Pragmatism: The Vision We Need

Critics of our Labour government say it has no “vision.” Starmer, they say, has abandoned hope in favour of cold pragmatism. Labour should have a vision that brings hope to people and not crush hope with hard matter-of-factness.

This criticism is erroneous. The error may arise from a lack of understanding of what pragmatism means. It may arise from anxiety or fear that the government won’t deliver on the five missions outlined in Labour’s manifesto. Or the error may lie in romanticism: harking back to an imagined past when life was simpler.

Here is not the place to dwell on anxiety or romanticism. There is urgent work to be done in understanding pragmatism.

The idea of pragmatism was kick-started by the work of Charles Darwin. He had concluded from observation that living things change over time in responses to other changes. Life was contingent – not the rolling out of God’s pre-ordained plan. The “father” of pragmatism was a Harvard chemist called Charles Sanders Peirce. He agreed with Darwin and wanted the scientific method to be applied across the board. This method first identifies a problem. Then it tries to collect accurately all the facts. Careful reasoning can then propose action that should solve the problem. If the solution does not work, then you use the same method to find a better solution [1].

For a pragmatist, a U-turn is not a sign of weakness but of strength: you are always on the look-out for better solutions. Margaret Thatcher could not see this, despite having been a chemistry student. There’s no place in good politics for dogma – for golden rules – whether puffed up as rhetoric or dumbed down as slogans.

Labour is the party that avoids dogma. It just has to, given the breadth of traditions that it encompasses. Other parties are hobbled by their “isms”. The Tories cling to free market fundamentalism, the SNP and Plaid adhere to nationalism, Reform asserts English nativism, the LibDems suffer from opportunism dressed up as flexibility while the Greens tend toward impossibilism – a variant of romanticism.

So, we advocate pragmatism. However, you may say, that’s another “ism”. Yes, but it’s an ism with a difference. This is revealed in the aphorism of Labour’s foundational member, George Bernard Shaw, when he said: “The golden rule is that there are no golden rules”.

Is our pragmatism as hard and cold as people imagine? Of course not. Pragmatism starts by identifying a real-world problem. There is no shortage of such problems, and you cannot resolve them all at one fell swoop. Not even a Labour government. You have to address the most pressing ones first. You have to prioritise. And you can only do that rationally if you have a set of values that you rely on.

Some of those values are identified in our party’s constitution at Clause 4. We value the strength of our common endeavour to realise our true potential. We value a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many. We value the rights we hold and the duties that we owe. We value solidarity, tolerance and respect.

Of themselves, these values solve no problems. When adopted in place of missions, they have on occasion led to humiliation at General Elections. Us “common sense” Brits want solutions not virtue signalling.

This is why Starmer proclaimed in 2023 that he would lead the first ever mission-led government. Five key problems to be resolved through five missions. These are: to secure the highest sustained growth in the G7; to make Britain a clean energy superpower; to build an NHS fit for the future; to break down barriers to opportunity; to make Britain’s streets safer.

The first mission is to deliver devolution and growth “everywhere”. How better to make real our values of power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many? The clean energy mission will make real these same values, as well as showing solidarity with deindustrialised communities. The NHS mission is based on values of solidarity, tolerance and respect for all. Breaking down barriers is a mission on childcare, housing, skills and education in line with our values on community, opportunity and rights. The fifth mission on safer streets tackles the corrosive insecurity that harms us all, but especially girls and women. Safer streets mean building community solidarity as well as building tolerance and respect.

The five missions are pure pragmatism – with Labour characteristics. By contrast, the Tories, for example, may sometimes be pragmatic, but it’s with Tory characteristics such as prioritising greater wealth accumulation by the lucky few.

Pragmatism therefore has a vision through the underlying values on which problem-solving is based. This is true for pragmatism in any field, not just in politics.

Party members may find the link between missions and values so obvious that they overlook the need to explain the link. We need to specify precisely how our policies, our problem-solving, are consistent with our values. We should proclaim it loud and clear.

But we must not rest on our laurels when it comes to values. They are work-in-progress, not Holy Writ. So, while we work on the five missions, we need also to be teasing out all the values that underpin success (and any failure). This will allow us – and the electorate – to understand our values better and to express them better. Also, it will:

• Help government to stay on mission
• Identify values that help solve Britain’s problems better
• Help us persuade voters of the value of our values as well as our policies
• Assist us in prioritising our future missions

Pragmatic missions tend to bring people together. Visions tend to tear us apart.

 

[1] For a detailed description of pragmatism, start here: https://plato.sydney.edu.au/archives/fall2025/entries/pragmatism/

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