Joyce Mcmillan: Is it all over now for the anti-capitalist left?
As Corbyn and Sanders step back, will Starmer and Biden meet the challenge of our time, asks Joyce Mcmillan
April is the cruellest month; particularly when the world goes into lockdown just as spring arrives, filling the parks with daffodils, and smothering trees with blossom. For those pent up in city flats without gardens, there’s the fear of parks and recreation grounds being closed to prevent rule-breaking by the careless, when for millions they represent the day’s only brief contact with the power and beauty of the natural world; and for those more privileged, including both Prince Charles and Scotland’s now former Chief Medical Officer, there’s often a sense of simple disbelief that any mere government regulation could disrupt the middle-class routine of long weekend drives out to bag a few Munros, or visit much-loved second homes on the coast and countryside.
The word entitlement comes to mind, in other words; and not only in a negative sense. It’s easy, of course, to rage against the wealthy who believe that the rules don’t apply to them. Yet what well-off people are mourning, in terms of their suddenly reduced access to Scotland’s wild places, is something that should, in a sense, be a birthright for us all; a relationship with nature that works, and is not just about expensive leisure activities for some, and a desperate clutching at a diminishing stock of public green space for others. What we are seeing around us now – in the crystal-clear air, the vastly reduced traffic, and the sudden loudness of birdsong – is a vision of how our world could be, if it were not so heavily dependent on a high-carbon, high-speed economy. And when our economic lives begin to gather pace again, we may – if we can seize our political chances – be able to make the argument that a change in our way of life is now clearly possible, so long as we can persuade governments to prioritise the switch to a low-carbon world that is desperately needed to prevent the worst ravages of climate change.
All of which makes it doubly ironic – and doubly cruel – that this moment of passionate support for public services, massive state intervention to protect jobs and incomes, and political opportunity for those arguing that our economy could be transformed at speed to a new low-carbon model, also marks the departure from the scene of the two political leaders who most clearly invited us to consider the possibility of such a transformation. Last Saturday, Keir Starmer stepped up to replace Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the UK Labour Party, while on Wednesday, Senator Bernie Sanders stepped down from the race to become this year’s Democratic presidential candidate, making way for the former Vice-president, Joe Biden; and both Corbyn and Sanders must be brutally aware of their irony of their position.
Both, after all, are passionate advocates of the need for universal healthcare and a well-funded public health system, at a time when that need is being demonstrated daily, in the most vivid terms. Both argue for an end to austerity, and for the maintenance of well-funded public services, at a time when the consequences of chronic underfunding are glaringly apparent. Both are passionate opponents of a labour market that consistently underpays and undervalues the essential workers on whom we depend for our very lives; now, the truth of that injustice is publicly acknowledged daily, across the media. And both are leading advocates of a Green New Deal; the idea that our transition to a more environmentally sustainable economy can only be achieved by massive public investment to sustain jobs and lives during the transformation, and to demonstrate that a new low-carbon economy can provide a better quality of life for everyone.
Yet neither Corbyn nor Sanders is trusted, it seems – either by voters, or by the grandees of their own parties – to deliver on that emerging policy agenda, which they embraced so much earlier than other politicians; and it is worth pondering the reasons for that rejection. It can partly be explained, of course, by the routine lies, slanders and sidelining to which left-wing leaders are always subjected by a predominantly right-wing media; and also by the widespread conviction, in “moderate” Labour and Democratic circles, that voters are now so wary of the radical left that only bland centrists like Joe Biden have any chance of electoral success; although how true this now is, in an increasingly volatile political landscape driven by a mounting anger against a skewed and unjust economic system, remains to be seen.
There is, of course, a grain of truth in the old political insight that only those who are trusted by the right are ever permitted, in British or US politics, to implement left-wing policies. If Starmer rejects revolutionary language, he may be allowed more wiggle-room to propose progressive change in the UK than Corbyn; if Biden can lull corporate America and its obedient servants into a vague sense of security, he may be allowed to prise the controls of government from the chubby hands of an increasingly volatile far-right incumbent.
The danger in electing such leaders, though, lies in the risk of inaction, when action is desperately needed. Across British and US society, radicalism is becoming the new realism, as people increasingly wake up to the extent to which they are being denied some of their most basic rights, even in some of the world’s wealthiest societies. Health care, job security, a living wage, and the right to clean water, good food, and a thriving natural environment – these are the basic entitlements that have been allowed to corrode, through decades of ideological hostility and financial austerity. The voices of the right and far-right are already gearing up for the campaign to ensure that despite current emotional gestures of support, there will be no real move towards the reinstatement of those rights, after the Covid crisis is over. And both Biden and Starmer will be judged, in the end, by the extent to which they are willing to confront those forces; and to recognise that in an age of crisis, even “moderate” politicians must embrace radical solutions, if they truly want to meet the challenge of the times.
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