Labour shouldn’t try to “improve” working class people. It should listen to them
(Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
After the crushing defeat of Labour and the unseating of Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson, the two main opposition parties are now set for leadership contests. On losing his seat at the 2017 election, Nick Clegg claimed “You live by the sword, you die by the sword”.
While this may be a little self-aggrandising, Clegg at least seemed to grasp why he had been defeated. Going on to warn of the gulf between young and old, left and right and voters of different regions, he said “We will not pick our way through the very difficult times that our country faces, if in the next parliament MPs of all parties simply seek to amplify what divides them.”
Comparing Clegg’s losing speech with that of 2019’s defeated Lib Dem leader, it seems that Jo does not agree with Nick. After waxing lyrical about personal achievements, Swinson proceeded to demonise Conservative voters, stating that the landslide victory invoked “dread and dismay” for millions of people. There was no reflection as to why, for millions more, it apparently did not.
To be fair to the Lib Dems, this is at least consistent with their view that “it only counts as a majority when we like the result”. Swinson further claimed that hers was a party of “openness, fairness and inclusivity”, portraying those who voted Conservative as narrow-minded, selfish and racist by implication — which of course, is a very open, fair and inclusive approach.
Unlike Clegg’s solemn acceptance of blame for his loss, Corbyn’s defeat in the 2017 election was seen by his supporters as a moral victory, by virtue of being not quite the predicted abysmal failure. So focussed on victory within the party were the Corbynistas, that victory across the country played second fiddle. With less than three per cent of MPs in the last parliament having ever done blue-collar work, this was a case of the middle-class, hyper-liberal, university-educated Labour members squabbling among themselves over who best represented working-class interests.
In the following two years, giddy in their excitement at capturing the youth vote and swelled by their “victorious” 2017 defeat, Labour dodged the difficult issue of the millions of Labour supporters who didn’t quite fit. The party prioritised middle-class remainers over working-class leavers, who they treated like the embarrassing, racist, elderly relative at an annual get-together.
After the Conservative victory on December 13, the caterwauling of the Corbynistas rang out across social media. As with the Liberal Democrats, the election result was blamed on racism, homophobia, little Englanders and the outrageous travesty of justice that is universal suffrage for those over the age of 35. After several years of using ageist insults such as “gammon” to shut down debate, the Labour Twitterati was dismayed to discover that their tactics of verbal abuse and blocking any member of the electorate who didn’t capitulate to their beliefs, had led to people taking their votes elsewhere.
The Conservative manifesto had prominently displayed photographs of their parliamentary candidates. These were individuals who often lived within the communities they were seeking to represent, people who held ordinary jobs — pharmacists, farmers, administrative assistants.
This marketing approach, one that recognises the working classes, outdid the tactic of using shame and coercion. Labour activists pleaded for us to deal with our consciences and “think of the most vulnerable person you know and vote in their interests,” a sort of latter-day “noblesse oblige” mentality. The vulnerable themselves, who had been ignored for years by Labour, were instead voting Conservative in their droves.
The working-classes clearly do not embrace the victimhood that was foisted upon them by Labour’s campaign. They turned to supporting the party that offered them — however superficially — a recognition of their work ethic, autonomy and their right to participate in the democratic process.
In anticipation of the forthcoming Labour leadership contest, Jon Trickett, the shadow cabinet office minister, said: “Never again must the bulk of our senior decision-makers and advisers be drawn from a narrow cultural circle, such as the more prosperous parts of London.”
There needs to be an about turn on the tactics of this electoral campaign. The middle-class, university-educated fringe activists, with their obsession with identity politics, have captured the party. Setting up immovable binaries, and attempts to expose how old, stupid and racist everyone who didn’t vote Labour was, only serves to alienate working-class voters even further. Rather than taking the attitude of improving the poor, the Labour party needs to start listening to them instead.
