How do we unite the left?
How local, national and global action builds a progressive future.
The left is undergoing a few dramatic weeks. The Makerfield by-election is indicative of this, as Martha Dacombe puts it in her Arguably piece:
The Makerfield by-election is a dramatic piece of political theatre – and that is a good thing. Andy Burnham’s cabinet critics have branded it a distraction, intoning that Labour must focus on “delivery”. But it is partly Keir Starmer’s disdain for politics – and his reverence for managerialism – that explains why this government is failing.
Central to any moment of political theatre is an element of risk that makes it compelling. Burnham has been Labour’s shadow leader since the start of this decade. He could have continued in that role – with a fourth mayoral victory all but guaranteed – or waited until a safe north-west seat fell vacant. But by choosing to stand in Makerfield, where Reform triumphed with 50.4 per cent of the vote in the local elections (to Labour’s 22.7 per cent), Burnham has heightened the stakes. If he wins, his status as the country’s most popular politician will be confirmed; if he loses, critics will cry that his appeal was always overstated.
Political theatre it may be — but the left can't simply stand around waiting for Godot. Ahead of UCL Policy Lab’s Ecosystem event, the Progressive Reader #3 brings you ways to build coalitions and reunite the left.
Beyond politics as spectacle
James Baggaley interviewed Hahrie Han, an expert in the field, and summarised her thinking:
Central to this thinking [about community organising] has been the divide between what Han describes as politics as spectacle versus politics as practice. The politics as spectacle views the mechanisms of social change as dependent on creating spectacles that draw widespread public engagement. Focusing on spectacle puts the focus on work undertaken by individuals, born of their identity and the issues they are interested in, such as posting outrage on social media or signing a petition. In contrast, politics as practice requires us to build sustained networks across difference - not in the name of compromise or finding the ‘middle ground’ but to try to change the world together, navigating political and social challenges in a way that is fundamentally shared.
Or, as Han herself puts it:
When politics is a spectacle, we treat it like we treat ketchup at the grocery store. I choose which brand I want to try. If I don't like it, I just throw that one out and buy another one.
[…] The alternative to this failed approach is a politics of practice, one that is embedded in the complexities and nuances of human life. It's a lot harder to build and sustain. Still, it creates an experience in which people, not only those of a certain political class but people of all kinds, can have the experience of being active agents within a political system
Lessons from the Christian right
A couple of editions ago, we discussed how Christians are leading the fight for progressive values. In her book Undivided: the Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church, Han draws lessons from the broader evangelical community. Duncan Green relates his impressions of the book:
What I got (…), through Han’s deep focus on the lives of four, mainly Republican evangelical activists, is a fascinating insight into the debates, doubts and dilemmas of the contemporary Evangelical movement, torn between social justice and white nationalism, conflicts that were all crystallized by the first Trump presidency, the murder of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter and other events from 2016-22. Faith-based community organising is, it turns out, similar to the secular variety but also very different.
Her four main characters are Sandra, a black Republican woman married to an increasingly hostile white guy who goes down the white nationalist online rabbit hole during the pandemic; Jess, a white former convict and drug addict struggling to get her life back on track; Grant, a white Republican who grew up with a black (adopted) brother and so thought he was ‘colour blind’ (boy, did he get that wrong) and Chuck Mingo, one of the few black preachers at Crossroads, struggling to stay onside with its more conservative white leadership while acting on his increasingly urgent desires to pursue social and racial justice. The depth and nuance of their stories is great, eschewing simplistic hero narratives to capture the awkwardness, fear and doubts that afflict activists as they grow and learn.
International Workers Unite.
Those who prefer to draw lessons from secular unions, should check out Amanda Tattersall’s book Power in Coalition: Strategies for Strong Unions and Social Change. As Denisse Sandoval puts it in her review:
Amanda Tattersall, founder of the Sydney Alliance, takes the reader through the process of setting up a strong and long-lasting alliance of organisations allied to win changes for the benefit of their communities. She compares case studies from Australia, Canada and the United States where labour unions, churches and community based organisations combine their resources and efforts. Questions such as ‘who should do what to make it happen’, ‘why should it be done’, and ‘what makes a good coalition’ are all explored. Having worked with a coalition as a community organiser, my burning question in reading this was concerning organisational self interest, and how to work with dominant organisations. The book provoked even more questions for me, which I’ve included below.
Ideas to get behind.
Much has been said about the divides on the left. Less so of what unites it. It is too easy to get carried away with debates over the right type of capital gains tax, but we shouldn’t forget what we do agree on. The system is broken and we need to change it.
Writing in Renewal, the Tribune group of Labour MPs diagnosed the problems facing Britain:
Central to our economic and political turbulence is that our model of growth, largely unchanged since Margaret Thatcher, has run aground. The state’s capacity to play an active role in economic development was hollowed out, replaced by a framework that prioritised market allocation while limiting political discretion. Over time, this has produced an institutional settlement in which governments are held responsible for economic outcomes but lack the tools to shape them effectively. The result is a persistent gap between political expectation and economic delivery, reflected in weak productivity growth, stagnant living standards, and deepening regional inequalities.
The Labour Growth Group, a broader group of MPs within the party, is at times more sympathetic to harnessing market forces. But its own report comes to a similar conclusion:
The financial crisis was not a setback within the settlement. It was the rupture that exposed its dependence and the contradictions which ran through both Thatcher and New Labour’s versions of it. The tax receipts on which the redistributive strategy relied collapsed. The financial sector that had functioned as the model's engine had to be rescued by the public purse. The lesson absorbed by millions was brutal: institutions too big to fail were saved, accountability was absent, and there appeared to be one rule for those who mattered and another for everyone else. Mainstream politics has badly underestimated that lesson in the years since ‐ it sits beneath Brexit, Reform and every populist insurgency of the last fifteen years.
So… how did we get here?
When it comes to understanding today’s political economy, there are few better accounts than that of Gary Gerstle’s The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order. Shortly after the book’s release, Jan-Werner Müller summarised the ideological incoherence of Neoliberalism in the New Statesman:
Gerstle shrewdly observes that ideological coherence is overrated. A political order will always contain tensions or even outright contradictions, which can be sources of strength: different outlooks will attract different constituencies. Neoliberalism had a distinctly neo-Victorian strand stressing “family values” – neoconservatism plus the morals Thatcher had in mind when she sought to change British souls. But another strand, Gerstle writes, was a form of “cosmopolitanism” more akin to libertarianism: a supposedly “deeply egalitarian and pluralistic” belief in “open borders” and diversity resulting from different people freely mixing. It took both the stern moralistic mistress Thatcher and the easy-going, formerly dope-smoking sax player Clinton (plus Cool Britannia Blair) to make neoliberalism truly dominant in the Western world.
What to do about it?
Gen Z has perhaps paid the most for the failure of capitalism. Peter Hyman went and listened to young people, producing a report that takes them seriously. He says:
It became clear, the more we listened to young people, that the issue of young NEETs is not just a welfare issue or an employment issue or a work issue - it’s a deeper issue about the society we live in. We have created circumstances - run the economy into the ground, locked children away during lockdown, regimented them in schools, turned a blind eye to bullying, given them the social media tools of destruction - and then let them drift. In safeguarding you train teachers to spot the signs of neglect in a child. Well these are the signs of neglect towards an entire generation. We have not safeguarded their future. We have let the tide go out and stranded them like flapping fish without water on the beach, gasping for sustenance. This is the stranded generation. And unless we act, the country has no future.
What to read?
Amanda Tattersall’s upcoming book, written with Kurt Iveson, People Power in Cities, takes the reader through the conflict over housing in Austin, Hong Kong’s Anti–Extradition Movement, and the quest for climate justice in Sydney. Their book is more than a few stories. It is a guide book for what they call ‘people power strategies’ and discusses: playing by the rules, mobilizing, organizing, prefiguring, and running for office.
What to listen to?
In the latest podcast episode of Changemakers, Amanda Tattersall talks to Hahrie Han about what America’s MAGA, Australia’s One Nation, and Britain’s Reform mean for community organising.
The Offspring’s Americana album, featuring infamous song The Kids Aren’t Alright. It’s not quite the same as talking to young people about today’s problems. But it sure has the same energy.
Come join us!
Tomorrow UCL Policy Lab is hosting its latest Ecosystem Conference. Those wanting to know more about the work featured today will be happy to know that Amanda Tattersall, Hahrie Han and Gary Gerstle will discuss local, national and international community organising.
Miatta Fahnbulleh MP will also be joining for the keynote address. We are similarly delighted to have the community organisers behind the Nation of Neighbours, Demos and the Lloyds Bank Foundation.