The Importance of Preserving Social Democracy in a Dangerous World

Slaves of Roman emperors reminded them they were mortal with the words “look behind you.” I sometimes think that each CLP should elect an Officer for Devil’s Advocacy. Their wise words could be “look around you.”

We can see that the lamps of the Left are going out all over Europe and America and progressives are thinking through how to revive and reinvent their politics. I talked with many social democrats from across Europe at Progressive Britain’s recent symposium in Oxford after a calamitous decade of humbling decline and defeat.

Czech social democrats fell to just over 2% of the vote and have no MPs while the historic French Socialist Party has bounced back from 2% in the presidential elections to 14% in recent parliamentary elections.

The hope I expressed not so long ago that a troika of social democratic leaders – Biden, Scholz, and Starmer – could refashion global politics has vanished. Suddenly, the British Labour Party tops the social democratic charts and plays a decisive role in deterring populism and the hostile actors of Russia, China, and Iran that sustain domestic populism.

The far right has 200 out of 700 members of the European Parliament. They are not a cohesive force but could double their representation in the coming years with the sort of Russian social media influence that we recently saw in Romania, which was nipped before budding further. Countering right-wing populism was a key theme at the Symposium, as it should be for us and particularly in the 89 Labour-held constituencies where Reform came second to us.

Professor Tim Bale once made the memorable point that populists obsess about “boats, boilers, and bathrooms.” This refers to irregular immigration, the costs of net zero, and the conflict between transgender and women’s rights. Concerns on these cross the left/right divide but social democrats should find compassionate answers to each that take the ground from under those who angrily exploit them.

The small boats must be stopped, and a start has been made by helping the authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan from where many thousands of migrants hail and where highly organised gangs operate. Most Kurds in barber and food shops have long been here but new arrivals may disappear into the cashless black economy. We should bite the bullet and introduce a digital ID card that can reduce pull factors with other benefits for public services.

Legal migration is crucial to our economy and cannot be artificially capped, but we should increase training and employment opportunities, and tackle in-work poverty and worklessness. We need net-zero policies but the infrastructure for electric vehicles, for instance, is lacking as is the workforce able to install cheaper boilers.

Labour is moving the wider debate away from amorphous abstractions and ambiguous slogans that alienate voters without solving problems and that paint progressives as out of touch, as we saw so painfully in the American general election last year.

Security was a major talking point. An Estonian social democrat, who lives 70 kilometers from St Petersburg, outlined his government’s tough analysis of the dangers if Russia wins in Ukraine.

Paul Mason, who has laboured hard to understand and convey military lingo, was on hand to lob intellectual hand grenades into the discussion. He made the basic point that deterrence is much cheaper than its failure when we would not be talking just about hiking defence spending to 2.5 or 3% but much higher. He also made the chilling point that 100,000 NHS beds could be cleared in the event of hostilities.

Brexit underpinned many conversations. Some optimistically noted that polls show great British ‘bregret’, but rejoining is not feasible while a third of the British people back Brexit. Besides, the EU won’t contemplate negotiations only to find any new British government reversing the reversal.

What this means in detail is to be determined and will depend on the impact of the new American President on trade and defence. Peter Mandelson’s special skills set will be most useful in his new role as Ambassador to the USA.

Labour is now the main social democratic party in power and our decisions and discussions will be highly consequential for the future of Europe and wider humanity. By this benchmark, devil’s advocacy and free thinking are the least we should do.

 

Click here to read another piece from Gary Kent on Britain’s changing international role following the US election of Donald Trump as the country’s 47th President. 

Author

  • Gary Kent

    Gary Kent is an international relations expert and Labour Party member. His column for PB highlights Labour's foreign policy challenges.  

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