while she destroyed their unions, Mr Brown on alleviating the inequalities generated by the bubble that was funding him. The invest- ment that was really needed during this time – in long-term energy security, in transport and in urban infrastructure – was neglected. Equally seriously, though, the illusion was fostered that the country had untapped resources to call on, distinct from the produc- tive labour of its population. That illusion perpetuated the thinking of the imperial age – when a British subject had half the world at his disposal in which to make a living – into the age after the Empire had ceased to exist. We knew, naturally, that the Empire was


over. But we thought that made a difference only to the former colonies, not to us. If any- thing, we rather congratulated ourselves on being more enlightened than our colonialist ancestors, as well as materially better off and technologically more advanced. But we did not recognise how deeply the Empire had formed our institutions, our families, our minds and our expectations, and how much Britain would have to change now it was no more. We thought we would carry on as before, but without the nasty bits. Before, in the Empire, there had been land across the world for anyone prepared to run a farm and dispossess the natives. Now, in our property- owning democracy, there would be a house and garden for everyone prepared to take on a mortgage. But we did not ask ourselves whether this was the most just and effective way of housing a large population on a small island.


Before, social cohesion had been maintained


by an extension throughout British society of the military hierarchy (and physical punish- ment) by which order was kept throughout the Empire – there were officers and men everywhere from police forces and fire brigades to schools and Boy Scouts. Now, after Empire, we would democratise our lives and reform our penal system. But we did not consider how we would in future motivate our police and prison officers to stay incorrupt, or whether we would lament the decline of voluntary youth services or of team sports in schools. Before, the British trav- elled the world through careers in the army or national service. Now, gap years, VSO and budget airlines do the same. But we did not expect the inhabitants of the former colonies to reciprocate, let alone to settle in Bradford. The liberal education once given by the uni- versities to imperial civil servants would now be made available to all, even though the state could not possibly afford to finance such a sys- tem and there was no longer an imperial civil service to employ its graduates. The toast of “Church and Queen” was drunk throughout the Victorian Empire and bishops educated and ordained in England were sent out to Africa, India and the Antipodes as if they were little different from district commissioners. As the end of Empire


came into view, the worldwide Church of England gave way to the Anglican Communion – an imperial Church with only the nice bits left. Whether it can survive with- out a single supreme head has been left to our time to determine. The formative influence of the Empire on Britain was felt, above all, in its structure of government. The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas saw in the reformed nineteenth- century British Parliament an organ for transforming British public opinion into gov- ernment action, but he overlooked the role of the Empire. Already under Pitt the Younger the development of Parliament was being constrained by the necessities of defending, administering and extending a global network of trade and power. The two-party system, with its apparent distinction between Government and Opposition – both of them, however, from the same classes of society, educated in the same schools and universities, and often enough members of the same clubs and Masonic lodges – was a device for ensur- ing continuity in the administration of an empire which depended in the last analysis on the deployment of military force. The Empire was, so to speak, in a permanent state of emergency, and required a government which did not change with party majorities in the House of Commons. Britain itself did not matter, and therefore could be left for the parties to differ over.


We did not recognise how deeply the Empire had


formed our institutions and how much Britain would have to change now it was no more


It is no coincidence that the biggest devo- lution of central government power, the foundation of the county councils, took place at the time when the attention of central gov- ernment was focused on inter-imperial rivalry and the “scramble for Africa” after 1885. Down to the present day we hear the refrain that “the task of government is to govern”. But that is a rule for running an empire, not a country, and we do not hear the complemen- tary truths that it is the task of the government to do the will of the people, and the task of Parliament to talk – and by talking to deter- mine what the will of the people is. In a post-imperial age we need to rediscover the original purpose of our supreme representa- tive bodies: not to endorse the decisions of the executive but to articulate the common sense and true opinion of the public and so to express the mind and


identity of the nation. So maybe 2010 brought into the open air of politics the unseen, subterranean shift. The 2008 crash put an end to 40 years (or more) of the British illusion that we could continue to live in an imperial society without having an empire, and the formation of the first peace- time coalition government in the memory of most of us perhaps represented a first adjust- ment to reality. The constitutional innovation was far more important than the recognition – novel enough in itself – that the country had to live within its means. For a government and policy formed by negotiation between


1 January 2011 | THE TABLET | 9


members of Parliament who between them had received the votes of 60 per cent of the electorate was a return to representative gov- ernment in something like the sense in which Burke understood it: the voters choose not a policy but a man or a woman, and in Parliament those men and women act not under mandate but as participants in a dis- cussion. To have a coalition in power felt refreshingly strange because it implied we were not in a state of permanent imperial emergency, responsible for keeping order in half the world, but had to sort out by agreement the problems that concerned us in what is now only a small country off the coast of Europe. This year, 2011, may see a further decisive and long-overdue constitutional development if there is a referendum on a new, post- imperial, voting system for parliamentary elections. This will not be a trivial moment. The British people will have a once-in-a- generation opportunity to show that they have really understood their more modest part in world affairs, are prepared to give themselves a new identity, and can turn a more realistic gaze on an uncertain future.


■Nicholas Boyle is the Schröder Professor of German at Cambridge University and a fellow of Magdalene College. His most recent book is How to Survive the Next World Crisis, published by Continuum.


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