Stumbling and Mumbling

Left & right: a common aim

The difference between the left and the right is that the left wants to change the electorate whist the right wants to change the workforce.

This thought struck me whilst reading this. Among the cliché-mongering, Marian Tupy says:

millions of Britons will need to be retrained and their movement between different jobs facilitated by 21^st century education and welfare systems.

This, of course, is part of a long tradition on the centre and right. Thatcher wanted to make workers more submissive – an aim she achieved if not in the way she intended. And a large part of the New Labour project consisted in what Stuart Hall called (pdf):

adapting society to the global economy's needs, tutoring its citizens to be self-sufficient and self-reliant in order to compete more successfully in the global marketplace.

Blair’s emphasis on “education, education, education” was an attempt to make workers fit for the perceived needs of capitalism. To him, “modernity” meant modernizing people. As he and Gerhard Schroeder wrote (pdf):

The most important task of modernisation is to invest in human capital: to make the individual and businesses fit for the knowledge-based economy of the future.

It’s easy to sneer at Corbynistas as demanding “no compromise with the electorate”. But neoliberals, with their incessant demands down the years for labour market "flexibility", want no compromise with the workforce. Both, in their different ways, want to achieve the same thing: to change people.

Which poses the question: why should it be a sensible idea to change the workforce but a daft one to change the electorate? Several possible answers seem to me to be dubious, for example:

“The workforce is in fact malleable but the electorate isn’t.”

Certainly, the workforce has changed over time; there are twice as many graduates now as in the early 90s. But so too has the electorate: for example, fewer voters want increases in public spending or unemployment benefits now than in the 90s, and tolerance of homosexuality has increased. (It’s unclear whether attitudes to immigration have changed).

“The workforce wants to become more skilled, but people don’t want to change their political views.”

This isn’t obvious. Of course, many do want to go to university and get better training. But on the other hand, tens of thousands of teenagers are bored at school and want to leave as soon as possible.

“We know how to change workers but not how to change voters’ minds.”

Surely not. For one thing, attempts to improve technical education in the UK have failed for decades. And if voters’ minds are fixed, then the millions spent on spin doctors and campaigns is wasted. One lesson of behavioural science, surely, is that people are persuadable.

“The payoff to changing the workforce is greater than that to changing the electorate.”

This of course depends upon how happy you are with the present state of public opinion – though surely even centrist critics of Corbyn must share his disquiet with anti-immigration sentiments. But it’s not clear that upskilling the workforce will have great benefits, given that it’s quite possible that technical change will destroy skilled jobs in future. The notion that we can predict the future skill needs of the economy seems to me to be absurdly hubristic – but then, we Marxists have learned Hayek’s lesson about the limits of what can be known more than have the centre and right.

My point here is simple. The centre-right should not sneer at the Corbynistas' desire to change public opinion over the long-term, because this project has much in common with their aim to transform the workforce. But they will sneer, because tribalism trumps intellectual consistency.

The strange death of the business vote

To those of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s, there’s something odd about politics now. It’s that no main party is, or seems to want to be, the “party of business”.

What I mean is that back then, the Tories were emphatically on the side of business, exemplified by Thatcher’s union-bashing and talk of “management’s right to manage”. In the 90s Labour – first under John Smith and then under Blair – devoted immense effort to trying to get business onside via the prawn cocktail offensive.

Elections then were won and lost by chasing the business vote.

Things have changed. In taking the UK out of the EU against the wishes of most major companies, the Tories can no longer claim to be the party of business. And Theresa May’s talk of getting “tough on irresponsible behaviour in big business” and of “unscrupulous bosses” suggests little desire to become so.

You might think this presents Labour with an open goal. It would be easy to present policies such as a national investment bank, more infrastructure spending and anti-austerity as being pro-business.

But there seems little desire to do this. Why not?

A good reason is that political parties should not be pro-business. Pro-business policies can often protect incumbent firms at the expense of consumers. Governments should instead promote competition, which denies businessmen an easy life and high profits.

What’s more, some “business interests” are in fact a desire for unjustifiable power. Kalecki pointed out back in 1943 that businesses opposed sensible fiscal policy because it made employment less dependent upon business “confidence”, thus removing a source of capitalist power. The point broadens. Some businesses are opposed to worker directors and some employment rights not because they are inefficient but because they undermine their power.  

No political party is, or should be, the party of Mike Ashley or Philip Green.

But there’s something else. Voters chose Brexit despite knowing that it was against the wishes of most major businesses. Brexit wasn’t just a vote against political and intellectual elites, but against business elites too. Perhaps, then – in sharp contrast to the 80s and 90s – being on the side of business is no longer a vote-winner.

In theory, this could be a very good thing, as it might facilitate policies that are pro-market and egalitarian. I fear, instead, though that it might simply lead to a populist pandering to grievances.

How true?

We should ask of economic theories not: “are they true?” but rather “how true are they?” I was reminded of this by Noah Smith’s piece pointing out that Friedman’s permanent income hypothesis is wrong – a fact which matters a lot because, as Noah says, the PIH implies that fiscal policy is ineffective.

Noah’s right. But he overstates the newness of the evidence against the PIH. In fact, we’ve known it was flawed (pdf) ever since the early 80s. He also overstates the PIH’s intellectual hegemony. The standard UK undergraduate textbook says:

One strong prediction of the simple PIH model…is that changes in income that are predictable from past information should have no effect on current consumption. But there is by now a considerable body of work on aggregate consumption data that suggests this is wrong…This is an important result for economic policy because it suggests that changes in income as a result, say, of tax changes can have a marked effect on consumption and hence on economic activity. (Carlin and Soskice, Macroeconomics: Imperfections, Institutions and Policies, p221-22)

However, Noah is absolutely right to insist that the PIH is “not completely wrong, mind you, just somewhat wrong.” There’s a big germ of truth in the PIH – that consumer spending is in part forward-looking.

Not only is this true, it is useful. As Lettau and Ludvigson (pdf) and Bank of England (pdf) research has shown, it implies that consumer spending can predict equity returns: when spending is low relative to wealth, it portends low subsequent returns.

In this sense, the question: “is the PIH true?” depends upon the context in which we are asking. As a guide to the effectiveness of fiscal policy, we should act as if it is wrong. But as a potential warning of bad times, it might well contain some truth.

It’s not just the PIH where context matters. The same is true of the efficient market theory. This is (perhaps (pdf)) false in the sense that stock markets are, in Samuelson’s phrase, “macro inefficient”: they over-react to good and bad news. It’s also not wholly true in the micro sense; the good performance (pdf) of defensive and momentum stocks is evidence against it.

However, in another context, the EMH is true and useful. If we’re asking “should we buy high-charging actively managed unit trusts?” we should act as if the EMH is true.

Here’s another example. The belief that a weaker pound post-Brexit will support the economy is partly true: it will give a boost to exports. But only partly so: statistics tell us that exports aren’t very sensitive to exchange rate changes.

Or another example. Economists believe that uncertainty usually depresses capital spending. Most post-Brexit business surveys seem to corroborate this (pdf). But this does not mean that all firms delay investment. Only some do, but as Geroski and Gregg pointed out, recessions are about what happens to a minority of firms. The fact that Glaxo has today announced a big investment is therefore wholly consistent with the claim that uncertainty will have some adverse effect on capex.

I say all this merely to reiterate what should already be well-known. For one thing, as Sarah O’Connor has said, economists need dirty shoes: it’s facts that matter, not armchair theorizing. In fact, as Noah has said, economists have taken this on board, and do more empirical work now than a few years ago.

And for another, it reinforces what Dani Rodrik has written:

Different social settings require different models. Economists are unlikely ever to uncover universal, general-purpose models. But in part because economists take the natural sciences as their example, they have a tendency to misuse models. They are prone to mistake a model for the model, relevant and applicable under all conditions. Economists must overcome this temptation. (Economics Rules, p5-6)

Split the Labour leadership

Here’s an intelligent idea from Richard Wilkinson:

If we can't have a Lab leader who can inspire and do the nitty gritty of Parliamentary politics, let's split the job in two, not the party.

David Owen has suggested how to do this. He writes:

When the Party functions at its best, the role of the Left is to keep the Right honest, to block its tendency to surrender too much in its electoral pursuit of power, to prioritize short-term tactics over long-term strategy. The role of the Right is to keep the Left focused on the point that principle is impotent in the absence of power.

He proposes a triumvirate of leaders: a party chair, elected by the members, to build Labour as a social movement; a PLP leader, elected by MPs; and a general secretary to coordinate the two and organize campaigns*.

This might seem radical by the low standards of politics, but it is in fact simply sound business practice. As I’ve said, what matters in important jobs is not just the ability of the individual but the match between the individual and the role (pdf). If Labour can’t find an individual who can adequately fill the role of single leader, it should redefine the role. If all you’ve got is round pegs, you should drill some round holes.

Decent organizations often do this. They rejig departments to make the best of what they’ve got.  

So, what could possibly be wrong with David and Richard’s suggestion?

To make it work would, of course, require cooperation among the three leaders, for them to subordinate their egos to the good of the party. This, though, should not be too much to ask. Millions of workers have to leave their ego at the office door every day. The same should be expected of politicians.

A bigger obstacle would be that this would invite a sneer from the right: “if your man isn’t good enough to be your sole leader, how can he be good enough to be Prime Minster?”

There is, of course, an intelligent answer to this. It’s to point out that leadership works best when it is collective, when the Prime Minister isn’t some messiah but merely primus inter pares. More collective leadership – and less deference – might have saved us from the war in Iraq.

Sadly, however, I’m not sure this answer will have the traction it merits. Our debased political culture – for which the BBC is partly responsible – requires the cult of the celebrity. The Greens tried to have collective spokespeople, but succumbed to personality politics. This, of course, dooms the left to failure: a culture in which Farage and Johnson are considered attractive personalities is not one in which basic decency can thrive.

But perhaps there’s something else. I fear that many on the left have a need for heroes. The Webbs’ support for Stalin, the Che Guevara T-shirts*; and the misplaced support for Hugo Chavez are echoed in the more fanatical support for Corbyn the man. Paradoxically, in this sense some on the left have more in common with neoliberals than they realize. They are looking for heroic leaders just as neoliberals look for heroic bosses – and both are wrong.

If the left is to have a future – which is in doubt – it must ditch the cult of personality, and recognize that organizations, ideas and policies matter more than individuals. I doubt, however, whether it can do this.

* Owen Smith proposed something like this when he suggested Corbyn be made party president. However, that was probably an attempt to sideline Corbyn, which is different from what David and I have in mind.

** A great song by Richard Shindell.

Brexit: a blow to the low-paid?

The CBI reported today that manufacturers’ business confidence has fallen at its fastest rate since early 2009, causing falls in investment and hiring plans. This corroborates surveys by Deloitte, Markit (pdf), the Institute of Directors and, to a lesser extent the Bank of England* all of which suggest that the Brexit vote will depress economic activity. This shouldn’t be surprising: uncertainty is bad for the economy.

What worries me is that the pain of this will disproportionately hit the low-paid. A new paper (pdf) from the Minneapolis Fed says:

It is precisely the households at the bottom of the wealth distribution with low savings rates and high propensities to consume out of current income that suffer the largest welfare losses from a severe recession. Further, these losses are much more severe than those sustained by the "average" household.

This is because the low-paid have no financial assets to cushion themselves against job loss and so must suffer either big falls in living standards or resort to high-cost payday lenders whereas the rich have savings and/or access to cheaper credit**. Also, firms faced with uncertainty might well respond by hoarding skilled labour – which is harder to find when needed – and trimming unskilled workers.

Although the coming downturn will probably not be as severe as the 2009 one, I suspect that these mechanisms will still operate.

What’s more, conventional macroeconomic policy can do little about this. Although Philip Hammond says he’ll “reset fiscal policy” he won’t do so until the Autumn Statement, by which time the downturn will be well under way. Nor can monetary policy provide much support: Bank economists have estimated that a quarter-point cut in Bank rate adds less than 0.2% to output. There’s a reason why Mark Carney has said:

There are limits to what the Bank of England can do. In particular, monetary policy cannot immediately or fully offset the economic implications of a large, negative shock.

And from the point of view of inequality, QE would only make things worse. Insofar as this supports the economy, it does so by raising asset prices. And the beneficiaries (pdf) of this, unsurprisingly, are those who own assets – the rich.

For these reasons, economic forecasters have cut their predictions for GDP growth next year, from 2.1% to 0.8%, despite expecting a policy loosening.

So, why might this not hit poorer workers harder? One possibility is that uncertainty might see an increase in the labour-capital ratio as firms postpone expensive capex projects and use cheap labour instead. Also, because there’s a lot of churn at the bottom end of the labour market, some of the redundant low-paid workers might step quickly into new jobs.

What’s more, for now we are only seeing the short-run effect of increased uncertainty. In the long-run, it’s possible that by depressing world trade growth, the losers from Brexit will be those in more skilled manufacturing and finance jobs.

For now, though, it might be the low-paid that suffer the most from Brexit. These, though, were more likely (pdf) to have voted Leave. We might ask them Johnny Rotten’s famous question: ““Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”

* The Bank’s survey found that most firms didn’t think Brexit would affect their capex or hiring plans. I take no comfort from this. As Geroski and Gregg showed in their great book, Coping with Recession, recessions happen because a few firms suffer badly, not because all suffer mildly. In the 1991 downturn, 10% of firms accounted for 80% of the gross drop in sales.

** Yes, I know the overlap between the low-paid and low incomes isn't perfect. But the point still holds, mostly.

Yes, inequality matters

The IFS reported this week that income inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, hasn’t much changed since the early 1990s. This does not, however, mean that it is not a problem. There are several reasons why it is.

One is purely statistical. Survey-based measures of income might understate top incomes and hence inequality. Stephen Jenkins and colleagues point out that tax-based measure of inequality show a bigger increase since the late 90s than survey-based ones.

That, though, isn’t my main point. 

First, a stable Gini coefficient is consistent with very different types of society. A big reason why the Gini coefficient hasn’t changed much since the early 90s is that a rising share of income going to the top 1% has been offset by a decline in the relative incomes of the 90^th percentile – and recent years, the latter’s absolute incomes have fallen. This means that the UK shifted from being a “bourgeois society” – with a big middle class, to a “winner take all” society in which there are high top incomes but increased support for the worst off.

This is not obviously a healthy development. It might be a symptom of the degradation of erstwhile “middle-class” jobs, which might generate increasing discontent in future among people who have incurred massive student debt in an effort to get such jobs. And if you believe Deidre McCloskey’s work showing that a big middle-class has healthy cultural effects – by promoting virtues such as prudence and honesty – it is potentially corrosive of a healthy society.

Which brings me to a another point. Even if inequality has stopped rising, the adverse effects of its earlier rise are still with us. To adapt Joseph Schumpter’s insightful if tasteless metaphor, if a man has been hit by a truck, he does not return to health when the truck stops. We have strong evidence that inequality generates distrust. The hostility to elites which contributed to Brexit – and to a debased political discourse – is in part a product of the rise in inequality (in the sense of higher top incomes and increasing social distance) we saw in the 90s and early 00s.

Also, it’s quite possible that higher inequality has other long-term cultural consequences – such as a Messiah complex, decreased job satisfaction or increased insecurity – which depress growth. Those who seek to defend inequality must answer the question: if increased inequality doesn’t help explain worsening macroeconomic performance since around 2000 – lower investment and slower growth in GDP and productivity – what does?

Focussing upon inequality statistics, however, misses an important point. What matters is not just the level of income inequality, but how that inequality arose. A free market society in which high incomes arise from the free choices of consenting adults – as in Robert Nozick’s Wilt Chamberlain parable – might have the same Gini coefficient as a crony capitalist society. But they are two different things. A good reason to be worried about current inequality – even if it hasn’t changed – is that it is a symptom of market failures such as corporate welfare, regulatory capture or the implicit subsidy to banks.

In this context, what matters is not just inequalities of income but inequalities of power. Top footballers and top bankers might be earning similar sums, but one’s salary is the product of market forces and the other of a tax-payer subsidy. The freelancer on £30,000 who’s worrying where his next contract is coming from has similar income to the bullying middle managers who created intolerable working conditions at (for example) Sports Direct. But they have very different degrees of economic power. And the low income that results from having to take a lousy job where your wages are topped up by tax credits gives you much less power than the same income that would come from a basic income and the freer choice to take or leave a low wage job.

My point here is a simple one. There are very good reasons why we should worry about inequality – not just leftists but also rightists who want freer markets and “bourgeois” virtues. Focusing only upon the stability of the Gini coefficient is a form of statistical fetishism which overlooks important questions.

Obliquity, & the Labour leadership

One book that’s had an especially big influence upon me is John Kay’s Obliquity. He argues that in a complex and unpredictable world our goals are often best achieved indirectly:

Happiness is not achieved through the pursuit of happiness. The most profitable businesses are not the most profit-oriented. The wealthiest people are not those most assertive in the pursuit of wealth…Soviet planners managed the economy far less successfully than the adaptive, disorganized processes of market economies. (Obliquity, p8)

People tend not to fully appreciate this point because of the outcome bias. We tend to look at success and infer that those who achieved it had a conscious strategy for doing so when in fact they might just have gotten lucky. As Alasdair MacIntyre said:

When imputed organizational skill and power are deployed and the desired effect follows, all that we have witnessed is the same kind of sequence as that to be observed when a clergyman is fortunate enough to pray for rain just before the unpredicted end of a drought. (After Virtue p75)

This brings me to a question: does obliquity apply to the Labour leadership context?

What I mean is that the direct, non-oblique approach is to get a leader who is more “electable” – one who plays by the Westminster rules and who fits the mould of a “credible” leader. This is the appeal of Owen Smith.

By contrast, the Corbynistas’ approach is the oblique one – rely less upon a leader and more upon a mass party, and hope that disenchantment with conventional politics leads to support for radical alternatives.

You might reply that Labour’s poll ratings suggest this particular oblique strategy has failed so a change is needed. But this is not certain.  For one thing, Corbynism is a long game: it relies upon a slow process of changing the ideological climate from the bottom up. And for another, there’s no assurance at all that Mr Smith would greatly improve things. Like any leader, he’ll face massive opposition from both the media and ideology. And he might well suffer big drop in party membership.

(There’s also the possibility that a “coup” against Corbyn would alienate tens of thousands of bright, energetic young people whom he has inspired to become political. I don’t like the potential long-term effects of this.)

It could be, therefore, that if Labour changes leader it will see the same results as when a failing football team changes coach – which is to say no change in the longer-run.

The fact that you’re losing does not turn a bad bet into a good one.

Now, I don’t say all this to defend Corbyn. My point is that, given the fluidity, complexity and unpredictability of politics, I just don’t know which of the direct and oblique strategies will work.

But there’s something I do know. One lesson of Corbyn’s victory last year, the rise of Trump and the vote for Brexit is that those who talk about “electability” know much less about the future than they pretend. As Adam Kotsko said, “electability” is “a purely speculative property.” All statements about the future must be heavily discounted. When pundits blather about “electability” they tell us little about Corbyn, but plenty about their own overconfidence, failure to learn from past mistakes and under-appreciation of the importance of complexity and obliquity.

On economic "credibility"

One of the stranger poll findings of recent days has come from ICM. It asked voters “which team do you think is better able to manage the economy properly?” It found that 53% said May and Hammond against only 15% saying Corbyn and McDonnell. Only 16% said they didn’t know.

This is odd because it cannot be based upon hard facts. So far, all we have from May on the economy are words. And these bear the same relationship to McDonnell’s as Melania Trump’s did to Michelle Obama’s. In abandoning Osborne’s target of a budget surplus, and demanding worker-directors, more housebuilding, more infrastructure spending and an activist industrial policy, Ms May has appropriated McDonnell’s ideas.

This poses the question: why, then, is she so much more trusted on the economy than McDonnell, when so many of her new ideas are his?

It could be, of course, that voters know something we don’t. One big fact, however, suggests this is unlikely: millions of people are financially illiterate. For example, economists at the University of Nottingham asked mortgage-holders: “Suppose you owe £100,000 on a mortgage at an Annual Percentage Rate of 5%. If you didn’t make any payments on this mortgage how much would you owe in total after five years?” Only 51% gave the correct answer, of over £125,000.

If people don’t know basic economics, why should we assume that they are good judges of economic policy?

Instead, there’s another possible explanation here. You’ll not be surprised that I suspect it lies in cognitive biases.

One is wishful thinking; people just hope that a popularish new Prime Minister will be competent.

Another is a form of halo effect: Labour now looks more disorganized than the Tories, and this contaminates voters’ assessments of economic policy.

And then there’s an incumbency advantage. Simply being in office gives one gravitas and respect.

This biases might be magnified by our biased media, but I fear they might exist even if our media were not beneath contempt.

But might there be something else – the power of brand? Years ago, the Tories succeeded in presenting themselves as being “stronger” in the economy. This is partly because of memories of the inflation and “winter of discontent” under the 1974-79 Labour government, and partly because they were the party of business and voters (and the media) think that what’s good for business is good for the economy.

Of course, the latter perception should have been destroyed by the fact that austerity and Brexit (two related things) have been bad for business. But it seems not to have been. This could be because May and Hammond are regarded as clean skins, untainted by the failures of the predecessors. It could also be because are ideas are shaped in our formative years. The ICM found that May and Hammond’s lead on the economy was even greater among over-65s – those who have livelier memories of the inflation of the 70s and the Tories’ more successful attempts to align themselves with business interests.

It could be, therefore, that the Tories’ lead on the economy for the same reason in part that they are still so unpopular with ethnic minorities: voters’ perceptions are shaped not just by current facts, but historical ones. We know that peoples’ attitudes to risks are shaped (pdf) by events years ago: why shouldn’t their political attitudes also be so influenced?

My point here is a depressing one for all Labour supporters. It’s that winning “credibility” on the economy is a massively uphill task. Yes, Blair succeeded in this – but he was massively helped by “Black Wednesday”, and voters have since reverted to the default perception that it is the Tories who are to be trusted on the economy.

 In theory, the coming economic slowdown might help Labour fight this, as “Black Wednesday” helped it. How to capitalize fully upon this, however, is a trickier matter.

My Corbyn dilemma

Should Labour replace Jeremy Corbyn as leader? I’m in two minds here.

On the one hand, there seem obvious shortcomings in his leadership. There are many stories of the sort from Lilian Greenwood, Thangam Debboniare and Heidi Alexander about basic failures of organization and person-management*. There seems to be a lack of sensible prioritizing, such as attending a Cuba solidarity meeting at the height of the political crisis. There’s a general lack of vigour about him, such as in his failure to exploit Tory divisions about welfare spending, or his silence about Theresa May’s cabinet. And, as Richard Murphy says, what was once the jewel in the crown of his leadership - the development of sensible economic policies – seems (until very recently) to have stalled.

What’s more, leadership is to a large extent performative: if enough people say you are bad leader, then you are. This seems true of Corbyn. It might be unjust to boot him out for this reason alone, but leaders should be picked on grounds of effectiveness, not justice.

But, but, but. I fear that a defeat for Corbyn would represent a victory for the worst sorts of Labourites, such as quasi-racists who want to “listen to concerns” about immigration or those who want to divert £100bn from public spending and poverty relief to spend upon the macho posture that is Trident.

What’s more, Corbyn has two great achievements to his credit.

One is that he has moved Labour away from its economically illiterate tolerance of austerity and inequality, perhaps for good: would Owen Smith have made the speech he did had Corbyn not helped to change the ideological climate? Corbyn’s great achievement might have been to save the party from what Paul Krugman rightly called the “sad moral and intellectual collapse of Labour moderates.”

Secondly, Corbyn has reinvigorated Labour as a mass party. Granted, Matt might be right to say the new members are clicktivists rather than active in old-style politics. But I’m not sure this is wholly a bad thing: is envelope-stuffing and canvassing really so effective?

And whatever form the activism takes, Labour desperately needs it.  Whoever is Labour leader will face massive ideological resistance and get dog’s abuse from a media that is both biased and deferential to power. Labour needs a counterweight to this, in the form of a social movement which can put a leftist case in millions of individual conversations in pubs, workplaces and online.

I fear that Corbyn’s replacement would – inadvertently or nor – lead to a retreat here. One of the most worrying things I’ve seen about Owen Smith is the claim that he has “very little self-doubt.” Labour does not need a leader so overconfident that he thinks Labour can win an election on the basis of the leader’s force of personality alone. It must be a mass effort.

So I have a dilemma. Ideally the solution would be to have Corbynism without Corbyn – a leader who preserved his achievements but has management skills he seems to lack.

To wish for this, however, would be to fall into the error of which I have accused the left before – of holding out for a hero. The fact is, however, that there are no heroes – or at least, none we should pin our hopes on. The question for Labour is: given this fact, what form should the party take?

* Many of these stories come from women. I hope that’s just coincidence.

The centralizing-decentralizing axis

Here’s a theory: one of the most important, yet under-rated, divisions in politics is that between centralizers and decentralizers.

This isn’t quite the same as the authoritarian-libertarian axis used by Political Compass, or Haidt’s liberty-oppression axis. For one thing, the axis I have in mind is often an instrumental one – it’s about how our values are best achieved – rather than one of values themselves. For another, some centralizers can be quite libertarian: some Blairites, for example, favour strong central political leadership and yet are socially libertarian. And for yet another, some forms of central organization can be freely entered into.

And it’s certainly not the same as the left-right axis. For example, Seamus Milne and left-libertarians are both on the left, but on opposite sides of the centralizer-decentralizer axis. And that subset of right-libertarians who are sincere and consistent are on the same side of this axis as we left-libertarians, whereas securocrats such as Theresa May are on the opposite.

Here are some examples of the centralizer-decentralizer axis:

 - Vote Leave’s demand to “take back control” appealed to some decentralizers – even though it amounted to just shifting power from Brussels to London. (The fact that the slogan appealed so much to authoritarians is more evidence that this axis isn’t the same as the authoritarian-libertarian axis.)

 - We supporters of greater worker democracy are decentralizers whilst our opponents are centralizers.

 - Supporters of a citizens income come from left and right, but are decentralizers. Those who favour conditional or needs-based forms of welfare, on the other hand, are centralizers.

 There is, though, a more pressing example of my axis: the split in the Labour party. There are two different visions of the party. One – that of the centralizers – sees it as primarily a Westminster party. This was expressed by John McTernan’s quip: “who cares about the grassroots?” The other vision is that of the party as a social movement which aims to change politics from the bottom-up.  As Matt Bolton puts it:

If only the party could get enough members, enough boots on the ground, it can counteract the power of the media, build concrete connections with local communities and activist groups, and fundamentally shift the terrain of politics — the very meaning of ‘electability’ itself — for good.

This is a backlash against the centralizing of the Blair years, in which – as Phil says – class atomization allowed the party to become dominated by Blair.

Although we think of this division between centralizers and decentralizers as being between left and right today, it hasn’t always been so: in its hey-day, when the Labour movement comprised both parliamentary and industrial wings, many trades unionists were quite right-wing.

Instead, the division should be regarded as being about how to achieve social change: can it be done merely through conventional parliamentary means in which a “strong leader” and good messages break through to voters? Or does it also (or instead?) require a broader social movement to counteract the massive ideological and media obstacles the party faces?

My sympathies are with the latter. But that’s not my point. Instead, the point is that there is mutual incomprehension here, in part because of a failure to see what the issue is. This, I think, contributes to the mutual loathing between Corbyn and lobby correspondents.

And here, even the so-called neutral media are in fact horribly biased here. The BBC’s political reporters identify politics with what goes on around parliament: “political correspondent” and “Westminster correspondent” are interchangeable. This represents an unthinking bias towards the control end of the axis, and as such functions not just as a bias against Corbyn but a bias against understanding as well.