Labour is a movement of organised sentimentality. Its default sound is a coo. Its default gesture a hug.
For generations the party has wrapped itself in fuzzy feelings. You only have to hear the applause for councillors who have served the party since Clement Attlee’s day to understand the part cloying, part inspiring, solidarity that sustains it. They may have lost many of the battles they fought. Their victories may have brought unintended consequences they neither wanted nor understood. But they remain good people with fine motives – just like the rest of us. Even when history has proved them wrong, the world would have been a better place and humanity a nobler species, if it had proved them right. By definition, attacks on Labour must be ‘smears’ from Tories, who are, as axiomatically, wicked and designing creatures.
The affection extends to Labour leaders – for a while, at least. When I criticised Tony Blair for his embrace of thuggish gestures on crime and asylum seekers in the 1990s, left-wingers of the day made it clear to me and my editors that I shouldn’t be allowed to do it.
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