The progressive alliance? An ecological viewpoint Warnings! Some people of a delicate disposition who self-identify as ‘progressive’ may find the contents of this essay upsetting. Only those prepared to think unconventionally should read on. A proposal for a progressive alliance, a multi-party non-Tory electoral pact, has been bouncing around the UK political discourse for the last few years. To some it’s an appealing idea whose time might come, just as it has in the past, with the right political leadership, which at the moment is lacking. A more intriguing concept is the true progressive alliance, which relates to the existing political firmament viewed from an ecological stance. It points the way towards a transformational political re-alignment that might eventually emerge. I explain this in due course, but first a little about electoral pacts and the progressive alliance. Given the vagaries of the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system it’s remarkable that after 1945 there haven’t been more formal electoral pacts during general elections. Especially given persistent postwar Tory and Labour parliamentary majorities achieved through minorities of the votes cast. An electoral pact is an arrangement between two or more political parties not to compete against each other in an agreed list of constituencies, thereby avoiding the cannibalization of each other’s votes. A multi-party first past the post system, which only requires a plurality of votes to win a constituency, virtually guarantees permanent minority rule! Electoral pacts offer a greater likelihood that Parliamentary majorities reflect majorities of the electorate. Electoral pacts would seem to be a no-brainer. Not so after 1945, but the story was different prior to 1945. During the period spanning the last great electoral reform act (1884) and the end of World War 2, electoral pacts in the UK were by no means exceptional. The first occurred after the creation of a new three-party political system once the Liberal Unionists split from the Liberals over Irish Home Rule. The Conservatives and Liberal Unionists formed an electoral pact and easily won the 1886 election. The Liberal Unionists eventually merged with the Tories to create a party known as the ‘Unionists’. Today the Tory’s official title is still the Conservative and Unionist Party. The next was agreed at the start of the twentieth century once the Labour Party emerged to create a new three-party system. This was a Centre-Left pact between the Liberals and the nascent Labour Party and operated during the 1906 election, in which the Liberals achieved a landslide majority and Labour gained an important parliamentary foothold. The third was perhaps the most notorious, operated during the 1918 ‘coupon election’. At the end of 1916 the wartime Coalition government underwent a parliamentary coup that 1 ousted Asquith as PM, hoisting Lloyd George into the top job. The Liberals split on the issue, dividing into ‘Asquith Liberals’, who went into opposition, and ‘Lloyd George Liberals’, who formed a coalition government with the Tories. Immediately after the armistice an election was called by Lloyd George. The Tories and Coalition Liberals formed a pact which gave them a huge majority in the subsequent parliament. The fourth occurred in another set of exceptional circumstances. The minority Labour government elected in 1929 collapsed in 1931 during perilous economic circumstances. It was replaced by a coalition National government made up of three parties: the Conservatives and two new parties, Liberal Nationals and National Labour. Soon after an election was called. The 1931 election was properly multiparty, contested by Conservatives, Liberals, the Labour Party, National Labour and the Liberal Nationals. The Conservatives, National Labour and the Liberal Nationals agreed an electoral pact and won a massive parliamentary majority, a feat largely repeated in the 1935 election. Given the success of earlier electoral pacts, it’s surprising that the only notable electoral pact after 1945 was the ‘Alliance’ between the Liberals and the Social Democrat Party to fight the 1983 and 1987 elections. When the Social Democrats split from Labour in 1981 it created an unprecedented four-party system. There was much common ground between the Liberals and SDP. To avoid cannibalising each other’s votes they agreed formal pacts, though they were distinctive from earlier iterations in that both parties fought under common programmes, the Alliance Manifestos. The pacts led to mixed results, especially for the Social Democrats. The two parties merged in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats. Electoral pacts have been canvassed since then, but never successfully. For the 2015 election two successionist parties, the Scottish Nationalists and Plaid Cymru, plus the Green Party relaunched the idea, rebranded as the progressive alliance. But it didn’t fly. The main opposition Labour party was uninterested as it thought it could win alone. More recently, after four consecutive electoral defeats, some within Labour are taking an anti-Tory progressive alliance seriously. Given the Labour Party’s constitution, with its commitment to fight all seats in mainland Britain, it’s unlikely a pact can be in place by the time of the next election; even then, the SNP might need to be included in the calculations, which complicate matters. Plus, there are no signs of an embryonic common programme being agreed, including PR and a new Scottish referendum, around which an electoral pact could be built. Up to this point, the comments have been prosaic, constrained within a conventional straightjacket. What if we go off at a tangent to offer an ecological angle on the progressive alliance? What insight might this provide? First, it’s necessary to define the term ‘progressive’, something the political commentariat don’t bother doing. Progress as a concept is a recent 2 historical invention. For millennia humanity thought of its lot as stable and unchanging, but during the last three centuries that notion fundamentally changed. The new dominant discourse became one of a long historic arc of progress during which humanity unceasingly improved, becoming more numerous, taller, stronger, better educated, more civilized and humane. The causes are many, but two are pivotal: the embrace of science and technology and the emergence of the labile growth society. Although there have been many human casualties in the fall-out from progress, the greatest suffering was (and is being) experienced by other species with whom we share this planet. As humanity (in the round) has progressed rapidly, wild species have just as rapidly regressed: their habitats destroyed, their range reduced and their numbers diminished, many to the point of extinction. The last three hundred years can be called an ‘age of extinction’, not matched since the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. In this context, what does it mean to be a ‘progressive’, what are the indispensable tenets of the faith? First and foremost, a progressive is a growther, a believer in the perpetual growth of economic activity on a finite planet. Progress is quantified using one metric: the growth of GDP per capita. The more sagacious progressives appreciate that the driver of GDP growth is the expansion of spending power; where the expectation of spending goes, technically-advanced production rapidly follows. And the fulcrum of it all is the alchemy of global finance, able to manufacture new spending power out of thin air, which means progressives are addicted to debt. Second, a progressive is a Promethean techno-optimist. Human ingenuity resolves the previously perennial human battle with scarcity; and all problems are solvable if technological solutions are applied, especially in the fields of economics and resource extraction. Even when growth allegedly hits a planetary limit, say carbon emissions, techno-optimism saves the day through ‘green growth’ fueled by renewables. Third, a progressive either ignores or denies the significance of the ecological trade-offs of growth. As progressives are only interested in the progress of one species, what happens to other species is of secondary importance, unless it threatens to undermine human well-being. Hence, disease in domesticated species is of concern; useful wild species, such as pollinating bees, are also deemed important. Another tactic is to deny the trade-offs. Deniers deploy an intriguing argument: a little growth causes pollution, but a lot of growth cures it. Hence, poor nations pollute heavily, whilst rich nations can afford to alleviate environment damage (using more advanced technology) which their affluent electorates demand. Growth creates a clean environment…for affluent humans at least. Fourth, a progressive believes in the sanctity of human rights, though what constitutes a ‘right’ is almost infinitely expandable. Human responsibility is less commonly part of the progressive lexicon. Rights are also reserved for one species alone, the dominant 3 predator of the planet. Other species barely get a mention. Finally, a progressive must judge all proposals by reference to whether they further human freedom and enhance human happiness. Progressives, admittedly, might argue over whether freedom and happiness should be defined individually or collectively, though that is a second-order dispute. Progressives rarely contemplate whether maximising human freedom and happiness is consistent with reducing the scale of ecological imbalance and respecting biospherical limits, presumably for fear of the answer they might reach. The purpose of mainstream political parties is to propagate progress. All of them must adopt its essential tenets, although they can legitimately disagree on the detail. Therefore, Tory, Labour and Liberal parties are united in being progressive. So too the sucessionist parties: the Scottish Nationalists, Plaid Cymru and Sein Fein. The Green Party is avidly progressive. Even an outlier like the Reform Party espouses the progressive faith. This is the true progressive alliance (the ‘United Front’, if you like) of modern politics, the existence of which is vehemently denied by all parties. They pretend that there are great ideological divides, while they differ slightly about the minutiae of progress. How might human rights be extended? How can we build back better? What should be the respective roles of the state and the market? Should the UK be a member state of the EU? How should we manage migration, if at all? But progress itself is never debated, especially the key ideas of ecologists: that progress is a disastrous path for humanity to choose, that infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible, that all problems are not capable of a scientific solution, and that human freedom to procreate and ecological balance are incompatible. To do so would open a Pandora’s Box. Powerful vested interests would be challenged, and no political party that aspires to hold power can survive long without the financial backing of some mighty interest. Far better to distract the electorate with the smoke and mirrors of political controversy. Should this man or woman be Prime Minister? Which party should form a government? Which politician’s stock is rising or falling? And whatever the answer, the progressives remain in power. Ernest Callenbach’s short but fascinating work of political fiction, Ecotopia, sets-out a possible future sustainable, stable-state society made up of a chunk of the western American seaboard that has succeeded from the United States. One peculiar facet of Ecotopia’s political life is a new political alignment: a Progressive Party, which objects to the new arrangements and wants a return to the growth society, faces a Survivalist Party, which argues that humanity must live as near as possible in harmony with nature. Oh, that in our modern politics we could have such a political divide. But it requires a transformational political re-alignment. One in which the true 4 progressive alliance joins together into one party. It would be a broad church embracing many ‘factions’: one made up of the iconoclastic vanguard, which embraces new fads and vogues (especially about human rights); a second the ‘traditionalists’, that only slowly absorbs new-fangled ideas; a third the ideological chameleons, prioritising power over principle; another the moralists, prioritising principle over power; and lastly the shallow, technophilic ‘greens’, who are partial to greenwashing. The alliance would face an ecologically-orientated Survivalist Party committed to creating a sustainable society, which would require the most profound economic and socio-cultural change. This political re-alignment would provide the electorate with a genuine choice about which future path humanity should take. I fear the re-alignment won’t happen in my lifetime or anytime soon after that. For we are not yet at, or anywhere near, a political crossroads which might follow a fundamental economic and ecological crisis. That is for future generations to face. Brendan Sheehan Leeds January 2022 5