Eyeing Up The Talent

When liberal commentators talk about the Labour Party they are invariably talking about the nature of the political system. The subtext of their all too frequent disappointment is that the country deserves a better progressive vehicle than a party that ostensibly respresents the interests of the working class, or one that is "in hock to the trade unions", in the traditional parlance. This is notably different to the subtext of their comment on the Conservative Party - something that is all too apparent at the moment - which boils down to wishing for a better class of Tory: more virtuous, more intelligent, less overt in their hatred of the poor and vulnerable. It does not extend to wondering whether the Conservative Party should even exist. Two examples of the former came this week from Neal Lawson in the New Statesman and Martin Kettle in the Guardian. You'll not be surprised to learn that Lawson remains the more sympathetic, his analysis being a lament for the party's lack of intellectual substance, while Kettle makes no bones about his contempt for democracy. What they share is an instrumental attitude towards the party, the origins of which can be found a century ago in the reformation of the political system with the arrival of universal suffrage.

In its original incarnation, Labour was essentially a ginger group of the Liberals. The formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 at the instigation of the TUC led to its independence, though this didn't preclude a secret electoral pact with the larger party in 1906, a template that has been regularly revived by liberal commentators ever since despite Labour supplanting the Liberals as the opposition to the Conservatives and despite the recent memory of the coalition government. More subtle analysts have seen the process as one by which Labour was effectively house-trained (that house being the Commons), with its more radical elements, such as the Marxist SDF, marginalised and the party apparat secured by an uneasy alliance between the trade unions and the progressive middle class represented by the Fabians. In embryo we see two themes that run through Labour's history: a commitment to constitutionalism and a disdain for the party membership. Keir Starmer, in his gushing royalism as much as his willingness to expel anyone to his left, is firmly in that tradition.

Against this backdrop, Neal Lawson's claim that "Labour’s leadership is an ideas-free zone" and that "There is no discernible political project" seems naive. To be fair, he does recognise that this may not represent an abrupt departure from history: "In truth, Labour has always found ideas problematic. It was never an intellectual party ... but it tolerated some intellectuals. Today it seems happy to be hollowed out. Dry nouns such as security, prosperity and respect are as deep as it gets." The point is that "equality", "the working man" and even "socialism" were just as dry in their time, the substance being ameliorism, social conservatism and managerialism. Lawson's sympathy results in a heroic effort to find Labour's contemporary Gramsci that immediately descends into bathos: "First, to be clear, this is not to argue the party doesn't have people who think. David Lammy, Lisa Nandy, Steve Reed and others in and around the shadow cabinet have ideas, as do backbenchers such as Clive Lewis, Stella Creasy and Jon Cruddas."

A less sympathetic observer might ask why the intellectuals of the left over the last 100 years have all, with rare exceptions like RH Tawney, been further to the left of the party (think of Tom Nairn or Stuart Hall), or why attempts to coopt intellectuals in the Blair years, such as Anthony Giddens, proved so evanescent. One might also ask why the intellectual discourse of the party, or what passes for it, is currently dominated by a chancer like Paul Mason. To give him his due, Lawson does suggest that Starmer's anti-intellectualism is purposeful: "The party’s claim isn’t to any radical new ideas or big plans but to competence, integrity and internal party control. The aim of the former two is to provide a contrast with Boris Johnson, the aim of the latter is to ensure Corbynism never happens again." He also correctly identifies the cartel motivation of Starmer's leadership: "Cocooned by the first past the post voting system, Labour is guaranteed second place in a two-horse race, and with it the trappings of being Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition: Short Money, broadcast time and PMQs." 

However, his sense of irony appears to desert him in the final stretch: "A political project of meaning takes years to assemble. And so, integrity replaces ideas, personality replaces policy and competence replaces a crusade." Faced with a party leader who dissimulated to win election, has proved to have the personality of lump of wood, and who has managed to put his own career at risk by a fatuous commitment to resign if he gets a fixed penalty notice for eating a curry, you do have to wonder whether Lawson is actually taking the piss here. Beneath this hand-wringing over Labour's current lack of policy substance, or the absence of a coherent electoral narrative beyond "We're not as bad as the other lot", lies a Fabian distaste for the organic development of political ideas that was all-too obvious in the resistance to "Corbynism", and which can also be seen in the wariness by which the party responds to local initiatives like the Preston model or any signs of union militancy. Instead there is the never-ending hunt for another saviour who can impose a new spin on old liberal ideas from the top down.

Martin Kettle provided an example of this in his piece on "the Andy Burnham problem in British politics". As he puts it, "The problem is the mismatch between the realities of British politics and governance on the one hand and the assumed supremacy of the unreformed Westminster parliament on the other. Burnham’s case is particularly topical, because there may shortly be a vacancy for leader of the Labour party." This manages to neatly capture both the obsessive constitutional tinkering and personal callousness of the liberal commentariat. Having striven so hard to get Starmer elected, they now seek another vessel for their ideals of integrity, personality and competence. And, to be fair, Burnham would appear to score more highly than the current party leader on all counts, though that really isn't saying much. Kettle reveals his true thinking in a throwaway remark: "Any system that played a part in stopping a talented Tory like Ruth Davidson playing a larger role on the UK stage is a failing system." Liberals will never cease in their admiration for a Tory who isn't an obvious swine.

Kettle's solution to the Burnham problem is predictable in its elitism and impracticality: "Some will argue that the answer is an all-embracing new constitutional settlement, in which the great cities, regions and nations are all somehow represented, German Bundesrat-style, in a new upper house to replace the Lords." As ever, bicameralism remains an article of faith (checks and balances, doncha know) while the assumption about who would benefit from this arrangement is itself revealing: "In an intergovernmental scheme of that sort the devolution barons – Drakeford and Donaldson, Nicola Sturgeon and maybe even a future first minister of England – might find a place ex officio, helping to make dual mandates more comprehensible and less open to charges of sleaze, and making it more likely that the parties will be able to elect the leaders they want." That Jeffrey Donaldson gets the nod isn't simply because Sinn Fein wouldn't take a seat at Westminster. He is the establishment choice. All that such a scheme would produce would be an even greater incentive for the party hierarchies to fix the selection of candidates in local and devolved government.

What this country needs is not a reformed upper house, or a wider pool of career politicians from which to select party leaders, but a genuine commitment to democracy: build it and they will come. The reason the political class is so low on talent isn't because the constitutional system hasn't kept pace with devolution but because that devolution has been treated as little more than theatre to keep the whining periphery happy and channeled into the traditional grooves of party patronage. The current refusal of unionists in Northern Ireland to abide by the rules of their devolution settlement isn't an outlier. The extirpation of Jeremy Corbyn was likewise an example of the political class expelling what it considered to be an illegitimate incursion into its domain. What Sinn Fein and Corbyn had in common was not a commitment to Irish unity but that they reflected popular opinion and thus an organic development of political ideas. Lawson's hunt for an intellectual party elite, like Kettle's desire for a more virtuous one, is ultimately a determination to talk about anything other than democracy.