Even the TRAs hate Starmer!
He has already entered his ‘pleasing none of the people none of the time’ phase.
Previous Labour leaders have all been divisive amongst the membership to a greater or lesser extent (it’s impossible to keep the entire broad church happy) but Labour terves range from Bennites to Blairites and TRAs range from Progress to Momentum (and there has even been a split within the Trans Labour movement, with Heather Peto and late transitioning Progress chums on one side and the young Nonbinary blue hairs and transmen of Momentum on the other).
Outside of the membership the potential Labour electorate is also split, although that largely splits geographically with those North of where the Red Wall used to stand being fiscally left wing but socially more conservative and those south of it (and small pockets in the studenty cities)being more interested in progressivism and IDPOL than fiscal policy and neighbourhood cohesion.
Another difficulty for Starmer to negotiate is that Labour BAME voters have had their ‘needs’ wrapped into imported American IDPOL with no acknowledgement that actually, a lot of immigrant Brits and Brits of recent immigrant heritage (2nd and 3rd gen) are MORE socially conservative than their geographical neighbours and economic counterparts.
I live in a NW neighbourhood that is a really diverse in ethnicity terms but until recently wasn’t very diverse in economic terms (a very working class area that is now experiencing gentrification).
The only working class people I know who are regular church goers are either senior citizens (mostly Catholic and of Irish descent) or Black British (Caribbean or African descent, depending on which church you go to). The local Catholic primary school is almost all children of fairly recent Black African or Eastern European immigrants, alongside the grandchildren of Irish immigrants. The non-religious primary school next door has kids from families who follow other religions (Muslim, Hindi, Sikh & Carribean descent Christians from the Apostolic/Pentecostal/Baptist churches, but not CoE) and kids of atheists (mine!).
I LOVE my diverse neighbourhood (it’s truly diverse with a massive mix of backgrounds, not a ghetto-style pocket of people with roots in one other country) but once you add all the Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi heritage small business owners (eg shops, restaurants, taxi drivers, accountants) who are concerned about business taxes (and often saving hard so as to send multiple children to university) to all the socially conservative religious people and all the traditional Labour women who can no longer trust a leader who says that some women have penises, how the fuck does Starmer really think he can pick up disaffected Southern Tory votes, preserve IDPOL Student Labour London and Brighton votes and not lose the North?
He can’t even convincingly pretend to play a diversity card when three of the most powerful positions in UK politics are now men of south Asian descent (Prime Minister, First Minister and Mayor of London, only one of which is a Labour politician)
Throw in some of the tensions arising in the midlands between Hindi Brits of Indian heritage and Muslim Brits of Pakistani heritage and it’s increasingly clear that Labour membership (especially Young Labour and Labour Students) isn’t representative of the people who live in the regions that are supposedly ‘Labour heartlands’ and blanket IDPOL policies cannot paper over the cracks.
What the fuck actually happened with all those Labour councillors being blocked from re standing in Leicester? Does anyone know? They weren’t deselected by branch members, it was a top down imposition.
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/23/labour-tells-19-leicester-councillors-they-cannot-stand-in-may-election
Labour are a now a poor fit for the people they were founded to represent.
Keir Starmer shows no understanding of any of these issues, at least not in public, but Labour are enjoying high polling numbers because people desperately WANT to be able to vote against the Tories.