As a society we have spent a lot of time writing about Labour’s woes. As a political blogger all I have done is added to the pages and pages written about how Brexit has realigned politics so that the places that solidly voted Labour for a century are now electing Tories. In these blogs, newspaper articles, Twitter threads and pub discussions one word comes up again and again: “patriotism”.  

For many, the underlying cause of Labour’s woes in places from Workington to Hartlepool is that it’s not seen as patriotic. Or that the party is controlled by middle-class, craft beer drinking, pansexual, students who care more about Palestine than Britain, and sneer at anyone with an England flag in their window as if they were some kind of subspecies of semi-intelligent human. 

Rebecca Long-Bailey attempted to use the idea of progressive patriotism to launch her bid for Labour leader. The idea was poorly received amongst her supporters. At the time, I wrote a blog that was critical of progressive patriotism, but now I think I should have been more open to the idea.

The reason that Labour isn’t seen as patriotic is not just because the radical left controlled the party for four and a bit years. Getting rid of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader hasn’t fixed Labour’s patriotism problem. Former leader Ed Miliband was also plagued by patriotism problems, most notably when shadow minister Emily Thornbury was accused of insulting the England flag. It’s still dogging Keir Starmer as, in May this year, the idea that Labour isn’t patriotic enough was back in the discourse.

Disliking patriotism

When writing these words, I’m imagining that I’m talking to people whose views are like mine. People who don’t consider themselves to be patriotic, or even … whisper it … people who consider patriotism to be a bad thing. A fellow middle-class leftie once said to me that “all patriotism has ever done is get working-class people to kill each other”. It’s not an over generalisation to say that, in the circles I move in, this is widely accepted.

You might firmly believe that patriotism is just socially acceptable racism, or that patriotism has been used throughout history to convince the poor of the world to throw themselves into a meat grinder with other poor people who follow a different flag, so that kings or bankers can continue ruling over the pile of bones that’s left behind. In that case I probably can’t change your mind, so you might want to skip the rest.

My key point is: I don’t think of myself as patriotic, but I understand that lots of people do consider themselves to be patriotic and these people aren’t necessarily regressive nationalists. I want Labour to appeal to more than just people like me. One thing the last few years have shown is most people (even on the far-left) have different opinions to me, so Labour needs to broaden its reach from just me to win.

I’m not saying that the left should embrace patriotism because it’s popular with voters. Certainly, something being popular and being right are not the same thing. However, my views on patriotism have changed in the last couple of years. I don’t feel any more patriotic than I once did, but I do feel Labour needs to, at least, appear to not be against patriotism.

Why patriotism matters

Already, I can hear muttering at the back that I have gone “Blue Labour” or that I’m starting down the road that led to Michael Foot supporters singing the praises of Tony Blair. Again, if you think patriotism is the same as racism, or that any acknowledgement of patriotism is inherently right-wing, then I’ll save you a few minutes and tell you now that you won’t agree with the below. However, if you’ll listen to me, I’ll set out the case as to why Labour should be a little bit patriotic.

The 2019 election result shows that Labour needs to win more seats to be in power, and while Scotland is out of the picture, Labour must win the places there Jeremy Corbyn’s perceived lack of patriotism was a drag on the Labour ticket.

67% percent of voters

Patriotism is important to a great number of voters. “Some 67 percent of Britons describe themselves as ‘very’ or ‘slightly’ patriotic,” according to an article by Helen Lewis in The Atlantic.

 Again, you could say that Labour needs to break with its 120 year history and find a new voter coalition that’s completely different to the old one (I will address this idea in a future blog post). However, if we rule out Labour completely changing politics, then the party will have to find something to say about patriotism.

There has been a lot of talk of Labour needing a narrative to unite its disparate voter coalition, so as a public transport-using metropolitan, I find it hard to ask this question: how does Labour win over people who love the flag?

Go UKIP or go home

What is key to the idea of how patriotic Labour should be is what I would call “light touch patriotism” or something subtler than the types of flag waving we usually see from politicians. Light touch patriotism doesn’t need to be in your face or loud, but it is present. On the left, there is a perception that to be seen as patriotic Labour has to go UKIP or go home. This is an exaggeration.

We fall into the trap of thinking that all patriotism is the UKIP style of angry, belligerent nationalism that gets so much attention because it’s so loud. Most people think of patriotism as “I love my country” but UKIP style patriotism is “I want my country to dominate other countries”. That’s the difference between most patriots and regressive nationalists.

UKIP patriotism is singing Rule Britannia with enough gusto to create a gale. It’s boasting about the power of the British Empire. It’s bringing up the Second World War over and over again. This isn’t love for your country. It’s fanaticism. It’s the way that children love football teams: with an undying belief in their side’s complete superiority to all others.

The alienating effect of UKIP style patriotism

That’s not what’s needed to win elections. In fact, UKIP patriotism is alienating to a lot of people, even those who consider themselves to be patriotic. One of the reasons why Leave won the Brexit referendum is that they recognised that people who were fanatical about their country would always vote for Brexit, and that they needed a softer message to appeal to people put off by chest-thumping patriotism.

This is what led to Brexit being sold as a vote for sovereignty and the NHS, and not a vote to take a dump on the Champs-Élysées and then wipe our arse with a 100 Euro note. Labour could learn a lot from how the Leave campaign used patriotism. I.e., ignore the purple-faced, flag underpants-wearing blowhards as they will never vote Labour, concentrate on how patriotism fits into a narrative with the things swing voters want: stability, control over their lives, a future for their children and communities.

Light touch patriotism

Light touch patriotism is not just the milder version of fanatical patriotism, it’s in opposition to it. It can be critical of the country at the same time as not saying that everything about Britain is so filled with toxicity that the entire national project should be condemned faster than a 1970s plastic factory still filled with poisonous goo.

Crucially, light touch patriotism can be combined with a radical economic message. It says: the country we love is ill and needs change. As with a recently divorced dad, who has hit the Johnnie Walker, Chinese buffet and angry calls to LBC a bit too hard since things went downhill, the way to help someone you love can be a radical intervention that holds back no criticism of how shitty they behaved in that trip to Costa del Sol. To save the country we love we need radical change to the state, the economy and our communities so that we can one day feel better about our lives.

The point of light touch patriotism is to reassure voters that Labour doesn’t hate the country, but wants to fix its problems. Like an abusive partner, the right uses love of the country as an excuse to do terrible things to it. They think love makes them exempt from criticism. Light touch patriotism should be a vision of patriotism that younger, more radical people in cities can get behind. It’s patriotism for people who aren’t Abbot Ale glugging, beetroot-coloured Boomers shouting at women Labour MPs on Question Time.

Inclusive and not exclusive

Light touch patriotism needs to appeal to people’s hopes and not their fears. Too often patriotism appeals to fears. It unites the people of the country by reducing us to our lowest common dementor: i.e. our hates and fears. Light touch patriotism can show how we are connected through the higher ideals of tolerance and fairness that (almost) everyone can agree with.

Light touch patriotism can include acknowledging what was wrong about the British Empire and celebrating multicultural Britain. It’s more about the Chartists than Rule Britannia. It’s Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis. Above all, it’s inclusive, not exclusive. What we all have in common is that we shared these small, rainy, inhospitable and stunningly beautiful few islands. We can live together or we can die alone.

Angry patriots

When I suggest light touch patriotism to other people on the left, I am confronted with a counter argument that it’s this view of patriotism - sensible, inclusive and critical of the country where it needs to be - that the people who have stopped voting Labour are rebelling against. People on the left argue that Mo Farah won’t be seen as an authentic symbol of Britain next to Nigel Farage.

I don’t think this is an accurate representation of the voters that Labour needs to win over. There are certainly some loud people - we have all seen them in the Question Time audience, on Twitter or even writing in national publications - who scoff at the idea that patriotism needs to be inclusive and would call light touch patriotism “metropolitan, elite, PC, woke, nonsense”. I’m not saying that these people don’t exist, but they are not representative of the people who consider themselves to be patriotic.

67% of the country doesn’t think that Nigel Farage is the embodiment of patriotism. Labour doesn’t need to convince everyone who wolfs down everything that Brendan O'Neill writes, or the people who go on Question Time to yell about “woke PC culture” until they turn the colour of a pint of Ruddles Best, that they are patriotic. Most of these aging boomers will never vote Labour anyway as they own their own homes and the Tories have protected their pensions.

Appealing to people who aren’t like me

Labour only needs to convince younger and middle-aged people who are struggling with bad housing, rising costs of living, low pay, long waits at the GP and underfunded schools that they love this country to win their vote. A little reassurance, coupled with a message of radical economic change can help Labour win back the seats that have been drifting away since the 2005 election.

In the past I have written in scorn about progressive patriotism, or light touch patriotism as I am calling it now, but Labour needs to think about how patriotism fits into the story it wants to tell about how the country will be better under a Labour government if it is to win back the support it has lost. I don’t feel particularly patriotic, and my goals for a Labour a government concern radical policy, but that doesn’t mean Labour shouldn’t seek to appeal to patriotic voters or that the two can’t be combined.

If the last seven years have shown anything, it’s that there aren’t enough people like me in the country for Labour to rely solely on people of my ilk to win power. Labour will need to appeal to people who aren’t like me to win power.