What is Left?

One of the harsher lessons for oppositions to learn is that in contrast to government, what you do and what you say very seldom matters. So it has been for Labour since its defeat. It is the new coalition government that has made the running in setting the domestic agenda and framing the terms of political argument.

In reality, the challenge facing the party is more fundamental than staging a stable and orderly transition to a new leader. Labour has to accept that its problems go far deeper than the unpopularity of Blair or Brown. Yes, controversies such as the Iraq War and the 10p tax debacle did lasting damage to its governing reputation. But the party has increasingly looked bereft of ideas, and has struggled to articulate a credible account of what social democracy is for.

Yes, Britain is a richer and fairer country than it was in 1997. The nation’s schools and hospitals are on a sounder footing. Real incomes rose, as the minimum wage and tax credits helped the poorest families. Many of our cities have enjoyed a renaissance unheard of since the industrial revolution. Social reforms made the British people more secure, more equal and more free.

But Labour was slow to recognise that the world rapidly moves on, and our society is now in the grip of three structural crises: the global financial crisis and its aftermath; the global competition crisis posed by China, India and Brazil; and the looming climate crisis with an immediate need for co-ordinated action after the debacle at Copenhagen. Each increasingly defines the geo-political landscape, with globalisation itself posing more serious challenges and dilemmas than ever. Labour has to show how it would meet and master these challenges as part of the new global order.    

Closer to home, the contours of British politics are being transformed. The new centre-right coalition argues that the best way to guarantee opportunity and security is to cut back the state. David Cameron’s brand of compassionate conservatism may have no coherent underpinning theme, but the Tories have recovered their appetite for power, and the coalition government represents an audacious pitch for the centre-ground.

Labour’s strategic response must be rooted both in an analysis of Britain’s role in a changing world, and the governing purpose of social democracy, the purpose of which, as R.H. Tawney elaborated, is to reform economic and social institutions to promote liberty and maximise human welfare. The centre-left has to demonstrate how collective action will advance the interests of individuals and communities, not through paternalism or charity, but reciprocity based on an ethic of duty and mutual obligation. If the openness on which the world economy depends is to be sustainable, the ‘winners’ will have to share more of the gains with the ‘losers’.

This has profound implications for the next generation of domestic and international policies. At home, Labour has to set out a coherent set of principles through which it would manage the process of fiscal consolidation, protecting the most vulnerable in society while resurrecting its reputation for governing competence. That means navigating a way between the economic masochism of George Osborne, and denial that there is a debt crisis and that Labour’s only purpose is to oppose the cuts.

There are more long-term questions that the party must start to address immediately: about how to design a regulatory system that encourages the growth of medium-sized and small businesses as the engine of new jobs, particularly in the regions of England that will be hardest hit by the withdrawal of public investment; what to do about inherited wealth given its corrosive impact not just on inequality and social justice, but the basic sense of citizenship in Britain; how to spread the benefits of asset ownership, including housing, without exposing low income households to the risks of debt; how to finally break the link between class origins and destinations through fundamental reform of our education system, addressing standards as well as structures in our schools. On foreign policy, Britain must move away from the anachronistic notion that it can act as a ‘bridge’ between Europe and America.

Addressing these challenges requires not only coherent policies but also a transformation in the process of governing.  Despite a decade of radical constitutional and political reform, Britain is still locked into an elite-model of governance. But rapid lever-pulling from the centre together with top-down, centralised solutions are unlikely to produce optimal outcomes, let alone get to grips with complex challenges.

A new kind of politics is urgently needed, based on engagement and debate between citizens and government, building consent for tough and painful decisions. Labour must not concede this territory to the coalition government.  

The enormity of such domestic and global challenges makes the party’s search for new ideas all the more vital. Labour’s next generation of ideas will have to be open and multi-layered, but it will be none the worse for that. There are two principal sources on which the party can draw.

The first is its past. Labour has to dig deep, re-discovering a rich heritage spanning at least three centuries of political thought among radicals and dissenters in Britain. The second is to draw on ideological and intellectual developments in the rest of the world. Both are central to producing a compelling governing strategy for the future, matching the scope and scale of the challenges Britain and the world now faces.

New Labour was notoriously suspicious of the party’s past, but it missed a vital opportunity to reclaim and refurbish important intellectual traditions. One example is how to define the public realm and the public interest. This is a real concern in the light of the global financial crisis, when it appeared that market interests embodied in financial institutions had prevailed over elected governments. Late 19th century liberals and social democrats in Britain gave considerable thought to how the public realm ought to be strengthened. They envisaged a sweep of civic institutions from guilds and friendly societies to mutuals and trade unions  that would generate public value, and offer protection from the turmoil of rapid industrial change.

These bodies were not positioned against the state. Over the course of the early 20th century, civic associations were seen as increasingly complementary to the expansion of government activity. This was forgotten, however, in the second half of the 20th century, with the growth of the post-war welfare state and the enlargement of the public sector at the expense of community organisations. The rebirth of mutualism as a strategy for embedding the public interest and encouraging the diffusion of wealth and ownership in Britain must be at the heart of social democracy’s future.

Turning to the rest of the world, the development of New Labour’s programme in opposition was heavily influenced by the New Democrats in the United States. After 1997, Labour also turned increasingly towards other European social democratic parties, particularly in the Nordic countries with their strategies for social equality and investment in children. But the search for ideas has to extend beyond Europe and the United States.

Take China as an example. We need, of course, to understand the role that manufacturing industry in China will play in the global economy, but we should also examine how the Chinese government is approaching the task of social development, providing public goods such as health care and education to a rapidly expanding population. Latin America, too, provides important insights about how to tackle rising inequalities, including addressing the empowerment of women. Labour must look to the world beyond Europe and the Anglo-sphere if it is to offer a convincing future programme.

The challenge for Labour is to think strategically about how to become the party of the future again, laying down alternative approaches and ideas to those of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. The party understands that there is no untried social democratic programme that would have provided a credible alternative to New Labour, for all the mistakes and dilemmas that have undoubtedly arisen since 1997.  After twelve years in office, Labour and British social democracy is surely ripe for an overhaul. This is the time, more than ever, to reclaim our progressive roots and to think audaciously about the world beyond Britain’s shores.

 Patrick Diamond is a Visiting Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, Senior Research Fellow at Policy Network, and an elected councillor in the London Borough of Southwark.