Counter-rebuttal to Andrés De Miguel on Political Phototropism

It has been enjoyable to exchange with fellow Europinion writer Andrés De Miguel, but this will be the last word on our quarrel. I hope the readership of De Miguel’s original Compromised to Death, my counterargument Compromised to Life, De Miguel’s response, and now this final article, has enjoyed our sparring foray. I thank my counterpart for allowing me to conclude the matter. 

In his counter-rebuttal, De Miguel addresses several aspects of political phototropism, a term I coined that refers to the process by which the political agents change over time to more accurately address the concerns of voters, ensuring societal relevance and preventing out-of-touch policy agendas. First, De Miguel confesses a fondness for my initial argument, expressing that his issue was less with “the shift itself” but instead “disagree[ment] with the right-wing positions being adopted”. In fairness, my response primarily addressed the failings of anti-compromise political discourse within De Miguel’s logic, rather than directly addressing the broader issue as a whole, and I acknowledge the potential shortcomings of my response in this regard. In actuality, there is a general consensus on the need for political compromise; however, conflicts persist regarding the nature, extent, and implementation of this compromise. My broad argument has been accepted, and instead, an approach using semantics and ineffective examples has been used to mount a dissenting case. This article will now examine the issues with how this has been done.

Firstly, in Compromised to Death, De Miguel considers the “recent failures” of moderate politicians in their response to growing anti-establishment sentiment. Interestingly, the failure to which he refers is framed electorally in both his initial piece and counter-rebuttal. Yet, De Miguel also attempts to discredit my analysis of contemporary British political phototropism through what is suggested as an overbearing focus on electoralism, making a major point to criticise my prioritisation of electoral success. De Miguel even feels the need to grant me “the compliment of assuming [I do] not believe electoral success to be the end goal of politics”, eroding such a metric while simultaneously using it to justify the failure of right-leaning policy shifts. As the proverb goes, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. 

Additionally, great ado is made about how I encourage a “nihilistic electoral strategy”. Supposedly, on the topic of immigration, by suggesting that the British government needs to address the popular calls for a tougher stance, I am encouraging shifts that mimic “public whim”, disregarding the “material impacts of policy”. In a sensationalist manner, the concept of political phototropism has been misunderstood and/or mischaracterised, not as a shift in policy towards popular opinion, but as a means of altering policy to become a direct reflection of said opinion. 

Take this extract from De Miguel’s response: “Mainstream parties should… address their electorate’s concerns, I do not deny this, but the word ‘address’ here can mean a wide variety of things. One can address the particular concern of immigration without endorsing a policy of mass deportation for example. Instead, anger and frustration can be reconfigured to support a policy of economic redistribution and housing-market reform”. Here, De Miguel has effectively taken the argument I posed and suggested that it should be used to channel policies that align with his ideological agenda.

In itself, this is acceptable. These are opinion pieces after all. However, when discussing the nature of political compromise more broadly, it appears at best slightly condescending towards voters’ concerns about immigration, and at worst, an outright attempt to disregard them, akin to suggesting that voters don’t truly understand their own beliefs, thoughts, and desires. I fear this line of argument views the electorate with a fearful contempt, an obviously damaging but eerily widespread phenomenon within politics today.

Let’s take his example of Barking, where Labour members fought to win back disillusioned voters who were flocking to the BNP (De Miguel details this in a separate article). De Miguel posits that “In Sheekey’s view, [Labour’s approach] was a mistake… Hodge would have been better off capitulating to the racist policy programme of the BNP instead of fighting against it”. In using this example to try to erode political phototropism, placeholders are in use: Margaret Hodge for the current British government and the BNP for a stricter stance on immigration. This framing only works, however, if political phototropism implies capitulation, which it doesn’t, and if the majoritarian view of wanting tougher migration laws is racist, which it isn’t. It is of particular note that Hodge herself has suggested that labelling desire for stricter migration law in such a way is inherently counterproductive. Instead, she believes her success came from resonating with voters by genuinely listening to, and more actively engaging with, their concerns while not capitulating to opposition rhetoric or policy. Sounds an awful lot like political phototropism to me. Sometimes, when someone disagrees with you, they end up agreeing more than they perhaps think they do. 

Political phototropism is about relevance and ensuring that the issues of the day are addressed. It is not about mimicry or capitulation, but rather a reasoned pragmatism that values the views of voters. Contemporary politics is suffering from a dearth of it, and that is why efforts such as Labour’s pragmatic shift to the right on migration should be viewed as a reasoned solution, not as a vague detriment on ideological lines. 

Illustration by Will Allen