Tony Blair is right: the goal of a political party is to put forward and implement a policy platform that successfully achieves our values in today’s circumstances. Last week he told Progress that our job is to use the next five years to do some deep thinking about the modern world, and about how we can craft policies that work. This will be quite a challenge and, because of the way the country and world has changed, it is a process that needs to be conducted in a different manner to how it was in the 1990s.
The main thing on our side is that we do not need to rethink our values. These, Blair rightly argued, are basically accepted by the country. This is why our challenge is different from the Conservatives’, and why we kept them out of power for so long. A big chunk of their values are not shared by the majority of Britons, including conservatism. The country knows the world is changing and therefore knows that the answer is not to behave as we have done in the past. Yes, people do not want to chuck the baby out with the bath water, but there is no national reluctance to changing the water from time to time. This the Conservative party will always struggle with.
So, what does deep thinking about policy mean? A lot has changed in the country since 1997 and, in the world of politics, the main thing that has changed is that the traditional levers of control have been eroded. When Labour was last in government, it was still possible to lead from the centre, with only taxpayers’ money, public and civil servants, and a big majority required to get policies enacted on the ground. Things are a little different now, not simply because the country has no money, but because we are a less deferential, more individualistic, unequal and polarised country than we once were. As a result, to get policy through, government has to take people with it, and encourage the growth of new coalitions of communities and businesses to deliver. We always did this a little, mainly focusing on the need to get the media on our side to carry our message but, as a result of technological innovation, we must now think more creatively about how we work across the whole country.
As a result of this erosion of traditional power and the speed of technological change, particularly social media, there is a third component to any political strategy that has become more important than ever. Yes, we need our values and yes, we need a thorough assessment of the situation in the country and where it is going, but we now also need a solid map of what resources we have to call upon. Without this map, we will have nothing to replace our lost levers of control and, just as importantly, we remain locked into repeated battles between the left and right of the party.
One of the things we need to understand is the relationship between collectivism and individualism. Looking at the world through a 20th century lens, collectivism is the polar opposite of individualism. It is a process that involves losing one’s identity in order to enjoy the fruits of common endeavour. For some, it is a romantic idea that has never been properly tested, and for others it is a dangerous fallacy that has been tried too many times, to disastrous and murderous results. But, for younger Britons, this is an argument of the distant past. When they march together or, more likely, adopt a temporary twibbon, they are sharing some of themselves without giving up their individuality. When they talk about community, they are talking about loose groupings that rightly come and go, not bureaucratic national movements that last years or more. This is a result of the power of social media to bring people together in non-committal ways. It is a form of action that is both collectivist and individualist.
At the start of our party’s history people came together in formal organisations which provided robust forms of collective action. They were willing to give up some of their individuality to achieve common ends. People are no longer willing to do this but, within our party, there are many who cling onto the past and worry that not doing so leaves us vulnerable to swirling economic forces. As a result, those at the centre of the party react against this evangelical desire to turn back the clock by insulating policymaking from their influence. However, with power now eroded at the centre, we need to think anew.
So, going back to the need for deep policy thinking, if we have three buckets of ideas: 1) our values, 2) our situation and 3) our resources, then collective action has a place within all three. However, like everything in our world, the character of that collectivism will continue to change.
A core component of our values is that we want individuals to succeed on the basis of merit, but we would be wrong to think that this individualism leaves no room for community or collective behaviour. We benefit from helping each other and do it all the time, through our families, communities, friendships and places of work. You will be hard pressed to find a successful business today, for example, that does not push itself forward on the energy of collaboration and difference; individuals working together in constantly changing forms.
Secondly, our situation is one in which people will defend their individuality to the hilt and yet also wear their allegiances as badges of honour. We must take account of this in our reading of today’s Britain. As Jonathan Freedland wrote in the Guardian on 26 July many people, especially young people, care a lot about their identity and their choices. These are not people who grew up haunted by totalitarian collectivism but came of age in an era where it is normal to define oneself by being for or against the Iraq war, or Edward Snowden or Amazon. A choice not made for the sake of joining a particular group and exerting power, but simply to be unashamed in having a view. We need to understand this, and recognise this urge for sharing within ourselves. If we do not, the backwards-looking left of the party will always be more welcoming to those wearing their passions on their sleeve, and we will miss out on their talent.
Finally, collectivism continues to be essential to our resources. I do not mean our resources as a party, for paying for leaflets and phonebanks, but our resources when in government, to get our policies enacted on the ground. This includes our members and supporters, but also those who can be reached out to deliver policies of mutual benefit rather than allegiance, including businesses. Thinking about collective behaviour like this we can think more about how people live, how we want to live, and what help we need from government to deliver policy for ourselves.
One of the most important creations of the Blair government were Sure Start centres. Not only because they provide much-needed childcare in an era where both parents need to work, but because a conscious decision was taken to not impose a standard model on communities. Instead, communities were given something to coalesce around, to design their own childcare services and beyond. This policy recognised that government cannot do everything, that only resorting to national programmes are not effective enough in today’s economy to deliver Labour priorities, that businesses will not fill this need left to their own devices and that within communities there exists the creativity to deliver for themselves. This policy therefore met our values, our assessment of need and a clear understanding of our resources.
If we think like this, and start with our three buckets, we can do some deep thinking about what the right policy for our times is, and also how that policy will actually happen. This is our safeguard from technocracy and conservatism. It will allow us to continually adapt our policies to achieve our values amid modernity without retreating into the insulated corridors of Whitehall. It relies on our brains and hearts to both design the very best policies for our times and to deliver that change with passion.
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Ben Garratt is a member of Progress. He tweets @ben_garratt
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Photo: Martin Burton