Although two party politics is over in the UK, with voters flipping between more parties more frequently, our ballot box behaviour remains stubbornly binary. Voters choose between one loose cluster of parties which value immigration, lean towards Europe, take action to avoid climate crisis, and seek redistribution of wealth – consisting of Labour, the Greens, the Liberal Democrats and the nationalist parties -– and a second far more fractious camp of Europhobes who oppose large-scale immigration and net zero action, pressing for lower taxation and less economic regulation. When voters float it is usually within these blocs, not between them.
Floating rightwards?
A relatively small number of Labour votes have leaked to Reform, now ballooning with former Conservatives and people who have tended in the past not to vote. But Labour’s stumblings and shortcomings in office are also reducing its weight in the more progressive bloc. A failure to improve public services and standards of living might deprive it of office after just one term.
The Starmer Symptom is a bifocal survey of the challenges and choices which lay ahead: one eye is dismayed by the limited ambition of empty pockets and low growth Labourism, while the other searches for ways in which the party might win another term in 2029. Can what one eye sees coordinate with the other? Possibly not. The last few months have been a giddy, dispiriting experience. In an enthusiastically curated showcase of soft left thinking, more than a dozen opinions are offered on ways forward for Labour.
On policy, these include Danny Dorling’s call for wealth taxes, reduced income inequality, rent controls and action to end child poverty; James Meadway’s suggestion of price controls to check inflation; and Andrew Simms holding fast to green transition investment. To raise levels of political participation and trust, Nicky Garland urges proportional representation along with national and local citizens’ assemblies, while Hilary Wainwright argues the priority is organising popular power from below, pointing to a new wave of independent local assemblies – from London to Tyneside – driven by and drawing people into community action.
Pluralist co-operation in an authoritarian era
The emphasis throughout the collection on pluralist co-operation by progressive parties, significant policy change, extra-parliamentary mobilisations, coalition building and tactical voting is a very different direction of travel to the centralism and tribal discipline being demanded by the Labour leadership and sanctioned with suspensions and expulsions. It is a bold and timely bid for dialogue between an increasingly dissatisfied soft left -– Clive Lewis, for example, who contributes the foreword – and Labour activists in battleground seats.
Some of its critique is considered: ‘The idea that social democrats can… manage neoliberalism more effectively and more humanely is untenable,’ observes Neil Lawson. ‘Starmer’s government is setting itself up for failure, but a failure driven by its own poor choices,’ argues Meadway.
Some is more damning: Keir Starmer ‘deceived and tricked his way into leadership,’ storms Jeremy Gilbert, and the result – his failure to challenge financiers, the managerial class, and landlords -– is merely non-politics. Gargi Bhattacharyya, who calls out Labour for race-baiting, is even more incensed: ‘I curse them with the core of my being,’ she concludes. One wonders if that will help the book’s alliance-building ambitions.
Hegemony now?
Many of the contributors draw on a 1980s turn to Gramsci, led by Stuart Hall and the magazines New Socialist and Marxism Today, to make their case: broadly speaking, this requires grassroots ‘organic intellectuals’ to assemble a progressive bloc capable of shaping a new social order by developing an overarching ‘hegemonic’ project – previous examples include welfare statism, Thatcherism and neoliberalism – a persuasive big idea and set of actions that advance a national and popular appetite for change.
Over the last thirty years Perryman has edited half a dozen collections of essays – from The Blair Agenda to Corbynism from Below – which extend this approach into the present.
In an enthusiastically curated showcase of soft left thinking, more than a dozen opinions are offered on ways forward for Labour
In his opening essay, Perryman points out that instead of the ‘plural coalition-building politics’ and community wealth creation which could strengthen local economies and recapture voters lost by the party in 2019, we have had a ‘passive revolution’ of top-down change (and not much of it) with a narrow focus on growth that remains, in many ways, neoliberal. His big-ups for Red Wedge and The World Transformed give an indication of how he thinks participatory politics might be rekindled and taken in new directions.
Navigating a left future
Books are often overtaken by events. A newly elected leader has repositioned the Green Party as an eco-populist challenge to Labour from the left, while the launch of a new party of the left also postdates this volume. Hilary Wainwright makes a strong case for putting community action and local assemblies first, pointing to the failures of the Socialist Labour Party, the Socialist Alliance and Respect in the not too distant past. And
A significant shortcoming of the book is that it provides little insight into the thinking of parties adjacent to Labour, nor updates on their openness or otherwise to local coalition building, which varies by constituency. Meanwhile, the populist right continues to rise in the polls and prevail on the street. Hope Not Hate’s Joe Mulhall thinks there are fault lines in Reform’s support and it may be possible to separate the lower paid, economically vulnerable and least prejudiced followers from Farage. Let’s hope so.
Can the voting bloc in which Labour presides, but in which its vote is being diluted, become more self conscious, co-operative and coherent? Can resource-poor local government and independent local assemblies identify common ground? Can antiracists woo flag wavers? Can the soft left reach past Labourism? Can Liberal Democrats be won to workplace rights? Can champions of an affordable low-carbon lifestyle ally with advocates for GDP growth, higher defence spending and sovereign AI?
We’ll find out as we go. This book will help us on our way.
