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Say something, I'm giving up on you

31 Mar 23 | Re: Where it all went wrong | Link-U-Post

Among the many people wondering where Labour went wrong at the election, Mark Steel in the Independent stood out. He says, "It's almost impossible to win an election by opposing corporate greed, against a hostile media, unless you have a social movement behind you." He's right: a left-wing party can't just be a party. It has to be a movement. Greece had a movement. The SNP is a movement. Even Obama had a bit of a movement. The Labour Party does not move people. It is not a movement. It's only a party, and a pretty tedious one at that.

The Labour Party when it was founded, and when it was mighty, was a part and a consequence and a triumph of the Labour Movement. Over decades, the tide of that movement has receded, leaving the party stuck on its own, surrounded by nothing but sand. The Labour Party is now a rock pool, populated by molluscs, anemones and various other dispiriting invertebrates. And shrinking all the time thanks to the remorseless attention of the Sun.

The size of the movement vacuum becomes most apparent when you realise that the closest thing Britain has to a demagogue is Nigel Farage. Such is the craving for a politician with even one idea that Farage, with all his obvious shortcomings, talking complete nonsense, with no obvious connection to ordinary people, or any people, is able to rouse the rabble after a fashion. Explanation: the rabble wants to be roused. It craves rousing. And the rabble should be roused. Not to march on Westminster with pitchforks, but roused at least to vote, and to vote with a punch of the fist rather than a shake of the head or a shrug of the shoulders.

This is why Labour need to lurch to the left. Not because the electorate is to the left of them — it isn't, which is hardly surprising when nobody is making the case. Labour should go left because once there, they might persuade people to come and join them. It's actually a lot easier to change minds a large amount than a little. The distance between ideas isn't a physical one, it can be crossed in a second. And it's far more attractive to say "It doesn't have to be like this at all, here's what we propose instead” than to say “The current government is broadly right but here are a few vague things we'd do a bit differently."

I wrote before about that famous statement The facts of life are conservative not being wrong so much as short-sighted. If you are dull enough to accept everything in front of you, I don't doubt that the Tories are plausible. When they and their friends and their predecessors define the rules of the game, it's no surprise that they tend to win. Labour should refuse to play. They should say, we don't agree with the most basic foundations of what you are saying. We reject your system. We won't play by your rules. Your rules are not fair. Your rules were handed down to us by people who had no right to set them. The people who support and defend them do so for their own benefit and no one else's. But rules can be changed. Changing them isn't even especially ambitious. It is, in fact, the job of government to change the rules when they need changing.

I wonder whether Labour's new leader will say any of that. Is it too much to ask that the Labour Party might still get behind, or even contain, a radical?

Posted by MISS GUATEMALA at 21:11

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