That Starmer fella...

I think they are looking for what they see as economic prudence and relatively small government, although they would consider public services and social welfare essential. I think the people that historically voted Lib Dems probably fall into this camp more or less.

I would (perhaps wrongly) describe that as small c English conservatism.

True, but cunts' votes count the same as anyone elses.

It's more the point about Labour being the "woke" party (no idea how and why liberal and left got joined together) and the votes that costs. As someone else said, they really need to get the basic stuff sorted out first.

The whole woke arena is a nightmare. In it are loads of important issues being dismissed as wokeism and a load of fucking nonsense which is turning into a breeding ground for the Laurence Fox’s of the world to form anti-left agendas that easy to amplify.

Don’t wanna trigger anymore but I saw Starmer coming out his yard on telly and he’s got *those * shutters on the windows

that's exactly how they describe it too :)
see reply chain - a person I know looking for an 'actual conservative party' to vote for (their words)

Yes.

lots of talk about "woke", "working class", "the red wall" etc etc following the election, starmers approach and what comes next. this new piece from ash sarkar is very good (as is all her writing imo), perfect articulation of a positive response to such turmoil for labour which addresses the reality of the situation and proposes a progressive outlook.

I think i generally get turned off by this "red wall" talk because such a one dimensional view of class it's almost a a meme. i think part of it also signals to me is a lack of new ideas to combat an opponent who has capitalised on the shifting landscape, but also new ideas to really embrace the new opportunities and fronts for growth (gig workers, minimum wage office drones, small/micro business owners, renters and so forth)

https://novaramedia.com/2021/05/10/everybody-is-doing-identity-politics-even-if-they-think-theyre-not/

I particularly liked:

For a political tradition steeped in class politics, there’s a stubborn refusal amongst the left to acknowledge that merely referring to ‘the working class’ every ten seconds can’t conjure a shared political identity between a precariously employed tenant and a retiree who’s paid off their mortgage. Many seats represented by cabinet ministers in Blair’s first government are not held by Labour today. Hartlepool is the latest in a trend of the Conservatives picking up seats where homeownership rates are 50% and above. As Joe Bilsborough points out, the Conservatives have “a keen sense of class formulation”. In privatising social housing, Margaret Thatcher fashioned a machine for making Tory voters: four in ten ex-council homes bought under Right to Buy are now owned by private landlords.

And

Politics is the expression of class forces, but we experience it as culture. And it is the malleability of culture which means that the freelancer with a laptop is coded as privileged instead of precarious, and the retired homeowner as ‘left behind’. We end up with an image of the British working class that does not include working-age people, that more often than not comes attached with the prefix of ‘white’, that renders invisible Uber drivers and Deliveroo riders.

merely referring to ‘the working class’ every ten seconds can’t conjure a shared political identity

Lol

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Yeah, Sarkar's piece is really good.

It’s bordering on a fetish the way the left talks about the ‘working classes’, even more so when you consider their vote is primarily from the city dwelling educated classes.

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.

^Good post

If young people turned out to vote in greater numbers, housing and job security would be more of an issue.

You can see Labour edging towards that territory when they temporarily think they can mobilise a "youthquake", but then a focus group in Middlesbrough will tell them they don't like it and they'll retreat back to no man's land.

Great post. I've been happy to let Starmer try to wrap progressive policies in the flag to see how it'll land. We know how it'll land now. It won't. Retired ex-working class people with their own homes will vote for Tories instead. Why would they vote for a copy when they can vote for the original?

Starmer was the progressive/soft left/remain candidate. He needs to start dancing with the people who brought him. Labour's new heartlands are not Hartlepool and no amount of flag waving will bring them back. Labour's new heartlands are the cities. Represent us. Stop prevaricating and start talking about the damage this culture war is doing. Stop harking back to a working class that doesn't exist any more. Help the working class which does exist.

^ And make education your ticket. Education is about the young and about the future.

Starmer was the progressive/soft left/remain candidate. He needs to start dancing with the people who brought him.

TBH, I think he was faking it to get the leadership votes.

Labour's new heartlands are the cities. Represent us

Genuine question as I don't know the answer, are there enough constituencies in this bracket to win a majority?

If young people turned out to vote in greater numbers, housing and job security would be more of an issue.

It's far easier to vote when you're retired and don't have to move flat every year and don't have kids etc.

Labour should propose to make election day a bank holiday. Would be a nice policy as it'd increase turnout and everyone would be angry if the Tories ever tried to roll it back.

Labour should propose to make election day a bank holiday. Would be a nice policy as it'd increase turnout and everyone would be angry if the Tories ever tried to roll it back.

This, for council elections too.

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.

They did in 2017 ;)

No

make election day a bank holiday.

sadly this doesn't help anyone in the service industry who are more likely to be stuck making coffees / working a till / stacking a shelf - the sort of low income, low job security working class people Labour needs to be courting right now.

I'd rather make election day a sunday, then the schools don't need to close

Good for the kids to see an election and get them interested in voting I'd say

Edit: I guess the kids could see the vote on Sunday as well. Tories would have less of a barrier to rolling it back though. Also you want teachers to vote as they're all Labour.

This is what I assumed