Corbyn’s Labour of the Few
Jeremy Corbyn was, in the first instance, the leader that socialists thought they wanted. With limited understanding of his competence as a national party leader, or of his ability to bring a country together, many on the left painted Corbyn’s blank socialist canvas with their expectations and ideals, hoping for a strong counter to a tired regime of austerity.
Over time, the sand of Corbyn’s actions and policies fell, with increasing pace, into unresolved, taboo fault lines in the Left. Friction eventually caused these cracks to split, and the only ‘many’ that the party faced were those who had rejected them, including many of the working class. Corbynistas increasingly looked around to realise that they had become the few.
So, what went wrong? Why did Labour not appeal to those that it so desperately wanted to help? The party had an abundance of educated and liberal talent, armed with data and knowledge on economic inequality. Piketty published his book, Starbucks avoided their tax, and Uber failed to pay its workers a fair wage. Labour had a potential match made in heaven of increasing academic knowledge and a ripe socio-economic environment. Now was surely the time to rebalance the economy and tilt it towards those who had been left behind. Yet once the olive branch was extended, it was determinedly snapped off.
Why? Because Labour and its educated elite only wanted to help the disadvantaged on their own, narrow terms. Rather than working with the working class, and for the working class, Labour’s desperation for socialist ideals led it to focus on an abstract higher level without focusing on those it professed to want to help. Spending some time actually listening to the people, the party may have come to realise that alongside the hardship of austerity was an emerging crisis of community. In the long run, it became apparent that this crisis of community, and of identity, was in fact the single most important differentiating electoral issue. And perhaps, it has always been a critical factor. In the end, Labour’s shallow anti-austerity policies captured the voter’s mind and not their hearts.
Arguably, austerity policies even increased the importance of local culture and identity. Humans are simple: in times of need we do not turn to increasing income, but instead we seek omfort from those around us. This includes what cultural norms we can rely on for a sense of ease and predictability, and whether we feel part of a community that gives meaning and feels like something greater.
Put bluntly: it’s not only the economy, stupid; it’s also culture, identity, and meaning. Corbyn’s message of acting for the many and not the few was always an economic argument, and nothing else. This meant that, instead of rallying the country, Corbyn represented the nadir of a Labour party that more closely came to replicate the societal insensitivities of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative party than any party since the 1980s.
The famous Labour parties of history each represented a national spirit and a unifying ideal: from Bevan’s founding of the NHS, to the support of struggling miners and workers across the country, ending with Blair’s carefully crafted identity of an upwardly mobile Britain. Instead, Jeremy Corbyn created a Labour party more distant from the British working classes than perhaps at any time in its history, despite having arguably the most radical socialist economic policies. To address this failure, and fulfil the latent needs of the majority of people in Britain right now, Labour needs to define, promote and embrace a no-shame British culture and identity
Many on the left may be wary of supporting a cause that appears antithetical to their values of diversity. The Labour party prides itself in being the political home of minorities across the UK. This is, and should remain, a critical and integral mission that the Labour party must not lose sight of. However, supporting minorities in their diversity is only the first step in the proess. The second step must be to create a narrative where minority culture can find a home in an overarching true modern British sense of self and identity. The Labour party must aim to help craft this identity. Ultimately, this will also help to achieve the economic goals of the party: successful and equitable economic parity is wholly easier to achieve when a nation has a broad consensus of shared identity and togetherness.
The current state of play leaves the Conservatives in control of what it means to be British. A barrier for Labour exists with those members who are either staunchly focused on economic issues, or who typically feel unease at a sense of British identity, equating it more closely with membership of the English Defence League.
Infuriatingly for much of the modern day working class, many of today’s Labour voters often believe that those who voted for Brexit must have been deceived, mistaken, or downright stupid. This centres primarily on the educated, liberal left-wing approach of purely analysing economic gain in policy decisions. Arguments on self-determination, culture or immigration are all dismissed in the name of economic gains, with a route to community purely envisaged through the redistribution of wealth. Despite these assertions of an ill-informed vote; as scientific experiments go, it is unlikely that a mass of 17 million people has all been hoodwinked.
The irony is that a Corbynite would clearly aim to protect the cultural space of an alienated minority in London who desired a comforting blanket norms and values, but would not extend that sympathy to that same individual seeking a British identity. We all, no matter what our socio-economic bracket, need to feel part of a group and part of something more meaningful.
It is the Conservatives’ ability to represent such a sense of British values, and therein a sense of meaning and place in the world, that drives them to consecutive electoral victories. Indeed, Conservatives are fighting Labour on two battlegrounds; one economic, and one sociocultural. On the economic battleground, the battle is closely fought, with each side landing jarring blows, forcing the other to evolve and strike back harder and stronger. On the national sociocultural battleground, however, Conservative foot-soldiers enjoy the comforts of an unseasonably warm British summer’s day; the enemy remains in their bunker.
This is why, with all their clear flaws, inherent mismanagement and even examples of Islamophobia, the Conservative party has stood above the Labour party in the last decade. They offer the majority of the British people a sense of protecting a semblence of values and identity where the Labour party has been timid to follow.
It is simply not enough to allow breathing room for cultural minorities without establishing what our culture is actually about. Being liberal to other senses of identity does not mean being agnostic to our own national identity. The Labour party must attempt to craft its own proud version of British values: its future may depend on it.
