Why the soft left fails
When did we last talk about what we want for the country - not the party?
Some of my lovely readers will know that I was once the Co-chair (and a few of you will know, for a while, sole Chair) of Open Labour - the current “organised” vehicle of the soft left. There is a story to be told about my time in that organisation, its failings, my failings and the brutal ending to my time as a leading member and supporter of that organisation (I am not only no longer a member of Open Labour but actively disavow any ties to it).
But this isn’t that. I don’t want to use this space to settle scores, defend myself on a personal level or attack those who have wronged me (what a fantastically melodramatic phrase). Not because I am too good for that. On the contrary. But I tend to thin of this space as where I genuinely try to do ‘hard thinking’ on a party or systemic level. So while I believe the personal is absolutely political (and the left’s denial of personal agency to the wrong type of people absolutely matters) and how we treat each other really really matters. It matters more than almost anything else because if we can’t get that right, we can’t expect to get anything else right or be trusted to do so. I also don’t want to muddy the waters of this posts critique of the soft left as a whole with my more bitter personal feelings of wasted time and energy and the blockage that is Open Labour.
What I do want to think about here is what the soft left is supposed to be for any why it keeps failing systemically to gain any real ground or traction or even proper definition within Labour and the wider leftist movement.
This is - in part - because from it’s inception, the soft left has almost always been about what it is not. From Kinnock’s Prince Hal “I know thee not old man” moment in the early 80s breakaway from Bennism, the soft left has been about moving away from the hard left but not joining the Labour right.
What that has meant has been different for different people for years. But in general what it has meant is a leftist but not necessarily statist approach to the wealth generating economy (so looking not simply at a division between public and private ownership, but an understanding of a need for a vibrant but well regulated private sector competing on a level playing field with a variety of cooperatives and state provision of the essentials of life for those who cannot afford them which includes healthcare, housing, transport and key utilities.
Sounds great doesn’t it? But there are a million fights to have between here and there and a million different ways to make this broad vision work.
State monopolies fail as all monopolies fail (something Amazon should be aware of) by becoming complacent and sluggish and losing their ability to innovate and deliver. How then can we ensure that any state delivered service is ket up to date and centred on citizens - not on the delivery mechanism?
What do we do about compensating those who will lose out under such a system? The shareholders who currently own stocks that might be compulsorily purchased if that becomes the desired approach to state provision? The stereotype of the city slicker who we are happy to lose our belies the pension schemes that are actually large parts of our investment economy. This needs careful and well thought through economic planning - not slogans about eating the rich.
How do we raise the finance we need to transform into a net zero economy? What financial mechanisms do we need under this systems? How do we interact with the finances of other nations and their different systems? How do we continue to nurture an agile and innovative private sector that is supported by - not in competition with - state provision and vice versa.
One of the reasons the Soft Left fails is that we are not having these conversations. At all as far as I can tell. And I don’t think we have been having them for a really long time. This is as much my fault as anyone else’s on the soft left, but it is something we really really need to rectify. Becuase I don’t think the soft left are nearly good enough at talking about what they have in common and what they disagree on when it comes to hard politics. We handwave at economics with a vague nod to being more left wing than Blairite, then devote our energy to discussing the smallest niches we can find. We get more excited by changing the voting system for the Labour Party NEC than the system that would change the lives of everyone in Britain. And then we think we’re winning.
We are not winning. We aren’t even close to winning. We are not even understanding that to win, we have to think like winners and raise our vision to the horizons. I have long got cross with the hard left’s focus only on winning power in the Labour Party. But what are the soft left gains of the last decade other tinkering with the structure of the Labour Party? Where is the bright policy horizon that can show the way between unelectable Corbynism and stale Blairism?
I tweeted the other day that the soft left gets captured by Identity Politics. This - obviously - comes from my own experience. But it is also a reality that in going down this road, the soft left can avoid doing the harder work of settling a proper policy platform and arguing for it. This policy platform would take a lot of hard work - and hard thinking. It would need compromise and expertise and understanding and work across the party to think about implementation and detail and the politics of selling it as well as the politics of delivering it. For too many, that’s not what they got into politics for. Much easier instead to set yourselves up as a the good guys in an unthinking war on anyone who might ask difficult questions.
But when we stop being about asking questions in one area, we lose that muscle everywhere.
The soft left don’t have an economic platform. They don’t even talk about not having one. Even as we despair at the vacuity of Blair’s latest pronoucments. Even as we shudder at how far down the conspritorial rabbit hole we see the hard left go. Even as we feel better about not being followers of either camp, we do not look at what we do not have to offer.
The soft left needs to wake up - not woke up. We need to stop arguing about the kind of things that exercise the JCR and start thinking about the lives of those who drive JCBs. We need to accept that as we accept and celebrate difference of identity, lifestyle and culture, we must do so while working towards what we do believe as a collective. We have to get back to the basics of politics and commit ourselves to actually doing the hard thinking.
I run a political and communications consultancy called Political Human. Please get in touch if you are looking for consultancy advice, copywriting, editing, training or coaching.
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I am also a playwright and director. My debut piece No Cure For Love can be seen here. I am working on my next piece Triggered with a view to staging it next summer. I do not have a fundraising mechanism for this yet, but a coffee to keep me going would be welcome.
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I seem to have been the only critic who did, but I rather liked Manor at the National Theatre.
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Questions, comments and arguments are very welcome. Insults will get you summarily blocked on every platform that no longer hosts Donald Trump. I’m at emmaburnell@gmail.com or on Twitter (far too often) at @EmmaBurnell_.