Don't despair - organise.
There’s been a lot of understandable despair on the left since the election result. But there have also been more positive reports: a surge in interest in organisations campaigning on the ground, to protect from the worst of the damage yet to come. So what can we do in 2020 to change things for the better?
Here’s seven ideas for how we can move out of our echo chambers and into communities across the UK this year. It is non-exhaustive – pick and choose, and add what’s best for you. The crucial thing is that we act: to create hope, change the debate, and make an impact however we can.
1. Support Extinction Rebellion. For all the criticisms about tactics and organisational structure, they did more than anyone or any organisation to put climate change on the agenda last year – both in the UK and globally. The rest is noise.
2. Get involved in a party. If you’re not in one already (and particularly if you live in England), now is a crucial time to get involved in Labour. This government can only be stopped through progressive parties winning. Who wins the Labour leadership contest will have nation-changing ramifications (the deadline to join is Jan 20th), and there are elections coming up for councils and mayoralties across the country this year. Help shape the resistance to hard right dogma and the attacks on our social fabric that are yet to come.
3. Back organisations working across the left. Compass are great, among others. They recognise the good in different parties and the need to work together. We’re pluralist or we’re doomed.
4. Live greener. As the climate crisis hits hard, we all have to work harder on reducing our environmental impact. Reducing meat consumption is one of the best ways of doing this. Not everyone will become a vegetarian or vegan – the big change will come from all of us cutting down on meat (particularly red meat), flying less, pressuring big companies, and switching to renewable energy. PS: You can support progressive media AND switch to 100% renewable energy through Ecotricity here. Each switcher funds half a day or journalists’ time.
5. Build our own media. We can say ‘the media cost the left the election’ all we want, but it’s meaningless unless we try and change that, try and build a fair debate. The only guaranteed way of doing that is supporting hard-hitting, progressive journalism. Left Foot Forward are on the up and only exist thanks to reader support. But I have to be honest: it’s a really tough funding environment. Become a Supporter to fight for a better media – and consider backing other great radical media organisations like openDemocracy, Red Pepper, Tribune, The Conversation or whoever you think shines a light on the right.
6. We have to tackle the democratic crisis. Westminster isn’t working, and Westminster’s broken voting system meant a little-over 1% rise in support for the Tories handed them a landslide. Millions more were forced to vote ‘tactically’ and hold their nose, while parties stood aside in hundreds of seats – depriving voters of choice. Groups like the Electoral Reform Society (who I work with), Unlock Democracy and Make Votes Matter are pushing for the real reform we need. There are big attacks coming on our already-embattled democracy – from voter ID to flawed boundary changes and yet more cronyistic Lords appointments.
7. Get involved in grassroots campaigning – from trade unions, anti-racism organisations like HOPE Not Hate, to activist groups like ACORN, who fight for renters’ rights. We can build community power to protect from the worst impacts of Brexit and the ideological assaults on the welfare state.
There’s huge force in collective action. But this is also a moment for experimentation, discussion, and new ways of engaging in politics. See what works.
Let’s move out of our echo chambers and stand up for our communities across the UK. Don’t despair – organise. Happy new year!
Josiah Mortimer is Editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter.
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15 Responses to “7 ways to change British politics for the better in 2020”
Francis McGonigal
4. Live greener. “the big change will come from all of us cutting down on meat (particularly red meat), flying less, pressuring big companies, and switching to renewable energy.”
I would argue that curbing population growth is as important as any of these.
gg poulloin
Not sure about extinction rebellion, don’t think any elected government can or will do anything about the climate emergency other than talk, They could tax gas guzzlers off the road now for example..
Alan Bond
It was the tory media ‘wot’ one it – the lies worked or the tories would NOT have got into power on a 1% increase in their vote. As it is just 31% of the electorate voted tory and that is called ‘democracy’ – what a laugh the tories are having at our expense. Worse is to come as they gerrymander there way into permanent power just like Hitler in Germany in the 1930s. They will disenfranchise as many people as they can and alter constituency boundaries in their favour. These are dangeous time my friends and they can only get worse if we leave the protection of the EU. My own view is that the result of the election is unconstitutional as more people didn’t vote at all than voted for ANY of the parties involved.
CharlievBrowne
1 ‘Population Matters’ David Attenborough dir
2 It would be a tragedy if the responsible extra-parliamentary left + right wasted their time fighting each other as the world approaches a ‘Perfect Storm’ involving global warming; reverse-colonisation/theocratic creeping conquest; over-population; over-production/consumption; freedom of capital to expand economies to the point of the destruction of the planet; speculative building of executive housing estates on Britain’s farmland needed to absorb greenhouse gasses + feed us etc
3 Gilets Jaunes tend to be working-class extra parliamentary folks of a left+right, rather conservative persuasion
4 The general realisation that Britain’s democratic institutions are not fit for purpose; and that the democratic initiative made available to the common person in Britain is equal to the decision-making available in one game of noughts-and-crosses every five years
(A much-derided far-right party has launched a Change.org petition requesting the introduction of a Participatory Democracy element to our democratic processes – what on earth have they been reading?)
Someone or other once said something to the effect that long-term quantitative changes would eventually produce a sudden qualitative change
The long-term changes must have been commerce + the industrial revolution which has served many but not all of us well?
The sudden qualitative change must be global warming?
Regards
Michael McManus
Good points except for the first, dare I say?
XR is just an ultra fringe of the capitalist/bourgeois climate scam – called climate change only because the warming has failed to appear except locally in parts of the north.
All (ALL) other predictions over the last 40 years have been wrong – Gulf Stream still there, no sea level rise of several feet, no 4c rise everywhere, no extinctions, no starvations, no permanent droughts, and despite the MSM alarmism no more fires or storms than normal (but far fewer deaths therefrom).
Who benefits? landowners housing solar/wind farms. The steel, electronics and construction companies and the posh boys and girls filling chairs in the various government departments and ‘charities’.
Who loses? The working class whose skills are deemed polluting whether mining coal or making cars. Even if they can afford electric cars (expensive battery life 5 years by the way) where do they plug them in – most of us don’t have driveways. How do the less affluent heat their homes – with electricity? already a multiple of the cost of gas.
Weather forecasters are not physicist and cannot even tell you next weeks weather. Three times this winter heavy snow has been forecast – the last time for Xmas day. What happened to it. I could go on about cloud-cover equations and the scandal of the Stevenson boxes but my guess is I wouldn’t be understood.
Two expts anyone can try at home:
Check the forecast every day for a week (the written summary not the arm waving live obfuscation). 40% accuracy is typical – same models basically for 2050.
Note the temp changes as you drive from home to shops – sometimes as much as 3c within a mile. yet we are told there’s been 0.3c rise in the last 100 years and that’s reliable and alarming.