What is ‘centrism’ anyway?
By Glen O’Hara
‘Centrist’ has become a term of abuse in British politics. On Right as well as Left, the word is taken to mean that you are somehow less committed to the cause than your more radical colleagues, at a time when more unusual or unprecedented positions are indications of heroic clarity or virtue.
That is not necessarily the case. For one thing, the attacks on more moderately-minded socialists and social democrats and liberal, pro-European Tories confuses means and ends. One does not necessarily need revolutionary policies to achieve very consequential ends. And for another, this whole idea muddles politics and policy. Yes, you might change tone and language by shouting (though you may not): but on the other hand, you might be able to go further and further the more softly spoken you appear and the greater a consensus you attempt to build.
The most important of our recent breakthroughs towards either economic or social equality have either happened by consensus, or because one government could not find a way to unpick the work of another. Here are three cases in point: the minimum wage; Working Family and Working Tax Credits; and gay marriage.
It is easy to forget, now, just how bitterly the Conservatives fought against the National Minimum Wage, which they argued would significantly raise unemployment. Now, with more than two decades of evidence behind us, we can see that this case was massively overblown. But the Tories mounted that attack continuously at the time. Why were they unsuccessful? Because under both John Smith and Tony Blair — Old Right and New Labour alike — the Left counterattacked with an argument from both morality and efficacy, forging a national consensus that became embedded not just in economic discourse, but in the national political culture itself.
Working Family Tax Credits and Working Tax Credits were designed by Gordon Brown as Chancellor to deliver a huge boost to the incomes of the working poor, and have largely succeeded in doing just that — framed as ‘reward for work’, rather than the rejuvenation of the welfare state that it to some extent represented. Part of the reason for that was that these Credits were so complex, defying George Osborne’s ‘reforms’, and indeed repelling attacks in some senses because it was impossible to touch any of the mechanics without unintended consequences throughout the world of work and benefits.
Gay marriage is another case in point. Prime Minister David Cameron faced down more than half his Parliamentary Party when he insisted on honouring this pledge on this front, relying on Labour, the Scottish National Party and the Liberal Democrats to bring in what may be seen as one of his most lasting reforms. Really radical reform didn’t rely on one wing of a party taking it over and driving it hard: it depended on cross-party consensus. Still less did raising the wages of low-income Britain rest on the ‘outriders’ of Right and Left — rather, a cross-cutting and sometimes complicated series of appeals and mechanics carried the day.
Consider the second point — about the most likely messengers of reform. Aneurin Bevan’s hard work and energy played a key role in the creation of Britain’s treasured National Health Service — right now in the front line of the national fight against the coronavirus. But Labour didn’t win in 1945 because of him. In large part, it triumphed because of the solid, stolid, perhaps even rather dull figure of Clement Attlee — a cricket-loving product of public school and radical English philanthropy who could not have been more welcome in most lounges and kitchens alike.
Bevan, along with that Popular Front firebrand Stafford Cripps (who later became one of our most austere Chancellors), might have provided Labour with its cutting edge: but its public face was a snail who won his races after all, a war hero from Gallipoli who was happy to serve under a Conservative Prime Minister as the nation faced its greatest trial between 1940 and 1945.
Harold Wilson’s political success is another case in point. Although he nominally came from the Left, the rather warm cunning that the public divined in him endeared Labour’s prime technocrat to the electorate. He eclipsed his Deputy George Brown — brilliant, but mercurial and unreliable — rather easily, and proceeded to dominate the Labour Party to the extent that his retirement in 1976 was met with astonishment.
Again, the hallmarks of Wilsonian politics were often emotional, personal and cultural rather than rooted in actual policies. Wilson wore many faces: in 1964, the ‘black-coated worker’, the young scientist thrusting to get on; in 1966 and 1970, the comforting ‘Dr Wilson’, seeking a mandate to heal the sick British economy; in 1974 and through 1975–76, a tough, experienced and savvy operator repelling the self-interested and the self-important.
Wilson won four elections out of the five he fought: legislated for equal pay between men and women; bought in the Race Relations Acts; and established the Open University. Only Tony Blair has managed to win an election for Labour since. The gap between now and Wilson’s last victory stretches to forty-six years and counting.
So here are just two reasons why the jibe of ‘centrist’ is absurd: because it jumbles up policies and outcomes; and because it pays no heed to style and sympathy. In the first instance, what was it that Franklin Roosevelt said, on his way to the White House? ‘The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something’.
And in terms of leadership the voters actually want? Attlee said it best and most practically, condemning in his 1920 book The Social Worker that type of ‘revolutionary idealist’ who would ‘criticise and condemn all methods of social advance that do not directly square with his formulae and will repeat his shibboleths without any attempt to work out their practical application’. Searching for solutions, and defying empty rhetoric, may be ‘centrist’: but they also achieved some of the most radical changes of all.
Glen O’Hara is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Oxford Brookes University. He is the author of a series of books and articles about modern Britain, including The Paradoxes of Progress: Governing Post-War Britain, 1951–1973 (2012) and The Politics of Water in Post-War Britain (2017). He is currently working on a history of the Blair government of 1997–2007. He blogs at ‘Public Policy and the Past’, and tweets as @gsoh31.
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