The disorganised left

Left or right?By Emma Burnell / @scarletstand

This column is not going to make me popular. It’s not going to make the people with whom I most often agree politically feel happy. It might even raise a timid smile to lips of the members of the Labour Party I spend too much of my time disagreeing with. The problem is that it’s true. It’s a painful but unavoidable truth that needs facing and needs addressing.

The left are not very good at long-term organising, and achieving results through the implementation of agreed long term strategic plans and a focus on long term goals.

I consider myself as being on the left of the country and in the middle of the party. I try to think honestly about what the balance of any policy I promote is between what I believe is the right solution and what I believe will be a solution that can be made acceptable to the country. Sometimes it is perfectly possible to sell radical ideas if you can make them relevant to real people. If you can’t, if you only see your relevance through the prism of party politics – whether that’s undermining the leader from the right or playing fantasy politics on the left – then you will not convince anyone beyond your immediate circle.

Having those who agree with you nod vigorously at your latest blog post is a great feeling. But ultimately it won’t even change the mind of a party member, never mind have an ordinary member of the public look again at Labour.

Sadly too often the audience for those who write and campaign from the left is their fellow lefties. Too often the left have allowed short term tactics to override the need for long term strategy. For me this was again crystallised by the response to Ed Miliband’s speech on Monday. Ok, some of the advance spin was a bit Mail-pleasing, but the speech was not a sop to the hard right. It is not hard right to want as few people on benefits as possible. It is only hard right to abandon people. I didn’t hear a speech about abandonment, but a speech about empowerment. A speech in which it would have been just as possible to infer the leftist goal of full employment as it was to infer a demonization of people on benefits. But too late, the trigger tweeters were off, and once again the tactic of defending the weakest against an immediate threat triumphed over the strategic goal of their long term empowerment. But please, because I am really struggling here, what is it about valuing our responsibility to each other that is incompatible with “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need”?

Labour’s left-of-centre need to stop attempting to live up to the ridiculous stereotypes that our right wing like to paint us with. We need to stop dissipating into fragments and fractions of the greater whole that we can be, embrace our value of collectivism and work together to achieve an inspiring policy platform – and just as importantly – the political machinery that makes that work.

There is an organisation deeply connected to the Labour Party whose organisational values are second to none. While I would politely say that I don’t always agree with the policies that Progress promote, I simply cannot fault their connection to the party and their dedication to winning back a Labour government. They know that in doing so they will be electing MPs who disagree with them from the left, but they have clearly also recognised that doing so keeps them relevant in our post-New Labour world.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Progress should be feeling pretty miffed right about now. Where are the equally vibrant models combining a soft left policy platform with fierce campaigning? Compass, the closest the left came, wandered off into the wilderness having long since blunted their organisational edge with too much oppositionalism and not enough strategy. Blue Labour are too academic, too much about the pamphlet and not enough about the leafletters, GEER are frankly, how can I put this, like a 1980s street stall made website (though I accept that the Far Left loyalist positioning is new and interesting, if probably the last thing Ed wants or needs right now).

The Labour centre-left need a Progress. We need a decently funded machine who can not only fund research into how to mould great Labour messages, but can also get our people enthused about door knocking. We need to show that being left isn’t about being oppositional but inspirational and organised.

I don’t believe that such an organisation should or even could pose a threat to Progress either. A strong Labour Party is one with a robust internal debate supported by a robust external promotional machine. An organisation that challenged Progress’ ideas from the left could make both sides more robust in their arguments, meaning we will be better prepared for the fight when we go to the country. I know in the past Progress have worked with Compass and am sure their members would see the value of a friendly competitor and the gains to be made from a diversity of Labour voices spurring members from all parts of the party into action on the doorsteps.

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