Creating a Britain where everyone has a stake and everyone has a say

Guest Editorial

By Anthony Painter / @anthonypainter

“Both domestically and internationally capitalism needs to be moderated and constrained to serve wider social objectives.

What is striking is how many on the left of politics lack the confidence that that is possible, how much indeed they accept the assumptions of the right that competitiveness imposes severe external constraints. In the global arena, their lack on confidence is partially, but only partially justified; in the domestic arena in rich developed countries hardly at all.”

The quote is from the final chapter of Just Capital: the liberal economy by the current Chairman of the Financial Services Authority, Lord Adair Turner. His suggestion that some form of transactions tax- a Tobin tax- should be introduced was not the most interesting aspect of his contribution to a Prospect Magazine round-table discussion on global finance. It was rather his concern with the social utility of the UK’s obese financial sector.

Number 10 and HM Treasury waved away the notion that the financial sector may be over-weaning and over-powerful and came out with the familiar riposte that a Tobin tax is impractical. It is not clear that it is at all: most financial transactions take place in regulated and transparent markets. This quote from 2001 would seem to be portentous.

What is indisputable is that playing host- and merely hosting is what we do if footloosers such as Boris Johnson are to be believed- to a large financial services sector has created immense economic, fiscal, and, consequently, social costs for the UK. Surely it is worth engaging in a discussion? How do we subordinate the City to social ends rather than vice versa?

But everything is upside down nowadays. How else can we explain the notion that the Conservatives are the party of progressive change? With ever greater audacity, the party appears to claim that has always been the case in this viral video:

Audacity does not equate to credibility. I’d grant you Robert Peel- with the exception of Catholic emancipation. The Duke of Wellington? Nonsense (with the exception of Catholic emancipation.) Stanley Baldwin, possibly and Harold MacMillan, almost certainly. The rest? Absolutely not. The notion that Margaret Thatcher was a progressive is laughable. As argued a couple of weeks ago, they are reformists not progressives.

Reform can serve a variety of ends- efficiency, productivity, fairness, liberty, and so on. Progress- as a political approach- serves a singular end: social justice. If it doesn’t mean that then it means nothing and let’s just ditch it as a term.

Out of this swirl of shifting meaning and hacked history where Chairmen of financial regulators can appear to the left of Labour politicians and the Conservatives can lay claim to be the party of progress, where can the modern left find a new and sturdy home?

LabourList has kindly asked me to guest edit the site for the next few days and this is the question that will be considered. Compass, Open Left, the Fabian’s Next Left and Progress are all making significant contributions to the debate in their own ways as are so many others and as we enter conference season- the last before the general election- LabourList will continue to be a place for this discussion to continue.

I have invited a number of thinkers, activists and writers across the left to consider a series of themes: (i) Building a Britain where everyone has stake and has a say; (ii) Creating a greener, more liberal party; (iii) Assembling a movement based party.

The left must be about giving power to those who have little, creating opportunity where there is obstacle, and securing a Britain which affords each of its citizens the capability to touch the outer reaches of their talents. In short, it must be a Britain where everyone has a stake and everyone has say.

Furthermore, the party itself must change. Social, economic and political reform proceed in tandem. To convince that we mean business about further political change Labour must demonstrate that it can change itself. It is becoming greener thank to the work of Ed Miliband at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. That should be encouraged further.

The balance between liberty and security has been challenged over the last decade and a half as never before- through a baying media demanding an increasingly though often ineffectively punitive penal policy and the reality of terrorist attacks. It is not clear that the right balance, one that protects individual liberties while ensuring community safety, has been struck.

But underneath all this have been calls for a different type of party: a movement based party. There will be a discussion of this also. The debate over primaries has been sucked into this. However, building a different type of party is, in many ways, a separate discussion.

So these are confusing times. It still means something to be on the left. It means something to be progressive. It means something to argue for a more socially just Britain. It means something to be Labour. Over the next few days, there will be an opportunity to explore all of this and I look forward to seeing where it leads.

Do you want to submit an article covering one of the themes mentioned above? Please email me: anthonypainter AT yahoo.co.uk