Lionel Shriver: ‘The left has a long history of self-righteousness’

The idea that we saw the failure of the liberal left in 2016 is a bit sweeping. The most powerful leader in Europe, Angela Merkel, is still – bar a sustained, successful campaign of domestic terrorism – likely to retain her office in 2017.



The [November] referendum in Italy morphed into another vote against EU austerity, which in the main the left opposes. In the UK, you could make the case that Brexit lies outside the traditional left-right axis; there is nothing intrinsically progressive about membership in a particular trading bloc whose political processes are high-handedly autocratic. And I’ve yet to see polls indicating that [Marine] Le Pen has any real chance of winning the French presidency [in March].

To the extent that the left is experiencing a setback, its comeuppance is well overdue. The left has fallen short in relation to immigration, continuing to insist that any questioning of mass influx is racist and xenophobic. It is back to finger pointing and name calling in relation to anyone who doubts the economic case for accepting mass migration.

The left advocates generosity, while its elite rarely live in the areas most affected by new arrivals. For affluent progressives, immigration mostly means a delightful variety of ethnic restaurants.

However, the shortcomings of the left are not only of political position, but of disposition. What puts people off is this assumption that all decent people are ipso facto in accord, and if you’re not onside you are evil (or, as Hillary Clinton would say, deplorable). The left has a long history of self-righteousness, with people regarding themselves as holding an exclusive claim to virtue. Latterly, the equation of leftwing opinions with virtue has encouraged the faithful to grow ever more shrill, ever more judgmental and ever more controlling, even among themselves.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Trump supporter with a bumper sticker reading ‘I am a deplorable’. Photograph: Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images

The left has to temper its idealism with pragmatism; make the pro-immigration argument on solid economic grounds, and start by advocating a looser, easier, cheaper and more hospitable legal immigration policy that would attract skilled workers in fields with employment gaps to fill. It should make appeals to national self-interest rather than resorting to pro-diversity sentimentality.

Pragmatism would also argue for dropping the fantasy that if we simply taxed the 1% into oblivion and squeezed all those satanic corporations, then the rest of us could have free healthcare, free nursing and home care, free childcare, and a guaranteed universal income from now to eternity. Reducing deficits through higher taxation would have to hit the middle class.

As for climate change, the left needs to make positive arguments: whoever harnesses the next generation of non-fossil fuels technology will win the big stuffed bear.

Lionel Shriver is an American author, resident in the UK, whose books include We Need To Talk About Kevin and Big Brother

Tony Travers: ‘Politicians seem to have lost their self-confidence’

International terrorism has triggered challenges for the left that are harder to overcome than for the right, such as the need to choose between higher levels of state surveillance and the risk of escalating terror attacks.

The question of immigration is also one with which the left must come to terms: many appear to believe in open-door internationalism, while most MPs accept that core voters want tighter controls on the movement of people.



In Britain and in many other places, politicians across the spectrum seem to have lost their self-confidence, and so are endlessly over-promising and under-delivering in an attempt to appeal to as large a number of people as possible.

If the left is going to have a chance it must come clean and admit that if the public wants more spending on the NHS, more funding for adult social care, more cash for international development and so on, then taxes will have to go up, and not only for the rich.



Would the left be prepared to argue for an increase in taxes even for people on average incomes? I don’t think so. But a political party that could spell out the reality of what is being offered would at least get marks for honesty, even if it’s not going to be popular for a while.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tony Blair in 2005. Photograph: Dan Chung/The Guardian

There is a lot of pressure on the left to come up with convincing and attractive policies that don’t put off centrist voters. That’s where Tony Blair was such a miracle worker: more than any other Labour leader in history, he could convince centre (even centre-right) voters that he was on their side. It’s not popular to mention Blair’s name now, but Labour can never get away from the fact that his capacity to win general elections is without parallel.



For Labour, state involvement in the way corporations operate could be reasonably popular if it is seen to be on the side of the public and consumers, but not if there is a perception of old-fashioned nationalisation. If you can convince the public that you’re intervening to make people’s lives better – in cases where the public is being exploited, and it is not just about the state extending itself – you’ll get good headlines in the Guardian and the Daily Mail on the same day.

In the end, most people who vote aren’t particularly interested in politics. Labour needs to make sure it’s not defined by its fringes. Thinking about the public interest, rather than sectional interests, is what gets parties into power.

Tony Travers, professor in government at the London School of Economics

Patrick Weil: ‘Our task is to reform our policies of equality’

At the heart of the election of Donald Trump is the importance of “the equality of conditions”, which the French diplomat, political scientist and historian Alexis de Tocqueville noted was “the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived” in US society.

It’s the same for Brexit: many British and American voters felt that unlike immigrants and minorities, their families were no longer benefiting from policies of equality, and this perception played an important part is the outcomes of these two historic votes.

We need to address this by reforming equality policies to ensure they benefit the most left-behind and the most neglected people in our countries, regardless of the colour of their skin or religious affiliation.

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This can only be resolved by each country confronting its own history. All too often citizens feel they are compatriots only by law, not by sentiment, because of the absence of a common history that is taught, shared and understood.

Our task must be to reform our equality policies, and to look our history full in the face – the history that is common to all our people and can make them feel more like citizens of the same country.

Patrick Weil, historian and author of several books on the history of immigration and citizenship, researcher at University of Paris 1, and visiting professor at Yale Law School

Christophe Guilluy: ‘Social mobility has become blocked in Europe’

In Europe, as in the US, protest and opposition are apparent in those areas that are farthest removed from the globalised metropolises. “Peripheral France” is the France of small and medium-sized towns and rural areas. In the UK it was “peripheral Britain” that voted for Brexit.

This is not a distinction simply between city and country dwellers. The question is social, economic and cultural. It is in these areas that we see the middle classes leaving behind the categories that used to be their bedrock: employees, smallholders, the self-employed.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A pro-Brexit poster in a field in rural Cornwall. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

These categories played the globalisation game, and even supported the European project in its early stages. However, after several decades of adapting to the global economy they have seen their standard of living stagnating or falling, their working conditions become ever more precarious, and mass unemployment increase. In short, social mobility has been blocked.

Unless the free trade that works primarily against these socio-economic categories and these areas is regulated, the process will continue. That’s why the priority must be to favour the development of a complementary (rather than an alternative) economic model in these areas suffering from socio-economic fragility. And that means giving power and responsibilities to local politicians and communities.

By adopting the globalised economic system, developed countries have created a societal model: multiculturalism. France has fared no better (or worse) than other developed countries. It has become an American society just like all the rest, with its identity-based tensions and paranoias.

We have to insist that society is not divided into people who are open and those who are not. We have to jettison the idea that if the higher and better-educated socio-economic classes do not turn to populism, it’s because they have the means to avoid interaction with “the other”.

This question of the relationship with “the other” needs to be framed as universal, one that affects all socio-economic categories. This is a precondition if we want to reduce social tensions in Europe.

Christophe Guilluy, geographer, author of The Twilight of Elite France (Le crépuscule de la France d’en haut)

Franzisca Zanker: ‘We should create more legal migration’

Europe can play a profoundly positive role in dealing with migration and refugees, if we can find the political will.



We should spare no effort in putting facts at the centre of the global debate, given how highly charged it has become in the past two years. For example, it should be stressed that it is not Europe but countries further south that have borne the brunt of the refugee crisis, and that they need urgent help from outside.

Europe should also realise that it rarely makes sense to split migrants up into categories – from refugees of conflict to economic migrants – because in the vast majority of cases the reasons for flight are mixed.



Next, we should create more opportunities for legal migration. That would not only spare many refugees the deadly Mediterranean crossing, but would also benefit Europeans.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Yazidis refugees on a bus in southern Turkey. Photograph: Ilyas Akengin/AFP/Getty Images

Take, for example, elderly care: Europe could give out training visas combined with permission to stay on a few years afterwards to work. That would fill urgent skills gaps in Europe while benefiting the countries of origin when these well-trained professionals do return home.

We must also reform our collaboration with the countries of origin. Human rights cannot be relegated to a secondary issue in our dialogue, as so often human rights abuses are what prompt people to flee. With this in mind, we should be talking not just to governments but also to regional institutions such as the African Union. Local authorities and NGOs must be drawn in: in Africa many governments have little influence beyond the capital, and it is often poor conditions at the periphery that push people to migrate.

In general, we have to think of the circularity of migration: people come for a period, work, send money home, go home, perhaps come back again. This would remove the current pressure on migrants to reach and remain in Europe at all cost.

Franzisca Zanker, peace and conflict fellow at Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institut in Freiburg