| Corbyn represents common decency and progressive societal change whereas Nuttall represents reaction and the hard right. |
As if by decree, the chin strokers unanimously declared that Nuttall’s elevation spelled the automatic collapse of Labour’s working Class Northern vote. Nuttall in fact declared that he intended for UKIP to replace Labour as the natural party of the working class. As happens surprisingly often, journalists took the word of a politician at absolute face value. Add to this their in-built anti-Corbyn prejudice and the story quickly became not “Nuttall claims he will replace Labour…..” but “Nuttall WILL Replace Labour”
Such assumptions fit into a long standing false narrative about Labour and about the working class, one that has been bandied around with increasing frequency since the advent of Corbyn. In this narrative the working class are universally obsessed with curtailing immigration, waving the Union Jack, worshipping the Monarchy, hanging terrorists and watching military parades. If Labour does not subscribe to such values, the narrative goes, it is “abandoning the very people it was created to represent” and will lose its position as a major party to one that does subscribe to those values.
Let’s deconstruct this:
(1) Labour has never been a right wing white nationalist Party. With regard to race, immigration and other social issues it has always held positions in advance of the social mores of its time. Now critics of the current Labour leadership are trying to rewrite Labour history to say that, pre-Corbyn, Labour was this sort of soft fascist, tub thumping anti-immigration outfit. It wasn’t, and is therefore abandoning nothing.
(2) Of course the purveyors of this narrative don’t use the words “soft fascist” because they like to make out that they approve of this supposed prior incarnation of Labour. Nevertheless that is what they are describing. What is noteworthy here is that most of the people taking this line are not UKIP types themselves — they are liberal lefties and liberal conservatives. If any party other than Labour employs white nationalist rhetoric the same pundits always strongly disapprove and start pontificating gravely about “a drift to the right” or “divisive rhetoric”. This is how they responded to Trump in the US, and the anti-immigrant dog-whistling at the last Tory conference. When it comes to Labour, though, they ludicrously try to claim that white nationalism is the sort of thing they want to see, so great is their desire to demonstrate that Corbyn is out of touch. It’s one of the many contradictions inherent the in liberal centrist worldview. The advent of Corbyn has forced them to confront such contradictions, which largely explains why they hate him so much. This is most hilariously demonstrated when anti-Corbyn Labour MPs try to tack to the UKIP wind. Laughably, these metro PR men like to think that they are the wing of Labour who are in touch with the working class, so occasionally have a stab at pseudo white nationalist rhetoric. But of course they don’t really have a clue how to speak such language, or the stomach to push it to the extreme needed to be truly effective. So they come out with the usual half-baked, baffling Progress-style jargon, the working class understandably ignore them and they are left looking far more out of touch and clueless than Corbyn ever was.
3) Of course the silliest aspect to all this is the ludicrously patronising and simplistic view of the working class. The pundits who push this narrative pretend that they are doing so from a position of sympathy towards the working class. In reality, whether consciously or not, they are actually insulting them. They are characterising them as an homogenous group of people motivated by simple, negative emotions such as fear of immigrants or enthusiasm for hanging people, or simple positive ones such as uncritical adoration of flag and Queen. In reality, of course, there is as much diversity of opinion and attitude within the working class as anywhere else. Some are very right wing, some are very left wing and all points in between. Some are socially liberal, some are not, some believe in low taxes, some do not, and so on. They receive the same education as everyone else and are subject to the same social and media influences. Historically, the working class has in fact been more left wing than not, because they are at more at risk of victimisation by their employers and earn less than those employers. Employment rights and the welfare safety net gained since the Second World War have lessened such risks to an extent, which is the hidden reason why working class attachment to Labour is not as strong as it used to be. Start to remove those things, though, as the Tories are doing and as I suspect UKIP would do, and that bond will soon strengthen again. It should also be pointed out that the working class is more likely to work and live alongside economic migrants (the very migrants that they are supposed to be so afraid of)Time and again I have seen upper middle class commentators make blithe assumptions, which they do not even think to question, about working class politics. I would say these assumptions are ludicrously outdated except that even in less enlightened times, they would not have been valid. For example workers were central to the 1936 Battle of Cable Street, which prevented a Fascist march through East London.
4) Another baffling aspect of this particular story is: why link it particularly to the election of Nuttall? Is he offering anything substantially different to Farage? Has he signalled any bold, new worker-friendly policies? Or does his supposed appeal to the working class stem from the same anti-immigration, anti-EU stance already integral to UKIP before his election? The inescapable conclusion is that these supposedly sophisticated commentators have got the impression that Nuttall will appeal to workers through some vague Pavlovian response to his scouse accent! If we look at UKIP’s electoral record against Labour since the election of Corbyn, on the same sort of platform as Nuttall favours, it does not remotely fit the narrative. Labour increased its share of the vote in Parliamentary by-elections in allegedly prime UKIP territory such as Oldham and Sheffield and its vote has held in local by elections in such areas too. Last Thursday it increased its share of the vote in both Crewe and Carlisle, for example.
5) Bizarrely, there is a significant intersection between those people within Labour urging Corbyn to pander to UKIP voters and those urging that he stall the government in its attempt to implement Brexit. If you really want to alienate right-leaning working class voters, if you really want Labour to come across as an out of touch metropolitan party, hindering Brexit is the way to do it.
6) Finally, what is it about UKIP that gives it potential to replace Labour as a workers’ party anyway? Is it a champion of workers’ rights? Is it sympathetic to Trade Unions? Is it anti-Austerity? Or is it, in fact, funded by wealthy individuals and businesses and populated by people (like Nuttall) who left the Tories in disgust because they thought they had become too liberal? What pundits always fail to consider when speculating on a new workers’ party to replace Labour is the age-old principle of “follow the money”. A political party will look after the interests of whoever fills it coffers. In the case of UKIP that is most certainly NOT workers.Conclusion: Despite all the above, and on the basis of no evidence, in fact counter to the evidence, mainstream commentators insist on flogging this narrative. What is going on? Well, as usual, the Establishment are trying to play psychological tricks on people in an attempt to keep a potentially dangerous socialist resurgence in its box. Firstly, as someone pointed out to me on Twitter, they are trying to redefine the minority of working class voters who do hold white nationalist views as “Labour Core Voters.” This is yet another attempt to persuade Labour that it must become another right-wing party, a tame opposition that wouldn’t change anything even if it did win power.
Secondly, if they can redefine the working classes of previous decades and centuries as white nationalists, that conveniently allows them to claim that previous Labour election victories were down to white nationalist sentiment. In a manner Stalin himself would be proud of, they are attempting to airbrush Socialism out of British history.
