Just prior to Labour Party conference in Liverpool (and the announcement of the leadership election result), I put out a paper on how the centre-left could regenerate itself once the Corbyn project has played itself out. I decided to revisit it now – this article forms the basis of a brief summary. If you want all the details, you can find them here:
http://radix.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Radix-Credible-Opposition.pdf
The basic ideas I put forward are these:
- That the centre-left must once again become champions of large infrastructure projects as it is the only plausible route to ending large scale austerity in Britain.
- It must argue for an English parliament as a way of rebalancing the current devolution settlement, devolving power to a more local level in an even handed manner, and reconnecting with the English working class.
- It must make clear that while it wishes to raise taxes on the very rich, it seeks to keep taxes for middle earners where they are, or if possible lower them for this group of people.
I also argue in the paper that the centre-left might become extinct if it is not carefully (and it certain is being anything other than careful at present). It is my contention that unless the centre-left manages to present a coherent and believable strategy for government, it will not only never govern again, but may in fact cease to be a mainstream political ideology in Britain at some point in the near future. After the vote to leave the EU in June, the country is realigning itself into a liberal internationalist wing and a socially conservative nationalist wing. Both could be considered to be of the Right, with a centre-right versus far-right battle for the electorate to possibly squeeze the centre-left out altogether.
The centre-left needs a lot more ideas than the ones I have laid out in my paper. But in the vacuum we currently reside in, I think it represents a decent start. I would love to hear ideas from outside the box from all of you. It seems clear to me that if the future of the centre-left is as an outright anti-capitalist, anti-west, pro-Kremlin, snobbish towards Englishness and in denial of where its traditional votes now resides style force, then it is totally finished. What replaces it could then become all important as British politics could get even more nativist than it has already become in the age of Brexit.
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