As the despised white working class voters desert the party, Labour's media cheerleaders suddenly get all contrite. Jonathan Freedland :
It's like the habitual wife-beater who suddenly discovers, when the little woman's packing the suitcase, how much he really, really loves her.The reason the BNP won two seats in Europe was not because their vote went up - it didn't - but because Labour's went down. The white working class, what used to be called the core vote, stayed away. Vast stretches of the English cities, as well as Wales and Scotland, are now Labour's broken heartland.
Those voters have to be won back. If Labour waits till after the next general election it will be too late.
It will have to do what - and it pains me to write it - the BNP does: listening to people who have been taken for granted for too long. "They felt forgotten," admits one senior cabinet minister. "There's no John Reid, no David Blunkett. Apart from Alan Johnson, there's not a working-class person in the cabinet any more."
"Never again, I mean it ! I promise I'll be good !"
Of course, they did listen to the working class. Then they called the white ones racists.
I never warmed to Tony Blair's "respect" agenda, with its Asbo-centric view of young people. Sunday's results have forced me to acknowledge its value. Blair's emphasis on low-level crime showed that Labour understood how fly-tipping and dodgy neighbours can blight lives. It told those core voters that Labour was on their side - something they no longer believe.Oh, and they said they were being led by the nose by the tabloid agendas of the Sun and the Mail.
Last year, after the local government elections, I wrote an Election Roundup. I don't think it's aged too badly at all :
... outside of London the working class Labour heartlands are losing the tribal Labour votes. And once identification stops being tribal, it's difficult - if not impossible - to go back. I remember how I felt when I first walked into a booth to cast a Tory vote (2001 after voting Labour since 18). The first time is the hardest. I would still vote Labour again (if Frank Field led them!) but it'll never be a tribal thing again. My children haven't inherited the 'Labour are for people like us' culture that I was brought up on, either. Look at the collapse in the South Wales Valleys. Look at some of the places the BNP gained seats - Bedworth, Rotherham, Stoke. These aren't Tories switching votes. Look at the performance of the Barrow in Furness People's Party. Labour's contempt for the working class - over immigration, the smoking ban, pensions, the 10p tax rate, crime - is at last being returned with interest.
13 comments:
The bandwagon of local smoking bans now steamrolling across the nation -
from sea to sea- has nothing to do with protecting people from the supposed
threat of "second-hand" smoke.
Indeed, the bans themselves are symptoms of a far more grievous threat; a
cancer that has been spreading for decades and has now metastasized
throughout the body politic, spreading even to the tiniest organs of local
government. This cancer is the only real hazard involved - the cancer of
unlimited government power.
The issue is not whether second-hand smoke is a real danger or a phantom
menace, as a study published recently in the British Medical Journal
indicates. The issue is: if it were harmful, what would be the proper
reaction? Should anti-tobacco activists satisfy themselves with educating
people about the potential danger and allowing them to make
their own decisions, or should they seize the power of government and force
people to make the "right" decision?
Supporters of local tobacco bans have made their choice. Rather than
attempting to protect people from an unwanted intrusion on their health, the
tobacco bans are the unwanted intrusion.
Loudly billed as measures that only affect "public places," they have
actually targeted private places: restaurants, bars, nightclubs, shops, and
offices - places whose owners are free to set anti-smoking rules or whose
customers are free to go elsewhere if they don't like the smoke. Some local
bans even harass smokers in places where their effect on others is obviously
negligible, such as outdoor public parks.
The decision to smoke, or to avoid "second-hand" smoke, is a question to be
answered by each individual based on his own values and his own assessment
of the risks. This is the same kind of decision free people make regarding
every aspect of their lives: how much to spend or invest, whom to befriend
or sleep with, whether to go to college or get a job, whether to get married
or divorced, and so on.
All of these decisions involve risks; some have demonstrably harmful
consequences; most are controversial and invite disapproval from the
neighbours. But the individual must be free to make these decisions. He must
be free, because his life belongs to him, not to his neighbours, and only
his own judgment can guide him through it.
Yet when it comes to smoking, this freedom is under attack. Cigarette
smokers are a numerical minority, practicing a habit considered annoying and
unpleasant to the majority. So the majority has simply commandeered the
power of government and used it to dictate their behaviour.
That is why these bans are far more threatening than the prospect of
inhaling a few stray whiffs of tobacco while waiting for a table at your
favourite restaurant. The anti-tobacco crusaders point in exaggerated alarm
at those wisps of smoke while they unleash the systematic and unlimited
intrusion of government into our lives.
We do not elect officials to control and manipulate our behaviour.
Thomas Laprade
Freedland is touting what seems set to be the official 'big lie' of the Euro elections; that the BNP vote went down but their share of the vote rose due to poor Labour turnout.
In fact the BNP vote went up in absolute terms and up in percentage terms. Though the collapsed Labour vote will have magnified the percentage effect.
BBC table of 2004 Euro results gives the following:
BNP 808,200 votes = 4.9% of the vote
And the BBC table of 2009 Euro results gives the following:
BNP 943,598 votes = 6.2% of the vote
A numerical rise of 135,398 votes does not constitute a fall in the BNP vote.
Perhaps the Labour party and their media pals use a new experimental form of maths?
It is no longer 'about the white working-class' in the UK. It is about the transformation of Western Europe into god knows what.
Richard
Freedland's wording in the Graun article is careful- technically he's correct in saying that the BNP vote went down slightly in the Euro constituencies where they won seats. However, his shocked NuLab readers, deeply immersed in that river in Egypt, will miss the nuance and try to convince themselves that 'those voters' (at least those who abstained) can be 'won back' for The Party with Gordon & Harperson at the helm.
Did John Major have any media cheerleaders in 1996 who were as delusional as this ?
If you despise the working-class then what you really hate is Democracy.
Fair point Mark, but as you point out Labour figures (such as Alistair Darling) and their compliant media lap dogs arent too fussy about the distinction.
Given the tenor of the last few weeks - all the parties seemingly campaigning on a platform of defeat the BNP and forget the issues - I would expect the greatest effort was expended precisely where the BNP looked strongest.
Could this account for the fall in those areas?
The Liberal elite are obsessed with the friggin' BNP because they have a guilty conscience.
Labour have been much more delusional than usual recently.
There was some Labour numptie discussing their council election result who claimed that Labour's vote was down about 1%, but the Tories by the same strange metric was down 6%, so they had really done much worse.
Was this article really in the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/13/christopher-caldwell-revolution-in-europe
Astonishing. Comments off though.
It's typical of Freedland and the chattering classes generally that they think another dose of patronising glob can appease Labour's lost supporters.
Hatred for Nulab and fear for the future in any case crosses class
UKIP is a waste of space though
Where will Farage be right now?
Pissing it up the wall
Agreed about UKIP.
However it still satisfying to note that more than 25% of all votes cast went to explicitly anti-EU parties including UKIP.
I was just looking at the results and hadnt quite realsied how scared Labour (and others) must be.
The Labour vote was only 2.5 times that of the BNP. So in the mythical average polling station for every 5 Labour voters walking through, there 2 BNP.
Given that the BNP vote is all but white the margin between Labour & the BNP amongst white voters must be even closer.
Does anyone know of stats on the ethnic voting demographics? Be fascinating to see.
Non-whites vote less on average but when they do...its primarily for Labour. Of course that in no way influences Labour immigration policy.
The idea that Labour can win back the working class White vote when it will continue its policies of race replacement against them - which its backers say it must - is laughable. Griffin is right about the dam having broke.
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