David Rennie has been the pen behind the pseudonymous Bagehot column, which appears weekly in The Economist, since 2010. During that time he has been deservedly recognised as the most acute commentator, bar none, writing on British politics. Not that I’ve always agreed with him, not least his indulgence of hoary old cliches with which to whack the Lib Dems.
He has now transferred to the US to personate another Economist pseudonym, Lexington. However, his final missive is a must-read ‘state of the nation’ take on the Britain he found when he returned two years ago, and the Britain he feels he now leaves. It’s a long-ish piece, well worth reading in full, but here’s the conclusion:
… Bagehot — who leaves Britain this week for a new posting in America — finds himself oddly encouraged by the nature of British pessimism. This columnist came to Britain after 12 years in the new world and Europe. From afar, the British seemed to have found a distinctive way of handling globalisation: a mid-Atlantic compact based on greater individualism and tolerance of competition than the French, say, balanced with a more generous welfare safety net than might be found in America. To simplify, Britain looked American at the top and European at the bottom, and it seemed to work.
Bagehot thinks that compact is intact, if fragile. In much of Europe, competition is seen as a necessary evil and the opposite of solidarity. In Britain, competition is still tolerated so long as the rules of the game are just. (This difference of view has deep roots: several southern European languages talk of “disloyal” competition when English uses the term “unfair”.)
In other debt-ridden Western countries, including much of the euro zone, vested interests and tribal voter blocks are hunkering down to resist reforms and defend dwindling privileges. Yet the British still yearn to live in a meritocracy: 87% told Policy Exchange that in a fair society incomes should depend on hard work and talent.
Though the British are immigration-obsessed, overt racism is all-but taboo. Consider how the United Kingdom Independence Party, a populist outfit that wants much tighter curbs on foreigners, has played down issues of ethnicity or religion as it rises in the polls, recently ditching calls to ban Muslim headscarves. Even those who would quit the EU are guilty of excess optimism along with excess gloom: Eurosceptics cling to the rash belief that Britain could secure free-rider access to EU markets by walking out.
If the British are obsessed with society’s unfairness, that is because they want it fixed—a finer ambition than clinging, fatalistically and cynically, to a crumbling status quo. Bagehot bids farewell to an unhappy country. But it is an unhappiness that looks to the future and wants to improve it. Britain is lost in this crisis. With luck and grown-up leadership, it will find a way out.
It’s an optimistic conclusion, and I think there’s a lot of merit in Bagehot’s sense of a UK ‘mid-Atlantic compact’. But it prompts in my mind an awkward question as to how far our political system can take some of the credit.
What would truly pluralist politics look like?
Don’t get me wrong: I’m a PR-toting liberal pluralist who believes fairer votes would pave the way to greater voter choice and a more mature way of doing politics.
And yet… part of the reason British politics has remained centrist — at least by Bagehot’s definition — is that we have had only three major UK-wide parties able to aspire to form a majority government, with each vying to appeal to the broadest possible spectrum of voters. While Labour in the early 1980s, and the Tories in the early 2000s, flirted with a more extremist version of their usual ideologies, each eventually tacked back to the more moderate course they knew gave them the best chance of winning an election.
If proportional representation were introduced, however, it would result in ‘disruptive innovation’ within our politics. Each of the three parties would likely split into their two competing wings (at least): Tories/UKIP, New/Old Labour, Economic/Social Liberals. For sure, they’d be likely to re-align again after an election when it came to forming a coalition, but as a result of ‘purging’ themselves of the other part of themselves they found most irritating each new half-party would become more narrow.
For example, I’m pretty unabashedly a ‘classical liberal’ on most issues, most interested in ways of increasing equality of opportunity by freeing the individual with the least possible state involvement. Yet I genuinely appreciate (mostly!) the ‘social liberal’ impulses held by many Lib Dems which focus more on the state’s role in delivering equality of outcomes. It’s that creative tension which, when it works, helps ensure the party adopts a balanced approach with general voter appeal. The narrower a party’s base becomes the more it risks becoming a self-reinforcing echo chamber for its own activists, detached from mass voter concerns.
Broad churches or zealous sects?
There is, of course, a counter-hypothetical to this post-PR political world: that as parties split and into sub-parties united around what a smaller critical mass of members actually believe in — rather than adopting a soggy centre which just about holds a larger range of diverse views together for the sake of electoral maths — this will in itself engage more voters. Forget three broad churches with often agnostic congregations (says this argument) and expect instead a multitude of small churches full of zealots. Well, perhaps so… But that’s not a prospect which over-fills me with joy.
The UK is (alas for us liberals) broadly a small-c conservative nation. Yet we liberals (and any of you who are conservatives) are dispersed across all parties and none. Somehow, mysteriously and oh-so-imperfectly, we have kept each other in check.
Our political system may be broken, our finances bankrupted, our media in disgrace and our football teams in the doldrums: but the ‘mid-Atlantic compact’ holds, just. However inadvertently, that’s down to us. That may not be grounds for pride, but perhaps for a cautiously optimistic dose of British pessimism.
* Stephen was Editor (and Co-Editor) of Liberal Democrat Voice from 2007 to 2015, and writes at The Collected Stephen Tall.
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9 Comments
Free debating of the issues shows intelligence. Whereas censorship is the ultimate ignorance.
Democracy and free speech, will return despite your best efforts to stop it.
2nd Posting.. fingers crossed !
Pessimism (in politics), arises from the deceit and lies that politicians personify. Some (65%) of voters still believe that democracy exists. And the politicians tease them with ‘biodegradable’ promises and pledges, that turn to mulch within weeks of an election.
In 1975 we were given a choice to stay with the European Community Common Market. It was sold as, a closer trading community. And I, along with many others voted to stay with it. But we were sold a lie. What we have today is nothing remotely like what we voted for back then.
An IN / OUT referendum is now the only solution to this gargantuan, undemocratic, bloated mess, that the EU is becoming. And if I dare use the dreaded democracy word, it is only right, proper and democratic, to allow those not born in 1975 to add their voice to the decision that will affect the rest of their lives.
It’s with good reason that UKIP’s voting base (9%) strengthens by the day, and LibDem’s voting base (8%) weakens.
Labour and Tories are now in competition ; each desperate, to figure out a way to deny a full in/out vote. Who will blink first? My pessimism is tempered by my optimism that democracy will return, despite the best efforts of politicians to block it.
As an ex-labour entryist I think you are utterly wrong to see the divisions in labour as comparable to those in the Tories or Libdems.
The groups that currently have control of the biggest unions arent interested in Labour winning elections, they want to reconstruct labour as a “mass” revolutionary party. They cant be winkled out of the unions the way militant were dealt with.
UKIP arent really a seperate party & dont act like one, hence their 30 councillors. They are more of an external lobby .
I just cant see the social/classic split in the libdems, I certainly detect no yearning for seperation.
Undoubtedly a democratic british parliament would contain substantial communist & faschist blocs – maybe 10% each but both extremes could still be frozen out of any negotiation for power as they are in many european states.
paul barker
Paranoid, conspiracy-theorist tosh!
A ‘mass revolutionary party’ – I think you have been reading too much Frederick Forsyth.
Also, I do not understand why you are continuing to lump the Tories and LD together, even on something like this.
On the pluralist / PR point I think most Lib Dems want a good British compromise – a system that’s not SO proportional as to promote a separate party for almost every shade of policy.
To take just one policy issue, the shortage of Housing is a national disgrace which no major party seems to care about any more – they prefer to join local NIMBY campaigns against development. PR might give a chance for a party to raise the profile of this issue and many others.
UKIP are more successful than suggested by having only 30 councillors. Look how well they do in European elections under PR – they are held back from Westminster success by FPTP. Frankly I would be surprised if the UK is still an EU member ten years from now.
I too have remarked on the following quote:
“From afar, the British seemed to have found a distinctive way of handling globalisation: a mid-Atlantic compact based on greater individualism and tolerance of competition than the French, say, balanced with a more generous welfare safety net than might be found in America. To simplify, Britain looked American at the top and European at the bottom, and it seemed to work.”
It is i believe very perceptive.
@ OCC – “On the pluralist / PR point I think most Lib Dems want a good British compromise – a system that’s not SO proportional as to promote a separate party for almost every shade of policy.”
I would tend to agree, but it does rather make a mockery of the LD battlecry “freedom!” where they issue fiery denunciations of the anti-democratic FPTP when really what they mean is “just a little more democratic………….. in a direction that suits us”.
Rhetoric that blinds them to public contentedness with the electoral system they have now, vainly pointing over the channel and crying; “hark, hark to europe, if only the lumpen british electorate had a more sophisticated appreciation of society like their continental brethren.
All without realising the truth of quote from David Rennie in my post above.
It seems that Liam Fox has just thrown a grenade into the middle of the coalition. Fingers crossed, but it looks as if democracy is coming back into fashion.
“The UK is (alas for us liberals) broadly a small-c conservative nation”
Pure unabashed soggy defeatism!
And I disagree too. The UK is an old-fashioned pluralist liberal democracy – Conservatives self-describe as centre-right, while Labour presents as centre-left, while even yourself note the tendency for centrist fudges approaching balanced standpoints (which is completely relativistic and conditioned).
The vast majority of UK voters are liberal by instinct, and would vote for a LibDem party which can articulate a serious and coherent package of reforms. Until then the electorate will continue to fluctuate between the blinkered utopian visions of never-was and never-will-be by the careerist figurehead most able to con us sincerely.
When we have good liberals to vote for, we do. When we don’t, we don’t.
Because liberty needs more than individuals to stand up and promote it, it must have a realistic vision with achievable policies able to inspire and motivate a wider audience. Liberty requires the public to buy into the programme. We need more liberal heroes.