You have to admire his cheek. When Gordon Brown stood up at the Commonwealth Club to bemoan the collapse of engagement with conventional politics, he omitted to mention the one phenomenon which has dominated the British parliamentary scene during that time: new Labour. Brown’s back-to-school speech promised a “new politics”, without once mentioning the central role the man delivering the speech had played in the old politics.
Old and new are confusing concepts here. In talking about the “new” politics, Brown clearly does not mean to dismiss everything associated with the “old” politics of “new” Labour. Rather his intention is to draw a veil over a past associated with Tony Blair, while heading off David Cameron’s claims to the future. There is more than a passing suspicion that Brown’s brand of consensus politics imagines Labour not just as the natural party of government, but, as the Blairite columnist Rachel Sylvester noted in the Daily Telegraph, the only party of government. There is nothing particularly novel about the concept of the one-party state, although admittedly it has not been tried in Britain since the time of Cromwell, Britain’s last great Puritan leader.
Nor were the specific measures outlined in Brown’s speech (citizens’ juries, standing parliamentary commissions and a Speaker’s conference on the constitution) especially ground-breaking. As the Prime Minister himself noted, Speaker’s conferences, for which the whole House meets, were a regular part of parliamentary politics in the 19th century. Taken at face value, any new measure to increase public involvement in decision-making should be welcomed, but the Labour government’s record is not good. Two examples spring to mind: the disastrous Preventing Extremism Together task force, set up in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 7 July 2005 and the citizens’ juries set up to discuss the future of the NHS under Patricia Hewitt. In each case the opinion of stakeholders was sought and then ignored. Brown has now pledged to consult citizens’ juries on issues relating to children, on crime and again on the NHS. It will be interesting to see what happens if they tell the government some unpalatable truths. What if they decide target-driven reforms in education and health have been a failure? What if they show that the public is unconvinced by the private finance initiatives used to rebuild hospitals and schools across the country? Will this stop Brown in his tracks? Somehow I doubt it.
There is a paradox at the heart of the Prime Minister’s rhetoric, which makes him unconvincing as a fresh-faced frontman for the new politics. It is all very well calling for an end to top-down politics, but the top is not the ideal place to call for it. Such a change in the way people think about political engagement cannot be imposed by central government.
Brown may not know it, but that shift is already happening. Present at the Commonwealth Club event was Catherine Howarth, of the campaign group London Citizens, which has transformed the way the public gets involved in grass-roots politics. Howarth’s group is part of a wider “citizen organising” movement that forges alliances between churches, faith groups, trade unions and single-issue campaign groups. It recently camped outside City Hall in London to demonstrate for more affordable housing and led campaigns for migrant rights and a “living wage” for Londoners. Its genuinely consultative model of local politics is something a Brown government would do well to learn from. There is a sense that even that most conservative of institutions, the British Labour Party, is beginning to get the message. Jon Cruddas’s deputy leadership campaign was influenced by the work of the citizen organisers and the increasingly influential centre-left Compass group also has close links to London Citizens.
On 8 September, the Fabian Society is holding a “Democracy Day”, in partnership with this magazine, to discuss how to address the collapse of political engagement. This followed on from an impressive Fabian publication, Facing Out, which argues that conventional political parties should learn from the popularity of campaigns on climate change and global poverty to reinvigorate local constituency activism.
Ideas-fest
Meanwhile, Involve, an organisation committed to increasing political participation, appears to be ahead of the PM’s thinking. In response to Brown’s speech, the Involve director, Richard Wilson, pointed out that the government already held citizens’ “summits” of about a thousand people on climate change, pensions reform and health care and smaller citizens’ jury events on nanotechnology, recycling and “respect”. In his view, these are already a well-established institution. A new politics will be forged, he suggests, only when citizens believe they are influencing policy, not merely acting as glorified focus groups for civil servants. (I would like to hear from readers about their experiences of the “new politics”. Email me at: martin@newstatesman.co.uk.)
As Brown prepares for his first conference as leader, he has every reason to be optimistic. The polls are largely good (even if the “bounce” appears to be weakening) and his party is united behind him. And, more importantly, the left is brimming with new thinking for the first time in years.
There are already signs that a political coalition is developing around Brown far wider than anything Blair could have imagined. Even in the anarchy of cyberspace, progressive bloggers are beginning to coalesce around a left-liberal consensus beyond the divisions caused by the Iraq War. There is a growing excitement, for instance, around the idea of a “super-blog”, first mooted by Sunny Hundal of the Asian website Pickled Politics, to promote ideas that will help keep the Tories out of power at the next election.
There are signs that a new politics is beginning to emerge, but if it is to flourish Brown must resist the belief that he and his small coterie of advisers have all the answers. There is nothing more likely to turn people off from political engagement than a prime minister telling them to get involved.
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