Ideological purity
It has been a funny old reversal.
For four years, without respite, one phrase was constantly hurled at us with the utmost disdain. ‘Ideological purity’. Meaning: stop fighting for your beliefs, go for the bare minimum, do what is pragmatic. Do not scare the horses, work within the Overton window, daren’t dream for more, respect the status quo. Like Blair did, like Milliband tried to do, like every leader must do: compromise, triangulate, know your place.
It is notable how the Right never gets asked to compromise. No one came to Cameron and accused him of ideological purity due to his pursuit of austerity. Nor were the Leavers — those supposed maverick spirits who turned politics upside down — told they should be more moderate. They are resented — of course they are, and very passionately — but never told what to do. Never ever accused of wanting too much, of being unrealistic, never told to think small.
Yet the Left was constantly told it is going too far. Prioritising ideology over people’s lives. ‘Why don’t you want to just help the poor and the workers, people who need a Labour government, a little’ — the cry goes. ‘Do the bare minimum and they will thank you for it. Don’t try to fix anything structural, you will scare Middle England. Your damn principles…’ and so on. And, needless to say, this accusation of wanting too much was one Corbyn faced from the start.
Years passed. The new (in reality quite old) Labour views took hold; people started talking about nationalisation, stronger unions, market interference with a lot more confidence than before. It turned out that, actually, people liked the idea of public ownership. They didn’t all share the view that the poor have to suffer in order to encourage them to work harder whilst the rich had to be given tax breaks to encourage them to do the same. It did help that most of Labour’s suggestions were already standard practice on the continent. Practical and with appeal: what more could one ask?
The media didn’t give up and feverishly raved about all this being the immediate onset of Communism. Yet, the ideological purity jibes mostly stopped. And then something strange happened.
The Tories decided to make the current general election about getting Brexit done. This left many Leavers— in particular Labour leavers — with a choice. Do you embrace ideological purity of Brexit with the Tories or the pragmatic unifying strategy of a second referendum with Labour? As Labour became the pragmatic choice, Conservatives became the ideological. The sight of disabled people and their carers choosing Brexit over the NHS, prioritising an ideal over what keeps them alive, speaks for this only too clearly. These people have lost hope of a better life in a better society, may not even care if they live or die and so feel free to expend themselves on a Brexit pipe dream before they fizzle out.
This is territory unfamiliar to Labour. It used to be guided by a belief in a better world, in social contracts, in certain ways of organising a society, but is now faced by other people’s ideological belief in Brexit. From years of triangulation and compromise, Labour are by now used to justifying every bit of spending, to trying to motivate every line in the manifesto — yet that will not work on someone who believes in Brexit no matter what the cost, who is intent on making a last stand on the burning deck for it.
The fate of the election now seems to hinge on breaking that ideological stranglehold, breaking the link that has formed in people’s minds between the EU and the deprivation in their local area, their own precarious situations. This link has been honed and strengthened by many years of tabloid anti-EU (and anti-immigrant) propaganda. It is also about transmitting some of the hope that is so evident among the newer, younger, Labour supporters onto those former Labour voters.