What imaginary country does Labour’s new deputy leader, Lucy Powell, live in? When Powell was crowned as the official thorn-in-the-side of Keir Starmer – as if he needed one – this weekend, she painted a picture of a Britain frustrated at the slow pace of change that Labour is delivering.
It’s always enjoyable hearing about the place that senior Labour politicians think they inhabit
‘Division and hate are on the rise,’ she said. ‘Discontent and disillusionment widespread. The desire for change, impatient and palpable. People are looking around, looking elsewhere for the answers … we have to offer hope, to offer the big change the country is crying out for. We must give a stronger sense of our purpose, whose side we are on, and of our Labour values and beliefs. That’s what I’ve heard loudly and clearly around the country these last few weeks.’
It’s always enjoyable hearing about the place that senior Labour politicians think they inhabit, packed with ‘working people’ who imagine that the party’s big problem is that it’s not doing enough of what it’s doing, that it’s bankrupting the economy far too slowly. I suppose this rhetorical device is intended to make people listening in say, ‘Hey – that’s me!’ But nothing brings the disconnect between Labour and the country into sharper relief.
It isn’t only Labour types that are guilty of misdiagnosing what irks voters. ‘What I’m hearing out there is everybody thinks exactly like I do’, we hear all too often from Tories too. But it’s a particular habit of Labour MPs to get into a romantic, misty, moisty state about ‘working people’, as if they’ve just got back, soles throbbing, from the Jarrow March. Improving their lot is ‘what Labour governments do, and have always done’ says Powell proudly, overlooking the small matter of the party always leaving the country bankrupt, and with more people out of work. Labour, in fact, seem remarkably shy about that aspect of their grand tradition.
For Powell, who was sacked by Starmer from the cabinet a few weeks ago, revenge is a dish best served continually – for breakfast, dinner and tea. After listing her demands, Powell added, ‘I know that you, Keir, as our leader, want that too. I’ll be your ally in that fight.’ This sounds quite sinister on the page, but you have to remember that it was delivered in the voice of Pootle Flump. Powell, with her toothy perma-pout and sardine eyes, has an unfortunate aura of somebody you have to really patiently explain things to.
But however it was delivered, the truth is that the public are not really upset that Labour isn’t going fast enough. No, the nation really isn’t full of plain-talking hard grafters struggling to make ends meet, or people who long for more immigration, more festooning of LGBTQ+ regalia. Do they want more congestion charges, more county-sized solar farms, more men in women’s toilets, more money thrown at parents so feckless they cannot feed their own children? Of course not. Yet still, we hear a lot about these mysterious voters demanding such things from Labour politicians. Naturally, we never actually hear directly from them. Funny, that.
One X user, @Aguirre115622, hit the nail on the head last week: ‘Do Labour think a ‘hard working family’ is a mining family circa 1910? Father and four sons aged 5-12 all working down the same pit, only seeing daylight on Sundays from September till April?’
Try telling Powell, who used her speech to rail angrily against ‘trickle-down economics’ – a fleeting fad from the 1990s that nobody was very keen on anyway – as one of our big modern problems. What next? Down with the bum bag? Out with Furbies? A pox on Babylon Zoo? Naturally, legalised theft – sorry, asking for more from those with the broadest shoulders – as the more moral course, seems to be the solution.
As for Powell’s fretting about ‘division and hate’? Hang on. The actual voice from the ground of multicultural Tower Hamlets on Saturday was chanting ‘Zionist scum, off our streets’. I wonder when it might dawn on Powell and her party chums that selling Labour’s soul for the sectarian bloc votes of ‘communities’ might not be the wowzer wheeze it once appeared.
The painful truth for Powell and Labour is that her party is attempting to build on weak and shifting sand, fomenting policy for a world that simply doesn’t exist; a multicoloured swap shop where bon-bons play, a fantasy land with a magical economic lever labelled WEALTH TAX.
This is indeed a class war, but not the one Labour thinks it is. It is the sniping of the lower middle class at the upper middle class, as we can see very clearly in recent YouGov polling for the Economist, which demonstrates that Labour is the party of the rich – even if it doesn’t like to admit it. There is no greater class enmity in Britain as that between the well-off and the very well-off. That is the real resentment wrapped up in the cloth cap of Labour’s imaginary doorstep. But Powell and Starmer don’t seem to have noticed.
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