Labour is the obstacle, not the enabler

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It was reported yesterday that, in the latest twist on the so-called ‘progressive alliance’, Labour and the Lib Dems have been discussing a non-aggression pact which under which each of the two parties would do only minimal campaigning in the other’s target seats, with the objective of removing as many Tory MPs as possible. Whilst there may be many of us who would be delighted at seeing Tories booted out, it doesn’t follow that we would be equally elated at seeing them replaced by the self-styled ‘progressive’ parties. It raises, and not for the first time, the question of what the word ‘progressive’ actually means.

We know that Labour and the Lib Dems are united in their ‘progressive’ belief that whatever outcome Scots vote for want can and should be ignored, even if pro-independence parties win every seat in Scotland. We know that they are united in their support for the ‘progressive’ policy that the UK should retain and be willing to use weapons of mass destruction to incinerate millions of civilians. We know that they are both committed to the ‘progressive’ policy of balanced budgets over the long term, as though a ‘progressive’ form of austerity is somehow better for its victims than a Tory form of austerity.

There are some areas of disagreement between them – whilst the Lib Dems are keen supporters of electoral reform, Labour remain committed to the ‘progressive’ policy of a winner-takes-all system on the basis that it is better for them to have absolute power some of the time (whilst allowing the Tories to have it most of the time) than to be obliged to compromise and negotiate. We discovered yesterday that at least some senior Labour figures (it’s not clear as yet whether this is actual party policy) support the ‘progressive’ policy of extra-judicial executions, and the establishment of something akin to a ‘progressive’ police state in which police are encouraged to batter down people’s doors at 3am.

For Labour, ‘progressive’ actually seems to mean ‘whatever policies Labour promotes’ which is a distortion of language on a grand scale. It is, in essence, a negative rather than a positive approach, more to do with who holds the levers of power than with what they actually do with them. There certainly is scope for some realignment in UK politics, but it inevitably starts with electoral reform, the one change against which Labour continues to hold out. Whilst we shouldn’t under-estimate the advantages of replacing a corrupt and dishonest kleptocracy, neither should we simply accept that ‘any’ short-term temporary alternative is going to be better if we then allow things to revert after one or two terms in government. The one form – perhaps the only form – of electoral alliance which would make a real difference is an agreement between a number of parties to fight one election as a single bloc with the sole aim of electoral reform followed by new elections. And it is the ‘progressive’ Labour Party which is the biggest obstacle to that.

Progressive isn't the same thing as anti-Tory

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Not entirely unexpectedly, given the poor performance of the Labour Party in recent months, the idea of forming what has erroneously been called a ‘progressive alliance’ has been rearing its ugly head again. Leaving aside the obvious lack of understanding by London-based political commentators of Welsh and Scottish politics (what on earth leads them to believe, even for a moment, that parties like the SNP and Plaid would want to be part of a formal coalition government to run the UK for five years, as opposed to a looser arrangement which allows Labour to govern in return for specific concessions?), there are plenty of reasons for the Labour leadership to reject the idea outright. Whilst it’s clear that the Lib Dems might be natural bedfellows for the Labour Party, why would a party so committed to austerity economics as the Labour Party want to constrain itself by an agreement with parties such as the Green Party, the SNP and Plaid which reject austerity? Why would a party so committed to the possession and renewal of weapons of mass destruction as the Labour Party want to constrain its ability to incinerate millions by trying to reach an agreement with parties which seek to scrap nuclear weapons?

It seems, however, that it’s not for obvious policy reasons like that that the Labour leadership rejects any sort of agreement with the Greens, SNP and Plaid at all – it’s because of their fear that the Tories might use any hint of an accommodation with the SNP in an appeal to an increasingly aggressive form of English nationalism (as if Labour haven’t already lost most of the English nationalist vote already). In effect, they would prefer to leave the Tories in government indefinitely than take a principled position against what has become the core driver of the English Conservative and Unionist Party. In the meantime, the Tories are using the absolute power given to them by a distorted electoral system which is unfit for purpose to promote a series of measures, including active voter suppression, to cement their undemocratic hold on power by uniting around 35 – 40% of English electors behind them.

There are serious problems with the whole concept of a ‘progressive alliance’, not the least of which is that the biggest party in any such alliance is hardly worthy of the description ‘progressive’. What is really meant is not a ‘progressive’ alliance at all, but a non-Tory alliance, as though being ‘not-a-Tory’ is, in itself, sufficient ground to unite a disparate group of parties around a five-year plan for government. It isn’t, and it is never going to be. What might, as an outside chance, be possible would be a much looser joint commitment by all the non-Tory forces to electoral reform, with a promise that they would jointly act to introduce STV and then call a new election under the new system within two years of them being elected on that platform. Coupled with vague hints that anyone supporting such an approach should consider voting for whichever pro-STV candidate was most likely to win in any given constituency (Labour are never going to agree to stand down candidates in a general election, and people should really stop predicating their analysis on an assumption that they will), that might just open a route away from a system of politics which gives absolute power to a single party on the basis of a minority of the votes.

Whilst it’s impossible to be certain what that might mean for future governments – changing the system might also change voting behaviour – it seems probable that long periods of single party rule would be consigned to history, and we would end up with governments which were forced to pay attention to alternative views and seek accommodations with them. Even this weak version of an alliance looks unlikely currently, though. Whilst Plaid, the SNP, the Greens and the Lib Dems are all committed to electoral reform, the Labour party is another question entirely. There are certainly individuals within the party supportive of STV (former Welsh minister Alun Davies, for example, has often indicated his support), but the London-based leadership is lukewarm at best. It often appears that they are content for the Tories to be in unconstrained government for 90% of the time in exchange for having their turn for the other 10%, and that they’d sooner be out of power completely than compromise with anyone else. Unless and until that changes, not only is any sort of alliance impossible – it’s actually pointless. Starmer’s reported comments this week are not exactly a cause for optimism.

Pacts are a poor substitute for proper reform

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With an election in the air, politicians’ fancies, it seems, turn inevitably to the subject of pacts and deals, and in Wales, that raises the perennial question of the ‘progressive alliance’ (whatever that actually means) between Plaid, the Lib Dems and the Greens.  The Labour Party can probably be relied on, as ever, to take its ball home.  How useful all this is is another question entirely.  It seems to me that the approach being adopted to assessing this is far too mathematical.

I agree with the premise of the would-be pacters that Brexit is a defining issue for a generation, and that the ‘wrong’ outcome will be seriously damaging to Wales, although I also fully understand that not all independentistas see things that way.  But even if we did all accept the monumental importance of defeating Brexiteers, will a pact actually deliver that objective?  In practice, the objective comes down to defeating Tories (on the basis that Labour MPs will, even if not part of the formal pact, be likely – although not certain – to vote for a second referendum given that that’s part of their policy for this election).  So, in order to make a difference to the outcome, the basic equations boil down to (in terms of votes cast for each party):

Lib Dems + Plaid + Green > Conservative, and

Conservative > Labour

Based on previous election results, the number of constituencies where these will both be true is vanishingly small, and even if we try and project forward from some of the latest opinion polls, such a pact doesn’t seem likely to make a huge difference.  To make things worse, the outcome isn’t just a mathematical one – voters aren’t ‘owned’ by their traditional parties and can’t be ‘instructed’ to vote in a particular way.  Many Lib Dem supporters are die-hard unionists and will vote Tory rather than Plaid; and there are more Plaid supporters than the party would wish to acknowledge who would prefer to vote Tory rather than Lib Dem.  A more accurate equation would be (using the Lib Dems as the chosen ‘remain’ candidate in this case, but the same applies in principle to other options):

LD + a* PC/100 + b*Green/100> Con + c*Plaid/100 + d*Green/100

Where a, b, c, and d are the percentages of supporters of the parties concerned which will choose to vote for the anointed or unanointed alternatives.  And here’s the thing – a, b, c, and d are unknowns; they might be what Rumsfeld called ‘known unknowns’, but no-one has a clue what values to assign to them.  If the numbers fall the ‘wrong’ way, a pact could even end up achieving the opposite of its aim.

I don’t blame the pacters for their feeling that ‘something’ needs to be done, and there is always, I suppose, the hope that being seen to be forming a pact will appeal to voters by giving the appearance of a qualitative change in the style and nature of Welsh politics, although I’ll admit to being doubtful about that.  And there’s always the complication that people can see what is going on elsewhere – Wales can’t be isolated from the impact, for instance, of a tacit LD/Tory (+Labour?) pact against the SNP in parts of Scotland, giving the absolute lie to the suggestion that the Lib Dems’ number one aim is to stop Brexit.  Pacts are a poor substitute for what is really needed – an electoral system which allows for the more accurate representation of electors’ views rather than a majoritarian system under which the winner takes all.

One small word

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Given the extent to which the same words can be interpreted to mean entirely different things, the success with which humans communicate is often amazing.  Take the word ‘can’, for instance.  This week, the question was asked as to whether Labour ‘can’ win the next UK general election.  It produced different answers from different people, but it seems to me that they’re actually based on rather different interpretations of the question.

On the one hand, those who argue that, ‘of course Labour can win’, are responding to a very literal definition of the word ‘can’.  And based on that literal definition, I agree with them.  Given the right conditions, the right campaign, at least a display of unity, and enough Brexit chaos in Tory ranks, it is certainly a possibility that Labour 'can' win a majority in 2020.

But I don’t think that was quite the question that the Fabian Society was asking in its report.  I think that they were looking less at an outcome based on getting a whole series of hypothetical ducks in a row, and more at the probability of getting from where things are now to a particular outcome in 3 years’ time.  And, for what it’s worth, I tend to support their conclusion that the probability is close to zero.

However, that clear difference in interpretation and understanding of the question is one of the reasons why the party will do nothing to avert the result being foreseen by the Fabian Society’s report.  As long as a sufficient number of them believe that they can win, their ‘strategy’ (and I use the term loosely here) will be to carry on regardless.  It isn’t the only reason for their rejection of electoral alliances, though.

It’s easy to see the potential advantages, to any party, of an electoral alliance where opponents stand aside and give that party a clear run (although I personally remain highly sceptical of the extent to which supporters of one party can be depended upon to vote for another party just because the leadership tells them to do so).  What’s rather less clear is the advantage to the party standing aside under any such deal.

I don’t think that the maths work terribly well either.  There are some seats in which the Lib Dems might be the front-runner in any challenge to the Tories, but there are no seats, anywhere in the UK, where it would make sense for Labour to stand aside for the Green Party for instance.  And In Wales, there are no Tory-held seats where Plaid is the front-runner amongst the opposition.  So the sort of deal being discussed is one in which Labour would actually only need to stand aside in a few Tory seats where the Lib Dems are the challengers, whereas the Green Party, Plaid, and the Lib Dems would be expected to stand aside in large numbers of seats in favour of Labour. 

Not surprisingly for a report emanating from within the Labour Party, such a scenario is overwhelmingly favourable to Labour – improving their chances of taking seats from the Tories at the expense of standing aside in a few seats where they wouldn’t expect to win anyway.  And still they line up to reject it.

And that brings me back to the point here.  What is being floated is an electoral alliance which owes more to a negative view of the Tories than a positive vision for a different future.  Labour’s only currency is that they aren’t the Tories; many of their policies aren’t actually that different.  A Labour government would still renew Trident, to select just one example, even if it were elected with the support of anti-Trident parties – they know that they’d be able to rely on their true friends in the Tory party to get that through Parliament.  As a voter, I couldn’t vote for such an alliance purely to replace one party with another – I need a better reason.

There is one reason – and only one reason – that I can think of which would lead me to support a cross-party electoral alliance for one single election, and that is electoral reform.  Ending the way in which one party (currently the Tories) can exercise absolute power on the basis of minority support is a prize worth paying a price for in the short term.  I don’t think it’s going to happen, though.  As long as the two main parties continue to believe that they ‘can’ (back to that word again) win an outright majority under the present system, they will not support change.  Absolute power is their whole rationale.  And that, ultimately, is the significance of their rejection of the report from the Fabians.

A means to an end

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The idea of a ‘progressive alliance’ has raised its ugly head again recently, both during Plaid’s annual conference and in relation to the pending by-election in Richmond Park.  It’s an issue which I’ve discussed in the past, because it raises a number of problems.  Glyn Morris referred to it yesterday as well, pointing out that, to be meaningful, it needs to be about more than an anti-Tory electoral alliance.

My first problem is with the concept: I’m not sure what the word ‘progressive’ means.  It’s a word often used by politicians and parties who see themselves as the good guys and the ‘non-progressives’ as the bad guys, but that is, in essence, a definition which starts from a subjective viewpoint.  Taking it as its lowest common denominator in recent discussions, the desired outcome would appear to be that Labour, the Lib Dems, Plaid, the SNP, and the Greens agree amongst themselves that only one candidate should stand in any given constituency, in order that the best-placed ‘progressive’ should be able to defeat the baby-eaters.  But what does that mean in practice?

Let’s take the issue of Trident, for a start.  Labour are in favour of renewing it, the Lib Dems want to replace it with an alternative form of nuclear deterrent (they don’t seem entirely sure what, only that it should be less accurate and less immediately available; a position the logic of which escapes me).  So, if there were to be a ‘progressive’ alliance, would someone like me, who is utterly opposed to the possession of nuclear weapons, be expected to vote for a Labour pro-Trident candidate in order to defeat a Tory pro-Trident candidate?  Why would anyone do that?  It’s a point which highlights the dodgy assumption being made by too many politicians that their electoral supporters would vote for a different party if only their normal party told them to.  It’s a position which owes more to abstract mathematical analysis than to serious political thought.

Or take the question of an ‘anti-austerity’ programme.  Labour’s pitch at the last general election may have been presented in that light, but the actual policy put forward was more about a disagreement about the extent and speed of austerity.  The basic Tory position was accepted; the difference was about the detail and timing.  Again, why would any serious opponent of austerity, who wants an alternative economic strategy, compromise and support austerity-lite just because his or her usual party told them to?

This article highlights some of the issues in arriving at a consensus platform, as seen from a Labour viewpoint.  Seen from that perspective, one of the conditions would be that “... the nationalist parties would have to accept a federal or ‘devo-max’ model of governance in exchange for using power to pursue progressive politics and give up hopes of independence.”  I think that neatly brings us to one of the key points: from a Labour perspective, the whole concept is not about what such an alliance actually achieves, it’s about getting Labour back into power and making other views subordinate to those of the big boys.  Just think about the constituencies across the UK, and which parties would be standing down for which other parties.  In the vast majority of constituencies in England (and in Wales), the simple reality is that such an alliance would mean other parties standing down to give Labour a free run.  It is, for Labour, a route back to two-party politics, marginalising other views in the process.

I can think of one, and only one, reason to back an alliance between disparate parties on a once-off basis, and that is an agreement to change the electoral system to one based on proportional representation.  (My own preference would be for STV, but there are other possible alternatives.)  Imagine electing a government which had that as its one and only priority, and which agreed in advance that it would resign and call new elections under the new system after passing the legislation.  I believe that would do more for the advancement of whatever progressive politics actually is than any political manoeuvring based solely on not being the Tories.

That’s something that Plaid, the SNP, the Green Party, and the Lib Dems could probably all agree on.  There’s a problem with Labour, though.  That particular ‘progressive’ party is wedded to the current system, and seems unlikely to change as long as they believe that they can win an outright majority under such a system.  In that context, talk of other parties standing down in favour of Labour hardly encourages them to shift their position.

Oh, and there’s another problem with PR as well.  Labour might not support it, but my understanding is that UKIP do.  I know that ‘official’ wisdom is that they eat even more babies than the Tories, but if we were serious about seeing a change in the electoral system as the number one priority for building an alternative approach to politics, one could make a good argument that, on a one-off basis, a UKIP MP might be a better bet than a Labour one.  That’s not a serious proposal, by the way; but it highlights a problem with the logic of much of what is being proposed, namely that the sort of alliance being proposed would not deliver real long term political change, only a short term change of government.

None of the above is intended to suggest that parties cannot or should not work together in relation to specific policy issues where there is common ground, but an electoral alliance which merely serves to reinforce Labour’s hegemony as the ‘main’ non-Tory party looks more like a regressive step to me than a progressive one.  Too many people who should know better are confusing ends with means.

Friends Falling Out

Tweet This week’s little spat between the Wales Green Party and Plaid Cymru looks, from the outside at least, to have been based on a not insignificant misunderstanding of the difference between an agreement to work together after the election and an electoral pact.  And reading between the lines, it looks as though some in Plaid had assumed, with no obvious foundation in evidence, that Plaid’s unilateral decision to urge people in England to vote Green would be followed by some sort of quid pro quo in Wales.

The desire in some quarters to see an electoral pact where there is none is driven by an over-simplistic analysis of the polling data.  The fact that adding the numbers of votes for two parties together leads to a higher total is an undeniable arithmetical fact.  Turning that arithmetical fact into an electoral result however is another matter entirely.

In the first place, it’s a fallacy to assume that supporters of one party will vote for another party if their leaders tell them to do so.  Electors’ votes are not the plaything of parties to be traded or swapped.  The extent to which the electors might feel inclined to follow the advice of their leaders will inevitably depend at least in part on the extent to which they feel that there is a real policy crossover between the two.  And in this case, at this time, I’m really not sure that there is.

There is, it is true, agreement on opposition to austerity and opposition to Trident, but these are essentially negatives, not positives.  Being united in opposition to something isn’t the same as having an agreed policy to do something different, let alone an agreed programme for possible future coalition.  This is not a UK version of Syriza or Podemos - it's much less ambitious than that.  And there are some fairly fundamental differences as well.

Any nationalist is likely to be wary about giving his or her support to a party which seems to have as little regard for Welsh national aspirations, to say nothing of the Welsh language, as some in the Green Party.  It’s as though Green Party members and candidates are free to take whatever line they want on an issue which is core to many nationalists.  And in the same way, any green voter is likely to be wary of voting for a party which has no coherent policy on one of the key environmental issues, namely energy policy.  On an issue which is core to many green supporters, Plaid’s members have shown that they are, in practice, free to busk; to say whatever they think will win them votes in a particular constituency.  Given just those points, the probability is that vote transference between the parties would be a very long way short of the 100% being assumed by people with calculators.

Looking at harsh electoral reality, the number of seats in Wales where one or other of the two parties standing down might (and I stress might) make it easier for the other to win, even if all the other party's supporters dutifully did as told, is a sum total of one.  Only one of the parties stands to gain; the apparent expectation that the other would tamely acquiesce looks wholly unrealistic.  Under the current voting system, what’s in it for the Wales Green Party? 

I can remember a time when Plaid was in a not too dissimilar position to the Green Party today; fighting a whole host of hopeless seats with no chance of winning.  And I’m sure that I can remember voices from the general direction of the Labour Party (albeit far from unanimous voices) questioning why the two parties were fighting each other.  Plaid developed a national presence at least partly as a result of insisting on putting its own unique view before all the electors of Wales.  Supporters of a pact between Plaid and the Greens are suggesting that both parties should, in effect, stop doing that.  It only works if that which they are proposing is sufficiently similar.

All that said, I’m attracted by the idea that, if we want to break the mould of politics (whether in Wales or the UK), more co-operation between parties would be helpful.  But to be meaningful it needs to start from a unity of purpose around an agreed policy platform which is positive rather then merely negative, not merely around a shared dislike of some elements of current government policy, let alone around grubby electoral calculations - which is where things are at present.