“I feel like Labour used to be for the working class… That’s how they got their votes this time around. But when they actually came in, they were not for the working class. They were more for the middle class.”
That is a quote that leads this week’s New Statesman report on the by-election in Gorton and Denton. The story is headlined: “In Gorton and Denton, the Muslim vote is fracturing. Voters have decisively turned against Labour.”
So, working class or middle class? (For the purposes of this examination, we can only use these terms, though readers will appreciate that the terms no longer have the same resonance that they did.)
Potential conflict lies in its founding principles
But once again we see the problem which continues to dog Labour and for which so far there seems no acceptable solution. The dichotomy lies in the party’s founding principles, which straddled working class interests and broader humanitarian and internationalist views; and almost made of it two parties.
One of those original principles was the parliamentary representation of the working classes, though clearly not all the working class adhered to the idea of socialism and internationalism.
Another principle was the belief in international cooperation and socialist solidarity, which it was thought provided the basis for working class betterment. It was these credentials that drew support from the altruistic and idealistic middle class.
Thatcherism revealed Labour’s secret delusion
So the seeds of differing interests were sown, though it took some time to take root. It was probably Margaret Thatcher who brought about the most telling split, and deliberately. She wanted a home-owning and aspirational working class, who could see how their new interests diverged from their traditional political roots, and her electoral success showed that she had hit the right button.
At the time, there was a sense among some Labour voters that those plumping for Thatcher were in some way betraying the cause, even though those they disapproved of were only after all voting for their own working class self-interests. It just wasn’t the idealised interests which had become romanticised, and didn’t take account of them wanting to join the bourgeoisie and vote Conservative.
Every Labour MP wants to be a working class hero
So some of the party’s more ambitious supporters, wanting to get on, were affronted at the criticism that they were letting down their own people. Newly envisioned working class interests and those who were disappointed at where the working class were going became clearly at odds.
This split is what increasingly divides the party, and it looks unbridgeable. (Though it has to be said the split tends more to be between the members and the leadership.) Culturally, Labour MPs all want to be heroes of the working class. None want to be heroes of affluent young graduates in the south of England, which is where much of their current support lies. But these days, many of the party’s ‘traditional voters’ identify with Reform, and of course over the Starmer years we have seen Morgan McSweeney overtly move Labour shamelessly rightwards, to win them back.
Gaza reintroduces the old clash
That strategy has proved catastrophically ineffectual, not attracting back the Reform-inclined working class, but alienating those who had become their voting base among younger and more professional groups. It remains to be seen how McSweeney’s departure will change the party’s culture and strategy.
The by-election comes too soon to judge. No part of Gorton and Denton is considered particularly affluent. But there is a strong Muslim electorate, who patronisingly are always assumed to vote Labour. (Presumably because they are assumed also to be naturally working class.) One issue which we know concerns this group is Gaza, predictably. Muslim voters are outraged at Labour’s position.
Which should win: founding ideals or traditional Labour voters?
But this concern is more attuned to that original Labour principle of internationalism and the brotherhood of man, and there is a further irony. We understand from canvassing that many of these disgruntled Labour voters are apparently heading over to the Greens, who for many represent the most woke of middle class political ideals.
So where lie the successors of that original working class who Labour was established to serve? Is it the people who the party has traditionally represented, now socially conservative and turning away from Labour’s early ideals? Or is it those founding ideals that Labour should champion, accepting that they lie no longer in socially conservative Britain but in the outward-looking ideals that gave them their historic fervour?
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