Andrew Rawnsley's columns in the Observer have not found much favour with me of late. Full of neoliberal angst at the rise of Jeremy Corbyn they have typified mainstream left paranoia that there may be an alternative to neoliberalism. This morning, in contrast, I have to agree with him, in part. His argument is that:
The big truth that is being exposed by this battle is that Labour is really two parties and they can no longer stand each other's company.
And:
Likewise the Conservatives, whose schismatic event over Europe is ahead of them, would be more honest with themselves and with the electorate if they were to divide into their two major constituent parts.
I even agree with his analysis as to why these dysfunctional relationships survive:
[I]f this were a country with some form of proportional representation, both the Labour party and the Conservative party might well have divided into four parties long ago. What stops this happening is first past the post because it is an electoral system that mercilessly punishes splits.
And there we part company: it had to happen. Rawnsley, having filled his allotted 800 words shrugs his shoulders and ends his piece. There is not a hint in his column that anything might change. This is they way it is, he implies; the party that splits with least impact in the public perception will, he clearly thinks, go on to sweep all before it.
Maybe he is right. Maybe, after all, Jeremy Corbyn will not win the Labour leadership. Maybe the left will be happy about that. Maybe all those unions will fund a Burnham / Cooper compromise after all. Maybe the Tories will not split over Europe. Maybe the EU sceptics and the electorate will forgive a prime minister who said he would renegotiate the UK's EU membership and then fails to do so despite which he asks for endorsement for staying in. Maybe a great many other things might happen that will deliver a majority government in 2020. I certainly don't know and nor does anyone else.
But to presume the supposed centre ground status quo around two party democracy (even the rump of two parties) will survive is, of the options available, a slim one to back. The reason is that to do so presumes that this is what people want. I see little evidence to support that.
First, two party politics very clearly has less appeal than it once did. Partisan loyalty to a party has also very obviously declined. The tribal split that fuelled the party divide and created a system suited to first past the post no longer exists, and there is little chance of it being reproduced.
Second, neoliberalism has effectively guaranteed this. The whole logic of the 35 year old neoliberal exercise has been to destroy organised labour. That was its explicit intent and it has, to quite significant degree, achieved it, although not in the way it intended. Unions have not been smashed out of existence as neoliberalism intended. What neoliberalism created in terms of changed working patterns achieved the goal of destroying labour unity instead. The definition of people's politics around work has as a result become largely irrelevant when people have such fluid perceptions of what work is and might be for them.
Third, that same process of destroying standard definitions and understanding of work has left people alienated from a model of politics - the neoliberal model - which defined itself on the basis of destroying a particular form of understanding of work as represented by organised labour working for large scale employers - but which has had nothing to put in its place and has as a result had to force people into low paid, frequently meaningless, work to ensure social control. Disenchantment with politics has resulted but so far has had little mechanism to express itself bar abstaining, which has happened in ever increasing numbers.
And that is why Rawnsley is wrong to shrug his shoulders. People now implicitly realise that the centre ground that at least three parties in UK politics would like to populate has no answers to the question that they want to ask, which is "what's this all about then?" If the utopia that neoliberalism has to offer is low paid, insecure, largely meaningless wok that provides those doing it with little chance to fulfil their potential then people are going to look for an alternative. The SNP, Greens and UKIP represent three alternatives. The Lib Dems ceased to be one. Labour's left provides another such alternative, with the fact that it has something to say that appears to make sense just adding to the appeal.
None of these options may provide the answer people are looking for. I strongly suspect all the alternatives have much more thinking to do before a coherent programme is clear that might address the issues needing to be solved. But the point is, coming back to Rawnsley, to assume that all such alternatives will fail and will have little impact on the centre-ground of politics, which first past the post will ensure survives in his cosy world-view, is just wrong.
Of course it is true that there have been spectacular splits that have failed before. I well remember the early 80s. But these splits have tended to happen when a new prevailing narrative had emerged. So the Liberals died in the twenties when Labour offered a new voice. And likewise Labour split in the 80s when the Tories offered a new voice. If there are splits now it is against a different background. Neoliberalism might be exceptionally powerful. Economically you would think it the only game in town. But it's also failing, spectacularly, to meet need and expectation. That's the background to these current potential splits. And as a result nothing is like the early 80s in this scenario, for left or right.
I think we're seeing the death throes of politics as we have known it.
I hope we can reinvent democracy to embrace the politics to come. That may be the greatest challenge for all to face.
And in the face of that the presumption by some that the old rules still apply seems to me to be the best indication that change is, in fact, inevitable because it confirms that prevailing centre ground thinking has nothing new to offer anyone except the preservation of power for a few who may not wish to give it up.
Let's hope they can be persuaded to do so, peaceably.
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Andrew Rawnsley is now rather unsteady with his views and has been forced to realign his opinions. He currently seems to be unsure of his footing. Compare his previous rabid anti-Corbyn rants this last article was more measured.
He has further to go. His recent article was based on the assumption that political views swing back and forth like a pendulum across a fixed landscape. This analysis is wrong. There has been an earthquake under the basic assumptions and certainties of post-war debate.
For example, see this analysis:
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/12/social-democrats-face-irrelevance-best-extinction-worse
Corbyn’s policies make perfect sense when measured against the new challenges we face. If Andrew Rawnsley wants to regain his balance he should look down at the new shape of the ground that supports him and his colleagues in the Westminster bubble.
If Jeremy Corbyn is elected leader, I hope his goal of bringing together talent is successful; his policies will need careful work and some great planning to put into action. For example, how might anti-neoliberalism be melded with the reinvention of public limited companies as suggested by Will Hutton?:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/26/capitalism-shareholders-greedy-stakeholders-change
Reinventing the company is a theme I hope to come to
One of the contributors, Godfrey Rehaag, to the economics newsletter I publish via Mensa has authored a book on this very subject. His insights can be found here http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00TBNCDM0
Richard, as you would expect, I wholeheartedly concur in the great majority of this analysis.
However, there is one point on which I disagree, and that is on the intention and effect of Thatcherite neo-liberalism on the Trade Unions. As you have it, Thatcher intended the destruction and demise of Trade Unions, and the anti-union work environment engendered by Thatcherism was just the by-product of that attack.
For me the two are inextricably linked by the REAL Thatcherite objective of “remoulding the soul and instincts of the British people” away from Socialism and towards marketised individualism.
And to do that the REAL enemy was working class solidarity. Unions for Thatcher were OK so long as they were really “staff associations” concerned with individual progress and competitiveness.
Alas, Thatcher has been wonderfully successful in her aim, using tools such as sale of shares in nationalised industries (I.e. selling us what we already owned!), the Right to Buy, the encouragement of private medicine, the desire to turn ALL schools into Grant Maintained or City Technology Colleges in competition with each other outside democratic accountability (something intensified by Blair’s silliest idea – the business a sponsored Academy, now morphed into education via Gove’s centrally appointed Commissars for Academies and “Free” (!!??) Schools.
The “golden thread” running through all of this is the attack on social solidarity, and the willingness to help the disadvantaged because it was good for a society to do so.
As to the Left and the Greens and whoever else needing to work put the real nitty gritty of their instinctual desires for change, we need to learn from the Right, who spawned a whole raft of think tanks VERY early on – think the education “black papers” of 1965 onwards, right on to the IEA and the Adam Smith Institute and the Centre for Policy Studies, so that by 1979 they had the ballast to add to the Tory Manifesto “The Right Approach” that enabled their ideas and proposals to sound reasonable.
The Left – despite the Fabians and the IPPR and the New Economics Foundation – and even, alas, despite the she Tax Justice efforts, still hasn’t woven those into a coherent narrative.
And it took the Right well over a decade to reach their 1979 command of the arguments, all helped by the horrors of the 1974-79 Labour Government, which actually performed very well, with much good social legislation on race and sex discrimination and health and safety, as well as a FAR better management of the economy after the madness of the Heath years than they are usually credited with. And then came “The Winter of Discontent”, handing the election to Thatcher virtually on a plate.
There MAY be a similar climacteric ahead for Cameron, but even if there is, the progressive majority STILL haven’t fully worked out their script, and certainly haven’t got all the dialogue they need to put on a convincing show. And time is now VERY short – only 18 months, Max, to embed their case in the thinking of the electorate, which makes Ed M’s foolish decision not to attack the false Tory narrative about Labour allegedly wrecking the economy even more stupid and reprehensible.
Andrew
You make a good case
Better than I did
Thanks
Richard
Actually I take this a bit further into the ‘narrative’ of competition above any form of cooperation or solidarity. Solidarity for the great unwashed [me!] is clearly dangerous, we could re-form unions, cooperatives, educate ourselves and get above our station, maybe become latter-day chartists, anarchists etc. etc. We see this on television too, every popular show must have competitors and a ‘winner’. This Hobbesian, state of nature, tooth and claw subtext seems to exist as a active substrate in the Thatcher legacy.
However cooperation for ‘them’ in the form of cartels, rate fixing, expenses scandals, possible cover-ups for sex crimes, price fixing, friendly calls between trading floors and convenient tax havens all propped up by public cash, seems to flourish.
What is wrong with this picture, as they [we] say?
Your picture looks accurate to me
Until about a fortnight ago, these were entirely new ideas to me — I watched “Pride” with my wife, and “The enemy within” 🙂
It’s clear the Thatcher project was a stunning and awful success.
Since then I’ve been thinking that perhaps my previous urges to see a change in representation or the form of election are less important — perhaps what we (well, the left) really need is to find a way to sow solidarity and community — perhaps everything else would come from this.
I’m not sure how.
My one observation has been that the Daily Mail is perhaps a perfect current tool for the opposite of what is needed. Almost all of its output works to highlights differences, having the effect of pushing people apart, creating “us and them”, atomising, dividing, breading dislike instead of sympathy, etc.
So maybe a start would be a publication doing the opposite of that — highlighting the great deal that we all have in common. Perhaps then people would remember how enjoyable, fulfilling and constructive it is to help each other.
I think social media has to play that role – and will do so, increasingly
The young do not read papers and do not watch television
In yet another election where one third of the electorate didn’t even bother to vote and also this time 24.9% of the vote went to parties other than the Conservatives, Labour or Liberal Democrats (a record high), change of the electoral system has to be the starting point. The large parties are coalitions anyway, and ones that are required to be on message when many don’t agree with it. It would be much more honest if newer, smaller parties could be elected and then be required to form an obvious coalition and say what they mean. Why should we have to tolerate a voting system which hardly ever reflects the votes cast in the result?
Further, the argument seems to be that that Jeremy Corbyn would make Labour unelectable. Well if he were in his own small party the other lot would be able to test whether they were so electable on their own. The only reason for not doing this is the unfair electoral system.
Corbyn’s appeal in my view, is that he is ploughing his own furrow and seems wonderfully straightforward (and also, at last! somebody who eschews personal attacks and talks about ideas). With a more representative electoral system others would find it necessary to follow this course. Eventually politicians might even earn rather more respect….
MayP,
If only Corbyn actually wanted to change the electoral system…
“How can you not like Jeremy Corbyn? Good old-fashioned lefty, hard-working local MP,…But yesterday, in a live discussion on…Press TV, Corbyn reminded me of how ugly, dispiriting and out-of-touch Labour tribalism can be. He objected to my support for proportional representation, attempted a half-hearted defence of our monstrously unfair first-past-the-post system and accused me of belittling the arguments in favour of the fabled “constituency link” out of a supposed animus towards “the working class” and towards — specifically — Labour’s safe seats.
I’m not often left speechless — but then I’m not often attacked from the left.”.
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/mehdi-hasan/2010/05/climate-change-jeremy-safe
As far as I’m concerned if Corbyn still holds such a dinosaur point of view he needs a sharp kick up the pants. This is the time for vision, not narrow self-interest. Its all the more stupid as PR (and forming a progressive alliance with the Greens etc.) is Labour’s (but especially his) only chance of actually winning the next election…
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/01/proportional-representation-pledge-would-guarantee-labour-landslide-may
I am in favour of PR
I am not a member of the Labour Party
Completely agree with the need to develop a coherent narrative and look forward to Richard’s ‘reinventing the company’ thoughts within an anti-neoliberal context (is there a more positive way of saying ‘anti-neoliberal’?).
The scale of the challenge that we face can be heard in the following LSE lecture podcast from David Smith (see link) who is the economics editor of the Sunday Times. In the lecture, David Smith tells the history of postwar economics as a series of self-evident ‘this was a good thing’ vignettes that bind a series of questionable points into a ‘networked’ neoliberal super-structure. Against this network, great arguments against any single node have little effect. To further extend the ‘network’ analogy, its weakness will be against a competing anti-neoliberal network narrative that tells the postwar economic / social story with an equal level of coherence.
As you can hear, the trick is not to get too hung up about any particular point, but to flow smoothly from argument to argument.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=3175
The Labour party and the press is shaming itself beyond even my expectations! We are now witnessing their true colours with Corbyn whipping away the pretence that that there are any real liberal values left in the parliamentary Labour Party and the disgraceful media.
We should be clear , Richard, that what we are dealing with at present is a ONE party system not even two. Corbyn has proved to me that many of the public may not be as narcoleptic as I thought, they just needed a wake up call to remind them they were still alive after nearly 40 years of satisfaction by bogus ideas.
To his eternal shame, Burnham, is desperately trying to radicalise himself whilst downing packets of Immodium in the face of Corbyns rise.
I’ve waited nearly 40 years for signs of life to re-emerge politically, and I’m feeling rather emotional about it as if a window has been opened in a claustrophobic, stifling room to let some fresh air in after breathing recycled guff for so long.
What Corbyn needs to do next is get the MMT message accross together with LVT -full house!
Working on it!
I understand Bill Mitchell wants a word too 🙂 http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=31457#more-31457
” But I wonder: might we not be reverting to a pre-capitalist era instead?”
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2015/08/back-to-pre-capitalism.html
I prefer Paul Mason’s analysis
This more conventional Marxist analysis doesn’t do it for me