“We would be naïve to think that changes at the top of the party and an end to the Brexit wars mean an automatic return to business as usual,” he wrote: “The political landscape has shifted, we must adapt or risk fading into obscurity like some of our sister parties on the continent.”
But what would that require? Jarvis pleads with his party to “better understand how notions such as patriotism, sovereignty and national security relate to people’s lived experiences.” He also observes that “local and regional pride is accepted, celebrated, even encouraged, but when the discussion moves to national pride, many in our party begin to feel uneasy.”
That’s putting it mildly. When Starmer tried to wrap himself in the Union Jack, parts of his party freaked out. It could have been his opportunity to face down those who see our national flag as symbol of hate and racism, but he clearly doesn’t have the stomach for a fight.
The Jarvis solution is to acknowledge the bad parts of our national history — “the Britain of empire and conquest”, as he puts it, while celebrating “the Britain of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Chartists and the miners’ strike.” But are enough voters interested in this brand of Old Labour nostalgia?
Matthew Parris has dismissed the Labour movement as “a gluey, opaque, illiberal freemasonry of bonkers activists, passive supporters, historical resentments, myths and legend.” Labour, he feels, is an impediment to change: “21st-century Britain will never warm to this 20th-century dinosaur, waving its banners of extinct mining unions.”
Labour’s predicament is that Jarvis and Parris are equally right and wrong. Much of the middle-class Left has no interest in Jarvis’s patriotic socialism and much of the working class has no interest in what Parris stands for. Without both sets of voters there is no path to power for the Left, yet Labour is clearly incapable of bringing them together in sufficient numbers.
And that leads us to the third, and most difficult, home truth that the party has to accept: it can’t defeat the Tories alone.
Britain today has only one major party — the Conservatives. They can be beaten, but only by an alliance of smaller parties, of which Labour would be the obviously leading member. Not splitting the non-Tory vote is hardly a new idea, but this latest incarnation of the “progressive alliance” would also serve a more radical purpose: the unbundling of the Labour Party.
It’s clear that Labour will never retake the Red Wall unless its leadership is free to develop a moderate and patriotic platform – and this can’t be done with either the Corbynites or the hardcore Remainers on board.
In order to persuade them to leave, the Labour leader needs make them an offer they can’t refuse — an electorally viable future outside Labour. Under our current voting system, Labour would stand aside to give other progressive parties a free run in a defined number of constituencies, concentrated in the big cities and university towns.
If this works — if Labour retakes the Red Wall and a progressive alliance gains a majority — then that still leaves the problem of reconciling the difference stripes of leftish opinion. But this would be less painful as part of a negotiation to form a government than as a bitter factional struggle within one party.
Denmark provides an example of how it can work. There, the main centre-left party are the Social Democrats, who govern with the support of several smaller progressive groups. Under Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, the Danish Social Democrats have gained support by combining welfarist policies with a tough line on immigration and national security. Whatever one might think of these policies, they’re electorally successful — and the rest of the Left goes along with it. Indeed Denmark is one of the last places in western European with a significant centre-left to speak of.
But can we really imagine Labour embarking upon such a radically different future? Yes — but only if it has no other option, and knows it faces oblivion. Given a choice between seizing the day or clutching at straws, it will always go for the straws. It’s easier, it’s less painful, and it’s ultimately disastrous. If Labour are humiliated today, it will be the wake-up call they need.
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SubscribeHumiliation is like shame. It is internally generated. Hence it requires insight, self-awareness and recognition of minimum standards below which one has fallen. People whose entire world view is built upon sanctimonious superiority over tabloid reading oiks cannot be humiliated. The more they lose, the greater their conviction that the world is indeed wrong. Go woke, go broke and lose votes.
That’s a really good point. If you regard yourself as ineffably virtuous and everyone else as just ignorant, nasty and wrong, you’re really going to struggle to accept that everyone else is in fact right.
The living manifestation of this is that tool Neil Kinnock. After he lost in 1992, and again when Labour lost in 2015, he actually had the effrontery to sniff contemptuously at the disgraceful electorate, that had spitefully, selfishly and nastily elected the Conservatives. Labour hadn’t lost because it was inept, nasty and wrong. It had lost because the voters were a disgrace.
oh yes,kinnock seemed to be particularly smug and entitled and then showed what a money grabbing hypocrite he was at the european parliament.
You’re going to be surprised how many voters up their expectations of the parties in the next eighteen months. The Leave Campaign style race to the bottom doesn’t deliver anything people can build better lives with and the repitition of populist guff exposes its lack of substance.
The Tories will be re-elected in 2024 regardless. The only question is the size of the majority. If the government goes into an election with a majority they get re-elected. If they’re a minority they can lose, as in 1979 and 1997.
The next GE will be held on revised boundaries that should (at last!) reverse some of the Blair era passive gerrymandering. So the current 80-seat majority is really a 100-seat majority. When was the last time such a large majority was overturned?
New Zealand &Japan in 1995/97 Turfed out their labour,Liberal Government by massive landslides, I believe Lib-Lab-Cons-Greens have rn their Course, its INDEPENDENT, SDP or reform Now
A prime example of the fingers in the ears ‘I am right and virtuous and anti populist (whatever that means) and you lot are not’ – that the article is taking aim at!
We have left the EU – move on from the Leave campaign were horrible (while Remain were virtuous, wise, etc) simplistic nonsense!
re. “sanctimonious superiority” etc. Yes. Metropolitan Labour no longer even attempts to be a broad church and cannot fathom that calling people “gammons” or “chavs” is not calculated to get them to support you.
It’s the same with the professional “anti-racist” lobby, another millstone round the neck of the Labour Party I voted for most of my adult life. You cannot debate with them. If you point out that white working class boys are now the most disadvantaged group in the UK, they say that proves you are racist.
And “First Past the Post”, which Labour supported when it worked in their favour 1997- late 2000s, means we will have an elected Tory dictatorship for at least a decade.
If you point out that white working class boys are now the most disadvantaged group in the UK, they say that proves you are racist.
That’s clearly not a racist position and shouldn’t be called one. But neither would it be unreasonable to point out that the reason they are the most disadvantaged is not because they are white but because they are working class.
But the grievance industry won’t have that. If you say blacks do badly at school because they’re working class, the race hucksters will insist it’s always white racism that’s the cause. We saw exactly this with Tony Sewell’s report last month.
The objection to Sewell’s report was that it didn’t take the next step in the analysis which is to ask why black people of certain backgrounds are more likely to be working class.
Why is anyone working class? That’s the line Labour need to win, not why are black people working class. Skin needs removing from the discussion. Whether you like it or not, our capitalist system does very much allow for clever, lucky, hard working and ambitious people to achieve social mobility. It’s all around us. It doesn’t guarantee it but it provides the possibility. There is no alternative to that currently, and nor should there be. You cannot force equality of outcome. What you can do is treat housing and employment as 2 halves of the same coin and run it properly, so clever, lucky, hard working and ambitious people can have a go. That’s the trick Labour have to pull off nationwide.
However, our capitalist system also makes it much easier for people with high status, wealthy parents to maintain that inherited social status, wealth and income. Historically, by the very nature of there being many more generations living in a country during which wealth and status can be built up it is on aggregate harder for those of some immigrant backgrounds to inherit that social currency.
Housing and good employment are crucial – and you are more likely to have access to them if your parents did because their parents did and so on back for generations. Before going back too many generations you are comparing equality of opportunity between descendants of emancipated slaves (1834) in the West Indies to descendants of tradespeople, artisans, farmers, shopkeepers and labourers and factory workers in the UK. I’m not saying that it was easy for UK born people and families in the generations since 1834 to gain or maintain that social currency but the odds of it happening were much greater than for those generations born to slaves in the West Indies and whose descendants then moved to a country where they were denied good housing and good employment because of racism.
You can’t force equality of outcome but you can recognise that there is a historical aspect to racial advantage and disadvantage that plays out in the inequality of opportunity and outcome of today.
Black Caribbean arrivals were no worse off than those from the Sub-Continent, nor indeed Hong Kong (many early arrivals from there were refugees from the CCP who passed through the Crown Colony on the way here)…and in some ways better off…same education, language and religion…how do you explain their success, which is quite marked?
I think you probably come from middle class origins. Most UK white people only need to go back one or two generations to find their ancestors living in absolute poverty.
Research what it was like for most in the hungry 30s. My dad born in 1927 learnt to go rabbiting when really young as that was the only meat he ever had. His mom died when he was 10 as the family could not afford a doctor. He actually got a scholarship the following year – but as they could not afford the uniform he could not go. He worked in factories for 52 years , from 14 to 66. Like many working class men he died at 68. Go and look in pit village cemeteries – most men died in their 50s and 60s – however they at least have headstones – probably the first in their families to do so – most working class people would have been buried in unmarked graves. The old headstones you see today come from the wealthy.
Go back even further and you see what working class people in the UK had to endure – Chadwick 1842 found that in Manchester 57% of working class children died before their 5th birthday. Remember 6 yr olds were working in factories and mines then.
By the way working class men did not get the vote till 1918, but their was no colour bar in the UK on voting – Charles Sancho was the first black man to vote in UK in 1774
…our first non-White MPs were Indians, elected in the East End in the 1890’s…we had Black Naval Officers in the Napoleonic Wars, and I believe a Welsh Squire of mixed race was an MFH sometime in the C19th…and stories of local folk in the UK kicking off in support of Black GIs against White Ones in WW2 are pretty numerous, the “Battle of Bamber” being the most celebrated example…and you might take a look at the Trial Scenes in a “A Matter of Life and Death” to get some understanding of the popular British view of our Non-White Comrades in Arms in that conflict.
Attitudes that influenced the Civil Rights Movement in the US.
All for our History in this area being taught…provided it doesn’t neglect these elements…and indeed our moral crusade against Slavery, which did much to put that noxious trade down at a great cost in blood and treasure…as well as partially explaining our involvement with Africa…
Bollox. Look at all those who fled the French revolution, fled the soviet “revolution”, fled the soviet colonisation of European countries, etc. – all penniless and devoid of any status. Still they found their footing as soon as they landed in their new countries. “Social currency” is culture, not wealth. No matter how much money you throw at the “communities” (bames), they still won’t miraculously exchange it to “social currency”. Because they lack the requisite cultural capital.
Marks &Spencer, John Cohen, etc all East European made Millions in ”racist” Britain..Wake up Wokes
On the other hand, there are a sufficient number of immigrant descendants in the UK who have done very well indeed for the argument that racism is the cause of lack of social mobility to be less than convincing.
Once, perhaps, but now? What if, instead of that, the lack of social mobility is down to an unwillingness to adapt to the requirements of the labor market, to prefer instead to be cloaked in a sub culture defined by its hostility to the mainstream?
People do not fear racial difference, they fear cultural intolerance – specifically the intolerance the minority sometimes has for the majority’s sensibilities, and the insistence that its own sensibilities be defended at all times.
The data clearly demonstrates that social mobility has been declining now for 40+ years. Thanks, neoliberals!
Thanks champagne socialists who have worked tirelessly to ensure that smart kids from poor families have no chance to compete with their own dimwitted but privileged offspring.
The data? Quote your source.
What is this meant to say about housing?
Presumably not that you can only have a house if you’re lucky (as well as being clever, hard working and ambitious). What is this trick Labour need to learn?
Why is never asked. On any issue. Instead, the political calculus is to assume the worst motives of anyone who is not on board with the accepted talking point. Yelling “racism” is easy, it’s political fast food. Discover “why” and doing something to address it takes work and it does not happen quickly.
You may be onto something.
But it’s unfortunate that many of the people who are saying “it’s not racism” seem supremely uninterested in solving the problem, once they’ve aquitted themselves (and the country at large) of the racist charge.
Uninterested? Not at all. It’s that the perfectly good rational and workable solutions they present are shouted down with even louder, more hysterical shrieks of “racism”.
I’m interested – how should it be solved?
I think we know the answer to that.
It’s simple. In this country the most important indicator of a child’s future status is that of their parents. The majority of non white people entered this country with very little and so their children and their children’s children have suffered the same fate as the indigenous working class.
There was some research recently that showed that having a French surname, linking you with our Norman overlords of the 12th century, is still an indicator of high earnings and status!
If that was the case, then all the East Asian, Indian etc. immigrants would perform as badly as the blacks, which they don’t.
No it wasn’t. It was that he failed to agree that racism was the cause of everything, as the woke left was demanding.
For example,
(BMJ)
and
(some huckster in the Guardian)
and
some other race huckster.
In short, these parti pris grievance industry cranks all objected to its evidence-based conclusions being preferred over their own anecdotes and racist prejudice. Most did so before they had read it.
Not one of those quotes states racism was the cause of everything. The objection was to sections of the report that appeared to deny racism played any role.
You need to reread them properly – “racism could account for the “adverse distribution of socioeconomic characteristics”; “institutional racism plays a key role in the education of Black and minority pupils”; “Black and minority ethnic teachers report experiencing systemic and overt racism”; “the recommendations of long-standing reviews into racial injustice” – which starts out by assuming there is some.
Every single one takes him to task for failing to agree with the left’s prejudice that it’s all about racism. Any conclusion that departs from the left’s bigotry and anecdata is intolerable, impermissible and wrong.
Labour’s associated with that and that’s why they’re scr3wed.
Sorry, Jon – I did read them carefully. Your interpretation of them might be that they are saying it’s all about racism but they are not saying that in the quotes.
‘racism could account for the “adverse distribution of socioeconomic characteristics” – this does not exclude other factors
“institutional racism plays a key role in the education of Black and minority pupils” a key role, not the only role
“the recommendations of long-standing reviews into racial injustice” – this is just saying there have been other reviews. It doesn’t say anything about there not being other factors that lead to social injustice.
All those reactions are founded on a racist assumption that there is “racial injustice” in favour of whites at the expense of “Blacks”. No distinction is drawn between “Blacks” of different origins (more racism). All insist that racism is to blame here, which is debunked in the report they object to, and supported only by anecdote or by grievance industry wibblings that toe the expected line.
There is no evidence of your claim that the objection was about why “black people of certain backgrounds are more likely to be working class” or to “sections of the report that appeared to deny racism”. In any case, if the report denies racism it did so off the evidence, not the nasty little preoccupations of race hucksters, grievance merchants and white-hating racists.
I don’t think we’ll agree substantively.
But I do agree that talking about Whites and Blacks, or BAME, is reductive and that was a point Sewell’s report made and critics of the report agreed with. The report then went on to use those very terms to explain why racism was not the problem.
Racism isn’t always between blacks and whites – it varies depending on the society it’s operating in.
None of the above makes it racist to believe racial injustice exists.
More likely to be nonworking underclass, you mean.
That aside, the simple explanation is merit. Statistically, they don’t merit much. Of course there are always the outliers and atypicals, but as a demographic mass they don’t merit much on average compared to other demographics.
That’s as clear a definition of a racist view point as one could ask for. Unless I’m misunderstanding you you’re saying black people of certain backgrounds have inherently less merit than people from other demographics. As you can’t decide which demographic you are born into I can only assume you think people in some demographics are born with intrinsically less merit than others. They are born to be inferior.
And? So what?
Indeed you are misunderstanding, as i did not say ‘inherently’ anywhere. The fact is that blacks have less merit on statistical average. The reasons for that are manifold, including cultural / environmental factors (i.e. prenatal / infant malnutrition due to high birthrates, the practice of cosanguinity etc.) – not some mythical predestined inferiority.
Oh, the old canard of “birthplace lottery”. People are not born to where they are born due to lucky draw or accident. People are born to where they are born due to their parents copulating, and their parents are the results of the sets of grandparents copulating, and so forth and so forth down the millennia. And that continuum is why there’s such diversity (disparity) between cultures / subcontinents / continents etc. That’s why Africa is by-and-large still a sche¡ßehole in the 21st century.
That might be a fair point if the colour of someone’s skin or identifiably different ethnicity was the only issue at play here, but there seems to be this rather convenient sidestepping of the fact that black African boys do markedly better than their black Afro-Carribean counterparts.
And that’s never mind the widely recognised fact that the most advantaged in the apparently irredeemably ‘systemically racist’ UK, certainly in terms of income potential, aren’t ‘ethnic, indigenous whites’, but ethnic Indians and Chinese.
But the left call him an Uncle Tom for telling the truth.
Because little things like facts have no impact on members of the progressive cult. Their positions are based on ideology not reality.
Working class and white.
Absolutely, and that is the problem with the current way of looking at everything through the lens of race. Black, white and brown working class people should make common cause. Only when they decisively emphasize solidarity will there be any hope of reform to the ‘system’.
Divide and rule suits the ruling class very well, that’s why they don’t make much effort to oppose the ‘woke’ agenda, even though they know very well that the majority of voters would agree.
Left wing politics, it is true, used to be more about solidarity. There is now more rhetoric about rights for individual groups seen as disadvantaged, although the Labour Party still seems to advocate for health and welfare, for example, which would benefit all groups.
While the extent of the shift towards “identity politics” may be exaggerated by those who oppose Labour on other grounds, there is a shift. And sometimes the identity groups manifest a distinct lack of concern for other disadvantaged people or other sorts of disadvantage. At times there can be alarming demands for “purity” of thought, or complete agreement. Both are damaging.
One example is an ongoing campaign about “trans rights”, much of it driven by what seems like a lobby group that has little interest in overall inadequacies in health or welfare. It’s sometimes coupled with an alarmingly rigid orthodoxy, and an all-or-nothing “with us or against us” mindset (even JK Rowling has become a victim). Though perhaps the loudest voices are not representative, they do create a view of how things are.
Another example was a recent surge in anti-semitism complaints – some from genuine campaigners for solidarity, but some from people only interested in that single issue, and some whose interest in that issue was driven by the prospect of getting rid of the previous Labour leader, or even a principled opposition to the Labour Party as such.
Largely outside of Labour, a similar rigidity and demand for purity was seen in parts of the Brexit campaign, and after the referendum, with anyone who advocated an insufficiently hard Brexit (even Mrs May was branded a remainer).
This narrow focus, and related demand for “political correctness”, may be a weakness of internet-enabled communities of interest – or of popular/populist campaign groups like momentum or leave.eu – but it shows a weakness of rhetoric on the left, that needs to be addressed.
There may be an opportunity for reflection after the dust settles on the current elections.
But white working class do worse than most non-white working class. And there are a lot of education & employment opportunities whites (of all classes) are excluded from due to Diversity ideology. There is discrimination.
So, if you are white and working class, you are disadvantaged, tbecause you are working class. But if you are black and working class, you are disadvantaged because you are black. Does that sound logical to you?
Probably both. They fail the class tst and the ethnicity test, both. The first because- “well, who cares?” and the second because “well, who cares- they’re not oppressed “.
…
Good luck with that in an increasingly racialised society.
Yes correct, and how does it feel to be an ‘ethnic minority’ in your own capital city?
I am just waiting for the figures at the recent census to see how much change upwards those figures will be. Last time it was 54 non white Londoners, not counting ‘other’ to 46 white indigenous Londoners. And that’s not counting those who are illegal here. It’s overload. Except for the bosses who love all that cheap labour and the landlords who don’t mind them sleeping 6 or 7 in a room!
It feels fine to me.
We need an elected dictatorship for at least ten years to undo the harm the left has done to every important institution of this country..especially in the public sector.
We’ve had ten years since anything even faintly left was in power. And we seem to have an elected dictatorship right now. So why are we still blaming the country’s problems on “the left”?
It is Extreme Left Blair & most of his cabinet were trotskyists of the Frankfurt school, They Politised The Police, Police &crime commissioners, Judiciary ,Supreme Court, BBC,media etc..that is not to Say liberals are illiberal conservatives dont conserve (Countryside),Massive housing to mostly wealthy Couples,etc…Old Political parties have outlived their validity.
Because the civil service, the education system, the media, the justice system, and even the nominally “conservative” government are all stuffed with the ideological left. That’s why.
Our government is on the ideological left? I haven’t seen much worker-ownership of the means of production on their watch. Not a lot of redistributive taxation (but a copious cut in corporation tax and higher-rate income tax). And cuts in policing and health over the decade.
At least we get flags everywhere, and self-appointed commissars on the alert for signs of ideological impurities like wokeness – was that what you were thinking of?
Because they joined with the right to subjugate the poor.
What would you suggest as an alternative, to remove this subjugation of the poor?
Entirely so. Check out the comments on the Labour Party Facebook’s posts about Hartlepool. Labour members cheerfully and unironically building on the turkeys-vote-for-Christmas trope : “northerners are thick”, “why would you vote against your class” etc. It’s an astonishing lack of self-awareness but more seriously, I think electoral failure is what makes them happy.
Yes, because activism and criticism are far easier than governing. They haven’t the basic intellect, worldly wisdom and strength of character on the front bench to run a bath, let alone a country.
Sorry – which of the parliamentary front benches are we talking about again?
Death wish??? Protest party?
You’ve summed Labour up in a nutshell Vikram
Humiliation is like shame. It is internally generated. Hence it requires insight, self-awareness and recognition of minimum standards below which one has fallen.People whose entire world view is built upon sanctimonious superiority over Guardian reading wokes cannot be humiliated.
The assertion is well written but involves no attempt to engage with the thoughts or beliefs of those it attacks or to provide any evidence or reasoning to support itself.
No working class family will vote for taking the knee, brainwashing kids to say that boys can be girls or that drugs, crime, crap schools and hospitals should be tolerated.
The only truly Wokist I know, works for the state (as does his wife and daughter) has an income of £85k and ( family income £200k) and lives in a new £million house a long way from any working class districts in his city. He completely lives and works in his own bubble and I don’t think he talks to anyone outside of it from one week to the next
No working class family will vote for taking the knee, brainwashing kids to say that boys can be girls or that drugs, crime, crap schools and hospitals should be tolerated.
I would rephrase that. “No working class family will vote.” The people I’ve talked to have no intention of voting because they have lost faith in all politicians. Therefore, middle class votes will win the day. Therefore, the woke movement will continue to progress and take over our lives. Older people who intend to vote say things like, “I’ve always voted Labour so I’ll carry on voting Labour.”
I live in an area which is strongly working class. People have given up trying to believe in a better future. The area candidate for the Assembly is 23 years old, trans, with bright red hair, the mayor of the city of Bangor. He will win.
The deputy mayor of Bangor has withdrawn their candidacy because someone has upset their feelings. Now guaranteed to win.
I don’t want to upvote this, because its quite depressing, but I think you’re right.
My feelings exactly
Same here.
I think this comment speaks very accurately about the current political scene: that the ability of the Tories to lose an upcoming election (at some point) will be more significant than Labour’s ability to win. I don’t disagree with what Franklin says, or with the other comments on here, but the current Tory government owes much more to Brexit and the popularity of Boris than to any innate competence or attractiveness to voters. It seemed easy to believe in the days of the Cameron coalition that the Tories could never again enjoy a majority: primarily because of the demographics of high housing costs. Cameron inadvertently created Brexit; which has won-over the votes of many former Labour supporters, for now, but this will wear off. When the more traditional Tories stab Boris in the back; when (if) levelling up fails to materialise; when millions of voters stay at home because no party represents them; Labour will return to power.
The only alternative is for the Conservatives to succeed in re-forging an economy that works for the many. What is the likelihood of that?
As irritating as it may seem, a functioning adversarial-based liberal democracy ensures civic engagement and freedom. Only tyrants like chronically dysfunctional oppositions.
Correct analysis of the Tory government, Boris Johnson and Brexit, which without Johnson campaigning to leave in the first place, would not have happened.
Johnson should not be surprised to be ‘stabbed in the back’, as all Tories appear to carry swords, to live or die by. After all, he did a pretty good job on Theresa May.
Yes, it would be extraordinary and fly in the face of conservative capitalist orthodoxy if the Tories re-forged the economy to work for the ‘many’. Trifles for Tory-supporting towns will not be enough.
It was Farage who got rid of Theresa May. And the fact is that she did a great deal to stab herself, presumably with those kitten heels.
Supposedly Barnier liked those kitten heels. Couldn‘t take his eyes off the “elegant“ Theresa May… 🙂
As she signed every document he passed across the table for her.
Her ”Mum” Dance at Tory Conference in 2016? deservedly sealed her fate,her poisonous ”Surrender treaty” and Coup d’etat attempt to derail brexit coupled with nincompoops ”Rejoiners” including Sir Kneeler helped Tubby Boris to 2019 Landslide, Post SARS2 Boris is globalist, Devios,, Green obsessed ,if He dips in polls,The Tory Rejoin grandees will Replace him…
I’m afraid Labour,Lib-dems,Tories,SNP Plaid, are ALL equally unattractive, A Moderate Left of Centre SDP may well surge in the future,but those correspondents,who say people have No faith in our decrepid 3 political is on the Money,from Voters I recently met
Plenty of working class Londoners will be voting.
Good comment, but “taking the knee” inside quote marks, please.
Every day I drive through rural Kent taking my child to school and back through a forst of Vote Conservative signs. There’s also a beautiful Tudor mansion I pass which is the only Vote Labour sign I ever see. Clearly this is some overpaid public sector worker rich enough to want socialism.
Indeed. I have never been rich enough to be able to afford a Labour government.
Tony Blair comes to mind. Expensive war in Iraq. Blair’s personal wealth is currently estimated at £150,000,000. He owns dozens of houses which he rents out. Remember that story years ago about his son studying in Bristol living rent free in one of his houses and all his student mates paying high rents!!!?
Funniest thing Was Cherie(Blair) Pleading at Press conference,to leave her Son alone,as he had left ”Home” at 18 the first time! He also was found drunk in Streatham,and Police Officer Moved on after reporting it!!
No the owner probably rents it out and the tenant is hoping Labour will rehouse!!!!!!dream on.
You are Lucky to have ‘rural Kent’ In East Midlands,Tories are busy buying up Farmland,to destroy Countryside,with massive housing,with No Schools,A&E Units,Parks or thought for drainage or House prices …
Don’t quite get why the British empire must be confronted as if it’s some sort of ugly beast. It’s a part of our history, yes, but we’re not living it now. My life hasn’t been impacted by it, nor have most people’s
And there is a lot of the Empire’s story to be proud of, not least the years spent by HMS Trincomalee on anti-slavery patrol.
It’s a ship that’s been beautifully preserved, and is currently on public display in… Hartlepool.
Definitely, the West Africa Squadron, the development of proper legal codes, a development of infrastructure.
And the small matter that everywhere we went we appear to have left behind a Parliamentary democracy they didn’t have before. And cricket, obviously.
Meanwhile, Spain left behind nothing but a pile of dictators.
In Africa at least the British empire waded into areas that were frequently at war, basically replacing tribal war with colonial war. But once its hegemony had been established that enabled people to live in relative peace. While they were certainly under-privileged compared to the new colonial rulers, they were just as powerless as under the previous tribal rulers.
That doesn’t excuse individual British commanders who ordered massacres, but on the whole the British empire’s involvement in Africa was a Good Thing.
(good read on this topic: “The Scramble for Africa” by Thomas Pakenham)
I’d agree with you. And in India (where I originate from), they removed the corrupt and stagnant bureaucracy of the Mughal Empire and brought in new innovations. Yes, there were harsh measures and harsh impacts of the Empire, such as the famines and the plunder of India’s resources, but there were also benefits. A proper legal code-replacing an out of date legal code from Alamgir I’s time-, railways, transport, proper roads etc.
Vivek, I think we can confront and acknowledge the bad things about Empire – slavery and indenture – certainly not equivocate on them; at the same time work for a truly inclusive culture, acknowledging where this is happening now.
A lot of nations have had empires in history. The British one was the biggest in recent history. It bankrupted itself fighting German fascism that also wanted a piece of the empire action as did Japan. Italy had a big one in the past and didn’t really have the stomach to fight for another one.
America after WW2 took on the mantle of the new world order and global policeman. Spain and Portugal were in on the game too. It just so happened the Brits were better at it. Russia really didn’t need an empire as it has the biggest land mass on the planet. Be interesting to see what happens with China.
Very true.
The US is smarter — they rule via debt. See Michael Hudson’s “Superimperialism”
Russia is the most successful European imperial power in history: look at a map of ‘Russia’/Muskovy in the 16th century as it embarked on its great expansion eastwards, and most of which it has retained…
I am not from England and did not know about these local elections, but now I understand why the media was suddenly trying to create scandals around Boris Johnson. It was just feeding the narrative* in an attempt to influence voters.
Well spotted.
No. The media has been exposing examples of Tory corruption, incompetence, cronyism and Johnson’s inability to be honest or transparent for years.
And on this election morning, Johnson got to send in the gunboats to stand up to the perfidious French. He’s a lucky blighter.
I’d be very surprised if Boris had’nt slipped a backhander to that French Fisheries Minister who gave Boris his opportunity to send a gunboat one day before polling day. To much of a coincidence for me.
He is exceptionally lucky because no matter how bad the Tories get Labour always manage to go one better (well, worse).
That thumping majority was as much gifted by Labour as won by the Tories.
You should be granted citizenship on that observation alone.
(If you want it..i.e.)
I think they got it wrong about the wallpaper. Here in B&Q land, we admire anyone who can someone else to pay for their decorating.
Unless Labor renounce wokism they will continue to lose voters. Ordinary people are frightened by it.
Not so much frightened, as weary of being browbeaten constantly by minority harridans, with voices amplified beyond reason by social media.
To say nothing of our state funded media.
The article posits that Starmer is doomed because of his association with Brexit. But I suspect Starmer ‘taking the knee’ had a far bigger negative impact amongst the red wall / heartland type voter under discussion.
I think they’re actually quite insulted by it, and are right to feel thus, because insult is intended. Payback happens in the polling booth.
Let’s hope Labour don’t catch on. A lot of the woke stuff is founded on denial anyway, so there’s a good chance they’re going to ‘woke’ themselves out of existence, and good riddance.
Not much frightened but disgusted, repulsed, sickened.
I don’t think it matters either way whether Labour is humiliated as the author points out there are two factions in the Labour party and already the Corbynites are pointing the fact that under Corbyn Hartlepool was won in 2015 and 2017 (it doesn’t matter about the The Brexit Party as they right wing in the Corbynites eyes it’s easy to pretend they don’t exist ) so if Starmer is humiliated then the left wing will take over then every time they lose an election i can guarantee it won’t be their fault it will be
1 We weren’t radical enough
2 A hostile right wing media
3 The voters were at fault for being to stupid to vote the right way
4 asteroid strike or similar
The point i’m making is this Labour as a working class party is gone and it won’t be coming back why because no one in the Labour party knows or understands what the working class are they any more they are just a group of people that they did research on to get their PHD when at uni
The left sees many things that simply don’t exist. The existence of a working class; racism; the concept of “government money”; the idea that taxing people creates jobs; all these are totally false, yet central to the leftist mindset.
Even with the lowering of education standards resulting in a plethora of ‘social science’ PhD’s there aren’t many in the Labour Party that can even manage that – more likely a degree at the University of Wherever in some crap subject or, of course, a law degree/PPE.
I resent Labour&its public sector/charity employees deeply because they are payed via our taxes and do absolutely NOTHING to deserve it.
There is still a working class. Problem is there is no solidarity and no honest leadership, as they all compete with one another to get on or in the case of the average wage earner, survive.
The left have always been divided. It is just that the recent history of Labour has it has been hijacked by people like Blair , Brown and Mandelson. And others before that like Kinnock.now politics is a career and family inheritance. Kinnocks son is an MP and his wife was until recently an MEP. Bet they were pissed off with a big salary leaving the household. Labour is full of opportunists.
Before that Gaitskill and others like George Brown and on and on.
Your post would be a lot clearer if you used punctuation.
Absolutely right. It doesn’t matter who their leader is, too many in the party despise the working class and are willing to sacrifice them to achieve aims which actively damage their former voting base, like the desire for mass immigration, which drives down working class wages.
Current Labour are one of the least pro-working class main parties out there. The other ones are all the other main parties.
This country needs a new party, holding many of the beliefs of the Brexit Party, but without the baggage of Brexit, which would hold it back in the eyes of some of its potential supporters.
So many articles and podcasts about the collapse or death of the Labour Party this week. I love it! Peter’s suggestions for their route back to power are probably sensible, but let’s enjoy this while we can. And don’t forget they will still have a free run at turning London into even more of a blood soaked dystopia for the next few years.
With respect, I have voted for Sadiq Khan and for Labour London Assembly members. I did not have in mind ‘a blood-soaked dystopia for the next few years’ when I voted.
Maybe that was not what you had in mind when you voted for Labour in London but that “blood-soaked dystopia” is what you have thanks to Khan and your vote.
With respect, I think you need to examine your comment. It’s quite a gratuitous slur. My vote has no bearing on the situation. It’s undeniable knife-crime is a major problem in London and Sadiq Khan could be more aggressive in his responses and ways of dealing with it as his predicted lower vote share should hopefully communicate to him.
And to be fair, James, it will be black and Asian youths who continue to stab each other to death on Khan’s watch. This won’t affect you at all.
I shall vote for Count Binface.
Well, that’s what you got.
I voted for a libertarian Conservative government and got placed under house arrest, subjected to endless state propaganda to induce mindless fear in the population and now face the prospect of a “passport” to go to the pub or a football match. What you vote for almost never matches up to what you get.
Nice one 🙂
I am OK with limited house arrest and a bit of ‘mindless fear’ if it keeps the hospitals clear and working.
Pub passports are unlikely to happen – we are used to distancing. We will no doubt have to book a table 4 weeks in advance though. Booking a pub table…? What?
Are you unaware of the killing of a young an outside Brent Cross a couple of days ago, and the killing of a father in east London last weekend? As I’m sure you know, these are not isolated incidents.
“….Labour would stand aside to give other progressive parties a free run in a defined number of constituencies,…”
This is desperate stuff. What makes the author think that I, as a voter, would go along with being manipulated in this way? He is making the age-old mistake of believing that votes belong to parties, and that these votes may be disposed of as party leaders think most profitable.
And he’s also assuming that the voting system doesn’t alter how people vote.
I have voted Labour in the past. I despise the Labour Party to the utmost, but living as I then did in a LibDem:Lab marginal, doing so was the most damaging way to cast my vote. It helped to ensure both leftist parties fought each other, thus diverting resources away from Tory marginals they might otherwise have won. Of course this would mistakenly be regarded as support for Labour.
Starmer lost any possibility of my respect when he became the knee-bender – and in public, too.
Starmer is best referred to as Sir Kneel in my view.
Considering that the terrible twins Dawn and Diane can presumably get past his security……
A friend of mine joined the Labour Party a few years back. She is left of centre but moderately so and could not stand the whole Corbyn thing. She wanted to see if getting involved could draw Labour back from the abyss but was askance at what was discussed in local party meetings: Palestine, Cuba, trans / minority stuff.
There you have it..
Too many on Labour’s left despise the British flag but are happy to fly the Palestian one.
Could you please define what you mean by ‘progressive’ as many policies espoused by these left-wing parties will not lead to societies progress, they are regressive.
“Progressive” abbreviates “so-called progressive”.
Could I further abbreviate it to ‘idiot’?
I certainly won’t stand in your way.
Quite! A much abused word in the hands of the Left.
The history of the Labour Party is a fascinating example of an utterly contemptuous left parasiting itself on to the back of working people. The likes of Keir Hardie (a Methodist lay preacher) were not motivated by political dogma or the Communist Manifesto. They were loyal to their country and wanted merely to make some much needed reforms, not to burn it to the ground and start all over again. It’s often forgotten that it wasn’t until 1918 that the party even declared itself socialist under the malign influence of those two industrial strength liars, Sydney and Beatrice Webb. Even then, “socialist” had a uniquely British definition which, as the saying goes, owed much more to Methodism than Marxism. Labour won the battle it was set up to fight decades ago. What’s left now are the commissars and the microaggressors.
The current Labour Party sound and dress like the younger members of the 1950s Politburo as showcased in Armando Ianucci’s film “The death of Stalin”. They adopt modern “street” fashion the way Mikoyan and Kruschev wear US/Italian style mobster suits in the film. Most Labour members are faux gangsters like rap artists but some are genuinely dark characters. If they ever got a sniff of power you’d see a gangster regime modelled on Stalin or Castro but a lot less competent.
The fact that the Labour Party and the left generally are so splintered is because they’re founded on hate. If you think it’s fine to hate Conservatives – and they do – then obviously you’re a short step away from hating enablers of it, such as other leftists who don’t agree with your every hatred.
Hence you have soft, medium and hard left, and they’re all riven with hatred not just for each other, but among themselves.
About the only thing that unites them is their belief in similar myths; in things everyone else knows don’t exist. They think there’s still a cloth-capped working class. They think there’s a “Sikh vote”. They think there’s a class struggle. They think that all black people are identical whether from west Africa or the Caribbean. They think you can generalise about people based on gross characteristics.
Perhaps the most fatal myth they buy into is that anyone needs them.
coffin nail, meet hammer. Labour needs to die so that something better can take its place. Its a zombie coalition of the separately unelectable.
yep…Labour is slowly, excruciatingly, publicly becoming unconnected and of no real raison d`etre. Cracks are appearing everywhere along its hull and the ship is falling apart and weighted down by its mouldy cargo of olde dated/olde fashioned ideas it will sink the quicker ( but can I hear the band still playing the “red flag” though ??). Reaching for life boats like wokeism is a sticking plaster over a sabre slash for it is devoid of forgiveness or redemption and not the current piquant of the ex-redwallers !
It’s hard to see a route back to power for Labour when the current govt is about as left-wing/socialist as you can get i.e authoritarian, corrupt, throwing extraordinary amounts of money we don’t have at people and things we don’t need, open door immigration, persecuting small businesses. How do you get to the left of all that?
I wouldn’t put it exactly that way but agree the most of the Tory Party is motivated by nothing more ideological than staying in power.
I don’t think left/wing socialist necessarily equates to being corrupt, authoritarian, or persecuting small businesses.
I’d like to see the sort of government that recognised we live in a grossly unequal society and used democratic means to implement humane measures such as income, wealth and power redistribution to reduce that inequality.
I think our best chance of getting a government committed to that in the short term is through the Labour Party.
Get past Labour =Rotherham first.
Do you not recognise that the root cause of gross inequality is the large number of bame mass-immigrants imported into the country by leftwing immigration policies?
No, I don’t. That grossly unequal society isn’t restricted to being within any one country. The inequality (between and within countries) is everywhere. It’s inequality driving mass migration not the other way round.
Are you aware at all of the disproportionately large costs thirdworld mass-immigration incurs in any country?
But Bojo has given residence rights to three million Hong Kong citizens and if he wants to get a trade deal with India – very important for the UK – that country will demand immigration rights for its citizens. As Annuntziata Rees Mogg (Jacob’s sister)said when she was BXP MEP people will have to get use to immigrants coming from different places.
Personally, i’m fine with the Hong Kongers. They flee a horrid communist regime. They are intelligent, civilised, hardworking people. They don’t breed like rabbits. In an ideal world we would be repatriating the equivalent number of thirdworlders to Africa & M.E. to make room for the Hong Kong refugees.
I think we can all agree that whatever government we want to see there needs to be a lot less of it?
This “the solution is always and everywhere less government” narrative is childish. The decision about what is and is not provided by government is properly the sphere of political economy and requires at minimum an understanding of the concept of natural monopoly.
Lets forget personalities and Leaders for a minute.
The Labour Party is now dominated by the middle class Liberal Left in the London Labour Partty. The policies needed to gain working class voters (e.g. jobs, houses) clash with the interests of the London Labour members (LGBT, BLM, Palestine Liberation etc).
There is no way that Labour can adopt the policies needed to be elected because of the power of the Liberal Left.
I cant see a way out
No, destruction of the Labour Party today will not wake it’s core vote up to reality. The real problem is Labour’s core vote is built around a city and large town metropolitan left who think Corbyn was the answer and see Starmer as the next best thing. They want taxes raised on the “rich” but don’t understand that under our tax law they are “rich” and they would end up much worse of. But the biggest problem Labour has is that core vote is hard core remian/rejoin and they believe that policy is a massive vote winner so will fight tooth and nail to keep it.
One of the outstanding features of the Eu Referendum result was the spread of the vote. Remain votes were concentrated in the middle class metropolitan left area (where Labour dominate now) while the leave vote was spread throughout the country. That means many remain voters don’t know any leave voters (or if they do the leave voter won’t admit or debate it knowing they will be ostracised by their former friends) so they can’t understand why someone wanted to leave the EU. These hard core Remain voters think they are the most open minded people out there but in reality are very narrow minded. They will not let Labour change because they think the world will change to meet them because, in their eyes, they are right.
The only way Labour can emerge from the mess Starmer help put them in is to first accept the world has moved on and they haven’t. That is impossible for an organisation that believes no one else has a right to an opinion they disagree with.
Labour can’t do Englishness.
I’ve seen two of videos promoted by Keir Starmer today. One mentions Britain, Scotland and Wales but not England; the other also refuses to mention England but mentions Britain and tells us that the Conservatives are letting the West Midlands down.
Labour seem to be comfortable telling us that so-and-so is letting Britain down, or Scotland down, or the North East down but uncomfortable about even mentioning England (unless it’s in the context of St George’s Day or sport).
Well, if you want English votes, tell us how the Conservatives are letting England down; tell us your vision for England (if you have one); tell us how you will make England a better, fairer, more prosperous country.
Jarvis is correct that Labour can’t do patriotism. But at least they try to speak for Britain and evoke an idea of Britain. To England, they have nothing to say. They have policies on Health, Education, Social Care, etc. that are policies for England (rather than Britain) but they refuse to couch them as such.
72% of the people of Hartlepool identify as English; 50% as British (according to ONS, 2020).
The Labour Party has had a record of late of denying the English even exist as a people and a culture, so it is hardly a surprise that they “can’t do Englishness”.
The idea of a wolf in sheep’s clothing “pretend patriotic” labour party gaining power with the support of nutcase leftist parties in University towns and London is worrying. Imagine the nonsense they’ll have to implement to keep the greens and momentum types on board. Let’s hope the electorate would be smart enough to see through such a ploy… Though I’m not holding my breath
“They can be beaten, but only by an alliance of smaller parties, of which Labour would be the obviously leading member.”
Which would be a complete misunderstanding of the way that the British constitution works.
In the UK the political parties form their coalitions *before* the election, not afterwards. That way voters know what they are voting for – rather than ending up with an unholy mess like the 2010 coalition (where eliminating student fees, which the voters wanted, was dumped in favour of a pointless PR referendum, which the political wonks wanted. Which incidentally is also why PR doesn’t work. It puts the policy choices in the hands of politicians, not the people).
The British first past the post system politely reminds minor parties that they need to be part of a bigger coalition or they, and their supporters, will be completely ignored for failing to do what the British constitution requires them to do.
Compromise.
But surely with the current British system the policy choices aren’t in the hands of the electorate as the majority of the electorate vote for different policies than the Government’s? And after a Government is formed with a majority they are under no obligation to do what they said they would do until the next election when they can again get elected on the basis of policies most people did not vote for.
I agree the 2010 coalition was an unholy mess. Essentially a coalition formed around the Lib Dem’s personal dislike of Gordon Brown and adoption of a fake austerity agenda which has since been disowned by all involved. I don’t think you can underestimate the sheer political incompetence of the coalition players, either. Nobody involved in it got what they wanted. Cameron lost on the EU, Clegg lost PR and any possible Lib Dem credibility for years and British politics became (and to some extent still is) a single issue affair.
I also agree with you on the need for compromise (which is presumably possible in Denmark because of, rather than despite, its PR electoral system).
The Labour Party has a split personality because its members actually care about politics and ideals and it has democratic processes for its internal management. The Tory Party maintains its relative apparent unity because its main concern is retaining power and it doesn’t let internal democracy get in the way of that.
LOL, coffee snort moment. You want to put more water in it, mate.
The Labour hates almost literally everybody, and wants to take everything they own off them because 1/ they’re all gammon racists anyway, and 2/ the Parteh can spend your money better than you can.
“because its members actually care about politics and ideals”…correction “because its members SAY they care about politics and ideals..”
Where was the uproar when Sarah Champion got the boot? (Taking into account just WHY she got the boot)
Wrong, the “split personality” is because people on the left hate everybody, including each other. It is their one constant characteristic. Like in the Monty Python sketch.
Their “democracy” is in fact a system where the most fanatical, obsessive and extremist gain power in the party simply by wearing everyone else down: people with lives and families and real jobs just don’t have the time to compete in the politicking.
Labour would stand aside to give other progressive parties a free run in a defined number of constituencies, concentrated in the big cities and university towns.
That would be a sensible way forward for the centre left. But I can predict with near certainty that something along those lines will never, ever happen here. The Labour Party will never willingly stand aside for anybody. Have you met Labour Party members? Tribalistic to the point of insanity, morally superior and profoundly uninterested in meeting people halfway. They could lose 3/4 of the seats they currently hold and it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to their approach.
Every week I participate in a Zoom call with 10 blokes who are all from traditional Labour constituencies. All are early retired, all worked in the water industry, all bought shares, and all when asked about which party they support still spit venom about Corbyn and haven’t got a clue what Starmer stands for. They also use their second names whereas with the PM its always Boris. They don’t lack intelligence but they seem to be able to drift by corruption, failings, chumocracy, buffoonry etc BUT can ascribe total credit for say the vaccine programme to our bumbling PM. It beggars belief but Labour are dead in the water at present and I actually think they will never regain trust. I am very pessimistic and having lived through Thatcher in a mining town and in Little Moscow as she dubbed my home city I still cannot forgive Labour for letting us down as follows (1) militant and the corruption of Hatton and his current mates who are still at it, (2) Blair for power and religion going to his head, (3) Brown because you were never ever a leader, (4) Milliband likewise (5) Corbyn a man who has never led anything in his life who felt he could be a world leader – joke – so, they are a complete shambles and joke and have left us in this Tory hell.
I used to be a labour voter in my younger years, I suspect many here could say the same. As you grow older the “realities” both good and bad, of life and family and society become far more apparent.
Labour as a party lose people to conservatism as they grow older because the whole message they give is not based in a reality experienced by the vast majority of people in the west.
Labour in Hartlepool and other red wall towns in the past rely upon what I’d call “inherited” support. I remember a common saying Liverpool amongst very ordinary people “Red in Football, Red in Politics” for instance.
But people are waking up and growing up, ESPECIALLY to this labour of knee bending, identity pigeon holers. The conservatives would also do well not to tip toe that line as time goes on. I suspect they will.
I will never again vote for a party that takes knees to group politics or teaches my young primary children that they ought to feel ashamed of the Britain they live in.
I’m not even “British” I’m southern Irish, I love this country and it breaks my heart to see parties and individuals and “identity groups” tear at its soul and decency. They wouldnt know decency if it started a riot in their yoghurt knitting, kale sandwich eating lunchtimes.
Starmer is not “excessively repulsive”?? One photograph (Sir Kneel paying craven tribute to Black Lives Matter) tells us all we need to know. Next useless leader, please.
I have always wondered what progressives are progressing towards? Social Justice? What does that mean in practical terms? No one ever defines it, well not that I have heard or seen.
That’s the point. If you define something, then there is a goal at which success can be recognized. But activism has no time for goals. It is a racket, an industry wherein the grievance must be perpetually stoked. There is no winning as sane people define it, just a perpetual reframing of the issue.
The word was probably found in the waste-bin of a Robin Di Angelo type but has since been given dead sea scroll status..
‘justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society’
Justice is trickier to define but here’s one ‘Justice is a concept in ethics and law that means that people behave in a way that is fair, equal and balanced for everyone.’
In short? Injustice. When they tack such a qualifier to a term, it negates (inverts) the meaning. Same as “political correctness” means historical incorrectness, geographical~, biological ~, ethical~, medical~, etc. incorrectness. Social Justice is the very opposite of natural justice.
Social justice is just the modern-day version of medieval justice.
I think the wokist left has already set the course of events with their unbending fascist will: If you do not support their pure ideology 100% you an enemy of the movement. So if you are pro welfare, pro restraining the worst excesses of the free market, more focused on equal outcome than opportunity you are not welcome on the British/US/Anzac left. You need to be pro FGM, pro ISIS and accept their is no such thing as a woman to be one of the chosen. Its good news (though a surprise) that the Danish left is still relatively normal. I think thats the case in much of Central, East and Southern Europe and beyond.
Yes. The no true Scotsman fallacy writ large. The right has its own issues with it, at least in the US. But it is less a group think chamber than the left, as cancel culture demonstrates. Leftists in otherwise good standing are treated like heretics if they dare deviate from any aspect of the dogma.
My lord I really hope that Islamic Trojan Horse, Saddiq Khan London’s mayor does not get another 4 years of our taxes to waste on the promotion of Sharia and get hold of a firmer grip over us all.
The Labour Party in their naivity think he is their token ethnic represntative but in reality it is the other way round. Lutfer Rahman and Tower Hamlets should have shown that.
As a white ethnic minority in London, he will no doubt get back in again and then all the street names will be changed and London history will be destroyed both good and bad. My uncle who fought and got injured in Normandy in WW2 fighting fascism, will be turning in his grave!!
I hold no candle for the Labour Party at all – although I was once a supporter – but we have been here before. In the 1980s, Labour was obliterated in the south of England and after the 1992 election it was being asked whether they could ever win an election by themselves again. Five years later they won in a landslide. It is a question as to whether Labour can turn it around this time but it does seem to take repeated defeats for them to learn their lesson. Blair did establish a conversation with Ashdown in the mid 1990s but of course jettisoned him when it became apparent he did not need him.
There is a precedent for a Lib-Lab Pact and not the one many may be thinking of.. Rather it was the agreement of 1903 which was a factor in the 1906 Liberal victory. However Labour appears to be more tribal than ever now so am not sure they would do that. Added to this, the still very much present Corbyn / Momentum element is ideologically inflexible.
The question of ideology and just how socialist they should be has always been the faultline within the Labour movement, going right back to their genesis in 1900 when the SDF refused to compromise and walked.
In 1906, mercifully only 60% of male householders over the age of 21 had the vote.
True enough. In the days I used to canvas for a friend (former Lib Dem MP) I used to come home thinking universal suffrage was a bad idea.
In the fabled days of the Roman Republic the Candidates* themselves remained remote from voters and refrained from public presentations/rallies.
In fact formal speech-making was at one point forbidden in an effort to focus on the policies rather than the charisma of the Candidate himself.
Perhaps ‘we’ could learn from this?
(*Candidus = brilliant white, describing the Toga they wore for Elections)
But the Republic eventually collapsed under its own weight.
Attempted to reply, but felled by the Censor!
Woops though that said “felled by Caesar..”
Very good!
Commodus did for Rome…..Russell Crowe couldn’t turn it around from the grave!
Only to be succeeded by a decided improvement, the Empire!
But when there is no universal sufferage anti-democratic monsters like the EU come into being.
A progressive alliance is easily defeated by the simple slogan of vote lib dem and get Labour. The Liberals in the last 40 years only do well when it’s safe to let Labour into government. The first target of Tories wasn’t the Red Wall but the Liberal stamping grounds of the South West. Frome used to be a tory/ld marginal now it has a 25,000 tory majority.
Any government elected with support of the SNP wins once. Labour has only achieved a victory that hasn’t relied on Scottish seats twice. A much more realistic policy is for Labour to recognise that the next election is gone and spend their energy and money and breaking the SNP’s hold on Scotland. 40 seats back means they have to win less seats in England.
‘Lib-Lab pact’ ….?? Oh, the Lib Dems. I’d forgotten about them, as indeed has most of the country. They’re even more strung out on insane woke agendas than are the Labour Party.
What will be interesting to see is what, if any, gains are made by The Reform Party. Obviously none in London, ( sorry Laurence ) however their performance in the Red Wall constituencies now that their figurehead has exited the stage.
Was actually the Liberal Party then. The Liberals only came into being in 1859 but were themselves beset by faultlines and only held together by the glue that Gladstone’s personality. By 1916, effectively, they had ceased to be a party of government.
Reform Could Mopp up disastified Tories,;.SDP likewise Labour voters,but Mainstream media,Likes Boring 3 ring Circus we have now ,with its ”Climate Change” Nonsense
The problem with implementing this strategy for Labour is that it doesn’t notice, much less take into account, the fundamental difference between the left and right mindsets.
For the left there is one acceptable view on anything. If you hold any other view whatsoever, you are a racist, a fascist, a Tory, a transphobe and a blackleg. That’s why they are splintered. They’re structurally fragmented, even within separate slices – so you have Leninists versus Stalinists versus Maoist versus Trotskyites within the hard left, just as you have SDP versus LibDem versus moderate Labour nearer the middle. These people are intoxicated with righteous self-regard and mutual loathing. Whenever one hears any of these clowns appealing for “unity”, what they’re actually appealing for is conformity – to their own narrow views.
The right, on the other hand, is tolerant, welcoming and inclusive, and hence finds no difficulty accommodating David Davis, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Dominic Grieve within the same party. To the extent these people do disagree, the factions – most obviously Europhile versus Europhobe – are found in most other parties too.
The type of electoral alliance proposed above is simply unworkable given this. If the factions of the left were capable of overlooking each other’s racism and class treachery in the way necessary, they wouldn’t be separate smithereens in the first place.
Absolutely – because the “pure ideology” does not really exist: there is no test to prove the members’ purity. Therefore all members of the cult can be measured against it and found wanting. Which they do, constantly, to each other at the expense of electoral success. That explains why much of the Left favours electoral fraud and violence over democracy. They realise their are few voters left daft enough to fall for their lies, envy and spite not just in UK but over much of the world.
I recall a small “party” in Reading in the 1980s. This Marxist group had around 20 members. Then there was an internal dispute and there were two micro parties, one with 13, the other with 7 members. It was a living example of the Monty Python Judean Liberation Front (No!! The Liberation Front of Judea!!).
Clearly the British Left in general and The Woke Party in particular have absolutely no practical idea of what a sustainable, resilient and sufficient future for Britain is beyond the rhetoric of the Green Industrial Revolution.
They do not wish to acknowledge the hard choices in relation to national ecological, economic and cultural sustainability and instead default to abstract globalist solutions without explaining how these create ecological, economic and cultural sustainability at the national level.
Their crisis is a crisis of knowledge and a crisis of scale and whilst a heavy defeat might be a wake-up call, they will still nevertheless wait for the eureka moment that all globalists are dogmatically waiting for.
Roll up, roll up, it’s time for that perennial metropolitan pastime brought about by the electoral cycle, in which middle class politicians and journalists discuss the working class in the manner of colonial magistrates worrying why the natives are so uppity, but without having to bother to talk to, or, far worse, actually listen to the poor benighted proles.
And how nice to see Dan Jarvis once more, à la Johnny Mercer for the Blues, providing evidence of the Marshal Ney standard that bravery rarely correlates with intelligence.
For my part, once (if ever again) they reopen, I cannot wait to chat in pubs with like-minded fellows about how today’s working class was forged by Tolpuddle, Chartism, and Arthur Scargill, that is if I can ever get the barflies to stop talking about Net Zero Carbon, the Green New Deal, transgenderism, structural inequalities, and intersectionality.
We can be proud today that in a society where working class people have carried most of the burden of the costs of lockdown in terms of reduced incomes, lost jobs, reduced access to health care, greater social exclusion and isolation, and diminished educational opportunities, that the concerns of ordinary hardworking people, as politicians so unpatronisingly describe them, are understood by the leaders of our three major national political parties, an Old Etonian, a Knight Commander of the Bath and Queen’s Counsel, and a Knight Bachelor.
Whereat Vox Populi, Vox Dei, as we Whiggishly wag in ‘The Dog and Duck’?
That taking the knee photo was a big mistake. One of the underexposed things about identity politics is right can use it to their own advantage as wedge issues. I expect to see that shared again and again if starmer leads Labour into an election.
From what I see and hear, traditional Labour voters in the North and elsewhere have no appetite for (and are often strongly opposed to) policies allowing trans-women to use womens toilets and participate in womens sports. However, this seems to be the most important policy of all for many Labour Party members. Lisa Nandy even talked about expelling party members who didnt support such policies
I can see the logic of the header, but it is just stating the blëèding obvious.
They still won’t get it. Has Clive Lewis learned a single objective lesson since the ‘worst defeat since the mid- thirties’, for instance?!!
The party is run for and by the bourgeoisie, and the working classes have rejected that group’s wokery and open-borders/globalist narrative.
Its finished, and it isn’t pretty.
Mr Franklin writes “the Danish Social Democrats have gained support by combining welfarist policies with a tough line on immigration and national security”.
Quite.
Nearly all the 650 seats in the House of Commons are available to a party – almost inevitably a NEW party – which is roundly opposed to the following:
Legal and illegal mass immigration
The islamization of the United Kingdom
Years of lawfare (hyper-demanding regulation and employment-legislation+lawyers-in-Sue-Grabbit-and-Runne-mode) and sheer capitalist greed sending jobs abroad, leaving ever more people here who don’t start life with money or privilege having to scratch around the bottom of the barrel for employments in the gig economy – jobs which pay little, have no prospects and usually confer little sense of human worth on those who do them.
All the political parties currently in the House of Commons have been complicit, actively and by default, in permitting these horrors over the course of the past 24 years.
By these means they all keep selling the British people down the river, towards the extinction of their country, their culture, their future on all counts (inc. their economic subsistence, let alone prosperity).
In consequence the 5 parties currently in the HoC are swinging around like gibbeted corpses in a void of meaninglessness for most ordinary citizens: the ‘Conservatives’ (who never conserve anything), ‘Labour’ (who don’t seem ever to have perceived that their name signifies ‘work’ and if that is not for people not well-off, what work IS in question?), the ‘Nationalists’ (who want to leave the British Union and become county boroughs of the new undemocratic dictatorial bullying protectionist and economically declining European Empire), the LibDems (whose furious treatment of the Referendum result in 2016 exposed their rejection of the principles both of liberty and democracy), and the Greens (who, in addition to their wild far loony left manifesto, produced in government – the City of Brighton – garbage piled high on the streets and vagrants sleeping in a multitude of doorways; so much for their environmental stewardship).
They should all be swept away and replaced by sane human beings with agendas that offer our nation hope and sanity.
Why the electorate carries on voting for any of them is above my understanding. Please will anybody explain this bizarre habit of the electorate to me?
Few things are more difficult than convincing politicians of any stripe that they’re wrong. The party does not matter. There is a genetic inability on the part of the political class to acknowledge its shortcomings. Today, it’s Labor; in the future, it will be the right in need of a reckoning that will not come. Some of it is voters. We get so caught up in the tribal aspect – our team is superior. Because reasons. – that noticing results over rhetoric becomes difficult.
‘Labour is polarised between two kinds of wrong and unelectable’ spot on!
First they abandoned the working man, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a working man.
Then they abandoned feminism, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a feminist.
Then they abandoned the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they abandoned the Red Wall—and there was no one left for Labour to speak for.
Have Labour passed their sell by date? Originally conceived in 1900 to represent the working class
and protect their interests against their employers.
A much needed function at the time but now workers rights are firmly enshrined in law. Beyond implementing the NHS after the war there is no notable achievement you can attribute to Labour. Whereas failings would take more space than is available here! The intellectual deficit evident in today’s Labour Party frighten many voters. Many MPs seem even unhinged. Starmer had an opportunity to remedy this with party discipline but he soon realised he would be laughed at. Got heavy with RL-B yet supported Dawn Butler ripping into the Met! Add Khan’s disastrous tenure as Mayor and what have you got?
Labour and disaster are ready bedfellows!
The progressive alliance idea surely can’t work, for the simple reason that the Red Wall voters won’t fall for voting for a labour candidate if it means empowering the Europhile and Woke minority in the other parts of the alliance. A similar problem presumably exists for the minority metropolitan voters who would have to accept being part of, as they see it, a coalition dominated by working class racism and cultural conservatism (although frankly, since their own views are anti-English racist anyway, I can see them learning to live with it).
“Butcher” Burnham will lose to Khan.
If Kahn decides to go for the Labour leadership then that will be another shoe-in for the Conservatives.
They should run on a joint ticket as they both disapprove of PREVENT.
We already have a Social Democrat party in the @SDP. Although I wouldn’t be a supporter, the blind faith of Labour, Green and LibDem supporters in their wilting parties never ceases to amaze me.
How ironic that word ‘progressive’ has become.
The same applies to the use of Democrat, whether in UK or USA.
The article reads like yet another Left-of-centre “progressive” journalist trying to keep their hope alive. These people seem not to have grasped that the public now realise that “progressivism” and “wokery” are one and the same horrible thing, and that both are no more than the sneering of an arrogant, self-styled elite.
That elite, from both sides of politics, and throughout the media, has entirely lost the plot, and with it, has lost the trust of the electorate, this time, finally I think, for good.
I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not and I suppose we’ll find out over the next few years. But the next election looks like being fought between the successors to Boris and Nigel Farage – whoever those two may be. I don’t think that the “progressives” will get a look-in, frankly.
Yes. The scene is set for a new set of political parties. This would have happened some time ago were it not for Nigel Farage keeping what could have been a reform party restricted to a single issue. All three major parties are 50 years out of date and irredeemably ‘identity politics’ totalitarian (PC fascist). Labour is a dead as a dodo and looks set to be replaced..
Andy Burnham, let us never forget, was Health Minister during the Mid-Staffs scandal. If he’s the last, best hope for Labour …
Back in the day educated rich kids (think Marx, Engels, “son of a wealthy London solicitor” Attlee) proposed an over-under politics of class. They had a good innings. They exploited the working class into irrelevance. Thanks, fellahs.
Today the educated rich kids — uni types with gubmint jobs — have switched to an over-under politics of race. They put the old white working class out in the cold.
I guess there aren’t enough non-whites in the UK yet for the educated rich kids to have a majority party based on race.
Liebore is beyond any pale and beyond any redemption. The party vehemently hates the mass of ordinary people, having completely adopted the Left backlash of ‘identity politics’, that began about a century ago with deeming ‘the workers’ supposedly ‘repressed’ by ‘capitalism’. This utter bunkum was a dumb plot to try to explain away why Marxist prediction was hopelessly awry — the workers in ‘advanced capitalist’ countries didn’t revolt yet feudal Ruskies did. This has developed into man-hating extreme feminism, and (through the Left in the USA co-opting the civil rights and Stonewall movements), white-hating and heterosexual-hating. ‘The worker’ has been ludicrously retrospectively stereotyped as having three dimensions of oppressiveness (sexism, racism and homophobia), to make them a replacement for ‘the boiss’ as the new hate target of the Left, which has also completely changed its notion of the state from ‘the boss’ friend’ to ‘agent of social change’. It’s the biggest political fraud in history. Liebore does not need merely to be humiliated. It needs to be annihilated.
Half sensible, half crazy. And we know the point at which one turned into the latter..
“But this would be less painful as part of a negotiation to form a government than as a bitter factional struggle within one party.”
Followed by an even more silly comparison with Denmark. Yeah, right. Because a proportional representation-powered, Euro-style, horse-trading politics is exactly what we have here, so if it works in Denmark…
As ever, commentators are quick on the diagnosis but none that I have seen actually have the faintest clue as to what the answer is, if indeed there is an answer.
There I was thinking maybe I was wrong that Labour had no one electable to high office and Dan Jarvis might be a good choice… until you got to the part where he wants to rebrand patriotism as only liking the things about Britain that Labour did or approve of. So bye bye Churchill for starters. I remember when Billy Bragg was proposing this years ago. If that’s as far as Labour will go to win back the working class, it may as well fold up its tents. As for Andy Burnham, the one thing Labour could do to make things worse is elect a self-promoting spiv like Burnham or Sadiq Khan leader.
Labour’s problem is very simple. Its members are overwhelmingly woke middle class graduates while the electoral demographic it most needs to win are working class people. There is a massive gulf between these two groups, more of a gap than exists between the working class and the Tories. I don’t see how they get past this.
But the working class put a self-promoting spiv – Bojo – into power!
It’s not just Labour that are useless at picking leaders, it seems to be a problem common to all our political parties. The problem started with the idea that members should select leaders. Go back to the days when elected Members of Parliament selected the leader.
I wish the Labour Party a slow demise. It is entertainment watching them perform.
I’ve always thought that the idea of a “Progressive Alliance” or a push to PR by those advocating such, was a cheat. The left are far from progressive and their biggest problem is they fall out with themselves, hence the many factions.
But I think the writer has made a major error in his assessment.
“Under our current voting system, Labour would stand aside to give other progressive parties a free run in a defined number of constituencies, concentrated in the big cities and university towns.”
This is the only area where Labour are strong. Strip out these and they have next to nothing.
Surely it’s the red wall type seats they need to step aside in? A party with Blue Labour type candidates might stand a chance.
Mind you, there’s another problem. Should that happen and the Suburbian Middle Class Labour had enough seats to form a coalition, I suspect the Blue Labour MPs might find they had more in common with the Tories than the likes of Begum, Lewis and Lammy.
This election could prove key to change. Some of the new fledgling parties have good ideas, but are fragmented. They will get trounced. The future for them is together.
I could see an established but small party with infrastructure like the SDP making a good home for the likes of Tice, Kuerten, Fox…. and they have something to offer such as the SDP.
Labour’s decline is an opportunity for these centre right and centre left libertarians if only they can come together.
Labour will stick with present policies as they appear to genuinely believe them and hold their traditional supporters in contempt, e.g. Brown’s ‘bigoted woman’ comment, Starmer’s more recent ‘I don’t need lecture’s from people like you’ or the Thornberry tweet. Corbyn of course, holds everyone in contempt unless they happen to meet one of his deserving criteria.
Sadly, through the teaching unions they appear to be attempting to teach the next generation that their view of the world is the only one permissible. Children are taught all about the evils of being British, about racism, colonialism, sexism and all the other totems of identity politics. However, students who I see arriving at University are unable to string together an intelligible sentence or perform basic maths. They can usually spout holy writ though so that is okay, they haven’t wasted all their time
I have become convinced that students cannot tolerate any opinion which challenges them because they do not understand their own opinions so are incapable of articulating their views or being engaged in any debate.
Children are Also taught The Sun ”Has no effect on Earth’s Climate & Carbon (Life Giving Gas) which incidentally contravenes 1996 Education Act,a 2007 Case saw a Parent Get his Wish,for opponents of ”Climate Change” MUST have their arguments &reason put to Children..
Whilst reprehensible i am not so defeatist on the supposed indoctrination of children by teaching unions and loony academics.
Don’t forget the USSR constantly indoctrinated adults and children across Eastern Europe on the virtues of communism ……and those very same adults and children then booted the soviets into the dustbin of history in the early 90’s.
The human spirit for freedom and free speech may some times only be a tiny flicker… but its really hard to extinguish it entirely… and when it catches light , it can cause a huge conflagration of change.
There are many members of the Conservative Party who will tell you that the current party of government is indeed left of centre so the Labour Party has now become surplus to requirements.
Labour will not feel humiliated by the Hartlepool result. Party activists will feel that the Hartlepool electorate has humiliated itself by voting Conservative. Reduce Labour to its Corbynist core and you have a group of people used to being a minority that know neither responsibility nor power.
Outstanding analysis. As a union memeber and local authority worker for over 40 years, I don’t think that my values and aspirations have changed much at all. It’s the Labour Party that has changed, not me.
I’ve gone from indifferent, to frustrated, to now down right angry at what Labour has become, like going through a painful divorce, I now loathe that which I once loved.
I don’t see how they can get my vote back unless they turn away from sucking up to the minority, gender focused clique that now seems to control it.
I was a straight-ticket D voter for 40 years, and when they went “woke” I went independent.
I was always disappointed that the SDP (gang of four) did not replace labour.
A quite a lot of the Labour Party is disappointed that the original, Chinese Gang of Four did not replace Labour.
Didn’t the SDP shut up shop because it polled less votes than the Raving Loonies at a by election?
Yes, a glorious day in British political history. Private Eye had a spoof editorial where Screaming Lord Sutch explained that he was disbanding the Monster Raving Looney Party. As the MRLP had scored only twice as many votes as the SDP, they had obviously lost all credibility as a serious political party.
They were Europhiles largely, David Owen revealed his hatred of David Steel &his (Steel’s)EU obsession after 1987 Tory landslide …New SDP is patriotic,anti -EU,,manufacturer UK based not perfect but better than Sh*** the Mainstream Media & Quislingtons salivate over..
Perhaps a fundamental start would be to change the name of the party itself from “Labour” to “Social Democratic Party”? Labour is now meaningless in post industrial Britain as is “working class”. Most people in Labour don’t get traditional Labour voters but instead align with the metropolitan champagne socialist set. If we want to truly “build back batter” and the current Labour party want to contribute to this, they need to modernise and get in touch with what their potential voters want. I beleive that fundamentally that is a fair crack of the whip and reward for those that work hard at work and school and targeting both ends of society firmly (the rentiers and the gangsters) that spoil it for everyone.
Are YOU for Real they are not Democratic, if You point out Carbon is only 3% of Atmosphere,VITAL for Life,Crops,Forests,Grasslands,Humans,they shriek ”Denier” Like banshees…They are as dead as lib-dems,Tories ,they embrace loonies like Extinction rebellion and expect patriotic blue collar workers to vote for them, not to mention ”Rejoiners” LABOUR is NOT, SDP
I don’t know enough about the individual politicians referenced here to endorse the author’s premises entirely, but it’s clear to me that Labour needs to defenestrate its Blairite faction — by which I mean its donor class among the educated urban elites who have driven them to abandon their erstwhile constituency among the working classes. Failure to do so dooms them to internal incoherence and electoral irrelevance.
If Starmer does badly at the polls today, the McCluskey/Momentum/Corbynite factions will convince themselves that if they still held the reins they would have done so much better.
According to the latter, there’s always a mythical electorate that will finally acknowledge the error of its ways and help rout the reactionary forces of Toryism (rather than one that reluctantly plumps for a conservative option given the ineptitude and divisive nonsense clearly emanating from the Labour benches over the last few years – wither the big beasts of yore, Labour?)
there is another element in labour party loss of traditional seats that noone dare mention.
What could it be ???
Its part of woke…
Thats pretty much the entirety if the problem. Well said
Why can’t Labour beat the Conservatives on their own?
It’s not as if we haven’t been here before. The party began to turn itself around after Thatcher hammered Foot into the ground like a tent peg, but it took an age.
Militant and militancy had to be forced out and moderation made the name of the game. Kinnock was not a bad start but you are not going to win elections when you are popularly known as the Welsh Windbag.
I remember Sheffield, and the moment he lost it (such wanton displays of hubris provide a moment of great clarity for a watching electorate), but I also remember John Smith, and thinking then that Labour had finally found the leader they needed. You could tell he was good because the Tories were unhappy about him.
And then, alas (for Iraq would surely have never happened on his watch), he died, and Blair took the helm.
Prescott chivvied the doubters, telling them to have a bit of trust (or faith), and at last it was full steam ahead for a Party that had once looked just as down and out as it does now (remember Thatcher infuriating the remaining Labour MPS with ‘there will always be a Labour Party ‘ after she had smashed them up a treat?).
Of course, you should always be careful what you wish for. Blair might have been electable, but we all we really knew was that he had a charm and freshness to him, and could talk real pretty.
Still it was enough, and in 1997 we had that landslide. And what a landslide it was.
Today’s Labour Party has firmly rejected the only winning formula of modern times. It is in a thoroughly wretched state. A decent but uninspiring man wants to lead a party made up of a few racehorses but many more teeth-baring mules, each of which is trying to drag the party in its own preferred direction.
This party is about as electable for the UK as a whole as the SNP would be in Gloucestershire.
But alas, whereas once the Labour Party wanted to win, and therefore finally let itself have a leader that the British people could feel a little confident about, this Labour Party’s factions don’t care whether they win or not just so long as the Party is under their sway.
Unless those factions fall on their swords, Labour really will first disintegrate, then disappear. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Those for whom identity politics and their version of progressive politics comes before all else (and I am thinking of the numerous writers on the Guardian here, as well as others) could simply down their pens, shut their mouths, and call it a day, exiting stage left.
This would leave the Labour Party free to kick out the toxic elements in its midst and start bringing forward people the electorate quite like.
This is all seen from the point of view of someone who has no particular political axe to grind, and who is not a member of any party. I’m just someone who would like an alternative to the Tory Party when the next General Election comes round.
It’s interesting to see that Mr Franklin doesn’t even mention Scotland. There lies the stark example of what happens to a party when it loses it’s way.
Tories won because of:
1) Get Brexit done (and inability of LibDems & Labor for an electoral pact) – Done
2) Corbyn – GONE
3) Levelling up – to be delivered.
It has been easy for Tories (BoJo basically) to make promises and spend (borrowed) money like a pimp with a week to live. German Unification is the best case scenario. It has cost West Germany (WG) c.€2 trillion over the last 30 years, that is c.66bn a year. And it will continue to cost more money. How did WG pay for East Germany (EG)? By taxing people (5% solidarity tax – to keep it simple – on everything) and by doubling of German Gov. debt during the 90s. And the price came due during Schroeder’s government. Germany was forced to make painful reforms (Agenda 2010) that led to Schroeder’s defeat. There is a painful lesson there for all the people that talk about “let’s do reforms”. I also would like to remind people that during all that time the global economy grew reasonably well.
Let’s say that Levelling Up will costs c.900bn over the next 30 years, it comes to c.30bn per year. Who/what is UK GOV going to tax? Is it going to tax Turnbridge Wells to pay Stoke? Is UK GOV going to borrow (say) 450bn EXTRA for the next 30 years? “Talk is cheap” is a cliché because it is true.
All those structural economic pressures that delivered the Brexit vote and BoJo’s win are only about to get worst – yes worst. Electrification of the car industry (something people understand) is about to wipe out half of the jobs (Germany study – VDMA) in the industry. Honda is leaving, Vauxhall is asking UK GOV to basically pay for its factories in UK for the next 7 years, Nissan is a deeply troubled car maker (especially European operations) that might or not make it as a company (yes, look at its annual reports). And just like people blamed EU, Labor, etc. they will blame the current gov when (not if) the car industry gets hammered. Many voters are about to be screwed and not in a good way. Flag waiving doesn’t pay the mortgage or the cheap Greek vacation. It doesn’t compensate for that good paying blue collar job that gave meaning to the life of Honda workers in Swindon.
P.S. Labor’s position looked horrible in 92/92 and by 2002/3 people were asking if Tories could ever win an election.
P.P.S. There is a reason why all the battery makers (all Asian) are building their factories in EU and not UK. Economics don’t make sense.
Wise words – Nissan has been on life support for two decades….unlike Honda and Toyota they have made a lot of bad models in that period. For UK PLC I agree the only way is down for now and think this adjustment may take 3-5 years to work itself out the other end. On the plus side we are starting from a much higher point wealth wise than the 91-95 slump, and 2001 and 2008 were “flash crashes” by comparison.
getting people to go out and bother to vote in the ‘Red/Blue Wall would be a start. some areas with less than 30% turnout.
The article queries Labour patriotism. Why aren’t the proprietors of the Tory supporting Sun, Mail and Telegraph patriotic enough to pay their taxes in the UK?
You forgot to include the Guardian in that list.
Perhaps someone could explain to me as a non-Brit – how feasible is it for Red Wall Labourites to form a new party. Their own Labour party that respects them?
surely joking about jarvis.the man is an idiot with a big ego.burnham would be the best of a really bad bunch ,so if truth be told,labour are going to struggle.
Some interesting themes but this seems out of focus. Forcing things to look for significant readout about national politics from these local and regional elections taking place in very special circumstances. Beyond the vaccine bounce there are many other things which won’t look the same next year.
As far as Labour goes, the new leadership thinks it’s already making the change of address Jarvis and others have called for,but they’re not expecting immediate results so won’t be shockable except perhaps in the scale of losses to Greens and LinDems. Second, Labour is in the middle of a massive bottom up reassessment of policy the results of which won’t become public until after Conference. The real political contest between Labour Values and Tory Opportunism is yet to come, outwith the special political circumstances of national CoVid crisis and after Brexit sentimentality has given was to the nuts and bolts of sovereignty for whom and for what. That’s a very different political climate from today, but it’s not far away.
Very poetic but I wonder if the American political debacle is as impenetrable to the British as your politics are confounding to me as an American. Since you are writing for a politically literate British audience, your British witticisms are understandable within their native context. One potential source of confusion might be the colours that your countrymen use to define their parties. Here, in the US, the reds are conservative if not reactionary (and probably reactionary more often than conservative) while the blues are lukewarmishly liberal although our Venerable Leader is trying force the Democrats to embrace their historic role as the party of (some) of the people.
Here, we face a bizarre situation in which our labor unions are aligned with our Blue Democrats, but a sizable minority (if not an actual majority) of the union membership are walking around wearing Red Maga Caps.
Am I correct in assuming that, in GB, Reds are Liberal and Blues are fatheaded conservatives, for that surely seems to be the case?
By the way, in the fourth line of the third paragraph from the bottom of the article really should be different rather than difference, shouldn’t it? If not, then British English is wandering increasingly away from its Brooklyn-Shakespeare root.
It’s interesting to note that in Labour’s 120 year history, it has only been in power for 30 of those years…
So all the ruinous things they are accused of doing must be seen in context. Labour policies therefore must have had no impact whatsoever. Tories have nearer enough been in power for decades. So present day Britain is down to them – extortionate welfare system, massive debt, widely open borders. Things they accuse Labour of. Life is stranger than fiction. Politics is a mess at the moment – not necessarily a bad thing.
Danish Social Democrats have gained support by combining welfarist policies with a tough line on immigration and national security.
So did our Tory party. So is the suggestion that Labour should become a clone?
But WHERE IS the ‘tough line on immigration and national security’?
Oh, we are regularly promised it by the Tories, have been for years.
Immigration tilted along at an average of 500,000 persons a year during the New Labour Government (1997-2010); Treason May, on becoming Home Secretary, declared that she shared the public’s concern about this – and on her watch it rushed upwards to 630,000 a year.
Priti Patel says she is taking measures to stop immigrants crossing the Channel (if they were real refugees they would stay in France or earlier countries of travel); but we have seen lots coming over in the weeks gone by; the French and British fleets escort them to our south coast, and the RNLI are at the ready to rescue and bring ashore HERE anyone in danger of sinking en route.
The Social Democrats in Denmark, so far as I am aware, are backing up their talk with real action.
Here’s the abstract of the plan: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/972517/CCS207_CCS0820091708-001_Sovereign_Borders_Web_Accessible.pdf
Once you disregard all the grovelling hogwash in the wording, it sounds priti sensible and effective even. Speeding up / enforcing deportations, sorting out the claims backlog, preventing landings, ending the hotel accommodations, that sort of thing. I dearly hope they can implement it as soon as possible.
“But what would that require? Jarvis pleads with his party to ‘better understand how notions such as patriotism, sovereignty and national security relate to people’s lived experiences.’ He also observes that ‘local and regional pride is accepted, celebrated, even encouraged, but when the discussion moves to national pride, many in our party begin to feel uneasy.’ ”
—-
The “progressives” just cannot hide their condescension. Ds in the U.S., Ls in Britain. They ooze smugness from every pore. Maybe it’s on account of their “lived experiences.”
Hey high-hats! You can start by talking the people’s language, and smile while you do it. Do you even realize how thoroughly offputting you are? Nah. Too scary. Way, way too scary to see ourselves as others see us.
Oh, would some Power give us the gift
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion:
What airs in dress and gait would leave us,
And even devotion!
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism
I’d like to see the Tories also crucified for their terrible reaction to the Coronavirus situation. They’ve done more to destroy the UK economy and public finances than Hitler could have dreamed of.
I received my second jab the other week, delivered with speed and efficiency by all concerned.
So I must politely disagree with you, especially as UKGov has been extremely helpful in keeping my business afloat during these trying times.
Not lost your job then?
it was army, Old Doctor volunteers Who deserve Credit,Tories Lockdowns have Sparked, mental health,and Alcoholism , Labour& Lib-dems,Greens,ALl went along with tory policies,written by Marxists & Social Scientist failures,Like Niall Ferguson,Ann maiches
I think the Conservatives have done rather well. They (by which I mean Boris) gave us Brexit against all odds and then vaccinated us all in double quick time. It means the UK will be back in business before most of the world.
Those are successes in my book.
Really ,it Was Pressure from Brexit/Reform Party which helped ‘Brexit’ but Boris signing Thereason May’s surrender deal,is having Known consequences 1) UK Fishing,look at Jersey 2) Northern Irish border,with help by Globalists John Major& Tony Blair
It’s fair to say that, overall and taking into account population size and mix etc, the reaction of this government to Covid has been no worse than that of any other government except Sweden’s. So, incompetence, fraud and authoritarianism, but it’s been more or less the same everywhere because that’s what these people do.
I have just become a member. I realise that, because I am not a Conservative and voted to Remain, I am effectively an outcast. It is fascinating to me as an essentially moderate person how extreme and grievance-filled so many of the comments on this discussion turn out to be. Yes, much of the (hard) left is sanctimonious and intolerant but so are many of the comments below. Fortunately, there are a few comments that show a greater openness. What will happen to this country if grievance-fuelled rightist politics becomes the norm? It will only get worse if the Scots leave and the UK rump state is no more than England plus two tiny add-ones. Then English nationalism, already a danger to our democracy, will effectively be let off the leash. Remember that the so-called Conservative Party under the leadership of the Boris Johnson is effectively a radical English nationalist party. I just hope that before I die – I am elderly – enough voters will wake up to end the current nightmare. Whatever Starmer’s limitations, at least he is an essentially decent, moral and highly competent man. One could not say this of Mr Johnson or almost all of his cabinet. Remember too that Cameron and Osborne by their policy of extreme austerity share much of the blame for our current predicament. This shameless duo used the global financial crisis – which they falsely called “Labour’s Great Recession” – as an opportunity to effectively destroy much of our public services. This made Brexit possible as a desperate response by those whose lives were made intolerable by the deliberate destruction of public services and a meaningful welfare safety net.
‘Remember too that Cameron and Osborne by their policy of extreme austerity share much of the blame for our current predicament.’
There was no austerity, extreme or otherwise, under the Coalition. The state continued to borrow, print and spend more than it can ever earn, often on functions and roles that should not even exist. Essentially, we slightly reduced speed for while on our journey to Paper Money Collapse.
Phew! I was beginning to think the same, that I stumbled onto another wannabe sp!ked online-type forum or yes, on the other extreme, a Labour List forum circa 2015/16. But, compared with them this seems to be fair-minded and sensible. I wish more people would read the Mission Statement, though.
In the spirit of UnHerd’s Mission Statement, I am looking forward to discussing what a progressive, post-liberal politics could look like. It’s certainly shouldn’t be simply Tory-lite. Being just ‘anti-woke’ doesn’t really take us anywhere, does it?
Sp!ked Online, although it has some fine journalism (by O’Neil, Füredi) is a trotz publication, still devoted to the class war. In what way do you find them “extreme”? Extreme left? I wouldn’t regard them as such – they might have been there back in their first original Marxism Today iteration 20-odd years ago, but the left swung so much leftwards since then that Sp!ked hardly even features on the left horizon anymore.
dltd
I know, i remember that. Unhinged antisemite memes & all that, i had a strong suspicion that Momentum’s propaganda kommando was in charge of the comment section.
There are many foul-mouthed one-liners on Spiked. This forum has a high IQ level compared with most, although there are a few who should use a spellchecker and read their own comment before posting. Conservative Woman is fairly good. The name is off-putting to some, but it is conservative with a small C and not about women.
You are making too much sense to get much traction among the usual suspects hereabouts.
Jeremy Corbyn was on the payroll of a government that executes children for being gay, and Starmer was perfectly happy act as his lieutenant. You have a very odd definition of decent and moral.
I would never defend Mr Corbyn. I did not vote for the Labour Party on any occasion while he was leader. Mr Corbyn is a neo-Stalinist, anti-patriotic and an anti-Semite. To equate Keir Starmer with Mr Corbyn is ridiculous. May I remind you that Mr Corbyn is no longer in the PLP?
Please stick around.
“What will happen to this country if grievance-fuelled rightist politics becomes the norm?”
But it is currently grievance-fuelled wokeist/leftist politics which are preventing Labour from winning back the Red Wall and attracting non-Conservative centre-left voters like me.
Are you really asserting that much of the Conservative vote is not grievance-fuelled? You just need to read the majority of comments on this article to see how an extraordinary level of anger and a sense of being badly mistreated fuels much of pro-Conservative opinion. Furthermore, note that intolerance (and indeed sanctimony) is not a monopoly of the left.
incidentally, I take issue with the endless use of “woke” or “wokeist’ to confront those whose opinions the right dislikes. Yes, many current leftist stances are silly or extreme but using what is no more than a deeply pejorative term with little analytical value is just like the left referring to those who disagree with them as fascists, racists, etc.
To answer that, the majority of voters do not post online. This is a big part of the 21st century problem – we take online activity to be representative of the public at large, rather than just the outpourings of the people who are most worked up about something.
I don’t think that a majority of votes for any party are grievance fuelled. Rather people look at the available options in the context of what they know, take a deep breath, and vote for the least objectionable option.
‘Woke’ people call themselves that. They’re usually the dumbest people in the room, yet the most confident of their opinions. People like that have existed since time immemorial, however what makes them a danger now is how much sway they hold over our cultural institutions. They’ve also taken over a political party that used to represent the interests of the working poor. Now they represent the petty hatreds of the perpetually aggrieved and the fetishes of the sexually confused.
Talk about an echo chamber!
chamber…amber…ber!
Yes, we will need a progressive alliance for liberal democracy, in its truest sense, to continue to exist in the UK. Looking further ahead, without any sort of PR for Westminster this will always be doubly difficult to maintain. (Do we need a referendum for this to be implemented? As with votes for 16 and 17 year olds, PR should just be seen as normal contemporary progress in the way we ‘do’ democracy.)
We cannot carry on with this pantomime, this depressing repetition of history – the Conservatives, sitting there, toad-like, with that sense of entitlement, becoming increasingly decadent while the Opposition flail away, playing undergraduate politics then trying to get a suitable but singular leader.
(Either Lisa Nandy, Dan Jarvis or Andy Burnham would be good as Labour leader.)
Votes for children? No thanks. That is a truly daft idea. Votes should be for working adults only.
Nandy? Definitely no thanks. Jarvis? Who he? Burnham? Not really.
(So, it’s OK for Welsh and Scottish ‘children’ to vote but not English.) It can only be good for participatory representative democracy. For those at school it makes citizenship education more real, encouraging thinking about participation. The earlier people start voting the more habitual and ‘normal’ it becomes.
Unfortunately children have not gathered enough information to vote wisely. They still have a very narrow outlook determined by where they go to school. We have two teens: one goes to a grammar where hyper-liberal politics are the norm, the other one goes to a comp where the kids are quite Tory. They literally don’t get to see the other side of the coin.
Not sure that is necessarily age related.
That’s a fair point, as there can be other factors that diminish a person’s ability to vote objectively. But a sort of “voting means test” would be impossible to implement in a way that is itself unbiased. So universal adult suffrage is still the least bad option we have. If you are arguing for an increase in the voting age that could make sense but maybe a bit rough on people who start working at 18.
You fool,Yes they have been brainwashed and Brain dead from Years of Authoritarian Woke teaching &Virtue signalling.
I live in Wales, and the Marxists brought in votes from 16 years old – simply because the young idealistic and politically ignorant will always fall for the socialist promises.
Voting should be restricted to tax payers – or those who have paid, say, five years of taxes – over the age of, say, 24.
Precisely.
Incidentally 24 was age one could enter the Roman Senate in the lowly rank of Quaestor.*
(* By which stage you would’ve already served about three years with the Legions).
Basically a return to the days of there being a property qualification to ensure the poor don’t get a vote? Would disenfranchise working class white people.
Assume you mean working age adults? Unless you’re disenfranchising the unemployed, those unable to work due to disability, stay at home parents and the very wealthy who choose not to work.
16 year olds are working age.
PR is dangerous because it places party loyalty above all else (just watch the SNP goings-on in our northern Bantustan). Constituency MPs have more freedom to challenge the party line and represent the specific needs of that constituency.
Having lived under both systems, I prefer the constituency system for forming governments but PR would be an ideal solution for the 2nd chamber that scrutinizes legislation.
Wouldn’t the use of different systems for the two chambers lead to endless arguments over which was more representative of voters?
Probably… but only within the politics-as-hobby crowd for which endless arguments are part of the fun. Think of it as two different approaches to representation which each compensate for the failings of the other.
It is not an academic point. What if the second chamber rejected legislation put forward by the other chamber? At present, the commons, as the elected chamber, eventually gets its way, if compromise is not possible. How would fundamental disagreements be resolved if both Chambers were elected and could claim equal legitimacy?
Perhaps in the same way as in the US where numerical makeup of Congress and Senate are quite different?
Yep, far better to have one elected and the other not. The other is a nice club though, subsided food and drink and they give you £300 quid a day even if you fall asleep with the cameras on you, mind you everyone of them deserves it for all they did for us (or rather did to us).
Accept that full PR can remove the local representation but with a transferable vote (STV), the most basic form of PR, the way I understand it it means the winning candidate in a constituency is truly the most popular.
I can only assume you haven’t seen Lisa Nandy on TV recently?
Yes, I have seen Lisa Nandy on TV recently. What’s the problem? She is a sharp, warm, engaging, down-to-earth politician.
I would have said totally committed to the woke agenda and out of touch with red wall voters. But, if that is what you like, fine by me.
Sorry, ‘woke’? If you mean aware, forward-looking, positive, yes, she probably is. Good.
As I said, if that is what you like, fine. She would still be unelectable as Labour leader, or potential PM.
I think I need to be told what ‘woke’ means.
Here you go, Chater: bigoted, irrational, dogmatic, aggressive, ignorant, anti-intellectual, malignant, entitled, fascistic, delusional – just to name a few characteristics.
Shibboleths of wokery: CRT (Critical Race Theory), white privilege, implicit bias, marxism, neomarxism, “decolonisation” of everything (education, arts, sciences etc.), biology denial (genderconfusion), feminism, etc. etc. – the whole litany of abject lunacy.
dltd
Woke, Follows on the Left Globalist,Climate change,Blm marxist agendas with no toleration for Opposition, on the Right, it belief Imported labour is better more grateful for Low Wages, and Concrete over Countryside etc…Wokeists are opposite,”Asleep ”
Sarcasm surely 🙂
And part of The idiot Globalist ”Rejoiner” brigade which is increasingly irrelevant…
I’m with Mark H. PR tends to embed power with Party Barons. The backroom dealers decide who goes where on the lists. It means any dissent is squashed and ‘favours’ and backscratching is how politicians have to play to stay on the lists (potentially including backhanders for leading parties).
That doesn’t mean FPTP is any better – that tends to lead to two party politics, but the individualistic elements, and ties to a geographic area mean you can get local protest votes and local issues ahead of party (eg Martin Bell, Richard Taylor).
In practice, some middle road could work, but it would all be a question of balance. You absolutely do not want to increase the hidden powers of political parties, against the need to represent individual or local issues. The representation element – of the people who vote (even if they didn’t vote for you), not the party – is quintessential.
The STV system has much going for it, I would say.
Moving off the issue slightly, but with our ‘Presidential-style’ PM’s office becoming more of a feature, the central offices are given more powers, making sure that MP candidates are suitably ‘on message’ always. A trend really begun by Tony Blair. As we don’t vote for a prime minister we can end up with poor representation by unqualified candidates. There is no way round this as long as would-be PMs see themselves as ‘presidents’ way ‘above’ their cabinets, let alone the MPs.
As for party members effectively voting for PMs after resignations of previous PMs! Our system is so full of holes, so undemocratic in spirit and letter.
STV, with “none of the above” as an option on all ballot papers, provides representation, proportionality (of intent), and allows for independent local candidates, and all while taking power away from the parties and the backroom dealers AND removing the need for tactical voting.
The “none of the above” option allows people to elegantly say to all of the candidates “I don’t want any of you”, but without having to spoil their ballot paper and disenfranchise themselves. We would no longer be speculating about whether people generally vote for the least worst option (I know I do!), we would be able to see from the first choice vote count just how many people think that all of the candidates are no better than a tub of lard.
Wasn’t there a referendum of something like this in 2011? It was rejected.
It shouldn’t need a referendum, in my opinion. But, it was deemed too complicated by too many interested parties using their favourite media mouthpieces in 2011. Bit of an insult to most people I would say.
No it wasn’t Nick Clegg chose Easy option..Half Labour,Green,some Tories, Lib-dems ,UKIP backed PR..Why have another system which props up failed mPs &Party hacks &Ars^^^^^ No..If I was on pR instead of beating Labour coming third to Green in 2019 Local Election I would be out at best in 2nd Round..The Establishment only learns,when UKIp, reform,Brexit party,SDP defeat &unseat incombents