Labour will be the real victim of the Farage populist surge
The so-called people’s party has only survived because it has had no competition. Until now…
As the Tory party rots in its own narcissistic juices, bogged down in the vanities of a leadership contest and imperiously complacent about the Farage threat, one would be forgiven for wondering whether the party that wrecked Brexit is approaching certain death. But are we overlooking something obvious here? This week, a bombshell Comres poll suggested the Brexit Party could rob the Tories of power in the next general election, seizing 49 seats. But the “natural” party of government may not, for all its disgraceful inadequacies, turn out to be Nigel Farage’s first victim. That would be the Labour Party, instead.
The Brexit Party has exploded in the dying light of the Labour heartlands. Former Tory grandee Ann Widdecombe was given a standing ovation during a recent rally, held at a working men’s club in the old mining town of Pontefract. At an event in Wolverhampton this week, the audience whooped and whistled at Farage as if he was a Black Country rock god.
There is already evidence that the Brexit Party earthquake has reached far beyond a few foot-stomping rallies. The latest polling predicts the new populist movement could seize traditionally safe Labour seats, from Hartlepool to Ashfield, as well as taking formerly-safe Labour seats which Jeremy Corbyn badly needs to win back, from Halesowen and Rowley Regis to Mansfield.
I don’t think it is hyperbolic to predict that, a few years from now, the Labour Party might well be past tense. After all, since its founding in 1900, the movement has proved quite the embarrassing flop. It was carved from the convulsions of a historic shift in influence, from the elite to the masses
at the turn of the 20th century with the rise of mass consumerism and enfranchisement of the working class. But it has proved utterly useless as a vehicle for the representation of ordinary people. In fact, in the last century of “people power”, the “people’s party” has squarely remained out of power. Labour has been out of office for 82 of the past 119 years. It has only managed a full second term once – under Tony Blair.
This stupendous underperformance can only be explained by the fact that the Labour Party is an imposter. Its thuggishly dogmatic statism, arrogant faith in centralised planning, and snotty, guilt-ridden Fabianism are the trappings of a patrician movement, not a populist phenomenon, even under Corbyn. It has got away with this ruse for more than 100 years only because it has faced no competition. This may be about to change.
Farage is so dangerous to Labour, because the grandstanding visceral Thatcherite grasps – instinctively, if not quite intellectually – that the northern heartlands are populated by strident individualists who want to control their own destiny, rather than be benevolently manipulated by a remote, enlightened elite.
In contrast, metropolitan liberals are in denial about their emotional and cultural alienation from the people they proclaim to speak for (“they were lied to”; “people have changed their minds”), and they can only view Farage through the self-puffing prism of ancient battles between the politics of Right-wing “fear” and Left-wing “hope”.
Curiously, feverish Remainer Tony Blair came closest to saving his party from the self-destructive fanaticism that has corroded Labour’s appeal in its strongholds. In those early years in office, he aggressively advocated “aspiration” and ruthlessly microtargeted the swing-voting self-starter, “Mondeo Man”. But in the end Blair couldn’t shake off his bullying, infantilising elite impulses. The former Labour leader rightly identified “change” as the most important psychological force in modern British politics, but deduced from this the completely wrong conclusion. He became manically obsessed with helping “ordinary people” to “manage” change in their lives (principally by embracing globalisation) when really they wanted to be the master of it (by choosing, for example, to leave the EU).
The further ironic twist is that although Corbyn is a closet Leaver, he understands his party’s lost heartlands – and the anti-eu sentiment that pervades such areas – even less than Blair. For him, Brussels is an obstacle to his Marxist utopia; but to people turning their backs on Labour, the EU is a centralising, totalitarian leviathan that threatens the integrity of the British nation.
Mr Corbyn is probably horrified to see patriotism filling stadiums in a way that socialism never has. And so he should be. After sanctimoniously and fraudulently posturing as the voice of the people for more than a century, the gig may finally be up for the Labour Party.