‘How we can build a strong political centre and centre-left’

At one level, the fortunes of the British Labour Party and the US Democrats could not be more different.

Following elections held on both sides of the Atlantic last year one is in government for the first time in more than a decade with a thumping parliamentary majority, the other is in the political wilderness out of power after a devastating defeat in November.

Yet both are struggling with a deeper malaise. Democrats and Labour are grappling with the same existential questions facing parties of the centre and centre-left across the Western world today. What is their future-oriented offer to voters, and how do they deliver it? How to formulate a coherent and popular response to the fundamental challenges posed by rapid economic and social change?

Increased polarisation, economic dislocation, wars over culture and identity, low trust in government, technological advances are putting extreme stress on our democracies. This threatens the basic tenets of what we on the centre-left have believed in and helped to deliver for decades – universal welfare provision, equal rights for minorities, a multilateral world order, social market economies.

Labour lacks a defining and driving purpose

Many of our traditional, working-class supporters have deserted us in favour of the extremes. As a result, the populist right has won power in the US and is in the ascendancy in the UK.

It’s 12 months since Keir Starmer’s Labour Party’s took office, a period marked by missteps on welfare policies and a tough economic climate. While it has won some plaudits for its policies on industrial strategy, clean energy, trade and Ukraine, it has little to show on delivery and it continues to lack a defining and driving purpose.

The result is that Labour, having won barely a third of the public vote at last year’s election, has haemorrhaged support since. An Ipsos Mori poll this month put Labour support at just 25%, nine points behind Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Three-quarters of voters say they are dissatisfied with the performance of Starmer and the Government. https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/reform-ipsos-record-9-point-lead-over-labour-public-satisfaction-government-nears-lowest-point

This grim picture has ominous echoes of what occurred in the US during Joe Biden’s term. Many of Biden’s policies to boost investment in the economy after the pandemic were popular on their own. But after just a year in office, public dissatisfaction with the Democratic Administration had fallen to historically low levels in the face of rising inflation and an immigration crisis. It never recovered.

READ MORE: New intake Labour MPs: ‘Why we set up the Living Standards Coalition’

Nothing is inevitable in politics today. The experience of the Liberals in Canada and the Labor Party in Australia shows that Starmer has time to turn things around. But the challenges facing the centre and centre-left today are not ones that have arisen in just the last four years. They reflect deeper issues that have been at play for a decade or more.

In both the US and the UK, our respective parties have been steadily losing support among key groups. Many blue-collar voters have seen their livelihoods affected negatively by the global economic change we have championed. We have been tin-eared to public concerns about immigration and its impact on national identity. And our energy and passion has often appeared to be directed towards cultural issues and climate change focused on by the few, rather than the basic economic issues facing the many.

The centre and centre-left are seen as the status quo

Tellingly, we are seen as vocal defenders of the status quo, of political and economic systems that many voters – particularly those whose support we have relied on in the past – believe has failed to deliver positive change for them.

With popular discontent with politicians and mainstream politics at an all-time low, Donald Trump’s MAGA movement in the US has capitalised and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK threatens to do the same in the UK.

So, how do we respond in order to revitalise and re-energise the centre and centre-left? Two things are certain. We must resist a lurch to the left, to pander to activists’ concerns over those of our voters. This is the path to electoral oblivion condemning our parties to permanent minority appeal.

Yet we cannot stick to business as usual, one that tinkers with tactics and message, in the hope that voters will stay with us despite all the evidence that they want change. We need to understand why we have lost touch with the values and interests of our voters, understand their concerns and involve them in a conversation about the future.

That will require us to be open to think again about issues and positions – and, at times, hear what we might not wish to hear. Yes, of course, we should always be clear about the fundamental values that drive who we are. But there should be no sacred cows that restrict our parties from renewing their bonds with the people who we are there to support, represent and champion.

That’s why we at Third Way are working with other like-minded organisations in the US, UK and elsewhere to work out a new path back for the centre and centre-left. This will include research with voters we have lost and discussions about how we shape an uncertain future.

By learning from each other and sharing ideas and perspectives we can help to reinvigorate the centre and centre-left and develop a forward-looking, hopeful and ambitious purpose. We owned the future in the 1960s and again in the 1990s. History will not forgive us if we fail to do so again.

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