Mrs Duffy and the “Liberal moment”

By Anthony Painter /@anthonypainter

It is very dangerous to make assumptions about anyone in this modern kaleidoscopic world. But I’m going to stick my neck out and guess that Gillian Duffy doesn’t read the Guardian. Apologies to Mrs Duffy in advance if I’ve got it wrong. If I’m right then she would be utterly perplexed by its leader this morning. The problem for the left now is that it is not just split between two parties. It is split between two worlds. One is the Guardian’s world – professional, comfortable in many ways, idealistic, individualistic, convulsive, rational, modern, and, yes, elitist. The other is Mrs Duffy’s – traditional, precarious, in search of security and certainty, emotional, nostalgic, rooted, and plain-spoken.

These is an element of caricature to this of course. But the point is an important one. It shows why – in my view – the Guardian has got it horrendously wrong with its headline celebrating a ‘liberal moment’ this morning. This isn’t a ‘liberal moment.’ It is a moment when a latent liberalism – suppressed by the political system – has again found its expression in the context of a struggling Labour Party. It happened in 1983. It is happening again but for very different contingent reasons. Labour is not paying the price for extremism; it is paying the price for failing to keep pace – in style and substance – with a changed society.

But there is an important reason for not seeing this as a ‘liberal moment.’ There is underlying political rupture on the left of British politics – papered over in good years but exposed in the bad. The complacent and wishful response is to see Labour and the Liberal Democrats as different choices on a progressive menu but ultimately the same cuisine; Liberal Democrats are doing so well because Labour is the incumbent and rather tired but normal business will be resumed soon. I really wish that was the case, I just don’t see it that way.

Actually, the left in this country is divided between labourism and liberalism (or ‘progressivism’ if you must.) And they are different world views generalised (unsatisfactorily, admittedly) by the Mrs Duffy v The Guardian shorthand. What binds them is the conviction that freedom is about empowerment not laissez faire, without equality people cannot be free, and some form of state or collective intervention is needed for people to be equal and free. Labourism and liberalism do not neatly divide between the Labour and Liberal Democratic parties. Labour is a broader church of world views and philosophies than the Liberal Democrats. That has been the source of its strength and why it has governed for 30 of the last 65 years. This election has cleaved liberals away from the Labour Party (in the way that many of a labourist disposition walked away from the party in its early years in office.)

Let me illustrate what this means in practice in terms of the ability of a party (mainly) of the left – Labour or Liberal Democrat – to construct a winning majority. New Labour’s great success was finding a strategy to unite the liberal and labour elements of the British left. This is not to suggest that a New Labour strategy would be successful today – I don’t believe it would be but in terms of coalition building it illustrates how the left gets to sustain a governing coalition for 13 years.

Now taking a recent opinion poll that is fairly close to the poll of polls, let’s see who is supporting Labour and Liberal Democrats respectively in this election. The recent Times/Populus poll had top lines of Conservative 36%, Liberal Democrat 28% and Labour 27%. Let’s look at the socio-economic/age profile of Labour v Liberal Democrat supporters in that poll:

Liberal Democrat supporters are, in general, younger and more middle/professional class than Labour supporters. Labour has 6% higher support amongst DE voters than it does amongst AB voters. Liberal Democrats have 7% more support amongst AB voters than DE voters. Labour has almost the same level of support amongst those aged 65+ as it does amongst those aged 18-24. The Liberal Democrats have 11% more support amongst 18-24 year olds compared with those 65+. They score especially highly amongst 25-44 year olds.

And this is the key point, what this election has done in a way that hasn’t previously happened – even in the aftermath of the Iraq War – is that the Guardianrati is becoming separated from the Duffyprols. Labourism is becoming severed from liberalism. The strange thing about the curious case of Mrs Duffy is that the Prime Minister expressed a liberal elitist view when he referred to her as a ‘bigot.’ And yet he is not a liberal elitist which leads me to think that he did genuinely mishear or misunderstand her. What was absolutely clear was her shock when she was told that she had been described as a bigot because she was expressing what seems to her a perfectly reasonable set of arguments. Did you think so? Well, if you think that Mrs Duffy is a bigot then that may say as much about your cultural and ideological perspective as it does about hers (for the record, I do not believe what she said was ‘bigoted’ in and of itself.)

One of the issues touched on in The Guardian today was the equalities agenda. Putting aside its virtue or otherwise, it is a wedge issue between the Guardianrati and the Duffyprols. Looking through British Social Attitudes data, there is a question: ‘do you think there is generally more racial prejudice in Britain now than there was five years ago, less, or the same amount?’ 33% answered more in 2000. In 2001, this became 50%. In 2007, the figure had become 57%. According to a recent YouGov poll 40% of voters consider that white people suffer unfair discrimination in Britain compared with 19% who say the same of non-white people. Surprised by this? I was but it displays what is actually happening in terms of real attitudes rather than a projectin of our own attitudes onto others.

I’m sorry if there are tough messages here. Immigration and welfare dependency are other such issues. My point is not to argue which perspective is right or wrong (you will see my views on an amnesty for illegal immigrants in yesterday’s blogpost, for instance.) My point is that the left in British politics is socially, culturally and now politically polarised. The risk – a very major risk – is that Labour fails to reclaim liberals and Liberal Democrats fail to attract labourites. In the absence of a more pluralistic political system, this would be a disaster.

So my issue with the Guardian’s leader – well argued in its analysis of the three parties in the main – is very basic. In describing this election as a ‘liberal moment’ it completely misses the fundamental nature of what is happening: if anything, and if it goes well, this will be a pluralistic moment. And that is why, as a pluralist (a labourite pluralist) I do not wish to see tactical voting anymore (it will break down anyway – the Liberal vote is predominantly anti-Tory and anti-Labour.) Let’s vote for what we believe in. Let’s show this system up to be the dog that it is. Let’s create a forcible moral argument for change.

But let’s not pretend that we are in a ‘liberal moment’ or that there is a magical progressive consensus just waiting to be wished into existence. And Nick Clegg’s assertion this morning that the Liberal Democrats have taken Labour’s place in politics was on a par with David Miliband’s assertion that support for the Liberal Democrats was all about anti-politics in the race for stupidest thing said in the election. The Guardian has been impressed with Liberal Democrats and is dismayed with Labour so it endorses Nick Clegg. Fine. I understand that. But it’s not a ‘liberal moment’. It could be a pluralist moment. Or it could be the onset of a new era of a fatally divided left.

What The Guardian did have absolutely right is the centrality of political reform in deciding which way things will go. A fairer Britain, a just Britain, depends on a more democratic and pluralistic politics – especially given the increasingly fragmented nature of the left. It’s not that our politics is ‘old fashioned.’ It’s that it no longer suits the type of society Britain has become. If both Mrs Duffy and liberal progressives are to both have their voice then reform is a bottom line. It’s not an end in itself. It’s the means to a better, fairer Britain.

This post was also published at Anthony’s blog.