I recently had a brief debate with one such person - lets call her Ms X - who felt that the left had abandoned aspiration. Aspiration had got Ms X from her working class background to where she is now: in a middle-class career with a middle-class lifestyle. The message was that everyone should aspire to 'better' themselves and the Labour party should be the party to help them to do that. I (and I wasn't alone) countered this idea by pointing out that there simply aren't enough middle-class jobs for everyone and not everyone wants to do them anyway. Sadly we didn't have time to debate further. I was left feeling that Ms X was puzzled by my alternative views. I hope I backed them up with enough clear knowledge to show that I wasn't simply a crazed Corbynite. Perhaps not; perhaps Ms X was puzzled as to how I could hold down my job while suffering from delusions.
I have a similar back story to Ms X: working class background; first in my family to go to University (not quite true: my Mum had gone back into education and enrolled the year before I did thanks to my artsy three years at college); moved from a small provincial town to a metropolitan city and now have a middle-class job and a middle-class lifestyle. Growing up, my parents were (and have always been) Labour voters. They were also Christians and while I don't share those beliefs, I do share the strong morals and underlying messages of equality and compassion espoused by true Christians (I say "true" Christians because if any Tory or Trump supporter claims to be a Christian, they need to read the bible and actually take it on board).
I grew up in an area with no grammar schools and that meant the affluent and the less fortunate all attended the same schools (I accept of course that some people would not move to that area as a result). A pupil who had spent their childhood being shifted around council estates in Chorley and Coppull could sit next to a child whose parents had a big detached house in Charnock Richard (ooooh) with land and their own horses. Of course, the children tended to feel more comfortable in friendship groups which more-or-less conformed to their parents' societal status. But to an extent, they understood how each other lived and the divisions were more nuanced: what sports you played, what hobbies you had, what music and clothes you liked. The differences were as much down to preference as wealth.
The grammar system divides children at an early age into the successful and the unsuccessful. From that point on, the differences can become deeper and more important. The grammar school children would go to University; for the state school children it might feel like University and the sort of career opportunities more available to them thereafter were out of reach. I went on to college where there were the majority who wouldn't go on to University, but also many who did and so for me, University felt achievable.
In the last 30-40 years, the UK has been in the grip of neoliberalism which (whether they like the word or not), is the basis on which both Labour "moderates" and the centre right build their policies. What we have learned in those decades is that neoliberalism is not compassionate and its principles do not align with the notions of collective endeavour that rebuilt the UK after the war and made it economically strong. The rich have become far richer and far more influential, while the poor have become disenfranchised, ignored at best and often vilified as spongers, a dirty underclass whose lives are worth so little that their safety is compromised in the name of saving/making a few quid (see Grenfell). The Labour centrists (for want of a better term) might feel a little sympathy for the poorest people and as they've done before, might secure the welfare safety nets and schemes aimed at helping people to help themselves. They might take some steps to make sure they're safe at least. The right would not feel sympathy and would continue to shrink the state and erode support for anyone struggling to get by.
It is important to note that for a decent chunk of my young adult life, I too was dismissive of the class I had left behind. I didn't fit in at school and while throwing myself into my new life with middle class friends in a middle-class area, I had a similar level of derision for those I had left behind as they had had for me. I absorbed the easy rhetoric that was all around (not coming from my new friends, I should add) about unemployed benefit 'scroungers' without engaging my brain long enough to do some easy logical thinking about why people might not - as far as we could tell - aspire to what we consider a better life. Thankfully I don't recall sharing these opinions widely, and I was always charitable (possibly more then than ever: I had spare time and causes I wanted to help) but it took time to replace the ideas that sheer proliferation had implanted in my head.
Ms X and I are no more worthy of praise for aspiring and achieving than anyone else is to blame for being unemployed or struggling with insecure work. Some people have opportunities presented to them. Some are shown that they are achievable. Others are neither presented with nor made aware that opportunities could (or at least should) be within their reach. People need to feel that there is a future for them. It would help if they felt represented. Politicians and media pundits are too white, too male and too middle-class: at present the left is led by white middle-class men but the ethos of their policies is inclusive and at least there are prominent female, working class and black and minority ethnic MPs coming to prominence in the party since Corbyn became leader. At the moment, we live in a country where Angela Rayner's outstanding performance since becoming a shadow minister has been broadly ignored because she has a regional accent. This has to change.
We desperately need to address the uncertain future for our large working-class population: there are not enough 'middle-class jobs' for all of the middle-class and working-class people in the country. My family laboured in mills, mines and factories and it was workers like them, not clerks and bankers, who grew our economy into one which could support everyone in it. We can't build an economy around middle-class jobs with too many people fighting for them and only the scraps for the rest. The 'gig economy' is regressive. More and more people are self-employed, which effectively means there is no minimum wage, no paid leave, sick pay, maternity pay or pension schemes, no health and safety and no maximum working hours (if someone needs to work 100 hours a week to make ends meet, their physical and mental health will suffer - and what if they're drivers or working in construction?). We need a strong industrial strategy, with well-paid and secure work for millions of people. We would need to invest heavily and we might see the economy take a temporary dip (undoubtedly a smaller one than 2007/8/9) but if more people are earning more, they will pay more tax and need less benefits and they will spend their disposable income, which will grow the economy. And as we have seen exports fall with the decline in industry, we would expect to see growth there too.
It is still not clear to me why people like Ms X are so put out by the current Labour leadership. They are very defensive of New Labour, but so are the left. In fact, people such as Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell are far more likely to defend New Labour's economic record than the previous party leadership. Let's not forget the confused, apologetic austerity-lite offered by Milliband and Balls. It wasn't until the last days of campaigning before the 2015 general election that I heard either of them challenge the notion that Labour caused the global financial crash. When it finally came it was both half-hearted and way too late.
One of the most glaring issues in my view, is that there really hasn't been an alternative. Had the "moderates" had anything to offer, Corbyn wouldn't have stood a chance. But having lost the previous two elections, the other leadership candidates seemed to be offering more of the same. Many still can't take Corbyn seriously but he was the only one who offered something exciting and hopeful that potentially appealed to the public and could repair the damage caused by neoliberalism. We are where we are because of the financial crash and the failure of austerity policies. Centrists didn't see Brexit coming. The establishment didn't see Trump as a serious contender. The "moderates" believed that Corbyn would be a complete disaster and yet, despite their repeated attempts to bring him down, he came within a whisker of number 10. Centrists feel there's a place for an anti-brexit party but the Lib Dems actually ended up with a reduced vote share (albeit while winning a couple more seats) with a centrist anti-brexit manifesto.
The assumption is that a compromise from the centre is the wise and sensible thing to fight for. But UK politics has moved so far to the right in the last few decades that we have to move it back to the left in order to reduce inequality and disillusionment. We've tried centrism and it left us with a handful of unspeakably wealthy people and a huge number homeless and hungry. We can't fight populism from the right with less popular suits in the centre. Let's try something different.
The grammar system divides children at an early age into the successful and the unsuccessful. From that point on, the differences can become deeper and more important. The grammar school children would go to University; for the state school children it might feel like University and the sort of career opportunities more available to them thereafter were out of reach. I went on to college where there were the majority who wouldn't go on to University, but also many who did and so for me, University felt achievable.
In the last 30-40 years, the UK has been in the grip of neoliberalism which (whether they like the word or not), is the basis on which both Labour "moderates" and the centre right build their policies. What we have learned in those decades is that neoliberalism is not compassionate and its principles do not align with the notions of collective endeavour that rebuilt the UK after the war and made it economically strong. The rich have become far richer and far more influential, while the poor have become disenfranchised, ignored at best and often vilified as spongers, a dirty underclass whose lives are worth so little that their safety is compromised in the name of saving/making a few quid (see Grenfell). The Labour centrists (for want of a better term) might feel a little sympathy for the poorest people and as they've done before, might secure the welfare safety nets and schemes aimed at helping people to help themselves. They might take some steps to make sure they're safe at least. The right would not feel sympathy and would continue to shrink the state and erode support for anyone struggling to get by.
It is important to note that for a decent chunk of my young adult life, I too was dismissive of the class I had left behind. I didn't fit in at school and while throwing myself into my new life with middle class friends in a middle-class area, I had a similar level of derision for those I had left behind as they had had for me. I absorbed the easy rhetoric that was all around (not coming from my new friends, I should add) about unemployed benefit 'scroungers' without engaging my brain long enough to do some easy logical thinking about why people might not - as far as we could tell - aspire to what we consider a better life. Thankfully I don't recall sharing these opinions widely, and I was always charitable (possibly more then than ever: I had spare time and causes I wanted to help) but it took time to replace the ideas that sheer proliferation had implanted in my head.
Ms X and I are no more worthy of praise for aspiring and achieving than anyone else is to blame for being unemployed or struggling with insecure work. Some people have opportunities presented to them. Some are shown that they are achievable. Others are neither presented with nor made aware that opportunities could (or at least should) be within their reach. People need to feel that there is a future for them. It would help if they felt represented. Politicians and media pundits are too white, too male and too middle-class: at present the left is led by white middle-class men but the ethos of their policies is inclusive and at least there are prominent female, working class and black and minority ethnic MPs coming to prominence in the party since Corbyn became leader. At the moment, we live in a country where Angela Rayner's outstanding performance since becoming a shadow minister has been broadly ignored because she has a regional accent. This has to change.
We desperately need to address the uncertain future for our large working-class population: there are not enough 'middle-class jobs' for all of the middle-class and working-class people in the country. My family laboured in mills, mines and factories and it was workers like them, not clerks and bankers, who grew our economy into one which could support everyone in it. We can't build an economy around middle-class jobs with too many people fighting for them and only the scraps for the rest. The 'gig economy' is regressive. More and more people are self-employed, which effectively means there is no minimum wage, no paid leave, sick pay, maternity pay or pension schemes, no health and safety and no maximum working hours (if someone needs to work 100 hours a week to make ends meet, their physical and mental health will suffer - and what if they're drivers or working in construction?). We need a strong industrial strategy, with well-paid and secure work for millions of people. We would need to invest heavily and we might see the economy take a temporary dip (undoubtedly a smaller one than 2007/8/9) but if more people are earning more, they will pay more tax and need less benefits and they will spend their disposable income, which will grow the economy. And as we have seen exports fall with the decline in industry, we would expect to see growth there too.
It is still not clear to me why people like Ms X are so put out by the current Labour leadership. They are very defensive of New Labour, but so are the left. In fact, people such as Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell are far more likely to defend New Labour's economic record than the previous party leadership. Let's not forget the confused, apologetic austerity-lite offered by Milliband and Balls. It wasn't until the last days of campaigning before the 2015 general election that I heard either of them challenge the notion that Labour caused the global financial crash. When it finally came it was both half-hearted and way too late.
One of the most glaring issues in my view, is that there really hasn't been an alternative. Had the "moderates" had anything to offer, Corbyn wouldn't have stood a chance. But having lost the previous two elections, the other leadership candidates seemed to be offering more of the same. Many still can't take Corbyn seriously but he was the only one who offered something exciting and hopeful that potentially appealed to the public and could repair the damage caused by neoliberalism. We are where we are because of the financial crash and the failure of austerity policies. Centrists didn't see Brexit coming. The establishment didn't see Trump as a serious contender. The "moderates" believed that Corbyn would be a complete disaster and yet, despite their repeated attempts to bring him down, he came within a whisker of number 10. Centrists feel there's a place for an anti-brexit party but the Lib Dems actually ended up with a reduced vote share (albeit while winning a couple more seats) with a centrist anti-brexit manifesto.
The assumption is that a compromise from the centre is the wise and sensible thing to fight for. But UK politics has moved so far to the right in the last few decades that we have to move it back to the left in order to reduce inequality and disillusionment. We've tried centrism and it left us with a handful of unspeakably wealthy people and a huge number homeless and hungry. We can't fight populism from the right with less popular suits in the centre. Let's try something different.
