Putting aside specific policies for the moment, the argument of the centrists (or moderates, or Blairites, or sensible ones, or right of the party, or whatever particular phrase you want) to those on the left (or hard left, or Bennites, or Trotskyists, or morons, or whatever particular phrase you want) has been that if they want to see any part of their principles enacted by a government, they have to stop campaigning for what they actually believe in, and start campaigning for a position close to "the centre ground", where the bulk of voters are.
An addition to this argument, perhaps to sweeten the pill, is that once a centre-left party has got into government, it can start to shift the centre ground leftwards. The LabourList article of Luke Akehurst's I looked at last time gives this argument:
"My vision for the country I’d like to live in is I know, somewhat to the left of most voters, but I hope not so far to their left that they couldn’t gradually be persuaded of it through incremental evidence of successful governments"
This is what I call the push argument - that you get into power, and then start pushing the centre ground to the left by implementing policies just slightly to the left of centre.
An alternative view is held by some on the left. This is that it isn't right to compromise on any of the positions, not (or, perhaps, not just) because of a moral belief against compromising, but because they believe by doing so, they can get more of their policies implemented more quickly. Their argument is that by arguing forcefully for their policies, they can begin to move the centre ground towards them.
This is what I call the pull argument - that power is at the end of the process, not the start, but that throughout you will be pulling the centre ground to the left by causing whoever is in power to compromise their position, and implement more leftwing policies to prevent the draining of their voters away.
It can be seen that, in an ideal world, these positions can be complementary - the crazy idealists provide a tension towards the left, while the sensible pragmatists get into power and implement slightly leftish policies to try to reduce this tension.
(Naturally, a similar argument would be taking place on the right, so the centre is under tension from both sides.)
In fact, this process can be seen most clearly in countries which use proportional representation - with the added benefit of the crazy idealists and sensible pragmatists having relatively open negotiations on the policies to be implemented if they are forming a government.
However, we don't have PR, as you may have noticed. Thus we have the Labour Party, a very broad church, which includes people from both the push and the pull positions. For a long period, the push side has been ascendant, arguably since the purge of Militant.
(For the avoidance of doubt, no, I'm not saying Militant were the pull side. They were genuine entryists.)
However, up until the election of Blair, the usual push and pull tension carried on. Blair seemed like a continuation of the same, but instead of the usual way of reducing tension (that of making some compromises) he took a different path - he started to reorganise the party to remove the ability of the pull side to create any tension.
Hence the steady removal of democratic methods of holding the leadership to account, the hobbling of routes for the grassroots to direct policy, the change of national conference to a rally, and so on. In this way, tension couldn't grow from the pull side, as they had no way of being able to push their point of view - the democratic structures were removed.
So what happened? Membership fell. New parties were started, but failed. A purge without a purge happened - as the pull position came to see they could not influence the party, they naturally began to leave, thinking "why pay to be a member of a democratic socialist party which doesn't seem to want to be socialist or democratic?"
This isn't to say these people disappeared. Instead, activists of the pull position ended up finding other structures to work within. This could be: a single issue campaign, such as UK Uncut; a broader opposition to austerity, such as the People's Assembly; trade unions; smaller left parties, such as Left Unity or the Greens; or even a very focussed party, such as the National Health Action party.
While these groups did have some effect (the issue of tax avoidance was forced on to the mainstream political agenda by UK Uncut, for example) they were all hamstrung by their separation from the party political process, and by the British electoral system. So, for example, the People's Assembly could have huge meetings, but there was no-one for them to vote for that could implement their agenda. The National Health Action party could raise awareness, but people don't vote on just that one issue.
In other words, the pull position left, so there was no tension on the push position to bring them to the, uh, left. This would seem to be good for them - they could concentrate on winning votes in the centre.
Except...
Without the tension from the left, the push position could go further right, reducing the difference between them and the main opposition. After all, getting into power was the important thing - without it, no policies could be implemented. But the centre wasn't, and isn't, fixed. And the pull side on the right still existed, bringing their push side further to the right.
So the push side on the left keeps edging to the right, and the push side on the right keeps going to the right, and we end up with a Labour leadership who won't defend tax credits, who won't vote against making poor people poorer.
The leadership election, particularly following the changes made by Miliband, is one of the few democratic ways remaining for views different to the current leadership (and central party structure) to be expressed. The easy extension of the franchise to registered supporters was originally supported by the push side as they made the mistake of thinking that the people they crafted policies to attract were the same sort of people who would sign up, or join a political party.
They won't make the same mistake again. This is the opportunity for the pull side to actually exert some pressure, some balance. Even if the only thing Corbyn does is help rebuild the democratic structures of the party, he will have left a party better able to make genuine positive changes in the country.
But I don't think that is all he will do. I think he will actually provide a better electoral position for Labour than his opponents, and that is what my next post is about.
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