A Free Left Blog

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...

This article was originally published by LabourList on 20th August 2011. “The buyin’ power of the proletariat’s gone down/ Money’s gettin’ shallow and weak/ The place I love best is a sweet memory/ It’s a new path that we trod/ They say low wages are a reality/ If we want to compete abroad.” These words, from the Bob Dylan song Workingman’s Blues off his Modern Times album of 2006, pretty much encapsulate where all peoples stand now as our governments compete to bring jobs and prosperity to our various nations. They also tap into the dilemmas, debates and despair of the Left. Our passions and desires for a better world seem almost beaten into submission by these very old but now turbocharged processes in which mobile capital dictates how the world is changed and people must either play along or find themselves outsiders: liberated but alienated. To their credit, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and other New Labour figures saw these dynamics, developed a narrative to ad...

This article was originally published on LabourList on 15th March 2011. Freedom and democracy are not things that the Labour Party does altogether well. The party leadership election and Tower Hamlets mayoral contest represent the tip of an iceberg of dissatisfaction and anger for many members concerning internal democratic processes. As for freedom, the word barely gets a look-in in Labour circles except when talking of foreign countries. In the Labour Party, we are not alone in this. Britain as a whole is in something of a rut when it comes to democracy. Participation in elections and in political parties is way down over time, and faith in democratic politics badly damaged. When it comes to freedom, many of us take for granted basic freedoms of thought, speech, conscience and movement. On the liberal-left, the political wind has blown in some mysterious ways, to the extent that some self-styled liberals have developed an alarming tendency to aggressively shout do...

This article was originally published on LabourList on 22nd December 2010. Turn on your TV to watch one of our many popular nature programmes and you are more than likely to hear sad tales of wildlife in decline alongside the footage of furry badgers and funny penguins. In the more outspoken accounts the presenters will issue heartfelt pleas about how “we” need to change our ways if species are to be preserved. Government, politics and the world economic system will not be mentioned. But while the producers and presenters of these programmes are restricted in what they can say by rules on political impartiality, politicians seem to be bound by a code of silence on the environment. It is a curious state of affairs when our politicians have so little to say about huge changes that are taking place, in the face of overwhelming evidence. According to the WWF and Zoological Society of London’s Living Planet report, populations of vertebrate species (like mammals and fish)...

This article was originally published on LabourList on 24th October 2010. Immigration is a touchy subject in Britain, and especially on the liberal-left. Ed Miliband admitted in his recent [2010] conference speech that it had been an important issue in the general election – and we only have to remember Gillian Duffy to see how Labour had lost touch with ordinary folk. Nevertheless many people on the liberal-left remain in denial about it, struggling to reconcile strong internationalist and anti-racist instincts with the increased levels of migration that have come with globalisation and global population growth. The liberal-left and Britain as a whole has much to be proud of for its record of accepting and integrating refugees and immigrants, albeit with a few bumps along the road. But it is now time for the language to change to one in which, as Ed’s brother David said during Labour’s leadership hustings, immigration as an issue is decoupled from race. It is time to ...

A Free Left Blog will hopefully be just that. My aim in setting it up is to explore in one place how the political and cultural Left remains constrained by old ways which often serve to reduce human freedom. Also, of course, I will look to put forward some better ways. What especially interests me is the censoriousness and opinion control that is so pervasive on my side of the political fence. It seems that, far from being a free-minded and free-thinking Left, we are stuck in a denuded, conformist and also rather boring rut. I believe the Left should be generous and welcoming, open and tolerant, but also committed and ethical in the way it behaves. I am against ideologies like neoliberalism and ‘Vulgar’ Marxism, and also some of the forms that have emerged around the politics of identity, including strictly deterministic versions of feminism. Ideologies like these offer simplistic, all-encompassing explanations about the way the world is while setting different groups in soci...