoing, maybe at the expense of those viewed as "more" affected by Labourite ideology? Is it a call for a totally separate foundation to society and politics than we have seen in the last 110 years, one that brings back memories of pre-Richeist conservatism and liberalism and the systems that upheld it? Is it one for even before them, that brings to mind memories of constitutional monarchism, aristocracy and the pre-Enlightenment age? Is it a totally separate entity from any of these in supporting an almost populist way of life, demanding communitarianism and social conservatism be the new flagbearers of the right in an age where the world appears to be inexorably moving to tolerance? And the worst question, the one that must be asked to those who support Progress realistically; is it a demand to abandon the post-Richeist settlement and return to the policies and governance of the Godfred Roscow years, now too far removed in time for any living man to remember and remind you of your total idiocy?
How are any of these approaches compatible? How do you clearly argue for one, without arguing for any other? How do you know your colleagues will reach the same conclusion on which one is worth arguing for? How do you stop the left from steering what people think of you towards one of the worse ones, or the last one?
That's a lot of questions. Far too many for any conservative to be realistically expected to answer in a lifetime. And, so, they don't - or we don't, whether or not you as the reader classify me as conservative or not to fall either side of the line. And in not arguing for any one, the left gets to argue amongst itself over the future of our nation, leaving the rest of us out in the cold - this is why Sutherlander politics still rings of the tired class issues of the early 20th century, why neoliberalism has been reduced to a caricature, why every politician strives to signal their virtue as a true politician of the late 1920s era. The centre-right here is not quite powerless - it has won election after election, including the last two in a row, although the next one looks less hopeful by the minute - as it is incapable. There is no cycle for conservatism to rise and fall with, at least until this catch-22 is broken out of, and I don't believe I'm qualified enough to pretend that I know the way out.
The modern situation, and the reply
That was a lot to unpack. Nevertheless, I think it sets the stage necessarily to answer the reasonable concerns and opinions of my friend Hr. Jaanovits over in Scalvia.
The centre-right in Sutherland is in a curious position. It neither enjoys the ascendancy that it had after the 2019 election, during which Labour had finally been branded with a sea change that was negative - the Recession - and castigated, nor the unwillingness of Labour to argue for "traditional Labourite" values, nor the willingness of Labour to compromise with the rest of us as it had for the three decades previous, in which it appeared to many of us that Sutherland was finally rising out of the post-Richeist consensus and that the Sutherlander model would begin to converge with our own understanding as liberals and conservatives. It can argue, and I believe rightly so, that the net effect of the Ramsay years have been positive, and that a Labour government during these crisis years would have been disastrous for our debt and spending problem, as much as many of them will complain from afar about the state of public services and finances now that they no longer have the burden of funding them themselves.
But the question that will be asked of these years, in which it appeared briefly that the future of progressivism in Sutherland was liberal, of the centre-right, is not "were these years a net benefit?" It will be "what did you do to change Sutherland?" And that's the question where our generation of the centre-right will stumble. Maybe the more persistent amongst us will argue that we have started the ball rolling on trimming the role of the state, but Sagan's Labour lies in wait to axe those initiatives the moment he reaches power, burning our legacy before it was even fully documented. We have fundamentally wasted an opportunity I am not sure any of us will receive again quite so unequivocally, and the reversion to Labour that appears assured with the provincial elections next month looking anywhere between dismal and hopeless, and the national elections six months later. I would not go quite so far as saying that the Red Wave we are watching approach our shores is our fault, but it surely feels like it at times.
Only now can we come onto the questions of how applicable Jaanovits' arguments are to our own situation here at home. I would not humour an argument that an attempt to advocate social conservatism, privatisation or religious influence on law are anything of conservation - but calling them progressive would strike me, you and the Sutherlander public as bizarre. Ramsay tried his best to argue the trimming down of the state and security of the future for young people that would arguably result were their own versions of progressivism, but nobody apart from his own supporters would listen, for it sounds like historic revisionism when the left-coded nature of progressivism in Sutherland is older than any of us. If progress is to the left, and we are unwilling to argue for anything except a tepid reversal of the least entrenched changes to our nation, what on eras is the point of voting for us, what will it change? It's why Progress, which to their credit is the only party of the right that actually is arguing for anything substantial even if most of it is terrible, is characterised as reactionary - because if left is forward, right is backward.
If you wanted to ask what I thought the way forward for the liberals and conservatives in Sutherland, the answer is complex, but falls down to this - the problem of whether conservatism should conserve or change is semantics. We lose and win based on our policies, and it is clear that conservatism has failed to convince the voting public - young or not, as much as young people in Sutherland and many other nations elsewhere are less rightwardly inclined - that it can be trusted. The developed world's youth are going through unprecedented challenges - most importantly, the apparent certainty that Thousandyears and Generation M's (Gen Z and Alpha, for the international reader) parents and grandparents had in being better off than their own parents has evaporated into a mixture of uncertainty and untruth depending on where you hail from. Never have young people been unwilling to oppose the status quo and "stable hands", where the older population has been willing to back stability and continuity for preserving what they have accrued and the lives they have led, but in an era of great change and uncertainty for a generation growing into a world colder, more threatening and more hopeless than the world we found a generation ago, it is wrong to expect young people to back us. We must give them not just an ideology, but a plan - and without that, conservative or no, we do not deserve their vote. The Sutherlander centre-right has found itself victim to the effect that many governments have - if you are elected on a slate of change, and then refuse or fail to deliver it convincingly enough to change people's lives, then you will fall. Whether our generation of liberal-conservatism will get a second chance, I don't know. Until then, we can only fight to earn it again. A static world in turmoil and conflict, a static Sutherland frozen in recovery and a static state built by socialists and labourists long dead is not an ideal any conservative can win under - we must not shy away from change and progress, and no degree of catastrophising against the rising tide of progressivism will prevent it from rising ever further in the face of our own inability to cobble together a real alternative for young people to believe their futures are protected, rather than merely their voices placated and overshadowed, by. My contemporaries deride the likes of Unite and the Greens, but for all their faults, they promise targeted, fundamental change to the youngest generations - on housing, on education, on public services, on employment, on social rights, and everything inbetween. Votes are earnt, not deserved - if we expect to deserve them, we will never earn them.
We have either failed a generation of young people, or failed to convince them that we haven't; the distinction is meaningless, and the lesson is the same.
If we cannot promise young people their futures, affordable housing, good jobs, family lives, and the right to live their lives as they please, in a country that enables them to be better off than any previous generation, then what is the point of voting for us when other parties offer this very slate?
If Labour are the only party willing to return with conviction, maybe they are the only party that will convince young people it is worth supporting. The problem is greater than any cycle or timidity - it is the sum effect of a hundred years of unanswered questions, a hundred years of self-consciousness taken so far that we have lost any ability to be conscious of any of our voters. We can win elections, we can govern, we can rise and fall, but we cannot define or manage the narrative in the current situation we find ourselves in - this, in my opinion, is the unique hand the Sutherlander right has, and it is one it has played poorly time and time again. Winning elections on their own mean nothing if your legacy is paltry, unpromising and unpopular, and if the left can undo what little you have achieved in a matter of days and weeks, as Blake Sagan has made remarkably clear that he intends on doing. We can no longer be defined by the spectre of Richeism, and must instead take courage from the lessons we have spent far too long moralising over, and far too little time solving. We laugh at the left's infighting, but as they fight over the future, we fight over the past - yet only the left's arguments affect something they can change. If we are too busy stuck in the 19th century mindset of trying to use state institutions to control peoples' lives and gain power, and too busy missing the forest for the trees - and that people care about provision, not who is in control of that provision - then we are just as doomed as the contemporaries of Frederick the Last were, except we are subjected to waves of pyrrhic victories and catastrophic defeats until we get our act together. Learning from history prevents it rhyming over and over.
Until we can return without the same clouds of doubt and cowardice that have begun and ended almost every liberal government in a century for Sutherland, we can only hope for opportunities to squander. Breaking the cycle will be brought by real promises and real plans, and by winning back the trust of a left-behind generation of young people growing up into a troubled world. I sincerely hope we are up to this challenge. Until then, we will stare down the barrel of election after election like the one we are facing now - one where the progressive-left are insurgent, with agitation from progressives is even coming into our own ranks by the forms of the policy-rich, young Liberal-Left faction. We can win this, but only if we bother to mount a challenge worth listening to. If all we promise is soulless administration, we will be nothing more than custodians of the left's legacy and nation.
Conclusion
Are we at the end of a death cycle, or the end of an opportunity? Yes, yes we are. And we will keep finding ourselves here until we stop finding ways to refuse to argue with our ghosts and skeletons, and start talking to voters over what we actually want to achieve for them. That day has not arrived, but I hope it will in time.
