Douglas Murray on intolerant politics

[BovaryX]

There is an interesting article by Douglas Murray in the DM about the authoritarian, identity politics which have alienated Labour voters and triggered a paradigm shift in the political landscape. It covers some of the themes which Lang GC Pencils and others have been discussing in light of election result.

It is a divide between people who have real-world concerns and those focused on niche and barely significant ones...How, you might ask, have we reached such a state? There is a clue in the Labour Party’s dysfunctional reaction to its catastrophic defeat on Thursday

Pic of coal in the bath or it never happened.

Bath? BATH? We washed once a year in a grubby bucket in t'back court and were grateful for that.

So in a strange way my mum found herself back in the sort of community she grew up in, and was happy there.

People don't really change, on a fundamental level. What you grew up with is always there no matter how much you try to reject it. I'm glad that she was able to spend her last years with people who cared about her.

In my early teens there were all sort of things I hated about the enmeshed communities both my parents came from but I appreciate them now, as well as the fact that they created the same around themselves to the best of their ability wherever they went as adults. My DH, who is not from the UK, is the same. Part of my issue with the people currently running Labour is that I can't imagine them ever genuinely connecting with or being fond of say your mum's carer and her family - there's an "improving the poor" tone to the way they talk about people outside their bubble that grates and comes across as contempt, like they assume anyone who didn't have the education they did is thick and their opinions therefore unimportant. I did get the education and would still say that my relatively uneducated parents were as bright or more so than anyone I went to uni with, and that the range of intelligence is the same in every class.

It's hard to put into words, what I see when the likes of Owen Jones or Ash Sarkar are talking about socialism, but I see the same disquiet in the way Janice Turner (Doncaster girl) writes about them. Lang calls it identifying as our representation, and honestly it's no more convincing than Jessica Yaniv identifying as a champion for gay rights.

identifying as our representation

Yes. "You don't have a voice, so we'll speak for you. NO NO, SHUT UP, we'll take it from here." And then on the other side, the Nigel Farages of the world pretending that they represent the real people of Britain because he goes to pubs sometimes and is therefore a Man Of The People. It is not what we need in a country with shrinking social mobility.

I notice the Lab candidate for Rother Valley who called women "trashy SWERFs" for campaigning against Spearmint Rhino - women including Sammy Wilson ffs! - didn't win her seat.

Sammy Woodhouse I mean! Wilson was the Lab candidate iirc.

I naively thought this was true of all politicians to some extent, so Gordon Brown's response was a shock...The way things have gone, it was not the isolated incident I thought it was but the direction things were moving in

Melroses
Good point. That was the trajectory, the casual contempt for voters, the silencing of debate. The imperious expectation people would just continue to vote Labour because of history and culture. An ex mining town that has been Labour for a hundred years would never vote Conservative. This paradigm shift has been a long time coming as Arnold has also said.

I've booked for the same tour RoLaren.

I don't understand the Putney/Islington infatuation with Momentum.

"noblesse oblige"

I would say that I do live in a bit of an SNP echo chamber and have been shocked by some of the abuse I have seen. I have a relative who called a long standing labour activist (old labour) a traitor to her country for not voting SNP. Statements like that are outrageous.

I will also say I have seen a lot of abuse from the right towards the left, I know very few right wing people in real life (my area is traditionally Labour, now SNP) but have seen it online and had some directed towards me. I was called an idiot today by one of my right wing friends on FB for saying I want an independent Scotland to be part of the EU.

I will note that the Labour campaign here did seem to focus on SNP bashing, and to a lesser extent tory bashing (the tories were no threat locally) instead on any positives they would deliver.

I am on a couple of discussion groups related to my profession, it is a caring role which seems to be dominated by left wing voters. There are very legitimate concerns about austerity and the effect it has but anyone who has dared to stick their head above the parapet and say they were voting tory have been abused. Lets not even start on the trans issue on that board where the TRAs regularly flounce because it is a hostile environment for them, the increasingly vocal GC voices are accused of killing trans kids and the word TERF is thrown around a lot.

there's an "improving the poor" tone to the way they talk about people outside their bubble that grates and comes across as contempt

Agree. JC's sons say "Jeremy has dedicated each day of his political life for the less fortunate among us", which though well meant makes it sound as though he is running a charity, not the leader of a political party representing equals.

The kindly lord of the manor tone of that set my teeth on edge.

I don't know, really, what people like Murray think Labour could have been offering working people that it wasn't. It was offering huge investment in the NHS and education, a rise in the Real Living Wage to £10 an hour, strengthening employment rights, extending statutory maternity pay, giving everyone a right to flexible working. But Labour was apparently "out of touch" with what ordinary working people wanted. Could anyone tell me exactly what it was that they did - and do - want that made the Conservatives so much more attractive?

Opinium did some polling on why former Labour voters switched away from Labour this time and Labour's policies were not anywhere near as big a reason as Brexit or Corbyn.

But Labour was apparently "out of touch" with what ordinary working people wanted.

I think they would have done better with a leader who doesn't give the impression that it is morally wrong to want to earn a lot more than £10 an hour.

OK some political guff incoming.

There are no longer the old classes as we know them.

Instead we have 7 distinct tribes in how we see the world. See link below to 3D political compass.
www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/pol3d_main.html

They are the Hard Left, the Centrists, the Progressives, the Young Kind Capitalists, the Somewhere, the Traditionalists and the Hard Right.

Labour have been of late driven by a combination of the Hard Left and the Progressives.

What's noticeable about the hard left is how they are so far away from all the other groups on the political compass.

This naturally limits the appeal they have to the other 6 groups.

My experience of NW small towns is they tend to have large numbers of traditionalists and somewhere. Where I live they don't like gentrification and 'the money moving in' because it destroys the idea of it 'taking a whole village to raise a child' which is essentially about the importance of communities looking after each other. There is a conflict between them and the progressives and the young kind capitalists for this reason.

It's often interpretated as xenophobia but I think it much more complex than that. I think it can at times have elements of that, but there's also this idea which is very positive and ensures the vulnerable are looked after.

We need to start looking at the positive elements here and communicating the idea that different ideas are not necessarily wrong and certainly do have value.

The people who gave been running Labour need to have a good hard look at the political compass and the new tribes if they want to assess where they went wrong and where they go from here.

I do not think anybody believed they could do that Royalcorgi. They didn't explain the policies well enough and just kept coming up with one freebie after another in some kind of scattergun approach. They could promise unicorns for all but without a strong leader people just didn't believe they could do it. If Tony Blair had promised to nationalise broadband, water, railways etc, the markets would have gone into meltdown because the City would have feared that hed be able to do it. When McDonnell and Corbyn said it, the markets were completely stable because they knew they wouldn't be able to do anything of the sort. I think it was the same with a lot of the electorate. No one believed them.

that made the Conservatives so much more attractive?

RoyalCorgi
I think there are a number of issues which are interconnected. Brexit. The attitude of Remain London to those who voted Brexit. Labour’s promises of free broadband etc came across as random and desperate. Not as an economic plan which was viable. The radical cultural agenda which had zero support beyond Twitter but dominated social media. The authoritarianism which is central to Momentum. Labour has been relying on history and culture as an indissoluble bond that tethers Northern voters to Labour, but Labour often appears to view those voters with barely concealed contempt. It has become the party of students and London. Its traditional base was always more Conservative than Labour realised. This election was the tipping point

Good post, Red.

I don't know, really, what people like Murray think Labour could have been offering working people that it wasn't. It was offering huge investment in the NHS and education, a rise in the Real Living Wage to £10 an hour, strengthening employment rights, extending statutory maternity pay, giving everyone a right to flexible working. But Labour was apparently "out of touch" with what ordinary working people wanted. Could anyone tell me exactly what it was that they did - and do - want that made the Conservatives so much more attractive?

Online, I think people are more likely to pay attention to the tone and attitude of activists than they are granular manifesto detail. Hence my banging on about pompous smug arses such as Owen Jones.

pp may want....some respect?

imo, labour promised too many things , pp didn't believe.
so, there's no expect for economy what else wanna expect?

but last several years people remembered how they have been mocked, ignored, be shouted to shut up.

in oppression race, surprisingly they have to keep remind themselves how privilege they are.

elites forced to do that while ignoring their morale and faith by identity politics.

and then there's someone at least saying 'i'm listening'
so...

as a foreigner's eye.
brexit was litmus test.
working class feels like ignored and think politician do what they want,
not people want.
and then there's referendum.

i think working class vote more leave because know elite doesn't want that.

and they have been watching what politicians doing.
"respect it ? or ignore it?"

We need to start looking at the positive elements here and communicating the idea that different ideas are not necessarily wrong and certainly do have value

Red
That is a great point. There’s George Orwell quote which I think is relevant

England is perhaps the only country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their nationality. In left wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman

I think Corbyn wasn’t perceived as patriotic perhaps. And I don’t think that helped

Could anyone tell me exactly what it was that they did - and do - want that made the Conservatives so much more attractive?

I cannot say what anyone sees in the Tories as I'm in Scotland and all the Tories I know are Tory for sectarian reasons which the English generally seem oblivious to.

I can tell you what annoys my own working class community about Labour.

Identity politics. Everybody hates it. Stop calling people bigots for using the wrong bloody word. The working classes are more likely to live with actual immigrants. To be friends with them., To marry them. Actions speak louder than words. Stop obsessing and stop changing the 'approved 'term than slagging people off for failing to keep up. And for gods sake stop calling people 'privileged' unless they are actually rich.

Stop speaking for people and telling them what they want. Increasing minimum wage is good for some, bad for others. Learn some nuance. Speak to the small business owners that might have to lay people off if it goes up. Consult and take on board their concerns. Create a policy that increases employees wages but not at the expense of putting people out of work. Not at the expense of businesses having to close. The small business owners I know are working class. They are roofers, and sparkies, and flooring company owners, and window cleaners. They want to employ people but may need some government support if you put minimum wage up.

Stop assuming what works in one part of the UK is good for all and can be applied blanketly. Allow different countries and regions to tailor policies to their own needs. When a country or region tells you 'this policy will be bad for us and here's why' listen to them and create a more nuanced policy that allows for difference.

There's so much more I could say but this post is long enough for starters.

England is perhaps the only country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their nationality. In left wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman

OMG! Serendipity! I am just reading that very essay right now!

One of the things about the Arab spring was it was interpreted by Western governments and press as being about a desire for democracy as the time. This was a convenient narrative because it fitted in with their narrative about how democracy was best and how the west was winning the ideological war.

What happened afterwards challenged that idea as democracy was not viewed as a priority.

Instead the wisdom now is that the Arab spring was about a desire for dignity in life and being able to live in a way which food and opportunities were more available. I much more basic need. Or one that was about cultural freedom of the majority against an aging authoritarian. And this was to an extent often promised or delivered by more anti democratic movements. These leaders were affluent oligarchs and capitalists who capitalised on the unrest and instability (also see disaster capitalism). The democratic leaders had much less to offer to the masses for a variety of reasons. And didn't offer dignity in the fact that they were often perceived to be beholden to Western Governments in some way rather than being independent and for the local populations interests primarily and not being told by the West what was good for them.

If you compare that with what's happened in the US and UK there are striking parallels though without the same degree of violence.

There is something of a reliance and arrogance in not viewing the wave of political instability in Western nations as part of the same wave of political instability as the Arab spring which predated it. The narrative is that it started with political instability causes by Brexit.

If you follow the strands though this concept is questionable.