When Douglas Alexander talks about refreshing democracy in Britain he talks of political ideas, visions and sustaining a national debate on them. He does not start by tinkering with the mechanics of democratic reform but by talking about the spirit of democracy.
‘Sometimes we see democratic reform too narrowly as to do with national institutions or hoary old constitutional questions. But all of us face a serious challenge in reinvigorating not just our elections but also our politics and that’s about competing visions of the good society.’
To those pointyheads who argue for a magic bullet to solve all engagement issues in one shot, be it PR, compulsory voting or postal ballots, this could seem very near inaction. But Douglas Alexander is fervently aware of the problems of low turnout and voter cynicism.
‘If you look at America, voting has become a habit that has moved up the income scale. This should be a cause of genuine concern for all politicians in the United Kingdom, but particularly for Labour politicians who want parliamentary democracy to be as genuinely representative of all the people of this country as it can be. Talking of disengagement better captures the reality that many of the people who are choosing not to vote at the moment are quite possibly running parent toddler groups or the local scouts. These are not by and large apathetic people. These are people who are making a conscious decision to disengage from party politics.’
It is not that people are uninterested in politics, it is that they are not interested in politicians and do not look to them for solutions. ‘If politics is not to be diminished into a soap opera that is disengaged from voters lives, families or communities, that demands of us as politicians a constant and sustained effort to communicate both the voices of the communities we represent to government but equally for government to communicate back the difference that governmental action is making in communities across the country.’
But if the solution lies in the political debate, not in the mechanics, then there are difficult questions to be answered. Is the Labour party creating a clear and distinct vision of a better society? Douglas Alexander says only two governments of the last century achieved that: the Attlee and the Thatcher governments, which ‘profoundly transformed peoples’ sense of their lives and the condition of the country.’ He argues that Labour now must aim no lower, but the nature of the achievement will look very different to those of the more statist twentieth century.
‘Some of our most significant legacies would not be national institutions, even ones as great as the Scottish parliament or devolved government in London or Wales. Rather they would be local legacies such as a Surestart facility, a children’s centre, in local communities. Or that in the community that I represent, Paisley, there would be a community at work rather than a community of joblessness and unemployment. The very locality of those legacies will be very different from the institutional legacies of past governments.’
No one could accuse him of making life easy for himself, as a politician or as an election strategist. In the face of falling turn out, he challenges the way politics is conducted. In spelling out his vision for the future, he appeals to the local, the everyday, for proof.
‘The challenge is to translate large goals into tangible gains for communities. Part of the problem is the way politicians all too often talk about politics at a macro level or a micro level. The real prize for politicians is to be able to talk in real terms about the tangible advances that have been secured and at the same time to recognise the centrality of a vision beyond implementing improvements’
‘Politics should not just be the clash between competing parties implementing improvements, but rather between competing visions of what it is to be the good society; between competing notions of the human condition.’
Now that the Tories have a leader capable of articulating a vision of a ‘better’ society, albeit a lower-tax, lower-spending and the devil-take-the-hindmost vision, Labour has to be able to articulate its own vision against theirs, rather than relying on shooting down dumb policies one by one, as with Duncan Smith and Hague.
‘I have never accepted Michael Howard’s vision as either achievable or desirable. Firstly, he fails to recognise many of the structural inequalities that still scar Britain and, in truth, while his rhetoric may try to sound compassionate he remains deeply conservative. He seeks a minimal state, seeking to cut back the very institutions, like the National Health Service, that have been some of the greatest civilising forces in our country in the last 50 years. His vision of charges, cuts and privatisation for our public services do not represent any kind of a balance, but rather a regression to a politics of division, inequality and injustice from which the country moved in 1997.’
‘Look at the central challenges we face. Domestically, to improve the level of service in the National Health Service, the standards in our schools, to tackle enduring poverty or inequality. Or internationally, the challenge of security in the face or terrorism, or tackling environmental degradation. None of the great challenges of the age can be secured by anything other than shared and collective endeavour, by us working together. And to that extent, if the Labour party didn’t exist it would be necessary for us to invent it to meet the challenges of the times.’
‘And, in contrast, I would argue that the real problem for the Conservative party is not the leadership question but the profound intellectual crisis that has enveloped modern conservatism. They are unable to reconcile whether they are a party of the timeless nation state, a party of patriotism or whether they are a party of the untrammelled free market.’
But articulating a vision of a good society is not just about increasing turnout and beating the Conservatives. It creates a better democracy and is therefore itself part of the good society.
‘I think citizenship upholds and honours the equality which is the foundation of so much social democratic thought and action. As I have said, at elections every individual’s voice has equal worth and weight. Citizenship similarly upholds the important contribution of each individual to the collective and recognises that we are inherently associational, social beings and that therefore our sense of belonging to a community is reflected by the fact that we must associate together in different ways, at a family level, at the level of civic institutions and at that level of political engagement.’
‘Active citizenship is an underpinning foundation for the kind of political change that we need to take forward in our society. To take just one example, the NHS embodies values of shared citizenship by recognising the importance of healthcare for all, free at the point of need. The market power of an individual has no bearing on their treatment. It is a different set of values from the market that underpins our health service: the values of mutuality, shared responsibility, and a sense of shared humanity. And, in that sense, many of our social institutions at their best embody a notion of citizenship, which is by definition egalitarian.’