The quest to remake British politics

PITY the disaffected British voter who looks to the autumn conferences for inspiration. Both the main parties are hypnotised by Brexit. Labour, which gathered this week in Liverpool, tried to fudge its position only to fall into more bickering. The Conservatives, who will meet in Birmingham next week, are so divided over Europe that they are openly conspiring to oust their own prime minister. The earthquake of the referendum two years ago has energised Britain’s parties like nothing else—and crowded out debate on everything else.

However, at last there are signs that politicians are starting to think about the direction that Britain should take after it leaves the EU (see Briefing). Some of the fundamental ideas that have underpinned Western governments of all stripes for decades are being questioned from right and left. A party which could come up with persuasive answers would stand to dominate British politics for many years. And just as the Brexit rebellion has been followed by populist revolts in other countries, so the ideas fermenting in Britain may well spread. Some of them are promising; others downright dangerous.

The people have spoken

The Leave campaign’s demand to “take back control” resonated because it applied to more than just Britain’s relationship with Europe. It chimed with those sick of a hyper-centralised state, where feeble councils take marching orders from an out-of-touch London. It tapped into growing anger at the outsourcing of public services to remote and incompetent private companies. It pointed to the firms that bypass employment law by treating staff as “gig” workers with few rights. And it reflected a feeling of impotence in the face of a system of global capitalism which, ten years ago, sent Britain into recession after bankers thousands of miles away mis-sold securities that no one, including themselves, understood.

On becoming prime minister in 2016, Theresa May assured voters that she had heard their cry, and boldly vowed to reshape “the forces of liberalism and globalisation which have held sway...across the Western world.” She has not kept this promise. Her lack of imagination, squandered majority and the all-consuming Brexit negotiations—the ones with her party, rather than the EU—mean that, more than two years on from their great howl, the British people have seen nothing in return. When Brexit day comes next March, and Britain is left with either a bad deal or with no deal at all, the call for revolutionary change will not have been sated—it will be stronger than ever.

Alarmingly, the camp readiest to answer that call is a Labour Party marching ever further and more confidently to the left. Many of the ideas in its manifesto last year recast old policies, such as renationalising the railways, which would not answer the fundamental new questions being asked of the state. But since then Labour’s economic plan has evolved. The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell—a bigger thinker than his boss, Jeremy Corbyn—proposes “the greatest extension of economic democratic rights that this country has ever seen”.

Mr McDonnell correctly identifies that power has drained from labour towards capital in recent years. But his proposals to redress this balance would see the state strong-arm its way deeply into the economy (see article). Companies would have to nominate workers to make up a third of their boards, while pay would be determined by collective bargaining. Ten per cent of companies’ equity would be expropriated and put in funds managed by workers’ representatives, that would become the largest shareholders in many of the biggest firms. Workers would receive some dividends, but the majority would go to the government. The Treasury would be “reprogrammed” to channel money to favoured industries. Coupled with a plan to raise the minimum wage so that it embraces 60% of employees under 25, the package represents a transfer of power not just to workers but also to the state and the unions. Labour-supporting economists propose still more ideas, including the introduction of capital controls. “The greater the mess we inherit, the more radical we have to be,” Mr McDonnell told the conference. Brexit is likely to provide the mess required to justify a socialist shock-doctrine.

The Tories have been slower to regroup, but they too are teeming with ideas. Some want to dust off the free-market principles of Thatcherism and apply them to new areas, lifting planning restrictions to encourage housebuilding, say. Others want the party to blunt capitalism’s sharper edges, for instance by mimicking the trust-busting of Teddy Roosevelt, whose target today would be the overmighty, rent-seeking tech monopolies. Still others believe the remedy for Britain’s fractiousness is to update Benjamin Disraeli’s “One Nation” Conservatism, arguing that its modern mission should be to unite a country whose deep divides—by age, class, region and more—were exposed by Brexit.

But what did they mean?

These ideas could mark a dramatic break with the past. But whereas an insurgent Labour has united behind a growing list of detailed plans, the Tories’ thoughts are ill-defined, and the party far from agreed on which to pursue. Their leader, on the rack in Brussels and fighting for her job in Westminster, has no time for philosophising. She is unlikely to make way for a successor until Britain has left the EU. Yet there is no time to lose. Too many Tories doubt that plans as drastic as Mr McDonnell’s could ever be enacted in Britain. That is complacent. The grotesque folly of Brexit will be enough to persuade many wealthy Britons to ditch the Tories, even if it means electing a far-left chancellor. And Britain’s winner-takes-all system lets governments quickly and dramatically reshape the country. Mr McDonnell would not face the checks and balances that have restrained President Donald Trump.

Britain is at last getting the battle of ideas that the referendum result demanded. That presents big opportunities, but also grave risks. It is time for those who dislike the sound of the future described by Labour this week to do some hard thinking of their own.