Where next for the democracy movement
By Emma.
The question of electoral reform is now closed for a generation. Anyone who disagrees with this statement is part of the much wider problem that the democracy movement has.
The movement likes to believe that it listens and that it represents “the people”, but, generally, what that has meant in my experience is that people who agree with the aims of the movement get a hearing as to how their aims might be achieved, while those who question the priorities of the reformers are dismissed as dinosaurs and not engaged with to understand their reticence. And while the movement certainly represents some of “the people”, who deserve a voice as much as anyone else, the inability to grow from a niche to a mass movement demonstrates clearly that it is not the voice of all the people.
At the moment, the blame game is moving quickly. So far we have the mendacious No campaign, the toxicity of the Lib Dems and particularly the childish tantrums of Chris Huhne, the intervention of the prime minister and the split in the Labour party. All of which did – of course – play a part in why the Yes campaign failed. But for my money, the biggest reason the campaign failed is because it was run by people who don’t know the electorate and don’t understand what they want and what they fear.
Most of my friends voted yes to AV (full disclosure, I didn’t) but among them I couldn’t find a single one with a good word to say about the Yes campaign. If even your strongest followers think you’re getting it so wrong and you aren’t listening to them, you have a real issue and you need to think very hard about how you deal with that.
If the democracy movement want to make real and positive changes to the impact of democracy on people’s lives and the engagement people have with the process, they need to do three things.
First I would urge them to take a year off and spend it getting their own house in order. While the campaign for fairer votes was made up of many disparate organisations, those who were at its heart – like Unlock Democracy, the Joseph Rowntree reform trust and the electoral reform society – need to get an external party to look properly at why they are failing to reach beyond their metropolitan support base. They need to look at absolutely every aspect of their organisations and campaigning, from the language they use to their campaigning methods, from their leadership to their relationships with their supporters. I suspect the results will be extremely uncomfortable, but should also be fully digested and changes implemented. The failure of this campaign shows the desperate need for the movement to get its house in order. This will take time, but is essential and unless they take the time to do this nothing else will be achieved.
Second, they need to stop being an anti-politics movement. Most of the thrust of the campaign was about teaching politicians a lesson and making them work harder. It was negative and that doesn’t really work when you’re campaigning for something. The No campaign had by far the easier job in that respect. But in truth, electoral reform is about improving political engagement which may or may not have a knock on effect on the behaviour of politicians. The honest and hard truth is that anyone who wants to talk about political or electoral reform is already politically engaged. They may be engaged through anger at politicians, but they are engaged. By being anti-politics you denigrate that which you want to improve, which is a confusing and confused message. It’s also mendacious which made fighting the No to AV’s baby and soldier posters harder, because frankly you all looked as bad as each other.
My final point is the most important and the most overlooked: There has been far too much focus on how we vote and far too little on if we vote. Whole swathes of the country, and usually those with the most to lose, are disenfranchising themselves by disengaging from the political process. Turnouts are dropping year after year after year. Electoral reform has been offered (rather unconvincingly in my opinion) as a solution to this, but in Scotland they have PR for Holyrood elections and turnout in this election varied from 34.5% in Glasgow Provan to only as high as 62.8% in East Renfrewshire. Given that a change in the voting system is now dead in the water for a generation, perhaps the best outcome of all would be a shift from the democracy movement away from procedural matters that obsess those who already vote, back to a focus on the cultural factors that stop those who don’t.
What happened last Thursday was a massive setback for the democracy movement. This is a dangerous time for them. They could retreat further into their own self-reinforcing bubble, blaming everyone else for their loss, but they could take this loss and use it as a springboard for the rejuvenation the movement has so clearly needed for so long. As democrats, they should listen to the message the people have given them before it’s too late.
This piece forst appeared at Labour Uncut.
Thursday, June 2nd 2011 at 16:08
Great article!
I agree with your first point, that the pro-democracy organisations need to do some careful analysis and somewhat uncomfortable repair work on their own house.
And I agree with your second point, that the anti-politics tone is confusing and unhelpful.
And I very much agree with your third point, that the disengagement of large numbers of people is a hugely serious issue. The sooner some remedial action is taken, the better – even if just to halt or reverse a trend of decline.
It has been argued on LabourList that it’s in the interests of the Labour Party to work on engaging with non-voters and encouraging more people to register to vote. Yes, undoubtedly this would be true.
But more importantly, this would be in the best interests of democracy overall. It’s not just electorally convenient for Labour; it’s actually the right thing to do.
To mention briefly just two contributing factors :
a) elsewhere on this site, I’ve commented that when New Labour shifts to the right and seeks to compete against the Tories to be the managerial, neoliberal party of government, then the whole political system becomes unbalanced and democracy is lessened consequentially as several millions of left-of-centre potential voters are left unrepresented and with no party they can vote for in positive cheerful mood.
b) I’ve noticed that turnout is lower in safe seats than in marginals. This suggests that the levels of disenchantment are either deeply rooted in pockets or, more probably, not so deeply rooted but more about pragmatism and apathy… or a mix of both.
Thursday, June 2nd 2011 at 16:09
* OFF TOPIC *
Hello Emma,
May I ask what your feelings are regarding longer or tangential or off-topic comments?
Out of courtesy and common sense I try to be reasonably short and relevant when commenting underneath individual blog-posts,
but sometimes there are things I’d wish to write at more length or at a tangent or even off the topic altogether
Your guidance would be appreciated.
Thursday, June 2nd 2011 at 16:13
Hi Phil,
I don’t mind how long comments are as long as they are constructive and interesting – something you have more than proved yourself to be.
I also don’t mind tangents, as they can take us to interesting places.
The only thing I would say is that i do get tired of people with particular bugbears ignoring wholly the point I am trying to discuss to return to the same topic over and over again. This is something I’ve seen on lots of blogs and sometimes I don’t let comments go through when they the third or fourth identical rant on a completely unrelated topic to any of the blog posts they respond to. I am sure i can trust you and your discretion to realise the difference between that and an interesting tangent.
Thursday, June 2nd 2011 at 17:29
Thank you!
Thursday, June 2nd 2011 at 21:51
* Off On a Tangent *
You describe the democracy movement as a niche movement with a metropolitan support base.
In recent weeks I’ve read speculative theory about the existence of a “progressive majority” and contrary speculation about a “conservative majority”.
There seems to be an assumption that the cleavage between Left & Right is very similar to the cleavage between progressive & conservative (and could even be a reinforcing cleavage).
I read the situation very differently; I think the two are cross-cutting cleavages.
I imagine on a piece of paper a horizontal line, marked Left and Right at its ends,
and an intersecting vertical line marked progressive at top and conservative at bottom.
The vertical line forms the Left-Right cleavage, and the horizontal line is the progressive-conservative cleavage.
This divides the political ‘map’ into four quadrants, of not necessarily equal size and population.
Many Labour Party members would be in the Left progressive quadrant,
but some would be in the Right progressive quadrant and others would be in the Left conservative quadrant
(consider: mainstream v Blairite ultras v TUC “dinosaurs”).
Complicating this further, most (being human) would switch between two quadrants on different specific areas of policy.
Therefore, I’d expect a post-1994 Labourite to be a blend of Left progressive & Left conservative or Left progressive & Right progressive.
(each, if free-thinking, being his or her own unique blend)
The democracy movement probably sits astride the Left-Right cleavage in the progressive half of the map
(if it were a clock face, it’d be between 11 o’clock and 1 o’clock).
Funnily enough, in this quadrant map, hard left sits next to hard right in the conservative half of the map (on either side of 6 o’clock), diametrically opposed to the democracy movement. So you’d expect maximum resistance to electoral reform to come from the hardest of left-wingers and hardest of right-wingers.
In conclusion, I would agree with you that the democracy movement is a niche movement with a metropolitan support base.
PS I do hope my thinking is not too unorthodox.
Wednesday, June 15th 2011 at 21:04
Hi Emma,
I apologise if I’m straying off too far from the allotted subject, but I really am trying to understand the political map and picture who fits in where.
I’ve hesitated for days about returning to this thread, but, in the light of your comments this evening re Blue Labour vis-a-vis Blair, I shall now dive in.
In my comment above, I outlined my imagined version of the political map which has quadrants around a Left-Right cleavage & a progressive-conservative cleavage.
Last Friday I was directed to a website which divides the political map into quadrants around a Left-Right economic axis & a Libertarian-Authoritarian social axis.
Obviously, the guys who devised this map are cleverer than I am, and they’ve done some proper research.
As an illustration, their chart places Brown, Merkel, Sarkozy, Bush and Thatcher in the Authoritarian Right quadrant.
btw, the website contains some fascinating stuff, such as the placement of anarchists,
and there’s a questionnaire which can be answered anonymously. My score placed me in their Left Libertarian quadrant, much more to the Left ( -7.75) than to the Libertarian ( -3.56). If you fancy having a go, I could post the link for you.
Anyways, if the political map is divided into quadrants,
the website would presumably place Blue Labour in the Authoritarian Left quadrant and Blair in the Authoritarian Right quadrant
while I would place Blue Labour in my Left conservative quadrant (as economically Left and socially conservative/ authoritarian) and I had placed Blair in the Right progressive quadrant (because I took the view that Blairism was mostly about a fervent desire for [Blair's own perception of] modernisation, despite an authoritarian streak, and definitely tacked to the Right on economics).
Hope this is helpful or, at least, interesting.
Wednesday, June 15th 2011 at 21:28
I’ve taken that test. It always places me wildly on the left because I always say yes to “from each according to his ability, to each according to their need.” but I’m pretty sure Marx nicked that from Jesus, and I’ve met some pretty right wing Christians in my time!