Competence IS an ideology
Good government is better than an -ism
We’re having coffee over a baigel, me and an old and very clever friend who is a veteran but moderate Labour supporter, and he asks me what makes me support Labour. You know, values, vision and so forth. Because he’s a bit worried that the early decisions of the new government (and indeed the things it failed to promise to do before the election) don’t communicate a sense of its unique purpose.
Probably unfairly, I thought I caught a whiff of a complaint that you hear perennially – that politics has become too technocratic and insufficiently ideological – and therefore lacking in inspiration. Where are the Great Goals? The Grand Narratives? The brightly painted political vistas which, like brochures for gorgeous destinations, animate the spirit and lead to action? Or, does Starmer have to be so gloomy? Why does he sound like a GP who has just examined a very unfit and ailing patient, has got out his pad and is about to prescribe laxatives, a strict diet and a weekly trip to the gym?
I’m projecting onto my friend here, but let’s imagine that this is what he meant and that this is the long reply that I would be giving him were there time and baigels enough.
God’s curse on ideology
I am not quite a Labour supporter in the same way as my friend. I was a member of the party between George Galloway being expelled from it in 2003 and Jeremy Corbyn winning his second leadership contest in 2016. In my lifetime I have voted Communist, Green, Liberal Democrat and mostly Labour and feel more affiliation to the party than to any other.
But is this affiliation particularly ideological? Once, maybe, when I was younger. Back then I might have been in favour of, say, nationalisation on the basis of believing that there was something called socialism which was superior to capitalism and made state ownership (on behalf of the people) morally necessary.
If I tend towards to a political philosophy today then it’s that laid out by the Indian philosopher Amartya Sen in his 2009 book The Idea of Justice. Sen argues that the improving society seeks to remove the impediments and create the circumstances to allow the individual to reach their fullest potential – to enhance their capability. To take an example, one of the greatest gaps between capability and achievement is that experienced by people with disabilities if the facilities aren’t available to “equalise” their chances. So we should try and do that and clearly this is both a collective and individual responsibility.
As it happens, in a society like ours it’s probable that most mainstream politicians of all parties would sign up to goals like this. So probably would most citizens. Only the most ideologically right-wing or extreme left-wing would dispute them.
Which - I think – means that the big political questions are around how best to realise these improvements. And increasingly I’ve come to realise that much of this is simply about good government as opposed to bad government and not about ideology at all.
In fact when pure ideology does make a big entrance into our politics it’s usually disastrous. Take, for example, that 100% ideological slogan “Take Back Control”. When Brexiteers argued that the nation state asserting its lack of dependence on others was somehow a superior state of being, this had nothing to do with practically improving the life chances of anyone anywhere. In fact some of the more candid campaigners for Brexit have admitted as much. The result has been – and remains – a slow disaster.
Liz Truss’s tax cut policy had a similar problem. It was based on an assertion – abstracted from the real world – of it simply being better that people pay less income or corporation tax. Morally better. Ideologically better.