A Labour Movement? Really?
This article was originally published by LabourList on 16th November 2011 . “You have got to stop seeing political parties as the engines of social change.” Colin Crouch, a lefty professor of governance and public management, said this a few weeks ago at a seminar hosted by Policy Network to mark the publishing of his nicely-titled new book, The Strange Non-Death of Neo-Liberalism. One of his arguments at the seminar and in the book is that political parties cannot take on major concentrations of power (which we now know as “The Vested Interests”), cannot take on big ideas, and are also always necessarily beholden to “public opinion”. At the event, he said, “You have got to create a public opinion for them [parties] to follow”, articulating a vision that only civil society groups like charities and voluntary organisations can lead the challenge to unaccountable concentrations of power. Professor Crouch’s argument holds some force, no doubt. We can see that from r...