UK Current Affairs

Bring It, Benedict

Samuel Hooper7 Comments

Benedict Cumberbatch - EU Referendum - Brexit

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In their barely literate open letter praising the European Union, Benedict Cumberbatch and his cohort of EU apologist luvvies not only fail to understand what the EU is or how it works, they also shamefully pass off their own financial self interest as high-minded concern for the future of Britain

If assorted celebrities are going to sign their names to a public letter calling for the British people to vote a certain way in a referendum of existential importance, it would be decent of them to be honest about why they really want people to make that choice.

This is hardly rocket science, but apparently it was too much for the cognitively tepid minds who signed their names to a letter calling for Britons to reject Brexit for the supposed good of the arts.

The signatories are exactly the kind of people you would expect to see flaunting their right-on, progressive virtue to their fans and peers. Tracey Emin. Anish Kapoor. Vivienne Westwood. Jo Brand. Patrick Stewart. Keira Knightley. Jude Law. John Hurt. The ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch.

So to what exactly did they put their gilded names? Here is the full text of the letter:

The EU referendum marks the biggest democratic decision of our time, and the outcome will have lasting and far-reaching consequences for the future of this country for generations to come.

The referendum forces us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves: what kind of nation do we want to be? Are we outward-looking and open to working with others to achieve more? Or do we close ourselves off from our friends and neighbours at a time of increasing global uncertainty?

Because choosing to step out of a steadily integrating political union with an overarching supra-national government obviously means “closing ourselves off”. There are only two models of engaging with the world – the path to euro federalism or North Korea. Absolutely no other options in there at all. Sure.

From the smallest gallery to the biggest blockbuster, many of us have worked on projects that would never have happened without vital EU funding or by collaborating across borders. Britain is not just stronger in Europe, it is more imaginative and more creative, and our global creative success would be severely weakened by walking away.

And where exactly do you think that “vital EU funding” actually comes from, Benedict? Did you fall for that old chestnut about the secret magic money volcano deep beneath the European Parliament building in Strasbourg, regularly belching out €500 notes and showering them down upon grateful starving artists?

Of course there is no “EU money”. There is only British taxpayer money, the majority of which contributes toward general EU spending with only a small proportion being disbursed to various organisations in Britain, to be spent strictly as agreed by whichever organ of Brussels loftily granted it in the first place.

So is your argument actually that if Britain no longer contributed to EU cultural initiatives, the government would be inclined to use the money for other purposes? And if that is your legitimate fear, why don’t you take it up with your fellow citizens, whom you apparently believe do not value the arts highly enough? Why are you content for higher levels of taxpayer funding of the arts to take place in Britain than you think the British people themselves would allow? Doesn’t that make you the textbook definition of an enemy of democracy?

And what is all this bilge about “collaborating across borders”? Nearly all of the high profile signatories to the letter have worked on various international projects – many of them involving the United States of America, with whom of course we share no political union. Does the lack of a parliament overseeing both Britain and America mean that artists in each country can no longer collaborate on projects? Hardly.

The letter continues:

And what would ‘Out’ really mean? Leaving Europe would be a leap into the unknown for millions of people across the UK who work in the creative industries, and for the millions more at home and abroad who benefit from the growth and vibrancy of Britain’s cultural sector.

Remember when art was bold and visionary? No, neither do I. I was born in 1982, so I do not recall a time when the artistic establishment was not firmly in the orbit of government, keeping the politicos sweet in order to keep a hand in the Treasury.

But despite never having known a time when (unlike the United States of America) our greatest artistic institutions were privately funded and supported by great philanthropists, I still get the nagging feeling that any artist worth their salt – unless of the Soviet variety – should instinctively chafe at the idea of stale political union and remote continental governance, rather than rejoice in it and argue for its continuance.

Leaps into the unknown seem to me to be the whole purpose of art – to boldly go in new directions, try new things and above all seek the maximum freedom possible (the EU hardly being synonymous with freedom). And yet here assembled are the great and the good of Britain’s acting crop, telling us that the best we can now hope for is continued membership of an anachronistic 1950s model of governance dreamed up by old men scarred from the 20th century’s wars. The utter lack of vision and ambition from people supposedly paid to be bold visionaries is as shocking as it is profoundly depressing.

More:

From the Bard to Bowie, British creativity inspires and influences the rest of the world. We believe that being part of the EU bolsters Britain’s leading role on the world stage.

Let’s not become an outsider shouting from the wings.

“We believe”. Well, good for you. I believe in unicorns. But just stating a belief does not make it so. Where is the proof that being a member state of the European Union increases the demand for art, films, television programmes, sculptures, compositions, songs, albums, plays, skits, musicals or operas conceived, designed or produced in the UK? They provide no evidence because there is no evidence. If and when Britain exits the European Union and moves to an interim EFTA/EEA relationship to maintain single market access, the only thing we lose is the supra-national government. Is Cumberbatch seriously suggesting that the political institutions of the EU are his muse of fire?

It hardly needs pointing out that the two British icons cited by the signatories themselves – William Shakespeare and David Bowie – both took the world by storm before Britain joined the European Economic Community, in Shakespeare’s case by quite a few years. The beauty of art is that good or bad, high or low, it has ways of crossing political and cultural boundaries. That’s how a future North Korean defector came to watch a smuggled copy of Titanic in silent wonder, shocked and captivated by the idea of dying for a love other than love of the Dear Leader. That’s how the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony became a symbol of British resistance when all around us was pulverised to rubble during the Blitz. So don’t stand there and fatuously tell me that political union is required in order for art to thrive and spread, Mr. Cumberbatch. You should know that this much is a filthy lie.

Ultimately, one simply cannot take this letter seriously. And neither can one take the signatories seriously. It is certainly much harder to respect someone in public life when they knowingly use their public position to help propagate a series of lies, half-truths and obfuscations in service to an anti-democratic, embryonic government of Europe; an unrequested, unwanted and unloved supra-national government which buys the unconditional praise of scientists, university leaders, politicians and artists with your taxes and mine.

If Benedict Cumberbatch and his right-on friends want to virtue-signal their trendy, progressive opinions then good for them. Have at it. But when they seek to use their fame to influence others in the referendum debate, they should expect to be attacked for casually parachuting into the middle of the fray for the sole purpose of spreading lies, half-truths and a childishly naive view of the European Union which makes one wonder when they last watched the news (if ever).

This risible letter is nothing but a childish hymn of praise to the EU written by people convinced of their own righteousness despite being among the least educated on the topic, and who think they can trick the public by constantly conflating Europe with the power-hungry political entity which wishes to control it. In other words, the letter’s signatories are pawns, and not very bright ones at that, to allow themselves to be used in such a way. I give the whole sorry performance one star out of five, and I’m probably being too generous.

Don’t like what I’m saying? Then bring it, Benedict. I’m available to debate morning, noon or night, any time between now and the referendum. You’re an actor. I have been a lifelong supporter of the arts, and in my 20s was the London Symphony Orchestra’s youngest ever patron. You pick the time and the place, and we’ll talk a bit about the role of the arts in British and European life, and just how intertwined – or not – they are with the political construct known as the European Union.

But do your homework first – and I don’t mean learning canned lines from Britain Stronger in Europe. I mean actually trying to learn something about the subject before you start grandly soliloquising and attempting to sway other people.

Maybe the kind of unrehearsed extemporising revealed in this letter works when you try it on hordes of screaming fans at the rope line after one of your performances. But when you try and pull the same stunt in front of the British electorate you and your chums in the art world look stupid. Very stupid.

And until you either issue a retraction or double down with a proper grown-up argument, I will continue to say so.

 

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The Labour Party’s Rocky Road To Redemption, Part 2 – Pat Glass Edition

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

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The Labour Party still shows no signs of having learned to stop hating half the country

Earlier this week, this blog looked at Tristram Hunt’s effort to combine feedback from various personalities within the Labour Party into a coherent narrative explaining why they lost the 2015 general election. As we saw, it hasn’t got off to the best of starts.

But quoting extensively from a failed parliamentary candidate who unabashedly declared that there is nothing good about British culture and power (as Tristram Hunt did when he quoted the losing Harlow candidate Suzy Stride) is nothing compared to the latest self-inflicted wound administered to the party by one of its own sitting MPs.

Next to enjoy her moment in the sun is Europhile Labour MP Pat Glass, who while campaigning in Derbyshire for Britain to remain in the European Union had some rather choice words to describe her encounter with a man who raised concerns about immigration.

From the BBC:

A Labour MP campaigning for the UK to remain in the EU has apologised after being recorded calling a voter a “horrible racist”.

Shadow Europe minister Pat Glass made the comments after an interview with BBC Radio Derby in Sawley, Derbyshire.

She said: “The very first person I come to is a horrible racist. I’m never coming back to wherever this is.”

[..] The man Ms Glass is believed to have been referring to said he had spoken to her about to a Polish family in the area who he believed were living on benefits, describing them as “spongers”, but denied being racist.

The North West Durham MP said: “The comments I made were inappropriate and I regret them.

“Concerns about immigration are entirely valid and it’s important that politicians engage with them.

“I apologise to the people living in Sawley for any offence I have caused.”

Let’s be honest – Pat Glass isn’t sorry that she made the remarks. She is sorry that she was caught making the remarks, which is very different. For just as surely as rich Californian donors bankrolling then-candidate Barack Obama understood exactly what he meant when he made his dog-whistle comments about backward Southerners clinging to their guns and religion, so Pat Glass’s intended audience knows exactly what she means when she recoils in mock horror after an everyday encounter with someone sceptical about immigration.

Because like the current Labour Party as a whole, Pat Glass’s audience is not the entire country. Her audience is not even everyone on the Left. And it certainly isn’t the “white working class”, with whom Labour now have such a fractious relationship. Pat Glass’s preferred audience is the same middle-class clerisy which cheered on Ed Miliband, whose sheltered home counties wishy-washy Fabianism renders them utterly capable of identifying with the hopes, fears and dreams of whole swathes of the country.

As is often the case, the initial reflex tells us everything that we need to know. And Pat Glass’s reflex on being confronted with the voter in question was not to attempt to understand their viewpoint and see the world through their eyes, but rather to high-handedly dismiss them as being beneath her dignity. Glass knows that both the EU and high net migration are both unabashed goods, and anybody who deigns to disagree with her is uneducated at best, or “racist” at worst. Why bother to hide it?

(Incidentally, Andrew Neil does a great job skewering Labour apologist Zoe Williams in the Daily Politics clip shown above, taking her to school on the difference between racism, xenophobia and bigotry).

We have seen this story play out before, and we will see it again. Mostly because it is how many Labour Party MPs and activists actually feel, and speaking the truth in an unguarded moment is a perennial occupational hazard in politics. Of course, under Jeremy Corbyn, Pat Glass can comfortably expect to receive no censure. Ed Miliband, obsessed with outward appearances, went too far the other way in the case of the Emily Thornberry St. George’s flag Twitter picture, purging Thornberry from his shadow cabinet.

But whether the Labour Party is breezily ignoring the issue or wildly overreacting out of concern for bad PR, the one thing that the party still shows no inclination for doing is actually reaching out to their scorned working class base and asking – pass the smelling salts – whether they might actually have a point? Until now, the best that Labour have managed to do in this regard is to put up a few spokespeople to say something along the lines of “of course it’s not racist to be concerned about immigration”. But this is then immediately followed by the pivot to “but here’s why they are wrong, and the EU / unlimited immigration is actually great”. In other words, the Labour Party are trying to tackle this gulf between the party leadership and the disaffected working class base as a problem of optics rather than a fundamental disagreement over policy.

Maybe the Labour Party will struggle along all the way through until the next general election without resolving the inherent tension between the multiculturalist direction set by the leadership and the more nativist attitudes held by those of their supporters who drifted away to UKIP or stayed home during the 2015 election. But unless Jeremy Corbyn or someone else steps forward with a concerted act of leadership, effectively “choosing a side” once and for all, the party will continue to be embarrassed in the polls when sneering Labour MPs accidentally reveal their true feelings about the working classes.

As this blog recently put it:

First, Labour must learn simply to tolerate the country again – to look upon the white working class and others of their former supporters not as godless infidels who spurned the One True Faith and threw their lot in with the genocidal Tories and racist Ukippers, but as decent and rational human beings who simply don’t like what the Labour Party is currently selling.

Meanwhile, Labour shadow ministers and the army of activists who knock on doors and deliver leaflets need to dial down the moral sanctimony from 100 to about 50, and accept that maybe they, rather than the electorate, made the mistake on May 7 (and the days leading up to it) last year.

At present, whether it is Pat Glass or the Labour In For Britain crowd in general, the scorn and contempt heaped by major party figures on otherwise natural supporters who fail to toe the correct line on immigration and the EU speaks volumes. The people are not stupid. They know when they are being mocked, and they will not buy the subsequent walkback and fake expressions of contrition.

So perhaps this is a split which needs to happen. Just as the Tories desperately need a cleansing fire to purge their ranks of all the wets and panting europhiles post-referendum, maybe the Labour Party needs to split into two new parties – one comprised of middle class luvvies who think they know best about what the working classes need, and another new party comprised of actual working class people who do not need sanctimonious young Corbynistas, Hampstead dwelling champagne socialists or the likes of Pat Glass to defend their interests.

Right now, this is an open question. But the antics of people like Pat Glass are making it a slightly less difficult one to answer.

 

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Remain Supporters Are In Denial About The Nature And Purpose Of The EU

Samuel Hooper17 Comments

Owen Jones - EU Referendum

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I’m voting Remain because Puppies For Everyone!!! The denialism and wishful thinking about the European Union’s true purpose and direction of travel exhibited by pro-EU left-wingers is off the charts

The Great Disappointment of the eurosceptic Left, Owen Jones, has popped up with a new contribution to the EU referendum debate in the form of the picture shown above, being widely shared on social media (albeit sometimes in cheekily photoshopped format with the message changed).

While this blog does not usually bother commenting on internet memes, this one is noteworthy because it simultaneously

  1. Sums up the entire basis of left-wing EU apologetics, and
  2. Reveals just how flimsy is that argument

The sign held up by Owen Jones proclaims:

“I’M VOTING REMAIN BECAUSE… I want to unite with people across the continent to build a democratic, workers Europe”

And I want to own a unicorn that shoots fruit based candy out of its ass and grants me three wishes a day, but sadly that is not on offer from the EU, just like the “workers’ paradise” lusted after by Owen Jones isn’t on the menu from Brussels either.

This referendum is serious business. So can Remainers please stop projecting whatever they desperately wish the EU to be onto an organisation which has never really been about friendly trade and cooperation, but is actually all about slowly and inexorably becoming a supranational government of Europe. And which is not going to abandon that long-held goal just because the British are now expressing a few doubts.

I’ve read the history of the EU. I strongly advise others to do the same. And if they still want to Remain, having understood the true nature of the grand projet, they should at least have the decency to admit out loud precisely what it is that they know they are committing us to.

 

For those interested in that history, here is a good starting point.

 

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The Feeble Christian Case For Remaining In The European Union

Samuel Hooper7 Comments

Christians for Britain

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Nobody has yet made a convincing Christian case for the EU. That should tell us something.

If nothing else, the Church of England’s Reimagining Europe blog has served to highlight – with a few very worthy exceptions – the exceedingly low quality of Christian thinking when it comes to the EU referendum question, and Britain’s place in the world more broadly.

The latest dismal example is a case in point, in which Andrew Gready (chaplain to the Anglican Church in the Hague) bemoans the fact that nobody is making a more positive case for staying in the EU:

Although there are certainly problems with the European Union (no one is seeking to gloss over these), the Dutch are at least able to see some of the positive benefits that belonging to a bigger whole has brought. It seems that they hoped that the debate in the UK would be more positive, more constructive than it has been. A number of people have said ‘Surely they can talk about the benefits of belonging, rather than just saying we are not sure what is going to happen, so let’s stay where we are!’

I think there is a real hope that the vote to Remain will actually be a positive statement of intent, rather than a negative one of fear and uncertainty. We will have to wait and see!

Newsflash, Gready – Britain is and will always remain part of a “bigger whole” whether we remain in the European Union or not. The European Union is a political construct, and a very recent and unproven one at that. It is not interchangeable with the continent of Europe, and it has no democratic legitimacy when it arrogantly claims to speak and act on behalf of the many diverse European peoples. There is a positive case for Brexit based on leaving euro-parochialism behind and engaging more fully in the world, and pro-EU Christians participating in the debate should at least acknowledge this fact rather than arguing against the two-dimensional cartoon Ukipper they hold in their minds.

But this is the very low standard of debate we have sadly come to see from those who claim to represent the Christian perspective. At its core, their argument amounts to little more than “the EU is about friendship and peace and cooperation, and Jesus was in favour of all those things, so what’s not to like?”

Or as the founder of Christians for the EU, the Very Revd Michael Sadgrove, puts it:

“I think life is meant to be lived together in partnerships and collaboration. To walk away from an institution that was set up to pursue those ideals is a big mistake.

“Link that with the Genesis principle that it is not good for a man or a woman to be alone. The EU is very much not perfect, but the essential ideal and aim is still valuable. The world needs nation states to be grouped together in alliances that will be good for the human race.”

Because partnership and collaboration is only possible through political union, of course. The sheer superficiality of this thinking is mind-boggling.

Seriously – boil down most of the pro EU articles over at Reimagining Europe and they amount to little more than that. You’ll hear endless variations on the theme that because we are all brothers and sisters in Christ, somehow it naturally follows that we should be united under the same supranational political umbrella – though curiously the Church of England never wastes its time clamouring for Asian countries to merge together, or for Canada, Mexico and the United States to institute a shared parliament.

Ben Ryan of Theos does a good job of summarising the many-layered complexity of Europe:

Yes, Europe is a Christian continent. But it’s not only a Christian continent, and that’s important to note. It’s a Christian continent, but it is also a ‘Greek’ continent, it is also a democratic continent; which is to say that the space that we call ‘Europe’ is not really a geographical thing. There is no border of Europe, geographically speaking. There are islands off the coast, there is no clear Eastern border.

Instead, what defines the border of the space that we call Europe is a cultural and intellectual thing. It is a space which is defined by what has come before; it is defined by Christianity, and by Greek philosophy, and by a number of other cultural and intellectual movements. So, it’s a mistake to think we are actually a real continent. There is no such thing as a ‘geographical Europe’, it can only really be seen as an intellectual space.

Sadly, many within the Church deliberately ignore these awkward facts, and have convinced themselves that pressing ahead with a uniquely 20th century vision of uniting the diverse under a single supranational government is a wise and moral thing to do – democracy be damned. And they do damn democracy through their actions, because what little organic desire and impetus for European political union there is always comes from the political elites, and not the ordinary people.

As a Catholic eurosceptic, it is frustrating to witness so many fellow Christians accepting the pro-EU, pro-Remain position almost by default, without actually engaging their brains or making considered reference to their faith. I’m no theologian myself, but I’ve read my Bible and I know that the New Testament offers little by way of clear instruction or even guidance as to how any entities larger than individuals and faith groups should organise or govern themselves, while much of the Old Testament reads as a “how not to do statecraft” manual.

If we restrict ourselves then to the teachings of Jesus, from where do Christian EU apologists draw their inspiration? The EU is not a democratic entity, nor is it likely to become one any time soon. What is so Christian about defending an organisation which insulates a continent’s leaders from the practical and political consequences of their rule? What is so Christian about sticking one’s fingers in one’s ears and loudly repeating the mantra “the EU is about peace and cooperation, the EU is about peace and cooperation”, while ignoring the known history of European political union and disregarding the fact that fruitful inter-governmental cooperation could take place just as well outside the EU’s supra-national structure?

Canon Giles Fraser, founder of Christians for Britain, gets it:

“If the Tower of Babel teaches us anything, it is, when man tries to control too much and usurp the power of God then God disperses them,” he said. “Government that is centralised tends towards corruption: that is the history of human nature.

“The biblical pattern is not always for agglomeration of power. God also divides in order that powers would be controlled.”

As I say, I’m no theologian. But I’ve been on the lookout for a more substantial Christian case for the European Union which is not based on wilful ignorance or wishful thinking about the EU’s true nature, and so far I have come up short. Meanwhile, Brexit offers at least the chance of democratic renewal in Britain, potentially giving people (including the faithful) greater control over their lives and communities.

Regrettably, I have come to the conclusion that much of the Christian case for Remain rests either on a lazy “agree with the Left by default” mindset, or the desire to virtue-signal generally “progressive” values across the board. I will be happy to be proven wrong, and to be presented with a serious Christian case for the EU based on the argument that staying part of a supranational political union unreplicated in any other part of the world is 1) what Jesus would do, or 2) what is best for Christians in Europe. But I’m not holding out much hope.

And if that’s what this is really about – cheering on the EU because it signals that one holds the “correct” progressive opinions in other areas – then they picked a really lousy time to do it. Our politics is suffering a crisis of legitimacy, and yet many in the Church have taken the decision to cheer on the one entity which best represents the interests of a narrow European elite overriding the interests of ordinary people.

For the Church as a whole, the consequences of coming down on the wrong side of this issue – or at least failing to come down convincingly on the right side – could be profound. One way or another, now or twenty years down the line, Brexit is coming. And when it does, many leading authority figures within the church will have placed themselves firmly on the side of governing elites rather than the people who fill their emptying pews.

This should be provoking a great degree introspection and self-reflection from Britain’s most high profile Christian leaders. So far, one gets the distinct impression that it is not.

 

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The Labour Party’s Soul Searching Exercise Is Off To An Unpromising Start

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

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Finally, a glimmer of self-awareness from within the perennially self-satisfied Labour Party. But there is a long, difficult road ahead if Labour are serious about reaching out to their legions of disaffected former voters, and it is far from certain that senior party figures have either the stamina or the humility to make the journey

 

“What makes us great as a country is not our culture, it’s not our wealth, and it’s definitely not currently our footballing abilities.” – Suzy Stride, Labour Parliamentary Candidate for Harlow, 2014

 

Apparently Tristram Hunt has been filling the time freed up through refusing to serve in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet by having a good, long think about why the Labour Party imploded quite so badly under the hapless leadership of Ed Miliband.

Hunt’s principle contribution to this process of soul-searching has been to assemble and edit a book of essays by various people within the party, each one ruminating on the cause of their defeat. The common thread which emerges, unsurprisingly, is the profound extent to which the increasingly metropolitan, middle-class core of the modern Labour Party has diverged from the “white working class”, to the extent that the Labour leadership (and many activists) had almost nothing to say to Britain’s strivers going in to the 2015 general election.

Hunt previews this new book – “Labour’s Identity Crisis” – in an article for the Guardian, and it makes fascinating reading, though probably not for the reasons that its author would like. For it reveals the absolute mountain which Labour has to climb just in order to appear relevant to those voters who have deserted the party for UKIP or the Tories.

Hunt begins:

“I’m a white working-class Englishman who isn’t on benefits, Labour isn’t for people like me.” That was the brutal message that confronted the Labour party candidate Suzy Stride on a doorstep in Harlow, Essex, during last year’s general election.

It was a sentiment repeated across the country: Labour didn’t speak for England. Worse, in that remarkable tweet from the Islington MP Emily Thornberry  – picturing St George’s crosses adorning a semi in Rochester – we seemed to mock it.

It’s very interesting that Tristram Hunt should kick off his article with a quote from failed 2015 Labour parliamentary candidate for Harlow (my hometown), Suzy Stride. Because this is what Stride had to say about the country which gives her life and liberty back during the 2014 Labour Party Conference:

“What makes us great as a country is not our culture, is not our wealth, and it’s definitely not currently our footballing abilities. What makes us great is that we have the dignity to care for those who are most vulnerable. So when did it become acceptable to make parents queue for food at foodbanks?”

This is someone who stood before the electorate asking for their vote only months after boasting on television that she believes there is nothing special about her country, its culture, history or achievements, and that the only thing which we on this rainy island have to be proud of is the fact that we confiscate ever more money from the most productive people in society and blast it indiscriminately at anybody declared by the Labour Party to be “vulnerable” (currently hovering at around 50% of the population, in terms of net welfare recipients).

And yet up pops Suzy Stride in Tristram Hunt’s book, acting as though the seeds of her defeat were sown not by her own contemptuous attitude toward her country, but rather by the mistaken priorities and poor leadership of the national party. The man who went on to beat Stride by 8,350 votes, incumbent Conservative MP Robert Halfon, understands that in fact our culture is great, as is our history, our wealth and global power. And while he is far from being a Thatcherite right-winger, Halfon at least appreciates that the greatness of our country is more than the sum of our public services. Faced with a choice between the two candidates, it was no contest for the voters of the bellwether constituency of Harlow.

Tristram Hunt quotes Stride again, at the end of a long passage on immigration:

For too many voters, we were still the party that had once dismissed Gillian Duffy as “bigoted” for raising the question of mass migration and cultural change. Labour still has a long way to go to acknowledge the post-2004 influx as one of the most dramatic demographic surges in the history of England. As a result, England has changed in cultural and ethnic composition with an intensity many voters understandably find deeply unsettling.

For at the same time as new migrants found work, manufacturing was laying off workers in the face of increased global competition. There was no direct link between the jobs gained and those lost, but the conjunction of immigration, globalisation and job losses left a toxic political legacy: industrial communities in England saw their way of life change under a Labour policy for which democratic consent was never sought, let alone given. Even worse was an unwillingness by Labour activists to acknowledge the problem. According to Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London, eight out of 10 Labour party members think that immigration is good for the country. This is not the case on most doorsteps in Labour areas. And when, in 2015, English voters raised cultural concerns about changes in language, dress and social norms, we answered with crass, material responses. “Many middle-class Labourites scoffed at such views,” according to Suzy Stride in Harlow. “Where would the NHS be without immigrants?” was a common response from canvassers, she said.

This is actually a very good passage, and is the closest we have yet come to anything approaching contrition for the way that the New Labour government of Tony Blair waved through an unprecedented influx of immigrants without so much as mentioning it to the British electorate, let alone seeking their permission. Whether one is generally pro or anti-immigration (and this blog is very much pro), we should all be able to agree as democrats that such a significant national change, brought about by stealth, was an unconscionable act of arrogance by the Blair government. The fact that many Labour activists still have to be coaxed ever so gently toward this realisation is itself a sign of how much atoning the party still has to do.

Tristram Hunt then gets to the core of it:

A failure to appreciate the value of Englishness played an important role in our 2015 defeat and nothing Corbyn has done as leader has changed this. Indeed, his cosmopolitan views on immigration, benefits, the monarchy and armed forces are likely to have exacerbated the disconnect.

As George Orwell put it: “In leftwing circles it is always felt there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings.” He was right: in no other progressive European tradition – from the French Socialist party to Spain’s Podemos – do you find a similar reluctance to fly the flag.

So there are obvious reforms for Labour to pursue: an English Labour party; a referendum on an English parliament; radical devolution to cities and counties. Alongside that, we have to be careful during the EU referendum campaign not to alienate those millions of Labour voters opting for Brexit. But more than that, what these tales from the 2015 campaign expose is Labour’s need to shed its metropolitan squeamishness about England. It needs to express its admiration and love for the people and culture of this great country.

An admirable sentiment, but at present a futile hope. As Hunt himself admits, the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour Party has done nothing to change the core of the party’s disdain for that bulk of people lumped together under the umbrella term “white working class”. While this blog hailed Corbyn’s leadership bid not because of his odious foreign policy opinions but because of the opportunity he represents to inject some real partisan choice back into our domestic political debate, there is sadly little evidence that the army of new members Corbyn helped attract to the party hail from outside the urban, middle class clerisy first identified by Brendan O’Neill as the Labour Party’s new de facto rulers.

You see the effect in Jeremy Corbyn’s immediate U-turn on the European Union the moment he became Labour leader. Corbyn had always held a principled eurosceptic stance and had voted to leave back in the 1975 referendum, and yet here he is in 2016, chanting the praises of Brussels. Why? Because while the Labour party membership will forgive many things (including supporting the IRA, as Alex Massie reminds us), the one thing they cannot abide is a failure to support the mindless, anti-democratic pseudo-internationalism of the EU, or the failure to take a firm, unapologetic stance in favour of unlimited immigration. Those things are simply non-negotiable for Labour activists, most of whom can scarcely conceal their disdain for anybody who fails to hold the “correct” view on immigration in particular.

And that’s the problem. Too many Labour activists actually hate the people of this country – or at best they view those not already convinced of Labour’s righteousness as dangerously ignorant, as Tristram Hunt goes on to explain:

Jamie Reed, MP for Copeland, in Cumbria, takes the analogy further by suggesting that, if Labour fails to embrace Englishness, it will face in northern towns and villages the same fate as the Democrats in the US south: a failure to connect “culturally” with a socially conservative working-class electorate, increasingly willing to vote against their own material interests.

Jamie Reed presumptuously declares that it is the cultural issues surrounding English identity which make natural Labour supporters spurn the party and vote against their own material self interest. But this lazy “what’s the matter with Kansas?” attitude is itself part of the problem – the arrogant assumption that people are voting Tory or UKIP despite rather than because of their right wing economic policies, and that of course they would see that good old fashioned socialist policies would be much better for them, if only they were a little more educated.

The headline of Hunt’s piece in the Guardian is “There’ll always be an England – and Labour must learn to love it”. But from all the evidence currently on display, aspiring for love is setting the goal far too high. First, Labour must learn simply to tolerate the country again – to look upon the white working class and others of their former supporters not as godless infidels who spurned the One True Faith and threw their lot in with the genocidal Tories and racist Ukippers, but as decent and rational human beings who simply don’t like what the Labour Party is currently selling.

Meanwhile, Labour shadow ministers and the army of activists who knock on doors and deliver leaflets need to dial down the moral sanctimony from 100 to about 50, and accept that maybe they, rather than the electorate, made the mistake on May 7 (and the days leading up to it) last year.

If these extracts from “Labour’s Identity Crisis” – and the behaviour of Labour supporters in the year since that fateful general election – are anything to go by, the party has a lot of unresolved anger toward the British electorate. If this were a marriage, couples therapy would most definitely be in order. All of which is quite ridiculous, because it is Britain which has every right to be angry at the Labour Party, and not vice versa.

The white working class and many others spurned the Labour Party in 2015 not because they are morally defective, but because the centre-left, urban, woolly Fabianism of the Miliband era had absolutely nothing to offer them.

And what remains uncertain, despite a radical change in leadership and a plucky first attempt at introspection from Tristram Hunt, is just how the Labour Party ever expects to win a future majority when they continue to hold such a large segment of the population in open contempt?

 

Tristram Hunt - Labour Leadership

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