Britain’s debate about ‘citizenship’ has narrowed to a question of the boundaries of our national community.
Often, this descends into little more than an argument about eligibility for welfare benefits. This is a disaster for progressives, who find themselves fighting on the chosen terrain of the ethnonationalist right.
But it doesn’t need to be this way. The history of progressive politics is a history of the broadening and deepening of citizenship: widening access to the rights of citizenship, and expanding the rights we enjoy and the mutual responsibilities we owe.
A new progressive politics of citizenship will, however, need to be different to the past. That is because our politics has become increasingly transactional, ill-equipped for a moment when fundamental conflicts of ideology, interest and raw power are coming to the fore.
This paper advances the case for a new politics of democratic citizenship, based on two principles: rebuilding the public and resisting oligarchy.
