The End of Left and Right? | Rory Stewart, Chantal Mouffe, David Goodhart

welcome everybody to this debate I see it standing room only so what are we talking about well does the distinction between the progressive left and the conservative right remain the central issue of our time or perhaps there's something more interesting and more original that we can find to replace it that's what we're going to talk about today and we have a fantastic panel for you Chantal mu foo is a world-renowned political theorist David good heart who was the founder and editor of Prospect and Rory Stewart reluctantly an ex Conservative MP you will have all seen his amazing pitch to become leader of that party so is it time to move on to something else our left and right the antiquated legacy of an area that is no longer relevant or are there perhaps alternatives that will be better descriptions of our current politics and which might help us improve and transform political debate so I'm gonna start with shut up we need to keep the left-right divide because this is the divide of the frontier which is the most conducive to a vibrant democracy I want to propose the frontier between left and right conceived in actual logic or principle you know as a question of values so according to the view which are I defended of course it's an dissociative view the question for a democratic politics is not to try to arrive to a consensus without exclusion but what I have caught in my wagon agonistic struggle among adversaries who know that they are never coming to be able to agree but who respect the point of view of their opponent and accept you know to the fight with democratic procedure and I speak of an agonistic debate between people who want a society in which you know equality and social justice are going to be the main driving force and I think this is for me what the leftist another one which is the right in which you know basically they accept a lot of inequalities thank you Rory many of us intuitively implicitly feel that there is a lacking center in politics and that there is an increasing divisive and polarized societies there are two responses to this one of them is that this is almost an inevitable feature of the nature of modern discourse partly fueled by social media this phone in my pocket and the things that it enables encourages the creation of a public that comes together very quickly against something that a line runs from the Arab Spring through to brexit and part of that line is the general story that there is to quote my friend David who's just accused me living in a bubble that there is these people living above being a right-wing populist people living in a bubble the question then is how inevitable is this is there something about the modern world something about this machine which means that any attempt to create a center ground is doomed and in fact actually the professor suggested that it is in the very nature of democratic politics that an attempt to define a center ground and consensus is anti-democratic her implication and her agonistic vision is that actually a truly liberal democracy involves standoffs between one group and another I would argue that there is a way of being a trumpian anti-trump that there is a way of using this machine to advocate not for the positions of the right or the left that there is a way of using this to connect to the local and the more things are embedded in the local the more plausible it is that through practical work through action you can discover the virtue of moderation right the virtue of avoiding the extremes Heraclitus since we're talking about philosophy is very interesting the idea of harmony and what Heraclitus points out is that harmony comes not by losing the opposites but by suspending the power of the opposites what gives it its force is that it operates in the realm of reality thank you David yes well I mean what is the center ground is always a pretty central and contested part of politics and I think we have shifted in the last particularly the last 20 years or so 25 years from politics is primarily socio-economic to one that is at least partly socio-cultural that the socio-economic is being partly eclipsed by the socio-cultural I think that's a good thing people aren't suddenly feeling and thinking things they didn't feel 20 or 30 years ago it's just that these things either didn't need to be expressed or weren't expressed so I think what's been happening recently is not a crisis at democracy its democracy working we have a kind of disequilibrium at the moment and we haven't yet found a new equilibrium I think we probably will over time left-left be right identities have become weaker obviously in Italy and half the voting population now identified primarily with their brexit position lis will remain and only nine or ten percent still identify primarily with with a party political identification but it's a it is a very complicated story because I think we're seeing a lot of convergence actually on left V right issues you know I mean to put it very crudely the middle class has become less right-wing and the working class has become less left-wing in the last 20 or 30 years and there's actually a very big consensus around a huge number of issues I mean if we do eventually resolve brexit I think though that we will see that there's a huge consensus that's emerged sort of in in the undergrowth in the last three years over things like essentially socializing adult social care building a whole lot more public housing investing a hell of a lot more in in Fe colleges rather than rather than sending everybody to university but if that does happen that would be partly because of a response of the political class to the brexit vote and a feeling that the socio-cultural issues you know the so-called left behind people had not been included sufficiently in the Congress so we've got convergence on left and right but divergence on the socio-cultural issues it is easier for the right to move left on economics than it is for the left to move right on culture and that gives the center-right a really big inbuilt advantage I think and I hope that Rory will be part of the conservative team that takes advantage of it though I do remember sorry I do remember David Blunkett when he first became home secretary saying to me Marianne you won't believe her right-wing I am so there has there is a bit of a tradition on the left actually of being quite socially conservative so let's let's now talk about whether this distinction between left and right is of the past and and whether it's no longer relevant contemporary politics so Rory David has pretty much said that the old-fashioned left and right divide has least partly dissipated and has been replaced by what you might call either anywhere in somewhere but a lot of people talk about the open/close divide people who are open on social issues immigration gay marriage that sort of thing and people who are socially conservative do you think post brexit assuming there ever is a post brexit and we stop labeling ourselves leave and remain do you think that might replace it well the the certainly a lot of evidence for David's view um I actually might my political betters against him but to give a credit this you can certainly do an analysis of the British voting public and their views on brexit where you can divide people between open and closed I don't recognize it in myself and I don't recognize that in my own voters and Cumbria you know I am somebody who is in many ways a conservative because I'm romantic and traditional about the Queen about the British army about our history about our tradition I love small sheep farmers I'm a conservative right I mean I that's where I come from I'm obsessed with history but at the same time I am absolutely appalled by the push for a No Deal brexit I'm very relaxed in about issues which really rile up many people in the brexit party and I believe that my tradition which is broadly speaking a tradition of one nation conservatism or on the labor side I suppose as roughly associated with new labor is a perfectly viable way of articulating a way of being British and it has a certain genius in it and I think the genius is that actually we tend as a nation historically to resolve our conflicts through compromise that the the religious wars of the 16th century the fight between Puritans and Catholics were resolved through a fudge called the Church of England that the civil war between Parliament's and Crown was resolved by a five court a constitutional monarchy and that the theorists have open and closed would have tried to suggest that that was impossible they would have tried to suggest a constitutional monarchy was the worst of all worlds you know why on earth would you want this as a Republican this is offensive as hereditary principle as a monarchist this this monarchy has no power there's no point having it anyway for more debates talks and interviews subscribe today to the institutes of Arts in 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Channel: The Institute of Art and Ideas

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Keywords: rory stewart, rory stewart 2019, brexit news, brexit 2019, general election, general election 2019, boris johnson, david goodhart, chantal mouffe, the end of left and right, liberals and conservatives, who to vote for in the general election, hot to vote to leave, how to vote to remain, the new political divides, political divide, divided britain, brexit britain, median voter theorem, donald trump, rise of the right, political parties, what do political parties stand for

Id: MCJGiIMz9Vg

Length: 10min 17sec (617 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 04 2019