Keep the Red Flag, Crying

The Labour Party is seeking its next leader. Harold Wilson, the sixties Prime Minister, remarked that the Labour Movement is nothing if not a moral movement. It is vital for the good of our country and parliamentary system that we have an effective opposition and a government in-waiting. St Jeremy of Islington was not the man to provide that. As the competing candidates feast on his political corpse, some offering to continue his policies, others a repudiation of them, I pray a goodly person will be found. The talent pool in the current Labour Party is rather shallow, admittedly.  

Labour needs to move away from its metropolitan liberal bubble of London and the university cities. The woke hipsters and liberals of Shoreditch, Oxford and Manchester are not representative of the wider country. Their organic soymilk, vegan diets, self-righteous Twitter-feeds and preferred pronouns are not shared by the blue-collar, northern wage-earner. While they pore over Marxist tracts and the ecological impact of the working classes’ holidays to Spain, they take time off their leisurely lives to go protesting. The northern Labour voter is too busy working hard to be overly troubled by such things. He’s concerned about his kids’ education, local crime levels, honouring referendum results and controlling immigration 

The Bible criticises the rich and powerful for their negligence of the poor. This charge can often be successfully made against the Tory Party with its core support among businessmen and landowners. It can now be levelled with comparable alacrity at London-centric Labour. Favouring middle-class liberals instead of the lowest paid and hardest working, the party has lost its soul.

The righteous considers the cause of the poor,

But the wicked does not understand such knowledge.

Proverbs 29:7

Image: Marx Memorial Library, via @EnglishRadical