Over the last decade, an increasingly confident right wing has presented disillusioned voters with a simple choice: elitist, neoliberal hyper-globalisation or popular, patriotic nationalism. This new fault-line pits economic and social liberalism against social conservatism and the promise of muscular economic intervention. Despite the defeat of Donald Trump in 2020, progressives have yet to find a strategy to combat this potent—if false—divide.
The traditional right-left dividing line—economic liberalism and social conservatism on the right, economic interventionism and social liberalism on the left—forced working-class nationalists to choose between their socially conservative instincts (including hostility to immigration) and their support for state intervention in the economy. In essence, they had to decide which liberalism—social or economic—to reject.
The 2016 Brexit referendum freed such voters from this restraint—and it certainly set back the old liberal order. But despite many jumping to the conclusion that fervent nationalism explained the whole Brexit phenomenon, it was not clear which liberalism was being rejected. Many of the towns that repudiated the EU were voting just as much against the deindustrialisation that took place during the years Britain was in the EU as they were voting to restore a supposedly Edenic 1950s. Back in the conventional world of parliamentary elections, in 2017 Labour’s anti-neoliberal economic programme under Jeremy Corbyn added 3.5m votes to its 2015 general election tally. But by 2019, identity trumped economics—on which the Tories had anyway begun to change their tune under Boris Johnson—and the red wall crumbled.
The British right was not alone in affecting to spurn both liberalisms. From Warsaw via Workington to Wisconsin, working-class voters received promises from right-wing populists that their economic interests would not be sacrificed on the altar of neoliberalism. Poland’s Law and Justice Party adopted an economic and social programme that would win over “left-behind” Poles. Marine Le Pen’s National Front professed to abandon its fascist past and moved the spotlight onto protecting French industry. Johnson committed his party to an interventionist “levelling-up” agenda. And Trump promised industrial protection against overseas competition, as well as the biggest programme of public works since the New Deal. (Of course, he delivered neither.)
This new fault-line not only redrew the political map: it fractured the old consensus around core democratic values—stretching from right to left—that had existed since the Second World War. These values were rooted in the French Revolution and European Enlightenment and comprised an alliance of liberty, equality and solidarity, which could accommodate Christian Democrats, liberals, social democrats and orthodox socialists, albeit in different proportions.
The nationalist far-right rejects these values. Echoing the rhetorical tropes of anti-democratic forces from the interwar years, populists like Trump promote conspiracy theories in which liberal politicians plot to destroy national sovereignty in the interests of global financial capital. A politics of demonisation, exclusion and “othering” has seeped into mainstream right-wing parties. In the United States, it culminated in Trump’s incitement of his supporters to storm the Capitol on 6th January to overturn the result of the 2020 election. Trump’s “We love you” message to his supporters exposed how in thrall the president had become to the anti-democratic, often white supremacist, forces he had unleashed, and serves as a warning to all conservatives of where alliances with the far right can end.
In a recent essay for Prospect, Timothy Garton Ash argues that “liberals need to join both conservatives and socialists in full-heartedly embracing the value of solidarity.” But for intellectual conservatives like the late Roger Scruton (whom Garton Ash quotes) as well as chauvinist politicians—like Trump, Le Pen, Viktor Orbán and the Italian League's Matteo Salvini—solidarity always has to rely on an inherently exclusionary notion of identity: we’re who we are because you’re not. Progressive social solidarity is, by contrast, accepting of difference. However, socialists and liberals have much in common in the battle against the far right: together, they can build on the social gains of the Harold Wilson and Tony Blair governments, allying around social and political liberty as well as the economics of equality.
The intellectual outriders
In the years after the neoliberal nemesis of the banking crisis, some thinkers on the right began to realise that it was time to move on from marketopia. And just like the disillusioned former leftists who gave intellectual heft to Reaganism and Thatcherism, a number of formerly progressive commentators came on board to support the anti-liberal, or as they describe it “post-liberal,” cause. Echoing Phillip Blond’s 2010 book Red Tory, which argued for the Conservatives to abandon neoliberalism, Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour movement campaigned for the party to drop its socially liberal agenda in favour of a renewed commitment to the supposedly traditional working-class values of flag, faith and family. Former Prospect editor David Goodhart’s 2013 book on immigration, The British Dream, blamed the increase of immigration under New Labour on a conspiracy between globalisers wanting to suppress wages and multiculturalists wanting to “rub the right’s nose in diversity.” Goodhart’s 2017 book The Road to Somewhere distinguished between people identified with and loyal to “somewhere,” and the “anywhere” metropolitan elite; in this he echoed prime minister Theresa May’s 2016 Conservative Party conference declaration that “if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere.”
Alongside Glasman, Goodhart was a signatory to the 2018 Full Brexit statement, which described Brexit as a historic opportunity for democratic and economic renewal. Other signatories included Matthew Goodwin, co-author of a perceptive early study of Ukip (Revolt on the Right) who now seems to side with the phenomenon he identified. In his also co-written National Populism, Goodwin describes Orbán’s conspiracy theory about “billionaire Hungarian Jewish financier George Soros” seeking to flood Christian Europe with Muslim refugees “to create a borderless world that is subservient to capitalism” as “not entirely without credence.” Fellow Full Brexiteer (and firefighters’ union activist) Paul Embery, recent author of Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class, employs the ancient conspiratorial trope of a “rootless, cosmopolitan, bohemian middle class” up against a “rooted, communitarian, patriotic working class.”
These commentators are feeding a debate that is raging within the Conservative Party. In 2019, May’s former chief adviser Nick Timothy claimed that “most voters want Britain to become more culturally conservative—cutting immigration, cutting crime, and getting on with Brexit—and they want more intervention in the economy.” Just before a short stint in Downing Street, former Times journalist Tim Montgomerie set out the clearest exposition of the new politics in an article in Prospect, arguing for a “Social Thatcherism,” a re-balancing “from a conservatism of freedom to a conservatism of locality and security.” Montgomerie argued that within the Tory Party “the magnetism of national sovereignty has finally overtaken the magnetism of free markets.”
This potent new cocktail of social conservatism and interventionist economic policies divides the right, but threatens to split the left from its traditional base. How should progressives respond?
Debunk the assertions of the right
First, the left must challenge the language and narrative of the right, starting with the assumption that every social liberal is an economic neoliberal as well. Post-liberal éminence grise John Gray repeatedly brands progressives as neoliberal champions of hyper-globalisation, writing in an undifferentiated way about “the liberal political class,” “liberals in all parties” and the “liberal elites” (New Statesman, 14th August 2019), as if every supporter of gay marriage or women’s rights owns a hedge fund and winters in Davos. In reality, of course, there are countless progressives who remain liberal on democratic and social issues but also want greater state intervention to create a more equal economy.
Second, progressives should confront the claim that people’s priorities are no longer economic but primarily cultural. Part of the populist right’s appeal is to “left behind” working-class people nostalgic for a rose-tinted version of the 1950s, before feminism, gay rights, immigration and the EU came along to spoil it all. But these issues only began to gain serious traction in the discussion after New Labour embraced unfettered globalisation, abandoning its traditional base. And they only became weaponised after the 2008 banking crash, and especially the austerity that followed it, had engendered material hardship.
Third, progressives must take on the view that the Tories are now the political voice of the British working class, and that the Republicans have become a post-Trumpist working-class party. True, both Tories and Republicans have consolidated support among sections of the working class (particularly in small towns and the countryside, where the working class is disproportionately old and white). But just as Danny Dorling demonstrated that the crucial votes for Brexit were delivered by Conservative voters in the affluent south, so the New York Times 2020 election exit poll showed that Biden defeated Trump among the 73 per cent of US voters whose family income is below $100,000, while Trump beat Biden by 11 points among the better-off. The growing fixation on the “white working class” should also not obscure the reality that a rapidly expanding slice of the working class is not white at all.
Even putting race to one side, the left has to believe that—in the end—the truth counts. Yes, Trump promised infrastructure spending, but voters noticed that his major actual economic “achievement” was a spectacular tax cut for the rich. Yes, Conservatives now support the minimum wage that they opposed two decades ago, but few court cases have actually been brought to enforce it, as seen recently over the conditions within textile factories supplying retailer Boohoo in Leicester. Progressives need to highlight such ugly realities, and voice and channel the discontent of those they affect.
Instead, the government and conservative press promote a “culture war” agenda designed to split traditional Labour voters and the new social movements. The most audacious attempt to fashion the new agenda was Equality and International Trade Secretary Liz Truss’s speech in December. She hijacked the language of “equality,” and twisted it into a stick to beat anti-racists and feminists. Truss claimed that left-wing teachers at her 1980s Leeds comprehensive were more concerned with racism and sexism than with teaching pupils to read and write. She omitted to mention that, prior to the introduction of comprehensives in the 1960s, just 15 per cent of girls got five good O Levels whereas today the figure (for GCSEs) has risen to 70 per cent.
In responding to the nationalist populist challenge there should be no triangulation. Blue Labour is a dangerous dead end that will only split progressive alliances. At the same time, absolutist positions must be avoided. Too often within contemporary social movements a narrow kind of identity politics is promoted, where solidarity is impossible because only personal experience is said to count. Similarly, there are still Remainers so incensed by the EU referendum result that they insist only a reversal of the decision will suffice. No element—liberal, progressive, socialist—can afford these indulgences. In opposing the illiberal, nationalist right the crucial lesson from the 1930s is crystal clear: unite against the main enemy.
The building blocks of a progressive coalition
If the myths of the nationalist right can be dispelled, then a new progressive coalition of forces can be forged which doesn’t pit “somewhere” against “anywhere,” but rather seeks to weave together alliances that address the needs of 21st-century society. What needs to be done to bring this opportunity about?
First, we need a confident argument for a new economics. As the failings of neo-liberalism have become starker, the centre of gravity in the economic debate has moved left, with even business leaders conceding things need to change. The pandemic reinforces that shift, demonstrating the vital role of government and public institutions in protecting people. Now the IMF, along with the OECD, has reversed four decades of Washington consensus and given its seal of approval to public investment strategies. Keynesianism and active government are back.
Second, gross inequalities need to be tackled, and the public realm restored. The hardest hit by inequality are those living in large, multi-generational households, working in low-paid, manual jobs, in communities with a depleted public realm and limited social capital. Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s approach is not going to fix this. His autumn statement combined emergency pandemic spending and public investment plans with a fresh squeeze on day-to-day public service spending in the years ahead—one that he doubled down on in his March budget. The offer to NHS staff of a measly 1 per cent pay rise has provoked rage, but the decision flows out of the continuation of austerity arithmetic across most social services: indeed, non-NHS public service workers are set for an outright pay freeze. Progressives can put this right in a way Sunak cannot, because they are not in hock to the interests of wealth. This gives them more options for raising revenue to put the public services back on a proper footing, raise the safety net and pay for a massive job support programme. Late last year, the Office of Tax Simplification published a report that suggested wealth tax measures could raise up to £14bn; in December, the Wealth Tax Commission demonstrated how a one-off wealth tax on millionaire households could raise up to £260bn.
Third, liberals, progressives and socialists can and should defend the social gains of the last 50 years, beginning with the social reforms passed or enabled by the Wilson governments (liberalising censorship and divorce laws, decriminalising abortion and homosexuality, expanding comprehensive education and introducing the Equal Pay and Race Relations Acts). In defending and expanding these gains, progressives are going with the grain of public opinion. Despite claims of an across-the-spectrum rise in social conservatism on “family” issues, the last decades have seen an extraordinary liberalisation in attitudes towards gay people, interracial marriage and extramarital sex. Hostility to gay sex has fallen by 50 percentage points since the British Social Attitudes survey was instituted in 1983. Rates of cohabitation are roughly equivalent between the liberal cities and the supposedly conservative towns (Birmingham’s cohabitation rate is lower than that of Sandwell, Walsall or Dudley). The most recent BSA survey indicates that attitudes to tax, spending and welfare are also moving significantly leftwards: only 20 per cent of the public thinks that current wealth disparities are fair, while the number advocating higher taxation and spending rose from 31 per cent in 2010 to 53 per cent in 2019. Despite the 2019 election result—and current polls—long-term trends in public opinion seem to be moving leftwards on social and economic issues at the same time.
The issues of race and immigration clearly influenced and probably settled the Brexit result. Cultural conservatives have been quick to denigrate the Black Lives Matter movement while the tabloid press stokes fears of foreign invasion by small numbers of refugees. Yet, the BSA survey indicates that more people now think that immigration benefits the economy and enriches the culture than think the opposite. In December, a mixed-race partnership won the public vote on Strictly Come Dancing and Lewis Hamilton, a strong Black Lives Matter advocate, was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Black footballer Marcus Rashford won huge support for his campaign for the government to provide free meals to poor children during school holidays, a model of a truly progressive campaign that draws on feelings of social solidarity across the whole community. This is volatile terrain, but one where we cannot be hesitant or defensive. Progressives should not apologise for multiculturalism, but rather set out a vision for the multi-ethnic country that we have already become.
Fourth, there is the need to address the climate emergency. When the pandemic struck, it seemed it might drop off the agenda. The reverse has happened. In the latter half of 2020 the EU, China, Japan and South Korea all made substantial climate commitments, and of course the US has jettisoned a denialist administration for one that is positively keen to engage. Johnson’s 10-point Green revolution programme might be inadequate, but it at least indicates that climate change deniers are a marginal force within government. Only progressives can provide the vast nationwide programme of state investment required to decarbonise the country’s building and housing stock, warm homes and lower fuel bills. The progressive forces in British politics—Labour and the SNP; Greens and Liberal Democrats—should set out their vision now, and call for a decade-long £30bn refurbishment programme.
Fifth, democratic decentralisation. While “taking back control” has been the leitmotif of the Tory story in the Brexit era, the reality is that—like the Thatcher government before them—today’s Conservatives are only interested in restoring control to a centralised British state. The progressive counterargument should involve revenue expenditure being returned to local authorities so that the public realm—libraries, parks, shopping and leisure centres—can be renovated. At the same time, the distribution of “levelling up” funds should be decided at the local or city-region level, not within Whitehall, which has revealed itself to be more interested in channelling funding on the basis of party advantage rather than on the basis of need. It also means allowing Scots to determine their own future, and not pretending London can “just say no” to another referendum if Scotland’s people vote for parties that want one.
Finally, a new internationalism. At the outset of the pandemic, the hard right heralded the end of globalisation and the return of the strong nation state. Yet the pandemic has in fact illustrated the interdependent reality of the 21st-century world, above all in the extensive scientific collaboration over the research, development and production of vaccines. The era of neoliberal hyper-globalisation is being replaced not by a jigsaw of sovereign nation states, but by a multi-polar world of regional trading blocs, as evidenced in November when 15 Asian states signed a mammoth trade deal, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.
Where does this leave the UK? With their anti-Chinese rhetoric, Tory MP Iain Duncan Smith and the right seek a pivotal role for Britain as America’s chief ally in the South China Sea and Indo-Pacific, an East of Suez imperial delusion that Harold Macmillan killed off 60 years ago. Others, like the newly ennobled Daniel Hannan, talk glibly of an Anglosphere stretching from Canada to New Zealand, a concept with no geographical or commercial logic. The breathtaking cynicism with which Johnson and his new Europe Minister David Frost disown the very Northern Ireland Protocol that they themselves so recently negotiated, as they whip up anti-EU sentiment in the press, is fast earning London a reputation for bad faith that could cost the country dearly in the years ahead.
Instead of “putting out more flags,” progressives need to promote pragmatic real-world diplomacy. In the 21st century no country, whatever its history, can ever walk alone. Any campaign to rejoin the EU now is a complete non-starter. However, for reasons of economics, geography, history, culture and security, a close working partnership between the UK and the Continent is in the interests of both parties. The EU remains by far the UK’s major trading partner; Britons make over 65m visits to Europe in a normal year. Hence, over the coming years, the strategic option is for the UK to seek a partnership that goes way beyond the lightweight deal finalised on Christmas Eve.
Constructing a majority
The UK faces a choice. Do we want to remain a fiercely unequal, deeply divided country, glowering across a toxic political fault-line? Or do we want to renew and build on the unity of national purpose shown in the early Covid months? A progressive coalition can build an uplifting programme that addresses the big issues of our age. But as Stuart Hall warned after Labour’s 1987 election defeat: “Politics does not reflect majorities, it constructs them.” The Conservatives suspect their coalition is unstable and that after four decades of neoliberalism the ground is moving against them. Hence their drive for a new populist model. In response, progressives need to avoid the traps set by our opponents, expose their inadequacies and weaknesses, and unite around a new social settlement for the future. Are we up to the task?
