Labour’s soft-left pressure group Compass has come up with what it believes is the answer to the growing popularity of Reform UK.
A “Council of Progressives.”
The idea is that Labour, the Liberal Democrats, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru should somehow come together to provide a united front against Nigel Farage and the populist right.
It is an idea that has reportedly found some favour with Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, currently the bookmakers’ favourite to become Labour leader should he win the forthcoming Makerfield by-election and continue his march towards Westminster.
I sincerely hope those reports are wide of the mark.
Because this is politics from fairy dairy land.
The argument put forward by supporters of a progressive alliance is deceptively simple. Add together the votes won by Labour, the Lib Dems, Greens, SNP and Plaid in previous elections and, they claim, the Conservatives would have failed to win power in ten of the last eleven general elections.
On paper, it sounds persuasive.
In reality, it is naive almost to the point of infantile.
The first flaw is the assumption that voters are transferable assets. They are not.
Millions of people vote Labour because they are Labour supporters, not because they are generic “progressives”. The same is true of Liberal Democrats, Greens, Nationalists and others. If those parties suddenly merged into some anti-Tory, anti-Reform electoral cartel, many of their supporters would simply walk away.
Some would abstain. Others would vote elsewhere. Quite a few might even end up voting for the very parties the alliance was created to stop.
Politics is not a mathematical equation. It is about identity, loyalty, culture and emotion. Voters are human beings, not pieces on a spreadsheet.
The second problem is that these parties agree on very little beyond a broad dislike of the Conservatives and Reform.
How would a Council of Progressives reconcile Labour’s position on defence and the nuclear deterrent with that of the Greens? How would it bridge the constitutional divide between Labour and the SNP? How would it satisfy voters who support economic growth and infrastructure development when significant sections of the Green movement oppose many of the projects required to deliver that growth?
And what happens when difficult decisions have to be made on immigration, taxation, welfare or public spending? Labour has a job maintaining control of its existing ‘broad church’ as it is. Can you imagine adding to an already complex cocktail the politics of four other parties.
The coalition would spend more time arguing amongst itself than it would governing.
Just look across Europe where supposedly broad progressive alliances have frequently collapsed under the weight of their own contradictions.
More fundamentally though, the entire premise misunderstands why Reform UK is succeeding.
People are not turning to Reform because there is an insufficient supply of progressive politicians.
People are turning to Reform because they believe the political establishment is not listening to them.
Whether that perception is fair or not is almost beside the point. It exists. And it is powerful.
The answer to Reform is not to construct an even bigger political establishment by stitching together five different parties and presenting them as a single movement. That would potentially reinforce the impression that politics is becoming an exclusive club determined to keep outsiders out.
Farage would not fear a Council of Progressives. He would celebrate it.
Every day it existed would provide him with fresh evidence for his argument that the political class is engaged in a grand anti-Reform stitch-up.
Indeed, the greatest beneficiary of such an alliance might be Reform itself.
If Labour is serious about defeating Reform, it does not need constitutional gimmicks or electoral contraptions. It needs to do politics again.
It needs to reconnect with communities that once formed its backbone.
It needs to stop sounding like a management consultancy and start sounding like a political movement.
It needs confidence, conviction and a willingness to engage in robust political argument.
Most importantly, it needs leaders who understand that elections are won by persuading voters, not by rearranging political furniture.
A Council of Progressives may sound clever in a seminar room. It may generate applause at think-tank conferences. It may excite activists who spend more time talking to each other than they do talking to voters.
But out in the real world, where elections are won and lost, it is little more than a fantasy. The politics of fairy dairy land.
And if Labour’s future leaders are seriously entertaining such ideas, they should be far more worried about Reform UK than Reform UK is worried about them.
