This week’s eruption of the new Independent Group in parliament has been caused in part by the toxic culture that has taken hold within each of the established parties. Bullying, intimidation and racism – covert and overt – have already persuaded 11 MPs to jump ship, probably to be followed by more in due course. But if they are to gain a permanent foothold in British politics, they will need to morph into a more normal party, and establish policies that distinguish them from Labour and the Conservatives. What policies might appeal to both social democrats and liberal conservatives alike?
Start with this: the stale brand of politics practised on both frontbenches is inherently conservative. It looks back to a mythic past that never was and never could have been. Tories increasingly look askance at the liberal, open and cosmopolitan Britain that is emerging: many of them want to shut off the world, raise our borders, reduce immigration, insist on social modes and mores that went out of fashion decades ago. Labour now seems like something of a 1970s tribute band, champing at the bit to nationalise the public utilities, re-establish a ministry of labour, bring back sectoral wage bargaining and repeal most of the Trade Union Acts. Each of these pasts is a deeply nostalgic vision of a Britain that is not coming back, however much governments huff and puff.
The implication for any new party is that it must seek to give people a sense of hope, a sense of a future, without relying on big-picture statist solutions that will quickly wear out after they have won a few headlines. Yes, a majority of the public want rail and water nationalisation – and those policies may well be sensible in themselves. But when you probe further, people are nowhere near so sold on the deeper and wider economic controls that a big Labour majority or an economic crisis would involve – effectively nationalising some share options, for instance, or exchange controls to deal with a run on the pound.
One thing a new party can agree on is a close relationship with the European Union – if Britain has already left, perhaps membership of the European Economic Area via a European Free Trade Association-style route. Although this means accepting freedom of movement (hedged around with some qualifications about coming to Britain to work), complete alignment with the single market avoids the fantasies conjured up by Tories and Labour, and would allow the UK one day to rejoin the EU if voters wished. That overarching commitment to the single market will also presumably be something that social democrats and liberal conservatives can agree on – vital in the weeks to come, which will inevitably be full of stories about policy differences.
The next thing the new party can do is to exchange the language of “fairness” for concrete examples of more flexible, meaningful and workable ideas. No one believes a word of the Conservatives’ or Labour’s public spending figures any more: a realistic approach to necessary reforms would speak to the public as if they are adults, and here some elements of the Conservatives’ and Liberal Democrats’ approach could be adopted. Take my own patch in English higher education. Abolishing fees altogether would be expensive, and likely to become more so over the next parliament as the numbers of 18-year-olds grow, and unlikely (as in the Scottish experience) to do much to widen access. Bringing back full living grants would be much cheaper, and would do much more to persuade young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to do a degree by dealing with their major problem: upfront costs.
At the same time, the very painful cuts that have been borne by local government should be eased immediately. If the funding for that change has to come from the budgets of core services, or rather more borrowing, then so be it. The ramshackle state of many local public services, whether it be libraries, social care, roads or even public toilets – the real stuff of life – could be reversed or at least ameliorated for much less than it would cost to abolish university tuition fees.
There is nowhere near enough focus in our political system on the havoc these cuts are wreaking on everyday lives. Instead, politicians focus on schools and hospitals – an easy appeal, but a snare when their admittedly tight funding settlements have been nowhere near as savage as those faced by services that should wrap around and protect them: elderly care and youth services being two prime examples.
Elsewhere, a new party can take a page out of Labour’s book, and think about co-operatising and democratising local government and public utilities – as indeed some of the best of Labour’s new economics has hinted at. Instead of nationalising train companies per se, central government should take public interest shares in them to gain the benefits of forward planning without the day-to-day business of management. Local and regional government should at last be freed to borrow and invest in both these businesses and their own metro lines and fast bus services.
Britain’s productivity is lagging. Its image is poor. Its politics is in disarray. It needs solutions that are neither Little England nor Big Government. If it combines a sensible approach to public spending priorities, an understanding of the local and the concrete, and allows cities rather than the central state to spend, it can start to recover. There is no time like the present.
• Glen O’Hara is professor of modern and contemporary history at Oxford Brookes University and author of Governing Post-War Britain: The Paradoxes of Progress, 1951-1973
