David Miliband’s speech today to Demos came hot on the heels of two events that have provoked the British left into examining itself anew this past week, and it answers some of these questions. First, last Friday’s progressive governance conference in London, bringing together European centre-left leaders, was marked by a constant refrain: ‘We should have the winning argument because the right want to trust to markets, yet markets have caused this mess. We believe in government, in regulation. So why are the right doing better than us in the downturn?’ Why can’t we pin down our own narrative?
Part of the answer is incumbency, at least in the UK, but James Purnell’s announcement that he is standing down as an MP to do community organising that same day also pointed up the need for the left to think about itself afresh – as not just a believer in government but as a component part of society that strives to work together to make things better. Gordon Brown drew on some of this when he concluded in a rousing speech on Friday that we are a movement, and this movement is on the move.
So today it was pleasing to hear David Miliband not only discover that sought-after ‘narrative’, going a step further from where the Progressive Governance conference left off. On that day, FT columnist John Kay chastised us progressives for concentrating too much on regulating the City instead of restructuring it for good ends. In this vein David today fleshed out the need for the left to understand that regulation and more government on their own are not the answer.
We can see how to move forward when we reflect on David’s assertion that “this is an exciting time to be on the centre-left”, something which may sound odd to an outsider looking at the opinion polls. But it is exciting, not just for the grit and imagination that Labour people knocking on doors and setting out stalls must display in a way we haven’t for 15 years. But also because the re-engagement with the community and the need to fight hard means we’re revisiting the ideals of empowerment to individuals and groups of individuals through cooperatives, local campaigns and community organising. These are not things Tories really believe in, because when they talk about communities they just mean the withdrawal of government. When they talk about freedom they simply mean the freedom for individuals to do as they please. From all I’ve seen, they canvass less than Labour people, they talk less to the public, because they don’t, in the end, believe in communities, in groups of individuals within those communities and working together to solve tricky problems.
The foreign secretary picked out that the Conservatives push on ‘broken Britain’ and the ‘Age of Austerity’ because “[t]hey think they’ve spotted that people are miserable and if they can only make them more miserable still, they can benefit.” For the Tories it is a “zero-sum game” between rolling the state back and rolling society forward. But here they make the same mistake as the left could find itself drifting into as hinted at last Friday. And in any case, the Labour grassroots experience shows that this not the case; society is more complicated than that, and that government is one part of society. Government may be the source of strength to fight vested interests, as he says, but it cannot itself become one itself. Strong communities and individuals with voices are needed to so public interest can be openly decided upon.
David also talked about the ‘progressive’ agenda emerging only in the 1990s. I think the Labour party can hold up a number of progressive credentials from before that era, but the opportunities certainly blossomed in the 1990s with the ending of the Cold War stalemate, Clinton’s America, and massive rejection of Conservatives at the ballot box. He’s right too that the progressive agenda has not run out of steam and he laid out important steps forward, steps that have sadly languished over the years. He talks of a ‘reset referendum’, perhaps reminiscent of Obama’s ‘reset button’ with Russia last year, and shows a way forward “not just about the Alternative Vote for the House of Commons, but also about local government, fixed term Parliaments, and the House of Lords. Call it a Reset Referendum.”
And beyond our borders too the same principles must apply: cooperation with our partners and people around the world to solve the environmental, demographic and security challenges that will not go away and that cannot be dealt with by a single country. The cooperative ideal and must apply here too, and this is something David also recognised today.
1945 and 1979 both represented ruptures with the old orders. 2010 could do the same if the Labour party seriously rethinks and overhauls the way government happens. And I’m optimistic about this because, even if we do not win the general election this year, the ground has shifted irrevocably. It’s Labour, from its leadership to its local activists, that is learning to build on the new ground while the Conservative erect only Tory totems of inheritance tax, fox hunting and ‘Swedish’ schools: disjointed, atomised and shaky foundations for a government of the future.