What should Labour do?

It’s a new year and we’re all trying to turn over a new leaf; as much as is possible during a third lockdown. We’re trying to be better people and achieve the things we didn’t do last year. So, in that spirit, what should the Labour Party do this year to rise in the polls?

Labour needs to turn over a new leaf. There’s a huge health and economic crisis in the UK right now - not that anyone needs reminding - but the Labour Party is only 1% ahead in the most recent polls. In 2020 the government didn’t missed an opportunity to screw up, but Labour’s poll lead is within the margin of error and 41% of the population doesn’t think Keir Starmer looks like a Prime Minister in waiting (compared to 33% who do).

We all know what the problem is: Labour’s game is too defensive. To borrow a football metaphor Steven Bush used on the New Statesman podcast: Labour are playing a strongly defensive game in the hope that they’ll get lucky and the other side will concede a goal, so that they can eke out a 1-0 win. However, it just takes one screw up and the opponent gets a goal and then Labour will need 2 goals, which won’t come from playing defensively.

The alternative to defensive play

In this case, playing defensively is trying hard to avoid culture war issues and not being seen as too critical of the government during a national crisis. Taking ginger steps to avoid any cultural landmines won’t produce the ten-point poll lead Labour needs. So, what would?

Labour needs to describe a vision of how Britain would be different under a Labour government. It’s not necessary to announce specific policies at this point, when it’s so far from a general election, but Starmer and Labour need to tell a story about how the country could be different.

David Cameron did this effectively with Broken Britain, a slogan that conjured up visions of urban decay that united rural Tories and fretful, middle-class suburbanites in fits of pearl-clutching about everything that had gone wrong under the soulless technocracy of New Labour.

Constructive opposition isn’t helping Labour

It’s not enough to say where the Tories are going wrong. Starmer has consistently pointed out the mistakes that the Tories have made during the pandemic and, although Labour now have a small poll lead, the government is still polling in the high 30s. The Tories have plenty of time to switch leaders and fight a dirty campaign, filled with warnings of Labour profligacy and dog whistles about Cultural Marxism, to win the next general election.

It’s essential that Labour outline a vision for how the country will be different if Starmer is elected Prime Minister. The electorate need to believe in more than competence. They need a vision that inspires them to take a gamble on putting someone else in charge after what will be 14 years of Tory rule at the next election.

A strange voting coalition

The story that Labour should tell about how the country will be different should mainly be economic in nature. It should be focused on tackling inequality, creating jobs, providing decent housing, building infrastructure and redistributing wealth. A desire for this type of change is what unites Labour’s coalition, from young people in large cities struggling with poor quality housing and insecure work, to older people in towns with crumbling infrastructure.  

As Helen Thompson said on the Talking Politics podcast, all electoral coalitions look strange and the coalition that Labour need to assemble looks very strange indeed, filled with people with very different values and opinions. They are divided on issues such as immigration, patriotism, how they view British history and social justice. An economic message can unite these voters.

Pain points for Labour

This will be hard to do. It’s a difficult thing to outline a compelling vision of how the country will be different under Labour that the electorate can believe in. The last three Labour leaders failed to do this.

It will also be hard to avoid being dragged into a cultural war over social issues, such as statues or trans-rights. There will also be people who will try and make issues such as Scottish Independence and our relations with the EU, pain points for Labour. (Some of these people will be motivated by a genuine passion to achieve something they believe in, but they will largely succeed in causing problems for Labour and getting more Tories elected.)

Something else that will make this difficult is that the politics of debt has reared its ugly head again. The government has had to borrow substantially during the pandemic the national debt has risen and Rishi Sunak appears willing to make this an important issue again. Whether he genuinely thinks that large public debts are unsustainable or is promoting this issue as it will be tricky for Labour to navigate (or both) is a moot point.

The lesson of Brexit

Calls for austerity following a period of large public borrowing is a simple message that can be easily explained to the electorate and one that Labour has struggled to deal with in the past. However, Brexit shows that it is possible to tell a political story that transcends economics. There are things that people care about more than money, as many people were willing to be (at least a little bit) worse off in exchange for the promise of freedom that Brexit was supposed to bring.

The Leave Campaign used “Project Fear” as a means to dismiss the economic concerns over Brexit. It worked during a time of lackluster economic growth, where many were feeling the pinch of low wage growth and high costs of living. Despite this many were willing to take the risk that things could be worse in exchange for the hope they could be better.

A vision of hope

The people who voted for Brexit were barking up the wrong tree. However, they show that a story about how the future can be better than the present can make handwringing about economic constraints look timid or expose them as an argument in favour of the status quo, if enough people believe in the story of change.

Labour must offer a vision of hope and tell a story about how we can build a fairer and better economy, which works for everyone. That is Labour’s only route back to power. Playing a defensive game in the hope that the government messes up enough for Labour to eke out a narrow victory won’t work.

"File:Official portrait of Keir Starmer crop 1.jpg" by Chris McAndrew is licensed under CC BY 3.0

How well is Starmer doing as Labour leader?

As we prepare to say goodbye to the god-awful year that has been 2020, we pause for a moment to take stock in all the ways this year has been less than we hoped. Keir Starmer became Labour leader this year and although recent polls show a slight overall preference for Labour (40% vs 37% for the Tories) I had expected Labour to be further ahead at the end of a year when the economy crashed and the government mishandled a serious disease outbreak.

There’s also the fact that we were assured numerous times during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership that any other leader would be 20 points ahead and that Starmer in particular was the man to lead Labour to the sunlit uplands of a 1997 style majority.

Policy commitments

Anyway, Starmer is the leader now, for better or worse, so how well is he doing? Well, many (if not everyone) who consider themselves to be a Labour socialists or on the left of the Labour Party are not happy with Starmer's leadership. From abstaining on the Spy Cops bill to suspending Corbyn, Labour socialists have been provided with many reasons to be narked.

This annoyance with Starmer goes deeper than specific issues, even hot button issues such as the Spy Cops bill or Corybn’s response to the EHRC report. Many Labour socialists, myself included, say that what we want from the Labour Party are left-wing policies, i.e. commitments to actually doing things to improve the country. Many also claim that it is Starmer’s lack of commitment to Corbyn’s (largely popular) policy platform that is the source of their anger with him.

A typical example is Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds saying that Labour has ruled out a commitment to Universal Basic Income (UBI) in the next Labour manifesto. This didn’t go down well on my Twitter timeline (storm in a teacup, perhaps) and was seen as further evidence of the lack of left-wing policy from this opposition.

The five week wait

Looking beyond the headlines, Starmer’s Labour Party is still committed to many solid left-wing policies. These include reforming Universal Credit (UC), taxing the top 5% of earners and the Green Recovery (aka the Green New Deal).

Yes, Labour have announced that they will not seek to implement UBI in power, but they will instead change the amount of time that a new UC claimant has to wait for their first payment, which is currently five weeks. Dodds said: “People waiting five weeks for social security doesn’t make sense.”

The five week wait for UC causes immense suffering for the poorest people in society. If you need welfare, being made to wait five weeks for it drives people to destitution and homelessness. Changing or scrapping the five week wait is desperately needed.

The vibe of politics

Many Labour socialists who don’t like Starmer have argued that he will go back on this and his other policy commitments before the next general election, offering more centrist policies instead. This might be the case, but for now there is a raft of left-wing policy that Labour is committed too, from climate change to housing.

Can Labour socialists who are angry at Starmer see the future? Maybe, and you rarely lose money betting that the Labour Party will disappoint you. However, from where I stand, there is every chance that Starmer will offer a policy platform in the next general election that is to the left of the one Ed Miliband offered in 2015. So why are all the policy loving Labour socialists so disappointed in Starmer?

Stephen Bush, the political editor of the New Statesman, has said many times your impression of a politician is mainly about the vibe that is given off and not about specific policies or statements. He has also said that left-wing Labour members’ dissatisfaction with Starmer is because they don’t like his vibe. I think Bush is right. I must admit that I don’t like the Starmer vibe either. I don’t like how he talks about respect for the troops or the police like he’s ticking off the Daily Mail’s list of the most important people.

The vibe is not good. But the policy is

I don’t like the vibe of Starmer telling Labour MPs to abstain on a bill to expand the clandestine powers of the state in order to appear tough on security. (Also, how do you appear tough by essentially doing nothing?) I’m sure there’s worse vibes to come, probably on immigration and some stupid culture war issue that the right-wing press will make really important to cause pain for Labour.

This said, I’m willing to accept the shitty middle England vibe, if it’s in exchange for the policies that are being offered, such as an end to the five week wait or the green recovery, or more money for schools and hospitals, or steps to tackle homelessness and the huge numbers of people with insecure accommodation. Mouthing Daily Mail talking points about the troops and the flag costs nothing, despite the fact that I personally find it distasteful.

The policies that Starmer is offering are not my first choice. I would prefer Universal Basic Income as part of a Labour government’s welfare policy. The environmental policy that Labour ultimately offers in the next general election is likely to be more moderate than the one I would prefer, but there’s every chance that it will rise to meet the challenge of the looming environmental disaster.

Put your vote where your mouth is

I’m still willing to vote and advocate (to my tiny following) for The Labour Party as they’re offering policies to improve the lives of many people, including the poorest and most disadvantaged in society.

When Starmer became Labour leader, I assumed that I wouldn’t like some of the things he would say, such as praising the army or Winston Churchill, but if he’s willing to actually do something about poverty, homelessness and the environment then he’ll be worth voting for.

A hill to die on

Many Labour socialists who claim to dislike Starmer because of his abandonment of left-wing policies, are responding to the vibe he gives off. As Bush has said, the point where the vibe went bad for many Labour socialists was when Starmer sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey from the Shadow Cabinet. Their estimation of him then continued to go downhill with Starmer’s handling of the EHRC report.

My own view is that Starmer has mishandled the publication of the EHRC report and the suspension of Corbyn has turned this into an even bigger inter-party row than was needed. Corbyn is entitled to make a statement in his defense following the publication of the EHRC report, but at the same time Labour needs to do more to tackle antisemitism. A big intra-party row doesn’t help with putting in place a process to kick antisemites out of the Labour Party or help Labour rebuild its public image as a party that is against discrimination.

It turns out that the hill that many Labour socialists are willing to die on is the argument that antisemitism has been weaponised against Corbyn. I don’t think that everyone on the left of the Labour Party is an antisemite or that it’s antisemitic to support Corbyn. I also don’t think that the treatment of Corbyn by the current Labour leader is the biggest issue facing the left right now. The fact that unless we stop capitalism's uncontrolled rampage through the natural environment the outside world will look like The Desert of The Real from The Matrix by 2100 is the most important issue in politics.

Pro-welfare reform. Anti-environmental collapse

That’s the hill I am willing to die on. Probably literally. The most important dividing line in politics is between those who want to do what it takes to stop the looming environmental disaster and those who think dealing with it can be deferred (or that small adjustments will make the difference). Another crucial division is between those who genuinely want to use the state to help the least fortunate in society and those who want to use it to funnel money towards their mates. Next to these issues, internal Labour Party beef matters about as much as a fart in one of those tornadoes made out of fire that they have in Australia now.

Maybe it will be revealed that Starmer doesn’t take the looming climate threat seriously enough to commit Labour to the necessary radical reforms to protect the continued existence of the human race. Maybe he will go back on commitments to policies that will help the poorest in society to try to win the votes of Daily Mail reading curtain-twitchers. If so, then I wouldn’t be able to justify voting for him. Until then, a vote for Labour remains the best way to make society better.

I’m not about to run out and get a Starmer tattoo or claim he’s the greatest Labour leader ever, but if Labour socialists are serious about wanting left-wing policy then that’s still what Labour stands for. The fight for left-wing policy should be the hill we are willing to die on and the fact that we don’t like the vibe - however disappointingly Sainsbury’s Saturday afternoon shopping trip the vibe is. So far Starmer still has my vote, but it’s a long time until the next election so I’ll have to keep watching.

"File:Official portrait of Keir Starmer crop 1.jpg" by Chris McAndrew is licensed under CC BY 3.0

It’s a mistake for Labour to want to talk about race and economic issues separately

How should Labour respond to the recent Black Lives Matter protests across the UK? I know how I feel about them: systematic racism is a big problem in the UK, you just have to look at the higher death rates from Covid-19 for people from Black and minority ethnic (BAME) groups people to know that the UK has a problem. I want the Labour Party and its leadership to be a vocal supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement and work to dismantle systemic racism wherever it is found.

One of the sad things about politics today is that there are voters who would be put off voting Labour if Keir Starmer became a prominent supporter of BLM. Part of me wants to say “fuck those guys, we don’t need them.” However, I don’t know if Labour can win power by only appealing to people who support BLM. It seems unlikely. 

Labour needs to win an election to be in power so that it can implement meaningful reforms that address systemic racism. For example, Labour could carry out the recommendations of the Lammy Review: “An independent review into the treatment of, and outcomes for, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic individuals in the Criminal Justice System.” The Tories aren’t going to do this, but Labour needs to win power first.

Conscience against compromise

This leads to the age-old political dilemma: conscience against compromise. Say what you feel or play a tactical game to win power and then make changes. I don’t envy the position that Starmer is in. Making the wrong strategic decision on BLM, or a host of other issues, could hurt Labour’s electoral chances, prevent them from winning power and then using the power of the state to address systemic racism in Britain.

It appears that Starmer has chosen compromise. He was photographed taking the knee, in a show of solidarity with those protesting the murder of George Floyd by police in the US, but he also criticised the removal of a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol. I can see the pragmatism in this approach, it aims to keep onside voters who support the removal of the statue and voters (and potential voters) who weren’t in favour of it.

It’s worth bearing in mind that a recent YouGov poll showed that 40% of those asked supported “the statue being removed, but not in the way in which it was done” and that 33% “disapprove of the statue being removed.” This could be read as 73% of voters being opposed to the toppling of the statue. It’s a courageous Labour leader who takes a stance that 73% of the voters oppose, so I can see why Starmer has opted for compromise here.

Identity politics

It’s also worth remembering that the Edward Colston statue is just one event in a long campaign against systemic racism. A single poll on one event doesn’t mean that Labour should be shouting loudly about keeping up statues of slave traders. The poll does highlight one of the key problems for Labour: what is the story that they can tell that will unite Labour voters who were glad to see the statue torn down and those who would want to see it staying up?

The discourse around events such as the removal of the Edward Colston statue are often referred to as “identity politics”. This phrase is usually evoked by people opposed to “identity politics” as a way to dismiss the voicing of objections to systemic racism or the oppression of LGBTQ+ people. However, there are a lot of voters who are alienated by identity politics and Labour might need to win some of their votes to be in power.

There is a view within the Labour Party that it needs to stay away from issues related to identity, from Black Lives Matter to trans rights, and instead tell a story that is entirely about economics.

An economic message

A form of this argument is made in the recent report from Labour Together into the 2019 election defeat, which concludes: “Our potential voting coalition shares much common ground on economic issues”. This argument is also made in Steve Rayson’s new book about the 2019 general election: The Fall of the Red Wall.

Both of these investigations into the future of Labour recommend a focus on economic issues over identity issues. The reason is that the party’s current supporter’s beliefs on identity are divergent from the rest of the country. Only a story about a radical economic change can unite its current supporters with the supporters the party needs to win, because they are so far apart on other issues.

Race and class

It is a mistake to think that Labour can win power by telling a story about the country they want to create that is only focused on economic issues, while either talking separately about racial equality or ignoring it all together. Gary Younge recently wrote in the New Statesman that he wanted the left to “end the futile attempts to engage race and class separately.” He said: “They do not exist in silos but are two interdependent forces, among many, and they are either understood in relation to each other or are misunderstood completely.”

In his article Younge talks about how people from the BAME community are more likely to be in poorly paid service industry jobs that make them more at risk from Covid-19. He said: “For historical reasons, related to migration, some groups are more likely to be concentrated in the health service, public transport and care work, while the modern economy has created significant concentrations of certain ethnicities in cleaning, taxi driving and security.

“12.8 per cent of workers from Bangladeshi and Pakistani backgrounds are employed in public-facing transport jobs such as bus, coach and taxi driving, compared with 3.5 per cent of white people. These are all areas where workers are most at risk.”

Measures to improve the conditions for people in low paid, service industry jobs fit perfectly into the economic story that Labour wants to tell about the country, but are also part of the story about racial equality that Labour feels it needs to sideline. The two issues are fundamentally linked and can’t be talked about separately. Pushing discussion of racial equality to one side and labeling it as “identity politics” is a failure to understand the details of the story that Labour needs to tell.

Informing, not undermining, solidarity

As Younge said in his article: “The effort to relegate race, gender, sexual orientation, disability – the list goes on – to mere “identity politics” has ramped up of late. The disproportionate number of deaths among minorities, the spike in domestic violence during lockdown, the manner in which disabled people were marginalised at every step – all these factors exemplify the degree to which we have experienced this moment differently in material ways that are not, solely, about economic. Acknowledging that doesn’t undermine solidarity, it informs it.”

Labour should urgently find a story that it can connect racial equality with its economic message. Talking about racial equality is not separate from discussing jobs, education, health, economic distribution and regional inequality, all issues that Labour need to be talking about as part of their economic message to the voters. The two issues are fundamentally connected. There’s no need to separate out the “identity politics” that some voters don’t like from the economic message that they will like.

Labour needs to tell a powerful story that connects the reasons why it’s wrong that we had a statue of a slave trader in Bristol, to reasons why we have so much regional variation in job prospects, all the way through to why the economic gap between rich and poor is growing. Labour cannot tell a story that addresses some of these questions separately. It needs to tell a story that addresses them all together.

"File:Official portrait of Keir Starmer crop 1.jpg" by Chris McAndrew is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Why Labour needs a narrative about how the country can rebuild better after lockdown

Recently, I wrote about how the Labour Party needs a new narrative to start winning again. Labour needs to tell a story, which connects with the electorate, about how things would be different under a Labour government. This story needs to resonate with people outside the echo chambers of left-wing social media and reach out to people across the country.

This needs to be a story about how things will be better after the Covid-19 crisis. As I write we are still in lockdown, the virus is a major threat, people have lost of their jobs, the economy is likely to experience a huge contraction and there is no clear sign of when we’re likely to get back to anywhere near normal. Right now, people need hope to get them through this difficult time.

What would give us hope is a narrative about how the world will be better post lockdown. We don’t need a story about how we’ll get back to normal. Normal wasn’t very good for a lot of people. It wasn’t good for the people with low paid insecure work. It wasn’t good for the people on Universal Credit who are struggling unable to feed their families. It wasn’t good for the people living in poor-quality housing. It wasn’t good for the people who don’t have anywhere to live at all.

The planet cannot afford for us to go back to normal

Normal wasn’t good for the environment. We have less than 12 years to make some really serious changes to the way we live if we’re going to avert the worse of the environmental catastrophe. Before March this year, it didn’t look like it was possible for human society to change so dramatically. Then we found that, given the will to act, huge social changes can be delivered quickly. The planet cannot afford for us to go back to normal after the Covid-19 crisis. We need a new normal, for the sake of both the environment and the people who inhabit it.

There are encouraging signs that some people within the Labour Party are thinking about the need to rebuild differently after the Covid-19 crisis. In a recent Guardian article former Labour leader and current Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband said that “the current moment is a contemporary equivalent of what happened after 1945.”

He added that: “It’s never too early to start thinking about the future, to think about what kind of world we want to build as we emerge from this crisis. I think we owe it to have a sort of reassessment of what really matters in our society, and how we build something better for the future.”

Miliband gave a few more specifics saying: “I think we should be aiming for the most ambitious climate recovery plan in the world,” and that: “That should be nothing less than the government’s ambition. The old argument that you can have economic success or environmental care is just completely wrong.”

Engaging young voters

The need for this to be a green recovery is especially pressing for a key group of voters, a group that has remained loyal to Labour through Miliband’s and Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and the ups and downs of Brexit: the young. Of course in British politics, the young is everyone under 45. I don’t feel young, but apparently I am, which is nice.

The divide between young and old is one of the starkest dividing lines in politics. The young generally voted Remain and are more engaged with Black Lives Matter and trans rights. On the whole, the young favour more left-wing economic policies and, crucially, care more about the environment than the old. The environment is a key issue for us young voters and leading with this is a good way for Labour to keep the young onside.

The young are also much more likely to be hit hardest by the recession that is currently unfolding (just as we were more likely to be hit hardest by the last one). A recent study from the Resolution Foundation found that more than 600,000 more young people could become unemployed this year because of coronavirus.

Own the future

A narrative about how the country could be a better, fairer, greener place after Covid-19 is what young people need now to give them hope that something good can come from the suffering that the coronavirus has unleashed. While Tories are struggling with the present - enforcing the lockdown, keeping the economy on life support, dealing with whatever stupid thing Dominic Cummings has done this week - Labour need to own the future. They need to tell a story about what happens next.

This story will energise young voters who are already fired up about Labour. It will also reassure them that Kier Starmer’s Labour party values their support as much as Corbyn’s Labour did. It will also offer them encouragement that issues that they are concerned about, from social justice to the environment, are the ones a Labour government will champion.

A story about what a better post-Covid-19 world is what the country needs right now. It’s a story that can transcend the group of people who already support Labour, break out of the left-wing social media echo chambers and bring the country together behind the vision of a Labour government.