Labour shouldn’t fear culture wars.
In their desperation to avoid hot button social issues, Labour look inauthentic and unappealing to both sides of the cultural divide, with voters to their right AND their left going elsewhere.
Labour have been in an awfully tricky position regarding assembling a coalition for a while, and Keir Starmer simply inherited it. The 2019 collapse occurred because one side of Labour’s voting coalition help up and came out, but the other side either stayed home or switched to the Brexit Party and Johnson’s Tories, over a hot button issue (the EU) which Labour had placed itself on the wrong side of in their eyes.
What’s the “new leadership” strategy for straddling this near impossible task, may we ask? Well, so far, it’s been almost worse than coming out and advocating a People’s Vote (a Starmer special from the 2019 manifesto), because it’s not just loosing one side of the coalition, it’s loosing both.
Keir Starmer’s strategy of avoiding anything to do with culture wars at all costs has made clear to both the more rural, older, traditional homeowning Labour voters, and the younger, more metropolitan renters that he isn’t on their side and won’t fight their corner. As Aaron Bastani has observed a balkanisation of Labour’s vote is occurring to its left and its right, peeling off Labour conservatives one side, and Labour progressives to another.
Is this inevitable, and is there any kind of way around it? At first glance the answer would appear to be no, and the most pessimistic or the Starmerite defenders will tell you “all well and good saying this, but if Starmer becomes a raging liberal he’ll loose the entire red wall and it’ll be 2019 Mark 2”. I don’t think this is true necessarily, at least not in such explicit terms or in such a fatalist way, but you can see the logic there and it makes sense, it feels persuasive, and it’s presumably what Team Starmer must think.
I don’t think Labour should fear the culture wars, they need to take their chances and face up to these things with their core values loud, proud, intact, otherwise what’s the bloody point? They’re on course to loose the next GE either way. Now I agree with the logic that we shouldn’t, and Labour certainly shouldn’t, get bogged down thigh deep in this deluge of culture war nonsense, or fall for the bait and get outraged at EVERYTHING, playing right into the radical right’s hands.
But there’s a difference between not biting for performative nonsensical crap that real progressives don’t give a shit about, and there’s neglecting or even pushing back on seminal social progressive issues, that anyone worth their salt with a grain of principle would stand behind, show conviction, take the culture war flack; otherwise everything will always be on terms set by the right.
When it comes to BLM; Starmer shouldn’t be aggressively pushing back when the mention of “Defund The Police” comes up, the tone and attack (which gained the approval of Nigel Farage by the way) alienates the young and puts him on the wrong side of a seminal social movement, when asked about Defund The Police he could simply say “that isn’t Labour party policy, nor will it be, but we recognise the strength of feeling here, and we want to work with this movement and other racial justice movements to craft progressive public policy regards race and policing”. Not that hard is it? That would keep progressives on side, wouldn’t sound like a “fuck you” to minorities, and it isn’t going to turn off anyone else, because they won’t mind either way.
Again, when confronted with a far right plant caller spouting bile about how Britain should model off Israel with “self determination for whites”, Starmer sure as hell shouldn’t say “we all have those rights” he should have said something along the lines of “I condemn people booing, what you do if your choice regards taking the knee, but this was clearly a hostile gesture towards a racial justice movement, and I condemn in the strongest possible terms the racist conspiracy theory this caller has just spouted on your programme”. The only people turned off by this would be genuine, actual racists; and they won’t vote for the goddamn Labour party either way.
I think Labour should stand loud and proud on hot button issues, and dismiss bullshit arguments about flags and the national anthem designed to distract. Sure, if a flag here or there is needed, I really don’t care. If you want to wear a poppy and say the right things sometimes, again, I don’t care; this is politics. But they should back and stand up for flagship and seminal progressive movements and causes, not instinctively side with the police, the security state, and racist football fans. This will loose them a few potential voters, sure, but it’s their only shot of taking a principled stand and building a coalition for anything remotely left of centre.
People actually respect when you stand loud and proud for something, much more than when you deny it but there’s innuendo about it. Jeremy Corbyn excelled in 2017 when he was honestly and truly himself, the pundits said this would mean he’d be slaughtered, but he got 40% of the vote because people liked his outlook, and didn’t care if they didn’t agree with every little thing he’d ever said or stood for; they respected his authenticity.
This fell apart in 2019 when the Brexit dilemma and compromise policy, piled on with years of parliamentary wrangling and calculated capitulating over Brexit, made voters (wrongly) view Corbyn as “just another politician” who lied, who calculated, and who they couldn't trust. The big variable was the perceived loss of authenticity. So the lesson for Starmer is to precisely NOT be a calculating focus group led turd, as that way lies great defeat.
Why would Keir Starmer see these facts and become the most obviously calculating, two faced, inauthentic, political actor this decade? Because he and his team around him don’t understand how you win in the 2020s, they don’t understand the era of spin is over, and people despise inauthentic technocrats. This could well be the factor that dooms Starmer; he’s being so cautious as not to offend potential voters, and to be seen as standing for all things for all people, every group sees him as standing against them, and 2023/24 sees him sink lower.