In June 2023 I was served notice by the Labour party that my 44-year membership could be terminated over a retweet supporting cross-party progressive cooperation. Almost 18 months later I, quite nervously, opened an email telling me I had been found “not guilty”. In most ways I matter not a jot: I was probably being used as a more high-profile example to warn others off such abhorrent behaviour.
Less robust and less well-connected figures, those for whom their party membership matters enormously, find such a trial a real ordeal. I’ve been let off by people I don’t know in a system operating in the dark. I made a big public fuss. Others can’t, and suffer their fate alone. And there are many of them. Their plight matters, but more importantly: why is this happening, and what does it tell us about Labour’s deep purpose and culture?
But first there’s an important electoral point. During the election, Labour ruthlessly targeted its resources in seats it could win and actively discouraged campaigning elsewhere. In effect it was signalling to its members and voters to back the best-placed progressive to defeat the Tories, which is exactly what I was charged with. This hypocrisy has a price tag in terms of the free run it gave the likes of Nigel Farage to win in Clacton and the lack of boots on the ground, and will surely affect the effort of Labour contesting bellwether council seats up for local elections next May. You can’t abandon people in places in one election and expect their support in the next. Still, there is much more to it than that.
Labour, and now the government, is run by people who lost control of “their” party to Corbynism and feared they could never win it back. Through audacity and cynicism, they did so. They now want to ensure it can never be lost again. They are fixated with control. Internally, “opponents” are excluded by the rulebook or are encouraged to self-exclude because of the party stance on Gaza or the winter fuel allowance.
Externally, the urge to control is pure managerial technocracy – a philosophy that says these are chosen people who have the skills and the insights to order, plan and deliver a better world for us, to us. We, so the thinking goes, will be grateful and will vote for them again. At a deeper level still, it’s a politics rooted in too much ego – and therefore reveals a lack of confidence in themselves and their project.
Of course every system of management needs some degree of hierarchy and a plan. But this isn’t the age of control – it’s the age of chaos. This week shows, as growth goes down and inflation goes up, the futility of pretending to control things beyond your reach. Any organisation looking to survive and thrive in today’s complex, fast-moving world doesn’t need the brittleness and inflexibility of centralised command and control but the resilience of alliances, the agility of dispersed power and the feedback loops of meaningful participation.
Leaders must lead, but more than ever they must listen. There is always at least a grain of truth in your opponent’s argument. To hear it tests your vulnerabilities and makes you stronger. The successful organisations of the 21st century will be those that learn. The good society we want won’t be imposed but negotiated by all of us, for all of us.
This is not just Labour’s problem. The Greens, understandably perhaps tired of giving electorally and getting nothing back, are now disciplining party members for cross-party cooperation. Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats are hardly a shining example of pluralism. So much for prefiguring a new future for politics.
All this is at odds with an electorate shifting far beyond lifelong party loyalties. Voters have never been more volatile, while our party system has never been more tribal and rigid. Something is going to give. Not least because you simply can’t govern with legitimacy and authority on only 34% of the vote. A majority of 172 means you can’t lose office, just as the Tories couldn’t after their 2019 landslide. But without a moral and majoritarian mandate in a chaotic world, chaos in Westminster and Whitehall is bound to ensue.
This is why proportional representation is the first key step in unlocking a democracy that is free to debate all the issues to stop the planet burning and poverty increasing, that can disperse power to every corner of our country.
Which takes me back to my retweet backing cross-party cooperation. In a world of runaway climate crisis and economic uncertainty, both made far worse by Donald Trump’s election – and when AI is starting to uproot and empower us in every conceivable way: culturally, economically and socially – we’re going to need all the progressive talents our nation has at its disposal.
Those who want to eradicate any opposition to their control within Labour must be warned. People who want a more equal world, with air we can breathe and harmony on our streets, are not your enemy. And if we fail to mobilise them, then strong, determined, thoroughly regressive talents are no longer waiting in the shadows – they stand before us in plain sight. It really is country before party. If there is a lesson to be drawn from the withdrawn threat to my longstanding Labour membership, let that be it.
Neal Lawson is director of the cross-party campaign organisation Compass
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