THE crisis precipitated in the British Conservative party by the calculated resignation of Iain Duncan Smith is best understood in an international context. Across the globe, traditional right-wing parties are losing political hegemony and fragmenting.

In the United States, the Republican Party – both its fat cat establishment and (significantly) its neo-con ideologists – are in arms to stop the insurgency of the demagogic Donald Trump. In France, there is civil war inside the Republicans – the party of the mainstream right – as various factions try to block another run for the presidency by Nicholas Sarkozy. At stake is ceding leadership of the entire French right to the racist National Front of Marine Le Pen. And in Germany, the long era of Angela Merkel looks like coming to an end.

Of course, there is a specific dynamic to IDS quitting when he did. For months, the word around the corridors and tearooms of Westminster has been that Chancellor George Osborne was planning to get rid of IDS after the EU referendum – assuming a vote to remain “in”, of course. So it is no great surprise that IDS got his retaliation in early and to such devastating effect.

IDS is not a Home Counties Tory toff, which is the mistake people often make. His grandfather and father were part of the British (and Scottish) Indian imperial establishment. IDS himself was born in Edinburgh and was an air force brat during the time his father was winning a second DFC putting down the Communist insurgency in Malaya. IDS himself did a stint in the Scots Guards, on the streets of Belfast during the Troubles.

IDS is from the military-imperialist wing of the British ruling establishment, not from the ultra-Thatcherite barrow boys. He is officer class which goes down very well in the current UK parliament where the Tories have had a big intake from those who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Conservatives now have 44 MPs from military backgrounds, compared with only four Labour (which includes Clive Lewis, a leading Corbynista). Everything in this military-imperial background makes IDS a defender of the status quo. It certainly underpins his anti-EU stance. But it also explains the resignation: it is an officer’s duty to look after the “other ranks”. Paternalist and patronising this attitude may be, but it reveals why IDS detests Chancellor Osborne’s willingness to slash welfare benefits in order to run a Budget surplus. Especially as Osborne’s Budget timetable is aimed transparently at propelling him into Number 10.

But there is more to the resignation than opposing the Chancellor’s ambition: Europe is involved. Until Cameron actually named the referendum date a few weeks ago, the Conservatives at Westminster had been relatively united, calculating that Labour’s own existential crisis could see the Tories in power for decades. All that has changed with a vengeance. Why? The Tory spat is about more than EU regulations on the shape of sausages. The Conservatives – like the Republicans in America – are trying to grapple with the political consequences of the end of the global economic boom. At root is a debate about a new, post-neoliberal world order – and Britain’s place in it.

The Reagan-Thatcher years swept aside the social democratic consensus of the post-war years. The state was downsized, the trades unions emasculated and the former Communist regimes incorporated into the world market. Result: digital toys to keep the masses happy while the Western financial elite and a few Chinese oligarchs got super rich. But this boom time has reached its natural conclusion: excess industrial capacity, excess consumer and company debt, and a global banking system on the verge of collapse.

The social upheaval and increase in human exploitation caused by the neoliberal phase of capitalism has produced a perfect storm of political problems. The entire Muslim world is in fever, magnified by ham-fisted Western imperial interventions. A wave of humanity is fleeing war-torn North Africa and Middle East, mostly to Europe. Cue the imminent collapse of the post-war European unity project, as EU nations squabble over how to deal with the crisis. No wonder mainstream political parties which had championed neoliberalism now find themselves losing votes to the anti-EU far right.

In America, where real wages for ordinary people have been virtually static since Reagan was in the White House, popular anger has been tapped by Donald Trump. He is a classic demagogue whose trade-mark haircut makes him no less dangerous than an earlier prototype with a pencil moustache. America’s mainstream right has no more clue how to respond to Trump. William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and arch-ideologue of American neoliberalism, is even calling for a third-party candidate to run against Trump.

The political solutions offered by the mainstream, right-wing parties are now out of date as their neoliberal agenda becomes obsolete. In the UK, this existential crisis was first manifested by the implosion of the Labour Party. This began in Scotland where national independence offered the prospect of an alternative to austerity. The fortuitous timing of the independence referendum allowed a mass intervention into politics which helped wreck the old political consensus.

Which brings us directly back to IDS and the unfolding crisis in the Tory Party. For six years, Chancellor Osborne has prioritised eliminating the deficit over welfare spending. In this, Osborne is dancing to the tune of the big City bankers. Last year he cravenly caved into demands from HSBC to cut the bank levy. Of course, those same big City banks want to stay in Europe and Osborne is fighting their corner.

By resigning, IDS has opened a new front in the Euro referendum – a social one. There has always been a paternalist “One Nation” wing of the Tory Party, led by its aristocratic and industrial interests – think Downton and Michael Heseltine. Traditionally, they preferred to buy off working class voters with public spending, as a means of creating a wider social base yet still protecting their historic privileges. But Thatcherite (and New Labour) neo-liberalism appealed to a different mass base – the petty bourgeoisie and sections of the working class aspiring to become middle class. It did so through tax cuts for higher earners rather than public spending.

The IDS resignation aims to breathe life back into the Tory “One Nation” wing, giving the Eurosceptic cause ammunition to fight the “Project Fear” line of the pro-City, pro-EU brigade. Will it work? I doubt it. For starters, I’m not sure what real economic concessions IDS and his ilk can really offer working people. In truth, IDS is as signed up to making them pay for the crisis as is Osborne.

The IDS resignation needs to alert the national movement in Scotland to two issues. First, in defending EU membership we need to articulate a vision of what Europe has to become. The social and human rights gains enshrined in the European treaties are now under threat. We need to be inside the EU to defend and enlarge those gains. And second, the SNP needs to press on with a radical alternative to the failed neo-liberal agenda. The IDS resignation indicates the old political verities are gone forever. Now is the time for boldness, not caution.


Tories in turmoil as IDS gets stuck in to Osborne


Letters I: Duncan Smith’s glee at cuts will not be forgotten


The National View: IDS has thrown a spanner in the works for ambitious Osborne