I have left the Labour Party - a few words

I left the Labour Party this morning. I won’t go on for ages about why because I don’t want this blog to be about me, but I will say a few words.

Firstly, people who have read some of my witterings on here will be aware that I’ve always been critical of the Labour Party, quite stridently in some cases. I think Labour has deep institutional and cultural problems, albeit I think these are really issues of the liberal-left ‘tribe’ and the systems of identity group favouritism it has spread into much of our public life rather than just about Labour. Labour simply provides a focus and a centre for them.
My 2015 leadership election ballot paper

Nevertheless, in looking at all this as I’ve done here, and on LabourList while I was allowed to write there, I’ve seen myself as a critical friend – as someone who is basically on the same side and wants us to change and become more responsive to all the people rather than just minister to certain groups and our own – mostly middle-class, liberal - priorities.

But as time has gone on I’ve grasped how embedded these practices are in the way we act, talk and organise ourselves. Identity group favouritism – by race (non-white), nationality (non-English especially but non-British to an extent), gender (female) and sexuality (non-heterosexual) provides the core focus and the core identity of the liberal-left now. Protecting and promoting these groups is what we are most passionate about and what excites us most, hence around 80% of Labour members describing themselves as ‘pro-immigration’ while around the same proportion of the population wants immigration reduced.

When you say you think immigration should be reduced or that the systems of favouritism are damaging and unfair, the nicer among these predominantly nice and decent people go silent. To say so is heresy, to breach an article of faith, to slaughter a sacred cow. But some of them – including some otherwise nice and decent people that you might have been chatting happily to a minute ago – get angry and start accusing you of being anti-immigrant, racist, an ally of Nigel Farage and of the far right and fascists.

On social media of course, and Twitter in particular, this is a lot more pronounced. It has been a major feature of the EU referendum campaign – and as someone who came out in favour of Leave, the barrage of abuse but mostly insinuation and innuendo has been quite tough to bear, not least when much of it is coming from fellow Labour members and promoted by senior politicians (although not Jeremy Corbyn, notably). To vote for leaving the EU is to be ignorant, uneducated, racist, intolerant, anti-immigrant, anti-European, choosing the past over the future, supporting the far right and even supporting the murder of Jo Cox MP - so we are told. Seeing so many Labour people leading this chorus has tipped me over the edge, albeit I was already at the edge.

I think the chorus is so strong and loud partly because it unites the different parts of the wider left family. Ideologies of identity group favouritism (which, it is worth saying, have decent origins and good intentions attached) unite the left with most of the centre-left, including the Blairite tendency. Without the politics of identity and support for mass immigration, these different factions would have little in common. So they delight in the chance to howl together.

Not just institutionally but culturally, the Labour Party is bound together with the politics of identity. It is what we do and therefore who we are. I say ‘we’, but for me of course it should now be a ‘they’. Old habits and old tribal loyalties die hard, even if you disagree with the party line as much as I do...

Anyway, I don’t see any of this changing. In fact I think it’s almost impossible for it to change because identity politics is such an integral part of Labour’s institutional fabric now. Once you integrate yourself into ideological and institutional systems, you are stuck there. For Labour to wrench itself out of this situation would take a mighty big and painful effort which would outrage and offend its core activist base no end. I see no sign that anyone with any power in the party has any appetite for even thinking about doing that, let alone trying – and I don’t blame them. So I’m out.


I will leave you with a terrific little clip from The Wire, of a security guard confronting a teenage drug kingpin who has just shoplifted a few lollipops from the store he is working in. The gang leader says to him: “You want it to be one way. You want it to be one way. You want it to be one way ... But it’s the other way.”



Comments

  1. Anonymous22 June 2016 at 22:21

    Preach. British people accept and love the concept of 'fairness'. They do not accept its transmogrification by the hierarchy of minority interests into "equity"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. New River Dining1 July 2016 at 13:15

      Show me a people that does not love 'fairness'. A non zero sum 'Tit for Tat' is key to all exchange of the essence of society. The British people also love Monarchy which is intrinsically unfair. Fairness only works if you can see the larger moral landscape. The problem is the British people (and all others) keep their eyes down low and so complain far more about the poor taking meagre benefits than they do the ultra rich taking billions. There's a reason for this.

      Delete

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