Haigh also endorses cooperatives and calls for more workers on boards, two policies that can be found in Corbyn’s manifesto. Embery supports ‘workers on boards’ too, claiming that this would represent an extension of social ownership that diffuses power and wealth in industry and commerce. Embery and Labour’s social democrats both speak of Trade Union organising but rather than viewing it as means for the working class to engage in an antagonistic struggle, it is a corporatist approach that guides their policy prescriptions...
From the Essex man to the ‘Workington man’ in the Red Wall, there is a clear shift away from an individual’s material conditions and aspirations to a values-based, communitarian framing. The Conservative think tank ‘Onward’, who coined these latest terms, published its report ‘
The Politics of Belonging’ in October 2019, finding a shift away from freedom of choice towards security as a priority for swing voters. The report also states that voters believe communities have become more divided, that family values are in decline and that an increase in university graduates versus those completing technical qualifications has been bad for the country. Economically, these voters will strongly oppose globalisation and the modern liberal market economy and believe that immigration has had a negative impact. Onward concludes by recommending to Boris Johnson an electoral strategy that focuses on economic security, restores a sense of belonging, prioritises national security and pursues cultural changes over a longer period of time.
Following the Brexit referendum and Boris Johnson’s landslide victory in 2019, attention for Labour strategists is now firmly on the Red Wall and it seems that Onward’s analysis has been wholesale adopted – and endorsed – by the left. Little in terms of alternative coalition-building ideas has been published. Labour’s own election post mortem in form of the
Labour Together report concludes that what is needed is a strategy based on an economic agenda combined with a “robust story of community and national pride.”
Is it wise to wholesale subscribe to a framing that has been developed by Conservative researchers, making recommendations for a Conservative victory?
... Embery at least is somewhat honest in that he is not shying away from conflict – he does not want to prioritise people’s needs over cultural assimilation and therefore has made his pick of which section of society he wants to see represented by Labour. The Party mainstream is dancing to a similar tune, but is less honest about it. Flat statements of unity and empty descriptions of community and values, fearful to antagonise and desperate to avoid political conflict, do not set a counter-argument to Embery. Mainstream Labour figures engage in the same language but are rarely spelling out what they actually mean. Consequently everyone can interpret their definitions of community, pride and place however it suits them. This void is easily filled with Embery’s interpretations. And when pressed to go more concrete, mainstream Labour voices slide down a bit further along the path that arrives at the same conclusions as Embery does: their definition of community remains ultimately closed and static, with a focus on unity over class conflict.
