Morning Call: The Elphicke of it
Labour is being stretched from the right and left.
Good morning. Some in Labour are aghast that pro-Rwanda scheme Tory MP Natalie Elphicke crossed the aisle before PMQs yesterday. Keir Starmer is obviously trying to paint Labour as a broad church, a place as welcoming to Tory voters as it is to Tory MPs. This inevitably creates resentment on the left, which is a small problem when you’re 20 points ahead in the polls. But could it become a bigger one in the future? Thoughts below.
Dismiss the cranks, the bigots, the disgruntled, the lost and the angry at your peril. David Cameron’s 2006 quip that Ukip was full of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” came back with a force that ejected him from office. Nothing speaks more to the complacency with which he viewed rising Euroscepticism and anger towards mass immigration. This is not pure hindsight: Nigel Farage pointed out at the time that Ukip got 2.6 million votes in the 2004 European Parliament elections.
Is the same going to happen with Labour and the Greens? That question came to mind yesterday when Peter Mandelson said that the latter party were “becoming a dustbin, a repository not only for climate activists, but for disgruntled hard leftists”. The local elections exposed a small but persistent problem that Labour has with chunks of the progressive and Muslim vote. As David Gauke writes in an intriguing column today:
Starmer has been intensely focused on winning over those who voted Tory in 2019 but, as time goes on, he may also have to worry about those who cast their vote for Jeremy Corbyn’s party.
Gauke goes on to urge Labour’s leadership to heed the lessons from the Tories’ attempt to both co-opt and repel the Ukip/Brexit Party/Reform UK entity to its right. He advises Labour to stick to the centre, not to over-promise or run towards ideological purity.
We should remember that the Greens barely resemble a proper party. Their co-leader set-up deprives them of a figurehead the media can latch on to. Dispersed authority does not suit 15-second news bulletins. At the same time, the Greens have a disparate offering, designed to appeal to local voters at the cost of penetrating the national narrative. Their coalition is incoherent: Nimbyism, the socialist youth, pro-Palestinian sentiment and, in the words of one Labour aide, “shire Tories high on organic veg”.
Some Labour sources are confident that the Green vote will narrow at the general election as people coalesce around the anti-Tory candidate. Others are confident that the Greens will be swept away by the first wave of proper media scrutiny. “They will take care of themselves,” another aide said.
The Lib Dems, resigned to fighting Tories in the rural south, see the Greens as Labour’s problem. One Lib Dem official remarked: “It’s a flip of a coin whether they end up with two seats or none at the next election so it’s high stakes.”
But Ukip showed that insurgents can divide a party and cause problems for the leadership without winning any parliamentary seats. Ukip and its successors have haunted the Conservative Party for more than a decade. Though the Greens are an incoherent vehicle for those who resent Starmer’s lurch to the centre, and the overall story remains Labour’s growing dominance, Labour will need to watch with care.
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Freddie’s picks
Hannah has done the definitive interview with Hilary Cass, the author of the report into children’s gender healthcare that has been a turning point in the debate around gender identity.
Chris explains what Kate Forbes’ appointment as Deputy First Minister means for the Scottish government.
David Gauke outlines how he thinks Labour should handle the Greens.
Sarah gets tennis. She’s the best person to write on the new film Challengers.
“Universities are not used to having to disagree with their students.” James Marriott on the return of proper protest (Times).
Demonising white women is not feminist
Cast your mind back to June 2016 and the Trump Hotel in SoHo, Manhattan. “She believes she is entitled to the office,” Donald Trump told the room about his opponent for the White House. “Her campaign slogan is: ‘I’m with her.’ You know what my response to that is? I’m with you.” This was a moment of rhetorical brilliance from someone who had until then appeared little more than a malign buffoon. It was also the exact point in time that, for Hillary Clinton, all was lost.
America is now a nakedly different country. In her new book Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History, the American journalist Nellie Bowles traces the path taken by the contemporary left in the denouement of the Obama years, through Trump’s turbulent term as president, to the present. One provocative section of the book, recently extracted in the Atlantic, asks: “Are white women better now?”
In the months following Clinton’s shock defeat to Trump, the inexorable march to a better world still seemed durable enough. But the progressive left is no stranger to total self-destruction. And so, as is perennially the case, the broad movement for women’s rights in the 2010s turned on itself.
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