THE UK ELECTION HAS STARTED SOMETHING, BUT FOR LASTING CHANGE WE NEED TO GO DEEPER
If we’re interested in long-term change, if we want a new economic and political system that values human wellbeing and respects the environment upon which it depends, then the outcome of the general election may well have been as much as we could hope for. For the millions supporting Corbyn’s Labour, that message could be hard to hear. After all, with only a handful more seats Corbyn could now be installed in Downing Street, framing a minority government programme that the other “progressive” parties would find hard to vote down. Enticing as that sounds, however, its is likely that such an outcome would have ended in tears, and not only because coalitions thrown up by the UK’s dodgy electoral system are inherently shaky. Even with a majority, Labour would still be obliged to operate within the neo-liberal economic system. That system would blunt its effectiveness, or even destroy its programme, risking disillusionment particularly among the newly-engaged young voters with whom Corbyn is so popular.
If you doubt that, think back to 1997 and the return, with a massive majority, of a Labour government that was going to rebuild the social and industrial fabric destroyed by Thatcher. Blair embraced the market in his attempt to achieve this, and in the process gave us an independent Bank of England (concerned only with monetary policy and not social consequences); eye-wateringly expensive Private Finance Initiatives, an increasingly privatised NHS and a rise in the wealth and influence of the “filthy rich”.
Corbyn may not embrace the neo-liberal market system with Blair’s fervour, but he still knows it’s there. So his policies, with their cautious costings, are primarily focused on relieving its unfairer aspects rather than changing it at source. This is not to say that he, and particularly his ally John McDonnell, do not want to change the system. It’s just that they don’t (yet) have a project to do so.
The ideas are all there. Academics, think tanks and campaigning groups have been working for decades to develop new models for corporate governance, banking, money-creation, fair trade, land ownership and wealth distribution, as well as the crucial question of how wealth is measured. Progressive parties have picked up on bits and pieces of these — the Universal Basic Income featured in the Green Party manifesto and Labour have a working group looking at the idea — but no one is weaving them together into a coherent political and economic programme.
Since the crash ten years ago the existing economic system is widely acknowledged to be broken, yet conventional political wisdom says we’re stuck with it. The idea that wealth is created through capital investment and asset appreciation rather than the work of people’s brains, hearts and hands is so firmly ingrained that no threat to the owners of that capital — whether murky offshore funds, big corporate rentiers or merely home-owners basking in the glow of rising house prices — can safely be contemplated.
If we want things to change, therefore, the primary and essential task is to shift that conventional political wisdom, and not just in parties or among activists or in the progressive “echo-chamber” but in the collective mindset of ordinary people who rarely think about such things. This means framing new, collaborative economic and political ideas not in working papers and policy documents but in the instinctual, emotional, personal and familial terms in which most people do their politics.
Looked at rationally, high house prices are not good for our collective or individual wealth or wellbeing, but how do you convince a homeowner of that? A Basic Income will free people up to create real wealth for themselves, their families and communities, but won’t people think they’re just sponging off the state? Fair trade, social enterprise and community banking will tackle poverty and social exclusion while keeping wealth in local communities, but to many it may seem inefficient and unrealistic. These are feelings, not arguments, so they cannot be countered directly. Instead, new forms and pictures must be shaped, to help change the landscape from which those feelings are drawn.
I don’t know how to do that, but I mean to spend time in the next year or so trying to find out. While the Tories are making a hash of Brexit the task of true progressives is to crack this puzzle and thus change the central premise on which the next election is fought. Only if we do that can the passion and enthusiasm that Corbyn has tapped into find its full, meaningful expression as a driver of profound, sustainable, political and economic change.
Originally published at www.martinwhitlock.co.uk on June 11, 2017.
