Alternative Editorial: Change Is An Open Goal
As we write, the UK is about to vote in the General Election – you might even be reading this on the very day. You may be wondering what we are going to say as people move to the ballot box. Given we are a political platform, will we make a clear recommendation for whom to vote for? Or will we bottle it?
Should any political initiative that is about diversity and participation ever lean on one side or another, given we are trying to move beyond the binary? Should we be strictly neutral and trust the collective wisdom?
Lucky for us, from all reports, the general public has already chosen to bring about a sweeping change and only a shock outcome would see the same party in Downing Street on July 5th. So, with your permission, we’ll go with that baseline and then delve a little deeper into the nature and size of any win.
To vote for the Labour Party at this stage in our history is a vote for ‘change’ after 14 years of Conservative government. But the call for change has many parts. On the one hand the desire to try something new is specifically triggered by the Tories. There have been too many scandals (Boris Johnson was removed by his own party).
And failures, where just about anyone could have done better (for example, Liz Truss’s spectacularly poor macroeconomic moves that led to massive costs to the British public). And we’ve reached that point in the Conservative cycle where it stops caring if it’s called ‘the nasty party’: Suella Braverman saying she will cheer when the first flight takes off to Rwanda earning her the name Cruella. And more.
More than party politics
At the same time the ‘call for change’ clearly goes beyond the Tory party. When the world went into lockdown during the Covid crisis it was the opportunity for people across the globe to re-set their relationship with the outside world. In the UK, those stuck at home could see how those on the front line of service put themselves in danger on our behalf - in ways we would never have noticed from our work-to-consume hamster wheels.
Is that one of the reasons Farage or even Sunak’s immigration argument has not landed as intended: we saw so many people, clearly from all over the world, saving our lives? With very little thanks (bar the clapping) or change in status.
At the same time, having more space and time shifted our sensibility. Not only to develop better relationships with family and neighbours, but also in relation to ourselves, as conscious individuals. The big questions – What’s going on? Who am I in this crisis? What do I miss and dream of? – were being discussed on solo walks or video calls everywhere. We ourselves developed an App – Before & Now - to capture some of these ruminations. Those with oppressive domestic situations also became more visible to us – with many leaving home to find shelter for the first time.
The Alternative UK was slightly ahead of the curve in that we had already ‘moved our offices’ into the Zoom room before lockdown—so it was easy to adapt. Over the two years of uncertainty, we found ourselves on a steep curve, looking more closely both at local development and global networks.
We saw that the proliferation of neighbourhood self-help groups was a global phenomenon; and that Zoom enabled sharing of information and storytelling in ways that caused growth everywhere. By the time the lockdown was over, our title had changed to The Alternative Global.
But when we all finally emerged, we found the world outside was not so changed, as we discovered that our political leaders had barely taken part in the privations of the pandemic. Few moments of deep realisation for them: only business as usual plus more champagne. While the majority fretted about income, some losing jobs or having to close down long-established business, the wealthiest became inestimably richer. The number of people finding themselves on the wrong side of a much wider economic gap grew enormously. Will history trace the beginning of a much wider socio-economic-political transformation back to this moment?
Certainly, the failure of official politicians to lead us away from the polycrisis – the cluster of disparate crises and shocks that interact, entangle and mutually re-enforce one another. leading to more drastic effects than the sum of the parts – is clear. At this stage in the evolution of our civilisation, humanity is at a precarious stage.
In addition to environmental, social justice, mental and physical health, the breakdown of our institutions – notably the NHS, Post Office, railways, armed forces – we seem to be back at war on two fronts with ‘unreconstructed alpha-males’ as enemies. In Europe there is a wave of anti-immigration, far-right parties coming into power, threatening to polarise large countries such as France and Germany. In America there is the renewed possibility of a second Trump win which would bring a newly convicted felon to the Presidency for the first time.
A different starting place
Of course, all the above comes direct from the mainstream media headlines. That does not make any of it untrue, or unreal. However, it doesn’t reveal the other aspect of our current state of affairs—which is that better responses are present and real too. Over decades people have been working – diligently and with passion – to develop alternative energy sources, economies, food resources (and therefore diets), educational options, care systems. This news never makes the front pages or tv screens.
There are also actively developing visions and some structures for a world beyond war, universal basic incomes provided by the carefully stewarded shift into technology and artificial intelligence, and a deliberative democracy fit for the future. In small ways across the world, as they face up to climate breakdown, people have been ‘prepping’ for a world in recovery.
At this moment, there is no political party representing this slow emergence of human ingenuity – it’s too soon, this is not that election. But the next one may be, if enough people wake up to the idea that while ‘this is Winter’, also ‘this is Spring’ too. In other words, even as our familiar world is in deconstruction, heading for dark times, a new one has already birthed and is coming to take its place. This is not simply a hopeful notion, but – in the distinction Cornel West recently made – an optimistic one. Optimism implies that the evidence is there to justify it. We have spent seven years blogging this evidence.
So this is more than the signs of lots of small projects experimenting (what some might refer to as Horizon 2, always in danger of failing down the chasm of no return. We are pointing at the growing appearance of Horizon 3 formations. Holistic, green, 4th sector economies (ref). African, South American, Indonesian, Chinese energy systems (capable of sustaining their nations without oil. A global system of cosmolocal community networks (CANs) moving into resonance as an ecocivilisation. A global treaty for the preservation of the seas.
A different mind-set
Yet if we want to realise these futures, we can’t be merely passive in awaiting their emergence. In our recent presentation at The Realisation Festival we workshopped the difference between a Winter and a Spring mindset. The first hunkers down and gives in fully to a not knowing what comes next. Winter focuses on acceptance of loss, resilience to the prevailing conditions. Spring within a Winter mindset is a hope for the future: no guarantee.
A Spring mindset – even in Winter – is that all four seasons are coherent with that moment in our cycle when we birth the new. Hannah Arendt would call it ‘natality’ – less a theory of change and more a way of being always present to creativity:
The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, … is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is ontologically rooted.
Moreover, Arendt points at the alternative nature of rebirth, or Spring. It doesn’t come from improving on Winter, it seems to arrive despite that:
Natality is the condition for a world and for the political, but it is a condition that does not depend on the previous existence of an organized political space; that is, natality is the concept through which it becomes possible to think the political independently from the Aristotelian claim that the political or the polis is "natural" to Man, yet still as a function of life itself.
In other words, there is nothing inevitable about the form of our current representative democracy: we can reinvent it.
Which bring us back to the General Election on Thursday. There is much talk about both of the large parties having much in common, accusing each other of the same lies and simply having different perspectives on agreed principles. Most notably, both present this moment in time as crisis-ridden, problem-solving: that’s the Winter mindset. Spring, from this perspective, is taking shape outside of this space (for more on this, see our launch of the Spring project in March 2024).
However, as we are already into our 4th year in the decade leading up to 2030 (after which our climate trajectory becomes much more difficult), the notion of change will be crucial. People everywhere need to invest in the idea that change is possible and that their vote will cause that to happen.
Change will not happen singularly through voting Labour, as in some traditionally Tory parts of the country the Lib Dems are more likely to be the second choice. In Scotland, for the seven Conservative seats being challenged, the second choice might be the SNP. In at least four UK seats the change might be to Green. Knowing what the best bet is (there are several websites ready to help) means some people may cast a vote for a party they’ve never chosen before. This might be the time for that.
Given that Labour has not made any explicit coalitions with other parties, and we are still far from a political culture that does coalition well (even in Holyrood), this might be a moment (shock, horror) to be grateful for our first past the post system in the UK. Without it Nigel Farage would have a much better chance of winning seats and getting a foothold for the far right (meaning explicitly populist and anti-immigrant) in British politics. Instead, we are hoping that the SNP—as the only party explicitly against nuclear weapons—will continue to have their unfairly large (meaning disproportionate) representation at Westminster.
Take our chances
For this Labour win to have any possibility of genuinely changing the tune in British politics it must have a majority, or some explicit agreements with a progressive alliance. A period of confident implementation of a shift towards greener, fairer futures) would be preferable to five years of fighting tooth and nail, between parties and factions.
While it’s true that there is nothing in Starmer’s rhetoric till now that suggests Labour has what it takes to successfully shift the dial on equality, diversity and planetary flourishing, their win at least means the start of prioritising that agenda: the beginning of a new narrative.
Meantime in Scotland, a change at Westminster without any real change in the country’s relationship with Europe or the chance for Scotland to benefit directly from its natural resources, might lead to the desire for more autonomy. Whether the SNP will be the only beneficiary of that, or whether – with a proportional system at Holyrood – new parties will begin to appear, let’s wait and see.
For now, with the election occurring amidst the European Football tournament, we dare to say that change is an open goal. On Thursday, July 4th, we have to take our chances.