By the end of the 20th century, the postwar ‘golden age’ of party democracy in the West was fast receding. Gone were the days when mass political parties spoke directly to an engaged social constituency. The political party, once a bridge between citizen and state, was now increasingly fused with the state. They relied more and more on public funds rather than private donations; they owed their enduring positions more to privileged access to the national media than any compelling message. Turnouts fell. By the noughties, a new elite, itching to remake society, found itself woefully bereft of any base of popular support from which to do so. As political scientist Peter Mair’s book title famously had it, it was now “ruling the void.”
In the 21st century, Western politicians attempting to fill that void have turned to an assembled class of ‘stakeholders’: independent experts, quangos (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation), charities, and community leaders whom they can consult about their policies and whose approval they now hope to win. For an elite needing a faux-democratic veneer of legitimacy, this ‘stakeholderism’ has much to recommend it. It diffuses responsibility for political decisions across society, for one thing. And it means the governing classes can largely ignore the messy business of mass electoral politics, for another. Instead of struggling to carry out the unitary will of the people, politicians could claim to be acting in their name by ‘engaging’ with various community representatives.
In Britain, a key ally to stakeholderism has been our longstanding official doctrine of multiculturalism. Such a model cuts against the democratic citizenship of 19th- and 20th- century nation-states, whereby everyone was a citizen of a homogeneous national culture. Instead, ethnic and religious minorities do not exist politically as individual citizens but as members of mutually exclusive ‘communities.’ Self-appointed community representatives, endorsed by the government, are held to speak for such communities and are invited to press their claims as ethnic client blocs.
Today, both are central parts of our political establishment. Policy announcements invariably come draped in ritual appeals to “strengthening our communities”; government websites contain endless briefings on how best to engage with stakeholders. Last year, when Suella Braverman MP dared to question this consensus by venturing that “multiculturalism has failed,” she was soon defenestrated as home secretary. The king on the other hand, never being one to kick against the favoured ideologies of the political class, has given this political settlement his royal endorsement. “I have often described the United Kingdom as a ‘community of communities,’” he pronounced last year, “an island nation in which our shared values are the force which holds us together, reminding us that there is far, far more that unites us than divides us.” The idea that Britain is now simply a series of overlapping stakeholders to be appeased now goes right the way to the top.
It is this settlement that Michael Gove MP—the communities secretary, no less—took a bite out of last week. With the threat of Islamist terror intruding heavily on British politics since October 7, the government has changed its definition of ‘extremism.’ Gove used parliamentary privilege to name five groups the new, wider definition would be expected to cover as ‘extremists.’ Two are described as promoting neo-Nazi ideology: the British National Socialist Movement and the Patriotic Alternative. Three, it said, had “Islamist orientation and beliefs”: MEND (Muslim Engagement and Development), Cage, and the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB).
Much ink has already been spilled over whether the definition is too broad, a question I will not relitigate here. The significance of this move lies not in the definition itself but in the fact that it is a revision to the government’s own “Community engagement principles.” As its press release made clear, “This definition is not statutory and has no effect on the existing criminal law—it applies to the operations of government itself.”
Previous community engagement principles had been set out in the coalition government’s 2010 “Compact” with civil society organisations. This radical, if unassuming, document sat at the heart of Prime Minister David Cameron’s Big Society programme, his grand plan to integrate the Third Sector—charities—more thoroughly into the state. The “Compact” commits the government to working with charities and community stakeholders to achieve a more ‘diverse’ and ‘equal’ society. It has the explicit aim of “transferring power away from central government to local communities,” which is to say, community activist groups. This came shortly after a Blair-era change to Britain’s charities law that redefined ‘charitable purposes’ to include the advancement of human rights, conflict resolution or reconciliation, or the promotion of religious or racial harmony, equality, and diversity, which the Cameron government declined to undo.
These were far-reaching changes, steering Britain away from parliamentary sovereignty and towards the rule of the stakeholders. Countless leftist charities and community organisations now work with the government and receive public money to pursue their goals, often, as journalist Poppy Coburn has noted, going directly against the policy of the government of the day. There is a litany of sorry examples. The charities that have lobbied against the government’s Rwanda Bill on illegal migration have received £209 million in public funds. Or the radical trans-activist lobby group Stonewall, which had sunk its hooks into numerous government departments (and despite a ministerial diktat to cut ties with it, still does). The nexus of these influential yet unaccountable organisations, which now exercise such a stranglehold over our democracy, is today known as ‘the Blob.’
However, instead of providing activist organisations with an express invitation into the halls of power, Gove’s intervention has raised the long-overdue prospect of subjecting such organisations to scrutiny. The aim of the new extremism definition is to “ensure the government does not meet, fund or provide a platform to extremist groups or individuals,” as well as to place further scrutiny on the honours system and public appointments. And the rationale given for this is clear: “There are some limited circumstances where the views that individuals, organisations or groups have expressed—or the conduct that they have engaged in—means that it may not be appropriate for the UK government to engage.” Such a move is necessary, it adds, to “maintain public confidence in government.”
The policy thus signals that stakeholder organisations hoping to cosy up to the government can no longer be assumed to be benign. Muslim Engagement and Development, for instance, one of the groups named by Gove, will no longer be considered merely a harmless civil society organisation just because it purports to be. Instead, the government will consider whether to engage with it by looking at its record, such as when its director of engagement said that the 2017 Westminster attack, in which five Britons were killed, was “not terrorism.”.
Of course, many will rightly think that the government should have been doing this before; indeed, having to publish guidance saying ‘don’t give money to extremists’ is itself rather an admission of failure. And it’s true that this move is hardly a bonfire of the stakeholders. A Sunak-led government will never be brave enough to openly declare war on every open-borders NGO or trans lobby group.
Nevertheless, by declaring that not all lobby groups have a right to influence the government, Gove has opened the door to questioning stakeholderism more widely. And considering the way the move has been denounced so far, he has clearly spooked this vast political constituency. For instance, three prominent leftist NGOs—Liberty, Friends of the Earth, and Amnesty International UK—have come out with the following strong condemnation: “Any suggestion that the government or political parties should ban all meetings or engagement with legal civil society organisations or sections of the electorate is profoundly anti-democratic and sets a dangerous precedent.”
It’s a telling remark. After all, how exactly is it “anti-democratic” for the elected government of the day to decide who it interacts with, let alone “dangerous”? Or take the charities blog Third Sector, which labels Gove’s policy a “threat to civil society campaigning” and calls for charities “to champion our right to engage in national decision-making.” Call me old-fashioned, but I always thought the ‘right’ to engage in national decision-making resides not in unelected charities but in a democratic electorate. Meanwhile, the Guardian, as ever reliably expressing liberal establishment orthodoxy, intoned: “Had community cohesion and tackling hatred truly been a priority, a full public consultation and proper engagement with faith groups would have been the right way forward.” All the usual suspects are spitting feathers at the idea that the government would simply stop engaging with an organisation it doesn’t approve of.
The assembled partisans of the Blob are, of course, not wrong to view this as a threat, because it sets a vital principle: not all stakeholders ought to be engaged with. Not all of them ought to be given public funds. No group has a right to be listened to by the government simply because it claims to represent a ‘community’ or claims to have a charitable purpose.
While the government does not have a duty to listen to each and every stakeholder, it does have a duty to exercise democratic control over who, wittingly or unwittingly, it gives patronage to. The Tories getting a grip on the stakeholder Blob is, of course, long overdue. But if Gove has fired the starter pistol on it, that’s a positive sign.
Britain’s ‘Extremism Crackdown’ Has Struck a Blow Against Stakeholderism
Justin Tallis / AFP
By the end of the 20th century, the postwar ‘golden age’ of party democracy in the West was fast receding. Gone were the days when mass political parties spoke directly to an engaged social constituency. The political party, once a bridge between citizen and state, was now increasingly fused with the state. They relied more and more on public funds rather than private donations; they owed their enduring positions more to privileged access to the national media than any compelling message. Turnouts fell. By the noughties, a new elite, itching to remake society, found itself woefully bereft of any base of popular support from which to do so. As political scientist Peter Mair’s book title famously had it, it was now “ruling the void.”
In the 21st century, Western politicians attempting to fill that void have turned to an assembled class of ‘stakeholders’: independent experts, quangos (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation), charities, and community leaders whom they can consult about their policies and whose approval they now hope to win. For an elite needing a faux-democratic veneer of legitimacy, this ‘stakeholderism’ has much to recommend it. It diffuses responsibility for political decisions across society, for one thing. And it means the governing classes can largely ignore the messy business of mass electoral politics, for another. Instead of struggling to carry out the unitary will of the people, politicians could claim to be acting in their name by ‘engaging’ with various community representatives.
In Britain, a key ally to stakeholderism has been our longstanding official doctrine of multiculturalism. Such a model cuts against the democratic citizenship of 19th- and 20th- century nation-states, whereby everyone was a citizen of a homogeneous national culture. Instead, ethnic and religious minorities do not exist politically as individual citizens but as members of mutually exclusive ‘communities.’ Self-appointed community representatives, endorsed by the government, are held to speak for such communities and are invited to press their claims as ethnic client blocs.
Today, both are central parts of our political establishment. Policy announcements invariably come draped in ritual appeals to “strengthening our communities”; government websites contain endless briefings on how best to engage with stakeholders. Last year, when Suella Braverman MP dared to question this consensus by venturing that “multiculturalism has failed,” she was soon defenestrated as home secretary. The king on the other hand, never being one to kick against the favoured ideologies of the political class, has given this political settlement his royal endorsement. “I have often described the United Kingdom as a ‘community of communities,’” he pronounced last year, “an island nation in which our shared values are the force which holds us together, reminding us that there is far, far more that unites us than divides us.” The idea that Britain is now simply a series of overlapping stakeholders to be appeased now goes right the way to the top.
It is this settlement that Michael Gove MP—the communities secretary, no less—took a bite out of last week. With the threat of Islamist terror intruding heavily on British politics since October 7, the government has changed its definition of ‘extremism.’ Gove used parliamentary privilege to name five groups the new, wider definition would be expected to cover as ‘extremists.’ Two are described as promoting neo-Nazi ideology: the British National Socialist Movement and the Patriotic Alternative. Three, it said, had “Islamist orientation and beliefs”: MEND (Muslim Engagement and Development), Cage, and the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB).
Much ink has already been spilled over whether the definition is too broad, a question I will not relitigate here. The significance of this move lies not in the definition itself but in the fact that it is a revision to the government’s own “Community engagement principles.” As its press release made clear, “This definition is not statutory and has no effect on the existing criminal law—it applies to the operations of government itself.”
Previous community engagement principles had been set out in the coalition government’s 2010 “Compact” with civil society organisations. This radical, if unassuming, document sat at the heart of Prime Minister David Cameron’s Big Society programme, his grand plan to integrate the Third Sector—charities—more thoroughly into the state. The “Compact” commits the government to working with charities and community stakeholders to achieve a more ‘diverse’ and ‘equal’ society. It has the explicit aim of “transferring power away from central government to local communities,” which is to say, community activist groups. This came shortly after a Blair-era change to Britain’s charities law that redefined ‘charitable purposes’ to include the advancement of human rights, conflict resolution or reconciliation, or the promotion of religious or racial harmony, equality, and diversity, which the Cameron government declined to undo.
These were far-reaching changes, steering Britain away from parliamentary sovereignty and towards the rule of the stakeholders. Countless leftist charities and community organisations now work with the government and receive public money to pursue their goals, often, as journalist Poppy Coburn has noted, going directly against the policy of the government of the day. There is a litany of sorry examples. The charities that have lobbied against the government’s Rwanda Bill on illegal migration have received £209 million in public funds. Or the radical trans-activist lobby group Stonewall, which had sunk its hooks into numerous government departments (and despite a ministerial diktat to cut ties with it, still does). The nexus of these influential yet unaccountable organisations, which now exercise such a stranglehold over our democracy, is today known as ‘the Blob.’
However, instead of providing activist organisations with an express invitation into the halls of power, Gove’s intervention has raised the long-overdue prospect of subjecting such organisations to scrutiny. The aim of the new extremism definition is to “ensure the government does not meet, fund or provide a platform to extremist groups or individuals,” as well as to place further scrutiny on the honours system and public appointments. And the rationale given for this is clear: “There are some limited circumstances where the views that individuals, organisations or groups have expressed—or the conduct that they have engaged in—means that it may not be appropriate for the UK government to engage.” Such a move is necessary, it adds, to “maintain public confidence in government.”
The policy thus signals that stakeholder organisations hoping to cosy up to the government can no longer be assumed to be benign. Muslim Engagement and Development, for instance, one of the groups named by Gove, will no longer be considered merely a harmless civil society organisation just because it purports to be. Instead, the government will consider whether to engage with it by looking at its record, such as when its director of engagement said that the 2017 Westminster attack, in which five Britons were killed, was “not terrorism.”.
Of course, many will rightly think that the government should have been doing this before; indeed, having to publish guidance saying ‘don’t give money to extremists’ is itself rather an admission of failure. And it’s true that this move is hardly a bonfire of the stakeholders. A Sunak-led government will never be brave enough to openly declare war on every open-borders NGO or trans lobby group.
Nevertheless, by declaring that not all lobby groups have a right to influence the government, Gove has opened the door to questioning stakeholderism more widely. And considering the way the move has been denounced so far, he has clearly spooked this vast political constituency. For instance, three prominent leftist NGOs—Liberty, Friends of the Earth, and Amnesty International UK—have come out with the following strong condemnation: “Any suggestion that the government or political parties should ban all meetings or engagement with legal civil society organisations or sections of the electorate is profoundly anti-democratic and sets a dangerous precedent.”
It’s a telling remark. After all, how exactly is it “anti-democratic” for the elected government of the day to decide who it interacts with, let alone “dangerous”? Or take the charities blog Third Sector, which labels Gove’s policy a “threat to civil society campaigning” and calls for charities “to champion our right to engage in national decision-making.” Call me old-fashioned, but I always thought the ‘right’ to engage in national decision-making resides not in unelected charities but in a democratic electorate. Meanwhile, the Guardian, as ever reliably expressing liberal establishment orthodoxy, intoned: “Had community cohesion and tackling hatred truly been a priority, a full public consultation and proper engagement with faith groups would have been the right way forward.” All the usual suspects are spitting feathers at the idea that the government would simply stop engaging with an organisation it doesn’t approve of.
The assembled partisans of the Blob are, of course, not wrong to view this as a threat, because it sets a vital principle: not all stakeholders ought to be engaged with. Not all of them ought to be given public funds. No group has a right to be listened to by the government simply because it claims to represent a ‘community’ or claims to have a charitable purpose.
While the government does not have a duty to listen to each and every stakeholder, it does have a duty to exercise democratic control over who, wittingly or unwittingly, it gives patronage to. The Tories getting a grip on the stakeholder Blob is, of course, long overdue. But if Gove has fired the starter pistol on it, that’s a positive sign.
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