Vladimir Putin celebrated Brexit and he'll be revelling in Labour's disarray – Joyce McMillan

She was supposed to be talking about the project, the Traverse’s acclaimed Class Act; but instead, the first question was blunt and political. “Do you understand,” said the journalist, “what your country has done to our country, by voting Leave?”; because to most Ukrainians, then and now, it was obvious that the weakening and discrediting of the European Union, and the trashing of the dream of a democratic European future, was substantially a Putin project, supported online and elsewhere by his web of propaganda and influence.

Then, just a few months later, Donald Trump was elected to his first term as US president, a victory which within weeks, and doubtless to Putin’s satisfaction, began to cast doubt over the future of Nato, and of continuing American support for European security.

READ MORE: Why Labour politicians who think SNP and Reform are the same put the Union at risk – Joyce McMillan

Liberal democracy vs 21st-century oligarchy

Since then, the kind of right-wing politics that Putin and his allies tend to promote – based on ethnic nationalism and racism, ecocidal denial of climate change, anti-immigrant hatred, contempt for human rights and international law, and reactionary backlash on all matters to do with women, gender and sexuality – has not always made the kind of progress predicted for it, in Europe and the Americas.

And since Trump’s re-election in 2024, his growing tendency to overplay his hand – attempting to bully Ukraine into submission in front of the world’s media, or entering into a spectacularly ill-judged war with Iran at the behest of Benjamin Netanyahu – must have rattled his “good friend” Putin, particularly since it seems to have triggered a new spirit of resistance, resolve and tactical free-thinking in Ukraine and across Europe, which has led to increasing Ukrainian success on the battlefield.

Yet the struggle between liberal democracy and 21st-century oligarchy is far from over; and my guess is that there will have been another round of Champagne in the Kremlin on Monday, as the UK’s first Labour Prime Minister in 15 years, elected with a huge Commons majority just two years ago, was forced from office by, well, what?

READ MORE: How John Swinney's thoughtful words about 21st-century independence were twisted almost immediately

Labour’s reckless gamble on Burnham

For from where I and many UK voters are sitting, it looks as if we’ve just witnessed a coup fomented in and around parliament by a furiously hostile right-wing media, and facilitated by some spectacularly inept early decisions from the Starmer government itself – winter fuel payments, Waspi women, shocking prevarication on Gaza – and by a weak, panicky parliamentary Labour party and Cabinet.

In betting the farm on the unproven proposition that Andy Burnham will somehow do better, Labour MPs are gambling recklessly not only with their own future, but with the long-term fate of an ageing parliamentary democracy that has been failing too many ordinary voters for a generation and more, and now seems incapable even of respecting its own rules.

Love him or hate him, Keir Starmer and his Labour party were duly elected to a potential five-year term in government. We were promised slow but solid economic and social reconstruction, gradual repair of our fractured relationship with Europe, and a much-needed period of political stability.

Instead, though, what this third-rate generation of Westminster politicians are bequeathing us is Starmer’s public humiliation just as he was beginning to rebuild the UK’s reputation and relationships on the world stage, and a new Prime Minister-designate who is largely an unknown quantity in terms of Westminster policy, and who will doubtless be subjected to exactly the same ruthless take-down as Starmer, within months of taking office.

Narratives of despair and xenophobia

The big result desired by the hard-right, of course, is a Labour collapse in government, and a forced early general election resulting in a victory for Nigel Farage’s Reform. Ordinary voters, meanwhile, are left gaping on the sidelines and reduced to mere spectators, as politics – over-personalised, dumbed down, and reduced to a celebrity game-show – becomes increasingly paralysed as an actual means of improving their lives.

On the streets, the feeling that would-be-progressive politics is useless, and that politicians are all corrupt and “all the same”, becomes the prevailing popular wisdom, and the only language that has any strong traction is the narrative of despair, reaction, and xenophobic hatred peddled to the angry and gullible by the far-right, with the horrifying consequences we have seen in Scotland this week; while among those who still believe in the power of good politics to foster peace and improve human lives, there is much quiet despair.

What this will mean to all those centre-left Scottish voters who ‘lent’ their votes to Labour in 2024, in order to end the post-Brexit years of Tory chaos, remains to be seen; certainly the SNP’s shabby performance this week – celebrating Starmer’s demise, and joining a right-wing, anti-net-zero pile-on against his Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband – does not suggest the kind of strategic and ethical vision the moment demands.

In the larger picture, though, those who seriously want to see a democratic, peaceful and sustainable future in Scotland and beyond now need to become serious about the alliances that will be necessary to defeat the rising tide of hatred and intolerance, and open conflict. Tribal sniping and ideological purism will have to be binned, noses held, hatchets buried, and genuine differences parked, or negotiated forward in good faith.

And above all, when we make political decisions, we have to be acutely aware – as UK voters were not in 2016 – of which side we are taking, whom we are supporting, and who is being betrayed. For these are the lessons of the 1930s and 40s, hard won in that epic struggle against fascism; and it would be a tragedy – national, European and global – if we were to fail to remember them now.