Just in

The folly of being divorced from reality

After all the excitements of Election night itself and the media analysis of the entrails yesterday which I (and no doubt many others) tuned to – given the general backdrop and recent prolonged paralysis at Westminster – with an inner sense that we were watching a far-reaching historical event even as it happened, perhaps today an opportunity for sober reflection.

Some of the things that occur to me are both facile but simultaneously telling.

As probably 80% of the UK electorate instinctively vote the same way at every General Election, those Parties – two of them – with a genuine chance of prevailing are really fighting for the attention of the 20% who are either prone to switching their allegiance and/or are lazy or disinterested enough not to vote at all unless, that is, something stirs them enough that this time they decide to make an exception.

Behind this, both Labour and the Tories assume that their core vote – the working class and the middle/upper class respectively – will be rock solid. Which it probably will be, unless (as on this occasion) something occurs which causes either to crumble.

Labour’s problem has always been that its intellectual contingent – largely comprised of either those successful in life but possessed of a social conscience or those steeped in socialism/Marxism with a fervent zeal and pronounced sense of purpose – (much as it would deny this) is somewhat disconnected from life ‘as it is’ for their core working class voters who, downtrodden and deprived as they may be, are essentially conservative with a small ‘C’ in their outlook.

Since the logic-defying ascent of Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour leadership, those ‘sensible’ senior figures in the Party – who, probably correctly, see the centre-ground as their target in order to achieve success – have been aghast at the ‘capture’ of the Party by an informal coalition between the Hampstead-set Corbynista intellectuals and the hard-left activists in the style of Dave Spart (to reference Private Eye’s erstwhile spoof columnist).

In this respect it is only necessary to point to Tony Blair’s three General Election victories – largely achieved by setting Labour’s controls resolutely for the heart of the centre ground – in contrast to the ignominious defeats suffered by every other Labour campaign based upon a policy platform anywhere from ‘left of centre’ to ‘way out there in socialist fantasy-land’.

The mile-deep frustration, of course, for Labour activists in the ‘lefty’ mould is the fact that the Blair approach – which represents a betrayal of every notion to which any half-decent socialist or person further left than that adheres – is the one that (historically) is the only Labour version that keeps winning.

In the Blair (victory) period the lefty activists in the Labour Party tended to spend their time wallowing in the proposition that their Utopia was in agonisingly-close touching distance, i.e. if only they could either win a victory peddling their ‘perfect’ policy platform or, alternatively, ‘take over’ control of the Labour Party whilst it was in government.

The Corbyn era emboldened them considerably. The Momentum movement began a ‘sleeping’ campaign to infiltrate the organisation whilst simultaneously Party membership grew exponentially, albeit the newbies largely consisted of bright idealistic new potential voters who were easily malleable and heavily infused with the enthusiasms and energy of youth.

If only – given the critical mass all of the above was building up – they could present their ideal policy platform to the nation … and then win a General Election … the Revolution would be within reach!

And – Ladies and Gentlemen – that is what those now in apparent control of the Labour Party have just tried to put into effect via their 2019 General Election campaign.

The trouble, of course, is that the task is far greater and more complex than just marshalling your troops in the manner of The Grand Old Duke of York (of Nursery Rhyme fame) and marching them up to the top of the hill.

Especially when firstly, a large proportion of your troops neither want to go up to the top of the hill, nor appreciate being taken for fools [sorry, that should read “for granted”].

And secondly, when elsewhere the above-mentioned 20% of the electorate who comprise the battleground in our two-party system are not (and never will be) Labour Party faithful and also can spot a ‘pig in a poke’ when they see one.

 

 

 

Avatar photo
About Simon Campion-Brown

A former lecturer in politics at Keele University, Simon now lives in Oxfordshire. Married with two children, in 2007 he decided to monitor the Westminster village via newspaper and television and has never looked back. More Posts