What will Gordon do?

Much ink is currently being split on the delicate balancing act that Gordon Brown, the PM-elect, faces when he comes to power, with many wondering where his slow trickle of future policy announcements mean for the strategy of triangulation that Blair utilised. The choice before him is portrayed thus : will he he commit electoral suicide and acquiesce to the Compass agenda? Or will he continue as Blair did and disappoint the true ideological heirs of the Labour party?

Triangulation means the betrayal of the core party supporters on the left. They are vulnerable because they have no choice but to vote for the party, while of course the party has much to gain by way of votes from the middle in moving rightwards. This I understand is a classic Downsian rational choice analysis and is also used to explain why shops cluster together in the same location. I don't know too much about the details of the theory and so will discuss it in its simplest form.

So what is the betrayed firm left voter’s rational response? He/she could choose, as many have, not to vote. How much non-voting exerts pressure on the party depends to some extent on the current distribution of voters within seats and on the electoral system. But it would not be wise to assume that non-voting in aggregate can ignored. Labour doesn't seem to have any good ideas as to how to respond to this threat.

Would non-voting be a rational response? The theory says no. It predicts that the firm left voter is trapped into continuing to vote for the party as it would be irrational to vote for other party and hence usher in an abhorrent government.

But one could finesse this.

It would be rational not to vote for the Labour party only if the difference in utility arising from the two parties' agendas in government is smaller than the loss of utility from said party’s failure to implement promises. If the difference remains greater, it would be still rational to vote. In other words, if both Labour and the Conservatives move too much to the same centre patch and become near indistinguisable, and the distance between where they are and where the firm left voter would like them to be is significant, firm left voters will be inclined not to vote for the party.

On this analysis, it will be advisable for Brown to mix it up by way of his policies, as he seems to be doing. I predict that certain core policies of the kind that the Tories will never be seen to be able to endorse, e.g. poverty alleviation, a nod towards a more equal society. Even if the Tories try and capture this ground, it is unlikely that the firm left will believe that they mean it. The strategy here will depend upon how the firm left views the general balance and direction of policies, and whether there is a particular totemic policy that is being violated. (in the way that Iraq did for Tony Blair) Conversely he will need to try and find other key policy areas (economy aside) that can attract voters from the middle who are otherwise inclined to vote Tory/Lib Dem. The firm left will not find in Gordon the ideal antidote to Blairism, but I would predict that he is likely to alienate them less. Moreover they will be seeking to maximise their bargaining power at a time when they actually have some. Hence the Clare Short tactics.

Some might say that where voting is viewed as an expressive rather than instrumental act core left supporters will be less anguished by the decision as to whether or not to support the party. But there may be instrumental longer-term calculations as well. The alternative to non-voting, that is, the emergence of a competitor party on the left might provide a more useful vehicle for leveraging the power of the disaffected, especially if independent and minority MPs are perceived to affect public debate about government decisions to some extent. It could also be instrumental in pulling the party back towards the left. The growing trend of post-materialism is likely to increase the incidence of expressive voting.

The predictive value of these strategic theories however, will not tell us enough about the future orientation of left politics without an important element, and that is what exactly the centre ground is, and what the values of the so-called median voter in the UK are. The success of any Labour administration needs to be measured by how much it has shifted the centre towards the left in its three terms of power, as much as as how successfully it has remained true to the values of the left in its policies. Some have argued that it is triangulation and obseession with winning the votes of the middle class that has corrupted the party, but it need not be an either/or situation. The challenge for Brown, and for the party, is to think beyond this dilemma, and in a more creative way about the legacy they want to create.

This will require a radically different way of governing. It will need to be an approach that abjures policy wonkery and the technocratic ethos of the civil service, which has been responsible for many recent policy crises and supported the general perception that the government has laboured much but achieved little of any lasting significance over the last 9 years. Too little of what we have seen of how Labour has been while in government shows any attention to the periodic call to create a "progressive consensus".

The worst possible outcome is not necessarily that of a Labour party shut out of power for the foreseeable future, but that of a Labour government enjoying sustained electoral success in a society that has become more rightwing under its watch. Gordon Brown may harbour a progressive vision of the ideal society, but without a different approach, and with time, and the patience of the left running out, the challenge of rectifying the rightward drift of British society will be insurmountable.