Carrying the card (1)

It’s no fun being a Belgian social democrat at the moment.

The francophone social democrats, the Parti Socialiste, are tangled in the European Parliament corruption scandal, hard on the heels of a scandal about Walloon parliamentary expenses. It’s two more entries on a long list of scandals in the party going back decades. The environment is difficult - its traditional voter base is being nibbled away from the populist left by the rise of the Workers’ Party (PTB), and by the Greens in the middle. Across the language divide it faces a possible nationalist/far-right government with whom forming a government would be near-impossible. Its Dutch-speaking counterpart has a very prominent leader (of what is now a movement rather than a party) who seems more than tempted by the nativist rhetoric of Danish social democrats. In a recent survey, three quarters of Belgians thought that they did not have a voice in politics, and a bare half supported the continuation of a party-based system, with the rest wanting either more direct democracy, or dictatorship.

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In that environment, why did I join, and why do I stay a member? In the next few posts, I want to explore that question - genuinely, rather than as a party advert and personally, rather than as a poli-sci paper.

I don’t know whether the political party as an institution still has a purpose. Even if it does, I don’t know how much individual membership matters. Even if it matters, I don’t know whether the scandals in my party should outweigh my broad agreement with their positions.

There are days when I think that reviving and reinventing the political party is an essential task in rebuilding democracy.

There are days when I think that being a party member is like driving steam trains - something that gives you a warm historical glow, and a chance to drink beer with fellow nerds.

Part of it is about finding something that expresses the political ideas I believe in - my political identity, if you like.

Identity is a difficult concept. My Polish identity, for instance, is not something I chose. I grew up in a very English environment. My Polish is very bad. My identity is only visible because of my surname. I would be just as Polish if my father had been Peter Paltridge and my mother Dorota Zacharzewksa, but I would be the so British Anthony Paltridge.

My Polish identity is part of how I see myself, but unsought and inevitable - a birthright in the most literal sense. Post-Brexit, I didn’t apply for a Polish passport, I applied for “confirmation of Polish citizenship” - I had either always been a Pole, or I never had been, Schrödinger’s Slav.

Other aspects of my identity - what I talk about, the clothes I wear, the car I don’t have - are personal choices. Informed by how I am or would like to be seen, and informed by what I believe, but not core to what I believe.

Identities often overlap - I’m British, I will soon be Belgian, and I’m Polish, so I’m also a European. I like going to the cinema, to the opera, and to the football.

Political identity, however, is exclusive. I support internationalism, so I oppose nationalism. I support equal rights, so I oppose discrimination.

Nobody is born into a party, but everyone has a set of political views, which they did not choose at random. Even if political calculus makes someone vote differently from their ideal, even if they have half-formed political ideas, even if they are mistaken on which party stands for what - there will be a party that is closest to their position on the issues that they care about most.

For many people, there would only be one, because parties are ruthless capitalists in a world whose currency is votes. An essential part of their work is making themselves the exclusive electoral vehicle for their core interests.

Sometimes those interests are economic, as with trade unions and the socialist movement. Sometimes they are cultural. A conservative party seeks to conserve, the party for the animals (nine seats in the Dutch Parliament, one in the European Parliament) cares about animals.

From that starting point, network effects give them a strong incentive to “sweep” the space around their core positions to maximise their votes.

Parties will seek to reduce duplication - there is no point in two parties battling over the same agenda. Even in the purest proportional representation systems, it would cost them attention and cost each of them the chance at seats. More seats and more votes mean more attention for your ideas. Far better to work together, even if there are internal disagreements and clashes of ego.

Parties will try to own new issues - for example, climate change as an issue started with the Green Party and has gradually been taken on as an issue by every party (even if only to oppose action).

Parties will also try to avoid falling apart. Too many incompatible ideas or people inside the party, and you risk the stress of coordination becoming too great. The party either splits or descends into internal conflict.

These different pressures mean that parties want to grow, but not grow so large that their internal contradictions become impossible to manage. The electoral system has a role to play in how big they get.

In systems that are very pure PR, such as the Netherlands or Israel, the electoral disadvantage for small parties is not great, and so neither is the electoral punishment for splitting. That means there are a lot of small parties.

In majoritarian systems such as the UK, the electoral punishment for splitting is enormous, so as voters have fragmented, parties have increasingly begun to resemble loveless marriages.

Rising individualism and decreasing class identification have changed the party system. Voter preferences are no longer tidily marshalled into the big post-war political traditions of socialism, liberalism and Christian Democracy. The mass party of mass compromises no longer reflects the way people want to express their preferences.

Instead, new political movements arise. Sometimes these are anti-system parties, trying to build their base with people discouraged by politics, or who have not previously voted. Sometimes they are personalised movements, like Macronism, that seek to present a mainstream programme built around an individual figure.

Old or new, the fundamental logic of parties as machines for gathering political positions and turning them into votes has not changed. Nor has their incentive to defend the space around the core issues, even if the number of small parties has increased in most places and so voters have more options.

The consequence is that if you have clear political views, you probably have a party to vote for, whether you like them or not. Short of creating your own bespoke party (as a few have tried), you are stuck with a very limited choice.

“Who else are you going to vote for?” is not the most upbeat case for political parties. but in the next post I’ll think about why parties matter for good government, even if the parties themselves are not well-run.

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