With the Labour freebies scandal Starmer has wasted his opportunity to restore faith in politics

I’m not a fan of Keir Starmer, so you’ll forgive me for a little bit of schadenfreude at the scandal that he has found himself in. I’m mainly feeling smug because this is one blow to the Labour Party that cannot be blamed on the left. It happened because Starmer likes free gifts - who doesn’t? – but, apparently, he didn’t anticipate that voters would object to this.

Most people’s jobs come with travel paid for to attend meetings or a free lunch at Christmas - although lots of people earning less than MPs don’t even get these freebies - but Arsenal, Coldplay and Taylor Swift tickets are not the perks of a normal job. They also show that Starmer has terrible taste.

Wasting a once in a generation chance

The sad problem with all of this is it just further alienates voters. We’ve had years of Tory incompetence and corruption, and Starmer promised a fresh start. He had a once in a generation chance to wipe away people’s cynicism about politics by working hard to improve people’s lives. Y’know, the thing he said he would do.

Instead, he’s burned all his goodwill for free football tickets and clothes for his wife. This will make it so much easier for whichever right-wing nutter the Tories choose as their leader to convince voters that all politicians are the same, so they might as well vote for the corrupt toff who will shoot boats of migrants crossing the channel as that will at least make Cynical Chris from Nuneaton feel tough while he’s been ripped off.

Playing politics on easy mode

It’s often said that the Tories play politics on easy mode. That a right-leaning press and the general small C conservative sympathies of swing voters across the country mean that they can fuck up or announce ridiculous things without the same level of scrutiny that ruins the careers of even moderate Labour politicians.

Starmer has been playing politics on easy mode since Boris Johnson detonated his own premiership and everyone decided that they had had enough of the buffoons in blue. Playing on easy mode is what has allowed him to go back on every commitment he made to become Labour leader and face no consequences. This appears to have led to complacency about how all these freebies will be received by Daily Mail readers in Workington, i.e. the people whose opinions matter.

What did these gifts buy?

Starmer has received £107,145 worth of gifts, benefits, and hospitality since the 2019 general election. It’s worth pointing out that Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn received very little, so this isn’t something that every leader of the Labour Party indulges in.

Look at that figure for a second. That is a staggering amount of money. It’s nearly three times what I get paid in a year for my very regular boring office job. It’s certainly way out of the reach of most people, so I can see why everyone is very angry.

Obviously, gifts of this size don’t come without strings attached or at least an audience with the giver. People are right to want to know what form of access or influence these gifts bought. Especially for a new government that has been less than clear about the difficult decisions it will have to make.

The shortest-lived huge majority in history

Starmer can’t keep being complacent and acting as if he’s playing politics on easy mode. The Tories will soon have a new leader, willing to take the fight to the incumbents who aren’t solving all the problems without the need for any sacrifices from anyone. At that point things will get much tougher for Starmer.

If Starmer wants to hang on to his massive majority, then he needs to start acting like everything he does will be used against him. Or else this will be the shortest-lived huge majority in history.

Disgruntled, ignored, demonised: the voters switching from Labour to the Greens

The local election results provided the satisfying sight of seeing the Tories getting a drubbing. It appears that the entire country is fed up with them. The Blackpool North by-election delivered a 26% swing to Labour, the third highest swing from Conservative to Labour ever and Labour won Rushmoor Borough Council, which controls the area that is the home of the British army. 

Sadiq Khan was also re-elected in London. He won in the face of the blatant Islamophobia of some opposition candidates. Many on the right implied that it was illegitimate for a Muslim to be mayor of London, which is a textbook definition of Islamophobia. The right also ran a vice signalling “we hate London campaign” which Londoners predictably rejected.

Still, all is not happy in the Labour camp. They have won huge amounts of councillors and every metro-mayor election apart from one. Despite this, Labour are worried about the rising number of green and independent pro-Palestine councillors elected. Truly Labour can never be happy.

“The words of a Conservative minister”

It should be no surprise that people are voting Green or independent. Kier Starmer has been courting Tory voters so hard he is alienating anyone to the left of Tony Blair. Recently, Guardian columnist Frances Ryan wrote that: “Labour leadership give soundbites that could easily be mistaken for the words of a Conservative minister.” She went on to say:

‘Recent weeks have seen the Labour leadership give soundbites that could easily be mistaken for the words of a Conservative minister, most notably when discussing the social security system. In a speech to the centre-left Demos thinktank last week, the shadow work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, stressed “a life on benefits” would not be an option under her party. It is not simply that such a statement is clearly nonsense – if “a life on benefits” is even possible, it is less a life of luxury and more one where claimants can’t afford toilet roll – but that it is not even original. Kendall’s phrasing was almost identical to the words of the work and pensions secretary, Mel Stride, who, in November, said, “Benefits shouldn’t be there for ever if they’re not required.”’

It’s no surprise that after being repeatedly told that the left are not wanted by Labour they are taking their votes elsewhere.

“Cranks, the bigots, the disgruntled, the lost and the angry”

Peter Mandelson - whose role in the Starmer shadow cabinet is … er … we don’t know but he’s always around - has been deployed to discredit the Greens, presumably to shore up Labour support amongst people who hate the Greens. In an interview for Times Radio he said the Greens were: “Becoming a dustbin, a repository not only for climate activists, but for disgruntled hard leftists.” This shows you exactly what Labour think of the Greens and the people who dare to want something better than a Labour Party that bows to every whim of socially conservative baby boomer homeowners who voted Tory in 2019.

It wasn’t just Mandelson, a recent edition of the New Statesman's Morning Call newsletter opened with the words: “Dismiss the cranks, the bigots, the disgruntled, the lost and the angry at your peril.” The comment was specifically about David Cameron dismissing UKIP as “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” in 2006 and how that came back to haunt him, but the inference is clear: people to the left of Starmer’s Labour are cranks or bigots.

There is also the inference in the same newsletter from Labour MPs that more media scrutiny will undo the Greens (some media scrutiny of Labour policies, or lack thereof, would be nice) presumably unmasking them as a party of fringe conspiracy theorists, crazy hippies and people who support any foreign anti-Western power, no matter how dodgy.

Sensible politics

I am tired of being called a crank and a loon for wanting politics to be a little more left-wing. I’m not calling for a revolution, but just for there to be one party that is on the side of renters in poor quality accommodation, people struggling with low wages and debt, and immigrants. Not two main parties that love landlords, big business, and wealthy home owning socially conservative swing voters. I just don’t want there to be two parties that are strongly anti-immigrant, anti-protest and pro-bombing the shit out of poor countries.

Apparently the sensible grown up approach to politics is not to promise to make anything better (apart from delivering growth as a vague panacea) and to care more about fiscal rules than starving children or homelessness.

The sensible thing is also not to do anything to improve the environment so that you don’t have to have any confrontations with angry motorists. Angry students can be confronted, dismissed and, if necessary, given the sharp end of the police baton. Angry motorists from small towns must have their every whim pandered too and under no circumstances be confronted with the problems of the world that involve them making any sacrifices. Anyone who disagrees with this must be ignored or labelled an extremist.

Voting for other parties

Tired of being ignored by Labour, people who are not angry motorists in small towns have decided to vote green after being repeatedly told by Labour that the party doesn’t value their priorities or want their vote. Now, in a fit of worry, Labour are concerned that the people who have been told that Labour don’t want their vote are voting for other parties.

You probably have an image of these new Green voters as hardened activists who are vegan, attend every social justice rally and agitate on every political issue. Well, the few people like this aren’t voting Labour, and certainly a lot of Muslim voters are annoyed at Labour’s stance on Gaza, but most of these people are switching to the Greens (like myself, I voted Green in the London Assembly elections) because they want something done on the climate and child poverty.

“An age of fools”

It’s worth noting that the Guardian recently reported a leading climate scientist as saying: “I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the global south.” Another scientist was reported in the same article as saying. “The world’s response to date is reprehensible – we live in an age of fools.”

This is what voters switching to the Greens are opposed to: our leaders not being fools on the biggest issue facing the planet. Still Labour doesn’t care. It’s easier just to demonise Green voters.

No interest in Maddy

As usual there is no interest from pundits or journalists as to why this is happening. Whenever there is a surge in support for some new right-wing entity, from the BNP to UKIP to Lawrence Gobshite Fox, there is a rush of journalists shoving their notebooks and microphones in the face of the terminally grumpy and nationalistic to find out why they are so annoyed with the centrists in suits that they’re now voting for an unhinged nationalist.

The same curiosity is never extended to the left. No one appears to be heading down to Bristol to ask a social media manager - let’s call her Maddy - in her 30s who is working full time in a growth industry, is married to someone working full time in a growth industry - Maddy met her husband through work - and went to university to get a well paid job, how she feels about the fact that she can only afford to rent a shoebox in a cramped dangerously clad new build and will never be able to afford to buy a home, save for a pension or start a family. And then asking Maddy what she thinks of Starmer’s Labour.

No one is asking Maddy how she feels about Starmer pandering to angry boomers with mortgages who have a pathological rage at the idea that somewhere a young person is eating a tuna sandwich they don’t deserve. No one is asking Maddy why she’s voting Green when Labour will do nothing to make sure Maddy has a liveable environment when she’s old. No one is asking how Maddy feels about Labour not representing her values, from trans-rights to immigration (where Labour is too keen to signal its values align with Tory voters). No one cares.

Welcoming a Tory MP

While Labour is busy accusing Maddy of flirting with extremism, the party has also been welcoming with open arms a Tory MP who wants to send vulnerable people to Rwanda. Natalie Elphicke, MP for Dover, crossed the floor to join Labour on the 8th of May causing maximum embarrassment to Rishi Sunak. So, people who want food for starving children and the government to do something serious about the environment aren’t welcome in Labour, but someone who supports anti-strike laws is welcome.

Labour chair Anneliese Dodds said that Elphicke was a "good, natural fit" for the party. This is someone who was a Tory five minutes ago. Someone who supported Sunak’s Rwanda plan, which Labour opposes. It’s one of the decent stands that Starmer has made. If you wrote this in a satirical political satire novel no one would believe it.

This is why people are voting Green, because Labour is another Tory Party. Tory MPs are now joining. Of course, voters who want crazy things like homes, food and air that can be breathed are looking elsewhere, and of course Labour doesn’t care and thinks these people are crazy. Whereas they will do anything to win back voters who left in 2019. Maybe Starmer’s Labour should look at itself before accusing its former voters of being extremists.

Labour Party picture taken by Andrew Skudder and used under creative commons.

Is voter apathy a problem for Labour?

Labour are way ahead in the polls thanks to their daring political strategy of saying as little as possible, promising nothing, ruling out anything that will make the country better and generally pandering to anything small “c” conservative swing voters want. Now, this brilliant plan might be coming unstuck as it turns out people aren’t moved by the position of “vote for things to stay pretty much as they are.” 

I might be being a bit unfair to Labour here. They are saying that some things will be different under a Labour government. Namely that the useless Tories will no longer be in charge and everything will work better under sensible and moderate Labour management, thus the economy will grow and we’ll all be better off. The problem is, where is the enthusiasm for this change?

Have you ever met someone who is a fan of Keir Starmer? I don’t mean someone who will vote for him, or thinks he would make a competent Prime Minister to efficiently oversee our continuing national decline, but someone who really digs Starmer? Saying you're a fan of Starmer is like saying you’re a fan of Sainsburys supermarkets. Fine on a Sunday to get some reasonable quality chicken breasts, but my god sir, dream a little bigger. You can aim to go to M&S.

Depressing effect on election day turnout

Maybe I tortured that particular metaphor to death, but my point is that this is not 1997. Rock stars and footballers don’t want to hang out with the next Prime Minister. He’s not a celebrity or riding a wave of positivity about the future. Most people are thinking: “I’ll vote for the guy with a polo shirt, I guess. What alternative is there?”

Labour are worried that this might have a depressing effect on turnout on election day. Whereas anyone stupid enough to still want the Tories in power will certainly be out voting, whatever the weather, as you must really love incompetent, cruel toffs if you’re going to vote Conservative this year (or really hate Labour).

If Labour are concerned about voter apathy, especially from anyone to the left of Peter Mandelson, then maybe they should look at what they’re offering. The reason why no one is inspired by Starmer’s Labour is that he is so uninspiring. This isn't as complicated as reading Immanuel Kant’s philosophy.

Take doctor’s strikes, as an example

Starmer was asked about the doctor’s strike on a recent LBC phone-in and he urged the government to “get in the room and get on with” negotiations. However, he wouldn’t say if Labour would end the strikes by offering junior doctors more money. “What I’m not going to do is hypothetically say what we might do,” he said.

So, he won’t confirm that he will give more money to doctors who work hard saving lives. Y’know, the people we were clapping for during the pandemic? No wonder people aren’t inspired. No one is out in the streets, waving banners saying: “Possibly more pay or possibly no more pay for doctors.”

The first Labour government

One hundred years ago, on January 22 1924, the first ever Labour government came to power. That was a huge achievement, filled with hope and optimism for the future. It began a process that led to future Labour governments who introduced the NHS and the welfare state, built social housing, reduced homelessness and introduced the minimum wage (yeah, even credit where credit’s due to Tony Blair). Sadly, in 100 years since that first Labour government, only three Labour leaders have won a majority at a general election.

Labour always has an uphill battle to get into power. However, when it does, it achieves this via a burning ambition to improve the lives of working people. Labour wins when it offers voters meaningful change; whether that be a new social contract after the devastation of the Second World War, unleashing the “white heat of technology” for the benefits of all or ushering in an era of youthful, forward-looking politics to sweep out the fusty, old and small-minded Conservatives. Where is Starmer’s burning ambition to match that of his predecessors?

If Labour voters from 100 years ago were around today, they would probably agree with most of us that any Labour government is better than a Tory one, especially this useless, corrupt government that delights in inflicting suffering on people it deems to be beneath them, from migrants to benefit claimants.

A century of struggle

Would they also ask: how did a century of struggle come to this? Promising not to rock the boat too much to win the votes of homeowners with middle-management jobs? No plans for fighting poverty or improving public services; despite levels of poverty and the public realm being overburdened to the same degree as it was in 1922.

Has a century of Labour struggle come to a leader who won’t help starving children or guarantee doctors a decent wage? 100 years on from the first Labour government, Labour is good at blaming the Tories for the state of the nation, rightly so, but shows none of the desire to change the country that previous Labour governments had.

The Guardian said Starmer “powerfully diagnosed the ailing state of the nation” but argues that Labour “continues to exhibit extreme caution regarding the detail of proposed cures.” They go on to say that “there are also risks attached to not taking any risks” and says that Labour should “boldly make the case for public investment as a catalyst for economic revival.” This last bit sounds like previous Labour governments, but not Starmer.

An inspiring vision for the future

Starmer might be the first Labour leader to win a majority by being the default opposition, rather than because he offered the voters something they wanted. If he succeeds in kicking out these awful Tories, maybe we won’t mind. We’re all pretty pissed at them - for good reason, look at the country after 14 years of Tory rule - and I will be one of many to be pleased to see the back of them.

Maybe Labour doesn’t need enthusiasm to win? Perhaps apathy is okay and I’m out of step with the country by wanting an inspiring vision from Labour. I don’t decide on strategy for Labour, which is probably for the best, but I can speak for myself, and I feel that the burning ambitions of the past and the challenges of the present require an inspiring vision for the future.

Labour need to be more than the default other guys for when the Tories piss everyone off enough that people want to vote for something else. They need to offer an alternative that will inspire people, and then they need to build a better country for everyone.

Labour Party picture taken by Andrew Skudder and used under creative commons.

If Starmer is the new Blair, then here are some things he can learn from Blair

Roy Jenkins said that Tony Blair was “a man carrying a priceless Ming vase across a highly polished floor” when describing Labour’s approach to the 1997 general election. That may have been the case, but Blair was shouting the whole time about his plans for the vase and why everything would be better when he finished his journey. Also, he only had the vase in the first place because he had said what he would do with it and people thought his plan was the best option.

This anecdote about election strategy is just one of the ways that Keir Starmer is compared to Blair. I’m not sure I agree with the metaphor, because Blair at least laid out his vision for a New Labour government; i.e. it would be a slightly kinder Thatcherism, have a bit more welfare and be a bit nicer to the minorities the Tories generally dislike. Starmer is keeping schtum about his plans with his priceless Ming vase.

That said, his strategy of saying and promising as little as possible is paying off. Labour are high in the polls and recent byelection victories (especially in Mid Bedfordshire, a seat Labour wouldn’t normally be expected to win) show that Labour *could* be on course for a huge election victory. On top of this, the recent Labour conference passed with almost no infighting and everyone staying on message. So, things are looking good for Labour.

Having a vision

Starmer’s caution is paying off for now, but there are challenges ahead that might require a bolder approach. Winning an election will require Starmer to set out how the country will be different under Labour. Keeping the fragile Labour electoral coalition together is a challenge akin to carrying a priceless Ming vase across a highly polished floor, but Blair achieved this by having a vision of what the country under New Labour will look like.

Like I said, Blair got the vase (being Labour leader) by having a vision for the party and the country. It was a daunting task to win power after four election defeats (although, he was helped by Black Wednesday and general Tory sleaze and incompetence) and to achieve this Blair presented New Labour to the country as a fully formed and articulated political project. It was a brand. You knew what you were getting.

Starmer, by contrast, got the vase by saying he would do something different with it than what he has done with it, and he’s trying to get it across the highly polished floor (getting Labour into government) whilst saying as little as possible about what he will do on the far side.

The economic status quo

This baffles me (perhaps even more than it disappoints me). There’s a lot that could be announced that would be popular. People are crying out for change after 13 years of incompetent Tory rule, but all that I can tell about a future Labour government is that things will be pretty much the same, only with more competent management.

Here’s something regular readers won’t expect from me: Why aren’t Labour being more pro-business? Jeremy Hunt has raised taxes on businesses, whilst high inflation and high interest rates are hitting their bottom lines. Surely more pro-business policies would be popular. Yet we get none.

Blair openly courted business by saying that New Labour would maintain the economic status quo, i.e. accepting the Thatcherite revolution. I have my criticism of this, previously expressed, but Blair was bold enough to say what he would do with power. Today, the economic status quo won’t help anyone. Change is needed and Starmer needs to be bolder, like Blair was.

An alternative vision of what Britain can be like

Starmer is often compared to Blair, but Blair had a vision that was clearly emblazoned across everything New Labour. Starmer just withdraws things he announced a few months ago. There’s no strategy to this. No vision. We don’t know what Starmer will do with power.

All that defines Starmer’s Labour is “we are not the Tories''. Labour will need more than that to win an election. The Tories are unpopular, and have done a lot of damage to the country, but an alternative vision of what Britain can be like is needed. The platform of “things will be more or less the same as they are, but with better management” does not rise to our current challenging economic and political times.

There are some glimmers of this. The housing announcements made at Labour Conference were very welcome, and the housing crisis is one of the big things Labour needs to tackle, as it affects people across the country of all ages and backgrounds. Cancelling the Rwanda plan is perhaps an attempt to push back at the climate of hostility towards migrants that blights this land. It could be a start, but it is a small start.

Something more radical

It’s funny how Starmer’s boosters have become quieter and quieter during the last three and a bit years. They’re either lying to themselves that he will be more radical in power than he claims (pull the other one, it plays Things Can Only Get Better) or they have totally given up on fixing the problems of the nation. They’re certainly not pushing for him to move to the left and they remain silent as Starmer moves further to the right.

There are many people to the left of Starmer who disagree with his views - such as tepid resistance to right-wing hysteria over immigration and his watering down of Labour’s environment policy - and would be happy with something more radical. I’m not talking about Jeremy Corbyn fans (although the above also applies to them), I’m talking about the many nurses and teachers struggling with low pay or young people locked out of the housing market.

People who don’t like how Starmer folds to any criticism from the Daily Mail and is determined to keep wealthy, Brexit voting, Boomers on side at all costs. And he means at all costs.

The Starmer they were sold

Many people want the Starmer they were sold, not the one they got. That’s why they voted for him. However, these people have gone completely silent. Through the Corbyn years there were repeated calls for Starmer to head up a soft left, Neil Kinnock style, moderate social democratic Labour Party, which would be anti-Brexit and reforming. Now Starmer is in charge and the difference between him and the Tories seems to be found in academic minutia.

The rage that animated anti-Corbynism has not translated into a desire to push Starmer back to the (soft) left or even hold him to account. No one wants to hold him to account for the things he promised in January and abandoned in June, yet alone things he promised in 2020 and has gone back on.

More than this is needed to win an election. The Tories have the incumbent factor and they are likely to play very dirty if they look like they are going to lose heavily. When the campaigning starts and Labour is accused of being a communist, woke and wanting to ban the flag or fish and chips, what will Starmer say? Will he have a vision to counter the negative campaigning? Something that will win people over?

Blair got people excited

I am concerned that there seems to be little enthusiasm for Starmer. His boosters have gone silent and can’t manage much excitement about him rolling over to socially conservative swing voters, giving them everything they want, whilst everything from the climate to the treatment of refugees gets worse. No one is excited about things staying pretty much as they are, but with a more competent set of suits with red ties in charge. Although, a lot of people are very keen to see the back of the Tories.

Again, Blair, for all his faults, did get people excited. Excited about him and the prospect of the new era he would usher in. This is the most striking difference between Starmer and Blair. Starmer is about as exciting as Gordon Brown, but with Blair’s substance. If we can’t have Corbyn’s integrity with Blair’s competence, can we at least have Brown’s substance with Blair’s excitement, and not the current inversion? (Although, I’m worried that we’ll end up with Corbyn’s competence and Blair’s integrity.)

The need for a vision

Starmer needs a vision of what the country will be like under him. Something that will get people excited. A vision for how the country would be different has never been more needed. This vision needs to be more than carrying on as things are, giving the angry conservative voters whatever they want and hoping that they don’t go and elect a literal fascist.

Surely Labour can do better than this? Starmer should take a leaf from Blair’s book, if he really is the new Blair, and have a vision for the country that gets people excited. There’s the chance to win people over to be genuinely enthusiastic about Starmer, with a tired and unpopular incumbent government and a bad economy.

This will win Labour real supporters, not just the tacit support of people who don’t want the Tories in power. However, Labour needs some sort of vision that can get people excited.

As the Tories and Labour become increasingly similar, many left-wing voters find themselves politically homeless

Pro- law and order, pro-landlord, anti-immigration, angling for the support of middle-aged homeowners. No, I’m not describing the Tory Party, this is Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. 

An illustrative case is the recent government announcement that it will be housing migrants in ex-military bases and is "exploring the possibility" of using ferries as floating detention centres. This comes after a furore in the right-wing press about how much it’s costing to house these vulnerable people in hotels.

Now people who are fleeing wars and oppression, and come to Britain in search of something better, will be housed out of sight as much as possible, less the sight of the needy upset some angry Boomers. This is the sort of outrage that the opposition should be opposing on moral grounds.

The Labour response, or lack of

Where is the Labour opposition to this? Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the plan was "an admission of failure" on asylum policy, which is hardly a plea for better conditions for her fellow human beings. Kier “human rights lawyer” Starmer has not gone out of his way to make housing vulnerable migrants a Labour priority. He’s more interested in winning over the people who think shoving migrants out of sight and into poor quality accommodation is the best way to treat the needy.

Labour under Starmer has no interest in standing up to the ever-increasing anti-migrant sentiment in Britain. In fact, they pander to it as much as they can. What will happen when angry voters demand something even more dehumanising in the future (the likely outcome of the constantly rising hatred of migrants)? How far is too far for Labour?

Labour giving the government’s authoritarianism a free pass

The same can be said on crime, where Starmer has recently claimed that the smell of cannabis wafting through windows is “ruining lives”. This statement is daft because Starmer (who is many things, but not an idiot) must know that the war on drugs has failed and that an, at least, tacit acceptance of weed has worked well in countries like the US and Italy. It’s just further proof that Starmer doesn’t want to change anyone’s mind on these issues, only pander to their existing beliefs.

Meanwhile, Cooper isn’t causing much of a fuss outside parliament about the government’s increasingly authoritarian anti-crime policies, such as their new clamp down on anti-social behaviour. Kids who have had all their social clubs and after school activities cut now can’t hang out in parks without being hassled by the police. Where is Labour on this? On the side of the Boomers who want kids to get off the grass.

This is happening alongside new powers for landlords to evict tenants, at a time when renting for millions of people is already dangerously insecure and homelessness has risen dramatically since the Tories came to power. Again, where is Labour on this? On the side of landlords and not tenants, less they upset some middle-aged homeowners.

We don’t need two Tory parties

The thing is, we already have one party that is pro-law and order, pro-landlord, anti-immigration, angling for support of middle-aged homeowners and it’s the Tories.

We have a party that wants to turn every angry prejudice about the youth expressed in the Daily Mail into a brutally enforced ban on something. We have a party that wants to keep migrants out, landlords safe in their ability to exploit tenants, young people in their place and supports harsh policing of anyone who doesn't own a double fronted semi-detached house in a leafy suburb. Why do we need two?

Yeah, I get it

Yeah, I get that Labour is going after the voters it needs to flip to get into power and, y’know, do something to help the homeless and people on huge NHS waiting lists. The Climate Change Committee (CCC) recently warned of a ‘lost decade’ on working to avoid the worst aspects of climate change. We can’t afford to lose another and to do this we need Labour in power.

I get it that the first past the post voting system, tribal voting habits and low youth voting turnout means that some people’s votes are just more important than others. You must play the game as it is, not the one you want to play. You don’t win the FA Cup by turning up with a tennis racket.

I also get that Jeremy Corbyn, and socialists like myself, aren’t everyone’s cup of tea and Labour wants to do some things differently after losing four general elections. But there’s a huge gap between Corbyn and being so close to the Tories that it’s hard to tell the difference on many issues - other than climate change, I’ll give Labour that one.

People to the left of Starmer

It’s easy to dismiss everyone to the left of Starmer as blue-haired, craft beer drinking, very online, Novara Media subscribing, hardcore activists who only read tomes of Marxist theory or histories of how terrible the British Empire was, who attend meetings with bearded real ale drinkers still wearing the same Clash t-shirt from the late 70s who are still fighting the Miners’ Strike.

Most of that describes me (apart from the blue hair, my hair has thinned too much to dye), but that’s not everyone to the left of Starmer. There are many people I have spoken to, from teachers to millennial parents, from young professionals trapped in precarious rental accommodation to gay boomers worried about growing intolerance in public life, who are alienated by how little Labour cares about them and how much they care about the opinions of Tory voters.

These people disagree on many things, from tax to trans-rights, but they all want something a little more left-wing than what Starmer is offering. They all think it isn’t necessary to chase the socially conservative Daily Mail vote to the exclusion of all else. Who will speak for these people? The people who don’t want to build a wall around the country. The people who aren’t horrified by the smell of weed.

Politically homeless

Of course these people don’t matter to Labour, Starmer and his cheerleaders in the press, although even they can only manage tepid optimism. To them the only people that matter, the only real people, are socially conservative, middle-aged, home owning swing voters in marginal seats. Workington Man and Stevenage Woman. The sort of people who think Gary Lineker is a dangerous left-wing radical.

We now have two main parties representing these voters and if you want anything to the left of this then mainstream “sensible” politics doesn’t want to hear from you. The sad thing is that there are many people on the left who are completely unrepresented by the two parties that are likely to form the next government.

I’m further left than the average person looking at Starmer in dismay about how eager he is to pander to every right-wing prejudice, from immigration to benefits. However, there is a big audience to the right of me and to the left of Starmer who now find themselves politically homeless as the Tories and Labour become increasingly similar.

Labour Party picture taken by Andrew Skudder and used under creative commons.

The 2024 election will be bitter and nasty

Now that 2023 is fully underway and turning out to be quite grim, let’s spend some time worrying about 2024? 

There will most likely be a general election next year. There must be one by January 2025 and the Tories will not want to have an election in January, when everyone is feeling cold, depressed and low on money, or an election at the last possible minute, when a surprise scandal can derail everything at the worst possible moment.

That means spring or summer next year is a good bet for the next election. Rishi Sunak must be hoping that inflation will subside, the strikers will either give up or he will find some legal way to force them back to work, and some form of economic growth will return. If he can sort these things out, he might think he has a shot at winning an election and call one.

A shield against being called woke

There’s a lot of ifs in the above, but quicker reversal of fortunes have happened in recent years. If Sunak can’t deliver at least a few modest accomplishments, then the only option will be to go full culture war and spend all day accusing Labour of being so woke they want to ban curtains or some bullshit.

If this cultural war tsunami bounces off Labour then maybe all of Keir Starmer’s pandering to the prejudices of angry, socially conservative Boomers will have achieved something. Maybe Starmer has come up with a winning strategy, that by saying that there’s little difference between Labour and the Tories on immigration he is building a shield against the electorally toxic accusation of wokeness.

Possibly. However, this shield will have to stand up to the strongest battering that the right-wing press can throw at it. When everyone from the Prime Minister to GB News is screaming that Labour is the vanguard of the woke Stasi, and that they will critical race theory your grandma, then whatever Starmer has done to purge left-wing people from Labour will make no difference. People will still think he is woke.

Keep the focus on the economy

There is another way that this can backfire, which is that the electorate may be unmoved by a culture war. Yes, Sunak might be gaining on Starmer in turns of personal popularity by making a strong stance against small boats, but most voters are still more concerned about their energy bills and mortgage payments.

All the time Starmer spends parking his tanks on the Tory’s lawn on issues such as immigration is time he’s not spending talking about the issues he’s most likely to win on: cost of living, inflation and the economy. If I were advising Starmer, I would recommend he keep the focus on the economy, instead of deliberately pissing off the people drinking artisan coffee at places overlooking the Regent's Canal because he thinks this will win some voters in a former mill town.

The rumble in Islington

Then there’s the situation in Islington. A large proportion of the election coverage will focus on Jeremy Corbyn’s run as an independent. Aside from formally testing the idea of whether people vote for parties or candidates, this race will profit no-one on the left.

It will be a huge distraction for Labour while they try to sell their program of government to the country. It’s a big tactical blunder on Starmer’s part to create the circumstances where a huge distraction will arise at the most crucial moment.

Corbyn should be pissed off at how he has been treated. He’s represented Islington for Labour for decades and having that taken away is nothing short of an outrageous slap in the face. Labour Party members should also be angry that the chance to choose their local MP has again been taken away from them.

Keep the focus on the Labour left

For socialists, this will once again mean spending huge amounts of energy defending Corbyn instead of building up a socialist movement that goes beyond the fanbase of one man. It also means that other decent left-wing Labour MPs, such as Clive Lewis or Zarah Sultana, could get chucked out of Labour for supporting Corbyn, which will only hurt the socialist movement more.

I find myself agreeing with veteran Labour left-winger Jon Lansman that Corbyn’s energy would be better spent leaving parliament to spend more time on politics, as Tony Benn said. Corbyn would be a great figurehead for a socialist movement outside parliament, which is where the momentum is at its strongest and is likely to make the biggest difference.

The socialist movement in parliament and communities

The socialist movement in parliament has faltered since Corbyn lost the 2019 election. This is largely because we thought that we were electing a left-wing leader in Starmer. We weren’t. He has used the power of party leader to push the left of the Labour Party as far out of view as possible. After setting the agenda for two general elections, socialists find ourselves marginalised again.

This is mainly because of Starmer’s lies, but it is partly because as socialists we made little effort to expand our movement beyond support for one man. As soon as a socialist stopped being leader of the Labour Party, socialist politics disappeared from the national stage.

There are movements in communities across the country, from Extinction Rebellion to ACORN via many local campaigns, which are making a difference and need a parliamentary voice. When the next election comes, we should spend our time getting sympathetic socialist Labour MPs elected to support the wider socialist movement in the country.

Past leaders stayed on

I also agree with Lansman that Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock and Ed Miliband were not forced out of the party after losing a bigger share of the electorate, and Corbyn’s loss is the reason the NEC is citing for not letting him stand again. It’s very unfair to push Corbyn out of the party for this reason when there is no precedent for this.

Labour should let Corbyn stand as an MP for the party, mainly so that this race doesn’t dominate the news during the election. It would be the sensible thing to do. Socialists should also not let our strong feelings about Corbyn give Starmer the excuse he’s looking for to get rid of other left-wing Labour MPs.

If you want to piss off Starmer, help get more left-wing Labour MPs elected. That will cause trouble for him and could be very effective for the left in the event of a hung parliament.

An ugly campaign

There are known unknowns in the next election as well. The SNP’s recent implosion could put Scotland back in play for Labour, but not if Starmer leans into the SNP’s narrative that the three UK wide parties are all regressive English social conservatives at odds with Scotland’s long history of progressive radicalism.

Tactical voting is likely to be bigger in this election than any previous one. This could lead to a coordinated exchanging of Labour and Lib Dem votes in an informal anti-Tory alliance to swing marginal seats. However, socially liberal Lib Dem voters might be put off by Starmer’s lines on drugs or anti-social behaviour. This is especially true of young voters, who find themselves politically homeless following Starmer’s lurch to the right.

An election is coming and it will be bitter and nasty. The Tories won’t give up power easily. They’re wounded, which is when they’re at their most dangerous. There’s no-one they won’t demonise or stir up hatred against to win this election. As socialists, we need to be ready to fight this ugly campaign when it comes.

Polling station image taken by Rachel H and used under creative commons.

It’s nice to feel good about Labour, for once

It’s odd to feel optimistic about the Labour Party after the spectacle of Labour conference. Especially a Labour conference that began with enforced singing of the national anthem underneath a giant union flag.

It was a bizarre sight, which resembled a scene featuring the villains in a particularly unsubtle action film, trying to make a heavy-handed point about nationalism written by someone who has only read the crib notes on It Can’t Happen Here. How do you know they’re the bad guys? Forced prostration in front of a giant flag.

Labour are clearly worried about being seen as unpatriotic, a slight that hung around Jeremy Corbyn’s 2019 election campaign like a concrete breeze block. More accurately, they’re worried about being seen as unpatriotic by a specific group of socially conservative, economically centrist Tory/Labour swing voters in Labour target seats. Everyone else who is alarmed by the increasingly absurd patriotism arms race is supposed to suck it up or vote Green. I guess. If you want to. I mean, look at Brighton Council.

Actual policy proposals

What is all this for? To get Labour into power? Well, that’s a means to something else and not an end in itself. Unless your view of politics is “go red team, boo blue team”. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll boo blue team at any opportunity, but I want Labour to do something with power and not just have power for the sake of it.

Which is where, bizarrely, I end up being optimistic. Labour did actually announce some stuff they would do with the awesome power of the state, which … deep breath … sounded good.

Like building a green power supplier to provide cheap, environmentally friendly electricity, which will tackle the climate crisis and the cost of living crisis. Or re-introducing the 45p tax band (if the Tories ever get around to abolishing it). Or building more social homes to help tackle the housing crisis. All this stuff is good. I can’t complain.

Will it happen?

A question lingers over whether this will happen. Keir Starmer has promised left-wing policy before and gone back on it. Looking around, we can see that if he does win the next general election, the nation’s finances will be in tatters and spending increases will be limited. Starmer may also be in coalition with another party with their own ideas.

Despite this, I do feel optimistic about Labour for the first time in a long time. The poll lead is good and there is a policy offer I can support. Yes, I would prefer something more radical, but this package is hard to oppose on its own terms. 

Don’t be complacent

As socialists, we shouldn’t be complacent. The Tories are wounded, but that’s when they’re at their most dangerous and their most unpredictable. Polls can change quickly, especially in an election when the disinterested masses make their voices heard. When the fever of campaigning begins and the insults start flying, poll leads can disappear. When this election comes it will be a nasty one. I’m not looking forward to it.  

For now, it’s nice to feel good about Labour for once. We’ll see how long this lasts.

Labour Party picture taken by Andrew Skudder and used under creative commons.

What happened to Starmer the Remainer?

In July, Labour leader Keir Starmer told Cit AM that the UK can I have a better economic future outside the EU than inside it. We’ve come a long way from the former Shadow Brexit Secretary who was seen as the anti-Brexit bastion in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, the man who was pushing for a second referendum and frustrated all of Corbyn’s efforts to find a compromise between Labour’s Leave and Remain supporters by reminding everyone of the perils of Brexit.

During the 2020 Labour leadership race one Starmer supporter and Labour Party member told me that “Starmer is not a Remainer, he’s a Rejoiner”. Two years on this statement is laughable.

What happened?

Since Starmer became Labour leader, he has whipped the party to vote through a Tory hard Brexit that is causing misery and economic damage from Lisburn to Dover. It’s worth remembering that Corbyn (the secret Brexiteer, supposedly) successfully blocked the hard Tory Brexit, whereas Rejoiner Starmer nodded it through without so much as a whimper.

What happened to Starmer the Remainer? The easy explanation is that Starmer the Remainer has gone the same way as everything else Starmer once stood for.

Before becoming Labour leader, Starmer made a series of explicit pledges and implicit promises that he has boldly gone back on now he is leader. He told Labour Party members what they wanted to hear to get elected. Be that those on the left of the party who wanted continuity with Corbyn on nationalisation, social justice and the environment; or soft left Remainers who wanted Britain to stay in the EU.

The leopard has changed his spots

Now he’s safely in power the leopard has changed his spots to win over socially conservative Brexit and 2019 Tory voters who aren’t keen on nationalisation, social justice, environmental policies or Remain.

More fool us for believing a politician would stick to his word, but how has he gotten away with this? Labour Party members from Corbyn supporters to Remainers (sometimes the same people, sometimes not) seem pretty placid, considering we’ve all failed to get what we ordered - regardless of what we thought we were ordering.

Part of it has to do with this new Starmer’s desire to not rock the boat and say things broadly popular with the establishment. The right-wing media are less likely to attack him now that he’s on the terrain they’re happy with. Also, the lack of mainstream left-wing news reporting means this isn’t getting much coverage beyond Novara Media and these august web pages.

The evidence on Brexit mounts up 

It’s worth noting that when a general election rolls around, and if Labour are polling strongly against the Tories, the right-wing press may well use Starmer’s duplicity against him. Not out of any love of scorned Corbynistas or Remainers, but to make Starmer look like any other lying politician. No better than Liz Trust.

I find it incredibly surprising that Starmer has got away with all this (so far). I’m more surprised that he got away with the transformation from ‘Mr Brexit Is Bad And We Shouldn’t Do It’ to ‘Mr We Must Nod Through A Very Tough Tory Brexit Because Of Daily Mail Reading Boomers’, than I am about how much he fucked over the socialists in the Labour Party.

As a Labour socialist I’m used to people being unkind to us, butt I’m genuinely really surprised by how fast the liberal establishment has forgotten how awful Brexit is, even as the evidence of how bad Brexit is mounts up.

False pretences

There are many arguments in favour of Starmer’s lies on the grounds that they are strategically sound. However, if you care about the public perception of politicians, you should care about Starmer’s lies. No politician should be in office on false pretences.

I believe that Starmer’s lies will catch up to him one way or another. Then again, I keep expecting the best from politics and getting the worst. I do strongly believe that the left, be you a socialist, a Remainer, or both (like me), you should expect better than we have with Starmer and not settle for being played for fools by the Labour leadership. One thing we all have in common is that Starmer lied to us.

"File:Official portrait of Keir Starmer crop 1.jpg" by Chris McAndrew is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Two years into Starmer’s leadership we can see that he is not the leader we voted for

We’ve had over two years of Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party and what do we have to show for it? Not much of what was promised when he stood for leader. And a lot of stuff that wasn’t promised. That’s what. 

Starmer’s pledges to Labour members are not what we have now. There was nothing about throwing out party members for meeting with proscribed organizations before they were proscribed. Nothing about not supporting striking workers during a cost-of-living crisis. Nothing about working with Peter Mandelson.

I’ve been had

I’m sorry to say that I chose Starmer as my second preference candidate. I did this largely because of his 10 pledges that contain reasonable centre-left Labour priorities, from social justice to tackling the looming environmental disaster. I must admit that I have been had. Starmer won’t nationalise industries in line with his pledge, which I foolishly believed he would stick to.

When the leader of the opposition won’t criticise the government’s repugnant scheme of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda on the grounds that it’s a violation of their human rights and it’s completely immoral to do this to vulnerable people, you have to ask yourself: what is the point in this leader of the opposition? Remember, Starmer stood to be leader of the opposition on his record as a human rights lawyer. 

False premises 

I feel like a trick has been played on me. I thought I was getting the moderate left, not a Labour Party determined to chase the votes of angry boomers in former Red Wall seats and sees no popular prejudice it’s not willing to pander to. We have a Labour Party that wants to win over the public, but so long as the public doesn’t include striking workers or left-wing activists.

Starmer became Labour leader under false premises. He has gone back on so much of what he promised that I feel confident saying this is a different leadership from the one that was voted for. What we have is like ordering a gourmet beef burger in your local gastro pub and then being served a deep-fried turd covered in puke. Then, when you complain, you’re told: “that’s politics” and “you didn’t take the commitments made in the menu seriously, did you? Don’t be so naive.”

More competent management

Will any of this make a difference? Well, you can already hear rumbles in the Starmer-sympathetic press that he needs to stand for something to win. The fact that Labour is outpolling the Tories is largely because Johnson self-destructed and this leadership race is making them all look awful, not because of anything Starmer has done.

William Hague said: that Labour wins when it owns the future, so, what is Starmer’s vision for the future if it’s not going to be those 10 promises? Is it that a man with a sensible haircut who isn’t massively incompetent will be in charge? Don’t get me wrong, the Tories corruption is utterly shameless, and needs to stop. I’m sure Starmer will be less of a train wreck than the Tories, but that’s hardly a future to get excited about. A more competent management of the slow decline of human civilisation into the inferno of climate change isn’t an appealing vision of the future.

I have written before about how Labour needs ideas to tackle the huge issues facing British society, from the cost-of-living crisis to the looming environmental disaster, and they need a narrative beyond basic competence if they’re going to inspire enough people to win an election.

Untrustworthy

Can we trust someone who went back on the commitments they made to be Labour leader? The most recent of which is Labour announcing that they will not renationalise the railways, energy and water companies, despite this being one of Starmer’s pledges. What commitments will he make to become Prime Minister, and will he fulfil them?

Starmer shouldn’t be leader if he can’t be held to what he said. He also shouldn’t be leader if he cannot support striking workers. The clue is in the name: the Labour Party. 

This does beg the question: who should take over? Andy Burnham is popular but he’s off being mayor of Manchester. Wes Streeting would jump at the chance to pander to as many socially conservative sympathies as possible as a way out of the culture war.

The left’s candidate

Who would the left’s candidate be? There’s no clear front runner. The Corbyn project appears to have died with Corbyn’s chances of becoming PM. Through a combination of a lack of planning and unwillingness of left Labour MPs to seize the crown, there is currently no successor to the Corbyn project.

When coupled with Starmer’s changes to the party’s rules for leadership elections, it looks increasingly unlikely that any left candidate would even make it on to the ballot paper. 

So, we have an illegitimate and ineffective leader with no clear successor. Labour has a lack of talent, partly because most people don’t believe that politics can change anything and don’t bother entering the field. Couple that with the abuse you get, why bother?

Front bench failure

Starmer may be in office on false pretences, but I don’t see a way forward. Labour clearly has no interest in being a socialist party or representing the views of young or left-wing people. Unless these young people agree with everything some mythical Red Wall ex-Labour voter thinks about strikes, the EU and Corbyn.

I don’t see any of the other front bench MPs behaving differently if they were leader. Labour has become another party chasing the votes of reactionary, socially conservative, angry about young woke people, anti-strike boomers. Changing the leader won’t fix Labour. Maybe it’s time we looked elsewhere. 

"File:Official portrait of Keir Starmer crop 1.jpg" by Chris McAndrew is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Even if Johnson resigns, Labour still needs a strong narrative

Is Boris Johnson’s goose finally cooked? The man who seems impervious to scandal and shame faced a no-confidence vote this week. Maybe there is a limit to what you can get away with in politics.  

What can we learn from this? Is it that eventually your misdeeds will catch up with you? You can only be shameless and slide out of any scandal for so long? Or is it that this scandal, Partygate, is one that people outside the circles who follow politics like it’s a sport care about?

Most people don’t care that Johnson lied about the benefits of leaving the EU. They think all politicians lie and people don’t mind the lies they like. Partygate is different, as we all went through the pandemic and made sacrifices, whilst in Number 10 people were partying like it was 1979. It also plays into the public perception of the Tories that they look down on the little people.

What should Labour do?

The vote on Monday has fatally wounded Johnson. He’s now a dead man walking. This poses a tricky problem for Labour. What to do when there’s a change of Prime Minister? Most likely there will be another leader from the right of the Tory party, as that’s what the membership will opt for in the final round of voting. Perhaps someone keener on culture wars and cutting taxes than Johnson, with less of a need to be liked by everyone.

Jeremy Hunt is on manoeuvres and it’s my belief that he poses the greatest threat to Labour. He’s standing on competent leadership, better morals and being opposed to corruption. In other words: everything that Keir Starmer uses to differentiate himself from the Tories.

With Hunt in charge, what would be the difference between Labour and the Tories? Well, the Tories would be in government so their announcements would matter.

Saying and doing nothing

The Tories stole Labour’s policy of a windfall tax on energy companies, and Labour somehow managed to not turn this into a political victory. The Tories are raising taxes and planning large scale state intervention in markets, and Labour aren’t using this as an argument for their policies or as an opportunity to make them look more reasonable to the voters. 

I guess this would involve saying something or doing something, which is against the Labour strategy of being quiet until the voters decide they have waited patiently long enough and it’s their turn for power.

If Labour cannot score with such an open goal, then what chance do they have of winning a general election? None. If they can’t find something to say as inflation soars and people across the country, across age groups and across the political divide are driven into poverty by the cost-of-living crisis, then when will Labour have something to say? 

Think Big

It’s said that in a time of crisis, when the old ideologies collapse, political parties reach for whatever is lying around. This is how neoliberalism or Chicago School economics seized the Tory party in the 80s. It’s how state interventionism seizedthe Democrats in the 1930s. There’s plenty of good ideas lying around. Labour need look no further than the book Think Big, written by former Labour leader Ed Miliband, to find some good left-wing policy ideas.

From the Green New Deal, to citizen assemblies, to universal basic income, via ways to revitalise trade unions in the gig economy and ways to get young people more involved in politics, the book is full of ready-made policy proposals that could be the basis for a narrative of how Labour is changing the country. Just open the book, flip through, and choose a page at random.

Labour needs something to say

Yet, Labour doesn’t do this. Most likely out of fear of being monstered by the press - which will happen anyway - and a need to seem non-threatening, like the guy sitting quietly in the corner of a rowdy pub. He may seem non-threatening, but he’s unlikely to be elected Prime Minister.

If Labour can’t think of anything to say, or a narrative about how they will improve Britain, at times like this, then it doesn’t matter if Johnson stays or goes. Another Tory, centre or far-right, will win an election if they have something, anything, to say to the people.

"Boris Johnson at Conservative Party Conference" by conservativeparty is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Let’s not fall for the false divide over fuel protests

A few weeks ago The Labour Party, in I guess what is called a fit of pique, called on Twitter for a ban on people protesting at petrol stations. This was after a group called Just Stop Oil blocked motorists from filling up. This heavy-handed response from Labour is somehow both surprising and completely unsurprising. 

It’s unsurprising because Labour clearly wants the votes of Boomers, who will only give up their car keys from their cold dead hands, over the votes of young people, who think we need to phase out fossil fuels, to, y’know, save the lives of every living thing on the planet.

A lot of ink has been spilled over the fact that we are a divided society. You could be forgiven for imagining the UK is split between people blocking tankers from delivering fuel to petrol stations, and people gladly running over these protestors so that they can get a full tank and then complete the school run. In this lazy comedy sketch, not even good enough for the terrible Spitting Image revival, the protestor is wearing tie-dyed homemade clothes and the motorist is driving an SUV.

An absurd divide

In this analogy, Labour is on the side of the homicidal motorist and determined to push away the planet-loving hippy. This is because … well why? A hatred of protestors who disrupt the lives of ordinary salt-of-the-earth types? A desire to crush the radical left? A need to win the support of working-class, no-nonsense, socially conservative Red Wall voters? A desire to distance the party from Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership? (We assume the hippy is a Corbyn loving Remainer and the motorist is a Brexit supporter who used to vote Labour under Tony Blair, but voted Tory in 2019.)

Does it come from a desire to represent decent, hard-working ordinary people who haven’t had a proper pay rise in years, who rely on public services that have been slashed by austerity, and are now having their quality of life eviscerated by the twin dragons of inflation and rising costs of living? These people are too busy trying to feed their families, pay their spiralling household bills and make it to the end of the week without collapsing into depression. These people don’t have the bandwidth to worry about next month, let alone decarbonising by 2050.

Maybe Labour shouldn’t be the party of the hyper-online, comfortably middle-class activist set who have the free time to block petrol stations because someone else is paying for their room and board. Or maybe they should, these actions might be the last chance to stop environmental devastation, and these activists are focusing on the big picture, while the rest of us are worrying about whether we have enough Tesco Clubcard points. Pick a side Labour! Goodie or baddie? Which one is which?

Twitter and elections

This division is, of course, absurd. Not everyone who drives hates the planet or is so focused on their own woes that they don’t care about the world their children will be adults in. Most activists aren’t a caricature of middle-class school student politicos, a latter-day Rick from the Young Ones, come to life to bore us to death. Society isn’t so starkly divided. Only on Twitter and at elections, where we force everyone into one or two camps for one day and use that to decide what will happen for four years.

So why choose one side or the other, Labour? Well, this announcement was made over Twitter where it pays to be single-minded. Twitter is not the place for nuance.

Big and small pictures

The tweet does indicate a preference about the type of voters that Labour wants to win over, and they’re more likely to be motorists than environmentalists. I’m sure Kier Starmer and Labour care about the environment and want to do something to avert the looming climate catastrophe. They also want to help people struggling through the week. People for whom not being able to fill up their car might mean they can’t take their kids to school or go to work. It’s possible to be on both sides.

We should reject the binary of the short-sighted motorist and the class-privileged ignorant activist. It’s good that Labour wants to use politics to improve the lot of the struggling ordinary families, who maybe haven’t read the latest ICCP report but do care about the wider world and the future.

On top of this, sometimes we need activists at a petrol station to remind us all of the bigger issues that will affect us all sooner or later, and these activists need the support of the party from the part of the political spectrum that isn’t in bed with those profiting from making the world worse and destroying the climate. Labour has responsibilities to both ordinary people and activists. It shouldn’t jettison one over the other because of a false binary created by angry discourse.

Being on both sides 

I get it, if for one day, Labour needed to be unnuanced on Twitter to not get monstered by the right-wing press. Although, that will happen anyway, so let’s not compromise too much to avert what’s definitely going to happen.

The rest of the time we need to remember that these discourse battle lines bear no relation to how most people live their lives, and the struggles they face. Struggles that Labour could help with if it gains power. Poverty and cost of living pressures need to be addressed, but so does the environment or it will make everyone’s lives worse.

Labour needs to be on both sides of these false divides. Helping ordinary people and saving the environment should both be crucial priorities for the next Labour government.

"Extinction Rebellion-11" by juliahawkins123 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

What Labour should not learn from the French election

I have to say that I breathed a huge sigh of relief when Emmanuel Macron was re-elected as President of France last week. Not that I harbour any love for the centrist French premier, who has spent his first five years in office drifting to the right on social issues (particularly around immigration and Islam), picking fights with France’s unions and trying to cut back the country’s social security safety net. 

There isn’t much to love about Macron, between describing himself as the Roman god Jupiter - no really - and trying to do Thatcherite reforms to the French economy, just at the time when even the centrists in Britain and the US are realising that cutting back the state with a devil take the hindmost attitude isn’t a good idea.

Whatever your criticism of Macron, I think we can all agree that Marine Le Pen is much worse. She’s the type of far-right to make Nigel Farage look positively tepid. I would fear for non-white French people and immigrants (much more than I do already) if she was elected. So last week I breathed a sigh of relief and opened a bottle of Chambolle-Musigny to toast the centrist dad’s favourite politician's re-election.

We demand something slightly better than the authoritarian far-right

Macron won easily, although not as easily as last time, because his opponent was so awful. This is a damning indictment of centrism. The only argument for what Macron offers is that it’s better than an objectively awful alternative. It’s hardly a banner to rally around or a shout that will echo through the ages. “We demand something slightly better than the authoritarian far right.”

What will Labour leader Keir Starmer learn from this? That it’s possible to win by appearing like the much-hated “establishment politician” when your enemy appears to be much worse, most likely.

This is the argument that British voters want a competent bank manager type politician as Prime Minister. This is how David Cameron beat Ed Miliband, the argument goes, and how Boris Johnson (looking a lot less like a competent bank manager than Cameron) beat Jeremy Corbyn (who looked even less like a competent bank manager).

An establishment political tradition

If Starmer is betting on Johnson/The Tories looking as off-putting as Le Pen and her National Rally, so that he can win the same way as Macron did, he’s in for a rude awakening. Le Pen carries more baggage going into an election, not the least her father’s name that is inescapably associated with the extreme right. As such, the French media and voters show her less deference than the Tories get.

Also, Johnson and The Tories are the government, so the argument of “you must not let this dangerous person near power or they will destroy everything” doesn’t work when Johnson is already PM. Even if Johnson’s time as PM has been a disaster and he shouldn’t be given more power or allowed to stay in power, past disasters don’t have the same scary quality as possible future disasters.

Finally, Johnson is not Le Pen. He’s part of an established and well-known political tradition and falls within The Overton Window or bounds of “normal politics”. The Tory party has moved to the right substantially in the last six years, but many people still associate it with great leaders like Winston Churchill or moderate, centre-right figures like Ted Heath.

Le Pen and the National Rally doesn’t have that history making her seem more reasonable. She is clearly outside what most French voters see as acceptable, despite her attempts over the last five years to look more like a normal politician. Politicians from establishment traditions, from the Tories to the Republicans (both US and French Republicans) are acting more and more like the far-right, but the successes of far-right figures like Le Pen has been making mainstream parties adopt her fringe views, and not stopping herself been seen as a fringe politician.

Uninspiring continuity

One takeaway from all this is that it’s possible to win without offering the electorate any substantial possibility of change. Even in the angry, constantly upheaving, “things cannot go on like they are” 2020s - where the only roar is the roar of protests demanding things be different - it’s possible to win by offering centrism, continuity and establishment values.

Again, I feel this doesn’t apply to Starmer’s Labour as Johnson isn’t seen in the same light as Le Pen. Also, Starmer isn’t offering continuity because he’s not in government. Still, all this does demonstrate you don’t have to be particularly inspiring to win. Starmer can take some comfort in that.

The other takeaway that Labour is likely to embrace wholeheartedly is that it’s possible to win by completely ignoring left-wing voters. Macron has talked about how he’s listening to the anger of right-wing voters, giving more justification for them to at least flirt with voting far-right in the future to get what they want.

Listening to the left

Macron has said: “I know that many of my compatriots voted for me not to back my ideas, but to keep out those of the far-right,” but during the campaign he didn’t say much about reaching out to left-wing voters who supported Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round. Despite his economics being “Oh Jeremy Corbyn” I’m not wild about a man who wants to ban the veil. Let’s just say that Mélenchon’s social views aren’t in line with what I consider to be the modern left.

Macron also seems to have little interest in those who voted for the centre-left Socialist Party, led by Anne Hidalgo who, as mayor, has put making Paris a modern green city at the heart of her agenda. Hopefully, Macron is aware that he won this second term because of left-wing sufferance and his statement about people not backing him for his ideas is more than words, i.e. a genuine desire to listen to people who objected to his policies in his first term as president.

Too close for comfort

I don’t think there is much that British left-wing politicians can learn directly from this French election. The Le Pen factor is crucial. Johnson and his government are in the same plane of awfulness as Le Pen, but they cling to the “legitimate” side of the right/far-right split in the minds of many UK voters. They have the veneer of acceptability that comes from being in a party that has been in and out of power for centuries.

It’s good that a dangerous far-right politician didn’t become the leader of the world’s sixth-largest economy, with a huge military and a massive civil infrastructure to bend to their will. Although, I’m not too hopeful about the future, in France and elsewhere, as this election was too close for comfort.

There is no challenge to the narrative that the Covid-19 emergency has passed

The response to Covid-19 transformed politics, but now we’re sliding back into regular politics. Covid-19 hasn’t gone away, even if the new Omicron variant is less deadly. But the emergency politics of Covid-19 is going away. 

This is because the narrative that Covid-19 is extraordinarily dangerous and requires an emergency response from all of society is being replaced by a narrative that the extraordinary danger has passed, even if Covid-19 itself hasn’t passed. No leading political figures, both politicians and press, are challenging this shift or presenting an alternative to it.

It’s worth taking a look at how this has happened over the last few months.

The end of Plan B restrictions

A few weeks ago, Boris Johnson announced the end to all Plan B Covid-19 restrictions as part of his attempt to save his premiership. Not that many new restrictions were brought in during the pre-Christmas Omicron surge. Here in England, things were considerably more relaxed than in Scotland and Wales. The reason why we didn’t have many new restrictions imposed on us (even after the end of the Christmas period) is that Johnson couldn’t get his cabinet, his MPs, or his party to support them.

To get the restrictions that were passed through parliament, Johnson relied on Labour. Being a Prime Minister with a sizable majority and needing the opposition to pass key votes is humiliating for any Prime Minister and maybe one embarrassment that Teflon Boris is unable to shrug off. Johnson looks weak, vulnerable and likely to fall at any moment.

By supporting Johnson’s restrictions before Christmas, Labour was propping up a Prime Minister they could let die the death of a thousand cuts. I can see why Keir Starmer doesn’t want restrictions, which he views as vital to saving lives, to fail. Although, turning his support for the ailing Prime Minister into a sermon on how Labour is a patriotic party seemed a little heavy-handed.

Johnson clings to power

Allowing Johnson to cling to power to get Covid-19 restrictions passed and claiming this is all for the good of the country is just another example of how Starmer is out of touch with most voters. Yes, lots of voters (especially those Labour needs to win over) consider themselves patriotic, but a public address that resembles a Command and Conquer briefing isn’t what they had in mind.

Starmer’s enthusiasm for lockdowns is another way he is out of step with the country. He is attempting to look like a decisive leader who cares about the health of the people, in contrast to Johnson who dithers and then reluctantly decides to act when the hospitalisation numbers go from alarming to critical.

Everyone dislikes lockdowns and the public distrusts a leader who is very enthusiastic for them, even if it’s for the right reasons. The fact that Johnson had to be dragged by overwhelming evidence into lockdowns is in line with most people's attitudes, i.e. I’ll do it if I must.

Arguing with people in their head

A lot of the public discourse around lockdowns does appear to be people arguing with opponents who only exist in their heads. People reluctant to enter another lockdown are arguing with the mythical very pro-lockdown person; as if there are many people excited to stay home all the time and not see their friends or family.

Meanwhile, those concerned about the rising number of cases are arguing against the vanishingly few people who think Covid-19 should be allowed to let rip, the healthcare system, the disabled and the elderly be damned.

Almost everyone sits somewhere in between these extremes, willing to lock down to prevent a huge spike in Covid-19 fatalities but finding the mental health or financial effects of lockdown hard to bear. They don’t want people to die, but don’t want to be indefinitely entombed in their homes either.

Everyday politics

The political situation is changing as the disease becomes a part of everyday life, not something strange and alarming that requires special emergency measures. Covid-19 is still scary but, like a looming climate disaster or a war with one of the world’s authoritarian nuclear armed regimes, it’s a terror that is now a part of normal politics.

People are being forced by their employers to work, even if they’re sick with Covid-19. That’s normal for the flu and other infectious diseases. People are working from home if they’re sick and have a job in the knowledge economy, which is also normal. A disease is killing lots of old people and putting massive pressure on the NHS in the winter, but this is largely being shrugged off by the Conservative government as something that happens and not something that needs a political solution. All very normal.

At this point you’re probably screaming into your pillow about how we have ended up with the worst parts of Terry Giliam’s Brazil and Terry Giliam’s 12 Monkeys. Shifting the burden of preventing the spread of a disease that kills thousands of people a year onto low paid, poor and insecure workers is not something that Covid-19 invented. Neither is shrugging and hoping that the problem goes away every time the NHS lets out a desperate scream of agony in the run up to Christmas. Catching Covid-19 might be worse than catching the flu, but in many ways our political system is treating Covid-19 very much like the flu.

Becoming endemic

The pandemic produced an emergency response. Two years of restrictions, three lockdowns and two Christmas panics later we’ve managed to jab almost everyone and found out that Covid-19 is not like measles, where one jab gives you all the protection you need. Covid-19 is more like the flu where jabs are helpful, as is good hygiene and wearing masks on public transport if you think you have it, but not something that’s going away anytime soon.

Covid-19 is becoming endemic and is thus colliding with normal politics. The public and politicians will no longer accept emergency response measures. We need to shift to a long-term response. Endemic doesn’t mean Covid-19 is going away and saying it’s becoming like the flu is saying that it will kill lots of people each year and put huge pressure on our health system, but people will largely ignore this.

We will feel the impact of Covid for years to come - there will still be deaths, illness and other losses - but fewer and fewer political ramifications. Unless one political party or politician can find a way to tell a story that weaves Covid-19 in with other political debates to present a vision of the past and future that motivates voters at an election, we will carry on much as we are.

Conversations about death

On Twitter some are saying things along the lines of: “We need to have a conversation about how much death (mainly old and disabled people) is acceptable to get back to normal.” This is to remind us that many thousands of people (mainly old and disabled people) will die if we exit the emergency politics phase of Covid-19 and allow it to become a part of regular politics.

Although shocking, these statements are not having a political impact because they are not creating an alternative narrative to “the emergency has passed and thus Covid-19 is becoming part of normal politics”. If we don’t want Covid-19 to become like the flu (deadly to many but without political consequences) then we need to tell a story about what society will be like when we seek to minimise Covid-19 deaths.

No alternative to the status quo

I don’t know what this society will be like and I’m not hearing much about it. There are no answers to Covid-19, only questions. There are no suggestions, only angry shouts. This isn’t an alternative to the status quo.

There is no coherent alternative to Covid-19 becoming part of normal politics and normal life. No clear call to what we should be doing differently. This means the era of extraordinary measures will end and it will be back to normality, with Covid-19.

Labour can be the party for Walthamstow and Workington, but it needs a vision first

Once again, it’s my sad duty to report that the Labour Party has lost an election. This time it’s the Hartlepool by-election; another post-industrial Northern seat has gone over to the Conservatives. On the same, Super Thursday, day of voting Labour also managed to come third in the Scottish elections. The party did win the elections for the Welsh Assembly and the London Mayor, but even the latter victory was by a smaller margin than anticipated. 

What this shows is that Keir Starmer isn’t the natural winner he was advertised to be. The idea was that a man in a smart suit, who is schooled in political strategy, has a good brain and knows how to run things would instantly be seen as the best man to lead the country, especially when compared with an incompetent clown like Boris Johnson. Starmer’s Prime Ministerialness is turning out to be less self-evident than his boosters thought.

To explain how we got into the situation of choosing a man who looks like he’s running a branch of NatWest as the leader of the Labour Party, and then finding out that there’s more to becoming Prime Minister than holding a really good meeting, we need to talk about Tony Blair. Now, I know there are a lot of hot takes about Blair, and I don’t mean to add to the pile, but he was the last Labour leader to win a general election.

What does Blair have to say about being Labour leader?

Shortly before Starmer became Labour leader, Blair was interviewed about the future of the party. Recently a clip from this interview popped up in a Labour Facebook group I’m in. The poster was trying to make the point that we should listen to Blair as he knows how to win.

In this interview when Blair is asked about who should be the new Labour leader, he says that “the most important thing is a leader with the politics to help us win an election”. I find this statement a little annoying. It’s not a profound or novel concept. It’s a sideways dig at the left of the party, not only saying that they didn’t win an election, but that they didn’t want to win. Say what you will about Jeremy Corbyn, he wanted to win an election.

Let’s take this statement at face value: the most important thing is a leader with the politics to help us win an election. This begs the question: what are the politics to help us win?

Winning politics

We know from Blair’s speech on the 120th birthday of the Labour Party last year what he thinks the politics of winning an election is. He said that his mission was to move Labour to the centre to bring together the Labour and Lib Dem vote. This is factually inaccurate; firstly because the Lib Dem vote was at its strongest when Blair was PM, and secondly because Blair won by winning over Scotland and some of Middle England to Labour, whilst not losing too much of the traditional Labour vote.

He did this by being socially liberal, pro-EU, pro-immigration and pro-free market and I’m guessing that this is what Blair meant by the “politics to help us win an election”. I have argued with Starmer boosters on Facebook that Labour being socially liberal, pro-EU, pro-immigration and pro-free market will go down like a cup of cold sick with the voters that Labour needs to win back. How many people in Hartlepool are going to come back to Labour after they announce a return to Blair’s pro-EU, pro-immigration politics?

Are the politics to win an election anti-immigration, anti-BLM, waving the flag a lot, disparaging young people and talking about how great the British Empire was when Britannia ruled the waves? It’s more likely to be the above than pretending it’s 1995 again, dusting off the John Lennon sunglasses and sticking Some Might Say on my cassette Walkman.

Winning back lost voters

Well, Blair’s successors from the Labour Right want to grab this particular bull by the horns. They don’t go as far as saying we should make Laurence Fox head of campaigns (I would prefer that we put Count Binface in charge, at least he makes better social media videos) but they do have views on what side of the culture war Labour should be on.

A recent Fabian pamphlet called Hearts and Minds: Winning the Working Class Vote says, amongst other things, that voters “are entitled to be worried about illegal migrants crossing our borders, or becoming a drain on our resources” and that some people feel “a stranger in their own country” and that Labour should be tougher on repatriating failed asylum seekers.

I don’t agree with this pamphlet and its ideas, but it does go further than platitudes, or the usual hand waving about Labour needing to connect with people from both big cities and small towns. It does seem to say that Labour should align itself with the socially conservative values of the voters it lost in 2019. Paul Mason described this plan as Labour standing for “the agglomerated prejudices of elderly people in small communities,” which about sums up how I feel about it.

Blame the young

I’m pretty sure that Blair didn’t think that the politics to win an election involved making Labour the party of the agglomerated prejudices of elderly people in small communities. I’m sure that’s the opposite of what he wants. He probably means the politics to win an election is people in sharp suits, schooled in comms and business concepts, talking about how qualified they are to run the country - y’know, New Labour - but we’ve had this since Starmer took over and it’s not working. So, now the Labour Right have another idea.

This focus on the voters which Labour has been steadily losing since about the time Blair became PM also has a hefty dose of blame for the young city people with their craft beer, tattoos and music festivals in parks for the downfall of Labour. If only they weren’t obsessed with things old boomers in small towns hate, like treating trans people with dignity and not dying from a global freshwater shortage. Corbyn might have gone, but apparently the people who liked him are still poisoning the party a year after Starmer took over.

As a member of the left of the Labour party, I get that the right of the party doesn’t want the radical change I want. They want to make capitalism more bearable, not overthrow it. Making life more bearable for the people at the sharp end of capitalism is a noble aim and I can get behind campaigns for better wages for workers, more jobs, better housing, etc. I want a revolution, but that doesn’t mean we have to live in extractive capitalist misery until it happens. If the Labour Right think they can use the power of the state to improve the lives of the poor, then that sounds good to me.

A place of greater safety

Right now, no-one in Labour is getting what they want. In Hartlepool we’re bleeding support from the fans of Mrs Brown’s Boys, and in London, the viewers of I May Destroy You are not voting for Sadiq Khan with truckloads of enthusiasm. (Don’t write in and say you watch both, you have to choose one or the other, I don’t make the culture war rules). The party is going backwards slowly and a PM who, allegedly, said “let the bodies pile high” and then oversaw 120,000 deaths just won another election.

Maybe this is more evidence that voters do really want a leader who is a craven, narcissistic, lying self-promoter who doles out culture war soundbites like they’re brightly coloured shots at an early-00s student club night (showing my age with that one). Whenever I pointed out to Starmer boosters on Facebook that the politics of winning an election look more like what Boris Johnson is doing and less like what Starmer is doing, I was told that I was wrong and that the electorate want a sensible, centre-left, social democrat, who’s a safe pair of hands.

This view seems to have become the underlying assumption amongst a good number of Labour supporters and it needs to be challenged. Labour has retreated to a place of safety. We have ended up in the centre left, smart suit, soft speaking, dinner at Pizza Express, don’t rock the boat too much or you’ll annoy people place of safety. The problem is, the Labour Party is aspiring to run more than a middle-class family holiday to Florence, and it needs some passion and some risk-taking to do this.

What does Labour stand for?

The idea that all that’s needed to win an election is a leader who is a media trained man in a smart suit and who has a proven track record of running things is comforting and reassuring to a lot of Labour members. I get that we want to be seen as reliable next to Johnson’s chaos, but this is not a vision. Labour needs a vision of how it will change people’s lives if it’s given the reins of power. Not just relying on the voters seeing us as the sensible choice.

In the absence of a clear vision, people can project whatever they want onto Labour - and none of that will be good. No-one is willing to give Labour the benefit of the doubt if it isn’t 100% clear exactly what the party stands for. Right now, what Starmer’s Labour stands for, aside from better grooming, is vague at best.

The Labour Right’s vision

The Labour Right has at least the beginning of a vision for what Labour stands for. It may be the agglomerated prejudices of elderly people in small communities, but that’s better than the nothing we have now. I disagree with Labour embracing socially conservative values - it means the party would be running away from me (as opposed to gently sliding away from me, which it’s doing right now). However, I can see how tacitly this is better than the fudge that is Starmerism.

The Labour Right’s enthusiasm for this can be seen in how keen certain members are to purge Momentum or anyone to the left of Jess Philips from the party. That would send a strong message about Labour’s identity to the voters they have lost. To justify this, they’re keen to blame all of Labour’s current woes on its younger, more socially liberal supporters scaring off frightened Boomers with all this radical talk of black lives mattering.

The party of Walthamstow and Workington

I don’t believe in blaming Labour’s problems on young city people with their strange coloured hair and strange desire to not die breathing in polluted air in the drowned ruins of our major cities before we all turn 50. I also don’t believe in ratchetting up the rhetoric on asylum seekers and immigrants as a means to win back support from Boomer Brexit voters. Especially as immigration has got less saliant as a political issue since we left the EU.

I don’t think we should take for granted Labour support in cities, like the party did with working class support in small towns during the Blair years. I also don’t think we should give up on everyone who voted for Brexit or the Tory party in the last five years as irredeemably racist and not worth attempting to convince to vote Labour again. Labour can be the party of Walthamstow and Workington, if it has a vision of radical economic change that can tackle the problems of both places.

A narrative for all

Labour needs to know what it stands for. We all know what it’s against: Tory corruption and incompetence, which is harder to argue as they successfully roll out the vaccine. Being against the government isn’t enough for an opposition, it needs to be for something. Once we know what we’re for we can craft a narrative about this country, what has gone wrong and where Labour will take it that voters of all stripes can believe in.

The result in Hartlepool and London show that Labour’s approach isn’t working. Putting on a suit and looking managerial isn’t enough to win broad support in the 21st century. There are ways that Labour can win back the voters it has lost in places like Hartlepool, along with holding onto the voters it has gained in places like London and Wales.

This will involve careful navigation of the values gap between these voters. Most notably on the issue of patriotism. More on that in the next blog post.

"Extinction Rebellion-11" by juliahawkins123 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

What does the left want?

The only thing everyone on the left seems able to agree on is that things aren’t going well for Labour. A year into the Covid-19 pandemic and the government has presided over a crashed economy and the highest death rate in the world, but still the Tories are ahead in the polls.

Everyone has their hot take on this. Is Labour not patriotic enough? Is Labour not socialist enough? Is Labour too focused on winning back the Red Wall? These questions are missing the bigger point: what is the change that we want to see?

It’s worth discussing this bigger question. I want to expand it beyond asking “what does the Labour Party want?” to asking, “what does the left want to achieve as a movement?” Or “what are we fighting for?”

What are we fighting for?

By asking this question, I want to involve more people than just those on the left of the Labour Party. The answer should include the Greens, the more left-wing members of the SNP or people who don't associate themselves with any political party, but do consider themselves part of the broader cultural and political movement sometimes called The Left.

One thing we all want is the defeat of our common enemy: The Tories. It may look like the Tories are destined to be in power forever, riding the wave of Boomer resentment of modernity, but it’s certainly possible to get Labour into power. In 2007 Labour looked unbeatable, but three years later they were in opposition. Labour can get into power and use the enormous power of the British state to make people’s lives a little bit better.

If this is our goal, then we have to start thinking tactically. What will cause the voters we need to move over from Tory to Labour? The answer to this might require some compromising over Labour being seen as patriotic. Patriotism is something I find distasteful, but might be needed to get Labour into power.

Labour in power

If the plan is to get Labour into power and then to use the power of the state to sand off the worst edges of capitalism, then we need to have a discussion about whether Keir Starmer can do this and whether Labour’s current strategy will work.

Undoing the damage of a decade of austerity would make a real difference in the lives of many homeless people, people with insecure work and people who are struggling to put food on the table. Labour can stop a lot of poor people suffering by ending austerity, and stop a lot of migrants suffering by ending the hostile environment.

To get Labour into power in 2024 will require Labour winning back the voters who switched from Labour to Tory in 2019. Voters who want Labour to be more patriotic and are opposed to identity politics. This fact is inescapable.

The left and patriotism

I don’t like patriotism and the steam roller effect it has on political debate where everything associated with patriotism is good and everything not associated with it is bad. However 75% of British voters consider themselves to be very or slightly patriotic, so patriotism needs to be reckoned with. [### link]

Labour (and the left more broadly) needs to either find a way to convince some of that 75% that we’re patriotic or convince these people that actually they don’t care about patriotism. It’s one or the other. Saying “yuck, patriotism” and hoping it goes away won’t help.

We need a plan if we’re going to convince 75% of the public that patriotism is toxic and it isn’t something we should expect from politicians. If we can’t do this then, as someone who is comfortable in my middle-class existence, it would be callous of me to say to poor people they must continue suffering under austerity because I don’t want Labour to embrace patriotism.

A bigger change to society

Does the left want to achieve a bigger change than this? Do we want to end capitalism and build a radically different society? Do we want to create a national or international identity that doesn’t rely on a patriotic, nostalgic version of Britain?

There’s lots of energy around making a big change. Every talk or meeting I attend has representatives from groups fighting neo-liberal capitalism or systemic racism in one way or another. However, the impact has been low. Capitalism remains entrenched. The racist systems that underpin society remain unchanged. The power of the banks and the right-wing media isn’t going to end any time soon.

If we want to achieve a bigger change then we need a strategy. Our strategy can’t be: wait until the climate and all the wars created by capitalism are so bad that even Daily Mail readers wake up and realise what’s going on. Too many people will be dead by that point.

The left’s identity crisis

All over the world, left wing parties don’t know what they stand for in the wake of the 2008 financial crash. The Third Way between left and right has been discredited. Does the left now stand for ending capitalism and stopping the constant cycle of crises it produces? Does the left seek an accommodation with capitalism, where taxes can be used to finance government programs to protect against its worst excesses?

We’re no closer to the answer 13 years on from the financial crash and one year into capitalism’s latest crisis.

Lessons from the last five years

For the last five or so years the left’s plan has been to put a good person in charge of the state. The Corbyn project didn’t provide a solution to the left’s identity crisis or a template for left-wing change elsewhere. Neither has Joe Biden’s victory in the US.

I’m sure that Jeremy Corbyn would have been a good Prime Minister and made sure that the Covid-19 crisis didn’t fall most heavily on the poor and marginalised. However, the fact that the left didn’t have a plan beyond “make Corbyn Prime Minister” has left us adrift now that he has gone.

A better idea of what we want

The left taking over the Labour Party to get what we wanted didn’t work. If we have learned anything in the last five or six years is that we can’t fight everyone from the soft left to the far-right all at the same time and win. We need a better idea of what we want and a plan to get it.

A clear answer to what the left wants will inform our strategy. Are we being big and ambitious or small and realistic? Anything can be achieved if we know what we’re aiming for.

Labour Party picture taken by Andrew Skudder and used under creative commons.

Labour needs a message and to stick to it

Usually watching England play in a major football tournament is a depressing affair, which is why I was pleasantly surprised at how well the team did in the 2018 World Cup. I’m not a football expert, but it seemed like new manager Gareth Southgate had got the team to function better as a single unit. The ball was skillfully passed and players were on point to receive it. 

When it all fell apart in the semi-final against Croatia, the formerly well-functioning team had turned into what I called “Shit England”, as it seemed they were just hoofing the ball up the pitch and hoping for the best.

This is how I feel about Labour right now. Like England, a change in manager seemed to deliver some good results initially. Keir Starmer introduced himself to the country and received a positive reception from people who don’t follow politics closely. The polls were moving in the right direction and Starmer had avoided the initial landmine of being accused of playing politics during the outbreak of a deadly disease.

Seeing what sticks

Recently the slick performance has given way to an undisciplined fumble. Like Shit England, Labour are throwing out anything and seeing what sticks. This reminds me of some of Ed Miliband’s cringe-worthy mistakes, such as constantly trotting out new era-defining buzzwords - One Nation, predistribution - only for it to be forgotten a week later in the desperate search to find something to make the Labour Party popular.

The latest example of this is the idea that Labour should be more pro-business. This annoys me more than the last idea, seemingly thrown out at random, that Labour should be more patriotic. Making Labour look more patriotic is about how the party is presented to the voters, not about policy. Patriotism can equally accompany neoliberal or radical economic policies. If Labour wants to appear more pro-business, this will require specific pro-business policies.

Politics for the wealthy

Britain doesn’t need another pro-business party, when we have the Tories (the party of the wealthy) the Lib Dems (the party of the wealthy with a bit of a conscience), UKIP (the party of the people who think that Britain is both a company and an Empire and should be run according to the worst aspects of both) and the SNP (who will turn Scotland into a low tax, low regulation, tax haven to lure away business from England).

Politics is already slanted towards the interests of the wealthy, without another party attempting to court the votes of the rich (and the confused people who aren’t rich, but seem to think it’s important to make life as easy as possible for those who are).

A vision for the future

All this flailing around is distracting people from the important work of outlining an alternative to the Tories. It comes at the same time a Starmer attempting to outline his vision for the future.

Starmer argued that Tory ideology made the UK more vulnerable to Covid-19. This framing came alongside a platter of policy announcements, including that Labour would “keep the universal credit uplift, end the pay freeze for key workers, prevent council tax rises, extend business rates relief and the VAT cut for hospitality and leisure, and renew the furlough scheme.”

LabourList editor Sienna Rodgers’s said: “It tied together the themes we’ve seen in Labour’s interventions over the past year: family, dignity, security, fiscal responsibility and long-term thinking.”

Tackling the problems of Britain

It’s good that Starmer is making the argument that 10 years of Tory rule led to the UK having the highest Covid-19 death rate in the world, but how does being pro-business fit alongside this?

Being pro-business is at odds with a number of the things a Labour government needs to do to fix the problems with this country. Can Labour be pro-business whilst taking on the fossil fuel companies destroying the planet? Can Labour be pro-business whilst tackling the issue of slum landlords and sky-high property prices, which blight the poor and the middle-class? Can Labour be pro-business whilst fixing the problem of too many companies offering low pay and insecure work? A commitment to tackling these problems puts the Labour party at odds with “business”.

Starmer’s pledges

When Starmer stood for Labour leader, he made a series of pledges. Many Labour members, myself included, took this as an indication of his commitment to a left-wing policy platform, or at least a commitment to a centre-left socially democratic policy platform.

The first of these pledges was: “Increase income tax for the top 5% of earners, reverse the Tories’ cuts in corporation tax and clamp down on tax avoidance, particularly of large corporations. No stepping back from our core principles.”

Is decreasing the income of the top 5% pro-business? Or is it the politics of envy, advocated by greedy socialists who want to take money away from hard-working innovators and give it to feckless teachers and nurses? The sort of thing Jeremy Corbyn would do?

Who will this win over?

The idea of chasing the support of business (or the people who enjoy a good lick of a millionaire’s boot) are at odds with what the Labour Party should stand for. There is a middle ground between Lenin’s War Communism and whatever “pro-business” means in actuality, such as taxing the wealthy a bit and using the money to offer a helping hand to the poorest in society.

This is not what Labour should stand for and it’s another example of Labour being Shit England. This “pro-business” idea is just hoofed out there to see if it scores a goal by accident, in the absence of anything resembling a strategy.

Who is this designed to win over? Everyone who voted Labour in 1997? It will take more than Keir Starmer praising Richard Branson as a job creator to achieve that.

Losing momentum

Starmer has lost momentum (in more ways than one), since the start of the year. He pitched himself as the competent alternative to the Tories, but as the government has successfully rolled out the vaccine program the wind has come out of Starmer’s sails.

There’s no better illustration of this than this recent video from Joe.co.uk talking to Red Wall voters.

Labour needs a clear communication strategy and not jumping from framing to framing, as they did under Miliband. Talk about being pro-business or more pro-flag is distracting from making the case that Starmer outlined in his speech about the future.

A message that needs to be repeated

As Sienna Rodgers said: “the argument that the Tories left the UK exposed to the worst of Covid must be repeated ad nauseam.” This simple message is what Labour needs to stick to. Just as David Cameron repeated over and over that Labour’s spending caused the financial crash or how “take back control” became ubiquitous during the referendum campaign.

Labour pitching themselves as pro-business is just throwing out things that Corbyn wasn’t in the hope that the polls will narrow. It’s the same as Shit England, firing the ball around and hoping for the best. It looks desperate even to the untrained eye and no amount of energetic kicking is a substitute for a solid strategy.

"File:Official portrait of Keir Starmer crop 1.jpg" by Chris McAndrew is licensed under CC BY 3.0

What should Labour do?

It’s a new year and we’re all trying to turn over a new leaf; as much as is possible during a third lockdown. We’re trying to be better people and achieve the things we didn’t do last year. So, in that spirit, what should the Labour Party do this year to rise in the polls?

Labour needs to turn over a new leaf. There’s a huge health and economic crisis in the UK right now - not that anyone needs reminding - but the Labour Party is only 1% ahead in the most recent polls. In 2020 the government didn’t missed an opportunity to screw up, but Labour’s poll lead is within the margin of error and 41% of the population doesn’t think Keir Starmer looks like a Prime Minister in waiting (compared to 33% who do).

We all know what the problem is: Labour’s game is too defensive. To borrow a football metaphor Steven Bush used on the New Statesman podcast: Labour are playing a strongly defensive game in the hope that they’ll get lucky and the other side will concede a goal, so that they can eke out a 1-0 win. However, it just takes one screw up and the opponent gets a goal and then Labour will need 2 goals, which won’t come from playing defensively.

The alternative to defensive play

In this case, playing defensively is trying hard to avoid culture war issues and not being seen as too critical of the government during a national crisis. Taking ginger steps to avoid any cultural landmines won’t produce the ten-point poll lead Labour needs. So, what would?

Labour needs to describe a vision of how Britain would be different under a Labour government. It’s not necessary to announce specific policies at this point, when it’s so far from a general election, but Starmer and Labour need to tell a story about how the country could be different.

David Cameron did this effectively with Broken Britain, a slogan that conjured up visions of urban decay that united rural Tories and fretful, middle-class suburbanites in fits of pearl-clutching about everything that had gone wrong under the soulless technocracy of New Labour.

Constructive opposition isn’t helping Labour

It’s not enough to say where the Tories are going wrong. Starmer has consistently pointed out the mistakes that the Tories have made during the pandemic and, although Labour now have a small poll lead, the government is still polling in the high 30s. The Tories have plenty of time to switch leaders and fight a dirty campaign, filled with warnings of Labour profligacy and dog whistles about Cultural Marxism, to win the next general election.

It’s essential that Labour outline a vision for how the country will be different if Starmer is elected Prime Minister. The electorate need to believe in more than competence. They need a vision that inspires them to take a gamble on putting someone else in charge after what will be 14 years of Tory rule at the next election.

A strange voting coalition

The story that Labour should tell about how the country will be different should mainly be economic in nature. It should be focused on tackling inequality, creating jobs, providing decent housing, building infrastructure and redistributing wealth. A desire for this type of change is what unites Labour’s coalition, from young people in large cities struggling with poor quality housing and insecure work, to older people in towns with crumbling infrastructure.  

As Helen Thompson said on the Talking Politics podcast, all electoral coalitions look strange and the coalition that Labour need to assemble looks very strange indeed, filled with people with very different values and opinions. They are divided on issues such as immigration, patriotism, how they view British history and social justice. An economic message can unite these voters.

Pain points for Labour

This will be hard to do. It’s a difficult thing to outline a compelling vision of how the country will be different under Labour that the electorate can believe in. The last three Labour leaders failed to do this.

It will also be hard to avoid being dragged into a cultural war over social issues, such as statues or trans-rights. There will also be people who will try and make issues such as Scottish Independence and our relations with the EU, pain points for Labour. (Some of these people will be motivated by a genuine passion to achieve something they believe in, but they will largely succeed in causing problems for Labour and getting more Tories elected.)

Something else that will make this difficult is that the politics of debt has reared its ugly head again. The government has had to borrow substantially during the pandemic the national debt has risen and Rishi Sunak appears willing to make this an important issue again. Whether he genuinely thinks that large public debts are unsustainable or is promoting this issue as it will be tricky for Labour to navigate (or both) is a moot point.

The lesson of Brexit

Calls for austerity following a period of large public borrowing is a simple message that can be easily explained to the electorate and one that Labour has struggled to deal with in the past. However, Brexit shows that it is possible to tell a political story that transcends economics. There are things that people care about more than money, as many people were willing to be (at least a little bit) worse off in exchange for the promise of freedom that Brexit was supposed to bring.

The Leave Campaign used “Project Fear” as a means to dismiss the economic concerns over Brexit. It worked during a time of lackluster economic growth, where many were feeling the pinch of low wage growth and high costs of living. Despite this many were willing to take the risk that things could be worse in exchange for the hope they could be better.

A vision of hope

The people who voted for Brexit were barking up the wrong tree. However, they show that a story about how the future can be better than the present can make handwringing about economic constraints look timid or expose them as an argument in favour of the status quo, if enough people believe in the story of change.

Labour must offer a vision of hope and tell a story about how we can build a fairer and better economy, which works for everyone. That is Labour’s only route back to power. Playing a defensive game in the hope that the government messes up enough for Labour to eke out a narrow victory won’t work.

"File:Official portrait of Keir Starmer crop 1.jpg" by Chris McAndrew is licensed under CC BY 3.0

How well is Starmer doing as Labour leader?

As we prepare to say goodbye to the god-awful year that has been 2020, we pause for a moment to take stock in all the ways this year has been less than we hoped. Keir Starmer became Labour leader this year and although recent polls show a slight overall preference for Labour (40% vs 37% for the Tories) I had expected Labour to be further ahead at the end of a year when the economy crashed and the government mishandled a serious disease outbreak.

There’s also the fact that we were assured numerous times during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership that any other leader would be 20 points ahead and that Starmer in particular was the man to lead Labour to the sunlit uplands of a 1997 style majority.

Policy commitments

Anyway, Starmer is the leader now, for better or worse, so how well is he doing? Well, many (if not everyone) who consider themselves to be a Labour socialists or on the left of the Labour Party are not happy with Starmer's leadership. From abstaining on the Spy Cops bill to suspending Corbyn, Labour socialists have been provided with many reasons to be narked.

This annoyance with Starmer goes deeper than specific issues, even hot button issues such as the Spy Cops bill or Corybn’s response to the EHRC report. Many Labour socialists, myself included, say that what we want from the Labour Party are left-wing policies, i.e. commitments to actually doing things to improve the country. Many also claim that it is Starmer’s lack of commitment to Corbyn’s (largely popular) policy platform that is the source of their anger with him.

A typical example is Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds saying that Labour has ruled out a commitment to Universal Basic Income (UBI) in the next Labour manifesto. This didn’t go down well on my Twitter timeline (storm in a teacup, perhaps) and was seen as further evidence of the lack of left-wing policy from this opposition.

The five week wait

Looking beyond the headlines, Starmer’s Labour Party is still committed to many solid left-wing policies. These include reforming Universal Credit (UC), taxing the top 5% of earners and the Green Recovery (aka the Green New Deal).

Yes, Labour have announced that they will not seek to implement UBI in power, but they will instead change the amount of time that a new UC claimant has to wait for their first payment, which is currently five weeks. Dodds said: “People waiting five weeks for social security doesn’t make sense.”

The five week wait for UC causes immense suffering for the poorest people in society. If you need welfare, being made to wait five weeks for it drives people to destitution and homelessness. Changing or scrapping the five week wait is desperately needed.

The vibe of politics

Many Labour socialists who don’t like Starmer have argued that he will go back on this and his other policy commitments before the next general election, offering more centrist policies instead. This might be the case, but for now there is a raft of left-wing policy that Labour is committed too, from climate change to housing.

Can Labour socialists who are angry at Starmer see the future? Maybe, and you rarely lose money betting that the Labour Party will disappoint you. However, from where I stand, there is every chance that Starmer will offer a policy platform in the next general election that is to the left of the one Ed Miliband offered in 2015. So why are all the policy loving Labour socialists so disappointed in Starmer?

Stephen Bush, the political editor of the New Statesman, has said many times your impression of a politician is mainly about the vibe that is given off and not about specific policies or statements. He has also said that left-wing Labour members’ dissatisfaction with Starmer is because they don’t like his vibe. I think Bush is right. I must admit that I don’t like the Starmer vibe either. I don’t like how he talks about respect for the troops or the police like he’s ticking off the Daily Mail’s list of the most important people.

The vibe is not good. But the policy is

I don’t like the vibe of Starmer telling Labour MPs to abstain on a bill to expand the clandestine powers of the state in order to appear tough on security. (Also, how do you appear tough by essentially doing nothing?) I’m sure there’s worse vibes to come, probably on immigration and some stupid culture war issue that the right-wing press will make really important to cause pain for Labour.

This said, I’m willing to accept the shitty middle England vibe, if it’s in exchange for the policies that are being offered, such as an end to the five week wait or the green recovery, or more money for schools and hospitals, or steps to tackle homelessness and the huge numbers of people with insecure accommodation. Mouthing Daily Mail talking points about the troops and the flag costs nothing, despite the fact that I personally find it distasteful.

The policies that Starmer is offering are not my first choice. I would prefer Universal Basic Income as part of a Labour government’s welfare policy. The environmental policy that Labour ultimately offers in the next general election is likely to be more moderate than the one I would prefer, but there’s every chance that it will rise to meet the challenge of the looming environmental disaster.

Put your vote where your mouth is

I’m still willing to vote and advocate (to my tiny following) for The Labour Party as they’re offering policies to improve the lives of many people, including the poorest and most disadvantaged in society.

When Starmer became Labour leader, I assumed that I wouldn’t like some of the things he would say, such as praising the army or Winston Churchill, but if he’s willing to actually do something about poverty, homelessness and the environment then he’ll be worth voting for.

A hill to die on

Many Labour socialists who claim to dislike Starmer because of his abandonment of left-wing policies, are responding to the vibe he gives off. As Bush has said, the point where the vibe went bad for many Labour socialists was when Starmer sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey from the Shadow Cabinet. Their estimation of him then continued to go downhill with Starmer’s handling of the EHRC report.

My own view is that Starmer has mishandled the publication of the EHRC report and the suspension of Corbyn has turned this into an even bigger inter-party row than was needed. Corbyn is entitled to make a statement in his defense following the publication of the EHRC report, but at the same time Labour needs to do more to tackle antisemitism. A big intra-party row doesn’t help with putting in place a process to kick antisemites out of the Labour Party or help Labour rebuild its public image as a party that is against discrimination.

It turns out that the hill that many Labour socialists are willing to die on is the argument that antisemitism has been weaponised against Corbyn. I don’t think that everyone on the left of the Labour Party is an antisemite or that it’s antisemitic to support Corbyn. I also don’t think that the treatment of Corbyn by the current Labour leader is the biggest issue facing the left right now. The fact that unless we stop capitalism's uncontrolled rampage through the natural environment the outside world will look like The Desert of The Real from The Matrix by 2100 is the most important issue in politics.

Pro-welfare reform. Anti-environmental collapse

That’s the hill I am willing to die on. Probably literally. The most important dividing line in politics is between those who want to do what it takes to stop the looming environmental disaster and those who think dealing with it can be deferred (or that small adjustments will make the difference). Another crucial division is between those who genuinely want to use the state to help the least fortunate in society and those who want to use it to funnel money towards their mates. Next to these issues, internal Labour Party beef matters about as much as a fart in one of those tornadoes made out of fire that they have in Australia now.

Maybe it will be revealed that Starmer doesn’t take the looming climate threat seriously enough to commit Labour to the necessary radical reforms to protect the continued existence of the human race. Maybe he will go back on commitments to policies that will help the poorest in society to try to win the votes of Daily Mail reading curtain-twitchers. If so, then I wouldn’t be able to justify voting for him. Until then, a vote for Labour remains the best way to make society better.

I’m not about to run out and get a Starmer tattoo or claim he’s the greatest Labour leader ever, but if Labour socialists are serious about wanting left-wing policy then that’s still what Labour stands for. The fight for left-wing policy should be the hill we are willing to die on and the fact that we don’t like the vibe - however disappointingly Sainsbury’s Saturday afternoon shopping trip the vibe is. So far Starmer still has my vote, but it’s a long time until the next election so I’ll have to keep watching.

"File:Official portrait of Keir Starmer crop 1.jpg" by Chris McAndrew is licensed under CC BY 3.0

It’s a mistake for Labour to want to talk about race and economic issues separately

How should Labour respond to the recent Black Lives Matter protests across the UK? I know how I feel about them: systematic racism is a big problem in the UK, you just have to look at the higher death rates from Covid-19 for people from Black and minority ethnic (BAME) groups people to know that the UK has a problem. I want the Labour Party and its leadership to be a vocal supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement and work to dismantle systemic racism wherever it is found.

One of the sad things about politics today is that there are voters who would be put off voting Labour if Keir Starmer became a prominent supporter of BLM. Part of me wants to say “fuck those guys, we don’t need them.” However, I don’t know if Labour can win power by only appealing to people who support BLM. It seems unlikely. 

Labour needs to win an election to be in power so that it can implement meaningful reforms that address systemic racism. For example, Labour could carry out the recommendations of the Lammy Review: “An independent review into the treatment of, and outcomes for, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic individuals in the Criminal Justice System.” The Tories aren’t going to do this, but Labour needs to win power first.

Conscience against compromise

This leads to the age-old political dilemma: conscience against compromise. Say what you feel or play a tactical game to win power and then make changes. I don’t envy the position that Starmer is in. Making the wrong strategic decision on BLM, or a host of other issues, could hurt Labour’s electoral chances, prevent them from winning power and then using the power of the state to address systemic racism in Britain.

It appears that Starmer has chosen compromise. He was photographed taking the knee, in a show of solidarity with those protesting the murder of George Floyd by police in the US, but he also criticised the removal of a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol. I can see the pragmatism in this approach, it aims to keep onside voters who support the removal of the statue and voters (and potential voters) who weren’t in favour of it.

It’s worth bearing in mind that a recent YouGov poll showed that 40% of those asked supported “the statue being removed, but not in the way in which it was done” and that 33% “disapprove of the statue being removed.” This could be read as 73% of voters being opposed to the toppling of the statue. It’s a courageous Labour leader who takes a stance that 73% of the voters oppose, so I can see why Starmer has opted for compromise here.

Identity politics

It’s also worth remembering that the Edward Colston statue is just one event in a long campaign against systemic racism. A single poll on one event doesn’t mean that Labour should be shouting loudly about keeping up statues of slave traders. The poll does highlight one of the key problems for Labour: what is the story that they can tell that will unite Labour voters who were glad to see the statue torn down and those who would want to see it staying up?

The discourse around events such as the removal of the Edward Colston statue are often referred to as “identity politics”. This phrase is usually evoked by people opposed to “identity politics” as a way to dismiss the voicing of objections to systemic racism or the oppression of LGBTQ+ people. However, there are a lot of voters who are alienated by identity politics and Labour might need to win some of their votes to be in power.

There is a view within the Labour Party that it needs to stay away from issues related to identity, from Black Lives Matter to trans rights, and instead tell a story that is entirely about economics.

An economic message

A form of this argument is made in the recent report from Labour Together into the 2019 election defeat, which concludes: “Our potential voting coalition shares much common ground on economic issues”. This argument is also made in Steve Rayson’s new book about the 2019 general election: The Fall of the Red Wall.

Both of these investigations into the future of Labour recommend a focus on economic issues over identity issues. The reason is that the party’s current supporter’s beliefs on identity are divergent from the rest of the country. Only a story about a radical economic change can unite its current supporters with the supporters the party needs to win, because they are so far apart on other issues.

Race and class

It is a mistake to think that Labour can win power by telling a story about the country they want to create that is only focused on economic issues, while either talking separately about racial equality or ignoring it all together. Gary Younge recently wrote in the New Statesman that he wanted the left to “end the futile attempts to engage race and class separately.” He said: “They do not exist in silos but are two interdependent forces, among many, and they are either understood in relation to each other or are misunderstood completely.”

In his article Younge talks about how people from the BAME community are more likely to be in poorly paid service industry jobs that make them more at risk from Covid-19. He said: “For historical reasons, related to migration, some groups are more likely to be concentrated in the health service, public transport and care work, while the modern economy has created significant concentrations of certain ethnicities in cleaning, taxi driving and security.

“12.8 per cent of workers from Bangladeshi and Pakistani backgrounds are employed in public-facing transport jobs such as bus, coach and taxi driving, compared with 3.5 per cent of white people. These are all areas where workers are most at risk.”

Measures to improve the conditions for people in low paid, service industry jobs fit perfectly into the economic story that Labour wants to tell about the country, but are also part of the story about racial equality that Labour feels it needs to sideline. The two issues are fundamentally linked and can’t be talked about separately. Pushing discussion of racial equality to one side and labeling it as “identity politics” is a failure to understand the details of the story that Labour needs to tell.

Informing, not undermining, solidarity

As Younge said in his article: “The effort to relegate race, gender, sexual orientation, disability – the list goes on – to mere “identity politics” has ramped up of late. The disproportionate number of deaths among minorities, the spike in domestic violence during lockdown, the manner in which disabled people were marginalised at every step – all these factors exemplify the degree to which we have experienced this moment differently in material ways that are not, solely, about economic. Acknowledging that doesn’t undermine solidarity, it informs it.”

Labour should urgently find a story that it can connect racial equality with its economic message. Talking about racial equality is not separate from discussing jobs, education, health, economic distribution and regional inequality, all issues that Labour need to be talking about as part of their economic message to the voters. The two issues are fundamentally connected. There’s no need to separate out the “identity politics” that some voters don’t like from the economic message that they will like.

Labour needs to tell a powerful story that connects the reasons why it’s wrong that we had a statue of a slave trader in Bristol, to reasons why we have so much regional variation in job prospects, all the way through to why the economic gap between rich and poor is growing. Labour cannot tell a story that addresses some of these questions separately. It needs to tell a story that addresses them all together.

"File:Official portrait of Keir Starmer crop 1.jpg" by Chris McAndrew is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Why Labour needs a narrative about how the country can rebuild better after lockdown

Recently, I wrote about how the Labour Party needs a new narrative to start winning again. Labour needs to tell a story, which connects with the electorate, about how things would be different under a Labour government. This story needs to resonate with people outside the echo chambers of left-wing social media and reach out to people across the country.

This needs to be a story about how things will be better after the Covid-19 crisis. As I write we are still in lockdown, the virus is a major threat, people have lost of their jobs, the economy is likely to experience a huge contraction and there is no clear sign of when we’re likely to get back to anywhere near normal. Right now, people need hope to get them through this difficult time.

What would give us hope is a narrative about how the world will be better post lockdown. We don’t need a story about how we’ll get back to normal. Normal wasn’t very good for a lot of people. It wasn’t good for the people with low paid insecure work. It wasn’t good for the people on Universal Credit who are struggling unable to feed their families. It wasn’t good for the people living in poor-quality housing. It wasn’t good for the people who don’t have anywhere to live at all.

The planet cannot afford for us to go back to normal

Normal wasn’t good for the environment. We have less than 12 years to make some really serious changes to the way we live if we’re going to avert the worse of the environmental catastrophe. Before March this year, it didn’t look like it was possible for human society to change so dramatically. Then we found that, given the will to act, huge social changes can be delivered quickly. The planet cannot afford for us to go back to normal after the Covid-19 crisis. We need a new normal, for the sake of both the environment and the people who inhabit it.

There are encouraging signs that some people within the Labour Party are thinking about the need to rebuild differently after the Covid-19 crisis. In a recent Guardian article former Labour leader and current Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband said that “the current moment is a contemporary equivalent of what happened after 1945.”

He added that: “It’s never too early to start thinking about the future, to think about what kind of world we want to build as we emerge from this crisis. I think we owe it to have a sort of reassessment of what really matters in our society, and how we build something better for the future.”

Miliband gave a few more specifics saying: “I think we should be aiming for the most ambitious climate recovery plan in the world,” and that: “That should be nothing less than the government’s ambition. The old argument that you can have economic success or environmental care is just completely wrong.”

Engaging young voters

The need for this to be a green recovery is especially pressing for a key group of voters, a group that has remained loyal to Labour through Miliband’s and Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and the ups and downs of Brexit: the young. Of course in British politics, the young is everyone under 45. I don’t feel young, but apparently I am, which is nice.

The divide between young and old is one of the starkest dividing lines in politics. The young generally voted Remain and are more engaged with Black Lives Matter and trans rights. On the whole, the young favour more left-wing economic policies and, crucially, care more about the environment than the old. The environment is a key issue for us young voters and leading with this is a good way for Labour to keep the young onside.

The young are also much more likely to be hit hardest by the recession that is currently unfolding (just as we were more likely to be hit hardest by the last one). A recent study from the Resolution Foundation found that more than 600,000 more young people could become unemployed this year because of coronavirus.

Own the future

A narrative about how the country could be a better, fairer, greener place after Covid-19 is what young people need now to give them hope that something good can come from the suffering that the coronavirus has unleashed. While Tories are struggling with the present - enforcing the lockdown, keeping the economy on life support, dealing with whatever stupid thing Dominic Cummings has done this week - Labour need to own the future. They need to tell a story about what happens next.

This story will energise young voters who are already fired up about Labour. It will also reassure them that Kier Starmer’s Labour party values their support as much as Corbyn’s Labour did. It will also offer them encouragement that issues that they are concerned about, from social justice to the environment, are the ones a Labour government will champion.

A story about what a better post-Covid-19 world is what the country needs right now. It’s a story that can transcend the group of people who already support Labour, break out of the left-wing social media echo chambers and bring the country together behind the vision of a Labour government.