Where next for the Left – ideas from the Fabian Conference

These are notes of points I found interesting at the Fabian Society’s January conference. It is not an accurate account of the many discussions, nor necessarily my own views.

Labour vision – respond to anxiety

  • This is an emotional time, people are scared and politics seems irrelevant (even the US security guarantees are no longer reliable)
  • Labour needs a change offer that promises security and doesn’t scare people – do we want a “more equal” or a “fairer” society?
  • We must build hope and positive values based vision – Labour must be more than a set of grievances
  • Help people to cope with change and protect those who will lose
  • Labour needs a new patriotic alliance based on principle and mutual security
  • Recognise that economy is not everything – attend to people’s sense of culture and identity – recognise people’s attachment to place, strengthen devolution
  • Reinvent the mixed economy round fair markets with industrial and regional strategy
  • Refound the welfare state – a new model of social security – consider Universal Basic Income
  • Retain our international commitment – ask what the UK can offer the world
  • On immigration ask “what’s best for the economy?”, and manage local/sectoral tensions creatively. Focus on integration, not immigration

Strategy

  • We have been talking to ourselves for too long. We have not made an argument with anyone we disagree with for years
  • 33 elections since 2010 the centre left won 5 (some with support from less than 25% of electorate) In Stoke on Trent Tristram Hunt was elected on 19% of electorate (turnout was only 50%)
  • The Brexit dilemma – if we try to block Article 50 May calls a General election which we lose, because of a divided opposition and press/public perception of democratic betrayal. She then has a clear mandate for a very hard Brexit –is that better?
  • Make it clear what hard Brexit means for local jobs and businesses – remember that, whatever they privately feel, most businesses won’t ring alarm bells for fear of undermining confidence, and weakening their individual competitive positions.

Brexit

  • Keep reminding people that they didn’t vote to destroy jobs and the UK economy
  • Resist the race to the bottom in economic terms, workers’ rights and social welfare
  • Non-negotiable issues:
    – Access to single market
    – Confirm that EU citizens already in the UK have an absolute right to stay
    – Ensure that employment and welfare rights are not reduced by Brexit
    – Retain commitment to rule of international law and human rights
    – Seek cooperative., collaborative relations with EU states and EU
    – Recommit to internationalism and multilateralism (not Trump’s bilateral deals)
    – Insist on a Parliamentary vote/referendum at the end of Article 50 process

Constitution

  • Our economic crisis was/is a failure of governance, not of economics or politics. Politicians failed to put proper institutions and regulations in place, and to police the laws which existed
  • We need a People’s Convention to renew our constitution, including relations between the four nations
  • We need a more proportional electoral system to restore public confidence
  • Follow the Electoral Reform Society’s 9 recommendations on Referenda, including legislation that Referenda must require 2/3 majorities (like the Commonwealth countries whose constitutions were written by British lawyers)
  • Build networks not institutions
  • Create a job description for MPs so people understand what they do and why
    Introduce compulsory citizen’s juries
  • Make voting compulsory voting – this removes the incentive to minimise turnout, there are then no safe assumptions about likely results
  • Nottinghamshire “Power to the People” project?

A couple of notes on the inclusive society of Theresa May

  • Since 2010 Conservatives have cut £4.6b from social care, precipitating the crisis in the NHS – the current proposal to allow Local Authorities to raise Council Tax rise could restore 3% of this figure
  • In the Housing Bill, Tories voted down a proposal to make it a legal requirement for private rented houses to be fit for human habitation

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