Canterbury is a difficult place to live in at times (probably could have chosen a better image to accompany that opening gambit). None more so than at general election time. Our constituency has been represented by a Tory since 1918, and there is very little sign of that changing any time soon. The problem we have is the same as a number of other seats across the country. All the alternatives claim to be the one that is most likely to unseat the Tory candidate (the Lib Dems are especially guilty of pushing this line), but the reality is that unless they unite behind one candidate, they will never topple the incumbent.
In some ways this is fairly liberating. Having no particular allegiance to any of the main political parties, I can vote for whoever more closely represents my views. Over the years this has meant voting for a number of “fringe” parties, but it has meant that I could do so without worrying about the outcome, worrying about whether if I had voted differently, that the Tory might finally have been removed from office.
In some respects, being “of the left”, I should be a “natural” Labour voter. But the reality is that I have never voted Labour and I have been largely suspicious of it going back to the very first election I could vote in. For me, certainly since the 1980s, it has been taken over by a middle class elite that has no interest in the working class, but instead concerned with tilting to a mythical middle, doing whatever they can to ensure that The Daily Mail Is Onside. Nothing in the Blair years undermined this belief (if anything it strengthened my belief). But this time feels a little different…
Although I have never voted Labour in my life, I have long been guilty of defending Corbyn. It seemed to me that he was positioning the party in exactly the place they needed to be. If the political landscape post-crisis has taught us anything, it’s that people (as they do in all periods of economic crisis) have lost confidence in the centre ground, in the moderates and liberals. People have fled to the fringes because the centre doesn’t provide the answers anymore. It is collapsing, and continues to collapse in the post-2008 period.
We only have to look at Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain to see that a shift is taking place. Indeed, look at the soft-left, third way (Blairite) parties in both those countries and they have been obliterated in the face of the rise of the more radical left movements. Similarly (yet also very differently) the United States elected a man who by generous interpretations would be considered a man of the hard right fringes, not a traditional centrist politician. And, of course, we see this with Brexit. A rejection of the liberal centrist consensus, and a move towards a new political order (in some senses).
It has been clear for some time that a centrist Labour leader would have had no joy under these conditions. In fact, I’d argue that a more centrist candidate would have seen the Labour Party drift ever more into insignificance. The centre is not where people are anymore. Sure the liberal centre sticks stubbornly to the liberal consensus, but the majority of people are looking elsewhere for answers. The Right gets this (look at how Theresa May has casually and increasingly adopted UKIP rhetoric and policies), the Left have, typically, been slow to pick up on this reality. And then there was Corbyn…
One of the things that has struck me during his leadership has been the criticism from liberal left commentators that he doesn’t have the capability to reach out to Labour’s working class base, merely to middle class lefties. This struck me as odd for a long time, not least because my experience of those below the average wage was quite different. Social media is a dangerous tool to rely on as a gauge for the political mood (filter bubbles etc etc), but given the people I am connected to (people from school, from a past life working in retail), the picture seemed quite different. It would be fair to say that pretty much all the critics I came across were of the middle class, and I barely witnessed any criticism from working class voters, quite the opposite: strong and consistent (stable?) support.
This certainly seems to have been borne out at the moment (a dangerous thing to say given how quickly things can change). As polling day draws nearer and Corbyn’s exposure grows, the gap is being closed and it seems that people are rallying around a manifesto that is radical by modern standards in UK politics, but fairly mainstream by European standards. Again, it’s dangerous to read too much into polling numbers, and it could very easily slip back over the coming days. But it seems unlikely that Labour will receive the significant drubbing that was forecast even a few weeks ago (notice the use of the word “unlikely” to cover my arse should it all go tits up).
One thing is for certain, if there was a significant defeat for Labour in this election it would mean only one thing: the Labour Right will seek to re-establish its authority over the party and will plot to remove Corbyn. Once achieved, they will trot out the line that a left-wing manifesto had been tried, it failed, and Labour needs to “return to the centre”. We can be sure that a fairly moderate left-wing manifesto like the one put forward by Corbyn’s team will be discarded by the party for a generation. Instead, they will shift back to the soft Tory politics of the last 20 years, a position that will surely signal it’s obsolescence to both elements of its core base (the intellectual middle class, and the working class), who will take flight to other parties that they see as more representative or of sufficient distance away from the mainstream liberal politicians many have come to despise.
So where does that leave my vote?
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t vote Labour. But this election feels different. I’m not uncritical of Corbyn by any stretch (his economic, tax and immigration policies are not radical enough – in terms of immigration I consider radical enough to be a no borders policy), but I get a sense that we are at a crucial juncture. A heavy defeat for Labour would see the end of a truly left-wing political agenda ever being on the ballot paper. We would be faced with a choice between three moderate, milquetoast parties that are tied to a liberal economic agenda that panders to the middle class whilst further marginalising the working class.
With that in mind, I feel that I have no real option but to vote tactically. Tactically not in the local sense of what is the best way of stopping the Tory incumbent, but in the sense of ensuring that the Corbyn manifesto is not used as a stick by which to beat the left for a generation. As far as I am concerned, it is essential to shore up support for Corbyn, to ensure that the popularity of his policies are reinforced at the ballot box and to do what is necessary to ensure that a left-wing political agenda is not consigned to history, but remains at the forefront of political life and continues to exist as a reality that the people can eventually realise. It may not be entirely to my taste, but this manifesto is the best first step we have in realising the kind of society I aspire to. It’s failure would make that ideal more remote than ever.
