Why Labour needs a covenantal approach to politics, now more than ever

While it will be a relief to see the back of Boris Johnson, the Labour Party must not become complacent. Johnson’s resignation speech used an important frame, one he returned to throughout, that it was him versus “the herd” and the elite of Westminster. This was a similar play he made before the 2019 general election and one that requires Labour to access a deeper form of politics to overcome.

Some of this kind of politics can be found in Labour’s Covenant. To understand Labour’s Covenant you have to first start with its name, which is about the fundamentals of a political relationship. It’s a covenant, not a contract; a politics that is based on long-term reciprocal relationships rather than short-term transactions. Contracts are legalistic, their arrangements between individuals are codified with defined rights and responsibilities. In contrast, a covenant is a binding, long-term relationship or promise between different people or institutions. It is actively constructed by these parties in a democratic politics of negotiations.

The best way to explain this is through a scene from the TV comedy show Parks and Recreation, which tells the story of Lesley Knope, a local politician who loves her town of Pawnee. Pawnee has its problems. The town’s main historic large industrial employer Sweetums, a candy factory, is being offshored leading to job losses. Sweetums also owns the parkland around Pawnee, which it seeks to sell off to a new technology firm Gryzzl for their new ‘campus’ HQ.

Leslie goes into battle with Gryzzl, attempting to block the sale and designate the land a national park for the town. In the end Gryzzl wins, so Leslie approaches the founders with an alternative offer, convincing them to build their HQ in the old industrial part of Pawnee, which would be cheaper and easier than building in the parkland. Yet, she goes further asking them to gift the parkland they’d purchased to Pawnee as a national park. The phrase she uses is key, she says: “Make a covenant with the people of Pawnee.” Build a lasting relationship with the town by thinking about the landscape that surrounds it. This is at the heart of what covenantal politics is about. The long-term relationships between people, places and our collective institutions.

Why does this matter? Well, part of Labour’s problem is the fact that people no longer trust us or have faith in us. This problem requires much deeper political solutions as it can’t be fixed quickly with a purely transactional approach. Labour likes to use the word deals when it comes up with a new policy idea – but these are usually about Labour offering to do things to or for people.

But we can’t expect people will vote for us if they don’t trust or like us. Voters have to believe Labour is on their side. When we’re trying to rebuild faith in Labour, a covenantal approach is vital. It’s a more resilient way to navigate the complex challenges we face in the coming decades, because it builds long-term stability through help to build bridges between estranged interests by identifying what people hold in common and negotiating a common good. Covenental politics isn’t a series of positions, policies or messaging. It’s a way to do politics in this era.

We can use this approach as a way to think about how Labour might reform the social care system, for example. Firstly, this is a long-term structural problem that requires a structural solution. This might mean that our approach to funding it must be intergenerational. The current government places much of the burden of paying for social care on working people, attempting to divide the young and the old. What this approach fails to see is that people aren’t just individual agents, they are related to each other; many young people have grandparents they care about, older people care about their grandchildren’s futures. Indeed, much of the asset wealth of older generations has been accumulated in order to pass on to the next generation and leave them with something. Instead of dividing these interests, a Labour government should go with them – working out more creative, fairer solutions to our structural crisis that binds the generations into an agreement, recognising the collective relationships at the heart of it.

Labour’s Covenant is also about how we do politics in practice. In some of the most interesting parts of our movement, broader conceptions of our relationship to our voters are reviving and unlocking new support for Labour. In Broxtowe, the local party’s community hub on the high street provides a walk-in community foodbank, hosting reading groups and local school uniform and sports kit exchanges. People remember how the local party was there for them during the pandemic, organising mutual aid efforts and laptop donation exchanges to help school children learn from home. As well as surgeries, local councillors do ‘ward walks’, enjoying catching up with people in the day to day, as another way to reach out to people where they are, rather than expecting them to come to more official surgeries.

Similar efforts in Worthing have paid off electorally, as an all-year-round approach to campaigning has developed strong relationships with the local community. The local party is part of the social fabric of the town, helping to set up three mutual aid groups during the pandemic offering food, prescriptions and befriending. Beyond the pandemic these efforts have been maintained with one of the groups becoming a fully fledged community organisation and the party, like Broxtowe, has set up an independent foodbank that has provided support to over 10,000 people.

Or places like Weetwood ward in Leeds, which was recently won from the Lib Dems in a historic victory. Here activists are experimenting with new kinds of engagement in local Facebook groups where local councillors post friendly updates and engage with other posts and answer questions on local issues online. Through participation in this online forum, relationships are formed by listening to the community so that real world actions emerge, such as organising community walks and litterpicks.

In all these places the local party is at the heart of the community. Labour people are not isolated, stuck in stuffy meeting rooms and yelling at each other but out doing things. Their interactions with voters aren’t limited just to door knocking but become part of a richer eco system of relationships in which Labour participates. In all these cases Labour isn’t just focused on transactions and winning votes, it’s about building deeper relationships with our communities based on reciprocity. A politics that is about doing things with people, not to them.

This also extends to how we treat each other internally. The culture is not dominated by hostile adversarial meetings, but shaped by social activity and relationships. A covenantal approach to our own internal politics might also be the first step in moving beyond the toxicity of our current political culture.