Ideology strikes back

Hasan Suroor

RECENTLY, the British Conservative Party’s semi-official house journal, The Spectator, ran a cover page story with the dramatic headline ‘The Dying of the Right’. Inside, though, it offered little new insight beyond moaning about the civil war that’s tearing the party apart after its general election humiliation. But there was a point to that headline. The centre-right is, indeed, on its knees in much of Europe — France, Italy, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Sweden. And across the Atlantic. Except in France, everywhere else the swing is towards the extreme right.  

Notably, the same week that The Spectator was mourning the demise of the centre-right, Tony Blair, former Labour prime minister, was touring TV studios lamenting the  dire state of the centre-left and the Labour Party’s lurch to the far left under Jeremy Corbyn. While he was happy at its unexpectedly good performance in the recent election, he insisted that “it’s a surer route to power to fight from the centre” and warned against the consequences of imposing “an unreconstructed far left programme”.  Both on the right and the left, the centre ground has collapsed under the weight of a rising tide of populist nationalism.

The far right in India is having its own “spring”, and rather a robust one. But the Indian story is fundamentally different from what’s happening in the West. For, the rise of Narendra Modi has nothing to do with the genuine concerns of ordinary people, and the phenomenon he represents didn’t suddenly burst upon us in 2014. It had been in the works for years as part of the RSS’s long-cherished “Hindu India” project, and Modi just happened to be the man to pull it all together at the right moment — with not a little help from a “secular” political establishment whose cynical use of minority vote fuelled the RSS propaganda of Muslim appeasement. Besides, secularists  failed — some would say wilfully failed — to take the threat from Hindu nationalists seriously; even now there is no sign that they are ready, or have the will, to fight back.

Meanwhile, the crisis in the West is really a delayed revenge against what happened in the 1990s when a new generation of modern and “pragmatic” leaders, particularly on the left, got together to purge mainstream politics of  ideology — and nearly succeeded in doing so. Well, it is payback time now. Ideology has struck back after more than a decade of an imitative one-size-fits-all politics that saw both the left and the right abandon their traditional ideological positions and move to the centre ground amid a scramble to attract the non-committed, new middle class and aspirational voters. It was called  “Third Way” politics. 

Propounded by British sociologist Anthony Giddens and popularised notably by Blair and Bill Clinton, it was an attempt to find a middle political ground by reconciling extreme left and right positions. And it took off like a rocket dominating the best part of the 1990s and the first decade of the new millennium. Its most dramatic effect was felt in Britain. Besides helping revive a comatose Labour Party into an ideologically-defanged election-winning machine (“New Labour”) under Blair, it also contributed to a makeover of the Tories. Transforming them from a raving right-wing Thatcherite outfit  (famously castigated  by Theresa May for its “nasty party” image) into a party that went on to embrace gay marriage, started to talk about “compassionate conservatism”, and champion gender and racial equality.

 “Third Way” politics effectively de-legitimised ideology which came to be openly scoffed at; perceived as something regressive and belonging to a bygone era. The age of left-right ideological divide, we were told, was over; we were now into a brave new world of practical and common sense politics driven by what worked for people — and not by old ideological prescriptions. In the famous words of China’s great moderniser Deng Xiao Ping, the colour of the cat didn’t matter so long as it caught the mouse. Political identities were sought to be ruthlessly erased in pursuit of a centrist broad church. And over a period of time, most mainstream parties started to look alike. Left and right became interchangeable terms. So, we saw Tony Blair being described as an “heir” to Margaret Thatcher; and David Cameron, a Tory moderniser, become heir to Blair! On both sides, grassroots groups and supporters came to be looked down upon as political dinosaurs trapped in a time-warp.

Initially, to many, this blurring of ideological dividing lines seemed rather liberating: a  freedom from the tyranny of ideological orthodoxy. But it also robbed people of their political choices. Only party labels remained; whichever labels you voted for you got broadly the same policies. This bred resentment; elections turned into a mere formality, and politics lost its appeal leading to massive popular disengagement from mainstream politics. Party memberships dropped, and voter turnout at elections declined to a historic low.  More significantly, the rush to the “centre” caused an ideological vacuum allowing fringe groups such as the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in Britain, Five Star Movement in Italy, National Front in France, and the Tea Party movement in America to step into it. Similarly, on the left, a host of new groups like Syriza and Podemos sprung up while previously marginal parties like Britain’s Liberal Democrats surged in popularity. 

The point is that political choices matter to people, especially to those whose choices in other vital areas of daily life are already limited because of their social or economic background.  As the American political scientist Jan-Werner Muller in his new book — What is Populism? — points out the “convergence on a ‘Third Way’ reinforced the sense among voters that they were being offered elections without choice.” Left-wing theorist Chantal Mouffe likened it to “a mere choice between Coke and Pepsi”. 

The result was that many couldn’t stand it anymore what they saw as a cynical elitist plot to impose a confected consensus around a model of democracy that they believed was essentially undemocratic and meant to benefit “a few at the cost of many”, to paraphrase Corbyn. That set off a modern version of the peasant’s revolt, but as often happens with unorganised blind rage, it was hijacked by groups who had their own agendas around immigration, Islam, globalisation, etc. Rest is history: Brexit, Trump, Marine Le Pen, Bernie Sanders and Corbyn. Will liberals be able to roll back this tide of populism without compromising too much? Or will nationalism become the new orthodoxy? In India, it already has. As for the West, the jury is still out. 

The writer is a London-based commentator