“Labour has also taken over as the party of the better off — people with university degrees, middle-class lifestyles and stable employment. In a poll by the British Election Survey last year, the ratio of Labour’s vote share among the richest voters (earning more than £70,000, or $93,000) to the poorest voters (earning less than £30,000) was larger than any other major party. All its talk about the working class and “miner’s lamps” is tribal hooey. If you want to meet real working-class people today (and most of them aren’t interested in politics) you are much better off going to a Reform UK gathering.
Rather than speaking for the marginalized — economically or otherwise — Labour has become the guardian of the status quo. It’s now the party of public-sector professionals, NGO functionaries, tenured academics, local-government employees, teachers, doctors and bat inspectors. Its voters and activists are more likely than those in other parties to enjoy stable incomes (and index-linked pensions), courtesy of the taxpayer. And they are more likely to brandish their university degrees as proof of their moral worth, just as old-fashioned Tories might have wielded their coats of arms.
Gascoyne-Cecil once said that `hostility to radicalism, incessant, implacable hostility, is the essence of Conservatism.’ That could just as easily describe the current Labour Party’s attitude toward any novel ideas that challenge its core base, the public sector.”
– Adrian Wooldridge, Bloomberg ($)
He’s making the point that Labour is now the main “establishment” party. My main reservation about his thesis, which is pungently expressed, is that the LP only secured 34 per cent of the popular vote in the “loveless landslide” of 2024, so the complacency that might seem to come out of Labour could be less entrenched than in the late 19th Century Tory Party of Lord Salisbury’s time.
Wooldridge makes a few errors in his article, however. This sentence jars: “Hence the recurrence of the same family names in the party’s annals (Peel, Salisbury, Chamberlain), and hence the ruthlessness with which its operatives dispatched ailing prime ministers.” As far as I know, while Robert Peel’s father was an MP, the Peels were not a great dynasty. Apart from that sort of detail, though, it is a good read. What he is describing is how a party once defined by standing up for the “working man” has become very different. To an extent, it resembles how a scrappy Silicon Valley start-up ends up as a clunky behemoth and ends up, eventually, being taken apart by private equity buyout folk, or just goes into slow decline.
I don’t think that undermines his claim that Labour is the Establishment party. As per Gawain Towler’s recent article, the power of the Establishment lies in quangos, legal chambers and state sinecures, not just the inhabitants of the Commons and those who vote for them. Tony Blair’s greatest achievement was remodelling the British Establishment into its present globalist, leftist configuration. Even more remarkably, he also managed to do this to the Conservative Party.
I don’t think that undermines his claim that Labour is the Establishment party. As per Gawain Towler’s recent article, the power of the Establishment lies in quangos, legal chambers and state sinecures, not just the inhabitants of the Commons and those who vote for them. Tony Blair’s greatest achievement was remodelling the British Establishment into its present globalist, leftist configuration.
I think that is partly true – and Wooldridge does not really talk about the Blairite settlement, if we can call it that – but 34 per cent of the vote on a low turnout is pretty shallow, and it is brittle. A year ago, Reform was cresting at 30-plus per cent and there was a real likelihood of Farage & Co in Downing Street. Things have changed since the knifing of Starmer and Farage’s own issues over his finances, plus a bit more vigour from the Tories, particularly Badenoch.
I think today’s Labour movement has a very “defensive” mindset. It wants to protect “its people” (public sector employees, the Quangocracy, bits of the private sector dependent on State contracts, corporate HR types, students, and of course all those who live off the taxpayer via welfare) (The military, while in the public sector, are probably the exception, as well as some ordinary police. So Labour will, as Wooldridge say, spend a lot of time trying to restrict competition in all its forms: weakening independent education, reversing Tory reforms to give parents more say over their children’s education, encouraging welfare dependency, renationalisation of certain industries, and trying to entrench more EU laws that restrict upstart competition from outside Europe. This is all about “battening down the hatches”. Some of the people who want to do all these things might still be idealists about socialism, some are simply looking for a secure, quiet life.
They use bogeyman terms such as “neo-liberalism” to describe everything they hate and fear (which only makes me like neoliberalism more): the “creative destruction” of capitalism, open trade, limited government, free, often noisy media and exchange of ideas, meritocracy in the broadest sense, liberal patriotism, and voluntarism, philanthropy and so on. (I should add that some critics of “neoliberalism” think it is the same as “globalism”, but it is not. The latter is about preference for transnational, only indirectly democratic, bodies over more national and local polities. Some people lump both together. Being in favour of free trade is not the same as what parts of the Right (such as Mr Trump) and the present-day Left (such as in France, or the Bernie Sanders types) think of as “globalism”, and it is important to make the distinction.
Look at the hospitality industry. They are being hit by massive increases in fixed costs (employer NI, energy, business rates) which means the margins at the bottom/middle are being cut to the bone. This is less of an issue for more expensive establishments because those are fixed costs. Just look at the cost of a pub lunch. I have spoken to The LORD about this. Well, Chris down my local. He is *mildly annoyed* about it. I dunno if it is deliberate (though the “chattering classes” hate pubs where people actually chatter) or just a “Let them eat cake!” thing.
“You can get a can of beer at the supermarket, why are you complaining about pub prices?”
Let Them Drink Aldi.
I dunno if it is deliberate (though the “chattering classes” hate pubs where people actually chatter) or just a “Let them eat cake!” thing.
Probably both. Decades ago, Coronation Street, the soap opera set oooop north in some northwestern town or city, such as Manchester, revolved around a boozer. Everyone would go there and chat. They were mostly working class apart from the bloke who was a Londoner and businessman who was always doing deals and seen as a bit dodgy. The Northern lot were seen as salt of the earth, working class, (pronounced “claas”), and talked in a broad “Manc” or Lancashire accent. They worked in pubs, or drove taxis, were builders, or often down on their luck. This was prime Labour heritage. The late stand-up comedian and writer, Les Dawson, once described why Mancunian women and men talked in a rather strange voice as if they were out of breath, and he said they used to work in cotton mills and the cotton particles messed up their lungs. So they used to talk in this rather odd voice. He also explained that people used to “mee-maw” to help people understand lip-reading because cotton mills were so loud that normal hearing was difficult.
Today’s Labour Party has no real link to this sort of heritage. To some extent that’s a good thing. I am glad that people don’t endanger their health in dirty mills or work underground cutting coal. But it is definitely different.
@NickM Labour are socialists and communists in suits. They hate private business and they hate anything that gives a sense of community as it challenges loyalty to the State. This should explain why they don’t like pubs. If you see the Left through the lens of being communists and all that this entails (tearing down society for starters) then all of their supposedly bonkers ideas start to make a lot more sense.
“Now”? My first political observation, which I’d have posted all over the internet had it been around back then, was that Britain had a liberal party called “conservative”, a socialist party called “Liberal”, and a conservative party called “Labour”.
I’m not saying it was precisely accurate. It’s certainly a mistake to imagine that the Fabians of Labour don’t want to change anything, although in my defence as regards the other two, Thatcher was still PM and the Liberals were cozying up to the SDP. But the point is that Labour has been the party of the statist establishment’s phoney-baloney “consensus” for over 40 years. A lot longer in truth, but nobody seriously challenged it until the 1980s.
One of the big political cons was to assert that Labour was the party of the working class. This may have been true initially but the political careerists took over and moved on from ‘supporting the working man’ once all the political fuel from that assertion ran out. Same with support for women (until no longer providing political fuel), the Gays, and Trans. Currently Muslims seem to be the favoured source of political fuel, but it will be interesting to see if they walk away from Labour before their value to Labour diminishes.
I think the Muslims are moving away from Labour – very much so. Many are very family orientated and often run small/medium family businesses. Labour hates that sort of thing and certainly has since at least they considered The Grocer’s Daughter virtually a Satanic Manifestation. The indigenous working class didn’t exactly walk away from Labour (well, some got into Transit vans and doing OK) but were de-Kulaked by Labour. Not exactly exterminated but turned into a benefits-dependent underclass (that Labour needs but despises*).
As to the Muslims (and they aren’t exactly a block – Labour will deffo keep the large number who work for the NHS) the question is where will they walk to? The Greens? Under the “Titty Whisperer”? Oh, behave! The guy who wants to ban circumcision? The guy who presided over the bizarre “Zionism=Racism” farce? Gimme strength. That last one seemed to be the Big Idea of the Kampus Keffiyeh Klan. People who have nothing in common with the Muslim folks who run my local shop. A shop that isn’t even “culturally authentic” and therefore “enriching”- The Horror, The Horror! It largely sells stuff like beer, Monster Munch and The Daily Mail. It even sells pork scratchings to go with your beer whilst you read the Daily Mail**. Those folks are more concerned about things like business rates than Gaza.
*What do you think would happen if it was Islington and not Rochdale where the “grooming gangs” prowl?
**JP – This is on the outskirts of Manchester and it is indeed grim up North so consider that with your canapes, champagne and Telegraph 😉
Labour may be the party of the establishment these days, but as far as I can tell they still think of themselves as anti-establishment. This too helps explain their destructiveness and self hatred.
NickM:
It’s not all grim in the North. Depends where you are.
I have Northern connections: one of my relatives, now dead, played a character in Coronation Street under the name of Don Brennan (my relative’s name was Geoff Hinsliff). He told me a bit about growing up in the North. He was from the kind of Lancashire stock that put a huge priority on education.
A great grandfather worked in the South Nottingham coal mines and worked double shifts to make serious money. He was, needless to say, a strong Conservative. Quite a few miners took an entrepreneurial approach to that they did, like the oil rig workers in the 70s and 80s. Others in my family are from southern Scotland, but most of us are East Anglian country folk. Farmers, vicars, small business owners, etc.
I prefer single malt whisky to champagne these days.
JP,
I think I have been around Samizdata long enough for you to know I was doing a bit of a “Four Yorkshiremen” even without the 😉. As to drinks… Well, it depends, really. I prefer certain English wines to Champagne though I would be very happy to discuss the nuances over a single malt though of late I’m beginning to think Welsh whiskey is rather underrated.
In Britain there used to be a deal for working for the state – relatively low wages, but not a particularly hard job – and a pension one could rely on at the end of one’s working life. It was NOT a matter of just sitting around – work (and honesty) was expected – but it was not a very hard life. And one did not have to have any particular set of political or social (cultural) opinions – there was real “tolerance” and “diversity” in government service – without anyone using those words. Now that the words “tolerance”, “diversity”, and “inclusion” are used endlessly – they are NOT practiced, indeed they are utterly crushed – there is a demand for total conformity of opinions.
Starting with the effort for the state to pretend to be a market (the “internal markets” idea that Ludwig Von Mises MOCKED in the 1920s – and Britain started to introduce in the 1980s – with the “internal market” in the National Health Service) high paid managers (on the Corporate model) started to be paid by the taxpayers (not that the taxpayers had a choice about this) – and private Corporations also began delivering some government services (central and local government services – “contracting out” which at-first saved money – but not later on as the Corporations worked out how to drain the taxpayers) – also paid by the taxpayers.
This went into overdrive under Prime Minister Blair after 1997 – when there was a full on effort to pay government employees, at the HIGHER levels “private sector” pay and perks.
Look what all this does – it means that a lot of high income people now either work for the government directly, or work for Corporations that depend on government contracts.
I go on a lot about indoctrination of the education system and the media, especially the entertainment media (everything from pop music to films and books – the left control the publishing trade) – but it is also SELF INTEREST.
If someone is a highly paid person working for the government, or working for a Corporation working for the government – who should one vote for?
LABOUR – such a person should vote LABOUR – as they are likely to get more money and perks that way.
Of course, Johnathan Pearce, there is a price for government service or service in a “modern” Corporation – the price (at the risk of being a bit melodramatic) is one’s soul.
The old apolitical state is gone – to get a government job (or allied Corporate job) now, one must have the “correct” opinions – wear one’s rainbow lanyard, support “Mermaids” and other “charities” sexually perverting children – and-so-on, one must have all the “Woke” social opinions of Critical Theory (Frankfurt School derived) Marxism – including opinions that would have horrified Dr Marx himself (Marxism has “developed” rather a lot since he died back in 1883).
But, in return for having “Progressive” opinions (supporting the sexual corruption of young children – and so on) someone has a chance of getting a high paid government or corporate job.
Voting Labour is natural for such people. As they snear “racist!”, “Islamophobe”, “sexist!”, “homophobe!”, “transphobe!”, “Climate Denier!” (and so on) at “uneducated” people who do not have the highly paid positions that they do.
Nor does there have to be any real ideological constancy – for example to have such a highly paid government or corporate position one must condemn “homophobia” and “Islamophobia” at-the-same-time – ignoring the obvious contradiction, ignoring that Islam teaches “kill the one who does it – and kill the one to whom it is done” and that Islam condemns (and has always condemned) both Judaism and Christianity for not carrying out harsh parts of scripture – Islam has always taught that scripture is to be carried out, NOT “interpreted” away – that is the point of the old Islamic cry of “raise your hand” (which was nothing to do with surrendering – it was attack on the Jewish practice of putting one’s hand over parts of scripture that call for violent death for adultery and so on).
This contradiction applies to the His Majesty the King himself (the highest person in the establishment – both the old establishment, and the new establishment – the transition has been seamless) – who will BOTH squeeze out tears about the alledged injustice of homosexuals, years ago, being dismissed from the armed forces, AND (as if there was no contradiction) say how much he admires Islam.
I suspect that His Majesty does NOT really believe in the death penalty for adultery and so on – he is (and this is to his credit) a hand-over-this-bit-of-scripture person – but Islam is NOT like that, indeed Islam was created as a specific rejection of that. Muhammed did not like people who pretended to be Muslim – but found excuses not to support plundering and killing of infidels (even one’s own family, if they do not accept Islam and also refuse to pay the infidel tax – with due humiliation), he called such people “hypocrites” and ordered that they be killed – and no one after him has any authority to change those orders (which Muhammed said came from God).
But one has to tick all the boxes to hold a modern government or corporate position – even if the boxes logically contradict each other.
The money one gets for ticking all the boxes is the reward – and the punishment for not holding all the required opinions (even if the required opinions contradict each other) is ruthless.
The money one gets for ticking all the boxes is the reward – but will the bulk of the lanyard class take to the streets, fight, and die for the Establishment? I suspect not, which means the continuance of this Establishment rests on sand.
Discovered Joys – good point, I am not at all sure they would die for the Progressive State, even the modern police and armed forces are not passionately committed to the Progressive State. Bashing some “right wing” pensioner on the head for being “Islamophobic” or whatever – they are fine with that (what is the pensioner going to do in reply to being bashed – hit them with his zimmer frame?), but DYING (risking their lives) for the Progressive State is a rather different matter.
Weeding out “reactionaries” from the police and armed forces has its down side for the state – as the “reactionaries” are the people who tend to be willing to risk their lives.
By the way – the comment of Marius already stated some of what I later said (and was a lot shorter – which is a virtue).
I did not mean to show disrespect for Marius by not citing his comment – I honestly missed it, I apologize for that.
The Peels: Speaker Peel in teh later 19th century, but then his son WIllie, in cabinet in the 1920s etc. And his tour de force: the Royal Commission on Palestine (two state solution, anybody?) in the later 1930s
It’s nice to know that even avowedly communist organizations eventually get taken over by very well paid, housed, transported, entertained, fed, clothed and shod apparatchiks.
Fred Z – that sounds like Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels – so not “taken over” rather “continued to be controlled by”.
After all “Lenin” was an aristocrat, and Mao was the eldest son of a farmer (an owner occupy – contrary to the legend, most Chinese farmers were NOT tenants) – who, unlike his brothers, never helped out on the farm (the one time his father asked him to help – Mao threatened to throw himself down a well, and his father backed down) who went to Teacher Training College – but was too lazy to become a teacher.
Even “Stalin” whose father was a shoe maker, was never worker himself – he went to seminary, but lost his faith and became a professional criminal (sorry I mean “a revolutionary”) planning robberies – although he did not have the guts to go on the robberies himself.
Sir Keir Starmer may have been “the son of a tool maker” – but he was never a manual worker himself, as for “Andy” Burnham – Mr Burnham has never worked a day in his life.