The independent group is desperately attempting to revive damaging blairite neoliberalism | thearticle

Since The Independent Group was launched on 18th February, its members have repeatedly affirmed their common ‘principles’ and ‘beliefs’, claiming that they were brought together by

fundamental values rather than concrete policy proposals. This discourse on values has been attacked by commentators on the left, who present Chuka Umunna and his fellow refuseniks as

unprincipled, bereft of integrity and devoid of conviction. (At least, this was the judgement of George Galloway, who described the splitters as ‘opportunists’ in a Talkradio interview, and

Solomon Hughes, whose _Tribune _article laid into the Group’s well-documented careerism.) But while it is easy to depict TIG as a collection of Westminster elites driven by personal ambition

– and laugh at their attempt to take a ‘principled stand’ _à la _MLK – this response does not give us an accurate sense of their motivations, nor does it describe the political significance

of last week’s breakaway. If these ex-Labour MPs were solely concerned with gaining fame and power, their best bet would have been to stay in the party and cosy up to its remarkably popular

leader. Instead, they decided to risk their political careers by alienating the bulk of their Corbynite constituents – a move which surely even arrogant and aloof Umunna realised would be

risky. We should therefore be clear that this centrist experiment is not just a vanity project for MPs craving the limelight. It is worse than that. It is a desperate rebranding exercise for

politicians committed to the dying ideology of Blairite neoliberalism. The problem with criticising TIG for having no firm principles is that it plays into the self-presentation tactics

which (until recently) Blair’s political allies have deployed. Centrist politicians have always seen their policies as sensible, adaptable, pragmatic and non-ideological, determined by a

rational evaluation of evidence rather than a partisan appeal to values. In the same stroke, their Corbynite detractors have been branded extremists, zealots and ideologues, whose faith in a

political Grand Narrative – or inflexible attachment to socialist principles – blinds them to objective facts. When confronted with this language of objectivity, leftists usually point out

that there is no such thing. The mirage of pragmatism conceals the promotion of specific class interests; the claim to adaptability disguises a series of uncompromising beliefs (in the free

market, in military intervention, in a largely unfettered financial sector) from which centrists refuse to deviate. So, when Umunna suggests that his politics are more technocratic than

ideological, the socialist’s rejoinder would normally be: ‘You voted for fracking, waved through a raft of Tory austerity measures, opposed Labour’s renationalisation programme and supported

the bombing of Iraq, Libya and Syria: your centrism is not “sensible”, it is a cocktail of free-market dogmatism and neo-imperialist militarism’. However, the effectiveness of this

rejoinder is undermined by TIG, which has broken with the notion of ‘sensible policies’ in favour of a communications strategy that emphasises principles, values and beliefs. What is the

reason for this shift? Clearly, it signals the extent to which Corbyn’s programme has achieved mainstream acceptance. During much of the Blair-Cameron era, the values held by TIG were so

pervasive that they could be presented as a simple, objective statement of reality. The strength of the neoliberal consensus throughout the 2000s meant that politicians did not need to

reflect on the political principles that underpinned this economic model (nor were they compelled to conceive of them _as_ ‘political principles’ which exist alongside a range of contingent

alternatives). But now that this model is threatened by the Labour Manifesto – a strikingly progressive document for which almost thirteen million people voted at the last election –

Umunna’s cohort must face up to what leftists have been saying all along: that the conflict is not between reason and unreason, experts and populists, technocrats and dogmatists, but between

clashing values that correspond to distinct societal interests. The formation of TIG is a bold and unambiguous acknowledgement that these values are irreconcilable: that if Corbyn’s Labour

is to represent the working class, it has no place for MPs who support the establishment. As such, when TIG say that their principles are more important than their policies, the left should

not dismiss this as an evasive PR move. We should agree that policy differences are simply iterations of incompatible, class-based belief systems, and congratulate them for recognising the

gulf between their pro-corporate, pro-war, anti-environmentalist values, and our radical, green, redistributive ones.