“We would be naïve to think that changes at the top of the party and an end to the Brexit wars mean an automatic return to business as usual,” he wrote: “The political landscape has shifted, we must adapt or risk fading into obscurity like some of our sister parties on the continent.”
But what would that require? Jarvis pleads with his party to “better understand how notions such as patriotism, sovereignty and national security relate to people’s lived experiences.” He also observes that “local and regional pride is accepted, celebrated, even encouraged, but when the discussion moves to national pride, many in our party begin to feel uneasy.”
That’s putting it mildly. When Starmer tried to wrap himself in the Union Jack, parts of his party freaked out. It could have been his opportunity to face down those who see our national flag as symbol of hate and racism, but he clearly doesn’t have the stomach for a fight.
The Jarvis solution is to acknowledge the bad parts of our national history — “the Britain of empire and conquest”, as he puts it, while celebrating “the Britain of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Chartists and the miners’ strike.” But are enough voters interested in this brand of Old Labour nostalgia?
Matthew Parris has dismissed the Labour movement as “a gluey, opaque, illiberal freemasonry of bonkers activists, passive supporters, historical resentments, myths and legend.” Labour, he feels, is an impediment to change: “21st-century Britain will never warm to this 20th-century dinosaur, waving its banners of extinct mining unions.”
Labour’s predicament is that Jarvis and Parris are equally right and wrong. Much of the middle-class Left has no interest in Jarvis’s patriotic socialism and much of the working class has no interest in what Parris stands for. Without both sets of voters there is no path to power for the Left, yet Labour is clearly incapable of bringing them together in sufficient numbers.
And that leads us to the third, and most difficult, home truth that the party has to accept: it can’t defeat the Tories alone.
Britain today has only one major party — the Conservatives. They can be beaten, but only by an alliance of smaller parties, of which Labour would be the obviously leading member. Not splitting the non-Tory vote is hardly a new idea, but this latest incarnation of the “progressive alliance” would also serve a more radical purpose: the unbundling of the Labour Party.
It’s clear that Labour will never retake the Red Wall unless its leadership is free to develop a moderate and patriotic platform – and this can’t be done with either the Corbynites or the hardcore Remainers on board.
In order to persuade them to leave, the Labour leader needs make them an offer they can’t refuse — an electorally viable future outside Labour. Under our current voting system, Labour would stand aside to give other progressive parties a free run in a defined number of constituencies, concentrated in the big cities and university towns.
If this works — if Labour retakes the Red Wall and a progressive alliance gains a majority — then that still leaves the problem of reconciling the difference stripes of leftish opinion. But this would be less painful as part of a negotiation to form a government than as a bitter factional struggle within one party.
Denmark provides an example of how it can work. There, the main centre-left party are the Social Democrats, who govern with the support of several smaller progressive groups. Under Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, the Danish Social Democrats have gained support by combining welfarist policies with a tough line on immigration and national security. Whatever one might think of these policies, they’re electorally successful — and the rest of the Left goes along with it. Indeed Denmark is one of the last places in western European with a significant centre-left to speak of.
But can we really imagine Labour embarking upon such a radically different future? Yes — but only if it has no other option, and knows it faces oblivion. Given a choice between seizing the day or clutching at straws, it will always go for the straws. It’s easier, it’s less painful, and it’s ultimately disastrous. If Labour are humiliated today, it will be the wake-up call they need.
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