The key line from Owen Jones in The Guardian is that “by demanding more boldness from Labour, the political debate can be shifted further left still”.
The Guardian
I’m sure it can, but I predict it will be met with even more hostility from the right. How do you combat that? Telling the truth doesn’t work, because it’s not just about appealing to the head, it’s about appealing to the heart, and more importantly the gut.
The problem for the left is that it’s very good at winning the intellectual argument, it just isn’t as good at hitting people in the gut. The jingoism of the right hits people where it hurts, and they carry it, remember it, act on it.
The left needs to do the same, and find a way to grab people by the intestines. Only when they learn to do that, will they be able to take a parliamentary majority with them.
I broadly agree with Owen Jones’s piece in The Guardian, a centrist split could be a gift to hard-right strategists.
The Guardian
Both Labour and Conservative are mistakenly committed to honouring the result of the referendum. We keep being told we’re defiantly, absolutely, positively, leaving the European Union. The only difference is the way we exit.
The Labour leadership seems broadly in favour a soft exit. Maintain the benefits of the European Union, mainly frictionless trade and workers rights, without being a member.
Government Conservatives, under the Chequers plan want the same thing, maybe? It’s definitely softer than hard-right Conservatives. They want to drive us off a cliff-edge.
Within that context, the appeal of centrists would be their pro-remain stance. Presumably it would attract MP’s from both parties, and damage both extremes equally. Their remain stance would appeal to the growing number of voters, slowly beginning to realise, leaving the European Union is going to have some very damaging consequences.
For me, one of the most dangerous parts of the centrist stance is their enthusiasm for neoliberalism. It wants to return us to the pre-election, pre-crash, status quo, and there lies its weakness. True, crashing out of the European Union would be a mistake. The cost of living will climb, and climb, and climb, with no deal. So the centrist can argue, with conviction, remaining part of the European Union is the lesser of two evils.
The hard-right Conservative version of exit, promises crisis capitalism that would make all but the wealthiest poorer. Which makes the Labour leadership’s stance either incredibly astute or incredibly reckless.
Centrist are hoping threats of a split will drag the Labour leadership towards them. It won’t, because what I’ve realised, exiting the European Union isn’t just about leaving, it’s also about exiting neoliberalism.
For Labour exiting offers a chance to draw a line under the neoliberal project. I could be wrong, I probably am, but the psychological break with the European Union is a chance to move us towards a country run for the many not the few.
That’s the astute part. The reckless part is letting the hard-right crash us out. They will then ramp up the hostile nationalism, and allow the profiteers to thrive.
The “determined effort in both the British media and the wider political elite to delegitimise the Labour leadership in particular and the broader left as a whole” is a strategy that I hope most people can see through.
Medium
Aggressively attacking someone while simultaneously framing themselves as the victims of an attack is a sign of desperation. It frames a reasonable point of view into an act of mindless aggression. We should stop engaging in these tactics. We need to find ways to reframe the issues. What the right manages to do is turn reasonable intelligent debate into emotional outpourings. They appeal to the gut not to the head. They appeal to emotion and not intellect. The left has to find ways to engage with the wider world on an emotional level without sinking into the spite of the right. If they don’t the conversation will end up being something akin to the vitriolic exchanges of an acrimonious divorce.
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