Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Coalitions and coalitions

We're living in strange but interesting times - though 'interesting' is hardly the word for the hundreds of thousands of people out of work or set to lose work, as the budget cuts do their worst. Still, though, the Labour Party is struggling to come to terms with the new political world: a Con-Lib coalition means things have actually changed, not merely in pragmatic, 'we have to stick together or we die together' terms, but more fundamentally - the world of public compromise is not the same as the kind of compromise that goes on within political parties. Labour won't win simply by trying to pick off people on the edges of the coalition or teasing away at the cracks - it actually needs new strategies. And not least because the wider world is weird - there's less money to solve the huge problems we continue to face (tackling climate change needs money; tackling poverty, at home and abroad, needs money; tackling the hearts and minds of potential terrorists needs money; etc), and yet at the same time money was found to support the banks - and I'm not saying it shouldn't have been found (I believe it was necessary, to avert a far deeper economic catastrophe), but I am saying that, if money can be found for that, the political will ought to be capable of being organised for other purposes ...

So we need alternative coalitions. Like Avaaz. Like '38 Degrees', a newer web-based campaigning organisation. We need coalitions capable of keeping the pressure where it ought to be kept - of speaking truth to power, so that we're not co-opted into lies that some kinds of debt are unaffordable (public budget deficits) while other kinds of indebtedness (to the needs of future generations) are evidently inevitable. Of course the level of debt needs to be reduced, but even the Tories realise that this cannot be their sole raison d'etre - and it is the role of alternative coalitions to keep the dreams alive of changes which are more humane. Just because money is short, job security is in short supply, and we are living in generally anxious times, that does not mean the age of dreaming new dreams or campaigning for something better need come to an end. The kind of coalition we build determines the kind of world we believe is possible.

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