What next? A few thoughts on the new convergences

My first post at The Sharpener, but – in typically lax fashion – rather than apply myself to producing witty bon mots, dazzlingly fresh insights, sharp apercus, etc, I thought I’d warm up something I wrote over here in the immediate aftermath of the general election, complete with unashamedly partisan appeal (that I hope my quasi-editors don’t object too greatly to.) Rest assured, dear reader, fingers will be pulled out for future postings. In the meantime, this:

With the dust now settling around us, certain new features have emerged in the grey and unpleasant land of British politics. New Labour continues is determinedly self-destructive bearing towards plain authoritarianism, seemingly unabashed; elsewhere, a definite series of new settlements are emerging. Take Tim Yeo, a liberal Tory, writing in the Guardian shortly after his resignation from the front bench:

Although the election of some talented and energetic new MPs could provide a springboard for recovery, a closer look at the results gives no cause for comfort. Conservatives are no longer the main opposition to Labour in great chunks of Britain. In Scotland we are not even the third party. Faced with a distrusted prime minister and a tarnished government, more people turned to the Liberal Democrats than to the Conservatives to protest.

In the aftermath of defeat, everyone says we must learn the lessons of the election but few spell out what this really means. Modernising the party means more than appearing on television without a tie and not being nasty to minorities. Now is the moment, perhaps the last moment, for Conservatives to accept that our brand was comprehensively rejected by the voters, not just in 1997 but at both the subsequent elections too. This doesn’t mean we have to abandon our principles. Belief in individual liberty, the merits of the market and a firm line on defence and law and order, and in the need to keep the state small, should remain the bedrock of our approach.

This should be set alongside Tory MP Damian Green’s musings, also in the Guardian, in which he suggests that

What this election reveals to thoughtful Conservatives is that we have now tested to destruction the theory that continuing with the ideas that served us in the 1980s and 1990s will somehow win us back the affections of the British people. For three elections in a row we have tried variations on a post-Thatcherite theme, using either Europe or immigration as a signal that we share the discomfort of some British people with the modern world. There are many such people, and they need representing, but they do not form the basis for a government.

Green even goes so far as to say that a national coalition with the Lib Dems might be necessary. Vince Cable, on the same page in the printed edition, concurs. Cable is one of the few senior Lib Dems with a degree of ideological clarity about the direction the party should take – which is, as far as he and the Orange Book crew are concerned, still further over to the right. It is possible to imagine a coalescence of socially liberal but economically conservative votes around such a programme: roughly, gay rights plus the free market. As the newly elected MP for Sheffield Hallam, Nick Clegg, wrote of his free-market comrades, “Other strands of liberalism might place greater emphasis on social reform, on radical constitutional reform, on the abolition of inherited privilege.” But not his, and not Cable’s, and not a whole crowd born-again Thatcherites. An alliance, explicit or otherwise, with socially liberal Tories would make perfect sense, over and above the habitual opportunism that has delivered Lib Dem-Tory coalitions in cities up and down the country. On Europe, a key issue for British politics in coming years, the alliance already exists in the blind support for the EU that left Tories and all Lib Dems espouse. Charles Kennedy, days after the result, drew this conclusion, and precisely the opposite to that hoped for by tens of thousands of Lib Dem voters: drop the “high tax” image so disagreeable to Tories of any stripe, question the party’s opposition to nuclear power, and align the Lib Dems still more explicitly with a perceived business interest.

New Labour, as is now clear, bled to death in Iraq. Blair is finished; he may manage a few last unpleasant twitches, but there is simply no way Labour can continue as a credible party of government with a notorious liar and probable war criminal at its helm. The promise of the Third Way – that, given the right conditions, free markets could deliver social justice – was exhausted some time before Iraq, but Blair’s criminally misguided adventure in the Middle East delivered the coup de grace.

Although Respect’s win, and the staggering votes it received across East London and Birmingham, offer the Left an unprecedented opportunity. For the first time in generations the potential is there to build a mass party of the radical Left in Britain, in opposition to an enfeebld New Labour and all the other parties of neoliberalism. The obvious danger, however, is that without both an absolute clarity about both its firm stand against oppression, and a meaningful economic programme, this potential will be missed. Without a clear critique of neoliberalism’s general failings – and, I would argue, Brown’s specific implementation of neoliberal policy – we run the danger of merely repeating, in more forthright fashion, a clear consensus broadly in favour of a diverse and plural society. The Tory left, and the Lib Dem right, could both sign up to such a view of Britain; New Labour also fancies itself in favour of diversity and tolerance, though the rigours of neoliberal government have pushed it elsewhere.

The tie between these two poles is, of course, class. Respect is unashamedly a party of the working class; it enjoys, at present, the support of some of the most downtrodden and overtly oppressed workers in Britain. Its vote in East London came from Asian workers in alliance with sections of the white working class, on a platform of unabashed class politics. This alliance was decisive in bringing victory in Bethnal Green and Bow, and could only have been achieved through the absolute rejection of the communalist politics all other major parties indulged in. We delivered the same message to all parts of the constituency. The Labour vote came from the other half of white working class voters in alliance with the more dependable middle-class areas – including large numbers of better-off Bengali voters. New Labour tailored its message on communalist lines, whilst Oona King was heard on the doorstep telling white constituents that Galloway was “stirring it up” amongst the Bengalis. Elsewhere, they’d call this playing the race card. In the absence of credible class politics, it was all New Labour had to offer.

(An aside: Respect was significantly ahead of Labour during the ward-by-ward count of votes taken at polling stations. It was only after the delivery of the constituency-wide postal votes that the gap between the parties closed. This accounts for the delay in the result. There are numerous reports of voters – including, somewhat bizarrely, Mariella Frostrup – turning up to vote only to be informed they had already voted by post. The suspicion forms that someone attempted to rig the ballot, and that someone miscalculated; this side of a thorough investigation, it can be no more than a suspicion.)

For Respect to flourish, it will need to maintain that same political line. There is a crying need for a political force that can credibly represent the aspirations of working people in Britain, New Labour having long abandoned any pretence at doing so: when it talks about social justice, it is in the language of old-fashioned paternalism, not the language of working-class emancipation, and of the fight for justice. Like Lenin, I will end with an appeal: join us.