I switched on the TV and stood horrified at the images of Grenfell Tower ablaze from top to bottom. I had fought fires in high-rise buildings, but never before, in my then 20-year career as a London firefighter, had I witnessed such a spectacle.

Over the ensuing hours and days, I helped co-ordinate the FBU’s response to the tragedy. I heard first-hand accounts from firefighters — some of whom were personal friends and colleagues — who had attended the incident. Despite having shown bravery beyond measure, their testimonies were relayed without drama or self-regard. They had entered the tower uncertain that it wouldn’t collapse around them. Some had hastily scrawled their names on their protective helmets to make sure they could be easily identified in the event they didn’t make it out alive.

Standard operating procedures went out of the window as firefighters did their best to improvise in a situation none had previously encountered. Amid the ferocious heat and thick, acrid smoke, some had removed their breathing apparatus facemasks and planted them over the faces of casualties. Incredibly, a number of firefighters entered the burning tower several times. One crew had even tried to fight its way up the entire length of the building in a bid to reach the roof and drench the flames from above. Others, having taken themselves to their physical and mental limits, collapsed as they exited the tower. The effects of exhaustion caused some to vomit.

Back at the 999 call-handling centre in Stratford, east London, operators were taking a stream of harrowing calls — the details of which will remain with them for ever — from trapped residents. I spoke later to a manager at the centre, Peter May, the most unassuming of men. During those desperate hours, he was almost single-handedly responsible for organising the deployment of hundreds of firefighters and scores of engines, striving to ensure that, as more and more resources were directed to the tower, the rest of the capital was not left without fire cover. Peter’s testimony is a matter of public record. People like him are quiet heroes.

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As the smoke cleared, literally and figuratively, we in the FBU tried to make sense of this most appalling of tragedies. Questions raged. How in an advanced Western city could more than 70 residents settle down for the night in an apparently safe block of flats, yet perish before sun came up? How in a society so obsessed with health and safety and red tape was it possible for potentially lethal cladding to be fixed not only to Grenfell Tower but, as we came to discover, hundreds of other high-rise buildings across the country? How was this any different to dousing these buildings in petrol and just hoping that no-one would ever put a match to them?

And it wasn’t like nobody had flagged up the dangers. While the scenes at Grenfell Tower were certainly unprecedented, they were not unforeseen. The FBU foresaw them: in 1999, the union had, with horrible prescience, warned select committee MPs in a written submission about the threat of combustible external cladding on high-rise buildings. One passage from the submission sends a shiver up the spine:

“The primary risk therefore of a cladding system is that of providing a vehicle for assisting uncontrolled fire spread up the outer face of the building, with the strong possibility of the fire re-entering the building at higher levels via windows or other unprotected areas in the face of the building. This in turn poses a threat to the life safety of the residents above the fire floor.”

That was precisely the scenario that played out at Grenfell Tower. Policymakers have a habit of ignoring the warnings of trade unions or dismissing them for “scaremongering”. This time, their disregard proved catastrophic.

The union had also campaigned against a deregulation agenda, set in train by the Thatcher government in the Eighties and continued under New Labour, that had diluted fire safety standards and allowed private, uncertified inspectors to sign-off building plans. These were the type of legislative changes that command little attention from the public and media, and often sail through parliament without proper scrutiny or debate. Only when someone dies are the merits of such changes deemed worthy of closer examination.

The public inquiry into the Grenfell disaster was announced by the Theresa May government, but the ordering was back to front. The first phase would examine the events on the evening of the fire, including the actions of firefighters. Inevitably, these early proceedings would take place amid a blaze of publicity. Only much later would the individuals who deserved to face the toughest questions take the witness stand — those who were responsible for the fact that highly-combustible materials were able to enter the market and be affixed to residential buildings without hindrance. By which time, as events subsequently proved, the media bandwagon would have rolled on.

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By Peter Apps

Millions will have seen news footage of firefighters on the witness stand, quietly yet conscientiously retelling their stories while facing a barrage of forensic questions from inquiry lawyers seeking to pick apart their every action and decision. Which was a perfectly legitimate exercise, of course.

But how many media organisations or members of the public were still interested 18 months and more later, when the inquiry heard that one of the firms that manufactured the combustible insulation installed at the tower had mis-sold it, as though selling “horsemeat as beef”? Or that the company which made the tower’s cladding sheets obtained a certificate on a “false premise” by misleadingly submitting reports for a safer version of the product? Or that contractors involved in the tower’s renovation had used inferior products in an effort to reduce costs? Or that the local authority had made significant austerity-driven cuts in its building control department, meaning the surveyor responsible for ensuring the renovation of the tower was compliant with building regulations was swamped with work? Or that the director of another firm which manufactured some of the insulation had said that consultants who raised concerns about the safety of the product could “go fuck themselves”? Or that government officials had been “dismissive” of a coroner’s recommendations following the deaths of six people in a fire at another London residential high-rise block, Lakanal House, in 2009? Or when, in a shameful appearance on the witness stand, former minister Eric Pickles got the death toll wrong before going on to tell the inquiry lawyer to get a move on because he had other commitments that afternoon?

To add insult to injury, corporate witnesses demanded and secured immunity from prosecution over anything they said to the inquiry, threatening to withhold their testimonies if they didn’t receive it. It was a move that told us everything about their motivations and priorities.

The inquiry’s Phase I report praised firefighters for their “courage and devotion to duty” but levelled sharp criticisms at the fire service more widely. By that time, I had parted ways with the union and was back working for the London Fire Brigade at its headquarters. The criticisms stung. The then-commissioner, Dany Cotton, was forced to resign. Everyone in the service knew that, on that awful night, our colleagues were motivated by nothing other than a desperate desire to protect and save those in peril. It was clear to us that the same sense of obligation to their fellow citizens couldn’t exactly be attributed to those miscreants whose corner-cutting was the ultimate cause of the tragedy.

The inquiry rumbles on. Meanwhile, a poor, disadvantaged community in west London refuses to be forgotten. Campaigners hold regular silent street marches to remember those whose lives were lost and to let it be known they still want justice. Whether or not they will receive it remains an open question.

Ask yourself what the party’s core message is and how it would improve lives and communities around the country, and few, if any, answers are forthcoming. But ask yourself what the party actually does, and the answer pops up instantly. Labour gives every impression of being preoccupied with purges and internal warfare. Talking to the country appears less a priority than removing all remaining vestiges of anything associated with the previous leader. Scarcely a day goes by without Keir Starmer making a new effort to signal to the electorate that the bad old communist Grandpa is gone.

Still licking its deep and self-inflicted wounds from the general election of 2019, the party under its current leadership appears desperate to convince voters that the Corbyn era was nothing more than an aberration, a squalid interregnum which came about because a proud movement momentarily took leave of its senses. Such a strategy is not without merit, of course. After all, that Corbyn was unpopular on the doorstep is undeniable, as is the fact that the gulf which existed between the Labour Party and its traditional base at the point of his departure was greater than it had ever been. So great, in fact, that there remains a question mark over whether it might ever be bridged.

In his eagerness to detoxify the Labour brand, Starmer should be aware of one or two risks. The most obvious is that a return to anything resembling Blairite liberal-centrism — undoubtedly the wistful long-term desire of many within Labour’s ranks — would do nothing to bring about rapprochement with the party’s old heartlands. Indeed, it is indisputable that while the rupture unquestionably worsened under Corbyn, it began several years before.

Second, not everything the Corbynites did was wrong or unpopular. True, they took hyper-progressivism to suffocating new levels and, in doing so, alienated huge swathes of provincial and working-class Britain. But they did get some things right. Most notably, in seeking to challenge four decades of neoliberal orthodoxy and shift the dial towards a fairer and more redistributive economy, the party under Corbyn showed a boldness of thought that had, for a long time, been sorely lacking.

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Labour was, for instance, right under Corbyn to declare that austerity was not an economic necessity but a political choice; right to assert that a nation cannot cut its way to prosperity; right to argue for investment-led growth; right to see the role of government in the economy as active participant rather than mere bystander.

This agenda was savaged by critics and pundits. They thought it reeked of the twentieth century and top-down, Soviet-style command economics. They were wrong. Corbynomics amounted to little more than the type of Keynesian interventionist approach which was adopted by every British government for three decades after the end of the Second World War, and has long been the hallmark of the Nordic economies. As Keynes’s most prominent advocate and biographer Robert Skidelsky argued, Corbyn deserved praise for confronting what had become the entrenched conventional wisdom and seeking to reassert the proper place of government in the economic life of the nation.

And while it is de rigueur for political pundits to now claim that “Corbynomics” were in large part responsible for the party’s annihilation in 2019, the reality is that much of the agenda was popular —  far more so than the man after whom it was named. People like the idea of an increase in the minimum wage; they frown upon huge disparities in wealth and income; they are sympathetic to progressive taxation and public ownership of key utilities and services; they want regional inequalities addressed and boardroom excesses tackled; they support the concept of worker representation on company boards.

That is why, with a cost-of-living crisis now taking millions of families to the brink, and the prospect of the biggest drop in living standards since the Fifties, Labour must not shy away from offering a healthy dose of radicalism now. They must contrast themselves with a flailing chancellor. Rishi Sunak was happy to splash the cash during the pandemic. But at the moment, all he offers voters desperate for a recovery are the failed Thatcherite policies of the past.

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So while Labour has been right to call for such measures as a windfall tax on the oil and gas companies and the scrapping of the national insurance hike, it must not limit itself to arguing about particular tax and benefit rates here and there. Instead, it needs to set out a bold vision for a complete reordering of economic priorities. That means — and I can’t say I’m holding my breath here — agitating for an approach that would see the government assuming full control over macroeconomic policy and opposing any further ceding of authority to technocrats with no democratic mandate. It would mean elevating the needs of our long-neglected productive sector — the real economy in which most people live and work — over those of finance.

Why should a party with such a radical tradition resign itself to the defeatist belief that there is no alternative to the dominance of the market over vast areas of our national life; that bankers and business leaders always know best; and that, in the end, government intervention in the economy should be seen as nothing more than an occasionally necessary evil?

The public are ready for Labour to be audacious once more. A decade of austerity has impoverished millions. The pandemic revealed dangerous flaws in globalisation — from supply chains and Britain’s missing industrial base. Our over reliance on global markets was utterly exposed. Voters understand all of this. Labour must make the case for the self-governing nation state, untethered from fragile markets and exploitative multinationals. But Labour rarely speaks in these terms.

If the party wanted a truly bold idea to express a new economic philosophy, it might embrace the “family wage” — a concept designed to ensure that families are able to enjoy a decent quality of life on the wages of one earner. This really would signal a revolution, as many across the Labour movement bristle at the proposal whenever someone is brave enough to float it. They often argue that it would serve only to reinforce the patriarchy, but such a reaction demonstrates how far the movement has retreated from its historical purpose.  It seems large numbers within Labour’s ranks would sooner see both parents be forced to go out to work than entertain any suggestion the economy be reordered to grant them the flexibility to allow one, should he or she wish it, to be a full-time home-maker.

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In any event, Labour must seek to use the current crisis as a springboard to set a new economic narrative. But, in doing so, it must not strive to exorcise every demon from the years 2015-19. While ridding the party of the worst elements of Corbynism is certainly no ignoble ambition, an indiscriminate blitz would be injudicious and counter-productive electorally.

Of course, any approach that is seen to run counter to the demand for economic retrenchment will be met by the usual vested interests protesting, as they did when Corbyn ran the show, that “There is no magic money tree”. But not only does such an objection demonstrate a misunderstanding of the nature of money — it can, in fact, be created out of nothing — it would, in the wake of the billions suddenly conjured up to get us through the pandemic, surely ring hollower than ever.

The perfect storm of a government in disarray, a forbidding economic landscape and an increasingly disaffected electorate presents Labour with an open goal. This is not a time for timidity or tinkering at the edges. It’s a moment for the party to display again its historical radical impulse.

Perhaps inevitably, subsequent polling has shown Labour moving ahead of the Tories. This has been seized on by some within the ranks as evidence that the Party is heading in the right direction and actually reconnecting with millions of lost voters.

We would do well to exercise some caution before assuming that any sort of decisive shift is occurring. A statement of intent made to a pollster at a time when one’s dander is up is one thing; following through with it in the privacy of the ballot box another. History tells us that.

I immodestly lay claim to having been one of a small number inside the labour movement who — often to the derision or fury of comrades — publicly predicted in advance of the 2019 general election that the Red Wall would crumble. My political antennae tell me now that, while fortunes have improved marginally for the party since that calamity, reports of an incipient Labour resurgence are greatly exaggerated.

For one thing, any opposition party that can truly be seen as standing a decent chance of heading for power needs to have enjoyed reasonably consistent poll leads far out from, and right up to, a general election. A clutch of favourable polls when the sitting administration is navigating choppy waters does not a government-in-waiting make.

It is barely-remembered that Labour, under Michael Foot, polled consistently higher than the Tories throughout the first half of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. And we all know what happened, in 1983, when it really mattered.

Though it pains me to say it, I see no compelling evidence that the political realignment which has taken hold in British politics over recent years is about to fracture. The Labour party, as with all opposition parties, must, if it is to win power, rely on something more than the ephemeral bouts of unpopularity experienced by all governments.

And while Sir Keir Starmer has gone some way to positioning Labour on territory that will afford it wider appeal, the party remains a million miles from sealing the deal with the electorate — especially those once loyal voters who jumped ship to the Tories in 2019. Refocusing the party’s messaging on themes such as family, community, patriotism, security, prosperity and respect is unquestionably the right thing to do, as is pledging to make Brexit work, rather than continuing to allow that particular sore to run. But the fine words need to be anchored in hard policy, and that is where Labour must be more audacious.

Never was it more necessary, as we (hopefully) emerge from the pandemic, and with a general election perhaps a little over a year away, for Labour to set out a bold, though coherent, economic narrative. It must resist all calls for the literally counter-productive measures of retrenchment and constraint. Starmer must ensure the party does not strap itself back into the intellectual straitjacket that restrained it during the new Labour years, eschewing its own tradition of economic radicalism to make its peace with neoliberal orthodoxy.

Rather, he would do well to emulate one of his predecessors, Clement Attlee, who, upon assuming power in a nation ravaged by war, gave no quarter to those agitating for deeper austerity and embarked instead on an ambitious programme of economic justice and reform.

Similarly today, tinkering at the edges won’t do. Instead of limiting itself to arguing about the odd tax rise or benefit cut, Labour must champion a profound reordering of the economy. Yes, it must present itself as the party of business — in fact, it needs to do far more to show that it understands the private sector and those who work in it — but it should also be prepared to challenge vested interests and what has become the conventional economic wisdom.

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Why, for example, should Labour, with its radical tradition, be shy about advocating full employment over price stability as the prime goal of economic policy? Let’s hear what the party has to say about reviving our industrial base. Where is the clear-eyed industrial strategy for a post-Brexit Britain? What about some ideas for closing the gap between rich and poor or rebalancing the economy away from the interests of finance capital and towards those who work in the productive sector? And instead of placing undue faith in the “wisdom” of bankers, how about tackling the virtual monopoly of the banks over the creation of new money — a state of affairs that has seen an explosion in mortgage lending and contributed significantly to the housing crisis? It’s about time Labour put the case for ending the overvaluation of sterling, which has caused untold damage to our manufacturing sector over recent decades, made British goods fundamentally uncompetitive in the international marketplace, retarded productivity and seen thousands of blue-collar jobs vanish overseas.

This kind of programme — call it “credible radicalism” — would befit any party of the mainstream Left serious about economic reform. It would also be well-received across the hard-pressed, post-industrial areas of the country that Labour needs desperately to win back.

But as we saw in 2017 and 2019, promises of economic justice are not enough for voters in these places. For Labour to even begin to reconnect with this cohort, it must recognise the obvious truth that the hyper-liberalism and globalism it and the wider Left embraced so enthusiastically and saw as the end point of all human progress has been rejected emphatically across much of provincial Britain. Instead, the party must readopt the politics of place and belonging — a politics that recognises that most humans are social and parochial beings who value cultural attachment and desire something that transcends money and individual rights.

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By Paul Embery

That means ditching for good free movement, ending the obsession with ID politics and multiculturalism, and crafting in their place a programme that, while defending resolutely the equal worth of all humans regardless of race or background, seeks to address the profound loss of meaning and community experienced throughout so much of post-industrial, blue-collar, small-town Britain. It means fostering the common bonds, reciprocity and shared citizenship that is the essence of nation building. It means promoting unashamedly a pro-family agenda — why not a “family wage” to supersede the living wage? — and relearning the concepts of vocation and the dignity of labour.

The key question confronting all parties of the mainstream western Left is how, in an age of liberal globalisation, and with all that means in the way of societal atomisation and fragmentation, we maintain the maximum possible social solidarity. Most have no answers. Some haven’t even recognised it as a challenge, less still a priority. Little wonder that so many of these parties have seen their support plummet in recent years.

It is ultimately the question that the British Labour party must start addressing over the coming months. It’s future viability as an electoral force — and, in particular, its ability to win back the hearts and minds of voters who have abandoned it — will depend on its coming up with the right answers.

These “vulnerable” areas are comprised largely of the nation’s neglected post-industrial and coastal communities, as well as some of our grittier provincial districts with sizeable working-class populations. Think Rochdale, Great Yarmouth, Thurrock… According to the report, these sorts of places could soon become hotspots of far-Right activity resulting in “the election of far-Right politicians, spikes in hate crime or one-off flash points spiralling out of control”.

A dramatic warning indeed. So, what exactly prompted the group to draw these conclusions? Had a hidden network of neo-Nazi cells been uncovered? Was a clutch of modern-day Lord Haw-Haws transmitting fascist propaganda to impressionable listeners via community radio stations? Was there a sudden surge in support for far-Right political parties?

Well, no. Nothing of the sort. Hope Not Hate appears to base its conclusions on two prevailing factors. First, and not inaccurately, the identified areas have taken the hardest hit, economically and otherwise, from the covid pandemic. Second, those residing in these districts have — heaven forbid! — “less liberal than average” attitudes to multiculturalism and migration.

So there we are. Any place that displays “less liberal than average” — for which read “less liberal than our own” — views on multiculturalism and migration is, so far as these oh-so-enlightened progressives are concerned, effectively worthy of being placed in special measures.

It is an attitude dripping with contempt and illiberalism. It is a tactic designed to marginalise anyone who voices opposition to, say, open borders or contends that state-sponsored multiculturalism has, all things considered, not been entirely to the good.

Of course, these opinions are common currency outside of our nation’s fashionable cities and university towns. But these are places where our high-minded political and cultural elites — including those who run our leading think-tanks, charities and advocacy groups — seemingly rarely venture. If they did, they would find communities which are, in fact, overwhelmingly fair-minded and decent. Most are populated by residents who are decidedly not opposed to immigration per se; they merely expect the system to be managed properly (as it plainly has not been in recent times) so that their neighbourhoods and local economies are not subjected to rapid and profound change.

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The Left's shameful tribalism

By Paul Embery

Similarly, they will respect the right of their fellow citizens to live the life they wish within the law, but question whether the particular model of multiculturalism foisted on society by their rulers hasn’t served to fragment communities and push people apart rather than bring them together. (They also wonder how it can be right that they are constantly chivvied to celebrate the culture of others when their own is looked upon with such disdain by those doing the chivvying.)

To our liberal establishment and its outriders, these opinions are so beyond the pale that those who hold them must be considered outside the boundaries of mainstream politics and, in some cases, deserving of high surveillance. It is a mindset that sees anyone holding patriotic, communitarian, small ‘c’ conservative views as being motivated by an inherent xenophobia and narrow provincialism — and thereby some kind of threat. And if that means perpetuating a false narrative that portrays such opinions and those who hold them as being driven by “hatred”, so be it. Anything deemed to be out of step with modern progressive thought must be crushed under foot in the crusade for “tolerance”. Diversity, as ever, in everything but thought.

One thing this shows us is that many among our liberal class still haven’t learned the lessons of Brexit. Millions — including significant numbers living in exactly the types of places identified in the Hope Not Hate report — voted Leave in large part because they felt demonised and misrepresented by the type of people now painting them as incipient fascist foot soldiers. Their votes were not a demonstration of innate racism and bigotry; they were instead a demonstration of anger at constantly being denounced as racist and bigoted. See the difference?

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My fight for free speech

By Paul Embery

The attitude of contempt towards our working-class Brexit-voting communities still prevails among our elites. It is as though they inhabit a different country altogether. They show no recognition of the great strides Britain has made in the fight to eradicate discrimination and prejudice, nor of the fact that our record in that regard is far superior to that of most other nations.

Indeed, it could be argued that Britain is an exemplar when it comes to tolerance and understanding. For example, a 2019 study by US academics found that prejudice against migrants and minority ethnic or religious groups was lower in Britain than in most other European countries, with 85% saying they would be happy to have a foreign worker as a neighbour and 95% someone from a different religion. “There are many ways in which Britain is known to be ‘exceptional’ in the European context,” said the study’s co-author Dr Jonathan Kelley, “but prejudice against immigrants is clearly not one of them.”

Of course, none of this fits the caricature propagated by those insistent that our country is a sewer of despicable racism and must engage in regular bouts of self-flagellation for its wickedness. We witnessed this attitude in the aftermath of this year’s European football championships, when a handful of vile social media messages directed towards England’s black players were presented as evidence that our nation was caught in a rising tide of prejudice and bigotry — no matter that most of the messages were sent from abroad.

That the far-Right has never been a serious force across our land, even during periods when circumstances were arguably more conducive to it, doesn’t prevent our liberal class from routinely trotting out hysterical predictions of a new dark age just around the corner. Their prophecies are hocus-pocus, an insult to fundamentally decent and tolerant working-class communities. They should be seen as such.

But I detect that, deeper in the bowels of political activism, matters aren’t quite so categorical. There hasn’t, it seems to me, been the same kind of grassroots unity of purpose and solidarity accompanying Sir David’s murder as that which we saw in the wake of the dreadful assassination of Jo Cox. Fewer candles and words of unconditional condemnation, no Twitter hashtag, a little more reticence among those who were not of Sir David’s political hue.

The contrasting reactions are certainly instructive. Some have said the difference might be explained by the fact that Cox was murdered by a far-Right fanatic (very easy for progressives to condemn), whereas Sir David was killed allegedly in the name of Islam (politically more problematic). I think it runs deeper than that.

Sir David was a pro-Brexit Thatcherite Tory. A committed Catholic, he opposed abortion. Those things are enough to persuade some on the progressive side of politics that, while his killing was indefensible, his politics were rooted in a lack of compassion for others; ergo he does not warrant much more than the obligatory statements of regret and condemnation. That he voted against military action in Syria in 2013, that he had raised the alarm about fuel poverty, and that he opposed fox-hunting and had, more than any other parliamentarian, fought the wider campaign for animal welfare – all causes close to the hearts of many on the Left – seems immaterial.

This attitude is symptomatic of the tendency of many on the Left to see those on the other side of the political debate as inherently bad people — even sometimes as something a bit less than human. It is a dispiriting and destructive approach. It is also, quite simply, wrong.

Don’t misunderstand me. I have spent most of my adult life opposing the Tories from my place in the labour movement. There is much that has gone wrong in Britain over the years – particularly during the Thatcher era — for which I would lay the blame squarely at the Tories’ door: wealth and income inequality, creaking public services, the housing crisis, austerity, unemployment, low wages, boardroom excesses, chronic industrial decline, and so on. But that doesn’t lead me to believe that people only ever join the Conservative Party to screw the working-class or that Rik Mayall’s Alan B’stard is something more than crude caricature.

While I believe their prescriptions for the economy and society are often profoundly mistaken, I find it hard — unlike many of my colleagues on the Left — to conclude that most Conservatives are driven by something other than a genuine desire to make the country a better place. One can dislike the medicine — and even find it highly distasteful — while believing the person administering it to be acting with the best intentions.

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Having spent most of my years living in a Labour heartland, I reside these days in a true blue Tory constituency. I’m quite certain that most of my neighbours vote Conservative. But they are often the most selfless people, doing good works locally, raising money for charity, coming to the aid of fellow citizens in need (such as during the covid pandemic), and throwing themselves into community-centred clubs and societies. I could debate and disagree with them all day on questions of the economy, the best model for public services, the value of trade unions, the role of the welfare system, or whatever; but I don’t have the feeling they are instinctively avaricious or lacking in compassion when they put a different view. I just think they are wrong.

Sir David Amess himself was the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on fire safety and rescue. In that role, he worked collaboratively over many years with my own union — the Fire Brigades Union — in an effort to bring about policy changes to better protect the public from harm. Presciently, two and a half years before the Grenfell Tower fire, he was ruffling the feathers of his own government in warning of the risks of fire in residential tower blocks, and he championed the campaign to have sprinkler systems installed in all schools. Though these types of crusades rarely hit the headlines, he remained a diligent advocate for them — as, so we have learned in recent days, he did for so many other unglamourous causes. That the leadership of my union — not exactly given to speaking warmly of Tory MPs — issued a heartfelt tribute to Sir David in the wake of his murder says much.

It is plain, then, that this was not some pinstriped-suited, bowler-hatted Tory out to feather his own nest; this was an industrious and conscientious member of parliament doing the hard yards of law-making in a way he believed would improve the lives of the public. And that’s the point: most MPs do the same thing every day, despite the perception to the contrary.

In my past life as a senior union official, I had cause to interact with MPs from across the political spectrum. The vast majority, even when we disagreed, were, in my experience, entirely human, attentive and respectful. Many were trying to juggle their public role with a busy family life, frequently travelling long distances between their constituency and Westminster, earning a salary that was arguably less than they might have been able to secure elsewhere. It doesn’t hurt for the public to be reminded of these things.

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By Miriam Cates

The great Tony Benn always said politics was about “issues, not personalities”. He was right. It is, of course, unbecoming for MPs to describe their opponents as “scum”, and I don’t hold with the argument, advanced by some, that parliamentary rules should be relaxed so as to allow politicians to brand each other “liar”. These things merely serve to reinforce the mistaken impression that MPs see parliament as their own private battlefield and have little interest in focusing on the things that matter to the electorate.

Ultimately, too, there is a real danger in fomenting the false belief that our political institutions are filled with self-regarding and venal politicians interested only in their own advancement. Democracy itself is damaged when the governed have such a low opinion of the governors. All parliaments have their rotten apples, of course. But unless we have good cause to do otherwise, we should make the battle about ideas and policies, not motives.

I certainly don’t argue that we should give MPs a free ride. On the contrary, robust debate and scrutiny – even a bit of gentle mockery – are to be welcomed. Democracy demands that we hold our law-makers to the highest standards and call them to account when they fall short. There is certainly no harm in MPs from time to time experiencing the raw anger of the electorate – such as when many of them tried to block the implementation of Brexit — and I would be deeply uncomfortable, too, if, as a response to recent tragic events, attempts were made to cocoon MPs from their constituents. Indeed, the chasm that has opened up between the political class and millions of ordinary voters in provincial Britain over recent years is attributable in no small part to the fact that the former simply didn’t understand the lives of the latter, and that situation would not be improved by any plan designed to increase the distance between the groups.

But it is certainly time that we – and by “we”, I really mean the Left – moved away from seeing people on the other side of the debate as enemies rather than opponents. As Sir David showed us, strong views, independently held and passionately articulated, need not be a barrier to building bridges, forging alliances or earning the respect of those on the other side of the divide. Sometimes they might even be conducive to these things.

By God, they need to hear it. And if, by doing so, he attracts the opprobrium of those who have led the party to the brink and have no desire to do what is necessary to drag it back he should wear it as a badge of honour. It would certainly do him no harm in the eyes of the millions beyond the conference hall who see Labour as having moved to the outer fringes.

I think, in fact, it’s time we re-introduced a little masochism back into politics. A bit more bravery. So many of our politicians take every precaution imaginable to avoid the prospect of negative publicity — the unfortunate encounter with the angry voter, being heckled during a speech, enduring the brickbats that come from stating an unfashionable opinion, from within the party, as well as from outside. The age of the spin doctor has seen a generation of senior politicians wrapped in cotton wool in an effort to head off these sorts of unwelcome scenarios. As a result, politicians look like automatons, living cocooned existences removed from the lives of everyday folk, and whose public interventions are stage-managed to within an inch of their lives.

These politicians need to open themselves up a little more — to risk taking a bit of a kicking from time to time. Most voters are, in my experience, sympathetic towards —even admiring of — elected representatives who are willing to submit themselves to the hazards that inevitably go with lowering the barriers between themselves and opponents. Witness, for example, John Major’s decision in the 1992 general election to ditch his party’s slick PR strategy and, armed only with a soapbox and loudspeaker, mix it head-on with the masses in town centres around the country. Sadly for us on the Labour side, it worked a treat.

So Starmer mustn’t shy away from reminding his party that it stands where it does as a consequence of its own failings. Its predicament — heading for a future as a pressure group rather than a serious alternative for government — is entirely self-inflicted. It forfeited the support of its traditional working-class base, voters in places such as the Red Wall without whom it simply cannot win power, because it took them for granted. Worse, it privately sneered at them and thought them unenlightened. In assuming that these people would never throw their lot in with the Tories, as millions of them eventually did, the party had gravely miscalculated.

The rupture was long in the making, but it ought to have been obvious to everyone in the movement that it was coming. While Labour was embracing the new global market, blue-collar Britain was becoming angry and disorientated at the deindustrialisation and rapid demographic change that came with it. While the party saw the world increasingly from the vantage point of our fashionable cities, those in the provinces felt a deep sense of neglect. While Labour was preaching the gospel of a militant cosmopolitan liberalism, post-industrial Britain was mourning the weakening of common cultural bonds and a lost sense of community and belonging. While the party was falling under the domination of the professional and managerial classes, the working-class saw that its representatives no longer looked or sounded very much like them, nor shared their priorities. The adoption by Labour in 2018 of a policy favouring a second referendum on the EU was, for the relationship between the party and its one-time core vote, the final nail in the coffin.

The party needs to hear all this. Starmer himself — upwardly mobile, north London liberal lawyer that he is — embodies the party’s ideological and demographic shift, of course. He also unquestionably — as the architect of the second referendum policy — contributed to the breach between the party and its working-class base. But he now needs to say and do what is necessary to put things right. There really is no alternative.

Starmer must implore the party to face up to the fact that, in no longer being an object of affection for the very people it was created to represent, Labour is betraying its heritage. He must tell the rank-and-file that Labour cannot be a party only for social activists, student radicals and middle-class urban liberals, but must also understand the lives of — and speak for — those living in small-town Britain. He should remind the party that a small ‘c’ conservative thread still runs through many working-class communities and, once upon a time, voters in these places felt no compunction about voting Labour. They stopped because they sensed, rightly, that the party started to see them as embarrassing elderly relatives; it wanted their votes at election time, but it had no desire to be seen in public with them.

Suggested reading

The speech Starmer should have given

By Ian Martin

The party must stop obsessing over issues that have little traction in the real world — the current internal squabble over gender identity being one example — and concentrate on the doorstep issues that determine the outcome of elections.

Starmer should be bold and tell the party that, for too long, it has indulged — sometimes actively supported — those who seek to stifle freedom of thought and expression, and that ‘cancel culture’ and a suffocating woke orthodoxy are not merely contrived props in a Tory ‘culture war’, but are alarming realities. If Labour is to return to being a broad church, there must be space in the debate for those with nonconformist political or moral opinions — especially when those opinions often resonate loudly in the world beyond the political class.

Voters who aren’t supportive of taking the knee, voters who oppose mass immigration, voters who supported Brexit, voters who believe that someone with a penis cannot be a woman, voters who worry more about law and order than they do Palestine and more about national security than they do climate change: these are the people, many of them rooted in our working-class communities, whom the ranks of the Left have increasingly come to despise, but without whose support there is, for Labour, no path back to power.

The messaging from next week’s conference should be geared almost exclusively towards reconnecting with these voters. Perhaps a bit less resort to the usual buzzwords of “equality”, “diversity”, “tolerance” and “inclusion” — always in heavy supply at Labour conferences — and more focus on the themes of “family”, “community”, “work” and “nation”. If you want to win the votes of the mainstream, you have to speak their language and share their priorities.

There can be no pulling punches at this conference. Labour isn’t about to go out of business, but neither does it stand an earthly chance of forming the next government — indeed, any future government — without a major recalibration of its priorities. Starmer must make sure this message hits home, no matter the boos and catcalls it may attract from elements of the liberal and radical Left (from which most delegates will be comprised). It would, at least, be a signal to the outside world that he has the guts to do what is necessary to drag Labour back to electability.

Suggested reading

Why Keir Starmer is doomed

By Matthew Goodwin

Warm words will not be enough (as we can see from the reaction to Starmer’s prosaic essay). Any strategy designed to reconnect the party with its lost voters must also be rooted in hard policy — in particular a clear programme for delivering economic justice after more than a decade of austerity. Achieving full employment, reviving our industrial base, addressing regional inequalities, closing the gap between rich and poor, rebalancing the economy away from finance capital and towards the productive sector — all challenges for which Labour must provide answers. A recognition that, for too long, it has focused disproportionately on the public sector (crucial though it is) at the expense of those who live and work in the real economy, where goods are made and wealth produced, will also be necessary to show that the party is willing to break out from its comfort zone in its quest to be the voice for all sections of the working-class.

Most crucially, Labour must seek to answer the question confronting all political parties of how we might maintain a meaningful sense of social solidarity and community in the age of a deeply atomising liberal globalisation. It was, after all, the failure to properly consider this question that has served in no small measure to bring about a fissure between several parties of the Left across the West and their traditional bases.

If, as seems possible, next week’s Labour conference is remembered chiefly for the fact that a female MP felt unable to attend on account of her defence of women’s sex-based rights, or the ongoing internal wrangle over voting systems, it would encapsulate everything that was wrong about the party. Instead, Labour must turn outwards. It must show that it once again understands there is a world beyond the M25, that provincial Britain exists, that the private sector matters, that hyper-liberalism has proven not to be the answer to the social and economic injustices that still bedevil our country, and that many voters still yearn for something that transcends money and individual rights.

And if, in conveying that message, Starmer riles up the assembled delegates, so be it. The objective of making Labour palatable again to the wider public is all that matters.

The union has a proud and illustrious history. Since 1918 — the year of its founding as the “Firemen’s Trade Union” — it has played a hugely significant role in delivering better conditions of service for the nation’s firefighters and improving public safety. It is in no small measure thanks to the FBU that firefighters have been able to enjoy decent pay and pensions, collective bargaining rights and enhanced health and safety standards, while the public has benefitted from the union’s tireless campaigning for robust fire cover provision in local communities.

The union plays a big role, too, in the wider labour movement, always punching above its weight and standing alongside other workers in the fight for a better, fairer society.

I was proud to join up as a member of the union when becoming a professional firefighter 24 years ago, and prouder still to be elected to represent my work colleagues as an official in various positions for much of the period afterwards. Trade union activity, as it does for most officials, became a major part of my life.

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The betrayal of Paul Embery

By Kate Hoey

So when, in 2019, I lost my job with the union — at the time I served as a full-time official on its national executive — it came as a bitter blow. My great crime was to give a speech at a rally called by the non-partisan, pro-Brexit campaign group Leave Means Leave. The rally took place on 29 March of that year — the date that the UK had been scheduled to leave the EU until, controversially, the Theresa May government and Brussels agreed to a delay. Other speakers were drawn from across the political spectrum and included Kate Hoey MP, the chair of Labour Leave.

There were thousands in attendance at the rally from all walks of life and of all politics and none. Some were rank-and-file trade union members. For others, this was their first public demo.

I attended the event in my own private time (it took place on a Friday evening) and spoke in my capacity as the national organiser of Trade Unionists Against the EU, a marvellous little group of principled activists with which I have been involved for some years. There was no mention whatsoever at the rally of my role as an FBU official, nor of the union itself.

That evening, however, and without prior notice to me, the general secretary of my union — an old friend but a vociferous opponent of Brexit — issued a public statement condemning me and others from the Left who had spoken at the rally as a “disgrace to the traditions of the labour movement”. I didn’t need a crystal ball to tell me where this was heading.

Within a fortnight, I had been placed under investigation. Four weeks after that I was suspended. And within two months, I was in front of the union’s executive council defending myself against a raft of disciplinary charges — some of which were completely unrelated to my appearance at the rally but had plainly been dredged up for good measure by the senior official conducting the investigation. As a 20-year trade union official, I had represented countless members in the disciplinary arena and knew a witch-hunt when I saw one.

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How patriotism came home

By Paul Embery

In working as a columnist for UnHerd, I had apparently prejudiced the interests of the union. In sharing a platform with those who would normally be considered political opponents, I had allegedly breached a union policy stipulating that FBU officials must not engage in joint campaigning with traditional opponents during the referendum (that the rally in question was taking place three years after the referendum and was therefore plainly beyond the scope of the policy seemed to cut no ice with my accusers). In publicly criticising leaders of the labour movement for their attempts to subvert the referendum result, I had again apparently acted in a way prejudicial to the union.

It was this final charge that led to my being removed from my role and banned from holding office again in the FBU for two years. I received other, though lesser, sanctions for the other “offences”.

The backlash across the FBU and media was fierce. Many people understood acutely that the sacking of a union representative for expressing a personal view in his own private time conflicted with the deep and longstanding traditions of the labour movement. Wasn’t our movement supposed to defend the principles of free speech and the right to dissent? Did we no longer tolerate the expression of alternative views? As the Labour MP Jon Cruddas argued in my defence:

“The history of the movement in Britain has always been one of debate, argument and civil disagreement. Union members have always been allowed to argue for positions contrary to their union’s own view, as long as it is made clear that they are representing themselves or another organisation. The Left’s traditional commitment to freedom of expression, and indeed the necessary right to express personal dissent, demands that union officials are not held captive to their union’s line at all hours of the day and in all situations.”

He was right, of course. But I reminded people that this was a new age, one in which a different kind of Left was increasingly imposing a rigid conformism in the public square — especially on Brexit, where things were presented as a struggle between good and evil. It seemed that my union leadership had fallen prey to this phenomenon.

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Labour isn't working

By Paul Embery

My internal appeal was rejected, but I chose to fight on. In February of this year, my claim for unfair dismissal came before the employment tribunal. The case was heard over three days. The union was represented by Oliver Segal QC, one of the country’s leading employment silks. I shudder to think how much was paid out in membership contributions to secure his services. I represented myself.

Judgement was handed down on 4 August. There it was on page one: “The claimant was unfairly dismissed under the Employment Rights Act 1996.” Judge Robin Postle did not spare the union leadership’s blushes. “It would appear right from the start of the investigation process conducted by the vice-president that there was an agenda to have the claimant removed” … “The investigation looked like no more than a witch-hunt, a fishing exercise” … “The tribunal overwhelmingly felt the matter was pre-determined” … “Quite how the claimant [in writing for UnHerd] had breached that rule was a mystery to the tribunal” … The union’s argument that a policy written specifically and exclusively for the 2016 referendum was still in force three years later was “a nonsense” … “How could any fair-minded member come to a reasonable belief on the facts that the claimant had committed any form of misconduct?”

An additional argument from the union — that my claim was invalid on the grounds that I wasn’t technically an employee of the organisation — was flatly rejected.

The ruling was a bittersweet moment for me. I am of course glad that, after two years, justice has finally been served, but I remain a proud member of the FBU and retain a deep affection for the organisation. It is filled with good people driven by noble ideals. It just happens that, on this occasion, they were badly let down by a leadership which tried to muzzle a dissenting voice and, in doing so, caused an awful lot of reputational damage. So, all things considered, I’ll not be popping any champagne corks.

Instead, I shall continue, as a rank-and-file member, to use whatever influence I possess to change the FBU for the better, and to support the union’s commendable campaigns to defend public safety and improve the working lives of firefighters. It is these things that brought me into the union in the first place. And, in the end, it is these things that matter most.

The rapidity with which support for open borders has gone from being a fringe position to dominant on the British Left ought to be one of the major talking points of politics. It wasn’t so long ago that open borders were championed principally by Trotskyists, anarchists and hyper-liberals. Most mainstream socialists and trade unionists understood that the labour supply was just another market dynamic which, as with all market dynamics, was requiring of regulation, the better to enable governments to plan around employment, welfare, housing and so on.

Nowadays, those of us on the Left who articulate such a position find ourselves in a minority, regularly assailed by colleagues reciting trite slogans such as “Migrants are not to blame!” and “Don’t pander to the racists!”

It is true that such evidence as exists shows the impact of immigration on UK wages overall to be broadly negligible. But this can disguise the more appreciable effects on specific groups of workers and sectors. For example, a 2015 Bank of England study concluded that for every 10 percentage point increase in the proportion of immigrants working in semi-skilled or unskilled jobs, there was a two per cent reduc­tion in pay. And a 2018 review by the government’s Migration Advisory Committee showed that while the effect of immigration on average wages was small, the impact on wage distribution was more significant, with higher-paid workers gaining and the low-paid losing out.

This is to say nothing of the other deleterious effects of open borders, such as the stunting of productivity and deskilling of the domestic workforce. What, we might ask, is the motivation for employers to invest in new technology or train up a local jobseeker when they can get away with bringing in an off-the-peg foreign worker for a pittance?

Yet when it comes to discussing these realities, there is something of a conspiracy of silence within the labour movement, whose leaders have set their face against any suggestion that open borders comes with downsides. Again, boilerplate sloganising has taken the place of reasoned assessment. Low wages are caused by “rip-off bosses”, they argue, and what we therefore need is better regulation and more trade union organisation in the workplace – arguments which, whatever their merits, overlook the inescapable truth that employers will always be under less pressure to pay higher wages the greater the supply of labour available to them.

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Batley won't save Labour

By Paul Embery

The more thoughtful will often invoke the “lump of labour fallacy” – an argument that correctly rejects any notion of there being a fixed amount of work in the economy, but goes on to contend that increases in the population, such as those deriving from immigration, inevitably lead to additional economic demand and thus more jobs and greater levels of growth and prosperity. But the British experience would suggest that evidence for the second part of this theory is, to say the least, inconclusive. For example, in his 2015 book, The Costs and Benefits of Large-Scale Immigration, the Cambridge economist Professor Bob Rowthorn explained how a study of the data demonstrated that:

“The extra jobs may not appear immediately and there may be quite a long transition period during which native workers experience unemployment (or lower wages). Moreover, if there is a continuing inflow of migrants, the labour market may be in constant disequi­librium, with economic growth and new job creation lagging constantly behind the growth in labour supply due to immigration. In its extreme form the ‘lump of labour fallacy’ may well be a fallacy, but it points to a genuine issue.”

In recent weeks, we have seen evidence that labour shortages caused in part through a reduction in the pool of EU workers – many of whom have apparently returned home for reasons connected to the pandemic and the Brexit vote – have led to sharp salary increases in some sectors. The recruitment firm, Reed, found that average wages this year have risen by 18% across catering and hospitality, and 10% across retail. These sectors are, of course, renowned for attracting — and often exploiting — migrant workers.

But still there has been no mea culpa from the open borders Left, no recognition that an over-reliance by business on overseas labour has, for some workers at least, demonstrably meant lower wage rates. On the contrary, some have used the recruitment challenges being thrown up by a tighter labour market as an excuse to reassert the case for EU free movement. How dispiriting that the instinct in such circumstances of those called upon to defend the interests of workers is not to harness the opportunity to secure higher wages and better conditions, but instead to defend the right of employers to exploit cheap migrant labour.

I have even heard a small number on the Left make the case that any generous wage increases deriving from a shortage of workers will inevitably mean higher prices for the consumer — precisely the argument that the Tories once employed in opposition to a national minimum wage (and, in fact, the argument that vested interests often employ in response to anything but the most conservative wage claims).

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Why is the Left calling me a fascist?

By Paul Embery

Some commentators who had previously thundered at how Brexit would bring economic disaster have been forced to admit to having been taken by surprise by the reports of salary increases in sectors now denuded of abundant cheap EU labour. But can it really be considered a surprise? Wasn’t it always obvious that where an over-supply of labour existed it was likely to mean — within that locus, at least — downward pressure on wages?

Whose interests have been served by denying this reality? Bosses or workers? The labour movement in Britain would do well to take a lead from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, which has shown admirable candour on the issue, stating in a submission to the Irish Government over proposed labour market reforms: “It is an iron law of economics that an abundant supply of labour pushes down its cost. It is insulting people’s intelligence to pretend otherwise.”

Working-class voters who supported Brexit have often been depicted as having voted against their own economic interests. But the middle-class, liberal, Remain-voting, graduate types who usually level this charge might wish to look a little closer to home – literally. Estimated data published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government suggests that in the 25 years to 2016 – the year of the referendum — house prices increased by around 21% in real terms directly as a consequence of immigration.

In our major cities, where many of these self-identified “progressive” types are roosted — often mortgaged up to their eyeballs or paying exorbitant rental fees — the rise is likely to have been more pronounced. On the face of it, then, the sneering contempt displayed by this cohort seems to have been somewhat misplaced. Aren’t they, in supporting open borders, guilty of precisely that which they have accused others – namely voting against their own economic interests? Has anyone told them? Would they even recognise the contradiction in their case? Might they show a little humility next time they aim their fire at working-class Leave voters, some of whom will now be reaping the benefits of the pay surges caused in part by a reduction in the pool of EU workers in the UK?

Suggested reading

How the EU bungled Brexit

By Helen Thompson

Ultimately, a system of free movement between highly-diverse economies is bound to mean traffic moving overwhelmingly in one direction – from the lower-wage zones to the higher-wage. Relatively few Britons will – for the foreseeable future, at least – find themselves travelling to, say, Lithuania or Estonia in pursuit of more attractive wages. One can be in favour of immigration yet believe the challenges presented by free movement to be serious enough to warrant an honest debate.

And while we are inclined to view these challenges through our own lens as a richer country, we should ensure that such a debate focuses, too, on the difficulties free movement creates for lower-wage nations. How many people, for example, know – or even care – about the fact that Romania has experienced a health crisis as a consequence of the departure of thousands of doctors following the country’s accession to the EU, or that Latvia underwent a depopulation emergency in the years after it joined the bloc?

Until now, the debate over free movement has too often been painted in primary colours when, in fact, it should be one of nuance and reason. The recent sudden wage hikes compel all of us – but particularly those who have in the past been too keen to shut down the discussion – to elevate hard-headed and truthful analysis over accusation and cliché. I can’t say I’m hopeful that it will happen.

It has — as usual — taken a football tournament to achieve this momentary tolerance, and there is no guarantee that it will hold. It hasn’t previously. But, while we may, let us enjoy it. Let us, against the background of not only this gruesome past 15 months but the bitter polarisation that has gripped our country over the past few years, appreciate the uplifting sense of solidarity and belonging that have emerged with the successful march of the England football team to the final of Euro 2020. Such sentiments, as most of us have always known, may be harnessed as positive forces if only the liberal establishment and assorted high-minded progressives were to abandon their own longstanding prejudices against them.

That we lost the final in the most cruel manner will not dampen the fervour. Not yet, at any rate. The feelgood factor generated by England’s advance through the tournament, as well as the admiration the players and manager have drawn for the impeccable manner in which they have conducted themselves, have given rise to unabashed displays of English national pride — the kind which, outside of a sporting context, are usually resisted and discouraged by those who know better.

St George’s flags affixed to cars and adorning houses; outpourings of support for “our boys”; the massed ranks of fans belting out “Football’s Coming Home”; the invocation of a history and culture that, by and large, has been a force for good; the spirit of openness that says that, irrespective of whence and when you came, you may be part of all this if you wish to be: these are not the divisive manifestations of a hostile or exclusionary nationalism or sense of superiority, but instead the benign and unifying expressions of national consciousness, born of a recognition that we are part of something greater than ourselves.

Everything we have seen in recent weeks has been the best of what it means to be patriotic: a spirit of reciprocity, common values and identity, the nurturing of associative bonds that give meaning to life and transcend cold economic calculus. When communities which would normally live parallel existences unite in pursuit of the same desire – on this occasion to see a team of eleven young men win some silverware on behalf of the nation – we all have cause for celebration. That’s what football has the capacity to achieve, and no politician dare mock it.

Only the truly cynical would have sneered at the unbridled joy displayed by students at an Islamic school in Blackburn when Harry Kane scored the winner against Denmark in the semi-final, or the Bhangra flash mob dancing through the streets of Wolverhampton to their own version of the Three Lions anthem. Who could have failed to identify with exactly how these groups felt at those moments? What separated them from the residents of the Bermondsey housing estate which was festooned in St George’s flags for the entirety of the tournament? During the past few short weeks, not much at all. For all the incessant and patronising establishment lectures force-feeding us a diet of “diversity” and “tolerance”, it often takes the simplest things to break down barriers.

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England fans can't be beaten

By Will Lloyd

I predict, however, that it won’t be long before we are back to normal. Those members of our political and cultural elites who are instinctively hostile to any overt demonstration of Englishness — seeing it as an inherently reactionary and destructive force — will regroup and seek to ensure that the phenomenon does not take firm root. Not for nothing did George Orwell say that England was perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals were ashamed of their own nationality.

The sense of English national dispossession which has been in evidence since the advent of devolution and has intensified in more recent years, coming to a head over the issue of Brexit, will continue to be ignored — but it won’t go away. Those living in our post-industrial and neglected coastal towns, where a heightened sense of Englishness exists — not by coincidence, but because it is in those types of places that citizens are most likely to feel a disconnect with an ‘unEnglish’ liberal establishment — will continue to see national identity as a tool of resistance. The sentiment will remain inchoate and uncoordinated, but it will not abate. And it will continue to develop outside of normal political structures, not least because none of the major parties has any serious plan for giving the English a dedicated voice in the institutions of our democracy, nor for addressing the democratic imbalances created by devolution.

This patriotic sentiment will continue to be misunderstood by many of our cultural influencers. It is dismissed as the fruits of unenlightened and nativist English mentality which refuses to be persuaded of the merits of a global cosmopolitan liberalism – almost certainly synonymous with white superiority and a longing for the age of Empire. It was this patronising attitude — a refusal to recognise the legitimate grievances of England beyond the cities, or to understand the motivation behind an instinctive affinity for country that is considered normal in most other nations — that has created so many of the faultlines in our recent politics.

It has taken a team of 11 multiracial young men to show these people why they are so wrong. Let us savour the moment.

Not really. As it turned out, Sir Keir described the outcome as a “fantastic victory”, and his acolytes in the party were quick to join in the crowing. Given what was at stake for Sir Keir personally, and what they perceived as the threat of the party passing back into the hands of the radical Left following a leadership challenge, it was perhaps no surprise that, privately at least, these people were cock-a-hoop about the result. But nobody in Labour’s ranks — at least not anyone serious about the task of winning power — could seriously consider Batley and Spen to be cause for jubilation.

I have never, by the way, been a member of the “Starmer must go!” brigade. Neither do I believe that Angela Rayner or Dawn Butler or anyone else being touted as a challenger to Sir Keir would offer a route out of the morass. In truth, the question of who leads Labour is barely relevant at the moment. What matters is whether or not the party at large is willing to undergo the kind of internal revolution necessary to make it a credible political force again. All the signs suggest it isn’t.

There is, too, the very real prospect that the Starmerites will, post Batley and Spen, make an identical mistake to that which the Corbynites made after the unexpected result in the 2017 general election: a not-quite-as-bad-as-we-feared outcome portrayed as some kind of stunning victory; an entirely misplaced triumphalism; the party’s deep-seated problems masked; the challenges unconfronted; the subsequent annihilation when the party next presents itself to the British electorate.

The clanging from Batley and Spen is a warning bell, not a victory one. Opposition parties which have not won a general election for 16 years and have just managed to cling on to a seat in a by-election in which their vote share plummeted have no reason to celebrate. All the more so when it follows hot on the heels of a devastating defeat in one of their strongholds. Batley and Spen may have granted Sir Keir a stay of execution, but it has not shifted the fundamentals in any meaningful way.

As far as I can see, the major political realignment which has been taking place in British politics for some years, and which was revealed most starkly at the 2019 general election, remains unchecked. Nothing that has happened since that election can be seen as giving Labour any cause for optimism that the outcome was merely an aberration — that the millions of working-class voters who, for the first time, turned to the Tories will at some point in the not-too-distant future realise the error of their ways and return to the fold.

Like all political parties, Labour has, throughout its history, experienced the shifting sands of public opinion, from the ecstasy of the landslides in 1945 and 1997 to the ignominy of the routs in 1931 and 1983. But the catastrophe of the 2019 election represented something different, something seismic. That particular defeat could not be attributed to routine fluctuations in political popularity; it was plainly something more. The ensuing 19 months have done little to disabuse us of this reality.

That the Labour Party is no longer an objection of affection for vast chunks of the British working class is beyond doubt. That millions among that cohort now actively dislike the party and everything it stands for is equally indisputable. And while, in matters of political discourse, it is important at all times to resist the temptation of hyperbole, it is still very difficult, even — perhaps especially — in the wake of Batley and Spen, not to draw the conclusion that the game might genuinely be up for the Labour Party; that the situation is now irrecoverable and we are witnessing the inexorable decline of an organisation that has been a fixture of our national politics for 120 years. In 27 years as a member, I don’t think I have ever felt such a sense of fatalism about the party’s prospects.

Further reading

Labour deserves to lose Batley and Spen

By Peter Franklin

There was a time when even many Tory voters would harbour a sneaking fondness for the Labour Party. They may have been unwilling to place the levers of government in its hands, but they recognised its value in putting the case for Britain’s poorer classes and pricking the consciences of those who would otherwise be content to give primacy in all aspects of our national life to the diktats and caprices of the ‘free’ market. But, while elements of the working class do still vote for it and will go on doing so, Labour these days commands true reverence from little more than a hardcore band of dogmatic progressives, radicals and utopians whose unyielding belief in their own moral rectitude acts as an instant repellent to most ordinary voters.

The truth is that, over the past 30 years, the Labour Party was unknowingly digging its own grave. The promotion of identity politics, the embrace of a militant and uncompromising cosmopolitan liberalism, the drastic oversteer to those living in our fashionable cities and university towns, the elevation of globalism over the nation state, the sneering contempt for the small-c conservatism of large parts of the country, the rapprochement with market fundamentalism — all these things helped to drive a wedge between the party and its traditional base. At the same time, the party itself was undergoing a radical transformation: the professional and managerial classes began to dominate, while the old blue-collar element was increasingly sidelined; the priorities of provincial Britain were subordinated to those of the metropolitan elites.

Batley and Span threw into sharp relief the depth of the mire into which Labour has sunk. The contest itself was a damning indictment of the party’s trajectory — the natural consequence of an aggressively identitarian politics which divides people into ‘oppressors’ and ‘victims’ on the basis of their biological, religious or ethnic characteristics. Every old hatred seemed to rear its head during the campaign, from anti-Semitism to homophobia to Kashmir and Palestine. It would be dishonest to claim that Labour was a victim in all of this; on the contrary,it was up to its eyeballs in it, even resorting in one leaflet to what appeared to be naked racism. “We are far more united, and have far more in common, than that which divides us,” said the constituency’s former MP Jo Cox in her maiden speech to the Commons. Those words seem like a bit of a sick joke after the by-election.

Further reading

The toxic battle for Batley and Spen

By Tanya Gold

That so little of the narrative in the by-election focused on the socio-economic challenges facing local voters was depressing. In fact, the contest seemed to centre on anything but these issues. It’s hard to imagine that the constituency’s silent majority – many of whom surely struggle daily against the effects of inequalities in income and opportunity – would have been happy at how these questions were largely ignored. They could also be forgiven for not having a clue about how Labour intends to address these challenges on their behalf.

Batley and Spen showed us, too, the fruits of state-sponsored multiculturalism: a community divided against itself, grievance heaped on communal tension, a paucity of social solidarity, families residing just yards from each other but living wholly parallel lives, a sense of one-nationism utterly absent, the associative bonds that bind us together as humans and communities seemingly torn all ways. What did anyone expect would be the consequence of an ideology — once again, traceable largely to Labour and the wider Left but embraced now by most of the establishment — predicated on the active promotion of separateness and difference? That constantly telling assorted groups how dissimilar they are from each other would somehow bring unity and cohesion? Surely nobody can survey the battlefield of Batley and Spen and not be forced to think again about such questions.

Neither is it acceptable to dismiss critics of this ideology as bigots and reactionaries. Is seeking to break down cultural differences rather than accentuate them some kind of ignoble ambition? Are all attempts at cultural assimilation and those who strive for it somehow unworthy? What an error we made when we opted for the salad bowl over the melting pot.

Further reading

Labour isn't working

By Paul Embery

Doubtless many in the Labour Party will now set about misdiagnosing the lessons from Batley and Spen. The Corbynites will blame the leader for the unimpressive performance. Sir Keir’s people will, in turn, argue that a fine victory was secured in spite of the fact that the Corbyn legacy continues to hobble the party. Some will blame George Galloway for eating up Labour votes. All will be missing the point.

Meanwhile, amid this internecine bickering, the party will plod on with no narrative, no strategy, no purpose, no sense of direction and little real leadership, with each of the warring factions – the liberal Left and radical Left – desperate to use victory in any new skirmish to assert its authority. The next of these skirmishes will be the ballot, beginning on Monday, to elect a new general secretary of Unite. Sir Keir will be hoping desperately that Gerard Coyne will triumph and rid the party of what he sees as the malign influence of Len McCluskey and his disciples. But, again, the risk is that such an outcome merely adds to the complacent belief that things are moving in the right direction. In reality, these types of victories will, unless the party can get its act together at the macro-level, prove to be pyrrhic, and will do little to turn things round in the polls.

Neither of the factions vying for dominance points the way to salvation. And it certainly isn’t within the gift of a single person to save Labour. For that to happen, there must be a radical overhaul in the party’s ideology.

The grisly campaign in Batley and Spen was a symptom of Labour’s disintegration and descent into a politics that does not resonate with large parts of mainstream Britain. That it squeaked home cannot mask that reality. Only when the party begins articulating a narrative that combines economic justice with the cultural politics of place, belonging and community will it stand an earthly chance of winning power again. We in the movement can only pray that we haven’t left it too late.

This conviction struck me most forcibly during a pivotal debate on Brexit at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Liverpool in 2018. Before the discussion, I had wandered around the city’s pubs and conference fringe speaking to delegates and visitors. There was an undue chirpiness in the air. Labour was now the largest political party in western Europe, people would remind me. The glorious leader was playing to packed houses everywhere. Ergo, we stood every chance of forming the next government.

Then, during the Brexit debate itself, the conference rallied enthusiastically behind a motion explicitly putting a second EU referendum on the table. I remember gazing around the hall in despair as speaker after speaker pledged support for the motion, each drawing wild cheers and applause from delegates. That the adoption of this policy was almost certain to result in electoral oblivion seemed lost on virtually everyone present.

At that moment, I tweeted that the conference was effectively handing a P45 to every Labour MP in the North and Midlands. I knew then that this self-inflicted wound would take years — possibly a generation — to heal. Images from the debate would that evening be beamed into the homes of loyal Labour voters across the party’s pro-Brexit heartlands, and millions among them would perceive the outcome as the ultimate kick in the teeth. Labour had betrayed its already-diminishing traditional working-class base and would pay a heavy price.

Nearly three years and one general election annihilation later, and the relationship remains in a serious state of disrepair. That point is proved by what we know so far of Thursday’s election results, and what we may reasonably predict will unfold in the coming days. That Labour, in a set of ballots two years into a parliament, appears to have lost so much ground in working-class communities against a Tory Party that has been in power for over a decade — and during that time imposed a programme of economic austerity which inflicted financial adversity on many of the nation’s poorest — speaks to the magnitude of the former’s estrangement from its one-time core vote.

That Labour’s losing Hartlepool — a seat which, since its creation in 1974, it has held at every general election — came in the end as no great surprise, itself speaks volumes. What was striking, though, was the plunge in the party’s share of the vote there by nine percentage points, and the increase in the Tory share by a remarkable 23 points.

At the time of writing, the picture looks bleak for Labour in the local authority elections, too, with the party in retreat in many areas. Heavy damage was sustained in the Midlands and North-East, and the party has lost control of at least four councils — including Harlow in Essex, a 1960s new town often described as the home of White Van Man.

The mistake — and some among Labour’s ranks are already making it — would be to lay the blame solely at the door of Sir Keir Starmer. The devastating results are attributable to the leader’s attempts to shift the party to the “centre” ground, argues the radical Left, adducing, among other things, the fact that Labour held Hartlepool under Jeremy Corbyn in 2019 (though ignoring the inconvenient truth that it did so only as a consequence of thousands of would-be Tory votes being redirected to the Brexit Party).

For their part, the Starmerites blame the Corbyn legacy, as though the rot set in only with the latter’s elevation as leader in 2015.

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Labour could lose Hartlepool

By Paul Embery

Both camps are profoundly wrong. The schism between the party and the working class began to materialise as long as three decades ago. The historical coalition in which Hartlepool had for generations rubbed along contentedly with Hampstead — blue collar and white collar united in the struggle for social and economic justice — started to fall apart as Labour began to be dominated by the latter, transforming itself into a party of the managerial and professional classes, graduates and urban liberals. Not only was the party abandoning those in provincial and post-industrial Britain, it started to privately — and sometimes publicly — scorn them.

The inevitable result was the steady flow of working-class votes away from Labour. Some were swept up by the likes of Ukip and even the BNP; millions more from that point simply went uncast.

For a long time, disillusioned working-class voters in the Labour heartlands were reluctant to throw in their lot with the Tories, conscious of the stigma that often came with voting for the traditional enemy. It was only in 2019 that these voters, still brimming with anger over attempts to reverse the referendum result, decided in huge numbers to back a Conservative Party that had pledged to “Get Brexit Done”. The taboo had been broken. Having voted Tory once, these voters would — as we have seen — have no hesitation in doing the same again.

All of this means that Labour faces the prospect of being out of power for another decade or more — perhaps forever. That’s why the battle that currently rages for control of the party, between its liberal and radical wings, is the proverbial two bald men fighting over a comb. If either side wins, it will find that the instrument over which it had struggled for possession turns out to be of little practical use — at least as far as forming a government is concerned.

That is because Labour’s problems are structural, cultural and elemental. They run far deeper than questions of party management and whether or not free broadband is a vote winner. If the objective is to win back the Red Wall, then neither the liberal nor radical Left has the correct prescription.

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The Brexiteer who could have saved Labour

By Paul Embery

In fact, the war between the two camps is, in many respects, a phoney one. There is far more that unites them than either would care to admit — or even seem to comprehend. Both are imbued with the same bourgeois, metropolitan, globalist worldview. Both aim their pitch at the student, the social activist, the fellow middle-class progressive, at Twitter. Both obsess about identity politics and “diversity”. Both hitch their wagon to every minority crusade and then afford to it an undue level of prominence. Both are largely ignorant — and often contemptuous — of the lives and priorities of those in small-town Britain, of their communitarian impulse, traditional values, desire for belonging and sense of national pride.

For these reasons, changing the face at the top would be pointless. In fact, given that Sir Keir has personally shown signs of understanding what needs to be done to win back the Red Wall — focusing much of his language since ascending to the leadership on the themes of family, community and nation — his defenestration would, if anything, prove counter-productive. What Labour needs is a root and branch ideological overhaul, not regicide. As matters currently lie, any leader attempting to take the party in the right direction would find himself or herself shackled by a membership and activist base — as well as the greater part of a parliamentary cohort — which simply has no intention of going there.

In the more fashionable cities and the university towns, Labour continues to thrive. Witness, for example, Sadiq Khan’s predicted comfortable victory in London. And therein lies the party’s dilemma. Any organisation seeking to hold together a coalition of interest groups must be wary about indulging one part of it to such a degree that its other elements begin to feel neglected. The greater the success of Labour in the citadels of cosmopolitan liberalism, the more likely it is that the old industrial heartlands will become fretful. That is precisely what has happened.

In the way that the working-class component of Labour’s coalition was expected to — and did — make concessions in the 1990s to enable the party to broaden its appeal among the upwardly mobile middle classes, so the obligation falls today on the latter to compromise so that the party stands at least a chance of recovering the support of the former. That doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning any commitment to a radical (but nonetheless credible) economic programme: there are deep wells of support in working-class communities for a more egalitarian economy, a higher minimum wage, investment in public services, reductions in income and wealth inequality, and so on. But it does mean understanding the small-“c” conservatism and proclivity for social solidarity and cultural attachment that exists across large parts of provincial and post-industrial Britain.

It also means being prepared to put front and centre the doorstep issues — law and order, immigration, national security — which Labour activists are usually uncomfortable discussing. If that means that topics such as LGBT rights, climate change, gender identity, Palestine and the next woke cause that comes along must take more of a back seat, so be it. The party must begin to look and sound again like those who have abandoned it and reflect their priorities. Until that happens, it will be relegated to the status of a middle-class pressure group.

I have heard some inside Labour’s ranks argue that the old blue-collar vote has gone for good, and the party must now throw everything at consolidating and widening its new young, liberal, metropolitan, university-educated, pro-EU base. But so far as such a strategy would be electorally viable — and that is doubtful — what would be the point of it? If Labour could not bring itself to speak for its old working-class base living in some of the country’s most disadvantaged communities, it would have betrayed its very reason for existing. The objective — and it may never be realised — must be to win back the hearts and minds of those whose votes it must recover if it is to win power and fulfil its historical mission once more — not to write those voters off as a lost cause.

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Is Labour dead?

By Ian Birrell

While polls are rarely useful as tools for predicting the outcome of general elections three years into the future, these latest results will prove valuable for revealing just how bad things have become for Labour. The party’s banishment from large swathes of its former strongholds, and the dogged resistance of voters in those places to all attempts at reconciliation, cannot be attributed to the standard ups and downs of electoral fortune or a desire on the part of those voters to deliver a well-deserved warning shot across Labour’s bows before returning to its fold in due course.

This is much more. The entire axis of British politics has moved. Even in 1983, when under Michael Foot it suffered a crushing election defeat at the hands of Margaret Thatcher, Labour managed to retain much of its working-class base. What we are witnessing today, by contrast, is a paradigm shift. Thursday’s elections were the latest evidence of it. The rules have been rewritten, the landscape has changed utterly. For Labour, this may yet prove terminal — only most of the party still doesn’t realise it.

The ‘No’ campaign was obviously heading for defeat. But that didn’t stop Shore arguing with all the passion of someone who believed things to be on a knife-edge. Millions watched live on television as this Labour cabinet minister implored them to resist the prophecies of the doomsayers and have confidence in their ability to manage their own affairs.

“The message that comes out is fear, fear, fear,” he said, gesturing towards Heath, the ardent Europhile. “Fear because you won’t have any food. Fear of unemployment … A constant attrition of our morale … A constant attempt to tell us that what we have — and what we have is not only our own achievements, but what generations of Englishmen have helped us to achieve — is not worth a damn.” Now, asserted Shore, that the fraudulent arguments of the Marketeers were exposed, “What it’s about is basically the confidence and morale of our people. We can shape our future … We are 55 million people … I urge you to say ‘no’ to this motion.”

It is one thing to be a fine platform orator; it’s another to have the intellectual heft to back it up. Shore had both gifts. Born in 1924 to middle-class hoteliers, he spent his early years on the Norfolk coast. When the depression forced the sale of the family business, they relocated to Liverpool, with Shore’s father returning to his previous career in the Merchant Navy. After Cambridge, wartime service in India with the RAF and several years as a Labour Party staffer, Shore was elected in 1964 as the member of parliament for Stepney in East London. Within three years, he was inside the Cabinet.

Peter Shore was the kind of politician you rarely see today: an unashamed interventionist who believed that the proper role of government was to use all the levers at its disposal to manage the economy in the interests of the people. Shore saw government as a force for good and understood that, in its relationship with the market, it must act as master and not servant. This meant regulating markets and not allowing them to let rip. It meant speaking the language of competitiveness, exchange rates and industrial strategies. It meant, ultimately, the elevation of the needs of the real economy — where goods were produced and wealth created — over those of finance capitalism; the prioritisation of full employment, growth and living standards over monetary targets as macroeconomic policy goals.

It was this driving philosophy which ensured, during the IMF crisis of 1976, that Shore was not seduced by the arguments of Prime Minister Jim Callaghan or Chancellor Denis Healey — they, along with others in the Cabinet, suggested that if Britain couldn’t spend her way out of recession, she had no choice but to embrace the precepts of Friedman-style monetarism. And it was Shore’s deep-seated belief in the capacity of the state to improve people’s lives — and the duty of democratically-elected politicians to drive such improvements — that informed his opposition to Euro-federalism. Like many who stood in that rich tradition of Left-wing Euroscepticism, Shore’s antipathy was not to Europe, the continent; he simply objected to an arrangement that served the interests of bankers and the multinationals over ordinary working people.

He thought it wrong to give primacy to the views of technocrats over those of elected representatives. Shore saw the objectives of those driving political and economic integration across Europe as antithetical to not only the aims of the British labour movement but the concept of democracy itself.

Oh, to have had Shore and other big beasts of the Eurosceptic labour movement — Michael Foot, Tony Benn, Hugh Gaitskell, Bob Crow and Barbara Castle — around in 2016, to articulate the entirely rational Left-wing case against the EU, and to act as an antidote to the cynicism and hysteria that infected so much of the Left during that period.

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Brexit: was it worth it?

By Ed West

Peter Shore stood for the Labour leadership twice: in 1980 and 1983. What might have been if he’d won, and then become Prime Minister? Labour would not have retreated from its historical economic radicalism. By the early 1990s — just as it had done for the second part of the 1970s — the party had come to broadly accept the argument that “There is no alternative” to market fundamentalism, and that elected governments must be no more than minor actors in the operation of the economy. A Labour Party — and country — led by Peter Shore would not have succumbed to such pessimism. Nor, most likely, would the party have developed the infatuation with the EU which has done so much to alienate millions of its once-loyal supporters over recent years.

The driving philosophy of this government would have been that democratic socialism was possible only if politicians of the Left were willing to step up to the plate and take control of the nation’s economic destiny rather than hive off responsibility to markets and technocrats.

As a Labour PM, Shore would have led from the front in opposing the Single European Act and Maastricht Treaty. Britain would not have entered the Exchange Rate Mechanism, and the ignominy of Black Wednesday would have been avoided. Shore would have resisted, too, the drive towards the internationalisation of capital which has facilitated a global market where power and wealth are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and multinationals have the whip hand over elected governments.

He would not have hesitated to prioritise the interests of the productive sector over the City. His Keynesian interventionism and his focus on competitiveness would have ensured Britain did not experience the decimation of her manufacturing base that came to pass under Margaret Thatcher and her successors. Hundreds of thousands of blue-collar jobs would not have been lost to overseas competitors.

Shore — like so many Labour heavyweights from yesteryear — was a patriot to his fingertips. A Labour Party shaped in his image and following his credo would not have lost touch with working-class communities, a drift that began three decades ago, around the time Shore stepped down from the front bench. And our nation as a whole would have been much the better for it.

Kinnock’s words were true, of course. The trust of the electorate is secured not by gimmickry, soundbite or hoping the other lot mess up, but ultimately through the demonstration of competence and the methodical process of crafting a cogent policy programme that appeals to sufficient numbers of voters.

So I’m not convinced that the forthcoming by-election in Hartlepool will be quite the litmus test for Labour that some are suggesting. It is, let us not forget, only a little over a year since the party suffered its worst general election defeat since the 1930s. Hammered in many of its heartlands and abandoned by huge swathes of once-loyal voters, the task of reconstruction was always going to be slow and painstaking. And potentially more than three years out from the next election, the result in Hartlepool, whatever it be, is unlikely to alter the broader electoral landscape in any profound way.

But modern politics has little time for such nuance. Whether the party likes it or not, the by-election will be seen as an interim assessment of Sir Keir Starmer — both the man and his leadership. And while Hartlepool may not prove pivotal to the party’s longer-term electoral prospects, it is undeniable that the “direction of travel” is important. Labour must be able to demonstrate that progress is at least being made in the job of reconnecting with its core vote, that it understands it cannot be an organisation only for student radicals, social activists and middle-class liberals living in our fashionable cities, but must also be seen by those in working-class, post-industrial Britain as their natural home. If that is the mountain to be climbed — and it surely is — then the party is barely beyond the foothills.

A by-election in a Red Wall constituency such as Hartlepool at a time when the Tories are in government would once have been a walk in the park for the Labour Party. Since its creation in 1974, the seat has returned a Labour MP at every general election. But now things are far less certain.

Last time out, Labour held on — but with a much-reduced share of the vote. Unsurprisingly, given that the place voted heavily in favour of leaving the EU, Brexit Party heavyweight Richard Tice swept up support from over a quarter of the electorate, eating into the vote of both Labour and the Tories. Tice has hinted that he may stand in the by-election under the banner of the Brexit Party’s new incarnation, Reform UK — though, with the flames of the whole Brexit debate somewhat dampened, it is doubtful he will secure the same level of backing this time round. How those Brexit Party votes from 2019 are divided may therefore prove decisive.

The ideal candidate for Labour would have been a local person who, while imbued with Labour values and passionate about challenging economic and social inequality, understood working-class Britain and spoke its language, voted to leave the EU, perhaps — God forbid — had a job in the private sector and knew what it was like to take a shower after work rather than before, didn’t obsess about trans rights and wasn’t ashamed of the national flag. Finding such a person would have been something of a fool’s errand, mind. Those matching these criteria are these days in short supply within the party’s ranks — and that fact alone stands as testament to all that has gone wrong.

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Why is the Left calling me a fascist?

By Paul Embery

So Labour has plumped instead — following a process that some are calling a stitch-up — for what appears to be an identikit candidate: Dr Paul Williams, a Remain-voting, university-educated member of the professional and managerial classes who banged the drum very loudly for a second referendum and subscribes to a liberal-progressive worldview. And a budding retread MP to boot. The very opposite, in other words, to what is needed.

The problem for Labour is that it has stopped looking and sounding like a large chunk of those it was created to represent. A survey of the party membership carried out in 2017 found that 77% fell within the ABC1 grade (occupational middle-class), with nearly half of all members living in London or southern England. Fifty-seven per cent were graduates.

For all his creditable efforts to reconnect the party with its old base — accepting the Brexit war as over, and focusing his messaging on the value of family, community and nation — Sir Keir is shackled by a party that, in the main, doesn’t want to go where he is trying to take it. The mix of globalist liberal progressives and toytown revolutionaries that still holds so much sway in Labour’s ranks view any expression of patriotism or the politics of place and belonging as unenlightened and reactionary. Witness, for example, the slings and arrows some among these groups hurled at the leader for his terrible crime of having given some speeches in front of the union flag. On the continent, to give a speech in front of the national flag is, even for politicians of the Left, viewed as an entirely normal thing. To many on the British Left, it is a harbinger of the new fascism. And then they wonder why they lost the working-class.

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What Labour learned from a year of Boris

By Paul Embery

With the acute impact of the economic crisis triggered by Covid beginning to be felt, and with the likelihood that the working class will, in the end, take the biggest hit, Labour should be Hoovering up the support of hard-pressed Britain. But from the Red Wall, the Labour Party still looks like that unappealing blend of 1960s hyper-liberal and far-Left ideologue that actively despises working-class values and culture. Those residing there continue to see an organisation dominated by middle-class activists preaching the gospels of cosmopolitan liberalism and social revolution. And the selection of Dr Williams as the by-election candidate in Hartlepool will not do much to disabuse them of that view.

Hartlepool is emblematic of blue-collar Britain. It should be safe territory for Labour. But instead the by-election could turn out to be a knife-edge battle against the Tories. The era when Labour could expect anyone wearing a red rosette to win in this type of working-class constituency is gone. Peter Mandelson was three times returned by the voters of Hartlepool. But that was in the days before the acute effects of globalisation – in the form of widespread deindustrialisation and intense demographic change – started to be felt in such places.

Mandelson and his New Labour chums were the cheerleaders for the new global market and all that came with it. They lectured provincial Britain about the benefits to be gained through improved GDP and cultural enrichment. But the people in these communities felt no better for it financially, culturally or spiritually. They yearned for something different – something that went beyond economic justice and was rooted in the concepts of place, stability and social solidarity. And when Labour showed itself unwilling to provide it, they began to look elsewhere.

To win back these places, Labour needs a radical overhaul. It must start focusing on the things that people want to talk about on the doorsteps in working-class communities — not only economic betterment, but law and order, immigration, national security and family.

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Whose side is Labour on?

By Paul Embery

I argue in Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class that, at its best, Labour is an electoral compromise between (coincidentally) Hartlepool and Hampstead – a coalition that fused the party’s traditional working-class base with a layer of more middle-class liberals who were attracted to its vision of a fairer society. But that coalition has become seriously unbalanced: Hampstead has come to dominate while Hartlepool has been sidelined and taken for granted.

This by-election presents an opportunity for Labour to demonstrate how serious it is about pushing the pendulum back the other way. I fear the party is nowhere near ready to seize it.

Likewise, half a century later, this time led by the magnificent but hapless Michael Foot, Labour’s routing at the hands of a Tory leader riding a wave of popularity on the back of a war in the South Atlantic — a defeat made more crushing thanks to the SDP’s splitting of the Left vote — convinced some that there was no way back. Fourteen years after that particular catastrophe, the party stormed to its second landslide.

Prophecies of Labour’s extinction should, then, be taken with a generous dose of salt. And that applies even today, with the party still reeling from the disaster that befell it one year ago. Though Labour is wounded badly, we won’t wake up one morning to discover that it has gone out of business; its roots are — for the moment, at least – sunk too deeply into our national life for that to happen.

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The PM's cabinet of puppets and placemen

By Peter Franklin

But there is certainly a question mark over whether Labour will remain a serious electoral force in British politics or instead become an organ of permanent protest. How that question will be answered depends on the party’s desire to win power again, and that in turn is contingent on whether it has the courage to reflect with the searing honesty demanded on why things went so badly wrong and the boldness to do what is necessary to put things right.

The first step is obvious. Labour needs to win back the trust of voters in its lost Red Wall seats. Without them, electoral redemption is a pipe dream. Every morning when he wakes, and again before he goes to sleep, Sir Keir Starmer should recite in his mind the mantra: “There is no route back to power for Labour that doesn’t pass through Don Valley.” That statement should become his personal credo.

In everything the party says and does over the next four years, it must consider how the message resonates in that former mining constituency in South Yorkshire which returned a Labour MP at every election from 1922 to 2019 and is now represented by a Conservative. That means a major shift in language and recalibration of priorities. It demands a laser-like focus on the everyday concerns of those living in our neglected post-industrial and coastal communities, and the crafting of a programme that puts those concerns front and centre.

Labour must treat the voters of Don Valley and other Red Wall seats like a lost love whom it knows it has betrayed and whose affections it is willing to go to any length to win back. There is deep contrition to be displayed and much penance to be served.

For a start, there can be no more equivocation on Brexit. The party’s vacillations between the referendum and last year’s election were in no small part responsible for its obliteration in Red Wall constituencies. If Labour doesn’t like any deal agreed by the Government and EU, then it should support no-deal. It must be one or the other. A call to extend the transition period (other than where a deal is genuinely within grasp) would go down like a lead balloon among the millions in the party’s old heartlands who voted Leave. It would also be the surest sign that Labour hadn’t learned a thing from its defeat. Painful though it will be for them, the party’s MPs must suppress their compulsive Europhiliac tendencies in the interests of electoral rehabilitation.

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What Covid stole from Boris

By James Kirkup

Labour must, naturally, commit to a programme designed to improve the lives of Red Wall voters in a material sense. But as we saw in 2017 and 2019, pledges of economic security are not enough. These voters want something more than promises of money. In an age when their communities are relentlessly buffeted by the storms of globalisation, and they fall prey themselves to the sense of dislocation and dispossession that comes with it, they want politicians to recognise their yearning for a rekindling of social solidarity and stability, to understand their sense of cultural attachment and belonging. They are parochial and not ashamed to be so. Labour must stop looking upon such sentiments as ignoble or exclusionary, and understand why they exist.

Many in these communities fall into that category of voter — significant in size, but long neglected by politicians — which is to the Left on economic issues (so they support, for example, a higher minimum wage and action to tackle regional inequalities and boardroom excesses), but to the Right on culture (so they are patriotic and communitarian in outlook, respecting of tradition and often hold small “c” conservative views on social issues).

If Labour is to be successful again, this is the sweet spot on the political spectrum it must exploit. This cohort — once upon a time the party’s base — should be its number one target, and only once it has locked them in can it even think about the necessary next step of building outwards. To achieve it, Labour will need a fresh vision that combines a more egalitarian economy with the cultural politics of place and belonging.

On the first, it can afford to be bold, for it is unlikely that Red Wall seats will be put off by a healthy dose of economic radicalism. So an interventionist programme that, for example, institutes full employment as the prime goal of economic policy, resists austerity, seeks to narrow the gap between rich and poor, takes key utilities and industries (such as rail) into public ownership, and returns the Bank of England to democratic control, while also promoting innovative polices such as workers on boards, regional banks, employee share ownership schemes and a jobs guarantee, would appeal to much of Labour’s traditional vote (as well as a layer of the middle class that has always been sympathetic to a redistributive Labour programme).

But, more importantly, there must be a decisive shift on social and cultural issues. This means understanding that Twitter and Britain are not the same thing. It means no longer treating the working class as some kind of embarrassing elderly relative, and being prepared to stand up to the shrill demands of wokedom. Labour must embrace the spirit of patriotism that runs through many working-class communities and see the nation state as a force for good and a bulwark against an ever-rapacious global market.

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What Labour learned from a year of Boris

By Paul Embery

The party’s activists must start speaking to the working-class about the things it wishes to speak about, and not the things those activists themselves wish to speak about. That means prioritising the issues and anxieties — such as law and order, immigration and national security — that matter to working-class voters but which too many Labour activists feel uncomfortable discussing when they are raised on the doorstep. And when the party speaks about these things, it must convince voters that it isn’t just paying lip service but has well-crafted policies in its armoury to achieve their desired outcomes.

By definition, all of this will mean that the causes which middle-class Labour activists have for too long given high priority — LGBT rights, climate change, free movement, Palestine, and so on — but which many working-class voters see as, if not unimportant then certainly not central to their everyday stresses and concerns, must take their rightful place in the pecking order. That is not to say they should never be discussed (only a fool would argue that a major political party should not talk about climate change, for example). But the attention paid to these things by the party’s representatives and foot soldiers is often in inverse proportion to the significance attached to them by ordinary working-class voters. Ultimately, these are not the issues which win and lose elections.

Labour must also start speaking in a language that working-class communities understand. That means talking incessantly and in plain terms about things like family, work and community, and ending the tiresome resort to buzzwords such as “diversity”, “inclusivity” and “equality”, which mean little to normal people.

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Can Keir Starmer rescue Labour?

By David Kogan

None of this means that Labour should seek to drive its middle-class liberal wing from the party or appeal only to its old blue-collar base in an effort to win power. On the contrary, the party has always performed best when it has brought Hartlepool and Hampstead together. The point, however, is that, over the past couple of decades, that historical alliance has become fundamentally unbalanced: Hampstead has come to dominate and Hartlepool has been elbowed out. The pendulum must swing decisively the other way again if the party is to ever return to government.

To his credit, Sir Keir has made a steady start. I’m quite sure he doesn’t get some of this stuff instinctively, but he has shown signs — not least in his conference speech, which pressed the themes of family, community and nation — of knowing what needs to be done. But he must know that he is still in the foothills of the mountain. Matters will not be helped if the incipient civil war between the leadership and disaffected Corbynites is allowed to overshadow every new initiative designed to reconnect Labour with its lost base. The party needs to get its own house in order — and quickly — if it is to convince voters that it is again fit to run the country.

Twice over the past century, Labour hauled itself back from the abyss after devastating General Election results. Today, with the old tribalisms fragmenting swiftly around us, that task may prove to be even more challenging. Whether the party is equal to it will ultimately depend on the extent of its willingness to change itself — and how far it is prepared to go to win back the affection of the good people of Don Valley.

Well, something along those lines happened to me this week. My book, Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class, analyses the rupture between the British Left and working-class voters, and concludes that a contributory factor was the former’s increasing tendency towards authoritarianism and its habit of shutting down legitimate debate by dismissing opponents routinely as ‘fascists’, ‘xenophobes’, ‘racists’, and suchlike.

We see it all around us — this creeping despotism which seeks to engender an atmosphere in which any expression of unfashionable opinion is met with fierce condemnation. No longer, it seems, is the Left interested in winning hearts and minds or reconciling competing interests. Instead, every debate is viewed as a battle between good and evil, enlightened progressives versus reactionary bigots, tolerance against intolerance. It does leave one wondering why, if these people are so inherently right, they feel a constant need to wield pitchforks and hurl abuse at opponents rather than attempt to win them over through the power of argument.

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Is this the end for Labour?

By Paul Embery

Think kids are better off through being raised by two parents? Not terribly keen on Black Lives Matter? Support proper control of immigration? Don’t believe a man is a woman just because he says he is? Then, in the minds of many on today’s Left, you belong in the basket with all the other deplorables, and the debate should go no further. It is irrelevant that such views still hold currency across much of the land. Liberal-progressive types always know better.

But I digress. No sooner had the more fanatical among the Left got wind of Despised’s release than they were inveighing against it across social media. No matter that none of them had read so much as a single word of it yet; they apparently knew everything about it.

The Left shouldn’t touch the book with a barge pole, they warned. It was an apology for ‘fascism’, claimed some. Others portrayed it as a homage to Vichy France or a manifesto for a new style of ‘red-brown’ politics. All this because – horror of horrors – the synopsis contained a call for the Left to return to the “cultural politics of belonging, place and community”. That was enough for these people to know my secret and sinister motives in writing it.

That an entire chapter of the book is devoted to making the case for the Left to renounce its support for the soft totalitarianism we have seen emerge over recent years, and to renew its historical commitment to free expression and diversity of opinion — the very antithesis of fascism — mattered not a jot. I talk about all that ‘faith, family and flag’ stuff. So I am, by definition, a Blackshirt.

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Whose side is Labour on?

By Paul Embery

One prospective reviewer announced quite boldly that she couldn’t wait to get her hands on a copy – how kind – but as part of her preparation was swotting up on the far-right. That particular review will be a belter, I’m sure.

I’m not looking for any sympathy here. As a seasoned political activist, I’m unlikely to lose any sleep over the brickbats chucked by petulant student revolutionaries and latte-sipping bourgeois bohemians tapping furiously on their smartphones. You will not, I promise, hear of me being bullied off social media. In fact, I find the levels of hysteria mildly amusing.

But, to be serious for a moment. It is worth remarking on how extraordinary it is that a book written by someone rooted in the labour movement and making a straightforward call for the Left, as a means to winning back millions of lost working-class votes, to combine socialist economics with a much better focus on social solidarity and the politics of belonging, should provoke such fury among supposed political allies.

There was a time when Despised’s key arguments would have been considered mainstream on the Left. Not that long ago, in fact. But a Left that is these days far more concerned with personal autonomy, open borders and identity politics than it is community and class finds such views beyond the pale. And then it wonders why it experienced electoral annihilation.

This all serves to illustrate the mountain that is to be climbed if the Left is to again play any relevance in the lives of those working-class voters who no longer feel any affection for it. A schism occurred for good reason. A movement that once welcomed those who, on the one hand, wanted to see a fairer and more redistributive economy while, on the other, holding true to some traditional — dare it be said conservative — values on social issues now looks upon them as an embarrassment. It still wants their votes, of course. But it would sooner not be seen in public with them. And it thinks they really ought to keep their noxious opinions to themselves.

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A manifesto to rescue Labour from irrelevance

By Paul Embery

This modern Left inhabits a world of safe spaces, echo chambers and group-think. It doesn’t want arguments articulated or books written which challenge the new orthodoxy. And those who transgress – especially if they do so from within the movement – must be silenced or hounded.

It is a mindset that leads to the Kafkaesque situation where someone who rails against the new censorship and defends with every fibre the principles of democratic debate and pluralism can be demonised in all apparent sincerity as a ‘fascist’. It is unthinking, unreasoning twaddle.

Ultimately, there is no alternative to confronting and defeating these people. We need a united front across mainstream politics — and indeed wider society — to resist those who would see it as their mission to stifle open discussion and dissent as a means to securing ideological hegemony across our public life. They have enjoyed success so far only because they have too frequently been indulged. The only serious option now is to take them on.

Paul Embery’s book, Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class is published by Polity

Except that, well, I don’t. By which I do not mean that I don’t have any views at all on the issue; more that the opinions I hold are the kind which are ignored or dismissed by most in the party, because they can’t easily be co-opted by either of the two warring tribes (and therefore leads both to regard me as some kind of faintheart or enemy).

After 26 years of activity in the labour movement, there are some things about which I am sure. One is that there is a strain of the Left — mainly embedded within the far-Left — that is anti-Semitic, virulently so, in some cases. It is small, but it exists. It will often cloak its anti-Semitism in criticism of Israel. Indeed, its obsession with the transgressions of that small country, when the misdeeds of certain other nations are more numerous and at least as bad, leads one to conclude that there is something else going on. Occasionally, it will lay bare its true beliefs with swivel-eyed rantings about “Zionist” control over the media or financial system. It is, quite frankly, comprised of irreconcilable extremists who are beyond reason.

I think it reasonable to conclude that the election of Corbyn as Labour leader, and the concomitant upsurge in far-Left influence and activity, led to a growth in the number of these crackpots infecting the party’s ranks. And, from my own vantage point inside the party, I saw that they were not identified and expelled with anything like sufficient vigour.

I know, too, that while most who raised concerns about anti-Semitism inside the party were well-meaning and justified, a small number chose to weaponise the issue because they loathed Corbynism and wanted rid of it. To say so is regarded as heresy in some quarters, but you don’t have to be a Corbynite to recognise that there has been some degree of naked politicking in this debate. It is idle to pretend otherwise. This politicking by a minority has served to create something of an accusatory — and deeply unpleasant — atmosphere across the Left which, on occasion, saw legitimate vigilance and a desire to clean the stables develop into hyper-sensitivity and recrimination.

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How hysterical leaders fail workers

By Paul Embery

I experienced this first-hand last year. In a Twitter debate over free movement with the folk singer Mike Harding, I argued that Britain’s working class was rooted, communitarian and patriotic whereas its middle class was more rootless, cosmopolitan and bohemian. The debate had absolutely nothing to do with Jews or Jewishness in any way, but when some anorak pointed out that Jewish intellectuals were referred to as “rootless cosmopolitans” in Stalin’s Russia, I was condemned by some on the Left as an anti-Semite.

It became clear to me pretty quickly that all resistance was useless. I could have pointed out that I was a supporter of Trade Union Friends of Israel and had joined one of its delegations to the Middle East, that I had visited Auschwitz and laid a wreath on behalf of my own union, or that the Israeli ambassador had invited me to a reception celebrating the 70^th anniversary of his country’s creation. But, frankly, it wasn’t worth it. Pitchforks had been drawn and minds made up. Even my own union leadership publicly denounced me. People were walking on eggshells everywhere.

So, then, just as there are some things about which I am certain, there are others about which I am not. I do not know if Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite. Truly I don’t. If I believed he was, I would say so without hesitation. And as much as partisans in the debate claim to know the truth of this, I do not think they possibly can.

We know that Corbyn has consorted with undesirables, some of whom are unquestionably foul anti-Semites and from whom most decent people would run a mile. We have seen the stories about murals and wreath-laying near the graves of those linked to the Munich massacre. But we also know the Corbyn who stood against apartheid and has been a lifelong and vocal campaigner against racism. So to the question of whether Corbyn dislikes Jews for no other reason than that they are Jews, I can only respond that I am unable to make a window into the man’s soul and provide the answer for you. And I am sceptical of anyone who asserts certain knowledge on the point.

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What Labour learned from a year of Boris

By Paul Embery

This makes some allies of mine tear their hair out in frustration. I think of two in particular, both as hostile to Blairite “centrism” as they are to the far-Left. Neither is driven by political factionalism on this question. One cannot understand how anyone could see Corbyn as anything other than a rabid anti-Semite; the other cannot fathom how anyone could see him as anything other than the victim of a wicked smear operation. Both would be pleased if I intervened publicly on their side of the argument. It isn’t going to happen.

This local dichotomy reflects the divide on the issue across the wider party over the past five years. One is either anti-Corbyn or anti-Jew. Subtlety and nuance can go whistle in this most ugly and tribal of internal clashes in which only primary colours will do.

That those who harbour feelings of hostility to Jews must be drummed out of every place within the labour movement where they reside, and that a party with deep and proud roots in Anglo-Jewry must never again be seen as a home to such individuals — no matter how small they are in number — goes without saying. While always allowing for due process, the party machine must be leaner, sharper and more efficient in despatching anti-Semites from its ranks in the future. Sir Keir Starmer will, I am certain, continue to make improvements in that regard.

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Keir Starmer's woman problem

By Joan Smith

The effect of this terrible affliction on the Labour Party should grieve anyone who cares about it. Indeed, it should grieve those with little affection for the party itself but who understand the importance of a viable and reputable opposition. The last thing that either the party or Britain needs at the moment is a Labour civil war. Yet, with yesterday’s decision by the general secretary, David Evans, to suspend Corbyn, that prospect seems inevitable.

One cannot help but conclude that Evans has boxed in Sir Keir in a way that raises the stakes dramatically. Any decision to reinstate Corbyn would be perceived as weakness and an affront to Jews, while his expulsion risks a veritable bloodletting. The gauntlet has been well and truly thrown down.

For the sake of my party and my country, and no less significantly for the health of the future relationship between Labour and a Jewish community that deserves so much better, I hope these people know what they are doing.

Wearing their primitive breathing apparatus sets, Fourt-Wells and Stocking were sent down into the acrid smoke with an instruction to locate the seat of the fire. They were never seen alive again. Their bodies were eventually found among piles of frozen meat packets and animal carcasses.

The incident became the catalyst for a powerful campaign led by the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) to modernise equipment and safety procedures. The union called for breathing apparatus sets to be equipped with low-pressure warning alarms and audible distress devices, and for a better system of monitoring firefighters while they were working in such hazardous conditions. The campaign was a success. Government and fire service bosses were eventually forced to concede that the demands were eminently reasonable. As ever, it had taken a tragedy to spark change.

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The town that should shame our politicians

By Paul Embery

The FBU’s campaign was a commendable example of a trade union looking beyond the battleground of pay, and lobbying for the safety of its members at work. 60 years after the event, I hosted proceedings as a plaque dedicated to the memory of Fourt-Wells and Stocking was unveiled at the spot where they fell. We will never know the number of firefighters whose lives were saved — and, mercifully, whose names it was never necessary to inscribe on such plaques — thanks to the union’s efforts.

Other trade unions can justly lay claim to having been instrumental in bringing about a safer working environment for those they represent. The annual number of workplace deaths has been dramatically reduced from an average of over 4000 at the beginning of the last century to fewer than 200 today. This is why anyone who tries to persuade me, a lifelong trade unionist, that unions have no business interfering in such matters is liable to get short shrift. History shows that trade unions are overall a force for good when it comes to safety in the workplace, and we shouldn’t forget it.

All of which brings me to Covid-19. At all times and on all matters, trade unions must strive to ensure their demands are measured and pragmatic. Crucially, union leaders must always seek to take their members — and, where possible, the public too — with them. This is even more the case when the issue at hand is one that is politically contentious.

In that vein, it is surely vital, when assessing how best to keep a group of people safe during these times, to start from the point of acknowledging that the virus poses a meaningful threat to only a small minority of people — almost exclusively those who are either elderly or suffering from underlying medical conditions, or often both. For the vast majority who contract it, Covid-19 is not a serious virus, let alone a killer one. Most will experience either mild symptoms or none at all. In fact, as of 16 September 2020, the number of Covid-related deaths in England involving individuals under the age of 60 and free from existing medical conditions stood at just 308. And, for several of these, it is possible that Covid-19 was not the thing that actually killed them.

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Has Covid become less dangerous?

By Tom Chivers

So it is against this background, and out of genuine concern for the credibility and reputation of the trade union movement, that I express alarm over the manner in which the leadership of some unions have taken unreasoned and insupportable positions in their approach to the virus.

Look, for example, at what is happening in our universities. Last week, the leader of the University and College Union (UCU) — which represents lecturers, academics and support staff — reiterated the union’s call for a ban on face-to-face teaching until the Government had curbed the spread of the virus. That the level of risk to those on campus is infinitesimal wasn’t enough to stop the demand being made. And given that universities are already in turmoil — as a consequence of mass self-isolation, threats of disciplinary action against those caught breaching social distancing rules, and the prospect of Christmas on campus, the demand, though not without its supporters, has caused exasperation among some students and members of staff.

Several universities, presumably motivated in part by an earlier threat by the UCU of strike action, have already switched to online-only teaching, leaving some staff feeling adrift and angry. A lecturer from a university in the Midlands told me this week of the deep sense of frustration felt by him and his colleagues after their impending return to physical teaching was abruptly blocked on safety grounds. Of eight members of departmental staff, only one had expressed a desire to avoid face-to-face lessons.

For most who do it, teaching is more than just an ordinary job or source of income: it is a vocation. Many educators feel that if someone is going to prevent them from doing what they love, there had better be a compelling reason.

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There is no student mental health crisis

By Louise Perry

Professor Sunetra Gupta, an epidemiologist who has attracted prominence and acclaim for her criticisms of the lockdown approach, believes those demanding a ban on face-to-face teaching have called it seriously wrong. “The risks are not sufficient to justify us not doing our duty — which is to teach our students. To not teach them is a dereliction of duty,” she told me.

Of course it is right that trade unions pay close attention to emerging risks and seek to shape any institutional response. No one could reasonably argue against robust measures to protect the genuinely vulnerable in any scenario. But what possible merit is there in a strategy that strives to keep healthy lecturers and students apart out of fear of a virus from which, should they contract it at all, the overwhelming majority — if not all — will make a full recovery?

After the Summer brouhaha over the question of whether and when children should return to the classroom — an unnecessary and near-hysterical ruckus in which the teaching unions this time had a hand — a similar excess of caution has infected our schools. Such is daily life now for many children, they could be forgiven for assuming that a world of facemasks, social distancing and relentless hand-washing was the natural order of things. Never mind the risks of contracting Covid-19; we are in danger of creating a generation of OCD sufferers who think the environment around them will always be fraught with danger. Again, the sense of panic has not been commensurate with the level of risk.

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Can university survive Covid-19?

By Gerard De Groot

On one level, the over-reaction of the UCU and others might be seen as entirely rational. After all, the Government and media have done such an effective job scaring everyone witless, those demanding the most draconian and extreme measures might genuinely believe they are saving lots of lives.

The brutal truth, however, is that one thing has been missing throughout this entire debate: proportion. Safety in the workplace, as anywhere else, should be about implementing sensible and proportionate control measures to alleviate risk. It is this principle which underpins health and safety legislation. Instead, we have arrived at a point where, for many in positions of authority, any risk at all is too much and, where it exists, drastic action is required to eradicate it. That attitude serves no-one. Society becomes afflicted by paranoia, and individuals lose their ability to quantify risk — an essential skill in the armoury of any human being.

The easy thing for a trade unionist like me would be to go along with it all. After all, as long as most union members are still drawing a salary, why should it matter?

Well, it matters because the education of our young is being harmed, not to say our economy devastated, livelihoods destroyed and civil liberties curtailed. And when unions themselves are part of a crusade whose demands are utterly out of proportion to the risk, it behoves those of us who care about the movement to warn them to pull back, lest they alienate large numbers of rank-and-file trade unionists and incite wider public scorn over “bloody intransigent unions”. What a tragedy it would be if so much of the historical good done by unions in preventing death and injury in the workplace was overlooked as a consequence of the overzealous and irrational demands of a handful of leaders.

When it implemented the coronavirus lockdown in March, the Government acknowledged that some of the measures were unprecedented and would require us to make huge personal sacrifices. But they were necessary, we were told, to help flatten the curve and prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. Then we could get back to something resembling normality.

It meant that people couldn’t be by the side of their loved ones as they lay dying; weddings and well-earned holidays were cancelled; treatment for cancer and other life-threatening illnesses was delayed; the healthy were forcibly quarantined, protest was outlawed, the national church locked its doors, and our children’s education suffered. It also meant that the economy would eventually tank and millions of jobs would be at risk. All in all, it was a colossal price to extract from the nation’s people, and one that surely demanded the most rigorous scrutiny before it was paid.

Interview

Parliament's pathetic Covid response

By Freddie Sayers

Yet how did Parliament react to this extraordinary power grab by Government? Was there a forensic debate on the merits of such an approach, with ministers called upon to justify their actions by a chamber of obstreperous and interrogative MPs? Were searching questions asked about the likely long-term impact on the health and prosperity of the nation resulting from such an authoritarian strategy? Hardly. Instead, Parliament meekly nodded through the repressive legislation before effectively shutting itself down.

Sure, there were questions later, and from afar, from some of these MPs about the failures in other areas of the Government’s response – the lack of PPE, poor rates of testing, and so on. But the overarching policy of lockdown went largely unchallenged by our political representatives. The deep unease felt by some of their constituents at the policy was left unarticulated.

Is it that today’s MPs are less enquiring merely because they are less capable, or because they are so hidebound by the culture of conformity that predominates in the public debate over coronavirus? Perhaps both. What other explanation might there be for the fact those most of them refuse to put up any serious resistance to a policy whose sheer incoherence becomes more apparent with each passing day?

For here we are, six months from the implementation of the first lockdown restrictions, with the curve duly flattened and number of daily deaths now mercifully low — notwithstanding a recent rise in the number of infections caused by a variety of factors. The NHS seems to be in no more danger of being overwhelmed than is usual for this time of year, the Nightingale hospitals remain empty, and there appears no serious prospect of the second wave matching the first. Yet still the nation remains bound up in the straitjacket of draconian laws, with a panicked Boris Johnson threatening every day to tighten the straps yet further. It seems the Government’s objective now is to keep us in some form of lockdown until the virus disappears from our shores completely – an absurdly quixotic ambition and a sign of the obvious mission creep that has occurred.

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Was the two-metre rule one big lie?

By Timandra Harkness

While it is true that a handful of Tory MPs have now begun to voice their concerns, you can’t help but feel it’s a case of too little too late. For its part, Labour remains slavishly loyal on lockdown. When asked for his view on the Andrew Marr show at the weekend, Sir Keir Starmer went as far as to declare that he would support “whatever measure the Government takes” and would be willing to “reinforce their communications”.

What a contrast this blind obedience and docility represents to years gone by, when Parliament recognised that even – perhaps especially – at times of national crisis, perceived or otherwise, its role was to hold Government to account, challenge assumptions and test policy to within an inch of its life. Consider, for example, the Falklands War and the interventions of the magnificent Tam Dalyell and others who understood that no matter the apparent degree of consensus throughout the country, it was necessary to ask the tough questions about unintended consequences and endgames and exit strategies.

It’s hard to believe there exists a single MP among the current crop who, if we were at war, would, like Dalyell, be brave enough to defy the mood and harry a prime minister over her decision to sink an enemy cruiser in violation of the rules. Can one imagine the response of heavyweight parliamentarians like him or Denis Healey or Roy Jenkins or Enoch Powell or Michael Foot or – dare I say – Margaret Thatcher herself if, at a time of national crisis, they were told, as today’s MPs were, to clear their desks, go back to their constituencies and prepare for impotence?

And for what? For a virus that, while undoubtedly unpleasant, represents a serious threat to a relatively tiny number of people, many of whom will have other underlying conditions. That doesn’t mean this small minority should be considered expendable: on the contrary, we should protect them aggressively, and far better than we have managed so far. But place the rest of the population under effective house arrest? Cripple our economy? Impose alien measures, such as compulsory mask-wearing, which fundamentally alter our relations with each other as human beings? Such a response has surely proven to be disproportionate in the extreme.

One might have a little more sympathy with the lockdown approach if it had demonstrably saved lots of lives. But there appears to be little evidence of any correlation between the severity of a nation’s restrictions and the impact on the number of excess fatalities. All too often, those who implore us to “follow the science” seem not to have studied the science themselves.

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The misguided mission to mask us

By Paul Embery

It didn’t have to be this way. A Government of a calmer disposition, and one courageous enough to take a long-term view rather than be in thrall to the 24-hour news cycle, would have seen that a policy which erected a shield around the elderly and infirm while defending the freedom of everyone else to go about their normal business, albeit with regard for sensible hygiene measures, was the wisest course. Even now, we might look to Sweden, which, in taking a more relaxed approach – no hard lockdown, no compulsory masks, no mass panic – seems not to have fared worse than many countries. Moreover, with current infection rates among the lowest in Europe, the country looks well-placed to come through the crisis swifter than most.

Instead, Britain is in the grip of a collective national hysteria, unleashed and prolonged by a Government that flails around dementedly, petrified of negative headlines, afflicted by short-termism, imposing extreme and counter-productive measures utterly out of proportion to the problem we face, trashing ancient liberties along the way, and all with disregard for the appalling economic consequences.

Sooner or later, ministers are going to have to start treating us as grown-ups who are able to assess the coronavirus risk for ourselves and make an informed choice about how to behave. The current madness cannot be allowed to continue. Because, if it does, a national crisis will quickly turn into a national catastrophe.

Often these interlocutors will reveal an inner residual fondness for what they believe Labour to have once been – a communitarian, patriotic party espousing economic justice and rooted in the principles of family, work, belonging, vocation and reciprocity – and declare that they would support the party today if it still stood for these things. “I’d vote for the Labour party my grandparents voted for,” is a common refrain.

I tell them that I am under no illusion about the extent of the chasm that has emerged between Labour and the working class. Labour has historically been the vehicle that has advanced the interests of the working-class through its willingness to challenge the domination of capital, confront vested interests and diffuse power and wealth more widely throughout society. And for all its current and deep-seated faults, it still has the capacity to play that particular role.

And notwithstanding its oversteer towards the urban middle-classes and the attendant self-destructive slide into hyper-liberalism and identity politics, there continues to exist within the party a few lingering threads on a fraying rope that are just about preventing it being wrenched irretrievably from its old ideological moorings. These can be seen in the work of a small number of groups and individuals who understand that, to win power again, Labour must begin lavishing love and attention on the very people – the traditional working-class – whom it has spent so long alienating.

By the same author

Is this the end for Labour?

By Paul Embery

So while it cannot be denied that much of today’s Labour party is wedded to the precepts of liberal wokedom and obsessed with fringe political causes, it also remains the party of the Durham Miners’ Gala, the co-operative movement, trade unionism and the singing of Jerusalem at the end of each annual conference. These sorts of things represent a vestigial working-class spirit within Labour that the Tories will always struggle to emulate.

Nonetheless, it is hard to pinpoint a time since the 1930s when Labour was so disconnected from its working-class base and far from power. Even in the calamitous general election of 1983, the party largely held on to its strongholds. But today, seven months on from the latest electoral catastrophe and on the anniversary of Boris Johnson’s first year in office, Labour arguably remains at its weakest in almost a century, its poll ratings flagging (in spite of the party being under new management) and many of its so-called Red Wall seats under Tory management. That this should be happening after a decade of grinding Tory austerity remains a mystery to some. But it really oughtn’t be.

After a year of Boris Johnson in No 10, the Tories are still dominant for a simple reason: they have captured the mood of the bulk of the working class. It is that simple. They understood that there existed in British politics a gap in the market that no party had for a long time seemed willing to fill. And they saw that by exploiting that gap they would attract the support of millions of working-class voters whose anger and resentment had been festering for years.

These were voters residing in the grittier, hard-pressed parts of the nation who had witnessed their communities altering before their eyes as a consequence of unrelenting globalisation, deindustrialisation and shifting demographics. They didn’t take kindly to the toxic mix of social and economic liberalism that had been foisted on them. They had suffered the effects of low wages and a lack of decent housing. They lived in the type of places – post-industrial, small-town and coastal Britain – which hadn’t exactly embraced all aspects of the cultural revolution and where traditional values were often still in common currency. They wanted not only economic security, but also a bit of cultural security. They had voted for Brexit in large numbers and were bitter at the establishment’s refusal to implement it.

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The town that should shame our politicians

By Paul Embery

The Tories saw that these millions felt unrepresented and, in the lead-up to December’s poll, got their messaging spot on. They would get Brexit done. They would end free movement. Austerity would be replaced by investment in housing, jobs, skills and infrastructure projects, bringing new opportunities and restoring a sense of pride to our industrial wastelands. This wasn’t so much the Tories parking their tanks on Labour’s lawn as barging through the front door, plonking themselves on the sofa and grabbing hold of the remote control.

Whether the reality will match the rhetoric is another thing. Boris Johnson is almost certainly no Keynesian interventionist by instinct – and neither are most of his MPs – so it’s hard to believe that the new direction adopted by the Tories is motivated by anything more than a cold electoral calculation about what it will take for them to hang on to their new supporters. They must surely know that any return to economic retrenchment in response to the Covid-19 fall-out will certainly do nothing to cement that support.

If, therefore, the Tories spend the coming years delivering on their promises, Labour has got a serious problem on its hands. Having taken the leap of voting Tory for the first time, many working-class voters will feel that the taboo of supporting their traditional enemy is for ever broken. It’s unlikely they will hesitate to vote the same way again if they feel their trust has been sufficiently repaid.

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I don't miss the nastiness of the Left

By Paul Embery

What, in these circumstances, would be Labour’s message to its old supporters? Would it cede the communitarian, patriotic, interventionist ground to the Tories and seek to outflank them on other issues? Trans equality? Freedom for Palestine? Defend migrants’ rights? All themes that are well-meaning, no doubt, but ultimately not the defining factor in whether the party will ever win back its old strongholds.

No, instead Labour must get back on to that territory usurped by the Tories. Start talking about the issues that matter most to working-class people. Demonstrate that it really means business by ditching the obsession with identity politics and wokedom. Show that it can again be the vehicle to advance the cause of the working class against the resistance of vested interests.

It will be a mammoth task. And it needs to start happening soon. Otherwise that fraying rope still tenuously linking the party to its traditional base will become severed for good, and no amount of appeals to history or sentiment will reattach it.

But I am far from convinced that the law requiring shoppers in England to mask up, which comes into effect next week, is rational or justified.

There is no scientific consensus on the efficacy of masks in the battle to suppress Covid-19. Some experts believe they do more harm than good. Until very recently, the Government’s own medical advisers were telling us that masks were of little use.

The timing is questionable, too. Why impose such a law now when the curve has flattened? Why not earlier when the virus was peaking (and, so far as I recall, supermarkets and other essential stores that remained open were bustling)?

I know some will argue that the Government is trying to encourage people to hit the shops harder in an attempt to rejuvenate the economy, and the order to don masks is seen as a way of assuaging the health fears of prospective shoppers. But I suspect that the order may in many cases have the opposite effect. There will almost certainly be a sizeable number who, puzzled and irritated by the measure, will simply choose to stay at home.

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Why heroes should wear masks

By Peter Franklin

Defenders of the Government’s decision have drawn parallels with the requirement to wear seat belts in motor vehicles. But the comparison is weak. There is compelling evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of seat belts in saving lives. By contrast, the jury remains out on face masks. Moreover, the wearing of seat belts does not fundamentally alter the nature of our society or our relations with each other as human beings. I have seen, where I live, the effects of masks — on buses, on the street and in shops. They, for want of a better term, sterilise the atmosphere. The friendly smiles, the subtle expressions, the small-talk, the banter: all suppressed behind a strip of cloth.

Does the Government have an exit strategy on masks? With a vaccine potentially a long way off, will we be expected to cover up indefinitely? Is that an outcome that a majority of citizens are willing to countenance? Can we believe ministers when they say the law won’t be extended to include other locations, such as workplaces?

And what happens when the next flu epidemic strikes? How could the Government credibly refuse to impose an identical order to cover up? Again, is that something we will readily accept? Furthermore, should consistency not demand that we don masks every winter in future to help prevent some of the average 17,000 flu deaths that occur annually in England (in spite of there being a vaccine)? If not, why not? It is true that flu and Covid-19 are different viruses, but both are contagious respiratory illnesses which are transmitted in similar ways, so any marked discrepancy in the method of response would surely be illogical, would it not? Or is it perhaps just a numbers game? In which case, what is the threshold for imposing compulsory masks? Twenty thousand deaths? Thirty thousand? Forty?

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Gen Z’s favorite rabbi

By Tom Chivers

Sadly, though perhaps unsurprisingly, to even raise these questions is to elicit a furious response from a section of society – particularly the Twittersphere – that appears slavishly compliant in its support for the Government’s position. Even those who challenge the wisdom and competence of Boris Johnson and his cabinet on virtually every other policy decision have suddenly become the embodiment of submissiveness over this new law.

Dare to challenge it, and you will find yourself accused of harbouring some wicked desire to see vulnerable people killed or ‘ignoring the science’ or being some kind of extreme libertarian. Rarely will your opponents put forward a considered and cogent response to your objections. Instead, they will use it as an opportunity to signal their own virtue. They support the compulsory wearing of masks, so they are by definition inherently better human beings. Hard evidence and facts can go whistle.

Every death from Covid-19 is a tragedy, but many seem to have lost sight of the fact that the vast majority who contract the virus will suffer either mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. Only in a minority are symptoms more serious, and in an even smaller minority fatal. Of course we must protect the genuinely vulnerable, an area where the Government has unquestionably fallen short. But the mentality that appears to have been adopted by some — that the virus presents a serious threat to the whole of humanity — is not serving us well. It is making us risk averse, generating needless panic and slowly recasting our social relations with each other. Perhaps permanently.

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Gen Z’s favorite rabbi

By Freddie Sayers

The law on masks is but the latest example of the mission creep that has marked the Government’s whole approach to the pandemic. The original justification for the lockdown — that it was necessary to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed — appears to have been lost in the mists of time. Those of us who warned from the beginning that the curtailment of our civil liberties might not end up being the temporary measure it was intended to be, and that we ought to be on our guard against ever-tightening restrictions, have, it seems, been vindicated.

Some would prefer there to be no debate at all — let alone any dissent —on all of these questions. In fact, the debate is only just beginning.

Usually conspicuous by its absence from such debates is China — or, more pertinently, the nature of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC). It’s an omission that has become even more glaring in light of recent events in Hong Kong. The national security law recently imposed on the territory, which will inevitably have the effect of quelling protest and freedom of speech, ought to have been the prompt for the British Left to abandon its reticence and, as one, speak out in unequivocal condemnation of the CPC’s repressive methods. But much of the Left remains either silent or ambivalent. If Hong Kong is a litmus test, too many on the Left are failing it.

China has always been something of a hot potato on the Left, which — much as the Soviet Union did — creates all manner of factional and doctrinal disputes. For some, the Chinese system, if not truly socialist, resembles something approaching it and is therefore worthy of qualified support. Or at least is undeserving of explicit criticism. Their desire to see a bulwark against Donald Trump and what they see as US imperial ambitions, and the belief that only China will ultimately have the means to play that role, persuades them to look the other way when confronted with the facts about the CPC’s nefarious activities. It was probably this kind of thinking that lay behind Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to attend a state banquet given in honour of the Chinese president in 2015, while later declining an invitation to the one held for Trump.

Some diehard Stalinists, in search of a new lodestar since the collapse of Soviet communism, go further and openly wax lyrical about the wonders of the Chinese economic system. Their historical foes among the ranks of British Trotskyism, on the other hand, have traditionally felt little sympathy for the Chinese model, dismissing it variously over the years, just as they once did the Soviet Union and its satellites, as ‘state capitalist’ or a ‘deformed workers’ state’.

A certain layer on the Left, while ill-disposed towards the current regime, feels at least a residual fondness for Maoism and the cultural revolution. It’s a manifestation of the impulse felt even by more sensible elements on the Left to romanticise tyrants and revolutionaries provided they are dead. It might be said that when John McDonnell threw a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book across the despatch box to George Osborne, he was laying bare this impulse.

Meanwhile, many on the mainstream democratic Left in Britain have no time for the CPC or the Chinese system but are reluctant to voice full-throated condemnation for fear of the hornet’s nest that might be stirred up across the wider movement. So they are content to put away the whole subject in a box marked ‘too sensitive’ and refocus their attention on the easier targets in Washington and Jerusalem.

Further reading

2019: the year the West wised up to China

By John Gray

This really won’t do. There is no good reason for the Left to walk on eggshells around China. A regime that ruthlessly suppresses dissent, outlaws free trade unions, exploits workers mercilessly, and routinely uses the army against strikers is no friend of the labour movement in Britain or anywhere else. And in the context of the regime’s wider abuses, not least its persecution of Christians and Muslims, horrific birth limitation policy, repression of Tibetans and disregard for the environment, turning a blind eye becomes nothing short of inexcusable. By all means attack Trump and Netanyahu over their transgressions; the criticism is often deserved. But this type of selective outrage betrays a deep hypocrisy and lack of principle.

Today, however, it is obvious that it is no longer just the Left that is troubled by the China question; it bedevils the Right, too. Very recently, the former chancellor Philip Hammond criticised Tory colleagues for displaying ‘anti-Chinese sentiment’. In taking this stance, Hammond was emulating the approach of his predecessor, George Osborne, who, while in office, made a big push for a strategic realignment with China. A general softening among many Tories to the prospect of deepening ties with China is unsurprisingly correlated to the latter’s embrace of full-blown capitalist economics (albeit a version rigidly directed by the state) and entry into the global market. Who cares about human rights violations when there is highly-profitable commerce to be done?

The Right once knew where it stood with China. It opposed it, just as it did the Soviet Union. But today’s China is a different beast. As the towers of mammon in Shanghai and elsewhere began to be erected and opportunities in the way of investment and trade opened up, much of the Right’s hostility to China’s authoritarian regime seemed to dissipate, with only a dogged band of Atlanticists, civil libertarians and MPs of good conscience now putting up any real resistance. Whether the rapprochement will survive the fall-out from Covid-19, however, remains to be seen.

What we do know is that as China flaunts its growing prosperity and international status, trashing freedoms and liberties as it goes, it finds itself defended in Britain by a somewhat unconventional combination of free marketeers and old-fashioned communists, with each group claiming the success of the Chinese economy as the fruits of its own ideology. Premier Xi Jinping has hardly helped matters by simultaneously attributing it to both Marxist philosophy and free market economics.

In truth, the Chinese system is a deeply unappealing fusion of neoliberalism and brutal state authoritarianism. It’s the Square Mile meets the Stasi, a rapacious capitalism enforced by despots. No one, whether on the Right or Left, should look upon the CPC regime as anything other than the tyranny it is. And those on all sides of the spectrum who believe that democratic freedoms and civil liberties should always come before political expediency or the exigencies of global trade must not falter in their duty to speak out.

It is easy, when surveying the public square today, characterised as it is by such deep-rooted uniformity and a climate in which any sort of resistance constitutes a revolutionary act, to conclude that things must have been this way for all time. That the uncompromising group-think that pervades so much of our discourse has always existed. That freedom of expression and the ‘marketplace of ideas’ are obscure concepts peddled only by heretics and those with a kamikaze disregard for their own reputations or careers.

Like a prisoner who, as his sentence grinds on, finds it increasingly difficult to recall a time when he enjoyed liberty, our society risks falling into the trap of believing that the ever-tightening constraints placed upon our freedoms have always bound us.

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Britain’s race pain is not the same as America’s

By Ralph Leonard

It is not so, of course. In fact, we don’t have to travel too far back to identify a time when our culture was quite different. If someone said or did something crass or thoughtless – even if the act was committed in the full glare of publicity — society would generally react by curling its lip or tutting or dismissing the culprit for an idiot. And then the world would move on. Nobody had been injured, nobody died, and one person might have been left feeling a bit embarrassed or sheepish. Real opprobrium was reserved for those who truly deserved it.

How the world has changed. It seems unimaginable today that someone — particularly anyone with a public profile — could depart from the orthodoxy on any subject of delicacy or contention, especially one of cultural sensitivity, without inviting the now-customary storms of outrage. These usually begin with a rabid kind of finger-pointing, invariably conducted through social media, and very quickly progress to demands for an apology, appeals to the transgressor’s employer that he be fired from his job and, where the individual enjoys any sense of prominence, an insistence that he be banished from public life for good. The actual merits of the person’s words or actions are irrelevant. All that was necessary for the pitchfork-wielders to do their worst was that ‘offence’ had been caused. When the storm eventually passes, the person is likely to find himself excommunicated from polite society.

The disturbing thing is that this ‘cancel culture’ has taken hold not because it can claim support among the mass of the population, but because a minority of intolerant fanatics has somehow managed to cow everyone else into submission. They have effectively been allowed to set the boundaries of acceptable debate on certain topics, to decide on behalf of us all what constitutes a legitimate opinion, and to determine the sanction to be imposed upon anyone who refuses to comply.

And, faced with this growing threat to our freedoms, our ruling class, including most figures in the fields of politics, business, the media and public services, have cravenly folded. Worse, in many cases they have actively sided with the zealots.

Which brings me to Jake Hepple. I have little doubt that Mr Hepple is a bit of an oaf. I’m not sure what he was trying to achieve when he arranged to have a plane trailing a “White Lives Matter” banner fly over a football stadium in Manchester when a match was taking place. He may have simply wished to make mischief or court publicity. Or perhaps his actions were genuinely intended as a sardonic rebuke to the Black Lives Matter movement and some of its more questionable aims and tactics (which, in spite of what we are led to believe, do not command unanimous support throughout the country).

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Facts vs feelings in the BLM debate

By David Goodhart

Whatever his motives, it was a pretty silly thing to do. Of itself, however, the message plainly wasn’t offensive. White lives, after all, do matter. Taken in isolation, it is a statement with which few would disagree.

The response, then, to his stupid stunt should have been to shake our heads at its puerility and hope that the perpetrator faded into obscurity as quickly as he had come to our attention. But, of course, in these days when ‘silence is violence’, quiet dismissal of Hepple would have been tantamount to endorsement of his actions. So the wheels of the bandwagon started rolling, and everyone duly clambered aboard.

First up was Burnley Football Club, whose players were taking part in the match inside the stadium (while, it should be noted, displaying the slogan ‘Black Lives Matter’ on their jerseys) and of whom Hepple was a supporter. The banner was ‘offensive’, said the club in a statement, before going on to pledge that those responsible would be issued with ‘lifetime bans’.

Then, so it seemed, anyone and everyone who might in some way be connected, however tenuously, to Hepple or the incident felt obliged to express their own words of condemnation. Blackpool Airport, from where the plane had taken off, said it stood against ‘racism of any kind’ and promptly vowed to suspend all banner flights. The CEO of the UK Civil Aviation Authority itself, no less, also saw fit to weigh in, resolving to work with the police in any subsequent probe. Right on cue, Lancashire police then launched an investigation, only to confirm a day later – entirely predictably – that it would not be pursuing the matter any further because no crime had been committed (thereby leaving us to conclude that its initial actions were motivated more by PR concerns than by any serious belief that the law had been broken).

Football pundits tripped over each other in the rush to express their full-throated fury and indignation – though whether they truly felt such levels of outrage or merely felt compelled to pretend they did because, well, it was expected is another question.

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Minority women can think for themselves

By Katharine Birbalsingh

Most absurdly of all, a Danish brewer issued a statement disassociating itself from Hepple and assuring us that it did not condone racism in any form after a photo emerged on the internet showing him holding a can of its beer. I half-expected McDonald’s, whose logo could just about be seen behind Hepple in the same photo, to announce that he was no longer welcome to eat their Big Mac and fries.

Needless to say, after all this outcry, Hepple was sacked by his employer.

On one level, some of this reaction is quite simply absurd and deserving of mockery. On another, however, it is deadly serious. Because, in the end, this isn’t just about Jake Hepple. Nor is it about the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s about a culture of intolerance and dogmatism that has poisoned our society — a culture that permits only a single and established view on particular questions and unleashes swift retribution upon those who dissent.

A cultural revolution is taking place across our land, and opponents can expect no mercy. It is Mao Zedong meets Joseph McCarthy. It is unhealthy; it is oppressive; it runs counter to our nation’s long-cherished traditions of liberty and free expression; and it leaves millions of ordinary people feeling alienated, dismayed and bewildered.

If we are ever to force a retreat — as we surely must — it will be done through the mainstream majority coming together and saying enough is enough. Until now, too many among those who wield power and influence in our society have demonstrated an abject cowardice as this new tyranny has taken hold. They have kept their heads down and hoped for an easy life. That must change. Because, if we’re not careful, it will soon be too late to do anything about it.

Naturally, a torrent or two of the abuse directed at Linehan and Rowling then started to head the way of Ross. But he stood firm, seemingly willing to take the brickbats.

That was until Monday, at which point he performed a reverse-ferret and informed us that he had come to accept that he was, after all, “not in a position to decide what is or isn’t transphobic”. A pretty spectacular climbdown, by anyone’s estimation.

So what lay behind this change of heart? Well, Ross revealed that he had spoken to his daughters about the issue, leaving us in no doubt that it was their intervention which had prompted his volte-face.

Those who know me will concede I try to be thoughtful & not a dick.Having talked to some people(OK,my daughters)re my earlier tweet,I’ve come to accept that I’m not in a position to decide what is or isn’t considered transphobic. It’s a wildly sensitive subject.Let’s keep talking

— Jonathan Ross (@wossy) June 8, 2020

It’s unlikely the doughty women campaigning to defend their sex-based rights against the demands of the more extreme wing of the trans movement will be deterred by this sudden turnabout of their fairweather friend. They have already shown themselves more than capable of pursuing their cause without much in the way of celebrity endorsement.

Ross’s capitulation, though, does point to a wider trend of parents who seem only too willing to defer to their offspring on the contentious social and political issues of the day. It’s a trend that dovetails with the more general fetishisation of youth that has become such a feature of our society.

We see it in the veneration of Greta Thunberg. We see it in the campaign for ‘Votes at 16’. We saw it with Brexit in the depiction of young Remainers as tolerant and enlightened in contrast to old Leavers who were bigoted ‘gammon’. We see it in the turmoil at the New York Times, whose owners caved in to ‘sensitive’ young staffers demanding the resignation of the editorial director because — capital offence, this — he ran a piece by someone they didn’t like and to whose words they took exception.

It seems that, for some, the young are right simply by dint of their being young — almost as though to be a teenager or 20-something is to be imbued with a unique insight and wisdom denied to everyone else. Yet there is no logical reason to routinely ascribe to the young these kinds of attributes, so why do it?

One answer might be that as the agenda of woke liberalism becomes ever more narrow and exclusive, its high priests must focus on consolidating support among the sections of society where it is most likely to hold appeal. Broadly, that means courting the young and ‘progressive’ over the older, more traditional voter. Then, so far as there is any chance of popularising such an agenda, it must be done by appeals to the sagacity and vision of its proponents, rather than asserting the merits of the agenda itself (which, as its cheerleaders surely know, will always prove unattractive to large chunks of the electorate). And if that doesn’t work, well, why not try to gerrymander the entire system by driving down the voting age?

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Why we must resist the corona-tyrants

By Paul Embery

None of this is to argue that the young should be seen and not heard, nor to suggest they be discouraged from political activity. On the contrary, much better a next generation — whatever its views — which is politically conscious and engaged rather than one content to hide away in the bedroom and immerse itself in a world of online gaming.

It is, however, to make the case that putting the young on a pedestal and assuming they always know best does nothing to help society find solutions to increasingly complex social and political questions. Neither, in the end, does it do youngsters themselves any favours, for in denying them the opportunity to have their arguments scrutinised and tested in robust debate, we leave them woefully unprepared for the competitive world they are about to encounter. It is surely no surprise that this tendency to grant excessive indulgence to the views of the young has coincided with the slow erosion of free speech on university campuses and the emergence of such sinister concepts as ‘safe spaces’, ‘trigger warnings’ and no-platforming.

This undue deference also fails to recognise what we all know: the worldview of the young will often shift as they grow older and find themselves navigating a world of marriages, mortgages and children. Rare is the person who believes at 45 everything he believed at 16. With the long passage of time, in fact, it is likely that the child will adopt the position of the parent on a range of social and political issues – positions that he might once have regarded as antediluvian and reactionary. It calls to mind the reported words of Mark Twain: “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”

We have enough division within our society at present without exacerbating the generational tension that was ignited in the aftermath of the EU referendum and continues to simmer today. Setting young against old by constantly portraying the former as all that is good and moral, and assuming they will have the answers to all life’s problems, while dismissing the latter as unreconstructed dinosaurs will do nothing to bring a rapprochement.

The young should be treated as equals in the arena of public debate. No more, no less. The cult status conferred upon them by some is misplaced and patronising.

Oh, and Jonathan Ross should have stuck to his guns.

The Party’s offer of a cocktail of liberal globalism mixed with a generous dash of revolutionary student activism — an unappealing blend of Lennon and Lenin, if you will — had alienated its once-loyal working-class base. Millions of its former supporters voted, instead, for an old Etonian in charge of a party which had spent the past decade imposing austerity on them and their communities.

Working-class voters — particularly in England — emphatically rejected the destructive creeds of identity politics and class war into which Labour had become so immersed, throwing their lot in with a party that many had hitherto regarded as their traditional enemy. Labour’s values were no longer their values.

Yet, five months on, there is little sign that Labour has learned any real lessons from the rout. The post-mortem, such as it was, largely sought to pin the blame for the party’s worst general election result since 1935 on Brexit, or Jeremy Corbyn’s unpopularity, or on a hostile media. All these things unquestionably had an impact — but none tells the whole story.

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Why I won't be celebrating Brexit

By Paul Embery

And the refusal to examine the wider causes — principally that the Party’s ideology, priorities and shifting demographic have increasingly taken it away from its working-class roots — means there is little chance in the near future of the organisation undergoing the radical transformation necessary to regain electoral credibility. In the eyes of many activists, it was the electorate that failed Labour — not the other way round.

Thus, these foot soldiers continue to obsess about fringe issues, in which most voters have little more than a passing interest, while relegating to a sideshow the everyday concerns they see as relevant to their lives.

A telling example of the party’s misplaced priorities can be seen in the reaction (or, more pertinently, the lack of it) to the release last week of a report, Manufacturing a recovery from Coronavirus, on the dire state of British manufacturing and the measures necessary to revive it — and the wider economy — once the impending crash has done its worst.

The report, published by the Institute for Prosperity, a new think-tank headed up by veteran Labour economist, donor and businessman John Mills — one of the finest economic minds on the Left — charts the decline of our manufacturing base (in 1970, it accounted for nearly a third of our GDP; today less than 10%), pinpoints the reasons for it (chiefly a lack of competitiveness caused through a perennially over-valued pound), and provides a road map for reinvigorating it. By anyone’s standards, it is a thoughtful and analytical piece of work deserving of the widest debate.

In the report’s foreword, Caroline Flint — who lost her ‘Red Wall’ seat of Don Valley at the election — rightly articulates the case for tackling regional inequalities through a ‘muscular economic nationalism’. As we emerge from the straitjacket of the EU, and as the downsides of globalisation — not least our over-reliance on global supply chains — are laid bare by the pandemic, people are looking again to the protective state for economic security. The report could not, therefore, be more timely.

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How will the Tories fix the Covid fracture?

By Paul Embery

There was a time, of course, when this type of debate would be meat and drink to the Labour party, for it goes to the heart of what the party ought to be about, namely shielding working-class communities from economic turbulence, setting the conditions that allow for the creation of thousands of solid blue-collar jobs in thriving and sustainable industries, and rebalancing economic priorities away from finance capital and towards the real economy where goods are produced and wealth created.

What better way to show lost Labour voters in post-industrial and small-town England — who are, after all, among those most afflicted by the phenomenon of deindustrialisation — that Labour gets the message and is now on their side than to place issues like those raised in the Institute for Prosperity report at the centre of the party’s agenda and messaging?

Yet, on the day the report was released, just two Labour MPs — so far as I could see, at least — showed any public interest in it (bravo Stephen Kinnock and Stephanie Peacock). The rest of the wider labour movement — including trade union leaders — appeared indifferent, or oblivious, to it.

That such a vital report seemed to pique the interest of so few inside the Labour Party is profoundly depressing — though it should really come as no surprise. It has over recent years become blindingly apparent that only a handful in the party ever venture to discuss these sorts of macroeconomic questions. Matters of employment, growth and prosperity can jolly well take their place behind the campaign for trans rights and Palestine in the queue of priorities.

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It can't be 'big business as usual' after coronavirus

By Mary Harrington

As it happens, the publication of the report coincided with the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia. You can guess which took precedence on the Twitter feeds of Labour MPs during those 24 hours.

For all the responsibility he bears for December’s crushing defeat — he was, let us not forget, the architect of the disastrous second referendum policy — Sir Keir Starmer has at least offered some encouraging early indications that he understands what needs to be done to recover lost working-class Labour votes. The appointment of Claire Ainsley — a pro-family campaigner who has written positively of Brexit — as director of policy, and his own video call with voters in Bury, during which he emphasised the importance of patriotism, suggests Sir Keir recognises that there is no path back to power for Labour that does not pass through its old heartlands and win back the hearts and minds of the voters residing there

But if that is the mountain to be climbed — and it most certainly is — then the party itself remains stuck in the foothills. And until it throws itself wholeheartedly and full-throatedly into discussing the issues that matter to working-class England, it will stay there.

Will the worldwide economic shock eclipse that experienced in the global financial crisis? It’s too early to be sure, but some think it might.

We could do worse than take a steer from the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, in resolving that any pessimism bedevilling our intellect during these troubled times will serve to ignite the optimism of our will – in particular, the knowledge that we have the ability, as a people and nation, to apply the correct solutions to overcome whatever destruction the virus might wreak upon us.

The question, of course, is what those ‘correct solutions’ might look like, in the event that the worst-case scenario, or something like it, comes to pass. And that presents a conundrum which has the potential to split British politics down the middle (again) and dramatically recast established thinking.

Would the Government default to the nostrums which have held sway for over four decades, and assert that the appropriate response to a floundering economy is a heavy dose of austerity, and that any fiscal deficit is best and most swiftly reduced through heavy cuts to public expenditure?

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Covid-19 has exposed our financial fragility

By Jonathan Tepper

Or would it learn the lessons of the past 10 years — not to say those of previous global economic catastrophes — that slamming on the brakes at a time when everyone else, households and businesses, are retrenching is the worst possible medicine. It is, of course, the job of government at such times to lean against market logic by maintaining economic activity and levels of employment through spending — thereby ensuring, too, that tax revenues remain sufficiently buoyant to allow for a faster reduction in the deficit.

If it’s the latter, then we are in for a fundamental reordering of economic priorities that might herald a welcome end — in Britain, at least – to the neoliberal orthodoxy that has dominated the approach of Western governments since the mid-1970s.

In normal times, of course, there would not be an earthly expectation that the Tories would entertain such a radical shift in thinking. It would go against all their natural instincts (well, their instincts since at least the days that Ted Heath was leader). But, this time, any economic crisis would take place against a quite different political backdrop to previous such episodes.

For a start, the Tories have just secured a thumping parliamentary majority by winning the support of working-class England. These are voters often inhabiting deprived towns across the post-industrial north and Midlands — Labour’s old Red Wall seats — who, in many cases, stuck a peg on their nose and voted Conservative for the first time. They will justifiably be looking for payback for having made such a sacrifice, and another long bout of economic hardship when they have barely caught their breath from the last lot will go down like a cup of cold sick. The electoral consequences for the Tories in such a scenario would surely be profound.

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Who will pay for this Covid catastrophe?

By Peter Franklin

The authenticity of pre-lockdown Tory intimations of a more interventionist approach designed to bring investment and opportunity to these places will be severely tested when the bill for the virus eventually lands. For it is then that the Tories will be presented with the choice between abandoning 45 years of economic orthodoxy and forfeiting the trust of their new supporters.

In the context of the sudden materialisation of a multi-billion pounds rescue package designed to tackle the immediate dangers, any future quips about “magic money trees” or “Soviet-style economics” will ring decidedly hollow. The money is there. It always was.

And, so the argument will go, if we can direct it towards protecting jobs and industry from the economic shockwaves caused by a pandemic, we can direct it towards supporting job creation and reindustrialisation in the Redcars and Blyth Valleys when the health crisis passes. After all, there are, as John Maynard Keynes contended, “no intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of capital”.

Any wrong approach on the economy would only deepen social inequalities and injustices. Already the virus is throwing these into sharp relief. The rest of us look on as the more hard-pressed within our society struggle to navigate the lockdown. I’m talking about those who are living in cramped and substandard housing, or in densely-populated areas where green spaces are in short supply, or where a lack of educational resources at home means that children may fall behind academically, or where Mum or Dad have jobs — such as in manual labour or the essential services or industries — which preclude their working from home and compel them to take risks with their health.

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Will Gen Z recover from Covid?

By Matthew Goodwin

We see, too, the elderly of all classes living lives of lonely (and literal) isolation with no end in sight. Little wonder that some of them would sooner step outside and take their chances against the virus than endure more weeks of solitary confinement.

All of this would be made worse if the long-term economic prescriptions meant more crippling austerity and, by extension, deeper privation and the gradual disappearance of more day centres, youth services, libraries and other community outlets that provide a lifeline for the disadvantaged and marginalised.

Much has been said and written about how the Covid-19 crisis has the potential to reshape our world, with activists and commentators asserting that these events have proved them right all along. That was perhaps to be expected. But there can be no denying that the crisis will in the coming months present us with a crunch moment in British politics.

The working-class heartlands, once red, now blue, are the new battleground. The way they respond to the economic crash seemingly coming our way may well determine how long the Tories hold on to them.

To understand why she felt the urge to report this to me, you would need to know that she lives in the most somnolent of villages in rural East Anglia, comprised of little more than a few houses and the odd farm. She was certain that it was the first time in a decade she’d seen a police car anywhere about the place.

Though we can’t be certain, the chances are that the local constabulary had dispatched its frontline officers to roam around sleepy villages like hers to ensure the denizens — in this case, many of them retired and elderly — were not contravening the Government’s orders by venturing outside without good cause.

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Can they really arrest you for walking the dog?

By Adam King

If you have picked up a newspaper or switched on the TV in recent days, you will have seen this type of spectacle being played out in various ways across the country. Hit squads of police officers have descended on high streets and parks, set up checkpoints on main roads and even taken to patrolling beaches in the hunt for transgressors. In some cases, they have been handing out summonses like confetti. Some forces have even established online portals, through which individuals can report fellow citizens who might not be following the rules. Less ‘Blitz Spirit’, more a Stasi-style neighbourhood informers’ network.

Empowered — or, in some cases, wrongly assuming they were empowered — by new legislation in the form of the Coronavirus Act, the police are suddenly everywhere. It’s rather amazing, isn’t it? After years of telling the public that there just weren’t enough resources to satisfy its demand for more bobbies on the beat, our streets are suddenly flooded with them. Like a child who has received a skateboard from Santa, the police just couldn’t wait to go outside and test out their shiny new toy.

Some may wonder why the police’s zeal for getting out into the community in search of offenders — who may be taking a crafty second stroll one day or placing a non-essential Easter egg in their shopping basket — cannot be replicated when it comes to, say, investigating burglaries or cracking down on the anti-social behaviour and general day-to-day lawlessness that blights so many of our communities.

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I must stress that this isn’t meant as an attack on individual police officers, most of whom carry out their duties sensibly and diligently. It is, though, a comment on the priorities of police chiefs who, backed by their masters in local and central government, downgrade — and divert resources from investigating — everyday crimes which cause considerable personal and private distress, but always seem willing to throw everything at satisfying a particular political demand. The sad truth is that when they are really needed, the police are too frequently not around.

Some of the well-documented recent incidents — such as the use of a drone by Derbyshire Police to shame members of the public — may well be seen as being at the extreme end of the spectrum and unrepresentative of wider police activity. And so they may be. Moreover, a call from the National Police Chiefs’ Council for more restraint by officers may result in fewer such aberrations henceforth. However, this is about something more than the disproportionate actions of a handful of overly-enthusiastic officers. There are, in fact, some fundamental questions here which go to the heart of how much value our society places on our hard-won freedoms and liberties, and it is astonishing, even taking into account the current fearful atmosphere, that more people are not asking them.

Are we content, for example, that our parliament nodded through, with the minimum of scrutiny and opposition, an Act which grants to ministers and police the most sweeping and draconian powers held by them in peacetime — and then, having done so, promptly shut itself down? What evidence is there that this trading of our liberties to such a drastic degree will in the end prove to have been worth it? How can we be certain that these powers will be relinquished when the pandemic is over or that, once the precedent is set, they will not be used in the future for any reason the government of the day sees fit? Governments are rarely keen to surrender powers which they have previously arrogated to themselves.

And, crucially, should the police have any role at all in enforcing what, in some cases, seem merely to be the general preferences of government rather than anything actually enshrined in the legislation itself? For example, the legislation does not prohibit members of the public from getting in their cars and driving to a convenient location for exercise — the government merely advises us not to do it — yet some police forces are acting as though it does.

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One might have expected the ranks of the Left — many of whom have described this government as ‘far-Right’ and just a few months ago were banging on about a ‘coup’ — to have been in the forefront of any opposition to this curtailment of our freedoms. But, no. As is often the case, many on the Left have become the loudest cheerleaders for the new constraints on our liberties. It rarely takes much for their inner-authoritarian to reveal itself.

Notwithstanding people’s anxieties and the widespread desire to protect lives, a society that asks no questions while politicians push through this type of far-reaching legislation — effectively placing the whole population under a form of house arrest — and then stands and watches as some police forces apply a wide and unsparing interpretation of it, may be storing up all manner of problems for itself.

That’s why we should listen carefully when someone like the distinguished former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption expresses his concern. Much has been made in the media of Sumption’s condemnation of Derbyshire Police over the drone affair. But it was his wider warning against the surrender of our civil liberties that should resonate with us most. Speaking on Radio 4’s ‘The World at One’, he said:

“When human societies lose their freedom, it’s not usually because tyrants have taken it away; it’s usually because people willingly surrender their freedom in return for protection against some external threat… The pressure on politicians has come from the public. They want action. They don’t pause to ask whether the action will work… And anyone who has studied history will recognise here the classic symptoms of collective hysteria. We are working ourselves up into a lather in which we exaggerate the threat and stop asking ourselves whether the cure might be worse than the disease… This is how societies become despotisms.”

In truth, I don’t know whether the threat is exaggerated in the way Lord Sumption suggests. For my part, I am following the Government’s advice in all matters. But there are some things I do know.

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I know, for example, that other eminent and informed voices — including the likes of Dr John Ioannidis of Stanford University, retired professor of pathology Dr John Lee and Professor Sucharit Bhakdi of the University of Mainz — have raised profound concerns over the strategies employed by Western governments in their management of the pandemic. So Lord Sumption may be on to something.

I know that it is especially vital at times of mass conformism that we create a space in the debate for those with alternative opinions — especially when, like the aforementioned, they are experts in their field — and challenge any attempt to silence them.

I know that, such are the implications of the new legislation, it should not have been enacted, as it was, without the most intense and rigorous scrutiny. And we had better be on our guard for as long as these new laws are extant.

And I know, too, that on every single occasion the police abuse their powers in the name of the legislation, every citizen who believes in liberty and the rule of law has a duty to protest in the most vociferous terms.

The acute hardship facing millions upon whose labour our nation depends must be seen as high a priority as shielding the vulnerable from the coronavirus itself. The unions must get stuck in to the discussions — and fast.

The context of these talks will be unique to all the main players. Union leaders will know that their leverage is limited — plainly none of them will be threatening industrial action if they don’t get their way — so there will no place for idle threats. Constructive dialogue and persuasive argument must be the way.

Meanwhile, the Government’s decision to provide much of its multi-billion pounds rescue package in the form of loans means that many business owners, unwilling to saddle themselves with future debt, may simply decide to battle on against the odds. The risk of mass business failures and interruptions, therefore, remains high.

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So the unions must, as a first concern, seek an agreement that the Government underwrite the wages of any employee who is either laid off or unable to work through having contracted the virus (or has self-isolated). The same must be sought for anyone who, as a consequence of school closures, finds themselves in the unavoidable position of having to take leave from work to look after children. Ensuring that workers are not compelled to choose between wages, health and childcare must be paramount.

In Austria, Norway and Denmark, tripartite negotiations between government, unions and employers have resulted in agreements on substantial wage support for workers in financial difficulty as a consequence of the virus. There is no reason why the UK should not seek to emulate any appropriate elements, even though these countries’ employment and social security arrangements will be different.

But if that proves unachievable, unions must at the very least demand the government increase the Statutory Sick Pay rate (at £94.25-per-week, it is miserly) and expand eligibility to all workers, regardless of their employment status, who don’t currently qualify for the payment.

Crucially, the unions must insist the discussions go beyond narrow industrial bargaining and seek to protect workers in other ways. The Government’s mortgage holiday initiative should be extended to other areas, such as council tax, energy and water bills. Renters must also be shielded. Additionally, unions should make the case for nationalisation of any strategically important concern whose collapse would carry catastrophic consequences for a particular industry or community.

For their part, unions must, in the task of wresting from the government as many concessions as possible, be prepared to demonstrate some goodwill. The Communication Workers’ Union, for example, has withdrawn the threat of immediate strike action by postal workers and instead offered them up as an emergency service to the nation during the crisis.

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It would be remiss of the unions, while they have the Chancellor’s ear, not to make the broader argument about the impact of austerity on public services and those who work in them — something that was not sufficiently addressed in the budget — and, critically, what macroeconomic measures will be necessary to stave off economic collapse once the immediate crisis has passed. While a significant fiscal stimulus, something greater than that pledged by the Chancellor in his budget, will almost certainly be necessary to prevent the economy going south, there is a danger, in purely public health terms, in deploying it too soon, and encouraging physical and economic activity at the very moment the virus is at its most infectious and we are being placed in lockdown.

The focus must therefore be on immediate cash flow injections designed specifically to keep businesses and households afloat, and then, as the country exits the health crisis, measures — which may include so-called helicopter money, tax cuts or increased benefit payments — to compensate for the inevitable (and potentially chronic) lack of demand in the economy. In other words, urgent liquidity now to keep blood flowing through the veins of the patient and then, only when he is fit enough, an exercise regime in the form of substantial fiscal stimulus to restore him to full health.

In any event, the response must be something far more radical than that which followed the global financial crash, when we saw eye-watering bailouts (albeit necessary ones) to the very institutions which created the mess, some poorly-targeted quantitative easing and then a decade of crippling (and literally counter-productive) austerity. The Tories should consider the wisdom and consequences of any strategy in which ordinary working-class voters bear the brunt of any downturn.

More broadly, the philosophy that a global economy administered by bankers, business chiefs and technocrats with an almost blind faith in market outcomes is best for humanity must now be confronted head on. It has, once more, taken a crisis to demonstrate that government still matters, nation states still matter and — crucially — public provision still matters. It’s time now for trade unions to show that they still matter too.

And as the clock strikes eleven this evening, the objective will have been realised. We will, after an almost four-year battle during which the massed ranks of the political establishment put up the fiercest resistance, finally be out of the European Union.

So why won’t I be celebrating? Why will this evening pass by like most others in the Embery household?

It’s simple really. For all my satisfaction that we would have reasserted our national independence – a precious possession for which many have fought and died – and freed ourselves from the shackles of an anti-democratic, supranational technocracy, Brexit was, for me, never the end game. Instead, I have only ever viewed it as a necessary but insufficient step.

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The question, therefore, is: what comes next? How do we construct the type of society that I, a socialist and trade unionist rooted in the labour movement, would like to see?

When we wake tomorrow, the same Tories who have imposed a decade of crippling austerity, slashed our public services and presided over crashing living standards will still be ruling Britain. Of itself, Brexit doesn’t change that. Milk and honey will not suddenly flow through our land the moment the grip of Brussels in severed.

There is to be no Left-wing exit from the EU. There was never going to be. That’s why I never once in four years described myself as a ‘Lexiteer’. But what Brexit does – and this is why the Left was wrong to set its face against it so determinedly – is to at least give us the freedom in future to govern ourselves in the manner we choose. The referendum provided a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do things in a radically different way should we, as a nation, ever so decide, and the minority of voices on the Left who argued that we should seize the moment were right to do so.

Secession from the EU means escape from an explicitly anti-socialist institution whose laws are inimical to many of the objectives of the Left. It gives liberty to a future Labour government (should we ever get one) to, for example, provide state aid to industry – especially our ailing manufacturing sector – without falling foul of EU competition law; to invest in our economy and people without breaching the terms of the wretched, austerity-inspired Stability and Growth Pact; to take some of our key utilities and industries — such as the railways — into full public ownership without transgressing EU rules on market liberalisation; to aid socialist planning and halt downward pressure on wages by ending free movement; to prioritise the interests of British firms and workers without contravening EU procurement laws, Crucially, it restores to us, the people, the right — fundamental to any democracy worthy of the name – to elect and remove those who make our laws.

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Such an agenda would normally be standard fare for a movement of the Left. But the British Left’s 30-year infatuation with the EU, coupled with a crushing lack of confidence in its own ability to govern, mean that now, as we stand on the brink of true self-government for the first time in nearly half a century, it can only view such an opportunity with fear and trepidation.

The past four years have been a depressing demonstration in how the Left, and particularly the Labour party, has lost its way. From the moment the bulk of the Left planted itself unambiguously on the side of Remain and was seen to be lining up with the broad mass of the establishment – the Tory government, big business, the banking industry et al – it had set itself on a trajectory that had the potential to result in a major schism between itself and millions of working-class voters. Labour’s post-referendum vacillations on the question of whether the referendum result should be honoured, and its eventual support for a second vote, meant the rupture was guaranteed. It is a large part of why the party today stands eviscerated and pondering whether it will ever have the capacity or support to govern again.

That Labour and the wider Left sacrificed so much in support of a neoliberal institution whose core principles run counter to so much of what they have traditionally stood for beggars belief. Ultimately, what they failed to grasp is that what happened on 23 June 2016 represented a genuine democratic revolt. It was millions of mainly working-class voters (many tribally Labour), angry and resentful at having been treated with contempt for so long by a tin-eared establishment, taking their revenge. It was their way of sending a missile through the status quo and telling their leaders to start all over again. From that moment, the Left should have accepted the judgement of the people. That it didn’t explains why it is now an irrelevance across huge swathes of Britain.

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But we are where we are, as the man said. Brexit is about to be ‘done’. For many who supported it, the battle is over. The bunting is out; the band is about to strike up; the booze ready to flow.

But I won’t be part of it. For me, it was always a long game. Socialism before Brexit was impossible; it had to be the other way round.

I can well imagine, were they to be alive to see the moment, what those past giants of the labour movement who believed passionately in the principle of national independence and fought against rule by unelected European technocrats – Tony Benn, Michael Foot, Peter Shore, Barbara Castle, Bob Crow, to name a few – would be doing at eleven o’clock this evening. I doubt very much that any of them would be popping champagne corks or waving Union flags. More likely they would be telling us that this was no final victory, that Britain remained riven by inequality and injustice, and it would be no good defeating the enemy of workers in Brussels if we didn’t now take the fight to the Tories in Westminster.

They would be right. After a gruelling four-year campaign, it would be tempting to mark this evening in a spirit of jubilation and triumph. Not for me. The fight for a fairer, more equal society goes on. We mustn’t confuse the battle with the war.

The leadership campaign has, so far, been thoroughly uninspiring. The only candidate who has demonstrated any sign of comprehending the scale of the mountain to be climbed, and what it might take to reach the summit, is Lisa Nandy — but, even then, one suspects it doesn’t come from gut. On the issue that, beyond all others, caused the meltdown in the Labour heartlands — Brexit — none of the contenders could claim with sincerity to have placed themselves unequivocally on the side of the 52%.

The most pressing question now is whether the party wishes ever to govern again. I genuinely fear that some activists — particularly those on the dogmatic, infantile far-Left — would be willing to see Labour relegated to being a party of permanent protest. That is, after all, where many of them have spent their lives and is the type of politics with which they are most comfortable.

If, however, it is serious about winning power in the future, Labour must elevate above everything the task of reconnecting with the millions of working-class voters who have abandoned it. These people are the party’s very reason for existing; without them it is nothing.

An attitude of “No compromise with the electorate” would consign Labour to irrelevance. So would attempts to pass off December’s annihilation with excuses about the hostility of the media or the “false consciousness” of workers. We were hammered. And we were hammered because our appeal was far too narrow. We were seen, justifiably, as a party for students, social activists and middle-class liberals in the cities. We had too little to say to everyday folk in post-industrial, small-town and suburban Britain. We ceased to be the “people’s party” and became instead the party of Twitter.

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The first step to recovery is accepting this painful reality. Then we need to embark on a journey of transformation. The working-class in the provinces will listen to us again only when we start speaking their language. That’s why a “one more heave” strategy would be fatal. It would make Labour that arrogant English tourist who, when faced with a foreign shop assistant who doesn’t understand him, thinks the solution is to shout a bit louder.

Corbynism was right to demand the end of austerity and articulate an economic alternative to neoliberalism — one built around government intervention, redistribution, investment, public ownership of key industries and services, and tackling regional inequality and boardroom excesses. That approach remains popular, and there is no need for Labour to shift off that ground. But, as the election showed, it isn’t just “the economy, stupid”. Voters want a bit of cultural security, too, and here they saw that Labour had nothing to offer them.

That’s why there needs to be a sharp recalibration of emphasis in Labour priorities. There is, of course, a place for debate about climate change, homelessness, gender identity, universal credit, multiculturalism, and LGBT and migrant rights. But Labour’s disproportionate focus on these things has given voters the impression they are all the party cares about.

For the next five years, Labour must dedicate itself to talking incessantly about issues that hit working-class voters in the solar plexus: certainly the economy, but also work, family, community, law and order, immigration, the nation and suchlike. These are not ‘Tory issues’. These are issues important to voters across the political spectrum, and Labour cannot afford to absent itself from the debate any longer.

But simply to talk about these things wouldn’t be enough. The message needs to be right. And, once again, that would mean a seismic shift in thinking.

The party must start to focus on the value of vocation — rooted in the philosophical concept of the dignity of labour — and not measure success only by how many kids it can ram through university.

It must begin to view the family unit as the bedrock of a civilised society, recognise the overwhelming evidence showing that children brought up in stable homes with two parents have far better outcomes than those who aren’t, and argue that government policy should be geared towards facilitating that end for as many as possible.

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It should acknowledge the misery that crime and anti-social behaviour bring to working-class communities, stop pretending that the solution lies in a determinist view that sees all wrongdoers as victims, and develop policing and justice systems – including much earlier intervention – around the principle that individuals must take ultimate responsibility for their own actions. Law-abiding citizens living on housing estates blighted by high crime are sick and tired of hearing politicians – especially Labour politicians – attribute the destructive activities of a minority to a lack of youth services.

It must end support for open borders — a crackpot idea once supported only by Trotskyists, anarchists and radical liberals — and understand that rapid and large-scale movements of people have, as with those of capital, the capacity to cause social and economic disruption in hard-pressed working-class communities.

It should promote the nation state as the best form of democratic government at its highest level and, particularly, as a bulwark against the agents of globalisation for whom national borders represent an obstacle to neoliberal priorities. On that theme, it must see patriotism for what it is: a genuine love of country, and not something motivated by xenophobia or a hankering for empire – a misconception that causes Labour politicians and activists to look down at their shoes in embarrassment at any mention of the ‘p’ word or to redefine it in a way so banal as to render it meaningless.

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On matters of defence and national security, it must leave voters in no doubt that, while operating an ethical foreign policy, a Labour government would keep them safe.

Some of this stuff will be anathema to many inside Labour, but if they want the party to remain relevant, they had better start understanding it. In fact, those activists doubtful that such a programme would be in keeping with the Labour tradition would do well to read up on the history of their own party. For much of its existence, Labour was a deeply patriotic, socially-conservative party, entirely in step with the values of working-class Britain – values that chunks of today’s party, chiefly the soixante-huitards and their political descendants, would dismiss as ‘nativist’ and ‘reactionary’.

Labour must become that patriotic, communitarian, proudly working-class, one-nation party once more. The woke liberals and toytown revolutionaries responsible for leading us to electoral oblivion — and ushering in potentially a decade of Tory rule — must be brave enough to admit they got it spectacularly wrong. If their hearts and minds cannot be won, they must be vanquished. They cannot be allowed to drive a once-great party into the abyss.

Lowestoft isn’t dead yet. But it is on life support. It’s hard to imagine, as you wander along its depleted high street and past the shabby facades looking out over the 19th-century harbour, that this town on the coast of sleepy Suffolk was once an industrial powerhouse. Until, that is, you begin to stumble upon the innumerable reminders – the museums and statues and faded signs on old maritime buildings – of its former status as a major fishing port. You can’t avoid them. And neither should you wish to. For you cannot understand any town without knowing its history.

But no place can survive on glories past. These days, Lowestoft is just one of our many battered and blighted former industrial towns, the sort that were once the pride of the nation but are now regarded by some among our political and cultural elites as a bit of an embarrassment. This old maritime jewel isn’t even treading water; it is slowly sinking.

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Dean moved his family up from South East London 34 years ago. “I’d go back if I could.” I ask how things have changed. “The fishing industry has been destroyed. You used to be able to hop from boat to boat in the harbour. Now you’d drown.” What else? “Factories have closed. The main shops have gone. All we’ve got left is takeaways and charity shops. A lot more foreigners live here now. But I’m not prejudiced,” he swiftly assures me.

Almost everyone I speak to here says the same thing. Fishing destroyed. Factories closed. Shops gone. Town in decline.

In its heyday, Lowestoft was home to a fleet of over a thousand trawlers and drifters. Some vessels fished in waters as far afield as Norway. It is said that if you weren’t employed in the industry yourself, you knew someone who was. Fishing was later supplemented by the presence of major employers such as Shell, Sanyo, Boulton and Paul, and Eastern Coachworks.

The town benefitted additionally through its appeal as a holiday destination. Holidaymakers would flock here in summers past to enjoy the golden beaches and other attractions.

Today, the only trawler – the Mincarlo – doesn’t leave the harbour (it is a museum ship), and the big firms have decamped. The holidaymakers still come but, in truth, it’s hard to imagine Lowestoft as a resort of choice.

The belief that the European Union – and in particular the Common Fisheries Policy with its rigid quota system – is responsible for the town’s plight is widespread. There is much truth in it, of course. But it isn’t the only explanation. God knows successive British governments must take their share of responsibility for the evisceration of our industrial base.

Still, it’s no wonder that 63% of the electorate in this part of Suffolk voted Leave in the referendum and almost 40% for the Brexit Party in the recent European elections. The Remain campaign never really stood a chance here. The EU has become the symbol of all that has gone wrong in Lowestoft. Brave would be the politician who ventured into this town to tell people they got it wrong and must vote all over again.

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Looking in at the Woodbine café (established 1895) near the entrance to the docks, I get talking to some locals. Christie Vorster and her family were forced out of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe when she was 13. Now, 17 years later, she is unemployed and in receipt of Universal Credit. She hunts daily for worthwhile employment. Her last job, at a day centre, didn’t offer enough hours. She isn’t hopeful of finding anything soon.

Her despair is justified. The most recent figures I could find reveal that 33% of the town’s population have no qualifications, and the number of young people in receipt of out-of-work benefits across the wider district is double the national average.

Those in work don’t have it much easier here. A report last year by the Low Pay Commission showed that the local authority has one of the highest rates of workers earning only the minimum wage across the whole of Britain.

“There’s just nothing for young people to do here,” Christie says.

We are joined in our conversation by 79-year-old Billy Crago. Billy fished out of these waters for half a century, eventually buying and operating his own trawlers. “Fishing was a huge industry here,” he tells me. “Everything depended on it. Other industries relied on it: boat-building, engineering works, dry docks. But they all went when fishing went.” I tell him I witnessed something similar when much of the Ford motor plant was closed in my hometown of Dagenham. I feel his pain.

“The fish market workers used to queue along the road to come in here when I was a little girl,’ says Rose Sinacola, who serves the teas and breakfasts in this place. ‘They would bring their urns with them. It would open at six o’clock in the morning. But everything’s changed now.”

“There’s a lot of violence,’ comes a voice from a table behind me. Christine McKensey-Stowe is sitting with a friend. She is 63 and in receipt of Employment and Support Allowance, surviving on £70-a-week. She says she is too ill to work and has been waiting for a home medical assessment for 14 months. ‘There’s a gang culture. And they’re starting young. I was abused by a nine-year-old in McDonald’s for telling him off for smoking.”

Christie and Christine begin swapping tales of violence and arson and other such lawlessness. I ask if they ever see police officers walking the beat. Christine looks at me with an equal measure of bewilderment and derision. I may as well have asked if Elvis comes to town for the occasional gig. She nods towards the high street. “It’s tough for old people when the shops close down. Most of them can’t work a computer, so they can’t shop online. It must be terrible for them.”

“And the rents are too high for young people,” Rose says. “Unless you’ve got a well-paid job, you can never expect to get your own place.”

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I ask if any of them has faith in politicians to put things right. They don’t. “I’d chuck them all out and start again,” Christine says. “They don’t bother about people here. Everything’s being cut. I don’t know much about politics, but I know enough to know they don’t care about us.”

I get the sense that neither the modern Left’s preoccupation with identity politics and class war, nor the New Right’s zeal for free trade, nor the liberal cosmopolitanism of the so-called ‘centrists’ would resonate here at all. I doubt that any among Jeremy Corbyn or Jacob Rees-Mogg or Chuka Umunna would be welcomed as some knight in shining armour in this town.

Buzzwords such as ‘diversity’, ‘equality’ and ‘inclusivity’ are far from the lips of people in Lowestoft. But speak about work and community and family, and the conversation comes alive. It is obvious that there is a hankering for something much more meaningful than that which is offered by the political mainstream, something rooted in the concepts of place and belonging and social solidarity.

These folk are atomised and disaffected for sure. But there is a residual community spirit that refuses to be extinguished. They are desperate to be proud of their town – if only it would let them.

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Leaving the Woodbine, I head towards the war memorial near the entrance to South Pier. A collection of wreaths lie at the base of the granite obelisk. One displays the logo of Ukip. There is nothing from the other parties. I reflect on what the men immortalised here would think of their town today. They battled against fascism, of course. Real fascism. I wonder how they might react to their descendants being accused of enabling fascism for daring to vote for a return of the very national sovereignty they gave their lives to defend.

Before I depart, I take the short walk up to Ness Point, the most easterly point of the British Isles. This small headland juts out into the waves, as if straining to be joined with continental Europe, only to be reined back in by the rest of the country. Westminster is just over a hundred miles from here as the crow flies. It may as well be an ocean away.

Looking out across the grey, forbidding North Sea, I imagine the days when armadas of drifters and trawlers would leave this place, sometimes for weeks on end, to ply their trade on the unforgiving waves. I picture, too, the families of the fishermen sitting by oil lamps in their modest little cottages, anxiously awaiting the return of their loved ones. These days the anxieties of the townsfolk stem not from meteorological storms, but from those of globalisation and unfettered capitalism.

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Heading back inland on the train as the light begins to dwindle, we are quickly into the Suffolk countryside. The spires and farms beyond the carriage window are evocative of A.E. Housman’s “Into my heart an air that kills” – his lament for a world lost and unrecoverable. There may be no blue remembered hills among these flatlands, but it is certainly a land of lost content. I see it shining plain.

For Lowestoft is a tale of our times. Its long, slow decline stands as a testament to the alienation and neglect of our post-industrial and coastal communities. Once confident and proud, they now fight to keep their head above the waterline. We should feel a sense of shame for having abandoned these places to their fate.

Yet, for all that, I didn’t detect a seething fury among the people I left behind. More a sense of resignation and acute disenchantment. A quiet anger and utter pessimism in the prospect of anything or anyone coming to their aid.

I don’t expect the good folk of Lowestoft to be hammering at the gates of parliament any time soon. But I do fear that, such is their cynicism in the entire political process and its ability to improve their lives, they will – if they haven’t done so already – disengage from it completely. Perhaps never vote again.

That may suit some people, of course – those who privately regard voters in these communities with contempt and believe the country would be better off if their voices stayed unheard. But for the health of our democracy and civic life – and most importantly our sense of ourselves as one nation – the implications of that would, in the long run, be far more profound.