A British Republic: the non-conservative case

Today's royal wedding has ignited considerable debate in the blogosphere about the merits or otherwise of the British royal family as an institution. Most readers of this blog will not be surprised to find that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool republican, but I think it's worth engaging with two of the most cogent arguments for monarchy from the Left that I've seen so far. One is from the brilliant outgoing general secretary of the Fabian Society, Sunder Katwala, on the Fabian Next Left blog. The other is from economist Chris Dillow on his equally excellent Stumbling and Mumbling.

Sunder used to be a republican but has since become a (possibly rather reluctant) monarchist. His argument for retaining the monarchy seems to boil down to two distinct points:

1. The monarchy's powers are so limited that it doesn't get in the way of any Left political projects (NHS, minimum wage, progressive taxation, electoral reform, etc.) so there is nothing to be gained by its abolition.
2. For the last 40 years or more, opinion polling has shown that only around 20% of British voters have republican sympathies. Therefore, a referendum on abolishing the monarchy (which, based on recent constitutional convention, would be necessary to get rid of it) is unwinnable. Nor do there seem to be any trends in public opinion in the direction of republicanism.

I think the first point is the most important so I'll address that first. Sunder's justification for retaining the monarchy is very much pragmatic - "if it ain't broke don't fix it". That is, the key issue at stake in deciding whether to retain the monarchy or not is: does it work well?

Whereas I approach the question from a different, more ideological, direction. For me, the question is: what do my principles, as a democratic socialist, tell me about the criteria that the head of state needs to fulfil, in order to be acceptable in a democracy? For me, by definition, the monarchy doesn't "work" as an institution if it doesn't satisfy those criteria.

The main criterion I would apply is that people in positions of power should be subject to democratic accountability. There is certainly widespread popular acceptance of this principle in the case of the British government - we have an electoral system (albeit a flawed one) rather than relying on some kind of benign dictatorship. As Tony Benn has long argued, "how can we get rid of you?" is THE most important question to ask about any authority figure.

If we don't have a system where people who hold political power can be removed, then we are essentially trusting to the hope that whatever alternative system delivers people into positions of power will lead to them exercising that power in our best interests. In the case of the monarchy, the alternative system is a mixture of genetics, assortative mating, and luck of the draw. The current popularity of the monarchy, in my view, is a result of a good draw from the card deck: Queen Elizabeth II does a good job within her terms of reference, and is popular and well respected.

But what about her successor? There are huge worries that Prince Charles - who has been a very vocal advocate for a large number of causes, some of which are IMHO worthy (organic food), some of which are simply flaky or downright dangerous (homeopathy anybody?) will continue to argue for his pet causes when he accedes to the throne. And just this week, the monarchy has demonstrated clear political bias in choosing to invite previous Prime Ministers Major and Thatcher to the wedding, but not Blair and Brown. (For the record, I wouldn't have wanted Tony Blair anywhere near my wedding either, and I'd be worried that Brown would punch someone out or go into a sulk. But that's not the point).

The monarch does not usually play a role in determining what kind of government we get, but there are exceptions to this rule. For example, last May we had a hung parliament and in a finely balanced parliamentary situation, the monarch could, in theory, have chosen to favour one side rather than the other, had the negotiations between the parties been inconclusive. For example, the Queen could have approached David Cameron to form a minority Tory government even if Labour and the Lib Dems had been willing to try an alternative 'rainbow coalition' government with the minor parties. This was never going to happen with the Lib Dems under Clegg, but if Kennedy or Campbell had still been Lib Dem leader, it would have been a very plausible scenario. So, the monarch's power is limited - but it is far from non-existent.

For sure, an elected head of state with similar powers to the current British monarch would have the power to influence events in hung parliaments and would probably make their views known on other issues too. The crucial difference is that presidents who abused their powers or their position would have to face the consequences of their actions in the popular vote. The question of how powerful an elected head of state should be is a separate issue. Personally I'd rather keep the existing structures with the head of state as largely a figurehead who only comes into play as a power-broker in limited circumstances - more like the Irish model than the US model, where the president is the most powerful single person in the government. But there are a number of potential systems - all of which would be preferable, in my mind, to relying on heredity for good governance.

In fact I'd go further than this: I think the argument for a hereditary monarchy rather than an elected head of state is a fundamentally conservative argument (with a small 'c'). Adherents of this view - whether they be social democratic conservatives such as Sunder, or true blue conservatives such as Simon Heffer - are effectively saying, democracy can't deliver a better head of state than genetics. But if we have so little faith in democracy as to think that, doesn't that start to undermine the basis for democratic government itself? Why shouldn't we think (using the same argument) that heredity delivers better Prime Ministers than democracy? Where do we stop? And if hereditary monarchy was so good in the first place, how come only a handful of countries in the world are still absolute monarchies?

In short, anyone who isn't a (small c) conservative - and a conservative to the extent that they have grave doubts about the desirability of democracy as a system of governance - should support the abolition of the monarchy. But only about 20% of us do. Which brings me on to Sunder's second point - which seems to be an argument against holding a referendum at the moment (why bother if the public is so heavily opposed) rather than an argument against making the case for republicanism per se. Surely one should make the case for republicanism (or withdrawing from the EU, or reintroducing capital punishment, or whatever) based on what one believes to be the right thing for the UK, rather than based on opinion polls. Otherwise, no-one would ever argue the minority view - which would be a sad state of affairs.

Chris Dillow makes some interesting other points in favour of the monarchy in his piece. One is that it seems to work well despite being a ludicrous system in theory - I'd argue this is entirely a function of luck of the draw and who the present incumbent is. At best it's an argument for keeping the current system until we get a particularly duff incumbent (perhaps only a few years away?) so one could label Chris's position as "republicanism but not right now". Chris's second point is that the inherent unfairness and randomness of the hereditary principle serves to underline the unfairness of our wider society and in doing so, increases support for efforts to make it fairer - redistribution of income, etc. There may be something in this, but surely the most worrying feature of current British society for people on the left is that it has become much more unfair since the late 1970s, with huge increases in the inequalities of income and wealth. If we had just been looking at the hereditary monarchy as a barometer for social unfairness we'd have missed these dangerous trends in the real economy, so the institution of the monarchy can't be the best way to put these concerns in the public eye.

Finally, Chris suggests choosing the head of state by a lottery of all UK adults - this is a very interesting idea as it's egalitarian and anti-conservative but without relying on democracy as an alternative system. A lottery is the solution I'd end up with if I believed that the democratic process in modern capitalist societies was so corrupt and ineffectual that it was not fit for purpose as far as selecting a head of state was concerned. I do have some sympathy with this, but I'm not cynical enough to believe it all the way down the line - and if I did believe it, it's hard to see why the same wouldn't apply to MPs or Prime Ministers as well. Prime Ministers by lottery? It's coming sometime... maybe.

Political conferences in mid-January? Believe.

I went along to the Fabian Society's New Year conference for the first time today. In previous years I've never felt enthusiastic enough about anything to do with the Labour Party to bother to go, but Labour being in opposition makes the whole thing a bit more exciting (at least in theory) and certainly a lot of people seem to feel the same way, as tickets were completely sold out and the Logan Hall at the Institute of Education was packed for Ed Miliband's keynote address.

I thought it was pretty good without being spectacular, which I think is more or less what I said about Ed's speech at the Fabian post-election conference back in May, when he first announced he was running for Labour leader. I still can't quite believe he won, even though on this blog I was actually predicting it as far back as the day of that May 2010 Fabian speech. In fact in one post from just before Ed announced his candidacy I suggested placing a bet on him at 11/1 for the Labour leadership. If only...

The old shirt-sleeves strolling about delivery beloved of DaveCam, which Ed is an old lag at, seems to have disappeared - at least for now - as it was a fairly conventional lectern-and-tie speech, complete with Tony Blair/David Miliband dropped "t"s and Gordon Brown "I wanna be a goalkeeper" hand movements. The delivery was a LOT better than Brown though, and there was also a sense of setting out a vision; several people I spoke to were impressed with that, not all of them natural Ed Miliband fanclub material by any means. So Ed is not a "son of Brown" but is mapping out a distinctive identity, set apart from New Labour. At least a bit (let's not exaggerate too much here...)

The speech was pretty light on specifics - I'd have liked to see some commitment to support the big anti-cuts protests planned for later in the year, for example, and commitments to reverse the worst of the Tory-led govt's cuts (e.g. benefits for disabled people). But it held out promise for the future, and. combined with the massive victory in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election, it looks like Ed's leadership is safe and secure at least until the next general election. Iain Duncan Smith he isn't.

The best breakout session I went to was about how the Left can learn from the Right's campaigning tactics. From the right we had Matthew Elliot of the Taxpayers' Alliance (sorry, I can't bring myself to link to them) and Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome, both of whom were actually quite interesting in terms of explaining where they thought the Right had done a good job of campaigning the last few years and where they were still relatively weak. The left was represented by MPs Jon Cruddas (thoughtful and philosophically deep as always) and Chuka Umanna (articulate and suave as hell - will probably be leader 10 years from now, if not before, and maybe the UK's first non-white prime minister). And also by Laurie Penny of New Statesman whose stuff I often enjoy reading, and made a powerful contribution.

Anyway that's quite enough politics for today... I'll get back to watching BBC4, currently showing Bruce Springsteen Live in Houston, 1978. Ya gotta love The Boss.

Reflections on the Fabian conference: exploring the wrong reasons for losing

Spent an enjoyable (yes, really) day at the Fabian Society post-election conference at SOAS yesterday. It was billed as the Ed Miliband show, and Ed didn't disappoint, announcing his candidacy for Labour leader. It was a pretty good keynote speech - Ed is an old lag at the DaveCam "strolling round the stage without notes" shtick. He didn't blow the audience away, though. What was weird was that two points, in particular, were stressed as to why Labour lost - and this wasn't just in Ed's speech, but all over the place in the panel sessions:

1. "voters on the doorstep" were worried about immigration;

2. "voters on the doorstep" were worried about an "unfair" tax and benefit system and in particular, lack of conditionality in the benefit system (this wasn't how voters expressed it, obviously, but this is what they meant; people who were getting benefits without doing any work).

Fair enough, but both of those were huge issues in 2005 as well - and Labour still won, albeit narrowly. Personally, I don't buy these issues as the main reason why Labour went from 2% in the lead to a 7% deficit against the Tories in a five year period.

So what's my explanation? A different kind of deficit - the fiscal deficit - is part of it. Mainly because the economic crisis badly damaged Labour's reputation for economic competence - and deservedly so, because Brown, in particular, had spent 10 years telling people that he'd abolished boom and bust. If you rely on a story that turns out to be obvious bullshit, don't be surprised if people turn on you very quickly when you get found out. The next Labour leader should deliver a bottle of champagne to George Osborne, because if it hadn't been for the fact that he was seen as a complete twerp even by most of his own supporters, the Tories would have done a lot better IMHO.

The other, easier-to-fix problem (in fact an already fixed problem) which wasn't mentioned at the Fabian conference yesterday (out of respect to Gordon Brown) is that Brown was, quite simply, fucking awful in an election campaign. With a few honourable exceptions his campaigning style was tired, awkward and offputting. Contenders for the leadership and other commentators are cautioning against blaming the whole result on Brown and I quite agree; but on the other hand, it's important to acknowledge that he was a huge problem. Any of the potential Labour leaders - even Ed Balls - would be vastly more comfortable in the election campaign.

So overall, Ed did OK, and despite efforts by his brother MicroBlair to lay down some frontrunner credentials in the Observer today, it seems to me that the Ed bandwagon is running and will be hard to stop. But he's gonna have to be a lot more specific over the next few months about how to win the next election. Some preliminary suggestions:

• admitting that Labour got the economy wrong. The Tories were very good at this in their 1974-9 period of opposition; Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher basically junked their entire "post-war-consensus" approach to the economy (which they had supported in Ted Heath's cabinet) and argued that Labour was still stuck with the old model and only the Tories could run the economy effectively. It was largely bollocks - monetarism was a much bigger failure than anything Wilson or Callaghan attempted - but it played well with the voters. The key for Labour is to pigeonhole Coalition economic policies as stuck in the neoliberal orthodoxy that Blair and Brown signed up to. And then offering a more effective alternative to cuts, retrenchment and austerity, based on long-term investment and active industrial policy. (This skips over a lot of stuff that I'll be developing over the next few months).
• do not degenerate (further than has happened already) into the party that best articulates the concerns of Daily Mail readers. Labour is not going to win the next election by being tougher on benefit "scroungers" or immigration than the Coalition. Partly because the Coalition is going to be extremely tough on both of these (and damage millions of lives in the process). There will not be a lot of space to the right of Iain Duncan Smith on welfare for example, and for Labour to try to live there would be a huge error. Better to promote a benefit system based on a "flexicurity" model; high benefits combined with job search conditions. On immigration, one thing that no-one really acknowledged at the Fabian meeting was that we can't restrict the numbers of workers coming in from central and Eastern Europe (even if we wanted to do so) without, er, leaving the EU? Pushing the coalition towards an ever-more-Eurosceptic stance (and pointing out the absurdity of the Lib Dems for supporting this shit and junking their own, progressive, policies on immigration) is the best way forward. The more Labour can push the Coalition up a UKIP-inspired cul-de-sac the better.
• Take the reform ball and run hard with it. Political reform and civil liberties are two areas where the Coalition is probably going to be doing some very progressive things, and rather than clinging on to the most unpleasant aspects of the New Labour era, Labour post-2010 needs to challenge the coalition from the left rather than the right. The coalition is offering a referendum on AV? Great, we'll offer one on AV Plus if we get in. The coalition is scrapping ID cards? Great, we'll expand FOI measures. And so on. These areas provide an ideal opportunity to emphasis the differences between past and future Labour.

Anyway that's just some ideas for now. I enjoyed the conference; most of the general public wouldn't have.