It is always a privilege to be invited to the inner circles of a political organisation and watch them debate their future but it also implies a responsibility not to reveal their secrets.

This weekend, I attended the Strategy Meeting of Compass, the left-wing grouping most associated publicly with the Labour Deputy Leadership campaign of Jon Cruddas, MP, but I shall keep faith with my hosts. It is for Compass to reveal its policies and strategies and not a guest.

However, this does not stop me from considering the nature and future of the British Left in the light of the discussion. Does the British Left have a future as we go into a major correction in the global capitalist system and as the Government which it ostensibly supports totters from crisis to crisis?

But first a definition of what we mean by Left in this context. I might best do this negatively, by saying what Compass and its networks are not. They are not revolutionary: Compass is well within the tradition of effecting change through representative democracy. 

It is not a Labour Party claque: although associated with the Party and certainly with the 'Movement' (in effect the trades unions and the traditional machinery of the Party), it reaches out to networks outside the Party and it has members who are not members of the Labour Party

It is not the Hard Left, represented by the Campaign Group in Parliament and increasingly by the Labour Representation Committee [LRC]. And, Europeans please note, it is not defined by any republican or secularist tradition or by a priori Marxist theorising (though these elements may intrude at the margins)

If anything, it is defined by some quite simple ideological commitments to redistribution and against exploitation. It is, in short, thoroughly British in its culture whilst always and fully asserting its instinctive internationalism. 

This 'sensible' Left (not all of which is inside Compass) is one of three main strands of the political centre-left that retain some links with the original Labour tradition (there is, of course, the LRC but there is also the right-wing trades unionism associated with Labour First and another Deputy Leadership candidate, Alan Johnson).

Moderate democratic socialism is an 'eternal' theme in the centre-left.  It has had many names and many Protean identities in the hundred years of the organised political wing of the Labour Movement - but its core is moderate and determined on a more egalitarian society free from market and other forms of 'oppression'.

The weekend showed that this force, periodically driven down by pressure from the harder Left (concerned with transformations beyond political sense) and from the pragmatic Right (concerned with power as a precondition for transformations that never seem to take place), is irrepressible.  No matter what, it bounces back - sometimes against reason and logic.

But I left the meeting, sympathetic but semi-detached as always, with a number of observations about the conditions in which a moderate sensible but idealistic Left can make its mark in the world when faced by forces that are more ruthless, more cynical or more impatient. 

These impressions may help the external analyst decide whether this strand of politics can be more than constant suitor or (at best) junior partner in British governance.

Taking Mr. Cameron Seriously

If there was one thing I came away with, when I left the meeting on Saturday, it is that the intelligent Left takes Mr. Cameron very seriously indeed. 

One of the frustrations of the thinking Left is that it is aware that Cameron is developing a critique of society that has the potential to be more 'socialist' (in the sense of reversing the previously predominant view within the Tory Party that, in Thatcher's formulation, 'there is no such thing as society') than the current prevailing ideology within mainstream New Labour.

I have one reference for you to follow up on this - Alan Finlayson's 'Making Sense of David Cameron' in the March/May 2007 Edition of Public Policy Research. Finlayson lays out Cameronian ideology in a crystal clear manner, with respect for its coherence, and then makes a serious critique of it that is also well worth reading.

The essence of the argument comes down to whether social recovery (and we are in a crisis of social breakdown that requires an attempt at recovery) will come through re-building individual will, in association with other individuals, to 'do something' or by re-building collective institutions within which individuals can co-operate institutionally and according to principles of 'solidarity'.

The worry is that New Labour has retained the authoritarian aspects of collectivism (including its negative attitude to internal dissent) but in the service of market individualism. The Left, on the other hand, is moving in the direction of rediscovering process, democracy and the reconstruction of civil society.

Unfortunately, the latest iteration of democratic socialism is being silenced by its need to appear 'loyal' to a Party just as Cameron is sweeping in under New Labour with a counter-critique that is socially-minded, libertarian (which is what the national culture inclines to in the South) and localist but at the cost of any respect for collective action.

The Dilemmas of Loyalty

The critical centre-left (on the evidence of the weekend) has all the intellectual tools for a re-casting of the New Labour project as one that is more libertarian, democratic, redistributive and potentially popular. Like the European Socialist movements, it has the potential to persuade the wider population all things being equal.

But to assert its message is not just to critique the Tory 'enemy' and ensure clear pink water from the Liberals, it is to attack the New Labour Government whose ideology might share with the Left an opposition to 'pure' liberalism and conservatism but which represents an almost diametrically opposed attitude to power and policy.

The logic of the situation would be for the centre-left to split.  This would be hard to argue against in a proportional electoral system. 

This is not an option for a variety of reasons: the First Past The Post electoral system; the lack of interest in ideas and change within the trades union movement; the inability to gain media and cultural high ground (of which more below); the formidable asset base (despite recent internal disarray) within a highly centralised Party; the difficulty of persuading the regional and petty national elites within the New Labour coalition that they have anything to gain by idealism at a national level; the political neutering of the English as a progressive force ... the list goes on.

It is not only the English who are neutered within a British identity that is now just cover for an interconnected machine of regional elites, it is the sensible Left itself. It cannot move forward without declaring war on its own party or taking up the cause of the English and non-unionised poor and binding the latter into some sort of alliance with the anxious middle classes of the South.  This is precisely Cameron territory.

But the Left cannot attack Cameron directly without either losing its own internal base by supporting a thoroughly discredited New Labour ideology (the fall-back is often to praise measures that are really only of interest to the trades unions and are anti-libertarian) or giving up all hope of 'revolution from within' through consent by alienating the all-powerful Labour machine.

And, yes, it gets worse still. There is no mechanism for seizing power within the Party in any case, even if it 'won' the battle of ideas. The Partnership in Power 'reforms' limited even trades union power to effect policy and personnel changes. The NEC is an anxious cypher and the party's organisation in the country is virtually defunct except as support mechanism for increasingly neutered (that word again) elected representatives. 

There is no sign that the trades unions will do anything to support the democratic socialist Left unless or until New Labour loses an election - when the only prospect becomes another bout of internal bloodletting which the Party might not survive, unless it finds its own charismatic Obama.

It would be beyond a case of a 'Hilary' by that stage. The new Crown Prince, Miliband [D.], would have to do some pretty tough thinking about the value of Blair legacy's in leading a disgruntled party to victory before a distrusting electorate.

Other than contemplating open revolt or the quixotic formation of a new party, the Left seems doomed to trust in some impending 'crisis of capitalism' or other deus ex machina.

None of the federal parts of the Party seem enthusiastic to rock the boat. The trades unions do their usual trick of funding left-wing organisations sufficient to keep them loyal but insufficient to be effective and spread their funds thinly. 

The PLP clearly did not back Jon Cruddas in the Deputy Leadership campaign. There is much work to be done to unite those in Parliament prepared to sustain and make coherent the critiques developed separately by the Campaign group, Cruddas and Kilfoyle (on foreign policy).

The party machine itself is dead set against change and is directed more at squaring things between two factions of New Labour (the so-called Brownites and Blairites) than at a dialogue between centre-left and centre-right. 

The Left element in the original New Labour Project, represented by Hain and the Kinnock network, is discredited in the grassroots while the grassroots itself is unorganised, divided and atomised with no credible mechanisms to put fresh opinion into policy practice without leadership or union patronage.

In the end, since a deus ex machina is unlikely and attacking the Tories head-on and separately from the Labour Party gains little and risks a lot, all that remains seems to be to try the only route left - to argue the intellectual case direct to the public without criticising the Government directly.

A weak but reasonable strategy if you rely on the faith-based incantation of Gramsci's famous dictum that Leftists should be optimistic in their actions even while being intellectually pessimistic.

Politics in a Celebrity Culture

And here we come across two further problems - the language of left-wing politics and the rise of celebrity as the only means to get ideas into the political market place.

Intellectuals and academics are good news for policy formulation but often bad news for communication and practical implementation. Politics is rarely about building a programme out of a priori theory unless you have a secret police force to enforce compliance. Human nature and material facts soon point out the flaws in any rationalist project - and unintended consequences follow.

One of the projects for the Left is to rip out words like narrative, hegemony and discourse and to have the confidence to store its policy documents for power and distil its programmes into as few words as possible. 

Compass, for example, has its brand sorted and its policy documentation is of the very highest standard but it still lacks that persuasive material in the middle ground that can tell the public what it is and why it is good for them. But, at least, the Left now understands that it has a problem.

Similarly policy ideas still need a version of the despised New Labour focus group but not to establish whether they are popular but whether they are credible, workable and saleable. 

For example, one ostensibly good policy idea emerged over the weekend and might have gone flying off into some Manifesto or other except that three or four practical and strategic flaws were easily demonstrable from non-academic experience.

The problem of how to communicate to the public, and to the political class in particular, is central to the problem of the contemporary Left. But even if it mastered the right language, it has to inspire interest and belief in a situation where the originating cultures of the traditional Left have mostly collapsed.

The main barrier to dissident political culture becoming mainstream lies in the delusion that endorsement by a celebrity intellectual (we might call this the 'Will Hutton' delusion) makes an idea effective and deliverable when all it does is place it in the system as a 'meme' where it becomes simplified, gutted and used rhetorically by others rather than as a means of political transformation.

Leftists salivate over an endorsement from Ms. Toynbee and get a sleepless night of rage at the Daily Mail but this misses the point. A strange introvert community of political advisers, journalists, selected academics, hangers-on and broadcasters have developed a collective group-think that creates the illusion of publicly-accountable opinion. 

Listening to the commentariat speak for the people rather than for themselves is showing contempt for those same people, as if an Oxbridge education, a career in the NUS or the ability to write well intrinsically privileged some thoughts on issues of moment for ordinary families and professionals rather than the assessments of the population at large based on practical experience.

This is a culture of columns in the quality media, talk shows, book festivals and intense meetings at the House of Commons where cocky talkers strut their stuff to adoring congregations as if their words were ever going to become action. Power resides elsewhere, including the PLP with its ability to force a vote of no confidence, but still they talk. 

Two developments make capturing the high ground in the political celebrity culture a relative sideshow in the long term. The first is that power decisions have disconnected from this elite increasingly over the last decade and will continue to do so. The high point of the old system was the rise and fall of neo-conservatism in America - pointy heads are no longer useful.

Whatever this or that opinion-maker thinks or says may be noted by the power elite. A sort of transmission belt of mutual regard, patronage, dinner parties and blind ambition makes the two ride in tandem for most of the time, but if the power elite ever decides that the intelligentsia are drifting in the wrong direction they will either ignore them, manipulate them back in line or appeal over their heads themselves to the mass.

The second development is more potential than actual. The construction of social networking tools is moving power back to small groups on the ground. The ideology behind the tools is libertarian rather than traditionally conservative but it does not mean that they are not progressive - but it is still the culture that Cameron's younger advisory network is responding to.

Periodic resentment of the old intellectual elite at the new demotic language of the web, the diana-like emotionalism that emerges in politics (all feeling, limited action), the volatility of public values and the lack of respect for 'high culture' all result in periodic tirades against the new technologies.

The probable truth is that, as newspapers decline (except for the Star on Sunday) and there is no revenue workable model for opinion on the internet, the dominance of the commentariat is probably doomed within a generation.

If the Left is ever going to re-establish its place in the national culture, it is going to have to by-pass the commentariat (who has time to read this stuff other than other intellectuals anyway?) and adopt a populist model that goes direct to the people, especially those under-35s who are ready, in their contempt for the Blair-Brown government, to fall into Cameron's hands and who do not read newspapers.

Looking back to Will Hutton's State We Are In (which is always over-emphasised in 'narratives' of the New Labour victory in 1997) is less useful than considering how the Northern League disrupted Italian politics or how the original organisation of the political wing of the Labour Movement developed in the period from Hardie to Lansbury.

The secret of success for the Left has not changed - discipline, patience, simple messages, identification of needs and, above all, organisation.

Concluding Thoughts

This posting has emphasised the difficulties for the 'sensible' Left, with a government that has got it wrong but with which it has become associated and a challenge to conservatism that cannot be elucidated without undermining its own coalitional partners.

A new party would be logical but facts and sentiment dictate otherwise - at least for now. Capturing power within the Party is now closed off by the post-1996 construction of its machinery.

Of course, there is the dream of capturing ground in a crisis, one in which the elite splits and discovers a ready-made solution on the Left, but the crisis is within and about the Government and the Party far more than it is within and about the nation.

An attempt to win over the commentariat is an exhausting process that is increasingly irrelevant to the exercise of power. The creation of a constituency in the country is ideal but the aggression as well as the resources required to go direct to the masses are not there.

And yet, and yet ... the 'sensible' Left, for all its weaknesses and the unpropitious nature of the conditions in which it operates today, is still the 'only game in town' if you are looking for a long-term credible alternative to the emergence of a successful social conservatism.

The traditional Labour Party died a long time ago. What remains of its more backward-looking socialist left can never win over the English middle class vote. New Labour has descended into becoming a machine for the capture and exercise of power - but careerists and opportunists tend to move on quite rapidly when the machine that sustains them grinds to a halt.

The public finds Cameron increasingly appealing - despite past distrusts - precisely because he is adopting the type of social thinking that Blair promised and failed to deliver and which democratic libertarian socialists would consider normal.  

I have heard life-long Leftists privately tell me that they could see themselves joining the Tory Party if all that Cameron claimed to offer was true. We have also been told that card-carrying Labour people have advised his office in frustration and desperation at Government policy.

The 'sensible' Left has a programme that could pull these voters back out of a foolish flirtation with our modern Disraeli. The problem now for it is to find the right language to speak to the public in favour of collective solutions to social breakdown - and to do so in a way that credibly suggests that a vote for the 'sensible' Left could and would result in change.

It's a tough call ... but, in that battle for ideas, our tip is that Compass is worth watching and, if you share their values, engaging with. If politics was an equity market, we would tip them as a BUY/SELL ON WEAKNESS and their rivals within the Party as SELL.

Above all, if the future is going to be an ideological struggle between this Left and Cameron instead of between the old-style Tories and New Labour, it may even be that we get a fairer, kinder country at the end of it.

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