Demos's new initiative Open Left is long overdue. Debate on the Left has been dead for years and needs renewing. Having resigned from government, James Purnell has done well, and may do good, in trying to lead a process of intellectual self-assessment. There is only one slight difficulty: it will lead him to conservatism.
The two key questions are these: When more of the state isn’t the solution, and conventional economics is dead, then where is politics to go? And: What principles should inspire and direct reflection on politics and policy?
Historically, the Left has always reflected three overlapping strands: non-conformist traditions of religious, cultural and political dissent; working class traditions (often thoroughly small-c conservative) of self-help; and Fabianism, which sought power for itself by increasing the power of the state.
In the 20th century Fabianism won. In the first 50 years the Left was captured intellectually by the Fabian middle class: the Webbs, Harold Laski and the rest of them. In the second 50 years it was captured politically: and again by the Fabian middle class, latterly in the form of Messrs Blair and Brown.
The name of RH Tawney has been mentioned, which is understandable given Labour’s current panic about its own record on inequality. But a more pertinent analysis was offered by Leon Trotsky. For Trotsky’s 1925 book Where Is Britain Going? was one of the first to point out that Fabianism was not an attempt to empower the ordinary working people of this country, but an attempt to suppress them.
So it has proved. Where are our dissenters, where are our working-class institutions now? How much good has really been done for the least well-off? And at what cost? Overall, as the recent LSE/Rowntree report showed, notwithstanding some real achievements, the Blair-Brown era has squandered the chance of a lifetime for genuine reform.
The deeper issue thus goes far, far beyond James Purnell’s acknowledgement that New Labour has become too much of a sect. It is about the very point and purpose of the Left as such — where it has come from, what it stands for, and why. At present it seems lost.
Which brings us to the notion of capability. It is a crucial idea, which I tried to analyse in some detail and bring into the forefront of centre-right debate in my recent book Compassionate Economics. I would simply make three obvious points:
The first is that taking the idea of capability seriously amounts to an utter intellectual repudiation of the command-and-control politics of the past twelve years. In education, for example, government policy has systematically insulted the abilities of teachers, staff and students alike. Ditto welfare, local government, the NHS, etc. etc.
The second is that the idea of capability is at root a conservative one. Independent institutions and individuals have capabilities — such as to govern, to bring people together, to play, to learn, to act, to think. Capabilities require freedom to develop, and a measure of risk. They thus require a culture of openness, entrepreneurship and dissent.
But empowering individuals and enhancing independent institutions — Burke’s “little platoons” — are basic conservative values. Indeed some notion of capability is positively required to discharge the idea of responsibility on which David Cameron has placed so much public emphasis.
And finally, this explains why James Purnell’s phrase “equalising capability” feels oxymoronic. Because capability is at root an individual notion, which requires freedom and which imposes responsibility, it cannot simply be equalised by the state in some Procrustean way. Individuals and institutions must be able, and assisted, to develop their own capabilities in their own terms.
Of course there are important positive freedoms and personal capabilities which the state can and must help people to develop. But then it is about finding one’s own way, with all the pain and joy that that implies.
In other words, Purnell is trying to latch onto a key conservative insight, but even here a lingering Fabianism makes his language incoherent. Maybe it is time for him to cast these shackles off and give his conservative instincts full rein?
