A different shade of red

Whenever I encounter people on social media who describe themselves as "traditional leftists", I often come away confused. They tend to bang on really quite a lot about how much they're traditional leftists but spend most of their time disparaging women, which is rather strange. They might espouse concern for worker's rights, but don't seem to have much a problem with attacking minorities - a trick not all that dissimilar to fascism.

So there is certainly plenty of diversity among those who self-identify as the left*. An excellent summary piece of a specific type of disagreement among lefties can be found here, which I think provides a good basis for understanding what's going on (though others disagree). In brief, I think there is a particular subset of the so-called "woke" who are not really determined to fight oppression and intolerance, but just to hurt people : when someone repents for their moral shortcomings, they still go on attacking them. It's one thing to find views abhorrent, but quite another to utterly dismiss anything someone says about any topic because you disagree with them on one particular subject.

*It's worth mentioning also that left and liberal do not automatically go together : in the Czech Republic, left tends to mean full-blown Communism, whereas in the UK it tends to mean vegan hipster students.

This, though, is a big topic, and I shall largely leave it for now. Such a subset is, I think, anyway rather small, and its importance massively overblown by the right. Today I turn instead to this very long, detailed study examining how the views of the traditional British Labour voter have shifted over the decades. While day-to-day politics and individual characters is and are important, it's easy to avoid seeing the forest for the trees. This study attempts to zoom out and see what are the large factors at work driving the changes, and, because it's from Tony Blair's institute, to work out a strategy for Labour to get back in the game.

It must be said that some of this is obvious. Labour needs clear policies ? That's nothing that literally everyone hasn't been saying for months. People don't like Corbyn ? It's only a wonder that the disaster of the 2019 general election didn't happen in 2017.

But much of it isn't obvious at all. While the decline of the working class is pretty apparent, the changing social attitudes of what remains of that demographic are rather surprising.

1) The working class isn't what it used to be

Trade unions, along with other local organisations, represented Parkin’s “institutionalised forms of deviance” that played such a large part in the local communities of Labour’s industrialised heartlands, dominated by specific industries with large workforces. In these heartlands, the disappearance of so many big industries has undermined the culture of working-class solidarity, and so diminished the appetite for challenging the status quo and the establishment... today’s working-class voters are :less likely than middle-class voters to join a trade union; less likely to have jobs in workplaces with more than 100 employees; less likely to be left-of-centre.

In so far as there are class differences, there are slightly more middle- than working-class voters who fit the traditional stereotype of unionised, left-wing voters with jobs in large workplaces. That said, the differences are small. Now that Parkin’s “institutionalised forms of deviance” have disappeared, so too have gaps in these traditional measures of class difference closed.

Not only has the working class severely shrunk, but those who are left don't hold the traditional views anyway. So Labour going back to its roots isn't going to work, because the roots have gone. Similarly, the decline of the Red Wall, far from being a recent development, has been ongoing for decades - it only looks like a sudden collapse because of the electoral system. The regions had atypically high Labour support decades ago, but have since undergone regression to the mean :

Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership accelerated the process towards the end of the 32-year period, but the red-wall bonus had been shrinking for 20 years; indeed, most of it happened before either the Brexit referendum or Corbyn’s election as party leader. In fact, the long-term political trajectory of the red-wall towns has been towards parity with England overall, not away from it.

The losses of the red-wall seats need to be considered in a wider context. They reflect Labour’s national failure to respond effectively to the economic and social changes of the past 50 years. This failure looks greatest in the red-wall towns simply because the changes there have been the greatest...  Our findings suggest that Labour will fail, and probably fail badly, if it tries to regain power simply by seeking to revive its working-class appeal. The reason is not just that the number of working-class voters is now too small, but that their lives today are far less like those of their (usually) working-class parents, and far more like their middle-class contemporaries.

In other words, it's the voters that have shifted, not that Labour is going in a different direction.

A small caveat is that some class differences do remain :

Despite these figures, it is wrong to say there are no significant class differences. Two do persist: in housing and education. Tenure is still linked to party choice and social attitudes. Working-class homeowners are far more likely than those who rent their homes to vote Conservative and to say that our welfare system has created a culture of dependence.

2) Where have the voters gone ?

Perhaps a more serious problem is that there has been a failure of confidence in social policies :

Far more people in almost every group think they pay more in taxes than they receive from public services and benefits. This applies to full-time workers, both blue- and white-collar, to the over-65s (despite NHS care and pension payments), and to families with children (despite the NHS and education benefits). Only among those whose household income is less than £14,000 are the two figures similar. Social class makes virtually no difference... These figures feed into the right-wing narrative that for the provision of everyday needs, government is more of a problem than a solution. This means that Labour’s task is to revive trust in not just the party, but in politics.

Unfortunately there isn't past data for this question because this would be fascinating to trace. After a decade of savage Tory austerity, with ambulance waiting times routinely in the hours during a pandemic, and tens of billions thrown recklessly at an dysfunctional track-and-trace system, is it any wonder the public don't feel they're getting value for money ? The reason they think so might well be very simple : they're not. So this does not necessarily represent a failure of belief in strategy, only a failure resulting from a corrupt, incompetent implementation.

But where have voters gone ? Largely, but by no means exclusively, to the Tories :

Of the 11.5 million lost voters, just half switched to the Conservatives in 2019. Put another way, four in ten people who voted for Boris Johnson had, at some point, wanted a Labour government. Labour also lost 2.5 million votes to pro-European parties: the Liberal Democrats, Green Party, SNP and Plaid Cymru. These voters should not be ignored in the attempt to win votes back from the Conservatives.

Why have they left ? The switch to the left-leaning parties is readily understandable (but for subtleties, consult the original article), that to the Tories more surprising :

There is no consensus about the impact of long-term changes either on the country as a whole or on specific areas. These changes were defined as a decline in old industries, factories and jobs, and growth of new jobs, businesses, goods and services. Voters who switched to the Conservatives are actually more positive about the changes than voters who stuck with Labour.

Somewhat encouragingly, there has not been a widespread public move away from socialist policies - if anything it's gone the other way :

In 1989, after a decade of Thatcher’s economic reforms, the public divided 47 per cent to 39 per cent in favour of a socialist rather than capitalist society. Today, voters as a whole prefer socialism by 48 per cent to 29 per cent, with the number of don’t knows climbing from 14 per cent to 23 per cent.

Which would again suggest that socialism isn't really the problem. The answer seems to lie in marketing.

3) What do voters think of Labour ?

Voters have some rather definite perceptions of Labour that are at odds with what they want :

While only 8 per cent of those switching to the Conservatives describe themselves as “very” or “fairly” left wing, as many as 48 per cent apply that label to the Keir Starmer-led Labour Party... Former Labour voters tend to support capitalism and reject collective welfare in larger numbers than those who have stayed loyal to Labour, but a) socialism and collective welfare remain fairly popular, and b) age makes little difference. The explanation for Labour’s problems with voters aged over 45 does not lie here. The party itself is the problem: it has haemorrhaged these votes, especially in the past few years, because it is seen by many of the voters it needs to win back as incompetent, out of touch and obsessed with what right-of-centre commentators describe as “woke” causes.

Many of those voters who switched to the Conservatives believe that Labour fails to share their concern for ordinary working people and pensioners. There is a 40-point gulf between the 52 per cent who are keen to help pensioners and the 12 per cent who believe this group is a priority for the Labour Party. Instead, these voters think the party cares far more than they do for immigrants and non-white Britons as well as the LGBTQ+ community.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with caring for minorities : quite the opposite. And I'm not quite sure where the image of Labour as "wokeist" comes up, except perhaps from the profoundly dysfunctional Corbyn era. Regardless, Labour need hardly resort to Tory racism or misogyny to win votes : it's rather a matter of prioritising and messaging. Labour can and should institute reforms to help minorities... but at a time when the entire country is suffering, those groups should not be put front and centre of its campaign message*. In support of this, of voters who returned to Labour, mostly their priorities and their perceived priorities of the party are in close alignment.

* Prioritising them might be morally laudable, but it would also be useless. Without actually getting into power, you can't do anything for them.

But the report stresses that we shouldn't read too much into this. Policy and perceived priority do matter. But even more important than this is perception of confidence :

It is clear that Labour’s perceived incompetence was a major cause of its loss in 2019, especially among those who voted for the Conservatives. Among those who voted Labour in 2017 but not in 2019, only 25 per cent say that Labour is competent these days, while 60 per cent say it continues to be incompetent. This is arguably the most important single indicator of Labour’s continuing failure to overtake the Conservatives when it comes to voting intentions.

It should come as no surprise that Labour voters who have maintained their support for the party have a reasonably good view of its competence, but a negative view of the Conservatives on this issue. (It should worry Labour, however, just how many of its loyalists still say the party is incompetent 18 months into Starmer’s leadership.)

Though I have reversed this section of the narrative from the report. It argues that Labour is perceived as incompetent due to its flawed policies and priorities, so these have an indirect but more damaging effect on its electability than the policies themselves.

My guess is that there's a lot of residual baggage from the Corbyn era : not just because of Corbyn himself, but also his entire team of idiotic ideologues. Starmer has made a lot of progress, but the lack of clear policies has hampered this - in particular, a simple, basic policy with an obvious vision behind it. And an additional difficulty is the need to present that vision without sounding like a loony, which was Corbyn's utter failure.

(It's probably worth remembering Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford, who is going for a very left-wing agenda indeed, but has crucially managed to sound extremely boring. You can't really accuse someone of being a Communist dictator when they look like a hamster and have all the charisma normally associated with a piece of toast. Mind you, just being boring isn't enough, and there are genuine cultural differences between England and Wales.)

We also do seem to be seeing more of the shadow cabinet lately, which is very welcome. I think Starmer's overall strategy of prioritising getting the Labour house in order is probably a good one - yes, there's some messy in-fighting along the way, but the previous incarnation was effectively opposition by committee. It needs clearer direction and greater unity than that, which certainly means kicking out the hard left. Doesn't really matter if you or I agree on the previous policies or not - that group were catastrophically unelectable. Change is necessary - there's no point being in politics if you're perpetually out of power. None whatsoever.

5) Where do Labour go from here ?

Uphill, obviously. While Labour at the time of writing are slightly ahead, to get a majority they require a rather thumping lead over the Tories which they're as yet nowhere near. And getting that will be difficult. But there are grounds for optimism : though their traditional voter base has gone, a new one has arisen that presents opportunities :

Asked which two or three groups from a list of nine that the government should help the most, voters across what used to be the class divide selected “ordinary working people” as the top choice followed by the poor and pensioners – some distance ahead of all others.

Importantly, it doesn't really matter how you slice the data - those three groups still come out as top priority. 

Voters of all stripes want a government that helps ordinary workers, pensioners and the poor, but too many think Labour prefers to defend minorities instead of tackling Britain’s everyday economic and social problems. It’s not so much that these target voters are obsessed by the cultural battles that Labour is doomed to lose. Rather, it is that Labour has gained the reputation of fighting the wrong battles by choice. It risks the most damning of political verdicts: irrelevance to people’s daily lives.

Being a left-leaning liberal does not mean having a fanatical obsession with minorities, which is what "woke", rightly or wrongly, has come to mean in the minds of many. Nor does it mean abandoning progressive policies, still less liberalism itself. There is scope for Labour to climb the still daunting mountain to electoral victory, but it's got to do a lot better than the schoolyard politics of Corbyn's day. 

As in decades gone by, Labour does not need to dilute its liberal values, even when they are opposed by the voters it seeks to attract. Such values become a liability only when they are seen to override Labour’s economic and social priorities... if Labour can reframe these issues as economic and social challenges, in which current government policies damage people’s everyday lives, then Labour has the opportunity to develop policies that are both progressive and popular.