Opinion piece about how the Dems, er, the Labour Party, abandoned the laborer in favor of identity politics ("Racist!"), globalism and liberal extremism. Excerpts sound like he is writing about the Democrat Party, but the GOP has done some of this as well at times. I would change some things below if I were to write this, but it is an interesting study on the politics of today in both countries.
Labour’s meltdown in [the recent election] will come as no surprise to anyone who was paying attention and wasn’t blinded by ideology or fanaticism. Some of us had long warned that working-class voters across post-industrial and small-town Britain were becoming increasingly alienated from the party. ...
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[T]he woke liberals...who now dominate the party didn’t listen to us. ... They believed that constantly hammering on about economic inequality would be enough to get Labour over the line. In doing so, they made a major miscalculation: they failed to grasp that working-class voters desire something more than just economic security; they want cultural security too.
They want politicians to respect their way of life, and their sense of place and belonging; to elevate real-world concepts such as work, family and community over nebulous constructs like ‘diversity’, ‘equality’ and ‘inclusivity’. By immersing itself in the destructive creed of identity politics and championing policies such as open borders, Labour placed itself on a completely different wavelength to millions across provincial Britain without whose support it simply could not win power. In the end, Labour was losing a cultural war that it didn’t even realise it was fighting.
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...If Labour is to again be the party of the working-class...[i]t must somehow rediscover the spirit of the early Labour tradition that spoke to workers’ patriotic and communitarian instincts, and offered them a natural home. It must exploit that sweet spot in British politics that marries demands for economic justice with those for cultural stability. It must move heaven and earth to reconnect with voters in Britain’s hard-pressed post-industrial and coastal towns who looked on bewildered as their communities were subjected to intense economic and cultural change, and felt that Labour was indifferent to their plight. It must rekindle a politics of belonging built around shared values and common cultural bonds. And, crucially, it must be unremittingly post-liberal in perspective and policy development.
But, to achieve any of that, Labour must stop treating the traditional working-class as though they were some kind of embarrassing elderly relative. It must learn to respect those who, for example, voted for Brexit, oppose large-scale immigration, want to see a tough and effective justice system, feel proud to be British, support the reassertion of the role of the family at the centre of society, prefer a welfare system to be based around reciprocity – something for something – rather than universal entitlement, believe in the nation state, and do not obsess about multiculturalism or trans rights.
Such people were once welcomed by the Labour party and felt entirely comfortable voting for it; but now so many of the party’s activists look upon these voters as if they were a different species altogether. And the price has been paid in millions of lost votes.
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...Labour stands today at a crossroads. [It] can choose either to plough on in the delusional belief that working-class voters really would support their philosophy if only they could be shaken from their false consciousness, or instead engage in an honest and frank debate about why things went so disastrously wrong and what it might take to put them right.
We are witnessing the beginnings of a fundamental realignment in British politics. The old tribalisms are crashing down around us. ...
Link: Is this the end for Labour?