Voters suffering most severely from forms of economic oppression, and who share fundamental left-wing values, are not voting for Labour and are definitely not voting for one of the parties to the left of Labour.
Voters suffering most severely from forms of economic oppression, and who share fundamental left-wing values, are not voting for Labour and are definitely not voting for one of the parties to the left of Labour
I am going to indulge in a little navel-gazing to argue that we – if anyone even wants to be part of the ‘we’ of the left anymore – need to take a break from blabbering at each other, and ask why our attempts to communicate are such a dismal failure.
The bedroom tax is bad. Raar! Angry! Me! Furious! Today’s left produces an endless stream of tweets, updates, comments and blogposts opining perspectives that, give or take the odd sub-clause, most of its audience already agrees with. Pat on the back! Yeah! It’s outrageous! Morons!
Meanwhile, many of the voters bearing the full weight of economic inequality blame Romanian immigrants and amble off to vote UKIP.
That this marks a catastrophic failure on the part of the left was demonstrated by research quoted in the Guardian a few months ago. It found that 71 per cent of UKIP voters agree with left-wing statements such as ‘the government should redistribute income’ and ‘ordinary people do not get their fair share of the national wealth’.
This was a significantly higher proportion than Conservative (43 per cent) or Lib Dem (65 per cent) voters, and not far behind Labour (81 per cent). Further research found that of the 10 most UKIP-friendly seats in the country, eight are Labour.
So what’s happened? Why are we finding it so hard to reach an audience beyond our own social and digital circles?
Could it be a consequence of what the film-maker Adam Curtis and novelist Michel Houllebecq identified about the movements of the sixties: that they were never really about social justice, they were about individual self-expression, and so not only did they feed quite naturally into the rise of marketing and Thatcherism, but they also created a culture whereby one’s politics are primarily an aspect of the identity you don each day and swish around on the stage of the world?
In a cultural context such as this, it is entirely logical that collective engagement should be relegated to second-place behind simply airing one’s views and splashing around in the warm pool of your own impassioned outrage.
Or, linked but a little different, is it that the left’s struggles have shifted from the grounds of class to focus on sexuality and gender – understandably tempting territory for the middle-class radical, allowing them to feel personally involved and oppressed and so to indulge their own narcissism?
These are of course vital struggles for many. But their inherent appeal has an unfortunate consequence. Those experiencing greater economic than gender-based oppression end up being left behind, forgotten about, and most of all alienated from a left of bloggers, artists, cartoonists and tattooists who spend half the time banging on about their own sex lives, shaving habits, and taste in arthouse cinema.
Or is the old left right after all, and it’s all the fault of New Labour?
To a large extent we’re still reliant on Labour to, bee-like, convey our arguments across the whole of the country. But Miliband’s party of career politicians has no convincing narrative to explain why people find themselves in dead-ends of economic deprivation, let alone any substantive policies that might get them moving again.
Whatever balance of these and other factors is the cause, it has happened, and we should acknowledge it. The left is losing the argument. Voters suffering most severely from forms of economic oppression, and who share fundamental left-wing values, are not voting for Labour and are definitely not voting for one of the parties to the left of Labour.
Most are not blaming flows of international capital for the housing crisis. They’re not blaming inadequate worker compensation for their long hours, poor quality of life and reliance on in-work benefits. They’re not blaming the slashing of subsidised legal aid for their precarious employment situation.
No, as UKIP’s continuing journey up the polls demonstrates, they’re blaming Romanian immigrants and benefit cheats. And the left is failing to counter these arguments.
Perhaps instead of churning out more contempt-laden copy on the latest UKIP blunder or eccentric policy proposal, we should turn our touchscreens to discussing how we can communicate more effectively with those suffering most acutely from the inequities of our economic system.
Toby Hill is a London-based journalist and writer
176 Responses to “The rise of UKIP marks a failure of the left”
theProle
>It enriches culture, revitalizes dead urban space, and broadens the notion of citizenship by opening it up to a wider diversity of people.
I’d be in stitches laughing if it wasn’t so terribly serious.
Quite how importing shedloads of semi-medieval misogynistic individuals which refuse to integrate, and a non trivial percentage of whom would like to kill us all achieves the above I struggle to understand. You clearly struggle to understand too, but then you’ve probably never been to Bradford or Rochdale.
>People have very understandable fears about the threat that it poses to the comfort and security of a familiar homogeneity.
Yes, because Britain as a Muslim majority country, complete with Sharia Law and probably a a religious civil war sounds bally unappealing, and the demographics mean it’s now a near certainty.
The only comforting thought is that they will do for the lefties too, as well as the rest of us.
Guest
No, you’re the silly one. It’s a requirement for your policies, and your crack habits are your own, why do I need to hear about them?
No surprise you have nothing to say, and indeed can’t disagree on your need for victims when you’d fail.
Guest
The majority of PC is today used is by the right as a cover for discrimination. You do it there again, of course.
It’s always the same – “lefties” “socialists” etc. – the PC blame game goes on.
There’s a few on the far left who are also stuck on it (and they are also wrong), but it’s nowhere near as widespread among moderates.
And right right, you need to burn the towns to the ground, etc.
theProle
>The fact is that a worrying number of people who used to vote Labour and who hold broadly left-wing values are being drawn to UKIP
Isn’t that because UKIP is rapidly headed left of center on a lot of policy areas, and on the rest has always been more in tune with the working class than mainstream politicians have (e.g. the working class has pretty much always been Eurosceptic, whereas left of center politics in hasn’t been for many years).
I was a Kipper back in the days when they were tax cutting libertarians. I’m now shaking my head and contemplating holding my nose and voting Tory for the first time, as they seem to now be further left than the Tory on many issues (e.g. they have been falling over themselves to say they would scrap the (IMHO perfectly reasonable) “bedroom tax”).
Conversely, I’m not even slightly surprised that the traditional working class left of center voters who have been abandoned by Labour (on the assumption they would vote Labour anyway) have seen a leftish party that seems to speak to their concerns coming over the hill, and started leaping on the band wagon.
If it makes Labour thing seriously about what voters actually care about, I think that’s no bad thing – but thinking the solution is to patronize the working class about how immigration is good for them really is unlikely to win many votes back…
Guest
You, an self-described “semi-medieval misogynistic individua”, who clearly hates British values and wants to kill us all..
Wait, no, you’re just after the left. And your civil war.