The politics are, on the surface, pretty straightforward. Because in Starmerland the working class are coded as Reform-supporting racists, pandering to scapegoats will turn the heads of this largely imaginary constituency. You can picture it on the nation's mobile phones. The BBC News alert pops up with Cooper's initiative, and the couple of million looking to vote for Nigel Farage at the upcoming council elections will look at it, curse the Tories' softness, and head to the polls with Labour voting intentions in their hearts. But, of course, this is not going to happen. Reform, you might recall, is a difficulty for Labour but an existential dread for the Tories, making this in strategic terms a fool's errand. Why chase after voters breaking to the right of the Tories on cultural issues instead of shoring up one's own fraying base, or making an offer that might appeal to the apparently "economically progressive" side of the artefactual Labour-Reform switcher?
There is no political mileage for Labour in pandering to the racist mischief thr right stirs up about foreign criminals. So what's the attraction? There is a joy a certain kind of middle class politician has in bureaucratically squishing little people, and especially so if one expects plaudits. Who cares about foreign criminals? They are the perfect out group, a scapegoat tailor made for scapegoating. And Labour needs its scapegoats. But there's more! Anything that is adjacent to cracking down on immigration and immigrants, according to the Tory play book is the route to political success. That Labour have imbibed this as their political common sense is illustrative of how far Keir Starmer's leadership has moved to the right. And then we have the obscene displacement activity of massaging the organs of the repressive state. Because this is a Labour government that doesn't want to do too much that might encourage people to expect more from politics, it's much easier to give the impression of being very busy. And the comparatively risk-free way of demonstrating activity without upsetting the apple cart is to lean heavily into the politics of immigration. And in so doing, the government are contributing to the huge effort made by the media and Labour's political opponents in keeping that as one of the country's top three issues.
And yet, the stupidity is their entering a race they can never win. Galaxy brain Morgan McSweeney is implying that if deportations are ramped up, work and student visas curbed, and foreign criminals seen to be getting their just desserts, then the issue will be neutralised. But it won't be. Labour supporters who are concerned about immigration are more motivated by other issues, and if they're leaning toward Reform it's in a manner akin to those who flirted with the BNP 15-20 years ago. I.e. mostly as the nuclear option among the protest vote buttons. And those that prioritise immigration do so on culturalist and outright racist grounds, and are never going to be impressed by nationality league tables of sex offenders and shoplifters. Except as ammunition for racist scapegoating, which Labour knows is likely to happen as a result of this policy. The headlines of the gutter press write themselves.
Racism as a tool of divide and rule is just as attractive to this crop of Labour ministers as it was to the Tories. And in the mean time, the base - one it can ill-afford to lose with the post-election collapse in its polling - will carry on unwinding and finding a welcome in the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, and where they're available, independent leftists.
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5 comments:
So as a counterpoint, can we have a breakdown in race/colour/nationality of familes with 3+ children, cos i sudsect its basically racist in effect. Same shit different day.
Oh for those heady days of 2015, Phil, when you got up on your hind legs to propose lovely Yvette for Labour leader….. https://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2015/08/who-i-voted-for-labour-leader.html
I propose that the distraction/displacement angle is the entire story here, and the entire reason why they're doing what they're doing. They're copying Sunak's doomed politics because they've got no power to do anything else.
They can't offer any more economic leftist policies, beyond the thin gruel which Reeves has already made enemies by daring to slip into her budget. They've clearly been given their marching orders on that.
They can't move to the right economically, because there's nowhere to go in that direction except for Trussian suicide.
Ergo, no movement on the economic axis is possible at all. They have to do their movement entirely on the social axis... Without any money to pay for it. Whilst forces with pockets of effectively unlimited depth (and troves of high value favours, which are being called in at surge rates right now to hammer at the wedge provided by the dodgy SC ruling and the Trump trade deal ultimatum) are relentlessly pushing division, division, division.
It's looking more and more like the Starmerites have been promoted to captain purely to go down with the ship.
The problems caused by unprecedented levels of net immigration to the UK are now too large, obvious and undisguised to deflect by shouting racist at anyone that notices. In fact I would say it's now counterproductive to do so, because it's such an overused and degraded stock tactic. Regardless of whether they want to explicitly admit it or not, politicians have no choice but to implicitly shape their policies around the problems of immigration. And the only reason 'nuclear options' are now part of mainstream discourse is the persistent failure to adopt sensible managed immigration policies over the last 20 or 30 years.
How many times do you think that you have to repeat this drivel in order to make it true, Kamo? You clearly don't get tired of it. Perhaps your entire mind is nothing more than a sample loop.
Endlessly repeating divisive lies and half truths, until the meagre mental defences of the more vulnerable half of the population simply cave in, seems to be the only political game with any commitment and money behind it now.
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