Britain is not crying out for socialism. It just isn’t
One of the quirks of the British Labour party is that its adherents feel compelled to say they love it. I will not be driven out of the party I love, said a Labour Peer this week, and other moderates voice similar sentiments about the stricken party in a manner that is not replicated by members of most other parties.
No-one says they “love” the Tory party, not even Tories. If Conservatives talk about love at all it tends to be in terms of love of country. To Tories the political party is a necessary means to an end, a coalition of interests assembled to win power in order to stop socialists taking and spending all the money.
The contrast in approach is curious when one considers the history of the UK’s two major parties. The Tory tribe’s roots lie in a romantic affiliation to the monarchy (over parliament) in the Civil Wars and then later in the Jacobite cause and the claims of the exiled Stuarts. Over the centuries, the Tories grew more hardheaded as they became adept at winning and holding onto power.
The Labour party was founded by hardheaded, practical people who wanted to create a vehicle to wrest power from the Establishment. With a few deviations (including the Blair experiment) the Labour party has become steadily more sentimental the older it gets, until it ends its days with a dunderheaded twit for a leader who seems, tragically, almost impossible to remove. A ruthless and well-organised political movement would never have elected him in the first place.
Labour’s problem – along with excessive sentimentality – lies in the party’s fixation on two other words beginning with “s”. Solidarity is often trumpeted as the defining word in the Labour lexicon, denoting a desire to stand together against non-Labour folk and, supposedly, to organise the defence of the working class. But all Labour’s moralising myth-making about its own history has helped cripple the party and make it too sentimental for grown-up politics. Stand together. Stand by the leader, even when he is terrible. Fear you have sinned or done something dark and transgressive if you do try – too late – to oust him.
The other “S” word that is a problem is socialism, obviously. Even relatively moderate Labour people still flirt with the word, as though it adds a hint of danger or authenticity. Gordon Brown wrote various books attempting to reconcile his acceptance of market economics with his belief that he was still a socialist. Even as Chancellor he would go to the Scottish TUC (STUC) and make after dinner speeches in which he used the “s” word and talked of democratic socialism.
This means that the smartest Blairites aside, Labour has never had a proper reckoning with the reality that socialism is a truly terrible idea. It rests on the nationalisation of industry, the centralised control of the economy and a confiscatory tax policy that punishes wealth creation. It is an agenda at odds with successful human development. The profit motive and markets, as Adam Smith explained, are a boon. Markets are not everything in life and they are imperfect, like human beings. Successful societies also require strong institutions and capable government. But as a mechanism for fostering growth, innovation and prosperity, markets and trade are unrivalled.
In contrast, wherever socialism has been tried it has ended badly. In its extreme form the socialist imposition of so-called equality requires coercion and tyranny to discipline those who want to trade and interact as free individuals. In its milder parliamentary form, in Britain pre-1979, it produced inefficient nationalised industries and an economic disaster.
That Jeremy Corbyn should not understand this is hardly surprising. Corbyn is not the sharpest tool in the box. He’s an old leftie who last year liked to praise the latest socialist experiment in Venezuela, until it became apparent that it had led to economic disaster and basic shortages of medicine and food. Now he has stopped mentioning it.
Much more troublingly, even Corbyn’s challenger now feels the need to invoke the “s” word. The alleged moderate Owen Smith said this week: “We need a revolution, friends. Not some misty-eyed, romantic notion of a revolution where we’re going to overthrow capitalism and return to a socialist nirvana. I don’t know who I’m referring to! But a cold-eyed, practical, socialist revolution where we build a better Britain. Where we look the country in the eye and we say: ‘This is possible. It can be better. We can create a better, brighter future.’ We have done before – we can do it again.”
The problem for Smith and for Labour is that England in particular, and Britain too, is simply not in the market for a socialist revolution. It just isn’t, by any available measure. No amount of Owen Smith looking voters in the eye is going to change reality.
The last time that the country voted in a government that could reasonably be described as explicitly socialist in its outlook was in October 1974. That was forty two years ago. Since then, demography and economic upheaval have changed the face of much of Britain in such a way that mass nationalisation and tax hikes are not going to get past the majority of voters, short of Corbyn putting LSD in the nation’s water supply.
There is plenty that a moderate centre-left non-socialist party could contribute – on education, training, infrastructure, trade – at what is an exciting time for Britain. That is, it could contribute if such a party existed. It does not. Despite the efforts of good Labour MPs and sane members who battle on, there is no such party. There is just Labour, disappearing down the plughole of history, with two candidates for leader who both use the “s” word.