Leavers need leadership. A new political party would help deliver Brexit
People have started to talk about an irrevocable split in the Conservative Party over Brexit. I personally have no idea where Brexit is currently heading. But somewhere along the line there will be an election. When that happens, it seems to me, there does need to be a political party that fully supports a clean Brexit. If it is one of the still-intact established parties – great. If it is not, it needs to be a new one. Here are some thoughts on what such a party should look like.
Firstly, a new party would need to break old party boundaries and loyalties. I have been involved with the Conservative Party for years. Before that I was a member of the Labour Party. Sometime before that I attended meetings of the Socialist Workers Party. There were good people in all these parties. The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. When we recognise this we work more effectively together. In fact, it is only by recognising this that we work effectively together. A new party would need to attract Labour voters, Conservative voters, didn’t used to bother voters. It would need to attract 17 million Leavers and at least 52% of the popular vote. How could we make this happen?
Nothing is possible without compromise
People who have not been involved in politics have absolutely no idea of the extent to which the two main political parties muddle along holding together vast coalitions of different, competing, interests. In the Conservative Party you get people who are virtually libertarians alongside people who want to save every last historic building in England. In the Labour Party you have “entry-ist” Marxists through to Blairites, indistinguishable from Tory wets.
Anyone involved in the two main parties also knows that there is a constant stream of people resigning their membership and stomping off in a rage. This happens when the compromise feels too great, and a straw has settled on the camel’s back. The compromise is very great for all of us, believe me. So what makes some of us stay on?
What fundamentally holds us together is a belief in democracy. We are aware that there is no “they” out there who are going to solve everything. Some Leave commentators go on about the “political class” as if there are a bunch of people out there who need to buck up and fix everything, while the rest of us shout at them from our twitter feeds. There is no political class. There is no “they”. There is just us… That is the wonder of democracy.
A new party, cutting through old left and right divides, will need to be as good at compromise as any party that has ever existed. And people will need to resist the desire to stomp off – unless they decide that bureaucratic technocracy is, after all, a better outcome.
A new party will need to start out resolutely centrist
In this article I am assuming that a Leave Party would support a hard Brexit whereby we will initially trade according to World Trade Organisation rules. I will not discuss the preparation for this – but see a word or two below. Rather, it is important to consider what the rest of its policy platform should look like.
In order to hold the vast coalition of Leave supporters together, its first principle needs to be starting-from-where-we-are centrism. Conservative Leavers won’t support vast increases in public expenditure. Labour Leavers won’t support the abolition of corporation tax. The party would need to establish a centrist position with a new policy direction working out from that base.
New policy needs to be firmly rooted in what drove the Leave vote
Starting from a fiscally-centrist, and no-other-overnight-big-changes position, a new party must set out in a new direction in terms of other policy areas. In order to drive this, it would need to put aside the tired old cliches of left and right, and instead look at the great big glorious signal that was the Leave vote. it would need to look at why people voted Leave and frame a policy direction around that. Here is why people voted to leave the European Union. It was a vote for:
– Outward looking and optimistic globalism
– Control of our borders and of our own immigration policies
– Sovereignty and democracy
– Localism and community.
Out of these, I believe that Leavers could come together to form a new policy platform which would not only deliver on the referendum vote, but also on so many of the wider factors that influenced that vote.
For example, a really critical area, around which left and right Leave voters are well aligned is localism and community. We need to look at policies that push decision-making and choice down to local levels. For example, we need to look at policies that create new opportunities for small and local businesses. Too much of global capitalism as well as EU regulation tilts the playing field in favour of global multi-nationals who are the only ones who can afford to jump bureaucratic hurdles and incur the costs of endless regulation. Supporting small and local businesses gives local people choice, opportunity, freedom, control.
Currently almost every idea that such a party would need is nestling in the unread pages of well-intentioned blogs and position papers. A few of them make it to the ear of a fresh-faced Minister. But then they end up back in the too-hard basket. Perhaps the EU Referendum came along at just the right time to save our democracy. Read Camille Paglia:
“I have been trying for decades to get my fellow Democrats to realise how unchecked bureaucracy, in government or academe, is inherently authoritarian and illiberal. A persistent characteristic of civilisations in decline throughout history has been their self-strangling by slow, swollen, and stupid bureaucracies…. In the modern world, so wondrously but perilously interconnected, a principle of periodic reduction of bureaucracy should be built into every social organism. Freedom cannot survive otherwise.”
In sum, there is no shortage of ideas and opportunities. But a new party would need to commit to an incremental approach to reform, starting from where we are. And then focus on policies that deliver on the drivers of the Leave vote. The ossification and built-up bureacratisation of centuries gives plenty of scope for liberating and localising policies around which Leave voters can unite.
As as aside, I also believe that left and right Leave voters are fairly united against the more bonkers end of political correctness. Whenever I have headed deep into Leave territory, the more shopkeepers have called me Love or My Lovely. How nice that is. We all need more connection and friendliness in our lives.
Leavers need leadership
Every day I see articles describing how we will survive and flourish with a No Deal Brexit. But I don’t bother to read them. Why? Well, why bother? To become an armchair expert in an evanescent dream?
The bottom line is, Us Leavers Need Leadership. We need a repository for all of the ideas and opportunities that make up the way forward, for a No Deal Brexit. We need leaders that articulate our vision. And prepare to put it into action. Only a political party can coherently and effectively do this.
Sure – such a party might evaporate again if no longer needed. But its very existence might be the one thing that creates the conditions to render it redundant. Death or glory – either way it would help deliver Brexit.
