Danny Finkelstein bemoans Labour’s toff-bashing in Crewe. For me, though, the problem isn’t that Labour’s displaying its class hatred, but rather that it’s attacking the wrong class, and years too late.
As Danny says:
To be portrayed as a top-hatted toff actually represents an improvement in the Tory image. Being seen as pinstripe-suited bosses, estate agents and spivs was far more devastating.
And herein lies the failure of New Labour. It is the party of pinstriped bosses. And it’s in this that lie the origin of its current troubles. For example:
1. New Labour’s reliance upon big money donors rather than upon mass support led to both the “cash for honours” embarrassment and - much more fatally - a withering away of the grassroots party organization.
2. Reliance upon management-style spin and PR, rather than upon the traditional political arts of rhetoric or moral principle has given the party a reputation for directionless unprincipled mendacity.
3. This same use of spin, plus the belief that top-down managers can introduce endless complexities into the the tax system, led to the 10p tax rate fisaco. The party would have avoided this had it instead had an anti-managerialist commitment to simplicity and explicit equality.
4. The belief that public services can be reformed by managers from the top down has led to - at best - only slow and expensive improvements in public services, and to the alienation of traditional Labour supporters, the public sector workers themselves.
5. New Labour’s consistent snivelling cringeing to anyone with wealth and power has given the impression that the party has lost touch with ordinary people. The fact that a multi-millionaire Etonian Bullingdon boy can present himself as being in touch with the people should cause every New Labour minister to die of shame.
If the Labour party is to be revived, it surely needs more class hatred. Not hatred of toffs - instinctively attractive as that is - but a hatred of bosses, and what they represent.
Blair managed to get a lot of support from some big donors such as Lord Sainsbury, but now the donations have dried up as support withers and Labour find themselves 25 milllion in debt according to the Electoral Commission.
They need to refocus their energies if they wish to avoid digging a bigger hole for themselves.
If the Labour party is to be revived, it surely needs more class hatred. Not hatred of toffs - instinctively attractive as that is - but a hatred of bosses, and what they represent.
As Dead Ringers’ Alan Bennett always says - but they won’t, will they?
If Labour is not the party of the business boss, it is certainly the party of the public sector bureaucrat.
It would be fascinating if toff Cameron could pull off the trick of being both anti-big state and anti-oligopolistic business.
Didn’t one of his early speeches go down that route?
It’s inconceivable to me how the party has managed to alienate and betray so many of its core supporters in the country. Unfortunately, those around Gordon Brown are so delusional that they refuse to see or admit just how hated they have become.
It’s a very sad state of affairs when you see and hear traditional Labour voters saying they intend to vote Tory. This only goes to show how far the party have become removed from reality – when Labour voters consider Cameron to be a more progressive and caring leader then you know you’re in deep trouble.
Trad Labour voters around here wouldn’t vote Tory if their lives depended on it, but a lot of them have told me they intend to vote BNP.
* shrug *
Hmmm, i’ve heard this as well…..
This is a far more worrying state of affairs; but just goes to show how disenfranchised people feel if they think that the BNP is the only place that they can go to…
Surely rather than class hatred, class love would be better, if they embraced the worker class rather than rejecting the boss class. It’d be a bit more positive.
The main issue with the toff-bashing isn’t that it’s a case of going after the wrong class, but that it’s a crude, clumsy tactic. Labour’s fortunes have fallen so far that they’ve been reduced to a grown-up version of playground name-calling as a substitute for debate. It reeks of desperation, and is frankly pathetic.
Indeed the toff-bashing is a crude, clumsy tactic. But this says it all about New Labour: it has been about spin over substance, appearances over reality. It has been about skimming along the surface of politics rather than drilling down to tackle key issues. It is dog-whistle politics, which are supposed to send messages to certain voter groups without other groups noticing. The time has run out for this. All the various groups now recognise the dog whistles. They know that the policies which are supposed to “send messages” to certain groups probably have an negative impact somewhere else and they’re fed up with these games. The spin no longer covers up the harsh reality of a party without direction.
The Labour party has plenty of direction, and therein lies the problem - the spin wasn’t about covering up their lack of direction (straight over a cliff edge) but to cover up what most ordinary people just don’t go along with, never have and have finally cottoned onto: extreme left-wing socialism. Most ‘traditional Labour voters’ never were socialists, which is precisely why the Fabian society and the rest of the left work by stealth.
As for class hatred, most ordinary people never went in for this either, but it’s what Labour have always fed on.
So Labour need a new hate? Aren’t the ones it’s already got enough? As David Cameron pointed out, the new villain in society - and Labour have been trading on this for a long time iwth the public services, particularly the schools - is parents.
Their new constituency is ‘minorities’ and the public sector so it no longer needed (it thought)) the ordinary working man’s vote.
Big mistake. Most people I know are ‘traditional Labour voters’, but Labour needs to remember that it was the ordinary working vote that put Margaret Thatcher into power and it was her promise to tame the unions and cut state spending that got that vote. We said we’d ‘never vote Tory again’ after Thatcher - I did too - but now everybody I know says they ‘will never vote Labour again’ because they just don’t share Labour’s ‘vision’ of a totalitarian state takeover, through a slavish, self serving and politicised public sector, of the family.; the content of sex-ed in schools, the teaching of Islam; mass immigration in order to water down our culture; taxing people and then ‘giving’ some of it back through ‘welfare’. How kind of them. I could go on and on. This government couldn’t fill a hole in the road let alone run the police, the schools, and now the family.
The Labour party has lost its traditional vote FOREVER! and will never be forgiven, and the reason they won’t be forgiven is that most ordinary people have finally woken up and are finally seeing them for what they always were: a bunch of crackpot idealogues destroying our society by stealth.
Thank God for that and let’s move on.
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