Unrepresentative Democracy

The argument that Westminster party leadership contests should be limited to MPs, which was very much en vogue during the last decade, seems to have taken a holiday faced with the unedifying spectacle of Tory hopefuls competing to see who can come up with the most extravagant proposals on tax cuts and public sector austerity. To note that this places them well to the right not only of the population at large but even of the Conservative Party membership obviously calls into question the claim that MPs are representative, let alone that they consider the good of the whole nation. As the candidates commence the first online hustings with the membership, the tone of debate has shifted perceptibly from the performative to the pragmatic, with much talk of "realism" and "restoring trust". There is a topsy-turvy air to all this, at least in comparison with the framing of Labour leadership contests, in which the more sensible members are expected to moderate the flights of fancy of the parliamentary party. Of course this is just a trick of perspective: the Conservative membership, like the PLP, simply being closer in sympathy to our predominantly centre-right media.

The Conservative Party selection process places a premium on appealing to the Parliamentary party first. Whereas you could once argue that it was largely representative of conservative sentiment in the country, this has become less so as first economic and then nationalist zealots have routinely succeeded in becoming parliamentary candidates ahead of the traditional cohorts of liberal-conservative professionals and reactionary gentry. As a result, there is now a conscious acceptance that MPs must make different appeals to the two constituencies: one to their colleagures, focused on the material interests of the rich and notions of sovereignty; and another to the membership, employing the traditional imagery of national strength, economic competence and social authoritarianism. The problem is that the cost-of-living crisis is intruding into the consciousness of even staunch party members, with the result that the tensions between the two have become ever more apparent, hence perhaps the prominence of claims of tax avoidance in the negative briefing. The attempt to reconcile this through a focus on the "culture wars", notably around trans rights, has come to naught, essentially because these are issues with little resonance beyond newspapers.

But that attempt is still notable because it emphasises that the membership hustings play a poor second to the Telegraph, Times and Mail when it comes to the formation of party opinion. In other words, your route to the top in the Conservative Party now requires cleaving to a particular brand of zealotry that will garner both the support of a committed core of colleagues and the backing of the Tory newspapers. For Boris Johnson, this was his late conversion to the cause of Brexit as policy rather than just a lazy way to fill column inches. For the current field the expression of zeal comes down to renewed austerity to control public debt (Sunak) or urgent tax cuts (pretty much everyone else), neither of which make sense in terms of the demands of the moment (teetering on the edge of recession) or offer a credible strategy beyond the next general election. Despite this incoherence and the general air of hysteria, the media has shied clear of suggesting the Tories have run out of ideas and road, preferring to dwell on the bickering instead.

In contrast, the Labour hustings remain far more politically significant. This isn't simply because of the party's more democratic approach to policy formation. It also reflects the (justified) belief that the media are biased against the party generally and the left in particular. Consequently, there is little to be gained by winning over the Guardian and Mirror. This can produce upsets, such as Corbyn's election in 2015, but it can also lead to strategic lying, as in Starmer's now infamous campaign of 2020, though it's also worth recalling the gap between Blair's promises before 1997 and his "realism" thereafter. The purge of the Labour membership over the last two and a half years is not simply about kicking out the left, it also serves to bring the membership more in line with the party apparat sociologically: more middle managers committed to fiscal responsibility. It's a commonplace to note that the social background of MPs has narrowed across all parties in recent decades, and that candidates are increasingly drawn from the narrow world of politics itself, with little in the way of an "ordinary" hinterland, but this has been particularly acute in the case of the party of the people. 

The traditional excuse for the empowerment of the PLP - that it had to appeal past an unrealistic membership to the wider electorate - looks increasingly unconvincing as it deliberately diverges from actual Labour voters in both style and substance. The turn to appealing directly to Tory supporters, even when dressed up as winning back ex-Labour voters in the Red Wall, is less of an electoral strategy than a way of articulating the PLP's own preference for what are essentially conservative policies. Ironically, it is now finding itself to the right of much of the Conservative Party membership, notably on topics such as utility nationalisation and the need for wealth taxes. Having re-engineered the Labour membership more to its liking, the party leadership is now attempting to re-engineer the electorate, neglecting its support among the young, trade unionists and ethnic minorities in favour of elderly reactionaries who it believes will be the decisive bloc at the next general election. 

In other words, both of the major parties in Parliament are now unrepresentative and have morphed into self-perpetuating sub-cultures with their own arcane beliefs and strange habits. The expenses scandal of 2009 went some way to exposing this - notably in the genuine surprise of many MPs that anyone should begrudge them such largesse - while the bias towards the interests of the rich in the management of economic policy since 2010 has been flagrant, but perhaps the most obvious evidence, which in turn has produced the greatest voter cynicism, is the serial manoeuvring at Westminster since 2017 that has led to repeated parliamentary coups by both the executive and backbenchers, vocally supported by every single national newspaper on one occasion or another. The overall impression gained is that Westminster is increasingly ungovernable, and it is that, rather than speculation about the union with Scotland or embarrassment over sovereign immunity, that should worry the constitutionalists. Like a fish, the British political system is rotting from the head down.

Coup, What a Scorcher #2

The single most significant outcome of Boris Johnson's resignation has been the media-driven proposal that the Conservative Party leadershp contest be cut short by dropping the membership vote and relying solely on the say of MPs. The same MPs who recently backed him, however reluctantly, in a confidence vote. Though it is coded as a demand that Johnson should "go now", as if his continued presence was an unconscionable risk to the polity and an affront to civic virtue, this is clearly nothing more than an anti-democratic manoeuvre, hence it has been supported as strongly by Keir Starmer and Ed Davey as by John Major. Johnson's claim of a personal mandate has been contemptuously dismissed, but more in order to stymie the implicitly populist idea that people vote for Prime Ministers rather than to highlight his egotism. While the fussy constitutionalists of the liberal media insist that the only personal mandate is that of the constituency MP, and one strong enough to allow the individual to switch party without the need for a by-election, the reality is that Johnson's appeal was undoubtedly necessary to get the Tories over the line in 2019. 

Despite being a serial liar, he was trusted by a majority of the electorate to "get Brexit done", whatever that might mean, and you can't say that he didn't deliver on his promise with the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act of 2020. That might be a comically flawed peiece of legislation that already looks in danger of unravelling because of its inherent contradictions and occlusions, but it is what people voted for and they did so through its embodiment in the comically flawed character of Johnson. Those who imagine that this marks the nadir of our co-habitation with the EU, and that we can now look forward to a steadily improving relationship that culminates in at least our accession to the customs union at some future point, are likely to be disappointed. If Keir Starmer has made one thing clear, it is that membership of the EU comes a long way down his list of priorities, and there is little chance of a future Conservative Party leader campaigning to reverse Brexit for the rest of this decade. 

In their heart of hearts, liberal commentators know this, but their bitterness is not really directed at the flotsam and jetsam of history like Johnson, which will inevitably bob away on the waves, but at the damn fool electorate of 2016 who wilfully sank the ship of state. As we head into the dog days of summer, we are witnessing what may prove to be the final chapter in a slow coup d'etat that commenced in the aftermath of the 2017 general election, with Jeremy Corbyn as the initial focus of its anti-populist ire, but whose roots go back to the momentous EU referendum of the previous year: the only time in recent memory when the electorate failed to behave responsibly in the eyes of the politico-media caste. The PLP in particular has an obvious vested interest in a return to the old days of party leaders being elected exclusively within the walls of Westminster, and not simply because there may shortly be a vacancy for Labour leader if the Durham Constabulary decide Starmer's beer and curry deserves a fixed penalty notice. 

Against the backdrop of rigged PPC selections and partisan trigger ballots against the left, marginalising the membership is clearly the order of the day and the return to an MP-only selectorate would cap the reactionary movement. Whether they can pull it off is another matter. Despite doing their level best to abolish the membership through expulsions and a return to the deliberately rebarbative constituency practices of old, it is difficult to envisage the party turning its back so decisvely on democracy without suffering at the polls, however much support it may garner from a press obsessed with "grown-ups". As the strike ballots that have marked the early summer should indicate, the wider labour movement is very much committed to democracy (as an interesting aside, consider the continuing resonance of a near-forty-year-old strike ballot in James Graham's recent Sherwood). Starmer's insistence that the Labour Party does not support or encourage industrial action is not simply an attempt to get conservative voters on-side. It is consistent with his over-riding belief in cartel politics and his contempt for popular activism.

There might appear to be a contradiction in the press demands for greater competence and virtue among MPs and ministers, given that all the evidence since the financial crisis of 2008 and the expenses scandal of 2009 suggests that the political system continues to promote the incompetent and venal, something that has been exhaustively revealed by that same press, but we must never underestimate the media's firm belief that a change in personnel is all that is needed to restore harmony: a belief common to political commentary since the days of Plato, and probably before that. There is little self-reflection on its own role in the promotion of the patently unqualified and dodgy. Indeed, what future historians may note about Johnson's career was how willing the media was to overlook his obvious failings simply because he was an effective weapon that could be wielded against the left: first Ken Livingstone in London and then Jeremy Corbyn at Westminster. Jonathan Freedland describes this as being "lucky in his opponent", but luck had nothing to do with it. Johnson was, and remains, a creature of the press. 

Perhaps the most insulting comment on the last 24 hours came from another centrist drone at the Guardian when Gaby Hinsliff insisted that "the Conservative party owes this country an apology", as if the Tories were a surly teenager who had been rude at the table. To read her, you'd think that the press had played absolutely no role in the elevation of "a lightweight and a liar". Predictably, she is part of the claque demanding immediate change at Number 10: "Convention may dictate that a prime minister who loses a vote of confidence carries on running the country, for the sake of continuity, until a successor is chosen. But doing so requires sensitivity, diplomacy and the ability to put people’s needs above your own. Who imagines Johnson capable of that? He’d rather take his enemies down with him, leaving nothing but scorched earth." Here we see both an appeal to virtue as justification for ignoring the conventions that liberals otherwise idolise, and a blindness to all the acts of centrist self-sabotage that marred the EU referendum and fuelled the campaign against Corbyn. Instead we are to be terrified of a domestic Götterdämmerung that probably won't go beyond chucking cake at expensive wallpaper.

Her solution is for a quick decision among MPs that implicitly ignores the party membership: "At the very least, the Conservative party must now organise the swiftest succession possible, coalescing quickly around a successor rather than plodding through an endless summer of hustings while a vacuum develops at the top". This requires her to big up the party's elite - "The cabinet emerging from Thursday morning’s surreal reshuffle looks slightly more grownup than expected" - but also to suggest that differences be put aside in the paramount interest of sensible government: "Brexiter Tories must keep stressing that ditching Johnson was not some factional coup but a decision that united leavers and remainers". Like Hinsliff, Freedland is happy to rhetorically yoke Johnson to Trump, despite the lack of real similarity in either policy or manner (Trump is closer to Bolsonaro; Johnson to Berlusconi). For all the wibble about "toxic spells" and "nightmares", what comes across is not simply relief at the political passing of one individual bad guy, but the fervent belief that this marks the end of the "populist" interlude.

I suspect the press campaign to ignore the party membership and restore exclusive leadership election rights to MPs will fail, not least because it is difficult to put the genie of democracy back in the bottle once released. But that campaign will never concede defeat, particularly if a Labour leadership election is in the offing. It is amusing to witness senior Tories, defending the right of the party membership to have the decisive say in the election of a new leader, being upbraided by the liberal press for not immediately declaring a state of exception. But it's worth stepping back for a moment and asking how we came to such a pass. The inability of contemporary liberals to see how illiberal they have become in a whole range of areas, from democracy to trans rights, really needs an explanation beyond the charge of rank hypocrisy or innate Toryism. I don't have a simple answer for this (though I do have a long and convoluted one), but what I do know is that their language over the last 48 hours (indeed over the last few years) has worrying echoes of that used by "the party of order" in advance of more violent coups d-etat elsewhere, and it is this, rather than the hyperbolic claims that "Johnson will leave scorched earth", that we should be attuned to.

Illogical Positivism

Now that Keir Starmer has "saved" the Labour Party from the "disaster" of the Corbyn years, it is time for British centrism to reassert itself as the hegemonic project of the early twenty-first century. Unfortunately, the "radical centre" is struggling to do so against the background of a cost-of-living crisis, a summer of strikes and the promise of 50-year mortgages. Tony Blair's latest intervention, at his vainglorious "Future of Britain" conference, conformed to a now well-established pattern in which a shallow technological determinism fills the void of substantive economic and social policy. This has become increasingly ridiculous over the years, presumably because his exposure to technology is limited to conferences dominated by the technically-challenged politico-media caste and industry self-promoters. Hence the suggestion, in respect of Elon Musk, that "we need more mad entrepreneurs prepared to throw money at science" if we are to tackle climate change, which ignores that Musk isn't interested in saving this world but in colonising another.

Together with his tendency to suggest that he, and only he, can locate the British electorate's erogenous zones, Blair's latest 5-point plan reduces down to little more than the received wisdom of the 1990s. Thus, according to Blair's chief amanuensis, John Rentoul, "One of the themes of the conference was the need to work across party boundaries to seek solutions". At a time when the limits of bi-partisanship have been shown only too clearly in the US, this is remarkably tone-deaf. Equally obtuse is the insistence that failed Tories should be treated with respect, if only to benefit from the reassuring vibe that supposedly appeals to voters. "The purpose of the conference was essentially to try to push Starmer into a more Blairite position, even though Blair claimed to be offering ideas for any party to pick up. There were Conservatives (Ruth Davidson) and former Conservatives (Rory Stewart and David Gauke) there, but they were part of a classic New Labour big tent, rather than an attempt to create a new centrist formation." You can almost taste Rentoul's regret.

Blair is famous for his ability to combine a lack of self-reflection with the pretence of a struggle of conscience: a long, dark night of the soul that inevitably leads to him concluding that he was right all along. Far from questioning the premises and tenets of centrism, this has led him to conclude that the problem is not the ideas ("it is about persuading swing voters that you are reasonable and not beholden to party ideology") but the personnel. Blair's central conceit is that he has been succeeded on the national stage by political pygmies: "In both his interviews today, one at the start and one at the end of the conference, he said that the politics of the radical centre has “a supply problem not a demand problem”. In other words, it is what people want, but there are too few talented politicians available to offer it to them." The idea that the apparent dearth of talent may reflect a structural problem does not trouble his mind. Nor is there any recognition that a political party that expends most of its effort on expelling or disciplining members may not be an effective seed-bed of talent.

In contrast, Philip Collins, another of Blair's loyal media epigones, has at least tried to mount a defence of centrism in the New Statesman, but with little success. The nub of his argument is that centrists are good at politics. This talent leads to them being dismissed as either cynical triangulators or opportunists lacking convictions. For Collins: "The task of drawing the political spectrum correctly – so as to work out where the centre is – requires a deep understanding of how things have changed. And, given that politics in 2022 is indeed very different from politics in 1997, the subject matter and conclusions to which the centrist will be drawn must be constantly changing. This kind of centrist will inevitably change their mind, consistent with the fact that the world under observation is itself changing." This is banal, but it does highlight Collins's claim that centrists owe their success to an innate flexibility and openness to experience. That the evidence suggests the contrary is simply ignored. The reason he opens his piece with a dubious quote by the obscure Greek philospher Heraclitus is because he wishes to argue by deduction rather than induction - i.e. the establishment of first principles rather than empirical research.

As centrism has been historicised, its defenders have taken to burnishing its record, often to the point of outright fabrication. According to Collins, doing his best to be generous to centrism's critics, "It is a reasonable retort to the New Labour years to say that its rhetoric was all rather uncritical when it came to the effect of new technologies. It is true too that globalisation has had its detrimental effects as well as its benefits, though no smart centrist would actually disagree with that. It’s not true, though, and never has been true, that centrism is just revivalist Thatcherite economics. There is no need to rehearse the long list of wage regulations and trade union rights and windfall taxes of the New Labour years to clinch the point." There was a vogue for laboriously rehearsing the achievements of New Labour a while back, but the tendency soon dissipated as the modesty of those achievements, and the ease with which they were reversed by the Tories, became painfully clear. Now we are told there is "no need" to consider the record. We must just take as an article of faith that we lived through the good times.

The fundamental problem that centrism faces as a political philosophy is that it was historically contingent: the product of a particular moment that combined the epochal shift from social democracy to neoliberalism along with the reconfiguration of geopolitics after 1989. You cannot wish away its deep imbrication with Thatcherite economics and anti-union laws, any more than you can claim its liberal interventionism was a product of a commitment to "what works". The refusal to acknowledge this has led to a doubling-down on the commitment to the future and in particular to a vapid technophilia that ironically bears echoes of the early twentieth century. It has also led to an unwillingness to analyse the current moment, and in particular the fall-out of the last 15 years. The conceptual importance of the future to centrism is precisely that it avoids the need to address the present. At root, the philosophical genesis of centrism is to be found not in Greek philosophy, as Collins imagines, but in Comtean Positivism, a school of thought that ultimately became little more than a secular religious cult.