Where now for the left?

Ben Wildsmith

It’s been around ten years since conservatism on both sides of the Atlantic mutated into a new form of insurgent populism.

In the USA, the strange 18th century cosplaying of the Tea Party movement had scoped out terrain that was moved into by thoroughly modern campus agitators who became known as the Alt Right.

Similarly, the space occupied by the doddery stalwarts of Tory Euroscepticism proved to be fertile ground for the more vigorous approach of UKIP and various incarnations of the English Defence League.

Jingoistic xenophobia, which had seemingly passed into spavined irrelevance, had returned anew, kitted out with dot com savvy and its own take on grievance culture.

Disbelief 

For many on the left, in its broadest definition, the response to this development has never progressed beyond horrified disbelief.

Last Saturday morning, for instance, I tuned in to Matt Frei’s radio programme to hear him trying to explain the factors that had led to Donald Trump’s election victory. To be clear, I admire Frei tremendously, he’s well-informed, sharp, and asks very difficult questions of politicians.

As he worked through his shock last weekend, however, he seemed to have forgotten his own words from the previous week.

With the election a couple of days away, Frei and much of the mainstream media had convinced themselves that the electorate had seen sense and Kamala Harris would prevail.

Trump voters, Frei sneered at 10.00am, would be enjoying their first beer of the day.

Deride

This has been the Establishment response to every perceived challenge from the right: minimise, deride, and condemn. Despite the evidence of Brexit, the first Trump term, and advances for the right in every corner of Europe, some seem unable to believe what is happening in front of their eyes.

As Trump assembles a team that holds genuine potential for chaos, and with the Senedd elections the first test for Reform UK in the wake of Trump’s success, it’s time for a new approach from those who hold different values.

There are two possible interpretations of the Labour victory in July. The Government version is that it represented a return to sanity.

In this reading, the endless tumult of Brexit, the pandemic, and associated scandals had left the UK electorate exhausted and ready for calm, managerial governance.

The alternative theory is that Rishi Sunak’s government was merely the latest target of an electoral kicking by a public that has become nihilistic in its mistrust of anyone who holds power.

If this was the case, then the right will be resurgent in time for the Senedd elections, and potentially competitive in the 2029 General Election.

Complacent

In light of America’s rejection of the Democrats, it would be criminally complacent for any section of the UK left to assume that the storm has passed here. Key to confronting the problem is an acceptance that, for many people, the status quo is unbearable.

After fifteen years of austerity in various guises, people are in no mood to be told to be sensible. In election after election, voters are pulling on the lever marked ‘change’ and we are becoming less picky about the ideological nature of that change.

It may be that Trump’s win doesn’t indicate that people have become more right-wing, but rather that they have become more radical.

You would think that this was a pitch the international left would be itching to play on. One of the peculiarities of 21st century politics is the disdain that established left of centre parties have for anything that might frighten the horses.

Whether it was the collusion of liberal Britain with the Tory press to bring down Jeremy Corbyn, or the outright theft of the presidential nomination when Hilary Clinton challenged Trump instead of Bernie Sanders, the left has cleaved always to the centre, allowing right-wing politicians to canter ever further into extremist populism.

Restrictive

The political choice as things stand is restrictive, corporate, global finance on the left against the coming hegemony of big tech aristocracy on the right.

The right has managed to dress up its case in a crusade of nationalism and faux libertarianism, leaving Starmer, Harris, and the rest to be the face of managed decline.

Parties of the left need to uncouple their appeal from what has gone before.

Trumpism is nothing more than a return to the age of the robber baron, and it is the job of progressive politicians to offer a radical alternative to this hucksterism.

Modern Monetary Theory, UBI, and a return to publicly owned utilities are examples of genuine radical solutions to our present condition. If no major party is willing even to discuss economics originating from outside the self-serving cabal of Bank of England economists, then radicalism will find expression on the right.

If Trumpism finds its equivalent in power here, then the timorous conformists of the UK left will have only themselves to blame.