The Embrace

The current government of the United Kingdom, led by the Conservative Party, is deeply unpopular. The incompetence of former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss has plunged the polling numbers for the next general election for Tories to their lowest point in a generation. In the face of this, it’s likely the British Labour Party will retake the British House of Commons for the first time since 2010 and be in charge of the country once again. One would expect Labour to energize its base and appeal to disaffected swing voters by highlighting the incompetence of the Tories, given their extreme likelihood to win the next election. Instead, Labour, under the leadership of Keir Starmer, has become significantly more moderate to the point where many of its stances are indistinguishable from those of the Tories in an effort to win its former red wall back (working-class, blue-collar areas that historically voted Labour, even amid national landslides, akin to the American Democratic Party’s blue wall) and break the Conservatives’ blue wall (white-collar, suburban areas that have historically voted Conservative).

Labour has embraced trans-exclusionary radical feminism as a result of trans panic in British media, refused to raise taxes on the wealthy, opposed a low-emissions zone in the United Kingdom, and has refused to support expansions of labor rights. Through this moderate strategy, Labour has left behind its most traditionally vulnerable supporters. This seems reminiscent of the Australian Labor Party’s embrace of Third Wayism with their leader in 2019, Bill Shorten, who failed to unseat Scott Morrison’s Liberal-National Coalition in an upset in their general election that year, which presents the worst risk of triangulation. This appears to be an attempt to replicate the strategies of former premiers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, who began the strategy of significant triangulation and moderation, but even they have called out Starmer for being “too cautious.”

Here in America, the Democratic Party has, for the most part, done the opposite, despite a less clear election lead. The Democratic Party has aimed to protect LGBTQ+ rights from Republicans attacking them, supported abortion rights into the second trimester, embraced legislation to fight climate change, and embraced tax hikes on the wealthy. The Democratic Party has substantially more party discipline than its U.K. counterpart, with members who opposed its agenda being cut off from the Democratic donor base and likely being denied re-election (Kyrsten Sinema being one of them, leading to her switch as an Independent). This strategy has worked. In every election result since Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) (which overturned Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992)), Democrats have consistently overperformed (and where they have not, other reasons have been at play), and have surpassed the Democratic presidential margin by an average of six points in elections held this year. Democrats are also crucially currently favored to hold the Virginia State Senate and retake control of the Virginia House of Delegates this year, which will deny Governor Glenn Youngkin the ability to pass restrictions on LGBTQ+ rights and abortion. Their strategy has proven well in both the red wall of white-collar suburbs (where Republicans have historically dominated, but have been weakened since the 1970s as the Republicans grow more conservative and radical) and the blue wave of Northeastern/Midwestern blue-collar industrial towns and farm areas where many voters are secular (where Democrats’ strength in recent years has diminished), unlike what the British Labour Party believes with similar demographics in their nation. Yet there is a concerning belief among many analysts, journalists, and others that the Democratic Party is not electorally successful, that its current strategy is too politically extreme, and that the party must moderate to win, even if it harms many of their own voters. This belief is influenced by the politics of a different era.

The 1980s were not a great time to be a member of the Democratic Party. In 1980, the conservative movement finally had its breakthrough victory on the presidential level, with the election of former Republican Governor of California Ronald Reagan in a landslide, winning 489 electoral votes and the popular vote by double digits. He defeated incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter amid a stagnant economy and high inflation (double that of today) in what was known as “stagflation,” which broke the Keynesian economics at the core of the New Deal Coalition that had been dominant since the 1930s to the point of failure. The landslide victory had coattails in the United States Senate, where Republicans won a majority of the seats for the first time since 1954, with 12 defeats of Democratic members, and the United States House of Representatives, which gave the “conservative coalition” an ideological majority, forcing Speaker Tip O’Neill to allow Reagan’s conservative priorities to pass in exchange for short-term midterm gains in 1982 and 1986. In 1984, Reagan easily defeated former Vice President Walter Mondale, winning every state except Mondale’s home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia and the popular vote by 18 points. In 1988, Vice President George H.W. Bush comfortably defeated Governor of Massachusetts Mike Dukakis, winning 426 electoral votes and the popular vote by double digits. In the 1994 midterm elections, Republicans picked up 54 seats in the House of Representatives, flipping the chamber for the first time since 1954, and eight seats in the Senate, flipping the chamber once more, in what came to be known as the Republican Revolution as the conservative movement broke through on the congressional level, and creating a Republican majority in Congress for most of the next 12 years.

All of these landslide losses created a skepticism of liberal and progressive ideas, fearing it would lead to more electoral loss. A new faction took control of the Democratic Party by the 1990s: the New Democrats. There was a heavy willingness on the part of this faction to moderate heavily, especially on economic issues, but with some moderation on social issues such as a “safe, legal, and rare” position on abortion and the Defense of Marriage Act that refused to confer federal recognition on same-sex marriages. President Bill Clinton was a product of the New Democrats, especially with welfare reform with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, which “ended welfare as we know it.” President Barack Obama, to an extent, was also heavily influenced by the New Democrats, having self-described himself as a “University of Chicago Democrat” (the University of Chicago producing many prominent neoliberal economists, such as Milton Friedman), supporting free trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and originally considered cuts to Social Security in his 2013 “Grand Bargain” with Republicans. All of this was understandably necessary in the 1990s and 2000s for political survival.

However, such triangulation is not necessary anymore. The United States is far more fiscally and especially socially liberal than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. Attitudes on social issues such as abortion and LGBTQ rights have changed drastically, especially in the past decade. Economic populism, which then influences social populism, has seen a resurgence in recent years due to a generally shared sense that economic conservatism has failed, and both conservatives and liberals have jumped to embrace this with the rise of figures such as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. The Democratic Party’s base has increasingly become college-educated voters who are socially liberal and economically progressive, with education strengthening their beliefs, and are high-propensity voters, turning out frequently and in most elections. Triangulation on issues would offend the Democratic Party’s base and likely depress turnout significantly. The Democratic Party’s most conservative voters are often voters of color with strong religious beliefs who will not abandon the Democratic Party due to racial polarization, and social and economic moderation on certain issues would actually hurt them the most. Even secular blue-collar voters are often socially moderate and economically populist. Many suburban swing voters hold liberal views on social issues and progressive views on economic issues. As a result, compromising on social and economic issues would actually hurt the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party must reject the triangulation seen by its liberal counterparts elsewhere, such as in the United Kingdom. Such moderation is flawed in a belief that the politics of our time are like the politics of the 1980s and 1990s when conservatism possessed incredible influence over the nation’s politics. The party would not be helped at all by moderation; rather, it would be hurt because not standing up for the most vulnerable members of society is inconsistent with any notion of liberalism. The actions of the Labour Party of the United Kingdom are an enormously flawed and risky decision by Keir Starmer to maximize short-term gains, and its replication is a risky move for any liberal party. Only a liberal party that actually embraces its roots in a socially liberal and economically progressive environment can expect to have long-term success.