Labour’s ‘impossible coalition’
Starmer knows what steps to take to claim power, but he will always be drowned out by the social progressives who overran the party structure and support base during the Blair and Corbyn years. This is a battle he will always lose.
The 2019 General Election was the Labour Party’s worst result since 1935, as their previously reliable working class support base abandoned them across their Northern heartlands.
Although a dramatic defeat, the headlines were focused on Labour’s old core vote defecting so heavily - by double-digits in numerous constituencies - to the Conservatives. Even former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s seat of Sedgefield, located in County Durham, became one of Labour’s many fallen fortresses.
As soon as dawn broke, the finger-pointing began. Candidates who lost a seat on the night, such as Caroline Flint and Ruth Smeeth, pinned the blame on Jeremy Corbyn’s lack of leadership qualities. Others mentioned that the party’s wobbly stance on the big B word threw millions of voters into rival parties with a clear vision on the issue, particularly the Conservatives, as Labour haemorrhaged support in areas which voted heavily to leave the European Union. This revealed the deep split within the party which Corbyn had tried to sweep under the rug in fear of electoral suicide; it is why Labour were so unclear and ambiguous in this key area of policy.
Corbyn may have left in disgrace, but Sir Keir Starmer has been bequeathed the same impossible task of uniting two opposing groups, whose worldviews are incompatible with one another, under the Labour banner if he is to have any hope of attaining power.
These warring factions are the middle class, metropolitan-minded, university educated progressives (created during the Blair years) and Labour’s traditional white working-class voting block (who have already said their good-byes to their old political home). The progressives despise the very existence of the nation-state, viewing Britain’s customs, history and culture as inherently evil and in need of a thorough makeover - with dynamite, preferably. The socially conservative white working class, on the other hand, have noticed that they do not benefit from mass immigration which results in depressed wages and cultural erosion, and causes a severe shortage in housing and school places for their children. This leads to a lock of horns with the open-border progressives who treat the vague terms of ‘diversity and inclusivity’ as an article of faith.
The progressives also religiously cling to the politics of identity and privilege and are world-leading experts in unearthing instances of racism and other forms of discrimination which are always invisible to the general public – the late Senator McCarthy would be proud. It goes without saying that the white working class does not buy the narrative that they have the upper hand in a society coupled with a political class that has ignored their concerns for generations, nor do they see themselves as bigots in need of re-education.
This is why Starmer has begun to declare that the Labour party, and any Prime Minister that it may plant in Ten Downing Street, is proudly patriotic (to the anger of the more radical wing of his party). It is also why he attempted (in vain) to keep the Black Lives Matter movement at arm’s length, originally calling it a ‘moment’, knowing that the organisation’s extreme agenda (abolishing the police and so forth) is deeply unpopular.
Starmer knows what steps to take to claim power, but he will always be drowned out by the social progressives who overran the party structure and support base during the Blair and Corbyn years. This is a battle he will always lose.
