Warning: amateur
political science below
Stewart Wood has a
well argued piece
in the New Statesman, saying that it was the move by left and right
towards a common centrism that laid the foundations for populism.
Although parts of his argument ring true, I find others less
convincing..Labour certainly moved to the centre and beyond in terms
of its economic policies. The Conservatives moved to the centre in
terms of social policy. But on economic policy, the Conservatives
moved strongly to the right with austerity. Senior Labour thinkers
still seem to have a blind spot on austerity.
Let me start by
looking at the country that now has populism in spades as a result of
electing Donald Trump as President. To argue that the Republican
party has been moving to the centre over the last 30 years is obvious
nonsense. The traditional centre right virtue of fiscal rectitude
went out of the door with Ronald Reagan, and was completely ignored
under the second Bush. The Republicans only extol the virtue of
cutting budget deficits when they are not in power. When they are in
power, they want cuts in taxes for the rich, increases in military
spending but cuts in other government programmes.
Margaret Thatcher
was considered pretty right wing when she was in power. Many of her
key achievement in terms of her own agenda, such as a diminished
union movement and shrinking the state through privatisation, were
not reversed by Blair and Brown. It is difficult to argue that the
Cameron/Osborne duo made any attempt to undo the Thatcher legacy.
Instead they tried to go beyond it, by shrinking the state to a size
relative to GDP not seen since the end of WWII. They did it under the
pretense that they were forced to because otherwise the markets would
no longer buy government debt. This was a colossal deceit. There no
evidence that markets were concerned about government debt, and
strong evidence that they were not. [1] This deceit should have
become clear when Osborne cut taxes at the same time as continuing to
cut spending.
Let me use a diagram
to illustrate what I mean. [2] (The vertical axis could also be labelled 'identity' as well as 'culture'.) No doubt we could discuss the detail
of the size and direction of the arrows, but I think this is roughly
right.
In the US, the
Republicans had moved steadily in a downward, socially conservative
right wing direction, whereas the broad church that are the Democrats have largely remained in
the same place (unless you go as far back as the southern Democrats). One possible argument is that this move by Republican
politicians helped create the Tea Party. Republicans have always
pretended their policies would help ordinary people, whereas in
reality they have helped a rich elite. This has laid the ground for a
populist leader who was prepared to move economic policy in certain
respects away from the right (in particular advocating
protectionism). The growing loss of respect of
Republicans for their party elite allowed voters to ignore the views
of senior Republican leaders in selecting Trump as their candidate.
In the UK David
Cameron moved the Conservatives to become much more liberal, by in
particular supporting gay marriage. (When I argued in an earlier post
that the Conservatives had moved to the right, I was surprised how
many comments I got back telling me this was nonsense, and naming gay
marriage as the main reason why.) In the UK this left a large gap in
this political space, which UKIP - the first successful mass party in
England since the SDP - filled. As Jonathan
Wheatley showed,
UKIP members are social conservatives, but are much more left wing
than the Conservatives in terms of economics.
Labour moved to the
right under Blair, while remaining socially liberal. I agree with
Stewart Wood that this alone was important in preparing the way for
populism. As well as the lack of a major industrial policy, they did
nothing to curb a rampant financial sector or reverse the gains of
the 1% that were a feature of the Thatcher period, a point emphasised
by Jean Pisani-Ferry in respect of both the UK and US. I think New Labour’s position is better
described as liberal rather than
neoliberal: New Labour substantially increased the amount of resources
(as a proportion of GDP) going to the NHS, and they also did a great
deal to try and reduce child poverty. Labour moved further right (and
more neoliberal) as they became more accommodating towards austerity.
It was hardly a surprise that party members tried to pull the party
back by electing Corbyn as leader.
As I argued here,
Brexit was a perfect storm where the economically left behind united
with social conservatives. With Labour no longer seen as representing
the working class, this allowed the right wing media (with the
support of the Conservatives) to help convince the left behind that
their problems were a consequence of immigration. The Leave campaign
was populist in the sense I describe here:
advocating a superficially attractive policy to some that would leave
everyone worse off. Much the same is true for Trump, who won the
electoral college by convincing the left behind that he really could
bring back their traditional jobs, something he will be unable to do
in any kind of general way.
So the idea of
growing centrism in the US makes no sense, yet it is they who have
just voted for a populist President. In the UK it only makes any kind
of sense if you think in one dimensional terms.
[1] This is
essentially because the Bank of England was pledged to buy whatever
it took in the way of government debt to keep interest rates low.
