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THE PuRPlE BOOk DEBATE:

COMMENTARY

Should we leave the big state behind?

Dare more democracy

Our friends across the Channel have stolen a march on us, writes Robert Philpot

Mind the pitfalls of decentralising power, arguesAndrew Harrop

The Purple Book seeks to revive Labours long tradition of participation, self-government and moral reform. Decentralisation, pluralism and people power: who could possibly disagree? But politics is about trade-offs and priorities. Yes, Labour should adopt a presumption of decentralisation, but there are clear restrictions on how, and how far, this should go. This is both because there are difficult tensions within the left-decentralist agenda, and also because decentralisation risks becoming a distraction from the huge national ambitions we need to embrace. Our politics of the state must first be about the big, long-term challenges which only collective action on a national scale can resolve: growth and productivity; demographic change; carbon reduction; housing supply; and, for us on the left, a fairer labour market for the middle and bottom, reduced health inequalities and closing the gap in life chances. Labours years in office show what the state can achieve, and not just through tax-andspend; for example, long-term, sustainable frameworks for pensions provision and carbon reduction. Britains public finance settlement remains overwhelmingly an issue for the central state too. To win again we need to give cast-iron reassurances against spending profligacy, overseen by the Office for Budget Responsibility. This could take the form of a promise on the deficit, perhaps animated by a pledge that during economic recovery tax and spending would only rise in line with growth. Creating this cover would provide Labour with the opportunity to radically restructure how public money is raised and spent. This could include greater devolution of public service spending, and perhaps the introduction of more local taxation. But most of the task is for the national state. Labour should rewrite the tax code to make it pro-green, prowork, pro-asset stability and long-termist.

We should also seek to integrate tax and welfare, to bind everyone into a common, more universal and contribution-based system. And we should no longer tolerate social security causing widening inequality, but instead index state credits to earnings a small change from the centre which over decades will transform life chances. So the decentralist agenda will need to jostle with an inevitable and desirable programme of central action. But there is also intense competition within the decentralist camp itself, with many visions and versions of the new empowering state. Some decentralist solutions seek to disempower and bypass local democracy, while others aim to strengthen it. Giving cash to service users and big paymentby-results contracts are both pluralist innovations, but their consequences are

It is time for the Labour partyto choose pluralism, saysPhilipCollins

In his great poem The Whitsun Weddings Philip Larkin described how he felt as he watched wedding parties boarding a train: there swelled a sense of falling somewhere becoming rain. It is clear that the Labour party has not fallen into recriminations after its 2010 defeat. Given the scale of the rejection it suffered in 2010, it is a notable fact. Neither has the party lurched to the left, particularly. It has crept to the left, a little bit, but no disaster has taken place. Yet there is still a sense of falling, of the party in a place that is somewhere becoming rain. This is because the Labour party is on the threshold between two different conceptions of what it might do next. The first conception is what we might call vintage social democracy. The state is the principal, though by no means only, agent of change and the sovereign objective of government is to reduce the various inequalities that characterise British life. The second conception is scattered through the pages of The Purple Book. This is an account in which the Labour party is an active sponsor of a spread of power, in which a Labour government would seed popular movements rather than seek to engineer an outcome. This argument is only just beginning but we should be in no doubt that it is an argument. There are, of course, many intermediate points between the two extremes but the tension between the two schools of thought is obvious. A strict egalitarian will denigrate the pluralists programme if, in the process, it widens inequality. The pluralist is more comfortable, by contrast, with inequality so long as it is chosen, so long as it reflects the choices that actual people make. The egalitarian begins with a concern with the overall pattern that people make when they are assembled in a society. The pluralist begins with the actually existing circumstances of peoples lives. It is the first tradition the domain of the social democratic centralist and the Fabian that has been the dominant strand in the

Our politics must first be about the big challenges which only collective action can resolve
totally different. At every turn we must ask what means and ends we are pursuing and how they may rub up against each other: personal control and responsibility; stronger democracy; professional autonomy; savings, efficiency and competitive innovation; enduring public institutions; community and civic life; and, of course, better service outcomes. Finally, decentralisers on the left must be wary that they are not widening, rather than narrowing, inequalities of power. There is a fine line, for example, between creating aspirational inner-city schools that bind professional parents into comprehensive education and free schools which seem to be all about giving privileged parents the ability to opt out. The lefts version of power-to-the-people must be about levelling up for those without control over their lives, not just giving more to those who do. Andrew Harrop is general secretary ofthe Fabian Society

history of the Labour party. But it is worth dwelling for a moment on just how poorly this tradition has stood up to historical scrutiny. Soon after the Labour party was founded it acquired an overtly socialist economics, committed, at least in theory, to the public ownership of the means of production. That promise was never redeemed in practice and it was quietly laid aside in doctrine too, in favour of selective nationalisation. After its less-than-glorious application by Herbert Morrison after 1945, nationalisation was, in turn, dropped as the central economic nostrum, in favour of planning. The revisionist formula articulated by Tony Crosland really bore no relation to anything the Labour party had thought before. The means were negotiable. The only value not up for discussion was equality. This is where the Labour right got to ostensibly flexible on means but dogmatic on a narrow conception of income inequality. The trouble is that its own formula (borrowed passim by New Labour) made no real sense. It is never entirely possible to separate means and ends. If your end is

The Purple Book is an account in which the Labour party is an active sponsor of a spread of power
greater income inequality, some means are likely to work and some are not. You spend a lot of time, like it or not, arranging income transfers through the central state. There is a lot of emotional energy invested in this programme in the Labour party. That is not surprising, both because it has a historical pedigree and it is a noble aim. There is one overwhelming caveat, which is that the Labour party now has to come to terms with an era in which the easy money it so enjoys spending is going to be hard to come by. That is why the pluralist idea of Labour has to prevail. It will not be easy because it is a question of identity. Philip Collins is chair of Demos and acolumnist for The Times

There is an almost comic or perhaps tragic disparity between the fate of Refounding Labour and the citizens primary held over the first two weekends of October which chose Franois Hollande as the Socialist partys candidate to challenge Nicolas Sarkozy in next years French presidential election. Despite all of the rhetoric, Ed Milibands brave plans to widen our horizons to our supporters and the wider public ended up being so much less than both he intended and the party needed. Yes, he managed to make more of a reality of the registered supporters scheme launched by Hazel Blears during her brief time as party chair. But Miliband was unable to persuade the partys powers that be that registered supporters should get a real say in the selection of candidates and in any future leadership or deputy leadership election. So while registered supporters will be entitled to take part in the latter, they have been allocated a meagre three per cent rising to nine per cent once their numbers reach 250,000 share of the electoral college. In some respects, this could prove worse than the status quo: how much fun will the media have if hundreds of thousands of members of the public who have become registered supporters vote one way, but the partys byzantine leadership election rules deliver the election to another candidate? Moreover, registered supporters will have no say at all in the selection of Labours parliamentary candidates in the run-up to the next election. Even Progress modest proposal that local party members should retain the right to draw up the shortlist and then vote on whether to open the process

up and allow registered supporters to join them in picking the eventual nominee was deemed a step too far. Compare this with the actions of our sister party across the Channel. The PS has a similar level of membership to Labour but opted to allow all those willing to pay 1 and sign a declaration that they support the values of the left to vote in their presidential primary. The party also gave a vote to all those who will be 18 come next springs elections and all the PS junior members aged 15 upwards. As most supporters of primaries in Britain advocate, the nominating process remained under the partys control with those wishing to stand needing to attract five per cent of any one of the partys five constituencies (MPs, NEC members, and mayors of large towns or regional and departmental councils). The two weekends of voting, which narrowed the original field of six candidates to a straight choice between Hollande and Martine Aubry, have given the nominee what the BBCs man in Paris termed a dream start to his bid for the Elyse Palace. Over three million voters participated with up to five million watching the series of high-profile TV debates which preceded the election. Nearly 80 per cent of those polled said the primary was a good thing. The nominal participation fee raised over 3.5 million more than enough, according to Akash Paun of the Institute for Government, to cover the considerable costs the PS had to shell out to establish 9,000 polling stations across France and purchase expensive electronic equipment to collate the results. Sarkozys conservative allies, who once disparaged the process, are now considering using it to pick their nominee for 2017. So far the PS decision Voters to dare more democracy queued up to take part has more than paid off. in the PS Has Labour the courage to presidential primaries followsuit?

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Progress November 2011

Image: Claude Paris/AP Press Association Images

Progress November 2011

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