Multi directional civil war, what happens next?
2026 in UK politics and the wording is getting violent. The inewspaper 26.01.26 described the manoeverings between Andy Burnham and Sir Kier Starmer as civil war. The general definition of civil war is different factions within a jurisdiction fighting full on fight to seize power in opposite to one country fighting another in the modern nation state, and different to straightforward tribal warfare because the tribes form a different grouping by ethnicity and language even if in close geographical proximity and however subtle compared to the whole of human groupings on Earth (the spinning mass of rock with a tiny life zone around it, contained within the atmosphere and held in place by Helios). A civil war is amongst citizens within the same administration and used to be pure physical normal fighting, and not at all civil.
The general tone of media and observation is that politics is getting more heated, more complicated, more personal, and with more at stake now with global definitions and actions instead of local or regional, and bigger and bigger projects like HS2 or strange projects like building a vast AI data centre, and the scale of the trouble is looming equally tall with more blame from party to party. Party to party warring talk could never be described as civil war because the different political parties form a different jurisdiction, no different to a state in that sense because the boundary is clear that one political party is not another, even if a politician changes party, the party definitions stay the same.
It struck this writer a while ago when the Deputy Leader of the Labour party was up for vote, because that is already a division within the same and you would think that the leader of the Labour party would be wanting to appoint his or her deputy, or rather his, because there has not been a female leader of the Labour party to date (and possibly everything could descend into a fine emotional mess if there was). But the leader has to work closely with someone elected by another process other than leader perogative.
A mayor of Manchester and a Prime Minister in the House of Commons in such heightened speculations and possible conflict if the present Mayor of Manchester does indeed want the throne, Parliamentary throne that is, is beginning to sound like the centuries olde way of doing business which was by power, physical action which produced a clear result, and which more closely resembles the natural world than the modern British political system. Use of the term civil war for the political system is reasonable – and reasonable in that sense is fair, relevant, apt. Trying to build a political administration on reasonableness is not really reasonable and it is all looking like something is about to unravel, not just within the Labour party but across the political groupings in the crumbling and leaking Palace of Westminster, House of Commons to you and me.
Over the question of the Assisted Dying Bill, at present being held up by every possible toe and finger hold that the Lords and Ladies who are so personally against it can find, yet which has been voted through twice – twice – in the House of Commons for part of the ‘UK’ of England and Wales, that could also be seen as a civil war, one Parliamentary institution fighting another. And set against the strange assumption of power again by the House of Lords to state that the ‘UK’ must ban social media for young people, like Australia is doing, is an equal and opposite war against the Commons. If the House of Lords can set out to block a legislation where their only power it to work on it to get it passed, and at the same time set out their own statement that a law should be passed on social media, what does this say constitutionally? Do the House of Lords want to change places with those in the Commons? That is what civil war means, a fight for the top power of which only one person or party can hold.
We have no written Constitution in the ‘UK’, no wish to return to pre the welfare state days or big State providing much of life, and no court of philosophy over and above all the state institutions. So if the system does fragment and a civil war between the Lords and Commons does bring down the credibility of the Commons, as seems the Lord intend over the hold up of the Assisted Dying Bill for Terminally Ill Adults, what on earth happens? The Earth will not change, but society in the ‘UK’ only references human made systems and such a situation has no framework for a governing system which collapses in on itself. One year on, just into 2027, what of governance in the ‘UK’? It is a really serious impasse.