The radical right have stolen the centre left's clothes – but it's not too late to fight back

It is fair to say that it has not been an easy first year for Keir Starmer’s government. Labour inherited a daunting economic outlook and a fraying public realm, put into an office by a distrustful electorate disillusioned from politics and pessimistic for the future. After 14 painful years in opposition, the honeymoon was somewhere between fleeting and non-existent. 

If we cast our minds back almost three decades, to the last time Labour entered power, the mood was very different. Come the mid-1990s, western politicians were celebrating an era of geopolitical stability, prosperity driven by the ‘peace dividend’ at the end of the Cold War, and a de-escalation of the social and industrial conflict that had marked the 1980s. State socialism might have been defeated in eastern Europe, but politicians from the western European left enjoyed a renewed political vitality, and a sense that they ‘owned’ the political future – a future of peace, rising prosperity, celebrations of renewed diversity social equality, the onward march of liberal democracy, and ever-closer global economic integration. Public services might have been suffering from neglect but a strong economy meant that the proceeds of growth could be reinvested heavily in health, education and poverty reduction.

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The global financial crisis in 2008 changed all that. In the UK, the Labour government found itself blamed for the crash and swiftly consigned to opposition. Elsewhere in Europe, centre-left governments in France and Greece struggled for their bearings, and fell to shattering – even existential – defeats after implementing austerity programmes. Ever since, there has been much talk of a profound, potentially terminal crisis for a global centre-left short of ideological self-confidence, lacking a coherent governing philosophy, and deprived of the support of a traditional working-class base. The question, which many have tried but none have entirely succeeded in answering, is what progressive politics stands for when public finances are stretched and thorny questions of culture, national identity and migration loom so large. Since 2016, a series of political and economic shockwaves, and of course Covid, have convulsed politics further.

The Starmer government will, of course, take some heart from the success of centre-left leaders in Australia and Canada to achieve rapid poll turnarounds and seize unlikely victories from the jaws of defeat. Perhaps president Trump’s chaotic brand of right-wing populism is in fact driving publics elsewhere towards the refuge of liberal and centre-left parties. But despite intermittent victories and encouraging signs – heralded, in particular, by the Biden administration’s embrace of bold new industrial policies – the truth is that, globally, the centre-left remains unsure of itself. That is less a question of the failures of individual parties and leaders, than a reflection of something more structural.

A new report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), a progressive think tank where I am an associate fellow, highlights some of the ways in which the world is changing, fast. First, national borders are being reasserted. The onward march of “hyperglobalisation” has stalled, and countries are increasingly looking inwards, embracing protectionist policies to protect domestic industry and pursue geopolitical goals, and taking increasingly strident steps to control the flow of people.

Second, politics and our public sphere have been fragmented and polarised. Our media landscape has radically diversified. Regular newspaper readership has collapsed, social media has changed public discourse into something more reactive and siloed. In very crude terms, we used to think about two-party systems organised around two large class blocs. Elections were won and lost through persuading a small cluster of swing voters, in key constituencies, to shift one way or the other. Today, parties struggle to hold together more disparate coalitions, with weaker identification with any one party, pulling in multiple different directions.

The third is about economics. Thirty years ago, centre-left governments broadly accepted the economic policy legacies of Thatcher and Reagan – restrictive trade union laws, privatisation and government taking a hands-off approach to industry – because they seemed to be delivering the goods. Since 2008, economic growth in rich democracies has largely stalled and, in turn, policymakers and economists alike have questioned the wisdom of markets. Policymakers have reached for new (or old) policy levers – most of all, industrial strategy is back.

There is no inherent reason why a popular appetite for national governments acting more decisively, to provide security from a turbulent world, and increasing demand for a hands-on state, should not serve the centre-left well. However, so far, the big winners have been the radical right. A fragmented public sphere and the politics of “culture wars” have been particularly corrosive to progressive parties which have traditionally relied on a strong working-class base, mobilised around economic interest. The radical right meanwhile has best surfed the waves of new media, economic discontent, and a backlash against progressive identity politics.

The challenge for progressive parties is that, where once they were challengers to the status quo, giving voice to those deprived of it, the radical right have – superficially at least – stolen their clothes. Progressives meanwhile have found themselves cast as defenders of a broken and unfair status quo. The challenge for progressives is to recapture that insurgent spirit, and engage with their populist enemies not as managers of the status quo, but in a fight about fundamental beliefs and ideas, in which political imagination will be the most vital resource of all.

Nick Garland is an associate fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank.

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