Simon Griffiths

What was Progressive in ‘Progressive Conservatism’?

In January 2009 David Cameron announced that the ‘underlying philosophy’ of his government would be progressive conservatism. Despite the ambiguity about this term, it was generally interpreted as a signal that Cameron was moving his party to the left. To some commentators, Cameron was allying with the progressive ‘one nation’ strand of conservative thought. To others, particularly in the media, he was drawing on the more immediate influence of Phillip Blonds ‘Red Toryism’. However, the focus on the market (as opposed to state or community) found in both Camerons speech and subsequent policies sits uneasily with both of these interpretations. Camerons progressive conservatism has more in common with Thatcherism – an earlier conservative modernising project –than it does with centrist forms of conservative progressivism. Camerons progressive conservatism is progressive, but only in particular, less commonly used, ways – not as a rediscovery of social justice.

Public Services after Austerity: Zombies, Suez or Collaboration?

Public services—in the UK and elsewhere—are under considerable pressure, not just from austerity, but also from a variety of social, demographic and technological changes (in effect ‘austerity plus’). In this context, three broad options are open to policy-makers: continue with tried-and-tested approaches while spending less money, which in the UK means a reliance on ‘New Public Management’ (NPM); withdraw completely from certain public services; or develop new approaches to public administration. We argue that all of these approaches have been attempted in recent years, but it is the final option that is most interesting and potentially the most beneficial. In this article, we examine experiments with these new approaches in responding to ‘austerity plus’. In particular, we examine various attempts at ‘collaboration’ in public services and discuss the risks associated with them. We conclude by setting out the extent to which policy-makers have moved beyond NPM and suggesting some of the benefits that this could bring.

New Labour, New Liberalism and Revisionism's Second Wave

In the early summer of 2008, two influential ‘progressive’ thinkers launched a strongly worded attack on the direction in which the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was leading the Labour Party. Philip Collins, a former speech writer to Tony Blair, and Richard Reeves, now Director of the left-leaning think-tank Demos, asserted ‘a Labour tragedy is unfolding’.2 The cause of this, they argued, was at least in part ideological: Labour is failing to win — or even to grasp — the big political argument: how to ensure people are in control of their own lives. The government has tested, often to destruction, the idea that a bigger, higher-spending state can deliver a better society … For New Labour to survive, it must become new liberal.3 The claim was made as Labour was heading down a steep slide in popular support from a temporary high the previous Autumn. Labour’s lead in the polls fell from +13 points over the Conservatives in September 2007 to −13 in May 2008 when the article was published, and the slide continued for months afterwards.4 The article came out in the month of Labour’s ‘worst local election result for forty years’.5 It created a minor media furore, which tended to reduce the story to an account of factional fighting, and fed increasing speculation about a leadership challenge to Brown.

‘Comrade Hayek’ or the revival of liberalism? Andrew Gamble's engagement with the work of Friedrich Hayek

One of the most revealing political engagements of recent years was between members of the British left, with the work of the right-wing economist and anti-socialist political theorist, Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992). This paper focuses on the work of Andrew Gamble, and more specifically on his claim that ‘Hayek has much to contribute to the renewal of the socialist project’. Whilst accounts of Hayeks work by the left during much of the post-war period were rare, by the 1990s several historical shifts had led Gamble and others to re-examine their attitudes to their old enemy. Gamble claimed that there were two sides to Hayek: Hayek the ideologue, and Hayek the social scientist, whose work contained lessons of which socialists should take note. Gambles engagement with Hayek represented a rejection of those statist forms of socialism which had been dominant during the 20th century and his argument, after undergoing this engagement with Hayeks work, bore many similarities to the new liberalism of the early 20th century. As such, Gambles work can be seen as part of a much wider mutation of those political categories that dominated the 20th century. By the end of that century, in place of statist forms of socialism and conservatism, the debate between left and right was largely carried out within two sides of the liberal tradition.

‘Pluralism, neo-liberalism and the 'all-knowing' state’

This article focuses on a left-libertarian response to neo-liberalism that emerged in the 1990s. In particular, it examines the work of Hilary Wainwright, founding editor of Red Pepper magazine. To Wainwright, the popularity and resurgence of a ‘neo-liberal’ or ‘new’ right could, in part, be explained by its libertarian and anti-statist outlook—themes, she argued, that had been neglected by the left. Wainwright used the arguments of the right-wing thinker Friedrich Hayek as a springboard for her own, very different, arguments for a left-libertarian, movement-based form of participatory democracy. There are parallels in her work with older, pluralist arguments. However, Wainwrights pluralism faces many of the same challenges—particularly concerning the relationship between group and state—that earlier pluralist thinkers struggled to resolve.

‘I’m Telling You, and You’ll Listen’: Ethos in the Rhetoric of Neil Kinnock

The chapter argues that Neil Kinnock’s ethos, as Labour leader in the early 1980s, gave him the authority to take on the left of the party. Yet, the same ethos that Kinnock possessed—derived from his Welsh, working class background—contributed to his failure to convince the electorate of his suitability to become Prime Minister. Indeed, perceptions of a speaker’s ethos can be filtered by factors outside their control, as was the case with Kinnock and the media. Responding to this negative portrayal, Kinnock’s later rhetoric drew less on his own ethos and more on other rhetorical modes: a transformation that created a degree of mistrust. The chapter concludes with some wider comments on the importance of ethos, broadly understood, in rhetoric.

Book Review: Roy Hattersley and Kevin Hickson (eds), The Socialist Way: Social Democracy in Contemporary Britain and Anthony Painter, Left Without a Future? Social Justice in Anxious Times

British Party Politics and Ideology After New Labour is an attempt to analyse the major ideological fault lines in British Politics over the past decade-and-a-half. The key aim of the book is to both ‘analyse ideological disputes’ as well as to ‘provoke discussion and debate’ (p. 1). It does this through a set of substantive chapters partnered with ‘response’ sections by renowned academic experts and political heavyweights. The key mission of the book is to suggest that a post-ideological age is ‘not the case’, and hence that ideology matters (p. 1). The scope of the volume is vast and expansive. The first section evaluates the Blair legacy and interrogates the extent to which one of Labour’s most electoral popular leaders was a social democrat. The second section follows by providing an in-depth analysis of the impact of the ‘Third Way’, liberalism, and Gordon Brown’s premiership on the United Kingdom’s ideological landscape. The most impressive element of this section, however, is the contribution by Anthony Giddens. This gives an insightful look at the extent to which his ideas were successfully interpreted and then adopted by New Labour. The final three sections of the book look beyond the Labour Party and towards the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Part III is particularly instructive, sketching out the extent to which David Cameron could be considered an ‘heir to Blair’, an ‘opportunist’ or a ‘one nation conservative’. Moreover, Part IV on the Liberal Democrats points to the key difficulties and tensions experienced by the party in recent years on constitutional reform and between ‘yellow’ and ‘orange book’ liberals. The final section of the book looks at ‘crosscutting issues’ (p. 7), examining the main parties’ ideas regarding public service reform and social justice prior to the Coalition. In sum, British Party Politics and Ideology After New Labour is an accomplished ideological survey that ultimately lives up to its ‘ideology matters’ mission statement. Some chapters delve into slightly tangential areas, but this is remedied by the innovative ‘response’ sections that help to add unparalleled life and vibrancy to the book’s pages. Its main audience appears to be students and scholars of British party politics and political ideology. However, some chapters could lend themselves to contemporary political historians, anthropologists and public service reform experts. First published in 2010, British Party Politics and Ideology After New Labour encapsulates the best of scholarship on pre-Coalition British party politics and ideology. One therefore hopes that an updated, post-Coalition version is on the horizon.

Tim Heppell and Kevin Theakston (eds), How Labour Governments Fall: From Ramsay MacDonald to Gordon Brown, reviewed by Simon Griffiths

disposal to convince their members to support the compromises crafted among the leadership. If one were to use the Cox and McCubbins party as ‘‘cartel’’ metaphor, under structured consent, the minority and majority party leaders effectively collude to limit partisan gridlock, as it is in the incentives of both party cartels to ensure the Senate performs its essential duties. Wallner identifies structured consent procedures as something of a hybrid of the traditional ‘‘collegial’’ procedures and ‘‘majoritarian’’ procedures, and he classifies the type of procedure for legislation by examining the identity and number of Senators involved in drafting and decision-making. Under the traditional collegial procedures, committees dominate legislative drafting, and the decision-making process on the floor is bipartisan and relatively open to amendments, without the need for leadership to invoke cloture or place strict limits on debates. Under majoritarian procedures, the majority party bypasses committees, cloture is often invoked, and votes are highly partisan, as the minority party is not given meaningful opportunities to participate. Thus, collegial procedures are in place when consequential legislative action occurs in committees and on the floor; majoritarian procedures are in place when the consequential action occurs off the floor and exclusively within the majority party. Under structured consent procedures, consequential legislative action occurs between the two parties, yet away from committees and the floor. Wallner examines a wide range of cases of legislation from the 102nd, 108th, 110th, and 111th Congresses, a long enough time period to observe the emergence of polarization in the Senate. Decision-making on major legislation was largely governed by collegial processes in the 102nd, but by the 111th the Senate made extensive use of structured consent, including on such notable legislation as the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Affordable Care Act. Wallner devotes an entire chapter to a case study of how the Senate used structured consent to raise the debt ceiling during the 112th Congress. Deliberation under structured consent is very different from the deliberation the founders envisioned for the Senate. Instead of resolving stateand regionally based disagreements through open discussion among members, structured consent procedures resolve partisan and ideological disagreements through private discussion among party elites. In this age of intense polarization, Wallner argues, the Senate as an endogenous institution needs to adopt these collusive procedures in order to perform its essential functions, but in doing so trades off deliberativeness against efficiency and the absence of broad deliberation within the chamber diminishes our democracy. At the same time, given the extreme polarization within our society and political institutions, it is not clear the Senate could do much better. Further, the give-and-take among party elites might approximate a deliberative process that in the end might be defensible in that the minority party is effectively engaged and the process tends to produce moderate legislation. And certainly, with must-pass legislation such as debt ceiling and government funding legislation on the table, the efficiency of structured consent is better than pure and potentially disastrous gridlock.

Market Socialism in Retrospect

An account of the rise and fall of market socialism in the UK, its context and significance, through a study of the work of David Miller.