At the end of last year, the voters returned a pretty damning judgement on Jeremy Corbyn and the wider Labour Party. But often, what was heard on doorsteps was that voters felt judged by Labour: on social issues, on Brexit, on the kind of lives they were living and providing for their families.
Labour leadership candidate Lisa Nandy has described Labour’s approach at the recent general election as ‘too paternalistic’ and she’s not wrong. But it wasn’t just the endless, unbelievable giveaways promised that left the electorate feeling disempowered. It was the sense of fatherly disapproval that voters felt from Labour. It’s a particular type of paternalism—the kind that always makes you think of the phrase “You’re not going out dressed like that!”
Some have reacted to this by arguing that Labour should give up its progressive social programme while retaining its economic radicalism. Some that they should give up their economic radicalism instead. Both sides are missing the point.
Labour cannot and should not give up its progressive values in either direction. For a start, to do so would be completely inauthentic—something voters dislike more than almost anything else. Voters don’t want Labour to pretend to be something they are not. They just don’t want Labour to pretend they aren’t who they are.
Labour has a terrible habit of projecting their own most radical instincts onto the electorate and just expecting them to be true through force of will. Just as Labour’s internal politics became a contest of who could shout the loudest in the highest numbers, so too did Labour’s approach to the electorate. Instead of trying to persuade a coalition by making a pitch to swing voters, they tried to bully, distort and imagine one into existence.
It is a truism that the Labour Party forgot that Tory votes count double: one extra vote for you and one fewer for your opponent. That’s why winning over people who have once, or might again, vote Tory matters so much. For Labour to have any chance to do anything at all—radical or not—they have to win elections first.
I have long argued that Labour members should ban the words “Tory voters” from their vocabulary. If you start from the premise that someone a Tory voter is who someone is, rather than voting Tory being something they have done, you write them off as a potential vote for Labour. You forget that they might be persuadable—and so don’t put in the hard work to do so.
Instead of putting in that hard work, Labour members spent years calling each other Tories as the worst insult they could think of. This leads to a misunderstanding that all you have to do is call a Tory a Tory and the voters will instantly agree that they are evil. Take, for example, the somewhat odd tweet from Richard Burgeon accusing Tory Prime Minister of being, well, a Tory. Voters know that. They don’t care. They care about what Labour or the Tories are promising to do and what they believe can be achieved.
Here’s the truth: This Tory government is going to be the most radical of my lifetime—and I include the Thatcherite 80s in that. The changes that are going to brought about by their hard Brexit alone will change this economy in ways few understand or have reckoned with. Their aim for a low regulation, low tax society will change many lives for the worse. The implications of their constitutional reform agenda are a significant curtailing of our rights as citizens and the strengthening of an already powerful executive against the checks and balances of Parliament and the judiciary.
Never once did they champion this radicalism during the election campaign. Sure, they set it out in vague language in a manifesto they knew few would read. But they preached to already weary and nervous voters how different their lives would be under their governance. They hid their radicalism under a cloak of “Getting Brexit Done” which sounds steady and competent and achievable (however much that may not be the case).
On the other hand, Labour trumpeted their radicalism above all else. In what feels like a misreading of their unexpectedly good performance in 2017, they doubled down on change—and left behind the reassurance that had previously accompanied it.
Where the Tories kept their most radical politicians out of the limelight—where was Jacob Rees Mogg?—Labour’s most radical politicians were front and centre. The spokespeople sent out were all largely from the leftmost part of the Party, and took their radical pitch as assumed to be popular and understood rather than taking the time to empathise with the public and explain its value. So when Jeremy Corbyn was laughed at for offering a four day week, he didn’t take the opportunity to explain the progress of the Labour movement in winning weekend, the working time directive etc. He just looked grumpy and stern at the audience. Like a disappointed substitute geography teacher.
Labour should not abandon its radical ambitions to create a more progressive nation both economically and socially. These are the things the Party believes in and was established to fight for. But as a Party, they must find a way to lead, rather than preach. To coax rather than confront. Because as long as voters feel judged, they will be repelled from engaging with either progressive ideas or the Party more widely.
