Adopting a centre-left anti-elitist stance is uncomfortable but necessary, argues Adam Lent
Just over a decade ago, the final report of the Power Inquiry was published. The inquiry was an independent investigation into the state of British democracy chaired by Helena Kennedy QC and I was the research director. We discovered a deep hatred of Westminster politics and politicians wherever we went and whoever we spoke to. But the establishment response to the inquiry revealed a political class in deep denial about the problem. I sat in many meetings and had many conversations where I was told that the report overstated the problem, that people had hated politicians throughout history and that most people were simply apathetic rather than angry.
The vote for Brexit was undoubtedly driven by many things: fear of immigration, economic insecurity, even, possibly, concern about the European Union. But it is undeniable that the Leave campaign’s positioning of itself as an anti-politics movement struck a deep emotional chord. It mobilised the same anger the Power Inquiry identified 10 years ago. All the sentiments and slogans that the Remain side pilloried – ‘take back control’, ‘we’ve had enough of experts’, ‘bash the elites’ – were designed to make an emotional appeal to citizens who feel as excluded by the Westminster and London establishment as they do by the Brussels bureaucracy.
By contrast, the stench of that establishment elite hung heavy on the Remain side not just because of the people it mobilised to speak on its behalf but because of its bloodless, technocratic arguments. As Aaron Banks, who bankrolled Leave.EU, stated, the Leave campaign deliberately set out to make an emotional rather than a rational case for Brexit.
The centre-left must learn from this. It must recognise that defeat of the Corbynites is only a very initial first step on the road back to public support. Social democratic parties across Europe are becoming minority parties because they are failing to adapt to a world where anti-elitism is a permanent norm. They are ceding support to populists who recognise the power of the anti-establishment trend and the anger and emotion it inspires.
The pitch to voters that previously served the centre-left well is defunct. The classic third way claim that social democratic parties can manage economies competently but with a bit more heart than their centre-right opponents has been delivering diminishing returns since 2008. It is likely to be an absolute negative for Labour, assuming the centre-left regains control, just as it was for the Remain campaign.
So what might a centre-left anti-elitism look like? The answer to that question does not make for comfortable reading. A political strand that has, in classic elitist style, long convinced itself that it is morally, ideologically and managerially superior to any other political force, including much of the British population, will have to loosen up.
First, it is time to embrace direct democracy. This is because the first step for an anti-elitist centre-left is to embrace a more direct notion of democracy. Populism is in some considerable part thriving because it claims the people know better than the governing elites and offers the people, however disingenuously, a chance to rule. It taps into a sense of elite failure that has been growing since 2008. But it is also in tune with a much longer-term shift in public attitudes, mapped by the social scientist Ronald Inglehart and others, which shows the decline of respect for hierarchies and established institutions and a rise in a preference for individual self-expression and self-determination. Indeed, research by The Hansard Society and the University of Southampton shows that citizens overwhelmingly identify having more influence over politicians as the chief way to address their sense of alienation from politics.
Very many on the centre-left and in Labour find the idea of a more direct democracy abhorrent. Certainly the conduct and result of the referendum on the EU will have done little to quell this sentiment. But direct democracy need not, and I would argue should not, mean more referendums. Instead, it should involve a shift to a system where members of parliament use well-established techniques of deliberation and consensus-building to understand the views of their constituents on the big issues confronting parliament and then vote in line with those views.
Second, the centre-left needs to seek equality without bureaucracy. More positively, the centre-left, of course, has a history of speaking on behalf of the ordinary worker against the interests of economic elites. It is a set of values that has long been taken up by the populists and even increasingly the centre-right, who recognise the clamour for a fairer economic settlement. But the statism of the centre-left blunts its appeal. Its solutions to inequality always seem to involve placing more power and tax revenues in the hands of the welfare state bureaucracy – a mistake magnified many times by the Corbynites.
Instead, Labour must build boldly on the so-called ‘predistribution’ agenda launched by Ed Miliband. The centre-left should embrace policies designed to hardwire a more just distribution of wealth into the economy without the need for bloated bureaucracies. These could include a huge extension of home-ownership by radical reform of planning regulations, aggressive breaking-up of oligopolies, shifting tax from income to wealth, and offering very favourable tax breaks to firms that mutualise.
Adopting an anti-elitist stance will be deeply challenging for the centre-left. Like most ideological strands they believe strongly that they alone possess the correct route to a better world. The notion of possibly diluting that mission through direct democracy is inevitably concerning. Equally, ditching the left’s deep faith in the capacity of well-funded state bureaucracies to deliver fairness is disconcerting.
But, however uncomfortable, the Brexit vote, the rise of populism and the decline in support for conventional social democracy only means one thing for the centre-left: adapt to a world of anti-elitism or die.
———————————
Adam Lent is author of Small is Powerful: Why the era of big government, big business and big culture is over. He tweets @adamjlent
———————————