'The hope for reform isn’t new parties but a hung parliament in which the price of cooperation is electoral reform'

Neal Lawson is director of Compass, which campaigns for a progressive alliance

With all that’s going on you probably missed the launch of a new political party last week. It’s called True and Fair and is led by the redoubtable Gina Millar who famously took the government to court over its handling of Brexit.

It was timed as a ‘New year, new party, new hope’ initiative but apparently only 13 turned up.  But would it have been very different if the Tories weren’t in turmoil and Labour hadn’t rocketed to a 10% over night poll lead?  Probably not. Because it’s the electoral reality and framing of these new parties that is the problem – not the timing.

Millar’s initiative was entirely what you would expect from a centrist move – bright colours, a rather hackneyed cross spectrum of people exclaiming on a warmup video how bad things are and how they just want a fair deal, and a speech from her calling for politicians who aren’t right or left but know the difference between right and wrong. It was solid but unaspiring – a new party but not a new politics.

Millar’s problem isn’t that politics is working or that people are content. It’s not and they aren’t.  Her problem is that another party, especially one that feels as bland as this, has neither the roots nor the soil in which to grow.  A party must stand for something and someone – it needs to be the agent of a subject.  Sure, you can pitch beyond left and right, but there must be some intellectual and ideological substance to the ground you stand on.

Macron’s En Marche was a success not just because of him as a credible and charismatic leader but because it offered a reasonably robust attempt to define what a liberal France could and should be. Being true and fair, decent and honest etc are all well and good – but they aren’t load stars to inspire, sustain and direct a new movement or party.

So, if True and Fair lack roots, what about the soil in which it’s trying to land? This is unremittingly tough. Our politics is dominated by two big parties because it is designed to.  First past the post rewards those who have a large and evenly distributed support. Breaking through that is nigh on impossible. In 2015, UKIP got almost four million votes and returned only one MP.  It can be done, or you can make an impact if your offer is defined.  Think of the SNP and Independence. But, if the SDP, in the midst of Thatcherism, Michael Foots ill-fated leadership of Labour and with the nationally renowned Gang of Four couldn’t make the breakthrough, what hope Gina Millar or anyone else?

Of course, our party-political system is fracturing. SNP dominance in Scotland is the biggest aspect of that and the Greens have got stronger but can’t break out of one seat. Nothing yet challenges the two-party system – and Turkeys – are not voting any time soon for Xmas or electoral reform.

There was little mainstream news coverage of the launch so it’s unlikely that this newest of new parties will have picked up the tens of thousands of members or supporters they will need. As I write they had precisely 1700 followers on Twitter a week after launch. Unless Millar has £millions to plough into organisation, True and Fair will sink without much of a trace.

Because this initiative, admittedly with a bit more heft than most, and a leader who looks the conventional part, is just one of a regular stream of new parties that is aimed at  breaking the mould – but don’t. Thirteen new parties have been registered with the Electoral Commission in the last six months alone: like the Breakthrough Party and The Northern Independence Party.  Their ambition is to be admired but it’s hard not to see them as wasted efforts. 

The central pitch of True and Fair seems to be that we all need to come together to create a rather ill-defined better society – but the practice of this means dividing the progressive vote even further. Where will True and Fair find any electoral success other than in metropolitan, Remain heartlands already represented by the Lib Dems and Labour or in Blue Wall seats the Lib Dems are targeting and are best placed to win? This move makes no electoral sense.

Of course, Millar might be doing it purely to make a point or tilt politics in a direction of her choosing, as UKIP did over Europe – but that was a decades long, slow burn venture. Or she is out to disrupt the system, to deliberately split the vote and hope something emerges out of the chaos? There was no strategic clarity from the launch or on the website.

But of course, Millar is right, like everyone else we can see the dysfunctional politics before us – a creaking Victorian construct in which voices are ignored, populism festers and events such Brexit and possibly the breakup the UK are virtually encouraged. But how to change it if a new party isn’t the answer? For a while The Independent Group (TIG) looked interesting as a construct – it took disgruntled MPs from different parties and gave them a home – it was loose and flexible. But then morphed into Change UK and the life was sucked out of it.

It is coalitions in and between parties, with connections to outside movements that offer a sense of hope.  It’s small scale but in Cardiff, Plaid Cymru and the Greens Party have forged an alliance with a local citizens movement called Common Ground and will be contesting seats at the next election. Nationally in Wales Labour and Plaid Cymru have struck a deal to boost democracy and in Scotland the SNP have brought the Greens into government.

The now ubiquitous talk of a ‘progressive alliance’, which Compass the organisation I’m Director of champions, looks to define and unite common interests and give them electoral bite in a system in which the one party of the right can always outgun the divided parties of the centre and left.

Of course, proportional representation is the answer to a more effective voice for citizens, but to get it we need to win seats under first post the post and create a parliament willing to vote for reform. Another new party probably just makes that task harder, as it deflects  energy and resources.

As our political system continues to disappoint more new parties will almost inevitably appear. We know Jeremy Corbyn is toying with the idea of setting up a new left party. Like Millar, the commitment to a better politics is to be lauded, but more splits and more division won’t help. The hope for reform isn’t new parties but a hung parliament in which the price of cooperation is electoral reform – which itself is no panacea but does unlock a more vibrant and creative political field in which different concepts of the good society can at least be pitched. That would be true and fair. 

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