Strong Labour

Our democracy is facing three existential crises –a living standards crisis, a military crisis, and a climate crisis. People who cannot earn enough are turning away from democracy; Putin wants to destroy democracy in Europe; and a burning planet is fuelling conflicts while making us all poorer. In the next decade, we will either find the strength to save our democracy or we will lose it.

We can meet this moment, make sure everyone can earn enough, protect ourselves from Putin’s war, and save the planet for our children and grandchildren. But do so will require a new vision for these more dangerous times: a vision of strength in unity that can guide us and provide a clear narrative at this uncertain moment.

This new vision should be rooted in timeless Labour values. That everyone should be able to live a good life. The vision we use to express these values has always changed to suit the time. In the 1940s, a vision of citizenship, where collective security was granted in return for collective sacrifice. In the 1960s, a vision of modernism, which embraced the technological revolution of the time. In the 1990s, a vision of renewal for both our public realm and our social fabric. In the current decade –the most dangerous in almost a century – a new vision is needed: ‘by the strength of our common endeavour’. This is the message we need for these dangerous times: strength derived from our collective power

The founding principle of every human organisation, be it a family, a company, a club, a movement, or a society, is a variation on this theme: we achieve more, and are more powerful, when we stand together rather than apart. At the level of a nation, strength is built out of our collective purpose, connection, and prosperity. A country where we all share the same goals, look out for one another, and where all of us are doing well, is a stronger nation. And cultivating strength is the right response to deal with a precarious present and a dangerous future.

 Our opponents’ vision is one of weakness founded in division. Their answer to every problem is to blame someone else or tear something down. They capitalise on our crises rather than confront them. They prize one group over the whole community. Their vision of a nation is one where only some do well rather than all, and where the success of one has nothing to do with the contribution of all. Their vision is of weak and divided nation. Ours is of a strong and united one.

 From our vision of strength flows the response teach of the crises we face. Strength means taking the bold action that is necessary to save democracy rather than dealing in piecemeal solutions that will not get the job done. We seek a country where everyone can earn enough to build our collective strength; where we defend ourselves and our values; and where we look to the future rather than focusing only on the present.

Confronting our living standards crisis

Many people living in Britain today cannot afford a decent life and see no prospect of ever being able to do so. Asa result, they are losing faith in democracy. Our opponents use stagnant living standards as an excuse to find a group to blame, weakening us further. Our vision of strength is one in which everyone can earn enough, strengthening the bonds between us and restoring faith in democracy.

More than one third cannot afford the basics. Two groups, in particular, are struggling – non-graduates and young (often graduate) renters. Non-graduates cannot find decent jobs in our post-industrial economy. Young renters can’t afford their own home without inheritance. Both are losing faith in mainstream parties and looking to radical alternatives: Reform for non-graduates and the Greens for young graduate renters. Both sets of voters are also losing faith in democracy itself. They are becoming increasingly angry at a nation, and a political mainstream, that is not providing them with a route to building a decent life.

That anger is leading to internal division. When things aren’t going well, we naturally look to blame someone, usually an out-group, to provide a natural and intuitive explanation for what are, in reality, longstanding and complex problems. There will always be people like Farage, but the reason his rhetoric has appeal to people is because things aren’t working for them. When people cannot earn enough, division leads to further division.

A strong nation is one where every person can earn enough for a decent life and where every person shares in our collective strength. That will require, firstly, bold action to get bills down, including investing in clean energy, which is over 50 per cent cheaper than natural gas, and investing in childcare, so that couples can botchwork and have a family. Secondly, the government needs to invest to create good non-graduate jobs outside major cities. Construction and home insulation provide good non-graduate jobs, but we also need to invest in public-sector jobs that have non-graduate routes, like nursing and care. Thirdly, to make renters better off, we need to build a lot more new homes and make it easier for people to buy them.

Confronting our military crisis

Peace is built upon strength. By showing that we are willing to defend our values, and that we will stand together to do so, we can prevent conflict. This is the logic of deterrence that the European peace of the past 80 years was built upon. That peace was founded upon nations and people standing together as part of the strongest military alliance in the history of humankind, NATO.

That peace is now under threat. America’s commitment to NATO is uncertain, and Putin is attempting to redraw Ukraine’s borders by force. He will come back for more once the war in Ukraine ends if he believes that NATO will not stop him. Again, we see the weakness that division breeds.

Preventing a wider war in Europe requires showing strength through unity. It means showing Putin that European NATO would not only defeat him – but defeat him easily. To do this, we need to convert our far greater economic power into more fighting forces than he can. Winning wars is more a matter of economies than tactics. It is the side that can outproduce the other in fighting forces – guns, shells, and now drones – that wins.

 To deter Putin, we need both a mindset shift and a production shift. We must first accept that we are in a pre-war situation, and need to prepare accordingly. Then, we must act quickly to build a stronger fighting force immediately while preparing to rapidly scale up in the case of conflict. That means having production lines for drones and munitions ready for when we need them. It means investing in skills like welding, engineering, and plating that we need to produce materiel. It means making sure the funds to make these investments are available as soon as possible, including by founding a multilateral defence bank with our allies that can leverage investment into defence. Strength means facing up to our problems, rather than shirking away. This will help us prevent war.

 Confronting our climate crisis

A changing climate is making us poorer at home and fuelling conflicts abroad. Confronting it requires the strength to act as a collective whole to protect future generations and reject the myopia of our opponents. The story of history is not that environmental degradation necessarily destroys nations. It is that weak political leadership allows environmental failure to destroy nations. The Akkadian empire, for example, began to disintegrate in 2220BC as droughts led to crop failures, and then civil wars. Similarly, 2,000 years later, in the Western Roman empire, a changing climate combined with poor political leadership led to food shortages, and the drought-induced Hun invasion helped to push a weak political system into collapse. But a stronger political system in the Eastern European empire survived the environmental shocks.

In our own time, the climate crisis is already here, and we must respond to it. The ten hottest years on record all took place in the last decade. At home, flooding is now costing us around £1bn a year, and 40ºC heatwaves are killing thousands. Beyond our shores, a burning planet is fuelling conflicts that affect us here at home. The Sahel, a region that stretches across Africa below the Sahara Desert, is sweltering, leading to droughts that are fomenting warfare in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. People are leaving the Sahelin droves and coming to our nation in boats.

Strength means confronting climate change by doing our part to prevent it and dealing with the changes that are already here. It is far cheaper to invest and stop emitting carbon now than to pay to deal with the consequences later. The good news is that investing now will also get energy bills down for good and create jobs in green sectors. In the UK we have almost decarbonised our electricity grid. Next, we need to decarbonise transport and our buildings. Crucially, innovations we make here can be sold to help others decarbonise across the world. This is fundamentally about making upfront investments now that will reduce costs for centuries to come.

Saving democracy through strength

These crises threaten to destroy us. What we do now will determine the future of our democracy. Democracy requires a demos. It needs a majority that are willing to stand up for it, rather than search for radical alternatives.

But anger and fear define our times. We hear it at the dinner table, we feel it on our streets, and it is fed to us through our screens. Anger and fear are a natural response to a precarious present and a dangerous future. People are angry that they cannot afford a decent life and see no prospect they will be able to do so. They are scared at the prospect of war in Europe and a burning planet. People feel unable to protect themselves or their families by standing alone. And anger and fear lead people to turn away from the mainstream: of Green and Reform voters,70 per cent and 80 per cent respectively are angry.

We can see a similar story across Europe. Anger has fuelled the rise of radical parties, putting democracy at risk. As I write this, the hard-right candidate has just won the Polish presidency. Elsewhere, a sequence of near-misses: in Germany, where the AfD are the second-largest party; France, where the National Rally (RN)has made sweeping gains in the national assembly; and Portugal, where the far-right have formed the opposition ahead of the centre-left. Beating the far right narrowly is not a victory. It is a sign of political failure, of weakness, that they can challenge for power.

We need to provide leadership at this moment, and leadership requires vision. A vision that guides us as well as a narrative to bring others with us. I believe it must be a vision of strength in unity and a good life for all. That vision is the right one to meet this moment of crisis and to build a sustainable coalition. The voters that are leaving us for Reform and the Greens are those that cannot afford a good life. A vision of strength that demands that every person can lead a good life is one that can help bring people with us now and to the ballot box in four years’ time.

Conclusion

This is a defining moment in our history. We will either rise to meet it, or we will lose our prosperity, our unity, and our democracy. There is no law of economics that says every person must be able to earn enough for a decent life. No law of politics that says that democracies must endure. No law of history that says its arc must bend toward justice. It is for us to make it so. We make it so by applying our timeless values to this moment as we have at every great moment in our history. By responding to today’s crises with strength founded in unity – the strength of our common endeavour.

Image credit: Number 10 via flickr