By Chris Truax
Thursday, December 19, 2019
It’s been said that it’s good to learn from your own
mistakes but it’s better—and much safer—to learn from the mistakes of others.
So, American progressives, it’s time for the Dutch Uncle talk. Last week, the
U.K. held an election and the Labour party ran on the most progressive platform
in living memory. Not coincidentally, Labour also suffered the most crushing
defeat in living memory. To understand how awful this performance was—and what
it means for the Democratic party in the United States—requires a bit of
background in U.K. politics.
For the last four years, Conservatives have been a byword
for incompetence and infighting—and if there’s one thing the British public
dislikes, it’s incompetence. The Conservative party has careened from one
disaster to the next, including blowing what should have been an easy election
victory in 2017 and having their Brexit deal rejected by the biggest margin in modern
parliamentary history.
While the Conservatives’ current leader, Boris Johnson,
is no Donald Trump, he’s bad enough. Johnson is famous for many things,
including barely being on speaking terms with the truth and having a colorful
personal life. Much to the amusement of U.K. voters, he’s notorious for being
either unwilling or unable to say how many children he has. Labour could have
had an easy victory.
But that’s not what happened. Not only did Labour lose
last week’s election, they turned in their worst performance since 1935. Labour
activists on the left were quick to offer excuses for all this—none of them,
oddly enough, having anything to do with the policies they ran on.
The first excuse was that this election was really all
about Brexit. But that doesn’t really add up. Recent polls suggest that a majority
of voters now favor remaining in the European Union. Leaving the EU with no
deal—something Boris Johnson has pushed for—is even less popular. Labour’s
somewhat complicated Brexit position wasn’t very exciting but that was the
point. It was an acceptable fudge for most voters.
Another excuse offered by activists is that Labour lost
because Jeremy Corbyn is “uniquely unpopular.” In terms of his personality,
this is nonsense. Corbyn is about as inoffensive as they come. Nor does he have
the checkered personal past that Boris Johnson has.
But the worst thing about this argument is that it
infantilizes voters. According to this theory, British voters were offered a
choice between a socialist paradise and the grinding horror of Conservative
rule but they voted Conservative because they thought Jeremy Corbyn was a
meanie. This is Obama’s complaint about the working class clinging to guns and
religion on steroids.
Voters in the U.K. knew exactly what they were doing.
Corbyn’s unpopularity didn’t stem from his personality, it stemmed from his
policies and attitudes. Given the disarray in the Conservative party, Labour’s
hard left reasoned that Labour could run on a platform of remaking both the
economy and society, including things like forcing companies to give board
seats (and stock) to workers, free college tuition, taxes designed to soak the
rich, and a Green New Deal. They offered slogans like “It’s time for real
change” and “For the many, not for the few.” Is any of this sounding familiar
yet?
But, as it turned out, U.K. voters didn’t want a
revolution, and the Conservatives, despite their incompetence, were the lesser
of two evils. As one member of parliament put it, “People just didn’t trust the
economics, the confetti of promises that was thrown at the public without any
clear and honest way they were going to be paid for.” Again, is this ringing
any bells?
Had Labour simply offered to restore sanity and
competence to government, they quite likely would have won. They certainly
would have done far better than they did. Now what’s left of the Labour party
can look forward to five years of irrelevance as Boris Johnson leads a
Conservative government with the largest majority since Margaret Thatcher’s two
landslide victories.
Even taking into account the differences between the
people and politics of the United Kingdom and the United States, the lesson for
American progressives is both manifest and chilling. In the face of chaos and
incompetence, voters want a return to sanity and responsible government, not
revolution. If Democrats make the 2020 election about who can return a sense of
stability and decency to American political life, they’ll have an easy victory.
If they make the 2020 election about which party is slightly less frightening,
they may very well lose. One of Elizabeth Warren’s slogans is “Dream big, fight
hard.” But come November 2020, there will be a thin line between progressives’
big dreams and the nightmare of four more years of Donald Trump.
Progressives need to concentrate on one job: beating
Donald Trump. That is hugely consequential, much more so than adopting Medicare
for All or instituting a wealth tax. Progressives’ big projects can wait for a
few years, but four more years of Donald Trump will do untold damage to our democratic
institutions. So forget “Dream big, fight hard.” In the immortal words of Al
Davis, “Just win, baby.”
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