'All In: How We Build a Country That Works', by Lisa Nandy (published by HarperNorth, 2022)
After its ill-starred flirtation with the Corbinistas, many of us believed that the British Labour Party was 'all in'. By which I mean, exhausted, like a long-distance runner. We saw this years ago when Michael Foot and Tony Benn, both thoughtful chaps, took the party into a wilderness from which, as some believe and many don't, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown rescued it, for a while at least, taking it to the middle ground after the so-called Thatcherite revolution.
The Cameroons reinvigorated theories of the market, reaching for its 'invisible hand', enough to establish it as the default option for the type of democracy they thought the British people ought to have. Against which, it seemed, there was Labour's default option – state intervention – regarded by many taking socialism too far.
This crude binarism is reflected in the polarised debate in the Westminster parliament and the public sphere, and on social media where opinion rates as the yardstick for truth. Lisa Nandy, MP for Wigan and Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, argues that for too long such political thinking is stuck. It not only ill-equips Britain to manage its post-Brexit and post-Empire place in the world. It insidiously and transparently excludes most of 'the makers, the carers and the creators' by privileging a power elite (in wealth and geographic terms) determined to hold on to power and mellifluously claiming that wealth and power will always trickle down to us all.
In her book
, Lisa Nandy defines the term 'all in' as a platform and slogan to argue that, far from being a collective political and economic endeavour, the British system leaves 'too much wealth in too few hands'. It over-privileges London and the south-east of England to the disadvantage of 'the north' and other parts of Britain, and has created a country made up of winners and losers. This is an argument working on several levels.
One is philosophical, going back to Adam Smith's ideas about the market, which she alleges Tory thinking has taken pick 'n' mix for its thoughts on that invisible hand while ignoring his 'moral sentiments' about social justice and civil society (the stuff writers like Michael Sandel often speak about). Lisa Nandy picks apart the myth of 'meritocracy' – that Gramscian weasel-word implying aspiration yet reinforcing (but not legitimating) that power elite.
Another, predictably, uses party politics to indict series of Tory governments (from Cameron to Truss and Sunak, with a wing-mirror view of Thatcher) for their naïve belief in trickle-down economics – that a rising tide lifts all boats. This has highlighted the conflict between labour and capital, that old dialectic. Being a northern politician, well aware of Red and Blue Wall psephological shifts these days, Lisa Nandy is determined, however broad brush her critique turns out to be, to ground her argument in local examples. For her, as for many both north and south of the Border, regional and local places are where the real decision-making power should lie. When it doesn't, unfairness flourishes and poor decisions, remote and often merely expedient, are made. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Readers don't need to agree with the party politics to concede that, in many ways, Lisa Nandy's argument is right on the button. A General Election is a year or so away and interest groups are already bidding for power. Her examples are telling and topical – the local football team dismembered because a wealthy owner abroad chose to disinvest, erratic support for energy development in Grimsby, predatory purchase of the public space by private landlords, and political and media scepticism about the power of communities and trade unions to level the playing field (as when Unite took on Go North West buses).
This is a book where the reader needs to sort out what they're actually reading about. Is it a general discussion of the changing geopolitical environment in which Brexitland Britain is trying to make its way (with all the pressures of a war in Ukraine, the rising economic and military might of China, and the decline of post-Trump USA as protector of democracy)? Is it a general discussion of something else – the state we're in, how we've got into it (remote centralised decisions, lack of accountability, disincentives for participation at regional and local levels) and all too little opportunity to 'negotiate the shared challenges in the interests of the many'?
Probably both, along with her own political agendas as Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up (Labour needs to display its credentials here) and as an MP for a northern constituency in England. Anyone who follows the news will recognise the to-and-fro of promises to 'the north', let alone the mixed messages and false promises of devolved power. Lisa Nandy's catchphrase seems to be 'of the people, for the people, by the people, and WITH the people' (my capitals). That is what she means when she refers to the makers, carers and creators, to the frustrations of communities who see broken industries and empty shops, to the tendency of central government to privilege power elites at their expense.
If the book succeeds at all, it is because she roots her arguments in real examples. She is wise not to make cheap political points (eg 'what Labour would have done…', 'what Labour promises to do…'). The tactics come later when polling starts, when in Scotland Labour try to claw back from the SNP that democratic base they claim spiritually to have always had and spoken for. She argues for a 'tilt' of the balance back to communities, especially those left out in the cold (literally and metaphorically).
Policy initiatives are clearly in the pipelines of the Labour Party – think Gordon Brown's recent theorising about new paradigms. We're all waiting for some clear strategic position from them, many wondering how they plan to move on from that default position of state intervention. Lisa Nandy rightly highlights the success of strong women in politics.
We all know how crude economic measures of well-being really are, and long to drill down to something like the truth. We know too that Labour, at worst, gets nostalgic about the glory days of its own past, and even tolerates the ambivalences of the Blair administration. The jury is out for Labour. Perhaps they have a phoenix in their back pocket.
Dr Stuart Hannabuss is a writer and reviewer based in Scotland
