It is very dangerous to make assumptions about anyone in this modern kaleidoscopic world. But I’m going to stick my neck out and guess that Gillian Duffy doesn’t read the Guardian. Apologies to Mrs Duffy in advance if I’ve got it wrong. If I’m right then she would be utterly perplexed by its leader this morning. The problem for the left now is that it is not just split between two parties. It is split between two worlds. One is the Guardian’s world- professional, comfortable in many ways, idealistic, individualistic, convulsive, rational, modern, and, yes, elitist. The other is Mrs Duffy’s- traditional, precarious, in search of security and certainty, emotional, nostalgic, rooted, and plain-spoken.
These is an element of caricature to this of course. But the point is an important one. It shows why- in my view- the Guardian has got it horrendously wrong with its headline celebrating a ‘liberal moment’ this morning. This isn’t a ‘liberal moment.’ It is a moment when a latent liberalism- suppressed by the political system- has again found its expression in the context of a struggling Labour party. It happened in 1983. It is happening again but for very different contingent reasons. Labour is not paying the price for extremism; it is paying the price for failing to keep pace- in style and substance- with a changed society.
But there is an important reason for not seeing this as a ‘liberal moment.’ There is underlying political rupture on the left of British politics- papered over in good years but exposed in the bad. The complacent and wishful response is to see Labour and the Liberal Democrats as different choices on a progressive menu but ultimately the same cuisine; Liberal Democrats are doing so well because Labour is the incumbent and rather tired but normal business will be resumed soon. I really wish that was the case, I just don’t see it that way.
Actually, the left in this country is divided between labourism and liberalism (or ‘progressivism’ if you must.) And they are different world views generalised (unsatisfactorily admittedly) by the Mrs Duffy v The Guardian shorthand. What binds them is the conviction that freedom is about empowerment not laisser faire, without equality people cannot be free, and some form of state or collective intervention is needed for people to be equal and free. Labourism and liberalism do not neatly divide between the Labour and Liberal Democratic parties. Labour is a broader church of world views and philosophies than the Liberal Democrats. That has been the source of its strength and why it has governed for 30 of the last 65 years. This election has cleaved liberals away from the Labour party (in the way that many of a labourist disposition walked away from the party in its early years in office.)
Let me illustrate what this means in practice in terms of the ability of a party (mainly) of the left- Labour or Liberal Democrat- to construct a winning majority. New Labour’s great success was finding a strategy to unite the liberal and labour elements of the British left. This is not to suggest that a New Labour strategy would be successful today- I don’t believe it would be but in terms of coalition building it illustrates how the left gets to sustain a governing coalition for 13 years.
Now taking a recent opinion poll that is fairly close to the poll of polls, let’s see who is supporting Labour and Liberal Democrats respectively in this election. The recent Times/ Populus poll had top lines of Conservative 36%, Liberal Democrat 28% and Labour 27%. Let’s look at the socio-economic/ age profile of Labour v Liberal Democrat supporters in that poll:
Liberal Democrat supporters are, in general, younger and more middle/ professional class than Labour supporters. Labour has 6% higher support amongst DE voters than it does amongst AB voters. Liberal Democrats have 7% more support amongst AB voters than DE voters. Labour has almost the same level of support amongst those aged 65+ as it does amongst those aged 18-24. The Liberal Democrats have 11% more support amongst 18-24 year olds compared with those 65+. They score especially highly amongst 25-44 year olds.
And this is the key point, what this election has done in a way that hasn’t previously happened- even in the aftermath of the Iraq War- is that the Guardianrati is becoming separated from the Duffyprols. Labourism is becoming severed from liberalism. The strange thing about the curious case of Mrs Duffy is that the Prime Minister expressed a liberal elitist view when he referred to her as a ‘bigot.’ And yet he is not a liberal elitist which leads me to think that he did genuinely mishear or misunderstand her. What was absolutely clear was her shock when she was told that she had been described as a bigot because she was expressing what seems to her a perfectly reasonable set of arguments. Did you think so? Well, if you think that Mrs Duffy is a bigot then that may say as much about your cultural and ideological perspective as it does about hers (for the record, I do not believe what she said was ‘bigoted’ in and of itself.)
One of the issues touched on in The Guardian today was the equalities agenda. Putting aside its virtue or otherwise, it is a wedge issue between the Guardianrati and the Duffyprols. Looking through British Social Attitudes data, there is a question: ‘do you think there is generally more racial prejudice in Britain now than there was five years ago, less, or the same amount?’ 33% answered more in 2000. In 2001, this became 50%. In 2007, the figure had become 57%. According to a recent YouGov poll 40% of voters consider that white people suffer unfair discrimination in Britain compared with 19% who say the same of non-white people. Surprised by this? I was but it displays what is actually happening in terms of real attitudes rather than a projectin of our own attitudes onto others.
I’m sorry if there are tough messages here. Immigration and welfare dependency are other such issues. My point is not to argue which perspective is right or wrong (you will see my views on an amnesty for illegal immigrants in yesterday’s blog post for instance.) My point is that the left in British politics is socially, culturally and now politically polarised. The risk- a very major risk- is that Labour fails to reclaim liberals and Liberal Democrats fail to attract labourites. In the absence of a more pluralistic political system, this would be a disaster.
So my issue with the Guardian’s leader- well argued in its analysis of the three parties in the main- is very basic. In describing this election as a ‘liberal moment’ it completely misses the fundamentally nature of what is happening. If anything, and if it goes well, this will be a pluralistic moment. And that is why, as a pluralist (a labourite pluralist) I do not wish to see tactical voting anymore (it will break down anyway- the Liberal vote is predominantly anti-Tory and anti-Labour.) Let’s vote for what we believe in. Let’s show this system up to be the dog that it is. Let’s create a forcible moral argument for change.
But let’s not pretend that we are in a ‘liberal moment’ or that there is a magical progressive consensus just waiting to be wished into existence. And Nick Clegg’s assertion this morning that the Liberal Democrats have taken Labour’s place in politics was on a par with David Miliband’s assertion that support for the Liberal Democrats was all about anti-politics in the race for stupidest thing said in the election. The Guardian has been impressed with Liberal Democrats and is dismayed with Labour so it endorses Nick Clegg. Fine. I understand that. But it’s not a ‘liberal moment’. It could be a pluralist moment. Or it could be the onset of a new era of a fatally divided left.
What The Guardian did have absolutely right is the centrality of political reform in deciding which way things will go. A fairer Britain, a just Britain, depends on a more democratic and pluralistic politics- especially given the increasingly fragmented nature of the left. It’s not that our politics is ‘old fashioned.’ It’s that it no longer suits the type of society Britain has become. If both Mrs Duffy and liberal progressives are to both have their voice then reform is a bottom line. It’s not an end in itself. It’s the means to a better, fairer Britain.
May 1st, 2010 at 15:26
I think this is spot on, except:
The strange thing about the curious case of Mrs Duffy is that the Prime Minister expressed a liberal elitist view when he referred to her as a ‘bigot.’ And yet he is not a liberal elitist which leads me to think that he did genuinely mishear or misunderstand her.
No, I think he is symptomatic of many Labourites that they understand the need for immigration but have now stopped making the case for it. You either make the case and stand up for what you believe in, or you just bitch about people behind their back when the questions come up. That is what Brown did.
I think what Duffy did was to echo the Daily Mail. We either take that head on or we let the debate be framed in their terms and always lose.
May 1st, 2010 at 16:20
Nice post.
You say: “Actually, the left in this country is divided between labourism and liberalism… What binds them is the conviction that freedom is about empowerment not laisser faire, without equality people cannot be free, and some form of state or collective intervention is needed for people to be equal and free.” But there is no-one in the LibDems, and few in Labour nowadays (except on the vanquished Left) who believe in equality (unless by ‘equality’ you mean that vapid excuse for an only-slightly-reformed status quo, ‘equality of opportunity’). The only Party you’ll find with Wilkinson-and-Pickett-type policies is the Green Party.
May 1st, 2010 at 17:50
Good summary. I suspect that the “liberal moment” phrase is prompted by a specific Demos publication of that name, written by Clegg a while back. The Guardian’s use of it is perhaps a bit lazier than your analysis allows. I don’t think they have coined it specifically to describe what’s happening.
The gist of the pamphlet, so far as I remember, came in two parts. On the one hand, it suggested quite mechanically that Labour were becoming tired and moving away from their core beliefs, and the time was ripe for the Liberal Democrats, who were in many areas more genuinely in touch with left-wing concerns, to make their move in the right circumstances. That has pretty much come to pass. On the other hand, it argued that liberal themes that had always been distinct from the labour movement were becoming relevant again in a way they haven’t been for fifty years or so. While I personally think the latter is quite true – think of civil liberties, the growing distaste for heavy-handed government intervention and appetite for devolution of services and power – I agree with you that they have had a lot less to do with this election campaign than perhaps a liberal would like. In that sense, this is not the full liberal moment that Clegg envisaged.
But I’d still slightly cavil at the “pluralist moment” idea, because it implies that political and constitutional reform is somehow neutral, divorced from any party’s belief system. It’s certainly neutral in its effects; the Lib Dems know they are breaking into the two-party system in order to dismantle it. But I would argue that such reform is a primarily liberal concern. It’s in the liberal mindset to seek pluralism, and to worry about democratic processes and whether they are representative, to be concerned about the weight of individuals against institutions. This does not seem to me to be true of the Labour party in its recent history; it does endorse positive discrimination, it does deal with collectivism of the right sort, and it doesn’t have the same internal democratic tradition (and fanatical devotion to applying fair rules correctly) as the Liberal Democrats. And, most obviously of all, it has not shown any interest in reform.
I would argue that political and constitutional reform, in the form we are seeking it now, comes from a distinctively liberal tradition. In that sense, and perhaps no other, this is a liberal moment.
May 1st, 2010 at 23:51
I don’t think that data you’ve got above shows that “the Guardianrati is becoming separated from the Duffyprols”. To actually look at what is happening, you need to look at the swings, not the frozen in time figures like those above. And if you look at that, you’ll see that Labour has dropped dramatically in the Northern areas of England.
May 3rd, 2010 at 06:43
Good, interesting article.
Duffy’s comments have to be considered in the light of the way she said what she said. I don’t think you can divorce content from delivery, but I agree that Gordon Brown’s ear was tuned to the language of the middle-class dining table rather than to inner Rochdale. And so what? Maybe that’s a reflection of my own upbringing, but she did sound like a Daily Mail reader to me, too, and I thought some of her later statements were disingenuous. Why should a northern accent and a reliance on being “uneducated but plain speaking” make the Duffy’s any more right than the Chablis drinkers?
What we have is a society that wants to cluster around issues rather than parties. This is helped along by the massive changes in the way we communicate and interact. Such groupings are fluid and dynamic and likely to change over and over again. They will also attract strange bedfellows. For example, Duffy shows us that the immigration issue has Old Labour and BNP supporters using the same mental frameworks within which to assemble their thoughts. She would be horrified to be lumped in with them, but there you are.
Issues are the focal point now, not class, or socio-political debates over big government, for example. Even “Class” is about behaviour and values, not about job, status and income. Traditional UK politics is finished, but the zombies still lurch through the ruins of the old system, dragging us with them. I welcome the opportunity to shoot at least one head off the corpses by removing first past the post.
May 3rd, 2010 at 14:04
I enjoyed reading your article. I do think you are stereotyping and the phrase Duffyprol is most unfortunate. As a miner of 23 years and a factory operator for the last 10 years, I guess I must also be a ‘Duffyprol’.
There are a number of reasons for the increase in the liberals vote/predicted votes.
1) Is the leaders debate on television.
2) Is the MPs expenses scandal, where many ‘Duffyprol’s’ took even greater exception to LABOUR MPs having their noses in the troth. They expect Tory’s to do it with their Moats and Duck houses. Yet 3 Labour MP’s face the courts for claiming on mortgages they didn’t even have!
3) A genuine mood for change despite the success of Labour in handling the credit crisis, increased spending on health and schools etc.
4) The Brown factor. He looks extremely tired and lacks the presentational appeal of the younger Cameron and Clegg.
You can go on patronising what I would class as ‘Old Labour’ voters like Mrs Duffy, who say it like it is. There has been a complete lack of ‘Doorstep’ politics by all politicians. I went to a local debate and was outraged that the chairman would not allow me to ask a question on MPs expenses. (My local MP is Alan Duncan, unfortunately.
On immigration, many people ARE concerned by large groups of immigrants from Poland and the old Eastern block stretching local services and being able to claim benefits when the country has such a large deficit. They are changing to the BNP in lots of areas. Labour can talk all day about as many British people going to work in the opposite direction but people have real fears on this one. People on long term welfare, choosing lifestyle welfare, is also an important issue to old Labour voters who have always had a hard work ethic.
As someone who was a member of the Labour Party for over 18 years, until 1990, I have been helping the Liberal Party to leaflet my ward and will urge voters in my constituency to vote tactically for the Lib Dems.
If I though Labour could win this seat I would vote for them, as they couldn’t in the landslide of 97, nor since it makes sense to vote tacticly. The Guardian-elite should listen to the Duffy’s instead of patronising them. She ain’t Fick!
May 3rd, 2010 at 14:18
Thanks Roger. I really wouldn’t take ‘Duffyprol’ too seriously as a term- I was being slightly facetious with it given the overall argument of the piece. Your comments are very well received.
Alex- re shifts since 2005, you are right though the overall argument remains. I will do some analysis of the shifts- which are across the board but most pronounced in C2, D, E when I have some time. What is happening in short is a long term severance of labour-liberal with a short term Liberal Democrat boost. It remains to be seen whether that can be translated into something more solid- it could well be.