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”
Leon Wolfeson
No, you did not.
You’re falling prey to some fallacies.
**** On – “UKIP up and Labour continue to slide in Wales”
This shows that UKIP are being successful in appealing to the right, who are going to vote for them. Meanwhile, ex-Labour supporters are going to “not voting”.
**** On – “Ukip has divided the left, not the right, and cut Labour off from its ‘old’ support”
This is a classic one. The reality is very simple – the economic policies talked about are *generally* popular. There is support for them from an awful lot of people, not just UKIP and Labour voters. Tory voters are pretty much the exception!
The story here is that political parties are to the right on domestic economics of the vast majority of UK voters. This is also true in a lot of other countries like, oh, America of course.
Classic examples of this are things like renationalising the railways and cracking down on tax fraud – popular, but the Tories refuse to countenance them!
(Moreover, that article has basic flaws, for example – “The Conservatives, meanwhile, retain their traditional faith in free markets and private enterprise.”
Which is utter nonsense. The Tories are capitalist, and the energy market is a classic example of it – regulatory capture, state funding to “pick winners”, high payouts and a general disregard for the effect of the prices on normal people.)
**** On – “White face, blue collar, grey hair: the ‘left behind’ voters only Ukip understands”
Erm…Those are ex-Tory voters. Labour hasn’t commanded 100% of the demographic, you know.
The obsession with talking about and appeasing UKIP empowers them. If Labour want to win votes back from the left, you need to stop talking about UKIP, and offer left-wing policies!
Leon Wolfeson
Labour in 1945 *changed the narrative*. Churchill was going on about sacrifice and poverty, and he was hammered for it at the polls.
The Tories won in 1950 because they adopted the narrative of Labour, to a great extent, and it’s wasn’t until Thatcher that changed! (And we’re still in *her* narrative today, really).
And you’re completely ignoring the demographics and saying the left should vote moderate right. Er, no, no, I won’t.
Dave Roberts
Toby. In the building industry eastern Europeans have held wages down. Thirty years ago labourers were earning fifty pounds a day. Go to any DIY store like B and Q or Wickes and there are groups of Bulgarians, Romanians and Albanians who will work for that now.
The studies are produced by either industry think tanks which are in favour of holding wages down or left wing ones which cannot bring themselves to say that mass immigration is bad because they have been demanding open borders all of their careers.
The old left/right differences were largely superficial anyway. The National Front and the BNP were mostly working class based movements in terms of membership and it was, like UKIP, former Labour voters who gave them support. The mistake the left made was to associate a desire for a strong welfare state, nationalisation and a strong health service as being the same as approving of multiculturalism and mass immigration, they aren’t.
The left gave up on the white working class years ago and instead decided that the revolution would be led by ethnic minorities, gays, and anyone else who was ” oppressed”. It was a mistake as Livingstone found out, twice.
Dave Roberts
Toby, can you produce a shred of evidence for your first paragraph. It is pure psychobabble worthy of a sociology lecturer at a former polytechnic.
What you are saying is that before mass immigration took place the indigenous cultures of the UK were impoverished, did they know this? How do governments ” reassure and help smooth the process of immigration” and what does that mean? It sounds like there as to be an all out charm offensive by all parties to convince us that permanent immigration is good for us.
Guest
So you lead with a lie. You ignore the studies, and go straight for inciting hatred.
You dismiss studies (from Universities), because they don’t tell you what you demand, you rejects facts because they don’t feed your hatred.
You try and deny your hard right views, dishonestly,to prevent debate, as you make frantic excused for the BNP and NF – who had nothing to do with Labour, and the same people are now being used as an excuse for Labour to keep moving right now they are voting for UKIP.
Your calls for purges, pograms, child removal, etc, – all part and parcel of a monocultural state (North Korea being a shining example) are far right.
You are projecting a lying narrative to support an isolationist, anti-trade, anti-economic view, no more, as you lash out against minorities and engage in gay bashing.