Cyan Labour: Ideas for Reshaping Our Political Economy Post-Brexit

By Oli Wheeler -

Blue Labour has always had two strands. The first is primarily an economic strand

that focuses on earning and belonging, and on the need to decentralise power to

workers, typified by thinkers such as Maurice Glasman and Jon Cruddas, standing in

opposition not only to the transactional nature of distribution under New Labour, but

also to the Labour Party’s total reliance on statism since 1945.

And then there is the second, socially illiberal strand, standing in opposition to the

liberal reforms of the New Left in the 1960s, typified by writers such as Michael

Merrick. Though various thinkers write at different times on both strands, with

indeed Glasman calling for a freeze on immigration in 2011, my purpose in dividing

Blue Labour thought is to hopefully demonstrate one can subscribe to the first

strand without signing up to the other and still be left with a coherent ideology.

This is important, I believe, because what I set out as the first strand of Blue Labour

has becoming increasingly important for critiquing modern capitalism and its effect

on rising inequality. But at the same time Blue Labour has done itself a disservice by

allowing second-strand thought to take over its identity, to the point where credible

economic ideas have become over run by nativist, anti-feminist, borderline racist

clap-trap from the Merrick wing.

As a case in point, a recent Blue Labour tweet that stated the rise in the number of

divorces negatively and disproportionately affects working class families led to

significant backlash. The tweet has since been deleted. Opposition to the right of

women to seek a divorce in the interests of the nuclear family is the kind of thing one

would think would be more likely to be spouted by ultra-conservatives such as Peter

Hitchens, than an organisation of the Left.

It is now obvious, I believe, that if the Labour party adopted Blue Labour wholesale,

such a move would dent our electoral coalition significantly, by signalling to left leaning

liberal urban voters and minorities that we no longer sought to represent

them.

At the same time, while we increased our share of the vote among these groups in 2017,

we fell back among the socially conservative, predominately white working-class voters

in areas such as the North, which Blue Labour seeks to win back to the party. It will be

difficult for Labour to form a government without a coalition of urban liberals, minorities

and the “white working class,” let alone win a majority, especially because the first-past the-post

electoral system disadvantages urban areas with highly-concentrated Labour

votes.

When we have united these groups in the past, it has been with a bold vision of the

future. In 1945, we won the peace, in the 1960s, we championed the white heat of

technology, and in 1997, we reflected the Britpop era of a Britain proud of itself and

enthusiastic about the future. Today, it’s hard to find or believe in a bright vision of the

future, when the calamity that is a Tory Brexit looks set to make British workers poorer

and weaken our position in the world. At the same time, to go back on the Brexit vote

would be to many a betrayal not just of promises made during the referendum

campaign, but of the principle of democracy. If we reversed Brexit for many that would

be the final proof that by becoming members of the European Economic Community in

1975, the British people gave up their sovereign right to democratic self-rule.

Therefore, our vision of the future must rest on three principles. Firstly, we must accept

that the Brexit vote is irreversible, and that the vote expressed the general will of the

British people. Secondly, we must explain why, and understand how our current variant

of capitalism has been rejected by the British people in the Brexit vote. And finally, we

must offer a new economic settlement for the British people and a new place in the world

for this country when we leave the European Union.

My answer to the question of what course Britain should now take, I call Cyan Labour. A

mix of the first (economic) strand of Blue Labour, and of the postmodern values of the

green rights movement. One may question whether Blue and green can be mixed like

this, or whether I am simply indecisive. But, I believe such a mix is crucial to both winning

back communities who feel neoliberal globalisation has left them behind, and

metropolitan liberals and minorities, who back Labour as much for its social values as for

the party’s economic policies. The question of whether such a mix is possible or not is

moot, as such a mix is vital to Labour’s continuing relevance to the whole of the working

class. Otherwise, if we sought to represent only metropolitan liberals Britain would risk

becoming a country like America, where income has negligible significance on the party

a person votes for, or on the other extreme, if we followed the second Blue Labour

strand, we’d risk cutting people of colour out of our discourse on class. Either way if we

fail to find the right compromise within the working class, we won’t be able to win a class

compromise on behalf of the whole of the working class.

But how would Cyan Labour work in practice? First, I start with the assumption that our

current variant of capitalism has been a political choice rather than economic necessity

and that by putting the right institutions in place we can affect the level of inequality of

market incomes (pre-tax incomes) rather than simply relying on redistributing market

incomes through tax and spend. This not only reduces the reliance of the working class

on the state (and thus leaves them less vulnerable to Tory cuts) but also champions the

ideals of “earning and belonging” that stems from the first strand of Blue Labour

thought.

To make pre-market incomes more equal (sometimes called pre-distribution) we must,

according to the typology of Peter Hall and David Soskice, change our variant of

capitalism away from liberal market capitalism, and towards cooperative market

capitalism. This requires that we focus less on finance and more on manufacturing.

Manufacturing requires long-term investment, a skilled workforce and open

cooperation across firms. According to Hall and Soskice this requires strong trade

unions, able to bargain for industry-wide wages with business federations. Trade

unions also work in tandem with business to create apprenticeship programmes that

train workers with skills useful in multiple firms. In short, manufacturing requires a

broad nationwide, skilled workforce and thus class compromise, whereas finance does

not.

The move toward a cooperative market economy could be facilitated by the move of

the state towards corporatism. Class compromise would be bargained for not only in

the workplace but in the policy arena, with the department of Business, Energy and

Industrial Strategy representing industry and a new Ministry of Labour representing the

working class. Corporatism could be copied on a region scale by devolving power to

the regions and nations, with regional authorities taking charge of the strategic

planning of jobs, housing and infrastructure. Manufacturing would enable jobs to

return to the regions, taking the pressure off the housing crisis in London, where all the

decent jobs currently are.

Manufacturing would be support by a weaker Pound following Brexit. While we could

continue to support financial services in London, a move to manufacturing would make

the state less dependent of finance and therefore able to regulate dodgy practices and

limit executive remuneration without risking capital flight.

Our relationship with Europe would be of one like Norway: inside the single market but

outside of the customs union. This would mean we could continue to sell into our

largest market, and the Irish border could resemble the Norwegian-Swedish border.

But, by leaving the customs union we could also take advantage of the opportunities of

Brexit to make trade deals with the rest of the world.

A criticism could be made of me here, that the change of our political economy to one that focused on manufacturing would require significant government investment as part of an industrial strategy, but that such investment is not allowed according to single market rules on

State Aid. However, this is where the green economy comes into play, because State Aid rules make an exception on investment in sustainable technology. Therefore, to ensure we can continue to trade with Europe while answering the call of the electorate to change our current economic settlement, would require an industrial policy based on the production of green technology.

Luckily green technology just happens to also be the technology of the future. This is how we put forward a modernising approach that will build a broad coalition of support. Britain should and must base its new economic and moral role in the world on finding solutions to the biggest crisis facing humanity: climate change. In one fell swoop, an industrial policy based on green technology creates a political economy that provides decent jobs to more people across the whole of the country rather than just London, in an industry set to grow, while allowing us to trade freely with Europe and take up a new position on the world stage, as a country that leads the progressive cause, rather than joining the race to the bottom.

This would be a Brexit I could be proud of. One that defines “taking back control” as giving back control to workers, while avoiding nativism and understanding our responsibility to work in solidarity with each other and with the rest of the world.