A New Politics: Promises and Premises

A New Politics: Promises and Premises

Paul Thompson: New Politics Doesn’t Just Mean Proportional Representation

The promise to usher in a ?new politics? is one of the oldest moves in the electoral book. It trades on voter skepticism and windy rhetoric about change. As Martin Bright charts (and celebrates?) elsewhere on Arguing the World, this clarion call has increasing numbers of media types and intellectuals switching their support to the Liberal Democrats in the UK election.

In this case the ?new politics? really boils down to electoral reform and some kind of proportional representation. Without it, the Liberal Democrats are unlikely to be able to enter government, albeit as coalition partners. Now, I?m in favor of proportional representation, and we have two versions of it already in Scotland, where I live?the local election version levered out of Labour by the Lib Dems as the price for the last coalition.

But while we have a greater variety of players in the electoral process, there is little sign of a new politics. Of equal significance, there is no sign of it in the local councils run by the Lib Dems on their own (such as my original home city of Liverpool) or in coalition, almost always with the Tories. What we do get is a lot of cuts and contracting out of services. All this seems to have largely passed our naïve bandwagon jumpers by.

If I seem a little skeptical on such matters, it?s partly informed by the experience of New Labour. While I?ve never been a Trot, the old slogan ?Vote Labour with no illusions? has always struck me as apposite. Anyone who had read and interacted with Blair and co. prior to the landslide victory in 1997 could not have expected radical policies, particularly on the economy. Looking back, if I had any illusions, it was that we would get some of the promised ?new politics.? And we did get some, notably devolution to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly.

But promises of a new pluralist, participatory politics and more concretely, a referendum on electoral reform, quickly vanished in the mists of the massive majority. Within a few years, New Labour was synonymous with a culture of cynical spin and hype, top-down targets in public services and a political machine that cut out party and public (other than bankers) from any influence. All this took its toll in terms of diminished trust. In the 2001 election, there was a historic low turnout of 59 percent, but under the first past the post system a vote share of 42 percent resulted in a 167 seat majority. In 2005, the turnout was still low at 62 percent and Labour had achieved a majority of 67 seats on a vote share of 36 percent. In between, there was Iraq in which the public was systematically lied to and then ignored.

This week, Gordon Brown has been trying to convince us that he wants ?a new way of doing politics,? including a referendum on electoral reform and an elected House of Lords. Too little, too late and too discordant with peoples? experience of Labour. For example, the party had 13 years, huge majorities and three governments to produce an elected second chamber. Result: nothing.

After the 2001 election, I wrote (with Neal Lawson) in an editorial of the Renewal journal that, ?We cannot rely on the Tories remaining the stupid party. And we should not underestimate the potential for a more confident Liberal Democrat Party to build on its success and outflank us on the left.?

It took us a while, but we are now at that point. Most progressives will, rightly, vote tactically to maximize the Labour and Liberal Democrat votes at the expense of the Conservatives. But the entry of the latter into the governing game, either through the existing or a proportional representation system, is not enough for a new politics. Political pluralism and transformation of the power structures requires coalitions of people and ideas in civil society as well as the state.