The flags and nostalgia nods are subtle shuffles toward authenticity. And so is the parading of opposition politicians' biographies. Keir Starmer talks a lot about how his dad worked around the clock as a working class factory man, while being sketchy about how he was a sole trader and the "factory" was a workshop. Our long-time friend Wes Streeting is often invited to talk about his journey from a single parent upbringing to Labour's front bench. Jonathan Ashworth has spoken many times about his upbringing and how it was blighted by parental alcoholism. And Bridget Phillipson has lately discussed her childhood as the daughter of a single mum living in a council flat.
But there is a problem. Growing up in a council property has become a favoured marker of keeping it real among Westminster and media circles, but is it one that can connect? Former Corbyn aide Steve Howell suggests not. With millions of people, particularly the young, caught in the rent trap the experience of a secure, subsidised tenancy is unknown to them. In fact, with people breaking their backs and putting themselves in harm's way to make the rent it comes across as a relatively privileged and lucky existence.
Yet, while this layer of the working class are, or should be, Labour's natural support the leadership's authenticity offensive is not geared toward them. Among Starmerism's many weaknesses is a strategic orientation targeting the older, home-owning and largely retired vote that have peeled away from the party these last 15 years. Nothing wrong with that per se, especially if one's policy platform is based around the appreciation of the interests young and old share in common. But Starmerism is not doing this. For all its formal repudiation of the so-called culture wars, Starmer and friends are peddling a low-fi cultural politics to try and win them back. The lick of Blue Labour paint is one pillar of this strategy, and the affected humility of their humble origins the other. Among the punters they want to recapture, council housing is redolent of authentic working class communities where everyone knew everyone. Their lot in life was modest, but the riches of place and belonging more than made up for it. The showcasing of shadcab biographies is another note added to Labour's background music, a spectrum of subtle, preparatory melodies before the leadership start playing (what they hope will be) an election-winning symphony.
Now in the most comfortable position Labour has been under Starmer's leadership, these soft, human interest stories aren't going to do any harm. I think having the likes of Phillipson talking about life on free school dinners aren't about to put anyone off, nor would growing up in a council property. Having stories filling up the press about how authentic leading Labour MPs are is good optics as far as LOTO are concerned. But what can and, judging by the polls, is turning off people the party must keep on board are the continually stressed socially conservative themes and the studied refusal to articulate the aspirations of the new Labour base versus the powerful vested interests Starmer has spent his leadership courting. Generation rent don't have council properties but, politically speaking, there are plenty of other homes available.
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7 comments:
All the "we are from such humble origins", trivial 'optics' bullshit vomited out by the Starmerite spin doctors and their Guardian/Independent/New Statesman cronies is actually just so much Westminster bubble irrelevance in this day and age, Phil - when the majority of the populace , certainly the mass of former and current core Labour voters, are facing a perfect storm of living standards crisis (new rapid inflation, ever less secure employment, static/falling real wages), ever more insecure /unaffordable housing , an ever-accelerating covid crisis - directly impacting the availability of core NHS services - and an NHS being engineered to collapse anyway - to be handed out in chunks in England to the private Healthcare multinationals in 44 Integrated Care System blocs.
Real world intersecting crisise are now increasingly overwhelming the impact of the political elite's distracting spin machine, of all the main parties. In the political wings of this smug Westminster theatre of our corrupt bourgeois democracy await the so far only yet emerging fragments of what in time will be the UK's very own disastrous political alternative - NOT the radical Left, but, as in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Hungary, etc, the radical populist Far Right - with their deceptively 'anti elite' rhetoric and poisonous scapegoating , socially divisive, messages.
Meanwhile the Labour and Westminster-centric commentariat, whether on this blog, or The Guardian, etc, will blithely maunder on about the trivial 'optics' games of the various factions of the theatre of our political class - oblivious to that ever-increasing roar of the game-changing torrent of radical neo fascist political formation that will eventually roar down the political pike (as we saw as a harbinger in the temporary but massive voting rise of the Brexit Party during the EU MEP elections) - to act as the toxic 'tribunes' of a huge cohort of our most deprived and poorer citizens - utterly deserted by NuLabour2 , after the short , failed, temporary insurgency of the Corbynite Left, 2015 to 2019 - and treated with utter contempt by the uncritically pro EU Corbynite Left itself during the 2019 EU Second/People's Referendum Vote and 2019 General Election campaigns. .
The politics of Working class aspiration fall into the same area as woke in my view, both serve ruling class interests. Both are built on the bullshit narrative of toxic masculinity, because as the factories and shipyards disappeared there was no longer a need for that kind of exploitation. So suddenly those who were the most deeply exploited by this system were suddenly the most toxic, the most detestable, and the most undesirable. Instead of, can we really really thank you for your hard sweat and tears, it was a now can you all fuck off and die. There is gratitude for you!
And this is where working class aspiration comes in. The main aspiration for the working class is to be middle class! The main aspiration for working classes is to escape. This narrative only holds if there is no longer a need for that kind of labour anymore, and those doing that kind of labour must be really thick, right?
What an insult to generations of exploited workers, which is what Labour is nowadays, an insult to labour, and anyone supporting Labour is insulting labour.
“to act as the toxic 'tribunes' of a huge cohort of our most deprived and poorer citizens - utterly deserted by NuLabour2 , after the short , failed, temporary insurgency of the Corbynite Left, 2015 to 2019 - and treated with utter contempt by the uncritically pro EU Corbynite Left”
I went on a car journey recently with such a ‘deprived’ person, and they were trying to sort out their housing situation with the council. Due to health issues they were eligible for a bungalow but it was taking a lot of time to sort out so they were stuck in their shit hole of a flat (it really was a shit hole as that is where we were driving to!), and during the car journey, it was a constant stream of, “If I were just off the boat I would be straight to the top of the queue”
To be honest I didn’t know if total contempt or utter pity was the right attitude. I was certainly crying inside!
I think we have been using housing as a good excuse for anti refugee sentiments for perhaps 100 years or more now. Well, if the ‘deprived’ haven’t figured out yet that refugees are not the problem then they will continue living in ‘deprivation’ no matter how much we bleat or sympathise or decry.
I think the left need to show much much more contempt than they do actually.
So Anonymous above thinks the correct, useful, response of the 'Left' to the misdirected anger of the disabled citizen he cites above - blaming immigrants, rather than Tory housing policy, for his/her lack of a home is "I think the left need to show much much more contempt than they do actually."
Well, that crass attitude by the largely relatively privileged, largely middle class, contemporary UK Left , is precisely what drives the poorer working class ex Labour voter into the hands of the radical , scapegoating populist Far Right ! And did do in the 1930's too , for instance in the East End of London , where the British Union of Fascists had considerable success recruiting amongst the working class homeless and slum landlord over-rented oppressed tenant workers, by scapegoating the then more recent incomer Jewish refugees and local Jewish citizenry generally. As is well documented, the Communist Party of the time had a major impact in turning this around by helping organise rent strikes across the ethnic/religious divisions of our class.
The contempt that the mainly middle class , securely housed, in secure jobs, Left in the UK currently feels for the poorer working class people super-oppressed by the insecure , low paid, job market - (which only grew apace on the back of the unlimited labour supply of the EU over the last twenty years), and the resulting desire of so many of these poorer workers to leave the EU, was the reason so many have now deserted Labour entirely, and in turn have matching contempt for the abstract 'No Borders' virtue signalling of that smug middle class Left.
With attitudes towards our poorer working class citizens , and their very real daily struggles for survival, like yours , Anonymous, the recruitment of masses of the abandoned poorer UK working class citizens to the Far Right will be a cinch !
The debate above (between Anon and Unknown) well illustrates the bankruptcy of the modern Left, as Dialetician remarks in the previous thread, a result of the historic abandonment of class-based analysis and any thread of socialism.
Actually, the working class has been impacted by mass immigration (really, since 1997) given that housing stock hasn't kept up with population growth, and Brexit has actually been a huge boost to many on the lower rungs of the ladder, basically all of my family is better off now there is a scarcity in their respective professions.
Yes, no Brexit and open borders might benefit the economy, and thereby the middle class, but only while making it disproportionately tougher for those at the bottom. Not that I thought Brexit was a good idea, but then, I wasn't at the bottom.
On the other hand, BCFG's swipe at working-class aspiration (which can only have come from someone who was not born working class) is absurd - Marx was not against ambition, he was for equality, so one could aspire to be a doctor or a teacher but not be considered better, or earn more, than a shipbuilder.
It seems to be the Left abandoned the working class because it simply abandoned socialism, and sought to shore up its own position while maintaining a sense of superiority, the usual bourgeois trick. Nothing to see here, move along.
«given that housing stock hasn't kept up with population growth»
Housing stock in the UK is overabundant, and house prices are falling in most of the country as a result.
But the better analysis is no look at jobs: there are too many jobs where housing is scarce, in most of the south-east, and there are too few jobs where housing if overabundant, most of the rest of the country.
That was and is deliberate policy by Conservatives, LibDems, New Labour to pump up housing cost inflation, as their core voters are affluent property owners in the Home Counties and London. Simple class politics.
«and Brexit has actually been a huge boost to many on the lower rungs of the ladder, basically all of my family is better off now there is a scarcity in their respective professions.»
Brexit has actually increased immigration between 2016 and 2020, as EU immigration has fallen a lot, and third world immigration has increased a lot.
Worker shortages are almost entirely due to widespread COVID-19 issues, The workers issues; The USA and Vietnam did not recently leave the EU, yet:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/business/boris-johnson-shortages-britain.html
“Wages in some industries are rising because employers can’t find enough workers. That’s not a path to long-term growth, analysts say.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-03/vietnam-factories-struggle-to-bring-back-workers-after-covid-shutdowns
“These days, many manufacturers are limping along with 70% or less of their workforce as employees resist returning to their sewing machines and metal presses. While that percentage is an improvement from last summer, when thousands of factories like Dung’s were shut down entirely, most companies remain months away from reaching full production capacity.”
Many EU workers have returned to the EU, but that was not because of brexit, but because they wanted to be with their families during the epidemic.
https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2021/05/26/the-2020s-disruption-you-aint-seen-nothing-yet/
“Change over year in RTI payroll employees by 'NINo' nationality"
After brexit the Conservative plan is to boost even more third world immigration, first with easy immigration for millions of HK residents, and now:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/01/uk-ministers-eager-to-ease-immigration-rules-for-indian-citizens
“UK ministers eager to ease immigration rules for Indian citizens”
the historic abandonment of class-based analysis and any thread of socialism.
Actually, the working class has been impacted by mass immigration (really, since 1997) given that housing stock hasn't kept up with population growth, and Brexit has actually been a huge boost to many on the lower rungs of the ladder, basically all of my family is better off now there is a scarcity in their respective professions.
Yes, no Brexit and open borders might benefit the economy, and thereby the middle class, but only while making it disproportionately tougher for those at the bottom. Not that I thought Brexit was a good idea, but then, I wasn't at the bottom.
On the other hand, BCFG's swipe at working-class aspiration (which can only have come from someone who was not born working class) is absurd - Marx was not against ambition, he was for equality, so one could aspire to be a doctor or a teacher but not be considered better, or earn more, than a shipbuilder.
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