Compass New Year Annual Lecture 2011
These were the panel members’ views on Prof David Marquard’s treatise on the progressive left.
Ed Miliband
Miliband is ‘at a 30 year moment’ with the markets, which led to Thatcher, New Labour and the financial crisis. Nobody in politics has got to grips with the crisis. We should not be aspiring to going back to ‘business as usual’. In 1997, people were saying a tax-funded health service could not be sustained in the modern world, and that it was a crisis service (it should be paid for directly). The world has changed – but we do not operate a crisis service, and there is reason to hope. Miliband does not support necessarily everything which happened in the last term, for example PFIs, but he feels that the public realm needs accountability, some targets, and should not be strangled by an audit culture. ‘Limit the market, reform the state, and build the movement’. A redistributive welfare state is insufficient; a vision for politics must go beyond Tony Crossland, thus reaffirming Miliband’s insistence on the living wage. The reform of the state is important, as a centralized state cannot deliver, and the state must be devolved and more transparent; the more responsive state could be privatized state vs marketised state vs audited state.
Pulling the levers in government, but Miliband believes that there must be a wider movement which supports their cause. (Marquard believes the great strength of Barack Obama – the candidate – was to lead a movement). The Conservatives have their media, but Miliband emphasizes that Labour needs to work with other parties, and move away from tribalism. And finally – as for libraries. Miliband believes that there has been an intellectual collapse of the Big Society. No volunteering in schools as Sure Start centres have shut, and no more free debt advice as Citizens Advice Bureaux shut.
On the Liberal Democrat party - Ed Miliband feels that the current leader of the Liberal Democrats is betraying the tradition of the Liberal Democrats. He also feels that he will happy to share a platform with anyone who can bring a ‘YES TO AV’ vote more likely (read into that you will..!)
Caroline Lucas
The three main parties are wedded to privatization and marketization, but there should be a much wider debate about co-operatives and mutualism, for example. The private sector has devolved itself from wider obligations, such that business leaders has betrayed their moral obligations. The spread to the public sector, i.e. commodification of the public sector. Popular movements can help with the realignment with the public realm, for example in attempts to sell off the forests. Popular movements on their own ‘cannot do the job’, in that there has to be action on a political level. Political parties run the risk of becoming irrelevant, apart from the advancement of a professional political elite. This includes that there must be electoral reform (and this requires the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats to ‘share a platform’, according to Evan Harris.) Political parties are not necessarily representative of their members. Prosperity itself is often built on rotten foundations, i.e. exploitation of natural resources, and people around the world. For many years, progressive politics has failed to grasp the meaning of the word ‘equality’ seeing every human being on the planet being equal. Caroline Lucas – if we believe in equity and a responsibility for future generations – argues that there must be a rejection of the models of traditional political growth, exploring more how we live within our means.
Dr Evan Harris
Realignment of the progressive left means the growth of a social democrat society, meaning that you should be able to speak openly about issues such as health. Liberalism should not be defined necessarily by what the Leader of the Liberal Democratic Party says it is. It is suprising that we have to work so hard against the arguments that free markets are always a good thing. Dr. Evan Harris believes in rule of law, freedom and equity, as well as localism, for example. A freedom to consume and invest is considered essential by Dr. Evan Harris. The biggest failure was to tackle inequality – the combination of privatization and marketization, in that each one can be controlled on their own and not in combination. Choice can have devastating implications if you do not consider fairness and equity, for example in free schools and NHS hospitals. Finally, on cannot have fairness in private goods unless you have equal access to it. He therefore believes in an end of policy “tribalism” – not of a ‘join us’ variety but policy overlap. It is hard for the Labour Party to be the resting place of the progressive left.
Prof Francesca Klug (from the LSE)
The argument is one of ‘counter-materialism’ – there needs to be a realignment of the mind before the realignment of politics. Three inspiring people have espoused the rights of man (Pompayne), the dead weight of bureacracy (Weber) and various issues (George Orwell).
Prof Klug then went onto how Cameron had united small-state libertarians and social liberals, and this week’s Orwellian nature of Cameron’s argument. The Big Society is fundamentally about means, not ends, not telling us about the destination. The Good Society is about the type of society we wish to live in, where the dreams and optimism of youth are not crushed, competition does not snuff out public service, and where caring is an indicator of success, pluralism is respected, standing for the many does not become populism. State action must not squash out community spirit, more than head counting or a vote every five years. The progressive left is driven by ‘horizontalism’ – where young people are ‘doing it for themselves’. Effective democracies need political leadership, reclaiming the ‘moral foundation of politics’, ethical leadership (ethical in style, substance and tone), inspiring people to be better selves, and to keep the economy on track. Effective democracies lie at the heart of the progress.
