gave us Brexit. It’s what gave us the evisceration of the Labour Party in 2019. It’s what has created a challenge to the dominance of cosmopolitan liberalism, which its advocates were certain represented the end point of social progress.
The people in these places cried out to those in power to heed their concerns. But for years these cries went unheard. That Labour – the party towards which so many working-class voters had for decades shown so much loyalty – was complicit in this disregard of them was inexcusable and ought never to be forgotten.
Labour was certain that it knew better than those who had supported and sustained it for over a century. The party tried to tell them what was good for them and it brooked no dissent. If the working class couldn’t see the virtues of global liberal progressivism, then it was wilfully ignorant.
This mindset owes itself to the fact that there has existed for some time on the Left a disturbing level of group-think, the consequence of which is that key planks of ideology are rarely challenged and the certainty of partisans in their own moral rightness is mutually reinforced. By extension, those who dare to think or argue differently – especially if they do so from within the movement – are marginalised and abused.
This, in turn, has created a culture on the Left – one which in recent years has begun to infect public life generally – in which freedom of expression is nominally defended but is, in reality, under attack as never before. Honest debate and disagreement, particularly around contentious issues, are becoming increasingly precious. In their place, a rigid and oppressive conformity is demanded. Opinions that are still common currency across large parts of our nation have been delegitimised and effectively banished from the public square.
We have a new national religion – liberal wokedom – and anyone who blasphemes against it can expect to be vilified by its high priests and followers. Those who hold positions of prominence or influence had better be especially careful, for they risk seeing their livelihoods or reputations destroyed if they dare express dissent.
These days, arguments are frequently shut down simply by one party in the dispute claiming to have been ‘offended’. Giving offence – even unintentionally and regardless of the merits of what has been said or done – is itself now seen as a sin worthy of punishment. Where we once placed a high premium on reasoned and respectful debate permitting the expression of a range of diverse and competing views, we now have echo chambers, ‘safe spaces’ and draconian hate legislation, all of which serve the purpose of supressing unwelcome opinions and enforcing an official orthodoxy from which nobody can expect to depart without repercussions.
It is no coincidence that at the same time as acting as the driver for this suffocating new reality, the Left has increasingly immersed itself in the destructive creed of identity politics, in which minorities are divided into discrete categories according to their race or religion or sexuality, and classified as inherent victims who must be protected from an oppressive and ‘privileged’ majority. This entire approach has, in practice, gone far beyond the laudable objective of defending people against prejudice, and has sought instead to promote the separateness and unique characteristics of these groups as virtuous in their own right, and the groups themselves as thereby worthy of favourable political treatment. Needless to say, all of this serves only to fragment the working class and undermine what should be the primary goal of developing common bonds and building the maximum unity required to defend its interests.
The modern Left and the working class currently inhabit separate worlds and are motivated by conflicting priorities. The fact that at the 2019 general election – after nearly a decade of Tory-imposed austerity – so many working-class voters were willing to place their faith in a Tory party led by an old Etonian instead of the party that was considered to be their ‘natural home’ is a stark reflection of the extent of this estrangement. Whether the Tories are able to hold on to these voters will depend on whether they improve their lives and communities in a tangible and lasting way, providing them with hope, investment and opportunity. If they do, Labour’s problems will only deepen, for there is no route back to power that does not pass through these places and win back the hearts and minds of those who live in them.
There is a chance, of course, that Labour has lost for ever much of its one-time core vote. That’s why it would be a fatal error for the party to assume that things could not get even worse. An organisation whose members, activists and representatives have so little in common with so many working-class voters – neither speaking their language, nor sharing their interests or priorities – can hardly hope to maintain their support. In today’s Labour Party, it is the liberal left and, to a lesser degree, the far-left that hold sway – two camps whose adherents are often at loggerheads with each other in the battle for supremacy, but neither of which ultimately has the capacity to reconnect the party with its old heartlands. The party is now an organisation comprised largely of urban middle-class liberals, students and social activists; it is no surprise, therefore, that it is towards this constituency that its policies and pronouncements are most overtly aimed.
Labour has a mountain to climb if it is to be a serious electoral force again. And if it proves unequal to the task, it will relegate itself to being a party of permanent protest. In everything it says and does over the coming years, Labour must consider as a first concern what the impact will be in its old working-class heartlands. All policy development must be geared to this end. This will mean a sharp rebalancing of its priorities – focusing less on topics that do not command mass appeal or interest, and more on the doorstep issues that voters see as relevant to their everyday lives.
The party needs to combine the goal of creating a fairer and more egalitarian economy with a social programme that speaks to the instincts of millions of working-class voters. It must rediscover a part of its history of which so many of its activists today are ignorant: the early Labour tradition that spoke to the patriotic and communitarian instincts of the working class and understood that we are social and parochial beings with a profound attachment to place and a desire to belong.
This will necessarily mean discussing openly issues such as globalisation, family, law and order, the nation state and national identity, immigration and welfare, and being prepared to change position. It will mean, too, reappraising the cultural revolution that has been taking place in our country since the 1960s and assessing candidly whether everything that it spawned has been to the good.
The past few years in Britain have been a lesson in what happens when an arrogant elite takes its hegemony for granted. If you don’t take people with you, if you haven’t won hearts and minds, if you plough on stubbornly when millions of working-class voters are imploring you to hold back or change course, then you are asking for trouble. And, in the end, trouble came.
Our politics is fracturing. Liberal progressivism is in retreat as working-class people seek to revive the politics of belonging, place and community as an antidote to galloping globalisation and rapid demographic change. The assumption that greater economic and social liberalism would pave the way to a new age of progress, prosperity and enlightenment now looks woefully mistaken. Tribal party loyalties are crumbling as sections of society long ignored by the ruling elites start to kick back. The Left bears a heavy responsibility for this polarisation, and it is why it currently stands decimated and flirting with irrelevance.
In this book, I set out why this happened and how it might be fixed.
But first, a point of explanation about my use of the term ‘working class’, which is of course interpreted in all sorts of different ways by everyday people, political activists and academics alike. Some believe it is determined by personal characteristics such as accent or lifestyle, or whether a person owns his own home or takes a holiday abroad, or by qualifications or income. Many on the Left argue that it covers all those who are forced to sell their labour in return for a wage; others get sniffy about including certain sections of the middle class – or the ‘petit bourgeoisie’ – in this definition. Then there is the much-used National Readership Survey
