Radicals? Who’s radical?

By Vincenzo Rampulla

Paul Richards has highlighted some critical dangers that could pose huge problems for Labour if Cameron et al ever get into government. But one of the greatest long-term dangers David Cameron poses to the left is this: he is out to steal our language. He has spent the last couple of years painstakingly talking about the Conservatives as being the party that naturally cares about solving poverty, being political progressive and, most destructively for the left, has a naturally radical attitude to politics:

“…the Conservative Party has a radical agenda for returning power and responsibility to people.”

“We will be radical reformers”.

“I’m going to be as radical a social reformer as Mrs Thatcher was an economic reformer, and radical social reform is what this country needs right now.”

So it is this last bit of linguistic theft, the radical attitude part, that I want to concentrate on because it is the one that changes a party with good ideas into a popular movement with a true political project.

Now, I accept that in the run-up to an election all modern political parties try to paint themselves as ‘truly radical’. The term is a sine qua non for a party looking to set the tone of public debate and take the reins of government. But why should we seek to take back the title of ‘a radical party’? If you listen to Lord Giddens – one of the architects of New Labour’s political attitude – talk about radical politics you hear him talk about its attractiveness as stemming from a public desire for transformation towards something better. It conveys a utopianism about what future we can achieve as a society. All of that sounds more like Labour than Tory to me.

A truly radical attitude in politics needs to both capture the popular mood and stand in opposition to established power. One thing that the left does well is challenge itself, even when it is the established government! At a Q&A session this week for young Labour supporters, I was amazed about how willing the young audience was to challenge the Foreign Secretary on a whole range of issues and demand better answers to the questions that they cared about.

But are the Conservatives really a radical party?

James Crabtree over at Prospect magazine has been analysing the Tory leader’s recent speeches for clues as to whether Cameron is actually having ‘radical ideas’, here and again here. While he is open to the idea, I’m not convinced that the answer is yes. If the Conservatives think they are a radical party, then the critical problem is that it is only in the context of their own party. In contrast to the national mood they are still playing catch-up.

Do I have any specific reasons why I think that Cameron isn’t a real radical? Well…

1. There is no honest purpose to his politics.

Radical politics need a vision – but what vision have the Conservatives set out for our country? Cameron has made speech after speech setting out what he thinks is wrong with Britain. But not within a context of a distinctive vision of Britain he would like to see. It isn’t clever to simply rattle back what he thinks is wrong with the country gathered from focus groups with the public. Those speeches aren’t a substitute to a coherent vision and policies. When he does dip his toes in trying to give political vision he fails to inspire. So when Cameron talks about “…a new politics of openness, accountability and power to people”, I feel angry because that doesn’t tell me anything about what kind of world we’d be living in after a Conservative government. For someone supposedly interested in innovation, he consistently fails to bring anything genuinely new to the table.

2. The Conservatives are behind the public when it comes to change.

Part of being radical is leadership. So far the Tories have only just gotten to grips with admitting that poverty, inequality and a lack of individual aspiration are issues that government and the state have a role in solving. But what good is a government that is constantly playing catch-up with the public? Even worse, a party whose main task is convincing its own backbenchers of their party’s priorities.

Labour’s enduring success has been to nurture a society more sensitive to injustice, more passionate about equality and more at home with working together to tackle our shared problems. The latest Social Attitudes Survey pointed out that two-thirds of the public think the government has a responsibility to reduce the income differential between rich and poor. Yet public debate in the media and amongst our politicians ignores that fact. Only 8% think that we should reduce taxes and spend less on health, education and social services. The headlines from the survey’s publication were that the country were more Conservative than ever, but isn’t the real story just how left-leaning the public is on the issues? How can the Conservatives claim to be radical if they are desperately trying to catch up with a more left-leaning public.

3. Radical is first and foremost an attitude.

When Cameron tries to lay out his radical credentials he still sounds conservative. When he talked earlier this week about a Conservative government encouraging worker co-operatives in the health or education services as a radical idea for public services it sounded hollow. Alex Baker at the FT points out just how many practical problems there are with the idea. Contrast that with the vision for a co-operative model to local government Labour controlled Lambeth has put forward. By considering engagement in local government and services as a root and branch problem that needs a solution, Lambeth have come up with a diverse and rich range radical proposals. This difference seems to be that Lambeth had a problem they wanted to solve, they weren’t just trying to use the word ‘co-ops’ in a policy presentation.

Another example is the speech Cameron gave to a TED conference. He used the speech to propose publishing details of government contracts over £25,000 as a sign of radically transparent government. He made it sound like he was changing the world. But it isn’t really a radical idea. Using technology to increase information and knowledge is right, it is sensible, it is good governance, but it isn’t radical.

A real radical suggestion would be to judge all government contracts against proper ‘triple bottom line‘ criteria so that companies only win contracts if give the best value against ‘people, planet and profit’ criteria. Actually we could go further, how about explicitly favouring organisations that utilise social enterprises, co-operatives, charity as alternative models of doing business to provide the services we want to pay for. That way we could encourage more stakeholder forms of business, encourage more entrepreneurship and give people the opportunity to gain a stake in the communities they work in.

Weeks away from a general election, this could seem like nit-picking. So what if a party wants to be known as ‘radical’? Voters care about taxes, jobs and services. But as Alex has pointed out, this Saturday Labour will unveil its key themes for the general election. But more importantly the manifesto will follow soon after.

Anyone spending time of the doorstep will recognise that people like to hear about all the great things Labour has done in government but the question always comes back: “But that’s what you did for me last time I voted for you, what are you going to achieve if I vote for you this time?”

For that reason alone, a radical manifesto could give us the opportunity to change the choice in this election. Labour must move away from our image of a ‘plumber government’ – politicians that think about tinkering with the machine, making small changes that fix leaks – to an ‘architect government’, redesigning government and society from the ground up so it works for us and not itself. And that has got to be done with manifesto pledges that promise nothing less than a transformation of our society for the better. We need a truly radical programme for government.

It was the popular programme for radical government that got Labour over the line in 1997. It was that attitude that gave us everything we are proud of during these years of a Labour government. It is that radical attitude that we need to win again.