How Labour can still win without sacrificing progressive principles

There is a stark message for the British Labour Party in the outcome of the recent election in Virginia, in the United States. The governorship was won by a Republican in a state that had swung heavily towards Joe Biden and the Democrats in last year’s Presidential election. The defeated Democrat candidate was what Americans call a “progressive”, that is to say one who is committed to left wing causes like socialism but also gay rights, transgenderism and critical race theory. The Democratic Party is engaged in an internal debate, almost a civil war, between progressives and moderates. And the message for Labour is plain: in Western democratic secular politics, ideological purity on the left is electoral poison.

Unlike on the right, at least until recently. Proponents of free market economics took no prisoners in their long march through the public sector, privatising even the sacred cows of public ownership, like the Royal Mail, that Margaret Thatcher had spared. They still won elections. But progressive politics is a bit different, as it seeks to intrude into an individual’s personal space. Telling parents that they had no right to an opinion on what their children were taught at school for instance, as Virginia Democrats did, is far more personal than making the delivery of mail a source of profit for shareholders.

The problem is not the progressive agenda per se, but the way many of those who believe in it want to enforce it. They are authoritarians. We can explain this diagrammatically, plotting political attitudes on a blank piece of paper. Imagine a cross in the centre dividing it into four squares. They are, if you like, the x and y axes of a graph. Above the horizontal centre line, on both sides of the vertical divider, all positions are authoritarian: you must do what you are told. Below the centre line, all positions are more or less permissive; live and let live. To the left of the vertical divider, above and below the horizontal line, are causes and attitudes associated with the left. The right hand side is occupied by the right. In every case, above or below, left or right, the further they are from the central point, the intersection of the two axes, the more extreme they are.

Hence the problem is not with left wing positions as such, but with those who reject moderation and compromise and want to impose their policies on those who disagree. The name for this ideology is progressive authoritarianism. And it is progressive authoritarianism that could be the undoing of Joe Biden – and Sir Keir Starmer. Note that the emphasis is on the use of authority, not on the content of the progressive message. Provided there is space to do one’s own thing, think one’s own thoughts, people can live with social policies with a touch of radicalism. In the long run opinions gradually change – over time, homosexuality has lost most of its stigma, tension between races has declined. The law can be used to suppress the most extreme manifestations of homophobia or racism, leaving lesser prejudices to fade away of their own accord. But if you push people, they push back.

Progressive authoritarianism stems from the conviction that the moral world is binary and polar. You are good or you are bad. If you are bad you have no rights; you deserve to be shunned and despised. The current furore over transgenderism is an illustration of this point. It is not offered as a plausible hypothesis to be debated, but as an inflexible truth that no-one should be allowed to deny. Progressive authoritarianism belongs in the top left of our diagram, and any milder and more tentative views of a similar but less intolerant flavour are closer to the centre line.

To win votes for left wing parties, their progressive policies need to be permissive, that is to say they must tolerate differences of opinion and rely on persuasion for their success. They are still to the left of our diagram but below the horizontal dividing line. To their right, also below the line, lies permissive conservatism, that is to say an attachment to tradition and to the status quo but prepared to entertain debate about reform. They believe that political systems not prepared to bend will eventually break. And above them, top right of our diagram, lies conservative authoritarianism. This is where you still hear Margaret Thatcher’s question: “Is he one of us?” In other words there is an orthodoxy that must not be questioned. In this respect it is not unlike progressive authoritarianism, where the question “Are they one of us?” – note the politically correct solecism of the plural pronoun – is asked just as much.

A truth of politics is that authoritarianism can win votes, but only from the right. Right wing politics is more about economics, and left wing politics is more about personal relations. That is an area where people do not want to be bossed about, told by the government what they must think, feel and do. Preferring one’s own kind isn’t racism; loving one’s country isn’t fascism; believing a trans woman is not a real woman isn’t a phobia. Such attitudes must be allowed to exist, not outlawed.

So it isn’t necessary for Labour to retreat from progressive policies, provided it does not insist theirs is the only truth allowed. Permissive progressivism can win votes, because it still respects the voters and allows dissent; it is not authoritarian. It is along that bearing that lies Labour’s path to power, and Biden’s best chance of a second term.