Semi, I very much agree with you on that.
That's why the video is important. I wonder what those Labour activists went back home thinking.
I don't think Corbyn is the right man and what he's doing isn't targeting the right people and groups. This business of going after the older traditional working class isn't where its at. But yes in principle he's not necessarily completely wrong. Its the right direction done in a poor way.
Equally neither are UKIP doing things that will make the difference. Their strategy is of big ideology not actually managing to do something which illustrates how change can be achieved. I fail to see how someone who has a track record of never turning up for work in Brussels - even if opposed to the idea of the EU - is going to be the best man for that job.
Everyone seems to be chasing the traditional working class vote and the lower income working groups. No one is chasing the vote of those who are out of work. They are the whipping boys. The ones for whom benefits should be removed. The ones who are portrayed as stupid and as lazy etc. But actually nothing is being offered to change the practical issues that stop people in this group from having opportunities. Instead the government is cutting back in this area and local councils are unable to do anything because they are having to remove services and infrastructure.
I was chatting to someone a couple of weeks ago, who was telling me about a scheme of social housing that had just been completed. It was great, nice new cheap houses, yet no one was taking on the houses. Why? Because that's all there was. Houses. No bus services. No shops. No services. People could not afford to live there, even though the housing was cheap because they couldn't get to jobs and couldn't afford a car or to learn to drive.
He was a university lecturer in the past, and one of his favourite things he had done was set his students a task to go to a very deprived area of the city and get them to go to the job centre, look at was on offer, what it paid and then work out how they could get to that job and how much it would cost.
His students had something of an eye opening experience to say the least.
The video of the labour activists in Stoke very much reminds me of that.
DH was alarmed a couple of weeks ago when one of his scouts made a comment about benefit scroungers. People don't tend to think things through, and its often the intelligent educated middle classes who don't join the dots up. They can just avoid certain estates and never think about it really. I do think that part of the Brexit vote is very much a backlash against that. And this is the part of the Brexit vote that the Conservatives and UKIP will definitely not solve, simply because their ideology is to focus on the working poor and demonise those who are on benefits. Or immigrants for taking jobs that the poor can not get to.
A night out in St Helens or Stoke or Hull or Luton teaches you much about life. Places that are 'no go zones' should be places that everyone should go.
Brexit can not solve the problems of these left behind. Why would they vote in Stoke tomorrow, even if they voted in the referendum? The government has made an interpretation of the leave vote which ignores why 'the left behind' voted. They do not give two shits about actually leaving the EU. That was never really the point.
Its why the media going on about how Stoke voted Leave heavily in the context of the by-election spectacularly misses the point. Brexit is way down the agenda when push comes to shove. People would rather have a whole host of other things that helped them directly instead first. Things that are possible in the EU.
Its also why future GEs can not be seen in the context of leave or remain too. In some respects Brexit is a way of distracting people from the other stuff going on which makes things worse.