For example, 11% of Labour's 2024 coalition fall into the 'Reform curious' category. And if all of them switched their allegiance at the next election, all other things being equal the party would shed 123 seats. Blimey, that sounds serious. In other parts of the country the problems are worse. In seats where Reform came second, 13% of Labour voters are open to swapping Keir Starmer for Nigel Farage. In Scotland, potential defectors are pegged at around 18% of the vote. A case of keep calm, carry on scapegoating the immigrants, and everything will be alright. Right? No. The polling finds 29% of the 2024 Labour coalition are 'Green curious', and 41% are prepared to support the Liberal Democrats under the right circumstances. And those said circumstances cover substantive lurches to the right.
The Reform-curious tend to share similar demographic characteristics with Reform voters at large (white, older, disproportionately male), are more socially conservative than the rest of the Labour base, and for 66% of whom immigration is the key political issue. But these positions are "worn lightly". For example, p.34 shows the long distance between the Reform curious and actual Reform supporters, even though they're on the right of Labour's coalition. For the latter, anti-immigration, anti-Green measures, and their antipathy to "woke" is baked into their world views. For the Reform curious Labour voters, it's more of an inclination.
This is important, because it suggests rightist tendencies within Labour's coalition could be overcome without too much bother. However, capitulating to them would be devastating. The centrepiece of Akehurst's research is an experiment which measured the weighted sample's responses to Labour adopting certain policies (p.67). It finds that leaning right on immigration keeps a few percentage points of the Reform curious on board, whereas the most extreme position - banning all immigration - could reach into the Reform vote itself. But the price paid would be the mass abandonment of the party by left wing voters. And this is after many liberal and left wing voters had already gone elsewhere in 2024. Going right secures negligible benefits at significant cost.
How might Labour avoid this fate? By not shifting right. Akehurst establishes that many of the Reform curious are "economically populist", or in straight forward terms, left wing on materialist issues. Workers rights, tackling inequality, rebuilding public services, and wealth taxes are much more popular with this group than Reform voters at large. And, electorally speaking, it's the sweet spot. Avoiding the ground favoured by the right and pushing populist economic messages against entrenched interests loses no votes to the left, and crucially none to the right either. The study does not look at voters who went elsewhere last year, but as there is a growing progressive majority in this country, such positioning could recapture votes lost and go a long way to secure the party its second term.
Picture the scene when these findings lit up the Downing Street radar on Monday morning. Will Labour alter its policy direction in light of this evidence? Will it change their strategy where the ignominious collapse of the Democrats and its centre left brethren on the continent have so far failed to convince? I'm sorry to say Morgan McSweeney is likely to file this report in the trash folder. This isn't because he genuinely thinks the path to re-election lies through racist posturing, but that his project - and that of Starmer's more generally - is about managing the politics in capital's interest. This means patrolling the political terrain so things like hope and raised aspirations are shot down if they so much as peer out of their foxholes. This government has constructed a fiscal fiction designed purposely to dampen expectations, and is refusing to countenance taxes on capital and wealth because, well, the more class conscious sections of our rulers fear where that might lead. The data is inconvenient, because it's at cross purposes to the government's project. And so into the bin this useful and interesting piece of work will go, while the "Morganiser" carries on laying the foundation for a catastrophic rout four years hence.
Image Credit
8 comments:
It seems as though the capital interests which McSweeney serves are completely unafraid of unhinged right wing populism. Why...? That's possibly the most important political question of all right now.
If they had any misgivings, then a word to their servants at Labour HQ would see the tone change overnight. Yet it doesn't happen.
Do they have a reason to fancy opening the door to Putinist fascism, or are they following essentially the same trajectory as old Joe Biden did?
Thanks for this. Yes, Labour Together (ironic title!) - McSweeney's project - having purged the left (and people like McDonnell, Abbott and Sultana 'on notice') their natural horizon will always be looking to the right.
As Jeremy Gilbert has said, the Labour right (that McSweeney helms) hates the left (whether in Labour or Greens or Lib Dems) far more than the Tories or (now) Reform.
(As the prototype for the old for the Labour Together right, many of the founding figures came from Scottish Labour - and certainly a building block for hatred of a progressive opponent - for Scottish Labour they hated nothing more than the SNP (it is a visceral hatred of the SNP with Scottish Labour). Happily Scottish Labour are cratering today! (McSweeney's wife has been parachuted into a Scottish seat (Hamilton and Larkhall) very conveniently!). Thus where Scottish Labour set the trend, Labour generally will follow - hate progressives to their left (whether in the party or outside). On this rate and with their current direction, I could see Labour more easily teaming up with Reform, in the event of a hung parliament, than the Lib Dems, Greens or certainly the SNP (bring out more union jacks!!)
Very sadly, grim times for the country and liberal progressive politics lie ahead.
Labour don't have to stray into Reform territory to nail the immigration issue, they just have to implement robust immigration policies to eliminate the commonly reported piss take scenarios that bring the system into disrepute with the public (those scenarios exist for official economic migration, for people seeking asylum via legal routes and for people seeking asylum through illegal routes).
By Kamo's standards this is a remarkably sane comment!
Unfortunately, it's a no-hoper as a strategy in the real world, because it's a whack-a-mole game which Labour cannot possibly win. Somebody somewhere will ALWAYS find a way to take the piss, and the partisan right wing press will ALWAYS report that and nothing else if that's what they want the public to be fixated upon.
Commonly reported by whom? Trump and Farage and Badenoch frequently commonly report but there is little factual information. It is just what comes into their heads.
Up pops our dear right-wing echoist, Kamo, with more of their veneered racism. A shiny surface of reason and politeness, but underneath a swirling, roiling cess pit of hatred and othering.
What are these safe. legal, and available routes for 'legal' migration? For many fleeing poverty, oppression and terror in the sadly multitude of places across the world where this is everday reality, there are none. As any human, they have the right to escape from this, and no obligation to stop until they believe they have reached a safe place. Should we condemn them because the only way to get to the UK (where they may have relatives, or speak the language, or have some connection) is to pay a smuggler? I'm sure they'd rather spend that money on a safe, 'legal' route in.
But instead we expect them to a) not get on their metaphorical bike (because that's the Tory way?) or b) go somewhere else - anywhere but here. Why? Because it's inconvenient. Sure is! Especially for them. How about addressing the issues that drive this mass exodus? No, we'd rather all that continues, thanks. In fact, we'll add to it by further encouraging genocide and war and exploitation so we can profit. Cheers!
Thanks Kamo for the faux concern and non-solutions. Stopping immigration is like trying to hold back the tide so long as we continue our destructive, rapacious, suicidal capitalist path to planetary extinction. No doubt you're enjoying the ride on the one-way train to death, but the sight of all those train surfers clinging to the roof and sides is spoiling the view. Get used to it.
Can McSweeney really be that cynical? Are he and his crew doing all this to placate the Capitalist Gods, and secure themselves some cushy roles in the future? That sounds a bit conspiracy-ish. Presumably they to an extent must believe their own messaging?
The interests of capital are those of large-scale industrial capital, which requires planning and regulation of the economy, and an ever larger single market such as the EU, not the kind of Brexitism and petty-bourgeois nationalism of Blue Labour, which has continued where the Tories left off. Its why capital hammered Truss and Trump in financial markets.
Its why they will not be at all unhappy if Labour gets replaced by the Liberals as the centre of a progressive bourgeois electoral alliance that will continue to drag votes away from the Conservatives and Labour. In he end, as the examples of Biden, Macron and Blair showed that will fail too. Its up to Marxists to build the real alternative.
Post a Comment