On challenges big and small, our leaders haven’t learned that nationalism is not the answer | Rafael Behr

Brexit doesn’t work and there are holes everywhere. These are not equivalent challenges. Fresh asphalt heals cracked roadways in an afternoon. The restoration of the broken continental union was the work of a generation. One problem did not cause the other. But they are on the vast continuum of political failure – from global to local – that coincides with 14 years of Conservative rule and for which the party will be punished in local elections in Thursday.

Also this week new customs checks on a number of imported products from the EU are introduced, throwing some more sand into the trade. The measure was repeatedly postponed and is now only partially introduced. The government has tacitly admitted that the economic impact is only negative: red tape, queues, supply disruptions, fueling higher prices.

Those costs aren’t as tangible as the decline voters see on the high street. Business investment that has stalled as a result of the EU’s single market split is not visible in closed shops and queues at the dentist. But all this causes a general malaise.

We wandered along cratered roads, turning right at every junction only to reach a dead end. Passengers feel sick and want to get out. The driver, irritable and resentful of criticism from the back seat, does not want to admit that he is lost.

So we go back down meaningless, darkly familiar byways of politics. Rishi Sunak’s latest plan to turn things around involves cutting benefits for people with depression and anxiety on the grounds that they are probably screwing it up and should be at work.

We’ve been here before, Prime Minister? We came this way just before the last immigration crackdown. Or was it two repressions ago? Maybe it doesn’t count as a new idea every time a different conservative leader says it.

The lack of direction is both Rishi Sunak’s personal failing and a matter of time. He may be clever and hard-working, but he doesn’t seem like a man with a fertile imagination, and he came into office in the Tories’ 13th year in power, their fifth prime minister in a row.

Prolonged tenure is physically and intellectually exhausting. Politics is endurance. There is no time in government to think about what is not working and why. The longer a mistake goes uncorrected, the greater the penalty for making it. No one wants to be wrong that long. Ideological sclerosis sets in.

Certain types of politicians thrive in these conditions. A party that is complacent in the habit of power encourages apparatchiks and fanatics. Prefers people who are good at climbing a closed hierarchy. Mediocrity flourishes by mastering sacred orthodoxy and preaching to the faithful. The craft of winning converts is neglected.

In their own style, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak were the beneficiaries of this mechanism. That’s how it was Humza Yusufalthough the shibboleths required to take over the Scottish Nationalist Party don’t sound much like those securing the Tory leadership.

The SNP has been providing First Ministers to Bute House for three years longer than the Tories have been appointing Downing Street officials.

The series of events that forced Yusuf to resign this week differed from the parliamentary arithmetic and policy debates at Holyrood. The comparison with Sunak’s situation is limited, but there are common themes.

Yousaf was unlucky enough to be handed the cup of high office just as the concentration of the poison – a slow drip from an unfavorable government, then a massive dose of financial scandal – reached lethal levels. He was a protégé of the popular leader, Nicola Sturgeon, whose legacy then unraveled. He was fully accredited for continuity at a time of growing appetite for change. The talents that made him look like a safe choice from inside the SNP bubble have proved insufficient to succeed in running a government. Not a million miles from the Sunak scenario.

There is also the analogous problem of Scottish nationalism in Edinburgh and Brexit Toryism in Westminster is chafing at the boundaries of cherished ideological projects that will not go to plan.

Support for Scottish independence is sustainable, just short of a majority, which puts a solid floor under SNP support. But the push for a second referendum (or Sturgeon’s ill-conceived idea of ​​engineering a “de facto” one for the next general election) has run out of steam.

Many Scottish voters who would like the idea of ​​independence one day are more interested in competent government at the moment. The SNP’s fixation on one proposal is not just a distraction from other issues, but also a deterrent to thinking about policy solutions. When breaking the union is always the answer, there’s no need to ask the question.

The Tory crisis is deeper because the Eurosceptics got the liberation they craved, and it didn’t satisfy anyone. They brought people to the Promised Land and it sucks.

The analogy irritates Scottish nationalists not least because rejoining the EU is an ambition for independence Scotlandwhich suggests the antithesis of Brexit.

It is true that Westminster dictates the terms of UK politics more meaningfully than Brussels ever did in the paranoid imaginations of (mostly English) Eurosceptics. The Scottish independence the movement accommodates the progressive views that Tory Brexit ultras anathematize as madness.

But the two movements are similar in that they wish to remove the massive economic and technical obstacles to the realization of their vision. And this, in turn, is symptomatic of a flaw inherent in nationalism, regardless of its cultural inflection.

The founding concept takes a motley society with competing interests and presents it as a unified people with a collective will and destiny. This encourages denial of complex challenges and generates bad politics. The subsequent failure is then projected as sabotage by a malevolent external oppressor.

Nationalism is a high-octane fuel for winning campaigns, but it is not suitable for the machinery of government. Regurgitating the same old grievances can put off facing reality, but not indefinitely. Rishi Sunak and Hamza Yousaf share the misfortune of taking over the erstwhile mighty engines just as they sputter and stall.

Whether the enemy is Westminster or Europe, the mechanism for constant shifting of blame and avoidance of responsibility is the same. Once codified into the ideology of a ruling party, nationalism will stifle original thinking and stifle talent. Ultimately, this will test the patience of even sympathetic voters. It is too abstract to address local problems and too insular to address global challenges. It can’t fix Brexit and it doesn’t fill any holes.