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Thing is Labour briefly mobilised the hopes of the younger generation, who swelled the membership.
Then everyone called them entryists / cultists / idealists / antisemites / etc.
Eejit-
I wonder exactly what the process was - that group join, bring some different priorities (probably more of a focus on social issues as well as traditional left / right politics) and then the vote ebbs away again by 2 years later.
Is that those young people leaving feeling disillusioned, or the voters who had stuck with lab until then being put off?
If the latter, then isn't there a real risk the same happens (for different policy changes) to the Tories, who are merrily changing policies to get the so called red wall?
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Problem was that they wanted real change and it started to look like it might actually happen.
andyfallsoff
Squaredisk
Those two quotes from Ash Sarker are what's been said in here and in commentary before.
The old, traditional, working class (manual labour, possibly unionised) have taken advantage of the right to buy and moved on. They're now small Tories. They may have always had non progressive ideas about race and gender.
Everyone is shouting about the working class but instantly that paints pictures of the white man working industrial jobs and not the truth of who is the working class. Those jobs were fucked years ago and more recently small industry was fucked.
There is nothing wrong with wanting a better life for you or your family, moving on, moving up out and into what you think is a better life. There is something wrong with not being connected to an ideal of kindness and compassion to help.
Labour and union politics of the past was about standing up to and against "things causing harm to the working man". Where those people who were voting for you, and could be guaranteed to vote for you, may not have had the progressive ideals of the left (now and then). It shouldn't be a surprise to see people without a willingness to embrace this thinking turn away from a party they are not connected to when they've "progressed" and everything they were told they'd expect as been trashed. The older vote are people of my parents age. They went through the 70s and 80s about the age I am now. Why would you expect them to embrace progressive ideology when the last 40 years have been what they've been?
Unless labour comes out and says:
Fuck this noise about pictures for voting
Fuck this noise about the red wall, our members are the young and those in shit jobs, not those that have had everything and pissed it away.
It's going nowhere. The demographics and the ageing population mean you're chasing a smaller group of people who don't rate you anyway.
It does mean that people of my age risk being lost unless you can motivate them to see the sense of investing for their kids and not for them.
If you turned 18 in 2010, look at what you've grown up in. Look at what you're facing. They need the focus. And their politics are messy and full of intersection and it needs a sensible voice to bring it all together. Fuck knows how it'll get the space to breathe and grow though.