The incoherence of Centrist politics.

• It’s about Elections silly.
  • You’ve got to raise an army.
  • Or bring money.
• What does this all mean?

There’s a persistent myth, long promulgated by dumbasses, that, somehow, we will be saved by some rider at the horizon, arriving just in time, bravely taking the mantle of leadership in Dark Times saving us from our Worst Instincts.

Some variations of this idea are:

1. During Brexit Labour and the Lib Dems called for a Government of National Unity (GNU), made up, just coincidentally, of talents from all the parties to get the best outcome from Brexit. Alongside this was the insinuation that the Tories weren’t serious about Brexit (they were confused about what they wanted), and that any actual implementation would be illegitatmate with a GNU.

2. Calls for the Democrats to nominate Mitt Romney or Liz Cheney or some wild card to defeat Trump. Alonside the insinuation that if the Dem’s don’t do this, well they aren’t serious about stopping Fascism and you can safely abstain in November’s election.

3. General calls for a Government of Talents where The Best of us come together to run society properly. Of course, it’s insinuated, we don’t run society properly now, regardless of who’s in charge.

What these accounts get wrong is the nature and function of mass political parties in democratic societies. Particularly how the different parties function, and why the govern the way they do.

It’s about Elections silly.

Modern electoral parties exist as machines to win elections. A party can’t do anything if it’s not in power; and to get into power, a party has to win elections. Everything about how a party operates is subordinate to the requirement that they win the next election. There are a lot of behind-scenes-and-only-interesting-to-nerds fights which determine what platform the parties seek election on, those fights are conducted differently, and the outcome determines who leads the party and how powerful they are.

However, left wing parties aren’t exact mirrors of right wing parties. Left wing parties have a distinct organisational culture from right wing parties and power flows differently within them. This difference explains why left wing parties have ideological stability, only changing positions slowly, despite being fractious and plagued by infighting. It also explains why right wing parties can seem like a big tent, but unless you are the main act you’re not really calling the shots. It also helps explain why left wing leaders are less important than right wing leaders, and why both the Republicans and British Conservatives have morphed so dramatically over the last twenty years.

You’ve got to raise an army.

Left wing parties a best conceived as a negotiating table. Groups come to the party looking for representation demanding that the party do something for them, but they have to demonstrate that they can do something for the party in turn. Often this is bringing a constituency of voters, or at the least new foot soldiers for door knocking. Both the Democratic and Labour parties see themselves as representing aa alliance of component constituencies, each represented by an activist organisation or caucus. The fault lines of intra-party debate fall along the lines of these constituencies. Once an activist groups has demonstrated that they are a constituency then can negotiate with other competing constituencies on for policy and personnel. Your group gets power in proportion to how electorally important it is.

Jo Freeman writes in Who you know vs who you represent:

Both parties are composed of numerous units, which have a superficial similarity… In addition to these formal bodies, the Democratic Party, especially on the national level, is composed of constituencies. These constituencies see themselves as having a salient characteristic creating a common agenda which they feel the party must respond to. Virtually all of these groups exist in organized form independent of the Party and seek to act on the elected officials of both parties. They are recognized by Democratic Party officials as representing the interests of important blocs of voters which the Party must respond to as a Party. Some groups have been recognized parts of the Democratic coalition since the New Deal (e.g. blacks and labor); others are relatively new (e.g. women and gays). Still others which participated in State and local Democratic politics when those were the only significant Party units have not been active as organized groups on the national level (e.g. farmers ethnics).

Some of the Party’s current constituencies have staff members of the Democratic National Committee identified as their liaisons. In addition, in the last few years an informal understanding has arisen that one of each of the three Vice-Chairs will be a member of and represent women, blacks and hispanics. Labor — still the largest and most important constituency — does not feel the need for a liaison as it has direct contact with the party chair. However, a majority of the 25 at-large seats on the DNC, as well as seats on the Executive Committee and the Rules and Credentials Committees at the conventions are reserved for union representatives. Party constituencies generally meet as separate caucuses at the national conventions. Space for these meetings is usually arranged by the DNC. While caucuses are usually open to anyone, the people who attend are generally those for whom that constituency is a primary reference group; i.e. a group with which they identify and which gives them a sense of purpose. With an occasional exception the power of group leaders derives from their ability to accurately reflect the interests of constituency members to the Party leaders. Therefore, while leaders are rarely chosen by the participants, they nonetheless feel compelled to have their decisions ratified by them through debate and votes in the caucuses. The votes usually go the way the leaders direct, but they are symbolically important.

These activist groups exist in an independent form outside of the formal structures of the party. This means that the leaders of constituencies are not dependent on the favour of the party leadership, but instead on the constituency that they lead. Your success as a politician in a left wing party is strongly dependent on the success of the group as a whole.

This explains why left wing parties tend be fractious in opposition and in power. Constituency leaders have to show that they have a constituency that needs to be listened to:

In the Democratic Party, keeping quiet is the cause of atrophy and speaking out is a means of access.…Since the purpose of most of the conflict is to achieve acceptance and eventually power it does not matter whether the issues that are fought over are substantive or only symbolic.

Activists and group leaders need to pick fights that demonstrate the importance of their group, but also to show that they are leader. Freeman points to Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential run as a case in point:

Jesse Jackson’s entire campaign was a way for a new generation of Black leaders to establish clout both within the Party and within the Black community. The means by which Blacks have exercised power in the Party has been less through organizations than through elected officials and their individual followings. As there is no internal mechanism for selecting leaders among the many contenders, those Blacks who have exercised power within the Party have usually been those whom White party leaders chose to listen to. Jackson’s candidacy challenged both the current Black political leadership and the right of Whites to decide which Blacks were legitimate leaders. By showing that Black voters would unite behind his candidacy in the primaries he established his legitimacy as a national Black spokesperson, independent of White approval. This gave him a claim to dictate the Black agenda in the Party, even though he had not previously been a Party activist and there were many competent Black leaders within the Party who were not supportive of this upstart.

This is why left wing parties tend to have a stable, if milquetoast ideology. Ideologues have to negotiate, and can’t guarantee influence without a constituency to represent. This is why the Labour party could appoint Alan Sugar as lord, but have Jeremy Corbyn as an MP. It also explains the calls on the left of the party for proportional representation—many on the left would feel more comfortable in an ideologically purer party. It’s also why Labour are unlikely to substantially build more council housing in the 2024-2029 parliament: council housing doesn’t benefit Labour’s core constituency (the disaffected worker), who could be picked off by another party instead.

Or bring money.

Right wing parties work differently: they are much more ideological, bound together by a stable ‘conservative’ identity. Internal party conflicts represent whether particular party members are ‘real’ conservatives, or not. Freeman writes:

The basic components of the Republican Party are geographic units and ideological factions. Unlike the Democratic groups, these entities exist only as internal party mechanisms. The geographic units—state and local parties— are primarily channels for mobilizing support and distributing information on what the Party leaders want. They are not separate and distinct levels of operation.

Ideological factions are also not power centers independent of their relationship to Party leaders. Unlike Democratic caucus leaders, Republican faction leaders do not feel themselves accountable to their followers. Sometimes there are no identifiable followers… The purpose of ideological factions—at least those that are organized— is to generate new ideas and test their appeal. Initially these new ideas are for internal consumption. **Their concept of success is not winning benefits, symbolic or otherwise, for their group, so much as being able to provide overall direction to the Party.

…The Republican Party does have several organized groups within it such as the National Federation of Republican Women, National Black Republican Council and the Jewish Coalition, but their purpose is not to represent the views of these groups to the party. **Their function is to recruit and organize group members into the Republican Party as workers and contributors. They carry the party’s message outward, not the group’s message inward. Democratic constituency group members generally have a primary identification with their group, and only a secondary one with the Party. The primary identification of Republican activists is with the Republican Party. They view other strong group attachments as disloyal and unnecessary.

In other words, right-wing politics is a vehicle for elite interests. This should be no surprise, since right-wing parties arose from the interests of the old aristocracy. All of the political action is behind closed doors: at parties and receptions and in halls between meetings. Right wing parties are fundamentally leader oriented political organisations.

Tanner Greer writes

Power flows from the top down. Convention battles were not contests between constituencies, but contests between patronage networks. The party is organised around powerful leaders and those who fly their colours under their patron’s banner.

And Jo Freeman:

Legitimacy within the Republican Party is dependent on having a personal connection to the leadership. Consequently, supporting the wrong candidate can have disastrous effects on one’s ability to influence decisions. Republican Presidents exercise a monolithic power over their party that Democratic Presidents do not have. With the nomination of Ronald Reagan, many life-long Republicans active on the national level who had supported Ford or Bush had to quickly change their views to conform to those of the winner or find themselves completely cut off. Mavericks, who do not have any personal attachments to identified leaders, may be able to operate as gadflies, but can rarely build an independent power base. Since legitimacy in the Democratic Party is based on the existence of just such a power base, real or imagined, one does not lose all of one’s influence within the Party with a change in leaders as long as one can credibly argue that one represents a legitimate group.

While the importance of personal connections works against those Republicans who have the wrong connections it rewards those who spend years toiling in the fields for the Party and its candidates. The longer one spends in any organization the more personal connections one has an opportunity to make. These aren’t lost when one’s Party or leaders are out of power, and thus can be “banked” for future use. Occasionally a dedicated party worker can develop sufficient ties even to competing leaders to assure continued access, if not always influence, regardless of who’s in power. Those Democrats whose legitimacy derives from leadership of a coalition group find it is quite transitory when they can no longer credibly represent the group. The greater willingness of the Republican Party to reward loyalty and dedication to the Party in preference to any other group makes it is easier for the Party to discourage extra-Party attachments.

This explains why the Conservative have been (at least) three different parties within my parent’s lifetime: they were the One Nation Tories, building houses in the 60s and 70s; then Free Market liberals, at home in Europe and laissez-faire; and now they are the party of Brexit and intense state capitalism. Or why the Republicans have metamorphosed from the Nixon/Fords to the Bushes to Trump. In each era there simply was a different faction leading. Anyone who disagrees was iced out: if you couldn’t toe the line, then the party had no use for you.

What does this all mean?

Centrists are people who have been iced out of a right wing party. For whatever reason they cannot toe the new party line any longer, so they have lost favour. But they don’t understand the politics of the opposing party: they can’t demonstrate that they are constituency to be reckoned with. It’s why self-styled Centrists come across as a little cringe: they demand power because they are used to calling the shots; but their words fall on deaf ears, since they haven’t done the leg work to deserve it in the new party. It’s why there’ll never be a Government of National Unity, or Mitt Romney will never lead the Democrats. It’s just that there are different types of people, with different cultures and expectations, and ways of seeking power.