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Jonathan Rutherford
© Jonathan Rutherford 2008
The New Conservatives have a commanding lead in the polls, but in truth there is no great upswelling of popular feeling for them, only a jaundiced contempt for the government. Popular disaffection is Britain's political crisis.
It's time for a national debate about the country's future. What does 'progressive' mean? Who isn't for progress? The gamut now runs across the political spectrum. In the last few years 'progress' seems to mean little more than a permanent restructuring of the status quo. Gordon Brown calls for a 'progressive consensus. David Cameron attempts to trump him with his 'progressive alliance'. The New Conservatives promise 'progressive goals by conservative means'; Labour, the 'true progressives' scoff at the idea. To be a progressive, says Richard Reeves of Demos, is to believe, 'that societies ought to move forward and that the measure of advance is the expansion of freedoms and life chances'. That used to mean being a socialist.
And yet, in its coverage of the Conservatives earlier this month http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/sep/10/conservatives, the Guardian allowed Demos to reward the Conservatives' pro-academy, privatising, backward-looking, inequality-producing education policies with a high 'progressive' rating. Right now, politics is full of such contradictions.
We are now in a crucial battle of political language. Whoever defines the terms of debate will own the political future. Both New Labour and the New Conservatives swap policies, triangulate and reposition themselves, vying for the limelight of the rightward moving political centre. Spurred on by focus groups, the latest poll ratings, and fear of the scabrous London media, they evade confronting the public with the pressing problems we face. Britain's political elite must, like water, follow the path of least resistance. In our governing political culture today there is not much leadership and little plain speaking to truth.
For the left, taking on the New Conservatives cannot be separated from the need to create a post-New Labour social democracy. It has to go back to the people and it has to be willing to tackle the destructive impact of liberal market capitalism. We need to renew the tradition of ethical socialism and our commitment to the moral value of equality. We have to reject the easy option of marketisation and instead find the means to democratise public services and build an accountable, redistributive state. Power needs devolving back to local government with all the problems this will entail for equity. There has to be constitutional and electoral reform and the protection and extension of individual civil liberties. The trade unions need supporting. They're the biggest civil society organisation and central to the development of a more equal and just society.
After the moral and political disaster of Iraq, Britain needs a new internationalism. And last, we have to deal with the emergencies of climate change, peak oil, water scarcity and food insecurity. We need a Green New Deal http://www.neweconomics.org.uk/gen/z_sys_publicationdetail.aspx?pid=258 that will create an ecologically sustainable, pro-society economy capable of generating wealth, jobs and equitable development. The debate for the left is about how we make sure the future is not Conservative.
Part of the Comment is free Soundings debate, first appeared 11 September
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