The End of Reason
2019-2022: Boris Johnson (Conservative)
Boris Johnson, scion of the Leave campaign, began his leadership with bold, simple statements - getting Brexit done. However, the country that had apparently had enough of experts was soon struck by a crisis that required expert skills - COVID-19. Despite bold statements and defiance of economists and policy experts over Brexit, Johnson was still a believer in the old style economic-scientific orthodoxy, and ultimately as questions rose over the death count from COVID his defence was based on claiming to have followed expert advice. However, a growing number of people at the time were questioning orthodoxy and coming up with new formulations of truth. The first expressions of which came in anti-mask, anti-vaccination, anti-lockdown and anti-5G movements.
In 2021, with the pandemic ebbing into it's long second phase, the Boris faced a second establishment revolt. A growing issue with second jobs and financial scandals caused a rift between Boris and factions in his party who relied on second jobs and illegal enterprises for income. A problem, for Boris, was dealing with the fact that he not only had to clean up the party but also defend himself against the same kind of accusations. His position became untenable.
The Conservative Party was at crossroads. Priti Patel was seen as too scary and forceful, Liz Truss was too gaffe prone, and Michael Gove left the contest after a scandal. This left a highly establishment moderate and an outsider candidate who was seen as a protest vote for backbench Tories and was never meant to be elected. Sunak won a lot of support in the country by charting a moderate course that was popular with liberals and the left. Cox aimed more at winning over people who were eligible to vote in the Conservative leaders election.
2022-2024: Sir Geoffrey Cox QC (Conservative)
Cox immediately found himself with a lower approval rating than Keir Starmer, and that was the honeymoon phase. While he was seen as the least bad option by his party he struggled to find a moral justification for his stance of ignoring the growing scandal over MP's business interests. Instead of trying, he tied himself to a series of culture war stances and government hand outs. For example, he banned trans women from women's competitive sport and established a rule that schools should fly the Union Jack; he deceased business rates, reduced alcohol taxes and reinstituted eat out to help out. During the period after the queen's death, when patriotism and his desire for a cheap payout was at its greatest, he even minted a special £5 coin commemorative coin and sent a copy to every home. The commemorative fiver would become a complete fiasco and a laughing stock.
Perhaps certain that they were going to lose the next election anyway, in 2023 the government closed Westminster for 15 years of renovations, selling this as them putting MPs into the real world, in the form of the QE2 Centre, next door to Westminster.
2024-2028: Sir Keir Starmer KCB QC (Labour)
By 2024 Starmer's election was seen as unavoidable. He won a significant majority and described his goal as being to "go forward from forensic opposition into evidence based leadership". His leadership was very much based on the old epistemology: academic and policy experts analyse data, present a reality, which then policy makers implement taking into account public opinion. An independent commission was set up to manage the House of Lords, with the goal of reducing it to 600 people by 2050 and to induct new members based on merit, with two thirds of the seats given to political appointments. Gender self-ID was quietly shelved in place of psychiatric professional bodies being given more rigorous training and powers to diagnose and get legal recognition for transgender identities quickly.
It was a time of rigorous evidence led policy, and, unfortunately, widespread economic collapse, a flare up of COVID and near war with Russia. Conspiracy theories, extremist movements and radical ideas abounded on all sides, from "Meghan Markle is part of a secret cabal of trans women" to "the UN is hiding the fact that the Earth will be uninhabitable by 2040". This was fine as long as the two parties represented establishment views, a state of affairs that existed for the first two months of Starmer's ministry.
2028-2037: Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative)
Moggism could be described as a fundamental and permanent break with the previous epistemic reality. It came at a time when this was necessary. Starting with Stonewall, the role of policy experts had become suspect, while outsider academics were creating successful ways to build platforms without relying on peer review. By 2035, less than half of research citations were to formal groups and peer reviewed studies.
Mogg's government rid itself of a large number of QUANGOs, think tanks and lobbying bodies and instead focused on collecting its ideas from specialist groups like churches, charities, businesses, and political campaigning bodies. MPs salaries had been frozen at £85,000 a year through Starmer's administration, but in his first year Mogg cut it to £76,500 and went on to cut funding to MP's offices, including replacing Short money with per MP expenses and grants.
In general, MPs were expected to be able to make up the shortfall through generating income and donations, to do this, MPs offices had to become commercial endeavours - producing policies or reports for particular businesses. A new model emerged where MP's offices served as a nexus for policy production, connecting influencers and stakeholders. This has advantages, for example Heathrow Airport invested heavily in developing its climate change policy and a lot of this research was directly applicable to the government's Green New Deal Plan. It had disadvantages in that the Green New Deal plan included £40 billion towards a refit of Heathrow Airport. Other examples of issues were the significant resources spent by homophobic churches towards the Equality and Freedom of Speech Act 2030 - which made much of Britain's laws against conversion therapy obsolete.
Mogg always intended to run the country from Westminster. But aside from a few symbolic debates this proved impossible. Not only was construction not finished but Westminster was highly inappropriate for the huge teams and technological infrastructure involved in running a modern parliament.
2037-2045: Gemma Bolton (Labour)
By the time Jacob Rees-Mogg left office the nature of politics had changed substantially. To counter the power of big business, left wing MPs had increasingly relied on crowd funders and patron subscriptions for income generation, the result was that trade unions were being sidelined and Labour MPs had increased financial reliance on their grassroots footsoldiers.
This had mixed results. Despite taking the leadership in 2032, Bolton did not manage to expel Rosie Duffield from the party until 2035 - she was bringing in money from a market that the party otherwise had difficulty accessing and was generous with donations to the central party. On the other hand, calling for Duffield's expulsion was a good business decision for most of the PLP. So while the party's organisation wanted to keep her, nobody wanted to actually say that. Over Bolton's premiership, the patron model would diffuse across the political spectrum.
Some heralded her leadership as a return to the old epistemology because it meant a return to the scientific consensus on climate change, vaccines, LGBT rights, etc. But this misses the point of Boltonism. Unlike the Mogg cabinet, Bolton's worked from the assumption that climate change was real. But this wasn't because Norwich had recently been evacuated after a bad flood, or due to the water wars in the former Saudi Arabia. It was because the XR caucus within Labour was rich and influential. Labour removed the rules against allowing school children to be transgender. But this was not because Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria had been disproven in 2021 and therefore shouldn't be the basis of government policy, it was because of school occupations and the social media campaign.
In many ways Boltonism completed the New Epistemology - MPs were now connected to both big business
and grassroots movements. Where Mogg had reduced the importance of professional qualifications in Law, medicine, academia, teaching, etc; Bolton reduced the status of the church, royalty, etc. The House of Lords was replaced with an elected Senate, old fashioned ranks and awards associated with the British Empire were replaced with no grandfather clause, the powers of the monarch were severely curtailed.
Symbolically, in 2040 Bolton announced that Westminster would be reopened as a museum rather than a legislature. By the time she left office, West Ham had won the tender to build a new parliamentary estate in the site of the former London Airport. However, for the next 15 years Parliament was held in various venues across the country. It was either a golden age that bought politics back to the people, or an era of constant, pointless upheaval and chaos. Depending on who you ask.