politics against politics

It's strange that James Purnell could well rise in many people's esteem by leaving conventional front-line politics. Richard Reeves suggests on Twitter that he "is a loss to Westminster, but not to politics. Politics is changing and the idea of the 'politician' needs to change too." This may very well be true. But it does pose a rather awkward question regarding who will continue to pursue sincere political ambitions via Westminster.

What makes Purnell an interesting case is that he appears to recognise that his own political career was symptomatic of something rather problematic in British politics. You don't get many more professional politicians than him, and perhaps this is what has troubled him on some level. His speeches and articles have recently echoed some arguments I made in this Renewal piece [pdf] a couple of year's ago, in which I also drew attention to the growing policy expertise of front-line politician, with a little dabbling in - gasp - quantitative analysis:

Purnell - like Ruth Kelly and Ed Balls - ticks both journalism and policy advice. This is a slightly different issue from the long-standing, Weberian concern with professionalisation of politics. A professional politician is one who is expert at campaigning and winning elections, but has no experience or life outside of this. New Labour was more about the scientisation of politics (sorry if that's not a word), in which expertise in economics and public affairs became a precondition of political authority.

So now he jumps into the messy world of collective civic action, as Chris Dillow says, turning a traditional political career upside down. Maybe if people had paid more attention to what he's been arguing, they would have seen this coming. If you believe, as he does, that both the state and the market have grown excessively powerful, this raises questions as to what alternatives are on offer.

I argued similarly in that same article that "New Labour is roundly attacked for being either too statist or too enamoured with the market, whereas the truth is it is often both." I remember at the time having doubts about the credibility of this statement, which risks being viewed as a cheap conservative appeal to 'community' or, worse still, mystical. I was therefore impressed but apprehensive when Purnell started arguing the same thing. Clearly there is truth in that critique of New Labour, but it is not a truth that can be translated very easily into policy. I mean - what do you do with the recognition that both states and markets are instrumentally rational alternatives to ethical and civic practice?  What I hadn't considered was Purnell's answer: re-train as a community organiser. I suspect he won't be the last left-leaning politician who comes to similar conclusions.

Comments

[Paul0Evans1]

Kevin McGuire was a lot more cynical than you are about the whole 'I'm going to be a community organiser' claim. He saw it as a respectable fig-leaf behind a retreat into the private sector.

On your point about over-powerful state / market, Tom Powdrill crystalised something for me recently in this post:

http://labourandcapital.blogspot.com/2010/01/krafty-cuts-2.html

... discussing the Kraft / Cadbury takeover:

"I think any radical reform of the financial system must focus on fees. Because no-one is really acting in the ultimate owners' interest, no-one challenges all the money leaking out to advisers of various kinds - because it's not their money. According to one estimate £250m will have been peed away on fees in this deal."

Tom consistently argues for a reform of the way that shareholders powers are exercised. Perhaps the implication of what he's saying that the lack of responsible ownership of businesses is replicating the 'tragedy of the commons' problems with the public sector. That *both sectors* have been captured by budget maximising bureaucrats.

That, in some ways, the left v right arguments are partly irrelevant (or surrogates for more naked tribal materialism in which tories object to bureaucrats protecting OUR interest while we lefties object to bureaucrats protecting the historical advantages of the already-wealthy.

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Increased state power is a necessity for increased power for 'the market' (in other words, capital relative to labour).

I'd argue that not only do we need more cooperative and mutual enterprise to empower people, but we also need the anti-union laws which tilt the legal balance in favour of employers and against the democratic organisations of working people.

Days gone by, Labour politicians might have had a background as a trade unionist and through involvement in Labour politics end up an MP. Now it looks like the reverse may be happening...

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oops! that should be "we need *to get rid of* the anti-union laws"