Labour - Tone Deaf In The Bubble

The Labour leadership should not need reminding of the promise brought by all those poll leads, only to result in an apathetic electorate giving them half a million fewer votes than in 2019, and a percentage increase in vote share of a measly 1.6%. Thus the reality of the party that had been transformed from a supposed basket case into an all-conquering electoral machine.

Had it not been for Reform UK Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage and his pals eating into the Tory vote share, Keir Starmer’s magnificent landslide majority would have been rather more modest. But at Labour’s Conference, held this year in Liverpool, no such consideration was allowed to enter. Nor were the latest and not at all favourable poll numbers.

So, given that fewer voters chose New New Labour than Labour as led by Jeremy Corbyn, how would Starmer and his pals approach their first Conference since the General Election? What would a pragmatic, sensible and indeed listening party have done? What would a party supposedly of the left have done? What would Nietzsche have done?

Sadly, it soon became clear that it was not about thinking of the poor, of a new left-leaning tide raising all boats, of making the obscenely overmonied begin to pay their taxes. Instead it was about another obscenity, that of freeloading on an industrial scale, with Starmer as chief culprit, scoring supposedly free clothes, specs, and a private box over at The Arsenal.

Others were on the take, too, with the lamest of excuses proferred in response to questioning. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson had accepted “free” tickets to see Taylor Swift earlier this year, excusing herself with "It was a hard one to turn down ... one of my children was keen to go”. Fine. So open yer wallet. Pay for it yerself. For one obvious reason.

To paraphrase Milton Friedman, there is no such thing as free clothes, or indeed free specs, free boxes at The Arsenal, or free Taylor Swift tickets. Someone, somewhere, has to pay for them. And what Milt may not have said, but I will, is that there is inevitably a Quid Pro Quo: that someone, somewhere is not practising altruism here. The gifts are all about leverage later on.

And it’s no good pointing at disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and reminding us that, in the 2019 Parliament, he managed to rack up more than six million notes’ worth of supposed freebies. We know Bozo was irretrievably bent, but it’s not good enough to be a little less bent. Labour should not be bent at all.

Nor should it be intolerant of dissent: as Rachel Reeves was delivering her speech, one young man stood up and heckled her, calling out “Stop selling arms to Israel”. Again the tone-deaf response: “This is a changed Labour Party. A Labour Party that represents working people, not a party of protest”. If you won’t listen to those in the real world, protest is all they have.

The young man was dragged out of the auditorium, with obvious marks on his neck to show for his trouble. Labour MSP Richard Leonard mused “Grabbing this protester by the throat was an unnecessary and disproportionate use of force. When Walter Wolfgang was manhandled out of the conference hall in 2005, the Labour Party apologised to him. We should do the same now”.

Walter Wolfgang was from the left, Bevanite, tradition. Would New New Labour have even let him remain in the party? After all, they’ve managed to expel an awful lot of Jewish members in pursuit of allegedly tackling anti-Semitism. Added to all of that, our free and fearless press is on Labour’s case as never before. Because New New Labour gave them an excuse.

Jeremy Corbyn would never have accepted all those freebies; he still sits with the rest of those ordinary paying fans at The Arsenal. But, in the looking-glass world of New New Labour, he is The Bad Guy and Keir Starmer is The Good Guy. So why d’you think Labour’s poll numbers have dropped like a stone in a very deep pool? D’you think the freebies have something to do with it?

You might conclude that they most certainly do. I couldn’t possibly comment.

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