Compass

I’m a member of the Labour party and proud to be so. I’m also a member of Compass and proud to be so. So what do I think about the decision today by compass to vote to open up voting membership to those who belong to other political parties. Well when I cast my vote I put the little “X” next to the no box so you might think I would be really disappointed.

However I think my response is a little more nuanced than that. Firstly and importantly I did not vote no because I think the idea was in of itself wrong, I just didn’t think it would work.

Apart from a few New Labour evangelists, and knuckle dragging party tribalists I think there are very few people who would believe the Labour party is right on all issues and that we have a monopoly on wisdom. People and Party’s views, policies and positions change. They often change in relation to one another. I am a member of the Labour party but in reality there are many policies the Lib Dems have on civil liberties that I wish the Labour leadership would adopt. And there are huge chunks of what the Green Party stand for that chimes very deeply with sincerely held views I hold. And heck, even the diaspora or crazy batshit mental lefty parties and trots occasionally have good things to say from time to time (that one is for you Rob W !)

For me that the campaigning soft left should have a cross pollination of ideas, and finding the grounds for cooperation areas on which we have common cause and can work together has to be a good thing.

You see here is the real kicker, and I know this pisses off the small “c” conservative Labour party dinosaurs, but UK politics is changing. Us in the party bubbles may still be incredibly tribal, we may see politics as urban warfare, black or white, us or them. But…. and it is a big but, increasingly the public are moving away from that. The public are becoming less tribal, the vote is fragmenting (an excellent take on this from the always excellent Next Left can be read here) and patterns of how people support parties is changing. And you know what barring something utterly miraculous that is going to continue to happen.

Irrespective of what happens in the AV referendum there are going to be more hung parliaments moving forward than we had become used to in the years leading up to 2010. If the Labour party is going to be able to succeed, win power, make real positive changes to peoples lives then we have to be able to find a way to look outward and work with others. For me the “soft left” in the Labour party really ought to be the engine of how this can happen. If the Labour party soft left in Compass cannot work with the Greens and left leaning Lib Dems how are we going to form a coalition if the next parliament is hung but Labour do better?

But despite thinking this I still voted no. Almost entirely as a tactical decision, because I think our politics at the moment is too tribal, too short-term-est, too blinkered. And I think too many people especially in the Labour party either don’t understand how voting behaviour is changing or are choosing to stick their fingers in their ears and pretend things are not going the way they are.

I worry that Compass opening up it’s membership just wont deliver the kind of open, dynamic progressive movement that will ensure that the next government has a progressive character in the event of a hung parliament (or even an outright labour win!). I must say I think the principle outcome is likely to be that Compass’ influence within Labour will be massively diminished.

And in the end this will harm Labour and the whole left wing progressive movement. One of the reasons I came back into the Labour party fold was that in Compass there was a successful campaigning body for the soft left that seemed to be changing Labour for the better. I imagine there are a fair few others like me. If opening up Compass means that good work stops being done then it is bad for Labour, bad for the Left and bad for the country.

I do ever so hope I am wrong.

I am massively in favour of voting reform, I think changing “the rules of the game” will have a massive impact on how the game is played. And a proper pluralism in our Party system, where different viewpoint currently kept out of things by our party oligarchies being involved would be a good thing. I think we need disenfranchised voices from the left, from the green, even from the eurosceptic right (though not to keen on them myself) involved more in our party discourse.

But irrespective of whether or not voting reform happens here are a couple of things that are possible (if a little improbable).

A Liberal Conservative Party or List?

It is an oft stated bit of truism that the moderates, and centrists in all of our parties tend to be more comfortable with each other, than with the opposite wings of their respective parties.

One interesting outcome of the Con/Dem pact will be if the Centre and the Left of the Tory Party, in addition to the Centre and the Right of the Lib Dem parties decide they are frankly more comfortable with, and closer to, each other than they are they are to the “extreme” wings of their own parties.

In truth there is probably not a great deal of ideological difference between the Lib Dem “Orange Book” faction and the so called “Notting Hill Set” in the Tory party. Further there are some common philosophical themes through the respective “Libertarian” wings of each party.

As to how it could happen I doubt there would be a dramatic “gang of four” moment with people setting off to form a new party. More probable would be if the coalition lasts until the next election some sort of a selective no competeagreement between the two parties to keep out Labour in key marginals and to increase the proportion of pro-coalition Mps in their respective parties.

I could imagine, that after the next election if no coalition is necessary that the Tory party may well invite a number of Lib Dems to cross the floor and take the Tory whip, boosting their numbers and changing the complexion of the Parliamentary Tory Party to one that would be more instinctively behind Cameron. How the right, particularly at in constituencies would react could be interesting! More on that later….

The Labour Right and the Lib Dem Left.

So in this scenario what happens to the Left of the Lib Dem party? Worth remembering that the Lib Dem party is a coalition themselves, the result of a merger between the Liberal party and the Social Democrat Party. Now the “Orange Book” faction that seem so cosy with the Tories at the moment comes very much more from the Classical Liberal party.

The SDP was essentially a splinter faction of the Labour Party, when the “Gang of Four” (Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen William Rodgers) left the Labour Party due to concerns about its shift to the left and in their eyes it’s un-democratic nature to form a new party of the Centre Left. After failing to dislodge Labour as the party of the left the Liberal and SDP parties merged.

Now the interesting thing is that the Gang of Four probably would not have left the party that Labour became, from the expulsion of the Militant tendency in the 80s, the structural reforms in Labour Party democracy to move closer to one man one vote, and the abolition of clause IV New Labour in many ways became the centrist party the SDP dreamed of.

I think it is probably fair to say that the Right of the Labour party would welcome the disaffected left of the Lib Dems with open arms. Now further if (and I consider this very improbable) the Labour party moves a long way to the left, and the Mandlesonian clique finds themselves marginalised I can see a situation where the Labour Party free marketers might want to come together with the left of the Lib Dems… We could see the SDP reborn!

Right Tory Elements and UKIP

So let’s just assume that the “Libservative” thing happens. Where does that leave the Tory hard right? Well already in lots of places Tory traditionalists and eurosceptics probably see more in common with UKIP than they do with the Cameroon Notting Hill faction. Norman Tebbit has frequently all but come out for UKIP, particularly during the Euro elections.

I think it is probably fair to say a big recasting of the Tory party in a much more liberal “one nation Tory” mode would be manna from heaven for UKIP in terms of defections from the Conservatives. Particularly if some sort of a “no compete” list actually happened, and local associations were disgruntled at having to effectively support a Liberal Democrat in an election.

What now for the Left.

Well since the modernisers in the Labour party came to the fore where Democratic Socialists and those to the left of them fall has been a tricky topic. The Diaspora of myriad left wing parties riddled by factionalism, petty jealousies and in fighting is as shocking as it is depressing.

By my count you have:-

Respect, The Socialist Party, The Socialist Workers Party, The Socialist Labour Party, The Communist Party, Workers Power, The Communist Party of Great Britain, and The Peoples Front of Judea…. no wait a second that last one is from a film!

Now assuming that Labour don’t move drastically to the left (and I am sure they won’t, the conclusion they will reach is that the problem wasn’t that they were new labour, it was that they weren’t new labour enough!) then where will the left coalesce?

My view is that it won’t be any of the infighting fracture groups who are surely doomed to remain a marginalised irrelevance. No I think the future of genuine left wing political groupings will be the Green Party.

Even a cursory glance at recent Green Party manifestos show how in many ways they have adopted the mantle of the disaffected left. They are pro Union, in favour of redistributive tax policies, strong on Labours biggest area of weakness Civil Liberties. And of course they are the strongest on what is going to IMHO increasingly become the rallying call of the left and how the left attracts new disciples… the environment.

Further the Party is a good “brand”, they are a credible nationally organised Party (now boasting a Member of Parliament), they appeal to young people and new voters, to different demographics. Also they poll well in local and European elections giving them a perfect platform to grow particularly if electoral reform ever happens. For the disaffected the left “The future is bright, the future is Green”.

I must say that I find the idea of the Greens attractive, though their crazy mental anti science stance means at least for now they are not for me. But this really is where the left has a chance of making a difference, the plethora of vanity project left wing parties are frankly a joke and will never achieve anything.

So there we have it, much this this will probably never happen but I reckon there is a possibility of some of it taking place.