Neal Lawson
Two fears haunt the Left; that Labour might still lose the next election, and leave us these soul-destroying Tories, or that it might win but be unfit to govern, and so, put the country on a bullet train to the populist Right.
The polls suggest the first fear is less well founded. Labour has enjoyed a big poll lead for two years, but there’s still a case that Labour’s lead is soft and could wilt, if the economy recovers, and they can’t stand the heat of an election battle in which shallowness, vagueness and a seeming lack of principles are exposed. The Right, in all its powerful manifestations, still feels the election can be won and is raising the money to do so. This isn’t 1997. But assuming Labour wins and forms some kind of government, only cements the second fear.
The two fears share the same root, namely the historic weakness of the Left, which isn’t confined to the UK. Nowhere across the globe is the Left, by which is meant those who defend democratic decision-making against the reduction of every important choice to the mechanisms of the market, in a position where it can transform society. At best social democrats cling defensively to office. At worst they are swept aside by authoritarian populists, with the former tending to the latter. There is no benign centrist 1990s like space to return to as the planet burns and the ranks of ‘the poor’ swell. Left and Right parties conduct a dance of disappointment as, in turn, one fails to meet the challenges of a poly-crisis world, leaving the other to fill the void. But the direction of travel points to the populist Right and the triumph of strong leaders over weakening democracies.
Right now, the prospects for a Starmer-led Government offer few reasons to think this defensive and downward trend will be arrested. At one level it’s hard not to sympathise with Labour’s leadership. The fact they have a poll lead of any size is a minor political miracle given the 2019 election debacle. But miracles, in the shape of persistent Tory ineptitude and the implosion of the SNP, have happened. And Labour’s dogged determination to offer only the smallest of policy targets makes a once impossible electoral challenge feasible. But therein lies the problem.
After four straight defeats it’s imperative to win, and winning means meeting the electorate, not where you fantasise them to be, but where they are. This is where a strategic divide opens. On one side, Labour’s leadership stick to their guns of leaving no hostages to fortune. The green transition is salami-sliced to death, the lifesaving ULEZ is junked as soon its attacked, tight fiscal rules are enshrined that bolster austerity, while wealth taxes to reduce inequality are rejected. As George Eaton wrote in the New Statesman last March“Whichever party wins power, most of the pillars of the Thatcherite settlement will endure: privatised utilities, a flexible labour market, a financialised economy.”
The strategy is to win at all costs and build from there. Some hope for a secret radical plan. Given that any such plan requires deep thought and even deeper alliances, it’s best to presume one doesn’t exist. What you see is what you get, the well-meant humanisation of the worst of neo-liberalism, not transforming or even taming it. Nothing more is deemed feasible given the electoral and cultural forces facing the Party. In turn, such a narrow task can only be served by an equally narrow elite within Labour, not a mass of active party members, let alone a broader popular front, who all expect more but ‘don’t understand’ the constraints imposed on the Party. Hence the moves by factional bureaucrats to control MPs, parliamentary candidates, the NEC and the wider membership. They ‘burn the village to save it’. And so, an iron cage is built for any ‘victory’, not a springboard for greater radicalism.
Of course, any incoming regime could have more economic wiggle room than currently perceived. But more likely, without the necessary intellectual spine or organisational heft, Labour will spiral fast from a short honeymoon to a long period of chaos. Crises are bound to hit them; banking, property, geo-political, health, tech and more. Whatever face they take, such seismic events demand both an ethical underpinning and operational agility to navigate. Managerialism is a necessary function of any government, until it inevitably fails. Even big majorities, like the Tories in 2019, no longer guarantee governing success. Labour looks brittle. If they crack the Tories, and wider right-wing forces such as Reform UK can’t be relied upon to simply tear themselves apart in Opposition. Instead, they will be incentivised to regroup quickly and aggressively to take back the keys fast from an even more disorientated Labour Party.
The lesson of David Marquand’s majestic Unprincipled Society is that the Left shatters when there is only the politics of technique to rely on. Or as Jon Cruddas has put it in A Century of Labour, when ethical and plural foundations are ignored “a party of labour could be destroyed by victory”.
Right now, it’s hard to see Labour’s path towards meaningful long-term social and economic transformation, and therefore on-going electoral success. Of course, for some on the Left an obvious alternative is available. Why not simply do what Starmer promised by delivering Corbynism without Corbyn? Sadly, for them, the forces and resources around Starmer’s leadership campaign were never going to allow this and always had more cynical plans. It was naive to think otherwise. Corbynism offered remarkable hope to many seasoned and young activists and the essence of its wider economic analysis has a role to play in any Left future. But like all the post-crash movement/parties in the USA, Spain, Greece and elsewhere, they could never break through systematically. Corbynism’s base and reach were too narrow, and they lacked necessary political professionalism. Again, naivety abounded. Of course, there was fierce opposition to Corbyn, concocted by all the vested interests he challenged from inside Labour to the right-wing media. What did the Corbynistas expect and why weren’t they better prepared?
Both Starmer’s dry focus on winning, and Corbyn’s idealism are necessary but insufficient elements for the daunting spectrum of demands Labour faces, straddling the imperative of winning to dealing with a poly-crisis world and the growing threat of authoritarian populism. What is needed to meet these challenges is something different, both deeper and more nuanced, a pragmatic but radical approach that combines the need for electoral realism with the ability to deliver, steadily but strategically, the economic, social, and democratic transformation the country needs. An approach that starts by accepting we must reconnect with the public, but with a plan about where to lead them to and how, and which builds the power of the Left. In this sense pragmatism isn’t simply ‘giving in to reality’, but being clear about the project’s direction, but open to how to get there. Radical Pragmatism squares electoral reality with the governing reality of a poly-crisis world.
So how does this Radical Pragmatic Left (RPL) differ from traditional Left reformism? Three critical factors stand out. The first is an ethical framework of what constitutes a good society and which prioritises greater equality and sustainability. This means that over time a RPL must rein in the forces of capital, away from private accumulation to public and planetary benefit, not just redirect the proceeds of growth. A RPL also knows that there are varieties of capitalism, and that it’s neo-liberalism, not purposeful business, which requires democratic oversight.
Second, achieving this primary goal requires strong countervailing forces, not just parliamentary majorities. Either politics will oversee the socialisation of the economy, or the continued marketization of democracy and the political sphere will deny any prospect of progressive change. Capitalism will not reform itself, so what matters is the array of forces acting against its expansion, putting the public interest first where necessary. This is more than being in office but mobilising what Antonio Gramsci, the Italian political theorist of the 1930s, called the Historic Bloc, the forces in the workplace, civil society and the worlds of culture, academia, media, and enterprise to counter the forces of the Right.
And third, the only effective weapon at the disposal of the Left to build hegemony is democracy, but a full and deep form of democracy which goes beyond the political sphere and reaches the economy and society. As such this RPL is both deeply plural, non-statist and attached to new forms of political leadership that recognise that the ‘how’ of change is as important as the ‘what’, and that means shape ends. For this new Left political leadership is less about being the ‘vanguard’ in either a reformist of revolutionary sense, and more the facilitator of a new Historic Bloc from below.
The three combine into the careful curation and sequencing of ideas and alliances that build countervailing power and demonstrate that deeper democracy delivers both instrumental and intrinsic benefits.
Unlike reheated New Labourism, which accepts as permanently given the dominant regressive forces and sentiment of our time, or Corbynism that was too content playing to a narrow Left gallery, a RPL recognises the imperative of building its power and reach gradually over time. John Denham and Jon Wilson have coined an inelegant but useful term for this approach, they call it ‘strategic incrementalism’. It lands us in a place between the politics of well-meaning but disconnected policy goals, Corbyn 2019, and where Labour seems to be now, simply trimming its sails to every gust of hostile wind-blown its way.
The overriding goal of this RPL is to assemble ideas, alliances and forces that enable an expansive political project, so that ‘we can do tomorrow what we cannot do today’. Borrowing again from Gramsci, this strategic Left seeks to build a hegemonic grip on society through a slow War of Position in politics, civil society, cultural spaces, and the economy. That means working through and around key institutions, not submitting to them and not taking them head on in some Leninist style War of Manoeuvre. Compass calls this theory of transformation 45° Change; the meeting point between the vertical/designed state and horizontal/emergent forces in the economy and civil society. This diagonal line is where transformation happens, where the state facilitates and accelerates new energetic and vibrant forces that are already building a more progressive future from below.
As such the RPL rejects the short-cut politics of either a dictatorship of parliament or the proletariat, but instead embraces an alliance of parties and forces that offers the Left a realistic power base. Here we confront the modern Left’s fundamental long-term weakness, the absence of any historic agent. Stripped of an industrial class, a class in and for itself that recognises its historical transformative role, the Left has no option but to build not just cross-class but cross-cultural and sectoral alliances. This doesn’t mean class that is irrelevant. In fact, it’s been encouraging to hear Keir Starmer talk about the ‘class ceiling’. But no single class can transform society and the economy. This is of huge strategic importance, not least because of the UK’s electoral system.
First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) overwhelmingly privileges the interests of the corporate rich, especially party donors, the print and social media barons who shape public agendas and the interests of a small number of swing voters in a few swing seats. In these circumstances, winning office demands the cast iron promise to these groups that nothing meaningful will change. Thus, the ongoing ‘crisis of crisis management’ is ensured. Combined with the historic weakness of the UK interventionist state and low rates of productivity and investment, the implicit message is that capitalism, the rich and the powerful, don’t have to change, but people must, to meet the needs of the former. And so, the seeds of future frustration and disappointment are sown, to the eventual benefit of the authoritarian Right.
The only viable Left alternative is to cement a new Historic Bloc open to the promise of pragmatic but radical change, winning on terms that can lead to gradual political expansion, not inevitable contraction. Here the wind is in the RPLs sails. Since 1979, the UK has had 11 General Elections. Out of these, eight were won by the Conservative Party and only three by Labour. But cooperation among progressive parties could have averted all eight Conservative majority governments bar 2015.
In addition, a data set from the ParlGov Project run out on Breman University, shows that on a matrix of four key measures, UK voters favour the Left over the Right. Over 40 years and 11 elections, UK voters have cast on average just under 6 out of every 10 (57%) votes for parties deemed to be on the Left, making the UK the most progressively minded of the 15 nations in the sample, including Sweden, Norway, Finland and Germany. And yet FPTP ensures we end up with the most right-wing governments[i].
To be very clear, this emphatically isn’t to argue that voters can simply be instructed to line up behind the best placed non-Tory candidate. Some centrist voters will undoubtedly vote Tory if they feel the outcome of any election is a likely Labour Prime Minister. But polls have shown that Lib Dem voters are twice as likely to favour Labour over the Tories. And many non or Left-leaning voters could be persuaded to use their vote if it held out the prospect of radical change. The critical issue here is not just winning the vote, but winning on the terms that allow for gradual radical change, not on ruling it out.
Right now, Labour is attempting to forge a shallow coalition from Rupert Murdoch to Unite the union, with the implicit message that nothing much will change, safe in the knowledge that under FPTP Unite and other Left elements have ‘nowhere else to go’. This works until, like the Red Wall and Scotland, and possibly now the Muslim vote, people feel so cynically used they break ranks. The Greens could eventually benefit electorally from such frustration, or the Lib Dems could shift to the left of Labour. But feasibly, and much more desirably, Labour could look to form a coalition that stretches from the centre to the left but on the very different promise of gradual but meaningful change. Implied in this is a constructive relationship with Greens and social Liberals in which there is already a vast amount of policy and principle overlap. In this sense there are two levels of pragmatism: short-term tactical electoral alliances and long-term Historic Bloc formation.
But any meaningful Bloc can only be coalesced around a series of demands. These need to be detailed by the likes of Renewal, Compass, NEF, the IPPR and others in the months and years to come, but it’s not hard to see an offer that includes fiscal devolution and the kind democratic second chamber suggested by Gordon Brown, wealth taxes and other forms of investment in a Just Transition that reduces inequality, and introduces a four day week, universal basic services and rent controls. These could be the building blocks for deeper reforms on deliberative democracy, tougher media ownership rules, a universal basic income aimed initially at school leavers, plus investment in community organising and much more. In addition, new institutions which embed Left values, as the NHS has, need to be built in areas such as social care, digital data, biotech, mental health and decarbonisation. GB Energy, constructed in the right way, could be an example of this approach. What matters is not just the material impact of any reforms and organisations, but the ways in which they build the agency and power of the Left and negate the forces of the Right.
But any kind of strategic alliance cannot just be electoral, but cultural and sectoral. A strong basis for such a New Settlement is to heal the false rift between the people obviously from ‘somewhere’ and those ridiculously labelled from ‘nowhere’. We’re all a complex mix of the desire to conserve and to change, to shelter and explore. Some are more open to patriotism than cosmopolitanism, and the tensions between the two cannot be wished away. Rather, the authentic and legitimate basis for both sides of the human condition, the need for security and freedom, must be recognised and continually and respectfully negotiated. A critical role for the RPL is to act as a bridge between progressives and small ‘c’ conservatives. Such an approach is the political basis for Labour’s ill thought through motif of security. As the Swedish social democrats once proclaimed, ‘secure people dare’.
Within Labour, the vast bulk of the membership would still orientate itself around the desire for a such a project. The soft and centre left, many Fabians, the thinkers around Blue Labour, the new left remnants of Momentum, Open Labour, Renewal and more want to see an electable but expansive project. More importantly, wider forces in the economy and civil society, from purpose-led business like the B-Corp movement, to environmental and inequality campaigners, from public sector reformers to local community activists and beyond, will vote and fight for such radical pragmatism.
Critically this diverse and complex alliance cannot be maintained under our majoritarian voting system. It is absurd to believe that everyone who wants change will huddle for long under Labour’s Big Tent. The harsh reality here is that despite the overwhelming support of Labour members and trade unions, a few powerful Labour bureaucrats know that it’s in their self-interest to protect themselves from any electoral competition that could come from proportional representation (PR). In election after election, it’s the voting system that saves the Labour machine’s neck but condemns the country to long periods of Tory rule and brief moments of weak Labour government.
A commitment to PR incentivises Centre, Left and Green parties to galvanise the country’s latent progressive majority, helping ensure both an incoming government win under FPTP, but crucially on more radical terms, and when enacted, creates a level voting playing field which is harder to distort by the rich and powerful and which incentivises new political cultures, ideas and forces.
So where does this analysis leave the prospects for a RPL? We should expect little surface change between now and the election. But as Hans Magnus Enzensberger reminds us, while “short-term hopes are useless, long-term resignation is suicidal”. Keir Starmer is probably not at heart a cynical Labourist whose goal is to permanently control the Party via the exclusion of the majority who want to see pragmatism and radicalism combined in equal measure. Instead Starmer could be an arch-pragmatist, in the mould of Franklin Roosevelt. His attachment to his Missions gives him little option but to deliver on them. This means freeing himself from his own self-enforced shackles of caution and control. There must a chance that in government, under the pressures of a poly-crisis reality and the looming threat of an authoritarian Right backlash, that he will use his leadership of the Party and the country to help assemble the necessary ideas and alliances for something more radical and pragmatic. If he doesn’t, he is mostly likely doomed.
In the meantime, this proto-Left must construct alliance-based ideas and organisation in advance of the looming crisis, in tune with Milton Friedman dictum, that in such moments “politicians look for the ideas laying around them”.
Labour is caught between saying “no hope is better than false hope” and Starmer’s New Year promise of “a realistic hope, a frank hope, a hope that levels with you about the hard road ahead.” Ultimately politics only matters if it can change, and not just mirror, public opinion.
If Labour wins, the day after the election will see the glue of self-imposed caution melt away, and with it the Party as a controllable monolith. Then we will enter a new world of demanding possibilities. In all this, we must chart a course between the hopelessness of the either the mainstream or the margins, “to live”, in the words of Gramsci, “without illusions, without being disillusioned”.
Neal Lawson is Executive Director of Compass.
[i] Taken from the work of Stuart Donald