Labour can learn from London cabbies

Iranian-Kiwi columnist and writer, writing from London

‘Iknow we’ve only been talking for five minutes, but would you mind if I had a go at guessing some of your political views?’’ Hearing this, my English black-cab driver adjusted himself in his seat and, after a searching glance at me in his rearview mirror, with a tone filled with anticipation, replied: ‘‘Go on, then.’’

Until this point we had talked only about the weather, where I was from, and taxi shortages (a post-pandemic general propensity to deprioritise work, together with a push to delicense old cabs in favour of electric cars, has led to a big drop in the number of black cabs in London).

So what did I guess? I guessed he’d voted for Boris Johnson in the last general election, not because he liked him but because he could never bring himself to vote for Jeremy Corbyn, whom he regarded as an ‘‘unpatriotic’’, ‘‘terroristsupporting’’, ‘‘Queen-hating’’, ‘‘IRAloving’’, ‘‘communist’’ with ‘‘anti-Semitic views’’.

I predicted he would never vote for Johnson again. He regarded Tories as ‘‘vile’’ and ‘‘corrupt to the bone’’, but was not happy with the Labour Party either because he thought it no longer represented working-class people. Instead, it had become the party of beneficiaries and minorities and this annoyed him a lot – as did the fact that alcoholics and drug addicts had more chance of getting social housing than hard-working people.

The other problem he had with Labour was its leadership. He thought Keir Starmer was a ‘‘wet blanket’’ who stood for nothing and had no real policies. I also guessed that he had voted for Brexit and hated Sadiq Khan, whom he thought was the worst mayor London had ever had.

‘‘How did I do?’’, I asked. After giving me another searching stare, my cabbie asked: ‘‘Isn’t that what everybody thinks?’’

I said I wasn’t sure. All I knew, I said, was that, almost word by word, this is what every taxi driver in London had been telling me, and that I had talked to at least 16 by then.

There were a couple of exceptions, though. One driver said that since his disappointment with Tony Blair, he’d never bothered to vote again. Another told me he was so disillusioned with UK politics that he was leaving the country to live in Corfu.

‘‘How about you?’’, the cabbie asked me. ‘‘Do you agree with our views?’’

‘‘Mostly not,’’ I told him, adding that the only thing I fully agreed with was his disappointment with the UK Labour Party, which consistently failed to refocus people’s attention on the main issues.

I told him it was disappointing that taxi drivers were mentioning beneficiaries and minorities in relation to the housing crisis, instead of reminding themselves that it was the Tories, starting with Thatcher, who turned housing into a money-making asset.

Housing, I told him, was an essential human right – a source of safety and security for healthy families to grow up and thrive in.

Instead, it was turned into unproductive profit for those with the capital to turn housing into a lucrative investment for themselves – and an unearned future advantage for their children (my own family has been benefiting from this easy profit too).

Why was it that taxi drivers were annoyed at alcoholics and addicts but never once mentioned multinationals or billionaires who were robbing us all blind by not paying their fair share of taxes and hiding their money in offshore accounts?

Weren’t they the main source of misery in his country?

Why wasn’t he more annoyed at that than the right of someone with a penis to call themselves a woman (that came up in the conversations too).

So what does all this have to do with the New Zealand Labour Party?

Well, similar false impressions of Labour are being formed in New Zealand – namely, that it is working mostly for Mā ori, beneficiaries and minorities, rather than for the long-term benefit of all New Zealanders.

If Labour is serious about changing this harmful perception, it needs to successfully convince people that the real source of unearned advantage in our society, now and into the future, is patrimonial capital, in which wealth is handed down from one generation to the next, and also that any benefit provided to Mā ori and other minorities is about levelling up and achieving social harmony through equality – not handing over undeserved advantages.

It is a shame so many people assume the world is going to hell because of women with penises or men or beneficiaries, or refugees arriving on boats.

In 2017, Oxfam reported that just eight men owned the same wealth as half the world – and the wealth gap keeps on widening.

Should we all not be talking more about that – and the fact that the double threats of climate change and nuclear war can push humanity into extinction? Thankfully, my cabbie agreed we should.