Responding to voters’ concerns
The unexpected Conservative majority in December 2019 was a painful defeat for both Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The pain of this defeat has been compounded by the fact that many of those on lower incomes, whose lives we seek to improve, switched to the Conservatives. This is a serious political failure and we need to consider why it happened. To have a chance of implementing the excellent solutions outlined in the following chapters requires us to resolve this dilemma.
The following chapters are written by experienced politicians, rather than academics, who are painfully aware of the need to reach out beyond those who think like us. On his election as Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey rightly emphasised the importance of listening, and not just to those who agree with us. Those of us who are activists on the centre-left should do the same.
Reaching out must be about more than policies. It may involve changing the way we express ourselves. Probably the most painful electoral defeat in the last ten years was the election of Donald Trump. On 9 September 2016, Hilary Clinton said: ‘you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables…. They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic.’1 It was a catastrophic gaffe that was used repeatedly by the Trump campaign. Not only did it energise Trump’s base, but some who were still undecided thought her insult might be directed at them. She quickly apologised, but the damage was done, perhaps because those words were perceived to reflect the underlying attitude of many liberal members of the Democrats. Social democrats and liberals in the UK should consider whether we have made similar mistakes.
Engaging with these voters will sometimes require us to make compromises. Such compromises are not a betrayal of our values. Those who voted tactically for Hillary Clinton to keep out Trump in 2016, whether from the Left or the Right, were compromising, but they were also acting out of deep principle. We want voters to give us tactical support in the UK, but we will be unable to do so if we reject the idea of seeking common ground with them.
We must also be careful about making superficial judgements. Instead, we should work hard to understand what people really mean. Ian Kearns, director of our sister group, the Social Liberal Forum, has talked about an experience in Germany.2 Locals feared the settling of angry young male refugees in their village, but when the proposal changed to settling refugee families with young children, they agreed to it. In the same way, if we meet communities in the UK who express similar concerns, we must engage with them. We certainly should not dismiss their concerns as racist.
Some of their concerns were the result of past government decisions. In 2004, Tony Blair’s government decided to open its borders immediately rather than apply transitional controls. They predicted EU immigration to the UK would be between 5,000 and 13,000. In practice, the migration was far higher. By 2007, 112,000 had entered the UK from new EU member states in a single year.3 This may have undermined the trust of many of the voters who have deserted the centre-left and who became disillusioned with the EU. However, this loss of confidence in the centre-left need not be permanent as long as we actively engage with these voters.
We should also consider the warnings of Michael Sandel4: by pursuing meritocracy without creating a level playing field for those without a privileged background, the liberal Left has abandoned the working class. In Chapter Eight, entitled ‘How do we deliver social justice through education?’, Stephen Williams proposes a series of policies to improve life chances for the disadvantaged. Sandel also calls for the redistribution of esteem, as well as money, to those doing work that does not require a degree. This cannot be done easily, and will require genuine engagement with these people.
Conclusion
Social democracy has dramatically improved the lives of people across Britain in the last century but it has lost support to populists in recent years. This collection of essays by leading social democrats and liberals aims to promote new social democratic thinking to arrest this decline.
While this will not be straightforward, we should not despair. In the 1930s, there was a fatalism among many democrats that the future belonged to fascism and communism. It did not. Nor do all the signs show that populism is on the rise. Polling shows that opposition to immigration has softened since the Brexit vote,5 support for most forms of benefit remains high,6 the hostility to those on benefits that existed around 2005 has subsided7 and, within Western Europe, opposition to minority groups is low.8
If we learn from past mistakes, and engage with the concerns of ordinary people, the proposals in the excellent essays in this book can be delivered, and the lives of many improved.
Notes
1‘Mook: Clinton’s “deplorables” comment “definitely could have alienated” voters’, CNN, December 2016. A study showed that Clinton’s ‘deplorables’ comment had the greatest impact in alienating undecided voters.
2‘Building a “do tank” not just a think tank with Ian Kearns’, LibDem Podcast, YouTube, August 2020 (23.09 minutes in).
3Erica Consterdine (2016) ‘The huge political cost of Blair’s decision to allow Eastern European migrants unfettered access to Britain’, theconversation.com, November, https://theconversation.com/the-huge-political-cost-of-blairs-decision-to-allow-eastern-european-migrants-unfettered-access-to-britain-66077
4The Guardian (2020) ‘Michael Sandel: “The populist backlash has been a revolt against the tyranny of merit”’, September, www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/06/michael-sandel-the-populist-backlash-has-been-a-revolt-against-the-tyranny-of-merit
5There is a preference in the UK for reduced migration but it has softened since the Brexit vote. See ‘UK public opinion toward immigration: overall attitudes and level of concern’, https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/
6John Hudson and Neil Lunt, ‘Winning support for the safety net’ (Table 4, p 17), https://england.shelter.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/1359741/Winning_Support_for_the_Safety_Net_Short_Report.pdf
7The Economist (2019) ‘Our attitudes to welfare have undergone a quiet revolution since Benefits Street’, The Economist, 18 July, https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/our-attitudes-to-welfare-have-undergone-a-quiet-revolution-since-benefits-street-315596
