Blue Georgia, Red Wall
If a week is a long time in politics then just how much can we achieve in ten, twenty, thirty years?
We live in an age of dynamic short-term changes in the political landscape; even the events of (the comparatively recent year of) 2019 already seem to emerge out of the murky fog of history. This is, however, not only a time of short-term change but also an era where geography, demography and culture is changing profoundly and at an ever-increasing pace. This has already had—and will continue to have—extraordinary implications on a global scale and on a diverse range of phenomena.
Andrew Harrop, the General Secretary of the Fabian Society, wrote in the leader of the Winter 2020 edition of the Fabian Review that:
“The [Labour] party will need to reach out further and put down new roots in all of the 150 constituencies that will determine the next election. The map may look daunting, but Joe Biden won in Georgia. Labour’s pathways to winning again lie both through reclaiming former strongholds and through seats the party has never one before.”
It is hard to deny that the Labour party faces a steep electoral climb for Keir Starmer to reach the front steps of 10 Downing Street. In 2019, the Labour party won only 202 seats, the fewest number of seats won by the party since 1935 and the lowest proportion of the vote of the top two parties since 1987 (42%). The interesting comparison that Harrop makes between the dramatic flip of Georgia in the 2020 Presidential Election to support Joe Biden (and subsequently even more dramatic election of two democratic senators) to Labour’s electoral battle is an intriguing one. Although I suspect he made this comparison to simply suggest that anything is possible, it might be interesting to consider this claim at a more fundamental level.
In 2016, Donald Trump successfully defeated Hilary Clinton—in part—by picking up key electoral college votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. These “rust belt” states bear a striking similarity to the “red wall” seats that swept Boris Johnson to his thumping victory in the 2019 UK General Election: they represent areas that have undergone a prolonged period of deindustrialization as the economy has shifted away from production of heavy materials. Once strongly Democratic or strongly Labour heartlands have been wooed to supporting radical right-wing governments. The question that faces both parties (and obviously also faces Republican and Conservative leaders) is how should we as a party react and take advantage of these long-term changes to ensure future electoral success? The Presidential and Senatorial successes in Georgia represented the culmination of long-term changes in the make-up of Georgia and campaigns by activists such as the eternally inspirational Stacey Abrams and many others to bring systematically marginalised and suppressed groups to the polls. The Democratic party have been working hard to use the increasing diversity in parts of the United States to their advantage. By contrast, Labour has struggled for many years to create a workable electoral coalition or even to understand who might make up such a coalition.
This dilemma is unsurprising. When it was founded it was the party of Labour, created by working people and committed to the aid of the working-class. Fast-forward over a century, and the Labour party has also become the party of the young, the middle-class and the well-educated. Brexit has not so much shone a light as a beacon on the divisions and contradictions within the current iteration of the Labour party. Globalisation, neo-liberalism and the free-market—the fundamental underpinnings of New Labour—have decimated former heartlands and lost the trust of many of its former supporters. The Corbynite analysis was accurate: inequality is rife, justice is the preserve of the wealthy and the state must do so much more to improve welfare, the job system and many of the nation’s critical institutions. However, the argument made by Corbyn and his supporters that “we won the argument” simply does not wash. Their leadership represented an era of political failure that has (quite rightly) been abandoned. Its replacement should be a new movement that embraces the many long-term shifts that our country is undergoing as well as one that stays true to the fundamental motivations of the Labour movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
It would be wrong to offer a precise list of policy recommendations for this new movement but I will try to express the vision that a strong and modern Labour party should embody. This new movement must be guided by a dual approach: visionary leadership on its principles—championing equality and human rights, fighting hate crime and discrimination, decisive action on the climate crisis—and engaging citizens across the country in a dialogue on practice—what policies should be implemented and how? How should we rebuild our struggling institutions? How can we restore faith in our democracy?
The Financial Crash, Brexit, Populism are symptoms of a changing politics—of a changing country embroiled in a civil war and like all civil wars it will be the victor that defines the soul of the nation. The stakes could not be higher but it is in the times of flux and uncertainty that we find the opportunities to make a brighter and more beautiful world. George Bernard Shaw called to arms the visionaries of the world and we must now heed these words as we work together in this effort to forge the soul of our country:
“Some people see things as they are and say, ‘why?’ I dream things that never were and say, ‘why not?’”