All political projects carry within them the seeds of their own destruction. Contradictions, paradoxes and limitations are hardwired through the context and conditions of their creation. An endpoint is built in at birth. After Keir Starmer’s announcement that Jeremy Corbyn will not be allowed to stand as a Labour candidate at the next election – the leader’s latest shut-up-or-ship-out message to the party’s left – the lifeline of any incoming Labour or Labour-led government has been shortened, perhaps dramatically.
This is not about support for Corbynism or leftwing ideas per se. Instead, it is to argue that in an age of increasing complexity, chaos and confusion any political project must have an agility, nimbleness and fluidity that allows it to forge ever-changing intellectual and movement alliances. Pragmatic politics is now defined by openness – not the closure of debate he has called for with a legitimate, though some would say misguided, wing of his party.
The argument Starmer is making seems to be this: shut up, let us get into government and we will pull the policy levers because we know what’s best for you.
Of course, we know why he’s making it. Like Tony Blair, he believes the only route to office is by proving to the already powerful in the media and the City that Labour will not rock their boat. But unless their growth and greed boat is rocked, Labour is doomed to fail. The real question is how cleverly and effectively we rock that boat and over what time period? To do so requires the skills and the culture Starmer is turning his back on.
In the 1950s, the psychiatrist and cyberneticist W Ross Ashby devised the Law of Requisite Variety, which stated that any body or organisation can only be effectively governed by a system that is equally complex. Simple organisations can be governed in simple ways, but a complex society such as ours demands complex systems of governance.
Because we know what happens when any leader says “it’s my way or the highway”: they sign their own death warrant. The demand for obedience is the opposite of the feedback, challenge, creativity and innovation that successful modern politics demands. Withdrawing into a corner and defining anyone who fails to support you as an enemy just narrows the scope of your own vision and capacity to act. Most leaders end up on their own, few start there.
The Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci said there is always at least a grain of truth in your opponent’s argument. Starmer would be better listening to the left and synthesising any useful elements of its critique into a more robust and less brittle project. This is a politics of possibility because it is dynamic and not static: a politics based on the key ingredient of successful leadership – the ability to listen. In the 21st century, effective and enduring leadership is defined not by arrogant “get with it or get out of it” chest-beating, but by the careful curation of ideas, talent and networks: a new radical consensus, not dull conformity.
To be fair to Starmer, his purge of the left is simply a more thorough and better organised version of what has gone before. The left under Corbyn promised deselections but never got round to them, while Blairism extinguished the left as much through ridicule as through the rulebook.
Of course, the Conservative and now – minus Nicola Sturgeon – a possible SNP implosion could well see Starmer fall over the line first, but then what? Without roots in ideas and social energy, without the ability to renew and regenerate itself intellectually and culturally, his project will wither. The question is how fast and what will fill the vacuum?
The idea that one small faction of one party can rule the chaotic waves of the 21st century is a non-starter. Neither Starmer nor anyone else is going to impose a better future on us; that can only be negotiated by all of us. For that to happen in our country, the skills and the tools have to be honed within the Labour party first.
Neal Lawson is director of the cross-party campaign organisation Compass
