Opposition's implosion is the political story of 2010

The year’s top story will not be the seamless transfer of power between former Premier Brown and Paula Cox but the implosion of the political opposition.

The sentiment intimated in the Bermuda Sun by newly elected United Bermuda Party deputy chairman Nicholas Swan — ‘we must unite or die’ — says it all.

The son of former UBP Premier Sir John Swan, he’s well aware of the fate of a divided political party; having witnessed how the PLP fractured when Sir John was leading the country.

It is interesting that Mr. Swan referred to a middle class that helped the UBP to retain control of the government.

The problem with our country is that too often, we want to uphold a delusional view of our history. The middle class of which Mr. Swan speaks had in fact risen from a vibrant union movement led by the Bermuda Industrial Union.

There was no benevolent UBP government presiding over a social contract that wanted to see all of its citizens rise economically and share in the wealth of this country. There was instead a series of labour wars, beginning in the 1960s and culminating in the general strike of 1981 which finally forced the UBP government of the day to accept that if you attempt to break the trade union movement you will end up breaking the country.

Downturn

Now that we are enduring what the rest of the world is enduring — economic downturn and dislocations in areas where we never expected our own economic well being to come under threat — we are hearing that you must work harder and be prepared to make further sacrifices and continue to complete with the imported work force.

It is almost as if Bermuda is no longer in the position where it creates more jobs that Bermudians are able to fill and that our policy of an open door for migrant workers may be coming to an end.

When you hear stories of even supervisors been laid off, you must consider that Bermuda is no longer building that once vaunted middle class.

Neither Mr. Swan’s UBP nor the BDA is speaking to these new realities and in that respect the political divide between the two entities does not seem to be that wide.

In fact, the real division between the BDA and the UBP has never been made clear.

The BDA seem to believe in perfect political circumstances but someone once stated that politics is warfare without bloodshed and certainly political disagreement often has led to the latter.

The last time Bermuda saw a political divide between those who claim to share the same party but not the same political viewpoint it was a struggle for the leadership and in certain respects for the party’s core beliefs. In this case, apart from some statements claiming that they would follow a different path to their erstwhile political soulmates, it is still not clear where that new path will lead and the UBP’s new deputy leader seems to be of the opinion that the division is not that great.

It would seem that any merger between these two conservative elements that make up the political opposition is as far away as ever.

If such reconciliation were to take place then the BDA most certainly will have to throw away what it has been claiming to be its core element; a new type of politics in Bermuda — whatever that is supposed to be.