This week, John Harris in the Guardian wrote his usual thoughtful column, this time critical of the increasingly cautious and sterile plans Labour propose were they to form a government. He quotes a Welsh writer, Raymond Williams: “To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing”.
For Keir Starmer’s team, it seems, hope is the enemy. It must be disparaged lest they lose control. The party’s every pronouncement sounds like groupthink, the only ideas allowed being those that reinforce the top team’s position. This leads to some absurd and untenable positions. ‘Making Brexit work’ and placing economic growth ahead of and separate from the climate crisis are not positions that any serious party of government can hold.
Starmer’s team reject radicalism, or any new ideas
It is known that Starmer’s team receive advice on radicalism based on intricate analysis of the voters’ values and concerns, and that much of that advice suggests the British public want change as never before; that this is a once in a generation opportunity. But it is also known that this advice is ignored.
A glance over the party’s battlements would show thousands of groups across the country campaigning on clean rivers, child poverty, refugees, dentistry, nuclear power, transport provision, Brexit, climate change and all the rest. In them lies passion and awareness and on-the-ground understanding of priorities. In them lies hope.
Labour ignores local campaigns because Labour knows best
They all want change. But either the party doesn’t know about them, or they ignore them.
All these people are expected instead to believe the mantra that Labour knows best. If they don’t accept that, they are likely to be treated with suspicion, and shunned. Too passionate, potentially too powerful, too far off-piste for what the party has in mind, they threaten Labour’s control. Instead of listening to them and picking their brains, the Labour leadership simply doesn’t acknowledge them. While Starmer denies saying he ‘hates tree-huggers’, they have made clear environment campaigners are persona non grata within its counsels.
Labour’s insistence on a status quo of thought
Control is a very Labour concern: that includes anything which threatens the status quo of thought and ideas which Labour increasingly upholds. In a thriving political culture, such activism would be embraced. But a thriving political culture is another description of people thinking for themselves.
Much of this is Old Labour – the patrician view that only the party has the understanding, the clout and actually the right to take on and beat the Tories. What seems unique to the present leadership, however, is the stultifying fear of failure. The fear their ideas may be found wanting – but only from the right. The fear, perhaps, that the people will always turn in preference to the Conservatives, given any doubts. But the more scared they become, the more insular and cautious they become.
What if voters think starving children is a good thing?
For example, only in February Starmer confirmed he would scrap the two-child benefit cap. Now he has abandoned that pledge. For any party of the left, taking children out of poverty would hardly qualify as radical. Yeah but… What if there are some voters who believe that starving children is a good thing? What then? Best not rock the boat…
Earlier this year, this writer was invited to join the Greens canvassing in Mid Suffolk. We encountered several Labour voters in leafy Walsham-le-Willows, perhaps surprisingly. But every one was disappointed with their party and inclined to put their cross elsewhere.
In the event, many seem to have done so. In May, the Greens won Mid Suffolk District Council handsomely.
A leadership which stands against its own party’s principles
It used to be a badge of honour among Labour members to be publicly critical of Labour’s leader, whoever it was. Not so anymore, in spite of the leadership standing against so many fundamental principles and passionately held beliefs of their members.
My colleague Mr Pecksniff notes in his weekly diary that he tried to speak to some Labour prospective parliamentary candidates about this. Usually, candidates are only too pleased to receive the attentions of the press, and so it seemed until they were told what Mr P wanted to talk about. Then it appeared they all remembered previous engagements. This may be coincidence, of course, but none of them have called back.
A clique of overprivileged Old Etonian spivs
Imagine. After 13 years of national decline and humiliation overseen by a clique of overprivileged Old Etonian spivs and their hangers-on, Labour tiptoes towards the new dawn too frightened to point out any of their failures. During that time, the Tory government has destroyed many of the fundamental pillars of what labour’s members and supporters held dear as the basis of a civilised society.
So who will be the first to speak up? Not Keir Starmer and his shadow team. Bruised and bewildered, they will fight the Tories on the Tories’ terms. Labour has had the stuffing knocked out of them and fail to recognise the importance of hope for fear it will become confused with expectation.
