Chris Clarke - The Dark Knight and the Puppet Master

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First published as Warring Fictions by Rowman & Littlefield 2019
Revised edition published under the current title by Penguin Books 2020

Copyright Policy Network, 2019, 2020

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Cover design: Tommy McGuinness

ISBN: 978-0-141-99436-9

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The true progressive giants are radicals of the real those who accept that true democracy implies pluralism, and that a plural society is self-evidently made up of many people and kinds, only a few of them truly exploitative and criminal, most just pursuing their own version of the good life as tradition and conviction has offered it to them.

Adam Gopnik, review of Clement Attlee biography , New York Times

Differences between pro- and anti-Corbyn wings have been the subject of painful tensions in the British Labour Party in recent years. The Dark Knight and the Puppet Master traces these tensions and similar divisions in Europe and the US to their source. It suggests theyre thanks to profound differences in the narratives governing our politics. The resulting divide, between the two sides of Labour, is between conflicting perspectives, not conflicting values.

To make this argument, the book sets out two outlooks on the left:

• Left populism is a style of progressive politics based on the idea that only left-wing ideas can be moral, that most problems are deliberately imposed from above, and that society is in a right-wing decline. Most common on the Corbynite far left (though not unique to it), left populism deploys stories of conflict, insurgency and crisis.
• Left pluralism is an egalitarian politics more common among non-Corbynites. It rejects the idea that the political spectrum is a moral spectrum, and accepts a diversity of values. Left pluralists see social problems as organic, complex and the product of conflicting demands not as authored. They also tend to be more upbeat about increased interconnectedness with other nations.

These divergences make cooperation hard, with agreement about the context were working in close to impossible. They explain why the left often splits, why relationships descend into bitterness, why arguments result in non sequiturs. The Dark Knight and the Puppet Master looks to identify the nub of the differences. It explores three narratives, which are believed in by the populist left but not by the pluralist left.

Underpinning my argument are two convictions about British politics. The first is that regaining a rational, civil and democratic debate should be the priority for people of all leanings. Until trust in the motives of others is restored, discourse is based on logic, not conspiracy, and respect for opponents returns, politicians cannot address other problems. So, Im asking that the left specifically the populist left takes the steps necessary to stop Britain being consumed by US-style culture wars.

The second conviction is that the crisis of socialism and social democracy, which has put progressives out of power across Europe, is easier to solve than we think. The adage that we have run out of ideas may be true. But there are answers, electorally and through policy-making, if we want them. Yet this is impossible when every conversation is distorted by sacred falsehoods and an atmosphere that straitjackets debate. The thinking needed to tackle global wealth inequality or address climate change is shut down by the visceral stories which guide left populism.

The book is therefore written from an openly left-pluralist stance, and in opposition to the populist approach. It asks how we on the left can jettison our destructive myths and folklore, in order to achieve an egalitarian society.

W. H. Auden called the 1930s a low dishonest decade, In the UK this has played out in Scottish nationalism, Brexit and the resurgence of the Bennite left. It has seen both main parties close to splitting at the seams, with a short-lived, non-populist breakaway, The Independent Group (TIG), registering as Change UK and then disbanding. The sudden crisis caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic occurring at the dawn of the 2020s makes the future even more uncertain in political and economic terms.

The rise of populism has been driven, in part, by globalisation (technological change, inequality, migration and other consequences of globalisation). This has generated problems which are often transnational and chaotic, and beyond the immediate control of national politicians. The chasm this creates feeds us-and-them dynamics and is exacerbated by twenty-four-hour news and social media. These phenomena magnify and polarise.

The populist movements this has spawned are not driven by rational arguments or policy goals. Because the problems are hard, and demand compromise, they are instead fuelled by gestures, symbolism and anger. Its this that has led to the term post-truth politics a shorthand for a climate where rational debate is eclipsed by emotion and identity. Donald Trump, for instance, claimed that he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and still would not lose voters.

There are three belief systems which sustain these new movements. The first is the belief in a common enemy us versus them. Populists rely on a malign foe. The second is an anti-establishment default. Populists imply that omnipotent and self-serving elites block the will of the people. The third is a sense of decline often expressed through opposition to growing interdependence between countries. This lends urgency to the populist cause.

In the UK this is manifest. Both the populist left and the populist right indulge in an attritional world view that lets their outer fringes feel justified in spitting at Tories or in intimidating MPs outside Parliament (as Yellow Vest Brexit protesters have done on several occasions). Both hold elites culpable global in the case of the former, metropolitan in the case of the latter. Both see themselves as victims of an institutional bias, on the part of the right-wing press or the liberal media. And both are sustained by nostalgia, for the Keynesian consensus of Attlee or the once-Great Britain of Churchill. Theyre thus driven by a sense of national decline caused, in turn, by neoliberal globalisation and culturally liberal internationalism which they suggest that only their movements can avert. As a result, we have demagogues as varied as Jeremy Corbyn and Jacob Rees-Mogg.