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David Blunkett in Defence of Politics Revisited blunkett,B5,coverJS,v2 28/08/2012 12:25 Page 2 David Blunkett In Defence of Politics Revisited is pamphlet is dedicated to the memory of my tutor and friend the late Professor Sir Bernard Crick who not only observed, researched and wrote about politics but in Britain and specifically in Northern Ireland, engaged as an active citizen in trying to make the world a better place. Rt. Hon. David Blunkett MP 1 Foreword by Ed Miliband, Leader of the Labour Party DavID BluNkett’S reconsideration of Bernard Crick’s defence of politics is timely. Sadly, politics needs defending in this country. Few people believe it can really change the world around them. Few believe that politicians are much different from each other. and few vote. is is not just bad for us politicians. It is bad for the country. When politics becomes an increasingly minority activity, no politician or party can gain a good mandate to make the radical changes this country needs. e biggest mistake those of us in politics can make would be to blame the voters. apathy will not be defeated by voters having a change of heart. I do not blame the voters. I think people are telling us politicians something we need to hear. Not just that this out-of-touch tory-led government has run out of ideas. But that labour – like politics in general – has a long way to go to win back trust. Our solutions start with our diagnosis of the problem. Why do people have such low faith in politics? Firstly, it is because they see politicians who make promises they do not or cannot keep. Where the present Government has done so – such as its promise not to reorganise the NHS or to cap migration – it does not just harm their reputation, it harms the reputation of politics as a whole. It is up to labour not to fall into the same trap. We must always set out bold aspirations. But under my leadership, we will not make promises we know we cannot keep. e second reason people have such low faith in politics is that too many do not see how it can make a difference to their everyday lives. We need a politics that is more engaged in the lives, concerns, and problems of the people we seek to serve. at means not just knocking on doors and asking those who answer if they will vote for us. It means also asking them what they are concerned about and then building our campaigns around those concerns. It means not just knocking on the doors of party members, but also knocking on new doors. It means bringing people in and showing them what politics can do for them. In some areas the labour Party is already doing that. Despite being in Opposition, we have MPs running jobs fairs to help people find work, and campaigning against payday loan companies to prevent people being fleeced when they are at their most vulnerable. e solution to people feeling that politics does not make a difference to their everyday lives is simple: showing them that it can. e third reason people have such low faith in politics is that too many see our politics as detached, and conducted by politicians who listen to a powerful few but not the many. is has been symbolised in recent years by the wealth gap between london and the rest of the country. Regaining trust on this count is perhaps the most important step to rebuilding trust in politics 2 as a whole. It means standing up for the working people of this country. at means standing up to energy firms which deliberately make their tariffs opaque. It means standing up to a banking system which all too often uses its profits to pay its senior staff, rather than paying its shareholders or lending out to those businesses who will be the engine of recovery and growth. and it means standing up to those media companies which have exerted unaccountable power over our democracy for too long. We will show people that politics can make a difference by being on their side. e British people want a Government that is more ambitious about making things work not just for a few at the top or for a few big companies, but for all the people in Britain. and ultimately, our task is nothing less than to rebuild this country. We must rebuild our economy so that it works for working people, our society so that it represents the values of working people, and our politics so that it includes the voices of working people. and we must always be optimists that trust in politics can be restored. at spirit shines through this pamphlet. and it is that spirit which must guide our efforts in the years to come. 3 Executive summary FROM CyNICal RePORtING to even more destructive satire, it is tempting to see the denigration of political democracy through the print and broadcast media as a spectator sport. However, there is a profound issue to address. Namely, in a 21st century response to Professor Sir Bernard Crick’s challenge to defend the role of politics – In Defence of Politics (1962) – in providing a counterweight to the financial markets and economic imperialism, is it possible to renew political democracy as a force for progressive change? Fifty years on from the publication of In Defence of Politics, the same questions are being raised today. What is the role of traditional political parties? are people alienated from traditional political processes? How do we reconnect, and build trust and confidence in democratic politics? e last five years of political and financial turmoil have seen democratically elected governments removed in Greece and Italy, not by the voters, but by forces outside the country. Politicians have been blamed for the global meltdown, yet all the pressures on them have been to leave the markets to ‘do their job’. Indeed, support for deregulation was proclaimed to the City of london by David Cameron back in March 2008, “As a free-marketeer by conviction, it will not surprise you to hear me say that” the problem “of the past decade” is “too much regulation.” 1 However, it was in fact politics that was called upon to intervene to save the national as well as the global economy from disintegration. a lack of narrative developed as to what was happening, and therefore an opportunity to exert the importance of politics was missed. Now we see continuing contradictions in terms of attitudes to profound issues, from public spending to stimulate the economy versus retrenchment to release investment, or from the desire to get involved as opposed to the ambivalence of people happy to let others make decisions for them. Indeed, e Economist , in a survey ‘Do the public know what they want?’ reflected the inherent contradictions which make politics a necessity, not an optional extra or alternative to technocracy. e findings showed that there was no clear consensus on whether or not to cut public spending (54% for cuts and 39% against), and opinion was even more finely balanced when the potential consequences of cuts for individuals was spelt out in more detail (47% for cuts and 46% against). Moreover, public involvement in public services was seen as a good idea in principle – 49% strongly agree that ‘people’ should get more involved in improving services and local areas. However, this fell to 28% strongly agreeing that ‘I’ should get more involved. Further to this, as David Miliband indicated in his lecture during the second series of the Speaker’s lectures on 19th June 2012, there is a contradiction between a desire for localism and an imperative for dealing with globalisation. e concept not only of neighbourhood and a sense of belonging, but also of developing city regions, is gaining traction. But this is mirrored with 1 Ed Miliband MP, Prime Minister’s Questions, 4 July 2012, Hansard Debates for 4 July 2012 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm120704/debtext/120704- 0001.htm#12070479000012 4 the challenge of transnational and global issues, of increasing international mobility and movement of peoples, and of twenty-four-hour-seven-day-a-week communication. e contradictions which politicians have to deal with are palpable and immediate. is is precisely why we need politics and, dare I say it, politicians. Both to articulate the language of priorities, as described by aneurin Bevan, but also to mediate and decide between contradictory demands from the public and short-term pressures alongside long-term imperatives. When the technocrats become politicians, democracy has effectively been declared incapable of meeting the challenge. What’s more, political democracy was and remains the counterweight to the market and, as we have seen over the last five years, the financial turmoil across the world has made this more relevant than ever. e foundations of identity and belonging through participative involvement and engagement in politics are therefore essential in ensuring a countervailing force to the power of globalisation. In essence, we need to stop promising the undeliverable. We must acknowledge the important but partial role of parliament in changing the world. and yes, we should lay out where other forces can be mobilised, to use the resources of government to assist with that process of mobilisation, and in that hackneyed phrase, to empower others. In this way, we can reassert the need for democracy and politics over the tide towards technocracy. Government in the future should be about enabling others to exercise influence in the world around them.
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