WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.200 Well, good afternoon, everybody. 2 00:00:02.100 --> 00:00:03.360 My name is Brenton Caffin. 3 00:00:03.420 --> 00:00:04.560 I'll be chairing this session. 4 00:00:04.780 --> 00:00:08.660 So to today's session, does the centre-left have a future? 5 00:00:09.720 --> 00:00:12.040 Across the globe, the centre-left is on the back foot, 6 00:00:12.200 --> 00:00:14.020 losing elections by record margins. 7 00:00:14.620 --> 00:00:17.240 Recent elections in the US, Italy, Spain, France, 8 00:00:17.280 --> 00:00:20.240 and Germany and the UK all saw the main social democratic 9 00:00:20.240 --> 00:00:22.480 or labour parties out of office. 10 00:00:22.820 --> 00:00:25.620 Why is the left losing and can it win again? 11 00:00:25.760 --> 00:00:29.060 So to answer this question, we have Dr Rob Manwaring, 12 00:00:29.060 --> 00:00:31.240 senior lecturer at Flinders University. 13 00:00:32.220 --> 00:00:35.000 Rob teaches and researches into politics and public policy. 14 00:00:35.740 --> 00:00:38.320 His research is into the area of social democratic politics 15 00:00:38.320 --> 00:00:40.860 and his 2018 co-edited collection, 16 00:00:41.120 --> 00:00:43.180 which is on for sale at the back of the room, 17 00:00:43.340 --> 00:00:45.360 is titled Why the Left Loses. 18 00:00:45.420 --> 00:00:46.660 Please welcome Rob Manwaring. 19 00:00:50.700 --> 00:00:53.860 Hello, good afternoon, and thank you. 20 00:00:53.880 --> 00:00:58.380 Welcome, friends, family, colleagues and comrades. 21 00:00:59.460 --> 00:01:00.460 My name is Rob. 22 00:01:00.660 --> 00:01:04.840 I teach at Flinders University, soon to be the oldest university in the state, 23 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:07.380 apparently, but we won't make those jokes yet. 24 00:01:08.940 --> 00:01:13.440 Let's talk about the centre-left and we'll talk about what the kind of session's about. 25 00:01:14.620 --> 00:01:18.180 And as Jonty says, I teach politics and policy up at Flinders, 26 00:01:18.260 --> 00:01:20.760 and I kind of look at and try and examine these questions, 27 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:23.960 particularly of the centre-left and political parties more generally. 28 00:01:24.320 --> 00:01:27.800 So today, I just want to do three things, really. 29 00:01:27.800 --> 00:01:31.820 I want to first of all set the scene and talk about the decline. 30 00:01:32.020 --> 00:01:34.200 Is there a decline? What does it look like? 31 00:01:35.600 --> 00:01:37.500 And what does that kind of look like? 32 00:01:37.560 --> 00:01:39.820 And we'll look at some kind of recent cases and examples. 33 00:01:40.560 --> 00:01:43.200 And then perhaps the bulk of my talk will be the second thing, 34 00:01:43.240 --> 00:01:45.480 will be explanation, saying, well, what's going on? 35 00:01:45.520 --> 00:01:47.380 Why do we think there is a decline? 36 00:01:47.500 --> 00:01:49.100 What seems to be driving this? 37 00:01:49.460 --> 00:01:52.680 And what seems to be the kind of the issues? 38 00:01:52.980 --> 00:01:56.840 And then the third thing I want to do is just offer some three models, 39 00:01:57.980 --> 00:02:01.420 or scenarios, I suppose, about what the future trajectories 40 00:02:01.420 --> 00:02:04.740 of the centre-left might involve or might not involve. 41 00:02:05.020 --> 00:02:06.200 So these are the three things I want to do. 42 00:02:06.360 --> 00:02:10.880 A bit of decline, explain everything, and three scenarios, 43 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:11.940 and then we can all go home. 44 00:02:12.380 --> 00:02:14.060 So that's broadly what my plan is. 45 00:02:14.180 --> 00:02:19.340 And I should also say, as Jonty said, a lot of the material and the things I want to kind of draw on 46 00:02:19.340 --> 00:02:22.580 from this book that I did with my colleague Paul, it's an edited collection. 47 00:02:22.980 --> 00:02:26.700 It's a series of case studies of centre-left Labour parties 48 00:02:26.700 --> 00:02:27.780 and social movements. 49 00:02:27.780 --> 00:02:30.820 It's a series of democratic parties in Western Europe and around the world, 50 00:02:31.840 --> 00:02:34.640 cataloguing how they're doing and tracking very well. 51 00:02:34.780 --> 00:02:37.920 And the book is on for sale for a princely $30. 52 00:02:39.100 --> 00:02:40.900 And I was very proud of the book. 53 00:02:40.980 --> 00:02:43.760 I'll just make a joke that Paul said to me, we really like the cover, 54 00:02:43.860 --> 00:02:46.280 and then he said, but it does look a bit like an advert for Viagra, 55 00:02:46.360 --> 00:02:48.980 which I can only apologise for. 56 00:02:49.220 --> 00:02:51.760 Anyway, let's move on and let's talk about the decline. 57 00:02:51.940 --> 00:02:52.740 How bad is it? 58 00:02:52.900 --> 00:02:53.260 Okay. 59 00:02:54.640 --> 00:02:56.720 For those of you who know a little bit about Morrissey, 60 00:02:56.720 --> 00:02:58.760 let's just look at this kind of stay-at-play. 61 00:02:58.900 --> 00:03:03.900 Here are a set of centre-left-looking leaders looking all particularly miserable around the world. 62 00:03:03.960 --> 00:03:07.520 Some of them you will recognise, some of them you may not be familiar with. 63 00:03:07.800 --> 00:03:11.340 Most of them have coming off the backs there of kind of record defeats. 64 00:03:11.480 --> 00:03:15.920 So let's have a little look at some of the examples. 65 00:03:16.560 --> 00:03:18.320 So we'll start in the Netherlands, for example. 66 00:03:18.560 --> 00:03:21.720 So in 2017, we were looking at the elections. 67 00:03:21.840 --> 00:03:25.960 And when we were writing the book in 2017, it was a bumper year for elections. 68 00:03:25.960 --> 00:03:29.400 And generally speaking, I kind of cheer on the centre-left, 69 00:03:29.480 --> 00:03:33.040 but of course for the purposes of the book, I was desperately hoping they were going to lose. 70 00:03:33.240 --> 00:03:34.800 And happily enough, they did. 71 00:03:35.820 --> 00:03:42.960 So in the Netherlands, a kind of a landslide kind of result here for the PVDA, the Dutch Labour Party. 72 00:03:43.160 --> 00:03:48.000 So you can see from the graph, they picked up just 5.7% of the votes. 73 00:03:48.180 --> 00:03:51.420 This is a devastating result for the PVDA. 74 00:03:51.600 --> 00:03:55.760 We had a book launch in Amsterdam, and everyone was thoroughly miserable. 75 00:03:55.760 --> 00:04:00.140 This is the worst ever result for the Dutch Labour Party. 76 00:04:00.360 --> 00:04:01.180 This was catastrophic. 77 00:04:01.640 --> 00:04:06.760 And as you'll see, particularly the party of Geert Wilders, if you know something of Dutch politics, 78 00:04:07.000 --> 00:04:11.840 one of the common themes is the rise of the populist right kind of sneaking in there. 79 00:04:12.140 --> 00:04:14.900 So Mark Rutte's centrist party won that election. 80 00:04:14.980 --> 00:04:17.320 But the centre-left doing particularly badly in the Netherlands. 81 00:04:17.880 --> 00:04:19.080 Let's look at France. 82 00:04:19.280 --> 00:04:22.660 This is the presidential election results of 2017. 83 00:04:23.620 --> 00:04:25.560 The interesting thing there, 84 00:04:25.760 --> 00:04:30.640 if you follow this, of course, is that Emmanuel Macron, the new French president, 85 00:04:30.940 --> 00:04:31.980 well, not so new now, 86 00:04:32.760 --> 00:04:35.000 in the second round of the presidential elections, 87 00:04:35.140 --> 00:04:38.820 this is the first time that neither of the major parties, 88 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:40.720 the centre-right or the centre-left parties, 89 00:04:40.780 --> 00:04:43.560 have made the second round of the French presidential elections. 90 00:04:43.860 --> 00:04:46.680 In the first round, because it's a two-round runoff, 91 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:50.500 Benoit Hamon, who headed up the PS, the Parti Socialiste, 92 00:04:50.700 --> 00:04:52.100 has a record defeat. 93 00:04:52.260 --> 00:04:55.740 So you can see there, something like just about five, six points. 94 00:04:55.760 --> 00:04:55.960 So, in the first round, 95 00:04:55.960 --> 00:04:56.440 the party was leading by about 10% of the vote. 96 00:04:56.580 --> 00:04:59.820 This was a catastrophic result for the Parti Socialiste. 97 00:05:00.120 --> 00:05:02.180 Perhaps not for the centre-left more generally, 98 00:05:02.260 --> 00:05:04.520 depending on how you categorise or think about Macron. 99 00:05:04.880 --> 00:05:07.880 So when I'm talking about the decline of the centre-left, I should say, 100 00:05:07.980 --> 00:05:10.700 what I'm particularly looking at are the performance, 101 00:05:11.060 --> 00:05:16.120 the electoral performance of the main centre-left political parties in these countries. 102 00:05:16.500 --> 00:05:17.400 Let's move on. 103 00:05:17.480 --> 00:05:18.360 So Germany again. 104 00:05:18.900 --> 00:05:20.940 There was a great hope in Germany 105 00:05:20.940 --> 00:05:25.360 that Martin Schulz would finally puncture the dominance of Angela Merkel. 106 00:05:25.580 --> 00:05:27.780 Angela Merkel's centre-right coalition 107 00:05:27.780 --> 00:05:31.660 have dominated German politics for over a decade, 108 00:05:31.740 --> 00:05:33.600 and she is a serial election winner 109 00:05:33.600 --> 00:05:35.860 and has been a model for a number of centre-right parties. 110 00:05:36.280 --> 00:05:40.500 The SPD have been unable to lay an electoral glove on her for many years. 111 00:05:40.740 --> 00:05:43.940 Yes, they've joined in coalition with them as junior partner at times, 112 00:05:44.060 --> 00:05:46.380 but generally speaking, the hope there. 113 00:05:46.620 --> 00:05:48.960 So again, when we had the German elections, 114 00:05:49.240 --> 00:05:50.280 would Angela Merkel, 115 00:05:50.280 --> 00:05:54.240 particularly on the backlash against her migration policy, cause a problem? 116 00:05:54.440 --> 00:05:55.400 Well, the answer was no. 117 00:05:55.560 --> 00:05:57.900 There was a Martin Schulz failed miserably 118 00:05:57.900 --> 00:06:01.060 to really make much of an impact there in terms of the centre-left. 119 00:06:01.700 --> 00:06:04.280 What I've highlighted there is the vote for the AFD, 120 00:06:04.920 --> 00:06:07.180 the far-right party that's come from nowhere, 121 00:06:07.440 --> 00:06:10.960 that's come up, that secured, what, 13% of the vote from nowhere. 122 00:06:11.100 --> 00:06:14.100 Sorry, the typing, the font's quite small on some of these cards. 123 00:06:14.300 --> 00:06:15.420 So Germany, not great. 124 00:06:16.000 --> 00:06:18.280 Italy, I don't know huge amounts about Italian politics, 125 00:06:19.060 --> 00:06:20.180 but it looks like a lot of fun. 126 00:06:20.180 --> 00:06:25.940 And what we would say here about the Italian election result is, 127 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:30.460 again, neither of the major parties have formed coalition for the first time. 128 00:06:30.560 --> 00:06:33.900 Something is happening in the party systems in these countries. 129 00:06:34.100 --> 00:06:37.340 And the incumbent, they were in power, centre-left, 130 00:06:37.500 --> 00:06:41.100 the Democratic Party, failed to kind of puncture through. 131 00:06:41.220 --> 00:06:46.540 So of course, as you all know, Italy is now governed by a populist kind of coalition 132 00:06:46.540 --> 00:06:49.380 between the League and the Five Star Movement. 133 00:06:49.380 --> 00:06:51.480 This is an extraordinary state of affairs, 134 00:06:51.760 --> 00:06:56.920 and the backlash against the centre-left there has been quite palpable. 135 00:06:57.360 --> 00:06:58.320 Let's move on. 136 00:06:58.400 --> 00:07:04.060 So UK general election, I'm a little bit more familiar with this scenario coming from the UK. 137 00:07:04.360 --> 00:07:05.740 What do we say about this? 138 00:07:06.060 --> 00:07:09.100 Well, actually, of all the miserable-looking leaders, 139 00:07:09.260 --> 00:07:12.240 Jeremy Corbyn at the last election is probably the most cheerful 140 00:07:12.240 --> 00:07:16.980 because Labour loses in kind of relative style there. 141 00:07:16.980 --> 00:07:20.360 But the point to make about British Labour is they've now lost 142 00:07:20.360 --> 00:07:23.900 three consecutive general elections in power. 143 00:07:24.220 --> 00:07:30.440 So they last won an election in 2005, if my arithmetic or my adding up counts for something. 144 00:07:30.600 --> 00:07:33.220 So they haven't won an election since 2005. 145 00:07:33.680 --> 00:07:38.960 And they calculated that something like 3 million votes have been lost 146 00:07:38.960 --> 00:07:42.800 since the period of Tony Blair and New Labour in office. 147 00:07:43.140 --> 00:07:46.960 So Corbyn presents a really interesting example. 148 00:07:46.960 --> 00:07:48.360 They've got a really interesting dilemma for the centre-left 149 00:07:48.360 --> 00:07:50.920 about where they're going on and where we take it all. 150 00:07:51.060 --> 00:07:54.800 But again, they're losing elections, and we'll see where they are. 151 00:07:55.000 --> 00:07:57.940 I'll end, lastly, with Greece, and we'll talk about PASOK. 152 00:07:58.100 --> 00:08:02.180 PASOK were one of the dominant centre-left political parties. 153 00:08:02.240 --> 00:08:07.760 They dominated Greek politics and the centre-left in the Mediterranean for many, many years. 154 00:08:07.980 --> 00:08:10.880 They are the green little bubbles you can see there. 155 00:08:11.060 --> 00:08:13.500 And there is now a term called pacification. 156 00:08:15.520 --> 00:08:16.000 Pasokification. 157 00:08:16.960 --> 00:08:20.160 Basically means the destruction of a centre-left party. 158 00:08:20.360 --> 00:08:24.040 From a party that used to harvest 40, 50% of the vote, 159 00:08:24.160 --> 00:08:28.120 have almost been destroyed down to about 5% of the vote. 160 00:08:28.560 --> 00:08:32.460 It seems a very long way back for PASOK if they were going to come from. 161 00:08:32.580 --> 00:08:37.380 And this seems to be perhaps a real outlier of the death of the centre-left. 162 00:08:37.820 --> 00:08:40.700 What I did do, I'm not particularly good with numbers, 163 00:08:40.780 --> 00:08:46.820 but I've been looking at election results since the 1970s and 1980s, 164 00:08:46.820 --> 00:08:46.940 and I've been looking at the results of the election results since the 1970s and 1980s, 165 00:08:46.960 --> 00:08:49.720 and I've done some research and I've done some research and I've done some research 166 00:08:49.720 --> 00:08:56.640 and I've done some research and I've done some research and I've done some research 167 00:08:56.640 --> 00:08:59.340 and I've done some research and I've done some research and I've done some research 168 00:08:59.340 --> 00:08:59.460 and I've done some research and I've done some research and I've done some research 169 00:08:59.460 --> 00:09:00.200 and I've done some research and I've done some research and I've done some research 170 00:09:00.200 --> 00:09:03.460 and I've done some research and I've done some research and I've done some research 171 00:09:03.460 --> 00:09:09.720 and I've done some research and I've done some research and I've done some research 172 00:09:09.720 --> 00:09:16.940 and I've done some research and I've done some research and I've done some research 173 00:09:16.940 --> 00:09:22.960 as a comparator too. The point being, it's pretty much close as you can get to a uniform trend. 174 00:09:23.360 --> 00:09:28.060 So if you look at each decade there from the 80s through the 2010s, if you look at the average of 175 00:09:28.060 --> 00:09:33.420 the percentage of votes that they're winning, there is a story of decline going on there. 176 00:09:33.860 --> 00:09:39.000 Caveats. Okay, so I'm portraying a kind of fairly bleak picture for the centre-left, 177 00:09:39.040 --> 00:09:43.520 but let's make some caveats about this. Firstly, in a liberal democracy, we expect all major parties 178 00:09:43.520 --> 00:09:47.820 to win and lose. We expect them to go in and out of office, and if they didn't, then we might worry 179 00:09:47.820 --> 00:09:52.580 that liberal democracy isn't functioning particularly well. My second caveat is that some of these 180 00:09:52.580 --> 00:09:59.340 parties, for example British Labour, their history is one of losing. So up until the point of New 181 00:09:59.340 --> 00:10:07.360 Labour, if you look at the electoral record of the British Labour Party until the 1990s, it's a story 182 00:10:07.360 --> 00:10:12.940 of decline. They don't win elections. So my caveats are this could well be part of a cycle. 183 00:10:13.520 --> 00:10:18.340 Let's not overgeneralise it as a trend. There are, of course, at the moment, a number of centre-left 184 00:10:18.340 --> 00:10:23.480 parties in government. In Sweden, there's a very healthy-ish looking coalition with the Greens. 185 00:10:24.040 --> 00:10:29.000 Portugal has a really interesting kind of coalition of the centre-left and socialists at the moment, 186 00:10:29.080 --> 00:10:34.040 and these perhaps might be an outlier of a return of the centre-left, but we're not sure yet. 187 00:10:34.220 --> 00:10:38.320 So the point being is, yes, it's a story of decline, but I don't want to generalise too 188 00:10:38.320 --> 00:10:42.940 much about it, and there's also specific kind of cases and countries going on there. 189 00:10:43.520 --> 00:10:50.400 Why? What's going on? Well, in the book, I took a model from this book by Tim Bale. Tim Bale's a 190 00:10:50.400 --> 00:10:53.700 British political scientist, and he wrote a really brilliant book about the Conservative Party, 191 00:10:53.860 --> 00:10:59.600 and basically said, why do they keep losing elections? And he was looking at, this is before 192 00:10:59.600 --> 00:11:04.740 the period, of course, the final emergence of David Cameron. David Cameron, which we should say 193 00:11:04.740 --> 00:11:10.160 for the record, is the worst British Prime Minister since the Second World War, if not before. 194 00:11:10.340 --> 00:11:12.680 That's just a personal opinion. We'll talk about Brexit later. 195 00:11:13.760 --> 00:11:19.720 But why? What does Tim Bale do? He says that we sometimes assume that political parties will do 196 00:11:19.720 --> 00:11:24.900 anything to win your votes, and he says, actually, the opposite is true. Sometimes political parties 197 00:11:24.900 --> 00:11:29.740 do things which actually won't secure kind of mainstream votes, and he looks at the case 198 00:11:29.740 --> 00:11:35.740 of the Conservative Party, and he says there are three main factors or dimensions. There are ideas 199 00:11:35.740 --> 00:11:41.480 and the battle of ideas. There are institutions, like political parties and structures that we 200 00:11:41.480 --> 00:11:43.140 need to think about, and there are individuals. 201 00:11:43.520 --> 00:11:47.980 And there are questions of leadership. And so we took this kind of model, this approach, 202 00:11:48.160 --> 00:11:53.160 and we applied it in our kind of book. So I'll just say something briefly about each of these 203 00:11:54.760 --> 00:11:58.180 kind of issues. So I'll say something about individuals first as an explanation. 204 00:11:58.560 --> 00:12:04.680 And I just want to point to kind of three main trends that are problematic for centre-left 205 00:12:04.680 --> 00:12:09.420 leaders. And they're problematic for all political leaders, but some of them are proving particularly 206 00:12:09.420 --> 00:12:12.960 problematic for the centre-left. The first of them 207 00:12:13.520 --> 00:12:21.000 is presidentialisation and personalisation. What this generally means is that politics in the kind of 208 00:12:21.000 --> 00:12:26.200 more modern era is much more focused on individuals. It's much more focused on the individuals 209 00:12:26.200 --> 00:12:31.400 and their life stories. It's much more, and increasingly in party systems where there's a 210 00:12:31.400 --> 00:12:37.540 cabinet tradition, then in one sense there's an extra focus and onus on political leaders. 211 00:12:38.220 --> 00:12:43.500 Secondly, new media and social media is causing problems for political leaders. 212 00:12:43.520 --> 00:12:48.640 And parties more generally. And then also particularly for the Labour Party, there's an issue of the 213 00:12:48.640 --> 00:12:55.000 representation gap. And I'll just talk about these very, very briefly. So basically, for the centre-left, 214 00:12:55.300 --> 00:13:00.840 part of the story of them losing is that at times they have chosen leaders who haven't been up to the 215 00:13:00.840 --> 00:13:09.520 task. So in Sweden, under the period of Hakan Juhod, he was the Swedish social democratic leader 216 00:13:09.520 --> 00:13:12.760 for about a year. He made a whole series of kind of gaffes, 217 00:13:12.760 --> 00:13:13.500 issues, and things like that. And he was the leader of the Swedish social democratic leader for about a year. 218 00:13:13.520 --> 00:13:13.720 So he was the leader of the Swedish social democratic leader for about a year. And he was the leader of the 219 00:13:13.720 --> 00:13:16.320 issues and prones and highly sort of problematic. 220 00:13:17.320 --> 00:13:22.940 For the SPD, Per Steinbrück was the opposition leader for a number of years. 221 00:13:23.200 --> 00:13:29.140 And Steinbrück particularly made a series of kind of gaffes. This is a magazine shoot that he did 222 00:13:29.140 --> 00:13:34.460 where he's flicking the bird. And it was contrasted with the kind of very motherly style of Angela Merkel. 223 00:13:34.820 --> 00:13:39.880 So some of these leaders are making missteps and gaffes, which is coming back to kind of haunt them 224 00:13:39.880 --> 00:13:40.780 particularly. 225 00:13:41.980 --> 00:13:43.500 So this is a kind of an issue. 226 00:13:43.500 --> 00:13:54.320 This is the kind of quite famous one, kind of the last headline of The Sun and kind of Ed Miliband, you know, and you can read it for yourself in terms of if a man can't eat a sandwich, how can he rule the country? 227 00:13:55.020 --> 00:13:58.080 This would never have been a photo of Clement Attlee. 228 00:13:58.300 --> 00:14:01.200 This would never have been a kind of sense of media pressure. 229 00:14:01.320 --> 00:14:11.320 The point is that politics is now so personalised and we want to know more about our leaders in a different way, which can be a good thing, but that poses kind of problems for them to command. 230 00:14:11.720 --> 00:14:16.460 I have a clip here which may or may not work, or we can see if it kind of works. 231 00:14:16.700 --> 00:14:19.660 This is an example about the media pressures that they face. 232 00:14:19.760 --> 00:14:26.100 This is an interview that Ed Miliband gave for a pre-recorded interview, and he's talking about a strike. 233 00:14:26.340 --> 00:14:30.720 If the clip works, and we might just see if we can try it, if not, it only goes for two minutes. 234 00:14:31.100 --> 00:14:33.660 It's an extraordinary example of... 235 00:14:41.320 --> 00:14:43.840 ...because the government has acted in a reckless and provocative manner. 236 00:14:44.480 --> 00:14:51.680 After today's disruption, I urge both sides to put aside the rhetoric, get round the negotiating table, and stop it happening again. 237 00:14:53.020 --> 00:14:56.240 I listened to your speech in Wrexham, you talked about the Labour Party being removed. 238 00:14:56.520 --> 00:15:01.360 What do you think of that movement of people who are on strike today, and they'll be looking at you and thinking, 239 00:15:01.460 --> 00:15:06.380 well, you're describing these strikes as wrong, why aren't you giving us more leadership as a leader of the Labour movement? 240 00:15:06.680 --> 00:15:11.240 At a time when negotiations are still going on, I do believe these strikes are wrong. 241 00:15:11.320 --> 00:15:20.440 And that's why I say both sides should, after today's disruption, get round the negotiating table, put aside the rhetoric, and sort the problem out. 242 00:15:20.640 --> 00:15:23.500 Because the public and parents have been let down by both sides. 243 00:15:23.620 --> 00:15:26.000 The government's acted in a reckless and provocative manner. 244 00:15:26.440 --> 00:15:30.800 Well, I spoke to Francis Moore for Arcane here, and the tone he was striking was a very conciliatory one. 245 00:15:31.100 --> 00:15:36.680 Do you think there's a difference between the words they're saying in public and the attitude they're striking in private in these negotiations? 246 00:15:37.000 --> 00:15:38.900 Are the negotiations in good faith, would you say? 247 00:15:39.300 --> 00:15:41.200 What I say is that the strikes are wrong. 248 00:15:42.300 --> 00:15:46.340 I think the government is acting in a reckless and provocative manner. 249 00:15:46.760 --> 00:15:47.560 I think the government is acting in a reckless and provocative manner. 250 00:15:48.640 --> 00:15:56.240 After today's disruption, I urge both sides to get round the negotiating table, put aside the rhetoric, and stop this kind of thing happening again. 251 00:15:57.200 --> 00:16:01.840 It's a statement you've made publicly, and you've made to me, and this will be broadcast, obviously. 252 00:16:02.020 --> 00:16:07.920 But have you spoken privately to any union leaders and expressed your view to them on a personal level? 253 00:16:08.220 --> 00:16:11.300 Well, what I say in public and in private, everybody has to be able to see it. 254 00:16:11.320 --> 00:16:17.960 The only way to get involved in this is get round the negotiating table, put aside the rhetoric, and stop this kind of action happening again. 255 00:16:18.240 --> 00:16:25.300 These strikes are wrong because negotiations are still going on, but parents and the public have been let down by the government as well, 256 00:16:25.540 --> 00:16:27.680 who've acted in a reckless and provocative manner. 257 00:16:28.180 --> 00:16:29.980 Your parent, my other parent, a lot of people... 258 00:16:29.980 --> 00:16:30.680 He does it one more time. 259 00:16:30.800 --> 00:16:32.760 Andrew, if you want, we can kill the clip. 260 00:16:34.400 --> 00:16:38.880 The clip there, you can see they highlight each time he says the phrases. 261 00:16:38.900 --> 00:16:41.300 I think he answers it six times in the clip. 262 00:16:41.320 --> 00:16:50.160 And the point is, the point is that the pressure on political leaders to deliver a consistent clear message and not deviate reaches ridiculous... 263 00:16:50.660 --> 00:16:52.780 It's like the real Julia kind of moment. 264 00:16:53.360 --> 00:16:56.140 Let's move on and talk about some other things before I'm going to run out of time. 265 00:16:57.160 --> 00:16:57.640 Representation. 266 00:16:57.940 --> 00:17:03.120 Broadly speaking, the centre-left parties are no longer their members... 267 00:17:03.120 --> 00:17:07.660 Sorry, their MPs are no longer from the working class backgrounds in any way, the number. 268 00:17:07.760 --> 00:17:10.000 The parties are more professionalised than ever before. 269 00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:15.640 There's been a hollowing out of working class membership of the parties and MP levels. 270 00:17:15.880 --> 00:17:19.980 Very interesting research by Oliver Heath in the book featured there. 271 00:17:20.120 --> 00:17:25.320 And he talks about the correlation between the working class vote and working class MPs. 272 00:17:25.320 --> 00:17:26.060 And I'll just read something. 273 00:17:26.200 --> 00:17:30.580 He says, working class people are much more likely than middle class people to vote Labour 274 00:17:30.580 --> 00:17:34.500 when the party contains a substantial number of working class MPs. 275 00:17:34.520 --> 00:17:39.760 And variation over in time in number of working class Labour MPs closely tracks to the strength of such 276 00:17:39.760 --> 00:17:39.980 Labour MPs closely tracks to the strength of such 277 00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:40.420 Labour MPs closely tracks to the strength of such working class voting. 278 00:17:41.280 --> 00:17:43.720 So the point being, if there are... 279 00:17:43.720 --> 00:17:49.920 One of the stories of the decline of the centre-left is the working class are looking to find their vote somewhere else. 280 00:17:50.100 --> 00:17:55.680 And what they're not doing is resonating with a more middle class and professionalised centrist party. 281 00:17:56.020 --> 00:17:57.300 OK, that was the second thing. 282 00:17:57.460 --> 00:18:02.480 I'm going to run out of time, so I'm just going to flick over some of these things more quickly. 283 00:18:02.820 --> 00:18:07.440 So this is a picture of a Labour club from the 70s. 284 00:18:07.460 --> 00:18:09.980 And one of the institutions that was involved in the Labour Party was the Labour Party. 285 00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:13.520 And one of the institutional problems is that people still talk about a Labour movement, 286 00:18:13.780 --> 00:18:18.120 and the party was merely just the political icing on the cake. 287 00:18:18.240 --> 00:18:25.440 It was the political representation of a more integrated working class kind of culture and background. 288 00:18:25.800 --> 00:18:31.060 And what you're seeing is an erosion of those old institutions which, in one sense, 289 00:18:31.220 --> 00:18:35.880 created representational links between party and kind of class. 290 00:18:36.200 --> 00:18:38.860 So in the 1970s in Britain, 291 00:18:38.940 --> 00:18:39.980 there was something like this. 292 00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:41.980 There were about 5,000 Labour clubs. 293 00:18:42.200 --> 00:18:44.920 People would go along, get a drink and meet together. 294 00:18:45.280 --> 00:18:48.340 And that's now reduced down to about 1,500. 295 00:18:48.760 --> 00:18:51.860 And so in one sense, these are spaces, you know, 296 00:18:51.860 --> 00:18:55.460 and let's not romanticise them, either the working class or these kind of clubs 297 00:18:55.460 --> 00:18:58.300 or the kind of sexist traditions and all these sorts of things. 298 00:18:58.460 --> 00:19:03.460 But the point being is just to kind of note that what used to be a Labour movement in one sense 299 00:19:03.460 --> 00:19:08.080 is far less embedded in kind of social institutions than it used to be. 300 00:19:08.680 --> 00:19:11.040 Again, there's this disjunct between candidates. 301 00:19:11.200 --> 00:19:17.180 This is the tweet that Emily Thornberry did, which cost her her job before she resurrected her career back in the party 302 00:19:17.180 --> 00:19:20.980 and will probably lead the Labour Party at some point in the future. 303 00:19:21.140 --> 00:19:27.340 That's a photo she took of a kind of house with a white van and the flag of kind of British politics. 304 00:19:27.480 --> 00:19:33.140 If you get the imagery, this was seen as being snobbish and sneering at the working class. 305 00:19:33.460 --> 00:19:39.020 And it cost Emily Thornberry and there was significant backlash against them. 306 00:19:39.120 --> 00:19:44.160 And part of the story of British Labour is that it seems to no longer speak for or represent the kind of working class. 307 00:19:44.620 --> 00:19:46.920 We're seeing other changes, structural changes. 308 00:19:47.100 --> 00:19:51.840 This is a graph that shows the decline of lifetime voting in Australia for the same party. 309 00:19:52.180 --> 00:19:55.540 Basically, people don't vote consistently for the same party, 310 00:19:56.260 --> 00:19:58.720 don't identify in the same way that we can do. 311 00:19:59.360 --> 00:20:01.960 There's a changing electoral sociology as well, 312 00:20:02.580 --> 00:20:03.440 which I haven't really got time to talk about. 313 00:20:03.460 --> 00:20:03.900 I don't have time to go into. 314 00:20:04.100 --> 00:20:08.420 But basically, class, which used to be a very strong indicator of vote destination, 315 00:20:08.740 --> 00:20:09.580 no longer holds up. 316 00:20:09.720 --> 00:20:14.460 And now there's a bigger gap, particularly around how old and young people kind of vote. 317 00:20:14.600 --> 00:20:15.980 So I'm just going to flick over that. 318 00:20:17.100 --> 00:20:22.480 Some of the problems, particularly in some countries, are magnified by the electoral system. 319 00:20:22.860 --> 00:20:27.080 So in 2015, for example, in England, what you're seeing here is the election results. 320 00:20:27.400 --> 00:20:31.100 And the thing to note here is the disproportionality of outcome. 321 00:20:31.480 --> 00:20:33.120 Three and a half million people 322 00:20:33.460 --> 00:20:35.340 voted for UKIP and they get one MP. 323 00:20:36.620 --> 00:20:41.980 One and a half million people vote for the SNP and they get 56 MPs as a result. 324 00:20:42.340 --> 00:20:45.040 So it's an extraordinary disproportionality, 325 00:20:45.120 --> 00:20:47.800 which is causing problems in the fragmentation. 326 00:20:48.180 --> 00:20:52.380 Many of these countries were founded on a two party sort of dynamic. 327 00:20:52.680 --> 00:20:56.620 And as we shift to a multi-party dynamic, that's proving very problematic. 328 00:20:57.080 --> 00:21:02.760 There's a great book here by Peter Mayer, which kind of captures the problems 329 00:21:03.460 --> 00:21:03.800 of multi-party democracy. 330 00:21:04.320 --> 00:21:09.120 And he's basically saying there's a whole series of trends that we should be paying attention to. 331 00:21:09.340 --> 00:21:11.820 He's saying that there's the rise of minor parties. 332 00:21:12.100 --> 00:21:15.000 We can see in Australia there's a decline in voter turnout. 333 00:21:15.280 --> 00:21:16.940 There's a decline in party membership. 334 00:21:17.320 --> 00:21:20.980 There's a decline in the number of people who identify with the political party. 335 00:21:21.140 --> 00:21:23.940 And there's a decline in trade union membership and other factors. 336 00:21:24.160 --> 00:21:27.760 All of these point to the hollowing out of the party system. 337 00:21:28.160 --> 00:21:33.440 OK. Lastly, I just want to say something here about changing patterns of voting. 338 00:21:33.460 --> 00:22:02.640 Why change our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and our votes and 339 00:22:02.640 --> 00:22:05.540 Participating in new and different ways and this opens up new opportunities 340 00:22:06.140 --> 00:22:08.920 But what it does do is it erodes some of the familiar? 341 00:22:09.640 --> 00:22:12.260 patterns of ways in which people I 342 00:22:12.260 --> 00:22:14.680 Organize in a collective kind of fashion 343 00:22:14.680 --> 00:22:22.680 So there's a shift from collective action to connective and given that the Labour Party's the social democratic parties give a strong 344 00:22:22.680 --> 00:22:24.160 preference to ideas of solidarity 345 00:22:24.840 --> 00:22:32.000 Coming together collective group action. This is part of the problem and it's not to necessarily is not an opportunity there 346 00:22:32.480 --> 00:22:33.660 But we can do this 347 00:22:34.440 --> 00:22:39.380 Very briefly. I'm just going to say probably just one thing and skip over these slides 348 00:22:39.380 --> 00:22:44.600 Because I'm mindful of time and I can talk about it a bit kick, but I want to end the 349 00:22:45.380 --> 00:22:50.000 one of the things we do in the book is we look at the role of ideas and most of the 350 00:22:50.740 --> 00:22:51.540 my collaborators 351 00:22:52.400 --> 00:22:55.120 Say this is the main problem. So of course, yes 352 00:22:55.740 --> 00:22:58.800 Lots of parties can have leaders who make gaps 353 00:22:58.800 --> 00:23:01.580 So it's not the reason that the center-left isn't 354 00:23:02.300 --> 00:23:07.340 Necessarily just because they've had a generation of bad leaders or they've been unfortunate in some circumstances 355 00:23:08.640 --> 00:23:13.420 And it's not just necessarily some of these wider social changes that we're kind of touching upon 356 00:23:13.420 --> 00:23:17.820 Some of it also is around actually the battle of ideas. What does it mean? 357 00:23:17.940 --> 00:23:25.660 What's the social democratic party what to do with itself at the moment and part of the problems of the center-left are its? 358 00:23:25.880 --> 00:23:31.960 Existential crisis. What does it stand for? What does it mean in the kind of modern age? How does it reformulate its values? 359 00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:33.740 the most 360 00:23:34.600 --> 00:23:39.680 systematic attempt to kind of revise social democratic thinking took place in the 361 00:23:39.680 --> 00:23:46.420 1990s and it's often associated with what we would call the third way a series of ideas and 362 00:23:48.260 --> 00:23:53.940 Attempts sometimes synthesized by Anthony Giddens in his kind of book, which was a huge bestseller at the time 363 00:23:54.700 --> 00:23:58.540 To to kind of regalvanize and reinvigorate 364 00:23:59.620 --> 00:24:01.560 social democracy and 365 00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:04.340 There's been a long-standing debate whether this 366 00:24:05.320 --> 00:24:11.420 Constitutes a break with the labor and social democratic tradition or whether in fact, this is just a reinvigoration 367 00:24:11.420 --> 00:24:16.380 So this is a lively debate still about what the meaning of this and it's still highly contested 368 00:24:16.380 --> 00:24:23.500 The third way if we look at say five of its main values sought to change the role of the state 369 00:24:23.500 --> 00:24:30.720 So the state's under the third way is supposed to be about enabling citizens and not necessarily about a more paternalistic 370 00:24:30.720 --> 00:24:31.900 kind of control or 371 00:24:31.900 --> 00:24:31.980 decision making or 372 00:24:31.980 --> 00:24:32.780 delivery of services 373 00:24:33.300 --> 00:24:38.920 It was about active citizenship about finding new ways for the state to engage 374 00:24:40.140 --> 00:24:46.140 Citizens it was about an embrace of globalization. It was about saying yes globalization is a force 375 00:24:46.140 --> 00:24:49.780 But it's one in which we can harness for social justice ends 376 00:24:49.780 --> 00:24:54.640 So a shift day away from its the long-standing critique of capitalism that you find 377 00:24:55.220 --> 00:25:01.100 there's an emphasis on the equal of opportunity rather than a quality of outcome and 378 00:25:01.100 --> 00:25:05.120 We see also significantly a shift away from public ownership 379 00:25:05.120 --> 00:25:09.520 So the purest example of the third way was new labor under Tony Blair 380 00:25:09.520 --> 00:25:13.800 That's probably but we see it elsewhere Romani Prodi in the Italian left 381 00:25:13.800 --> 00:25:14.360 for example 382 00:25:14.360 --> 00:25:21.340 played with these eyes did as did Gerhard Schroeder and denier meter in kind of the Germany and SPD and 383 00:25:22.040 --> 00:25:29.140 The point being is that this probably part of the problem in all of the cases we look at is that many of these countries? 384 00:25:29.300 --> 00:25:31.080 Haven't worked out what to do now? 385 00:25:31.080 --> 00:25:38.120 They tried third way experiments perhaps Hawkeating here in Australia, and they've not worked out quite yet 386 00:25:38.120 --> 00:25:45.400 What to do next how do you reconfigure that your political economy in these sort of changing kind of environments? 387 00:25:45.720 --> 00:25:50.540 So there is a third way hangover particularly in places like Sweden in terms of this 388 00:25:50.540 --> 00:25:54.320 To give an example of the of the kind of issues there 389 00:25:54.320 --> 00:25:59.320 I just about Germany just for a moment one of the most significant things that Gerhard Schroeder did when he was 390 00:26:00.160 --> 00:26:01.060 Chancellor but also the 391 00:26:01.060 --> 00:26:04.680 Back in the 90s was introduced what was called the hearts for labor reforms 392 00:26:04.680 --> 00:26:10.340 There was a strong deregulation of the labor market, and there was a strong push to 393 00:26:11.020 --> 00:26:14.560 Reconfigure the welfare state it was highly unpopular 394 00:26:15.140 --> 00:26:20.500 Particularly the labor reforms and there was significant backlash from working-class and middle-class 395 00:26:20.500 --> 00:26:26.940 Kind of communities alike it seemed to be an erosion and attack on the traditional large German welfare state 396 00:26:26.940 --> 00:26:31.040 What many economists seem to agree is actually particularly around the labor? 397 00:26:31.060 --> 00:26:39.580 reforms are probably the reason why Germany has had a significant economic boom since that time and so Angela Merkel in one sense part of 398 00:26:39.580 --> 00:26:44.980 The period of economic growth or stability that she's just about in kind of enjoyed with many bumps along the way 399 00:26:44.980 --> 00:26:51.220 This goes the argument are actually due to the center left so the center left make these deeply unpopular 400 00:26:53.320 --> 00:27:00.960 Choices these deeply unpopular kind of policies at the time the legacy seems to be economic growth to certain extent or at least 401 00:27:00.960 --> 00:27:08.160