The new dawn that Change UK promised did not last long. A party forged from political splinters suffered a splinter of its own, MPs breaking away, leaving behind a group ridiculed for their institutional failings, dismal EU election results and complete failure to catch fire.
The departure of six out of their eleven MPs, including Chuka Umunna and Luciana Berger, coupled with weeks of speculation that they could form an alliance with the Liberal Democrats, leaves their own future in doubt. Whether they will submerge themselves within the Lib Dems is unclear, and possibly unlikely, but what also is apparent is they are not the breath of fresh air they promised to be. Politics hasn’t been done differently.
In fact, politics hasn’t been done at all. CUK have been uninspiring, drab and almost entirely devoid of actual policies that could provide a glimpse into their ideological directions. Pragmatism only works to an extent. Insisting to have no ideology is in fact an ideology in itself. These were politicians formed from the opposite sides of the austerity debate. What legitimacy would they have to adopt either side on the issue? Would the electorate really accept Anna Soubry suddenly denouncing spending cuts as a moral failure that has not expanded the economy but squeezed ordinary families? As it happens, Soubry actually defended it. How does that square with the former Labour MPs?
In fact, barring their highly charged media conference when the former Labour core first announced their departures from Labour, they have not really outlined any clear principles beyond backing another referendum on the EU. In that respect, they share underlying traits with the Brexit Party. But the latter inflamed people’s imagination and feelings on a nationwide scale, whereas CUK barely stirred ripples.
It is unfortunate as the problems they diagnosed in Labour were largely correct: an institutional rot contributing to the anti-Semitism crisis coupled with terrible foreign policy ethics around Venezuela and Syria. But that is where CUK stopped impressing, because their diagnosis for the country exposed not just their political shortcomings, but highlighted a clear truth: liberal centrism is not the answer to Brexit.
The answer to Brexit was not to advocate more policies of economic liberalism, or to define a Remain vote in terms of how it affected the interests of businesses. Brexit is not solved by watering down regulations for multinational corporations or celebrating the gig economy as a morally good thing just because it’s ethnically diverse in who it exploits. This is not liberalism that emancipates the poor but a liberalism that protects the wealthy. And in a country of rising in-work poverty, this is not a form of politics that many want or need. That CUK could not understand this shows their failure to assess the mood correctly.
What does seem to be courted more is the politics of security, both economically and culturally. Years of polls have found people to be demanding radical solutions on housing, railways, utilities, NHS and housing, combined with tougher stances on crime, welfare, drugs, immigration and security. A YouGov poll found that out of thirteen different industries, nationalisation was favoured in around ten of them. Particularly, there were four services that people were particularly keen to have in public ownership: the police (87%), the NHS (84%), the armed forces (83%) and schools (81%). Alongside this, support for publicly owning the Royal Mail was 65%, 60% for railways, and 59% and 53% for the water and energy industries. This highlights a popularity for economic protectionism that makes Jeremy Corbyn appealing to many voters. But at the same time, YouGov also found 38% of Britons in a poll believed immigration was too high, compared to just 4% who thought it was either too or a little bit low. Interestingly, this was an improvement on the 44% who thought it was too high in August 2016, a month after the EU referendum. The polls also showed people were more favourable towards skilled migration than unskilled foreign labour, particularly around the NHS.
This brand of socially conservative leftism is not regarded as centrism, but is no less centrist that socially liberal, free-marketers, and it is where much of the country socially is too.
This form of politics has been missing on the left, who for years have understood identity in its racial and gender terms, but never through a communal sense. Through this, cultural insecurity has been ignored by focusing extensively on economic concerns. To a significant degree this is actually not wrong, but factually and ethically, correct. Immigrants did not destroy the social fabrics of local towns, nor atomise them. Globalisation built in the image of the free-marketer did that. Social decay is bound up in the economic destruction of communities through the closing of the mines and weakening of the unions through to the modern-day welfare cuts.
Yet to focus just on this would be to cast humans as simply materialistic and not also appreciative of culture. People are social animals, averse to living separate lives, and instead seek to share a common destiny, to belong to communities. This requires not just a foundation of social rights but also responsibilities, built upon ideas of reciprocity and mutualism. It means understanding that immigration can and does contribute immensely to communities, but local planning must also be maintained to ensure a strong local social cohesion is not lost. This can mean supporting migrants to learn the language and building communal hubs to replenish that lost sense of community. It also means understanding that national identity matters to people, and it’s important it is defined by cultural values rather than ethnicity.
These policies are significantly different to that of liberal centrism because they do not leave things just to the market or champion the individual completely over the community. A centrism that is communitarian and pluralistic is a centrism that will appeal.