Labour's three bad habits
While competence did not feature strongly in the Tory years, there is, to so much of what Starmer's government does, a seeming naïveté.
Max Hastings and an investment banker walk into a pub. And if that sounds like the beginning of a joke, I mean to be cruel to neither. Although, truth to tell, there is a lurking comedy, however dark, in what they both said.
It all happened last Friday when Max Hastings, military historian and former editor of The Telegraph, penned one of his rather patrician pieces for The Times. In it, he gathered all of his headmasterly talent for lecturing the sixth form about what he has seen of life to warn the reader that we must wish Labour well.
Having thrashed the Tories in front of hall, he moved on to the governing party to warn both them and us that much the same fate beckoned both if Keir Starmer and the rest of the prefect body didn’t jolly well pull their socks up.
Following a brief chorus of the school song, the sub-ed of the school mag summed up the master’s message thus, “I still hope Starmer succeeds – so should you.”
Perhaps duly chastised, the investment banker genuinely did walk into a pub that same day and make a similar plea that “They must be given a chance.” I know, see, ‘’cos I was there. It was a more wide-eyed plea, granted. A more surprising plea, given the current investment sentiment. But what both seemed to have in common was the notion that at all times we should remember the shambles of what went before.
Fair point, up to a point. Competence, probity and progress did not feature strongly in the Tory years. There was no shining example to follow.
But surely someone should mention this to the Labour party whose talent for the schoolboy error seems unending. There is, to so much of what they do, a seeming naïveté.
It would be easy to put this down to a lengthy spell in opposition where a wilful vagueness might be forgiven and an obvious lack of governing political experience tolerated. But there’s more to it than that. Underneath are three bad habits of the Left.
The first is the tendency to assume the moral high ground at all times. And then be surprised to find that the public and the Press aren’t convinced. The surprise comes in the sudden discovery that their sense of their own righteousness is open to question. Most notably when behaviour and communication are compared and to which the tired response is always something to do with “the Tory Press” who have failed to take dictation.
The second, and related, is the belief that the world is as they would have it be, not as it actually is. This manifests itself in hostages to fortune often taken during the carefree years when bad juvenile habits came without immediate consequence. Think shadow Foreign Secretaries tweeting rude words and the favoured Leftist insult "Nazi", about a potential US president. Or, in government, Transport Secretaries who badmouth ferry companies on the eve of an investment conference.
This masquerades as principle but always overlooks two things. Fairly obviously, that principles cost and then the principle of realpolitik. Even the Queen shook hands with Martin McGuinness as the cliché goes.
All of which leads neatly to that third bad habit, that of caricature. The world is to be seen never in shades but in black and white where US presidents are the pin-up villains of banana republic graffiti or student bedrooms and businesses are the stove-pipe hat-wearers of Soviet era propaganda.
At best, this is a soft-centred Richard Curtis fantasy of Hugh Grant telling off America. At worst, a damaging embarrassment at which the diplomat’s teenage brat is dragged from the reception for shouting common room, Generation Z insults and dressing in three-week jeans.
Neither side of the political divide is, of course, above this habit of caricature. Nor its offspring of sloganizing or focus-group phraseology. An idea borrowed from marketing and related trades which groups people into demographic types. All, once again, hostages to fortune.
“Take back control.” We plainly haven’t. “Yes we can.” Except he couldn’t.
Worse still are the sort of political vagaries which seem banal, benign and meaningless but actually come freighted with a Janus looking many ways. Think Gordon Brown’s “hard working families” or, I dunno, “working people”, the phrase on which the budget hangs.
They are, as Steven Poole described in his book Unspeak, weaponised phrases, superficially attractive to all but actually sending coded messages. Poole uses the examples of "pro-choice" - because who could object to individual choice, the credo of the consumer? – only to be trumped by "pro-life" – because, who, after all, is against life? Or "Friends of the Earth" which simultaneously defies anybody not to be while sounding beguilingly, erm, friendly.
All of which leaves us with “working people". I mean, who is isn’t one of those, right? Breathe easy then as Rachel Reeves prepares her tax Hallowe’en. Except, in its jelly-to-the wall indefinability is its trap for us and for Reeves.
We know what the pre-election pledge was; “No tax rises for working people”. Clear enough. If you’re working, no tax rises. But what it actually plays to is a caricature which, if the highly trailed manifestation is to be believed, will mean that if you’ve worked for an asset or a pension or to leave your kids something, you are by implication "rich" – implicitly preceded by "idle" - and your pips are about to squeak as an older, more honest chancellor once pledged.
You are the one, lying there twirling your moustache while you kick the boot boy, force yourself on the scullery maid and your effete children swim naked with their friends in the ornamental lake while the underbutler pretends not to notice as he pours their champagne.
While "working" is that heritage Labour echo of an industrial class, streaming from the mills and factories and into service. That tricksiest of words then; "fairness". And who can object to "fairness"?
It’s a fabrication of course. As the recalcitrant “Tory Press” will doubtless point out and the voter will hardly fail to notice, as the “tough decisions” look notably tougher on some than others.
Which, handily, takes us back to the pub where Hastings is still suggesting we hope Labour succeeds and the banker is “giving them a chance.”
Time gentlemen, please.
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