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”
Toby Hill
Dave, look, I have sympathy with the claim that ‘liberal-lefties’ dismiss people’s concerns about immigration with little understanding of how it really affects people working in certain sectors, such as construction. That’s probably true. And I can see why the swiftness with which the racism card is waved at anyone who brings it up as an issue is frustrating too (although in some cases it’s just plain accurate). But, again, I think this is just a case of these ‘liberal-lefties’ (and often more radical lefties) failing to get across what they mean. Here are two things on immigration its easy for everyone to agree with, which explains why these damn lefties don’t like talking about it:
1. Cutting immigration would obviously do absolutely nothing to decrease inequality in Britain. There was far less immigration in the 19th century and pre-WW2, but people in lower-paying work hardly lived a life of wealth and ease then did they? Inequality and poverty have deep roots in the structure of our economy and society, and nothing to do with immigration.
2. Focusing on immigration runs the risk of ramping up tension and violence against some of the most vulnerable people in Britain. This is why the Far Right are generally considered such nasty bastards in trying to do so.
Finally, I would add that immigrants make a convenient scapegoat, and that powerful people – in politics, business, media – channel people’s legitimate frustrations away from themselves and towards immigrants as a way to protect their own interests.
swat
In fact, a failure of Cameron’s Tory Party in not being able to contain the far right tendencies in his Party. The trouble is the Tories have moved to much to the Centre where Labour have traditionally held ground; and that confuses the electorate. They see Dave as a softie, and the next Leader will be someone like Gove or May from the right.
GhostofJimMorrison
I think you’ve nailed it. Multiculturalists do not see – or they simply refuse to see – the difference between immigration and mass immigration the likes of which this country has never seen before. Immigration over the years has consisted of small numbers of people coming over and quickly integrating and settling into their adopted community, much to the benefit of both the region and the country as a whole. By and large EU migrants, who come here often for short periods to work, have no desire or need to integrate. I get that, but I see the tensions it causes on a daily basis.
Megan Killerby
This is the well-rehearsed argument of the left. People blame immigrants when they should be blaming big business and the government.
1) To put it simply, people like to be among their own kind. Multiculturalism is not something most people value as a good thing. The left may not like this fact, but it is a fact. Multiracial societies are unusual and can have high levels of tension. Even with the economic issues taken away, a large number of people feel natural aversion to people whose culture and ethnicity are different from theirs. I doubt that the natives and Asian immigrants of Bradford would start getting along harmoniously if the economic argument could be neutralised.
This is what the left simply fails to grasp. They see multiculturalism and multiracialism as wonderful in itself and simply cannot understand the people who do not like it.
2) Immigration *does* undercut native workers, mostly those at the bottom end of the pay scale, while it mainly benefits big business by providing an army of mostly unskilled laborers willing to work for low wages. And immigrants *do* consume resources that native people might need. While you may point out the underlying problem if a immigrant is allocated social housing while a native is not is the lack of social housing thanks to government policy, but the fact remains that in such a situation, the native person is disadvantaged.
Dave Roberts
He’s accusing you of not looking at links. You can’t read English.