All the outrage from the identity left about the stupid, racist working class refusing to recognise their best interests lie in voting Labour is just so mad and so circular.
The old left diverges in values from the identity left, so the ID left responds by doubling down on its moral framework and berating the old Left for being retrograde, racist, sexist, homophobic etc. As if insults were going to make the old left vote for them more.
In other words, their response to seeing that the old left doesn't share their worldview is to insult the old left for not sharing their worldview. But what if people don't even see your insults as insults any more? How do you imagine flinging them will make anyone like you more?
Either way, it's clear the ID left is *not* going to adjust its moral framework to take into account a diversity of viewpoints in the people it presumes to help. Its aim is not representation but proselytisation. It's a religion, not a political movement.
This wouldn't matter except that it leaves a lot of working class people politically voiceless. We have to hope that the new crop of Conservative MPs elected to represent former Labour strongholds are less squeamish than the Labour Party about actually listening to their voters.
The ID-left response to what I'm saying is likely to be 'oh right so you think Labour should respond to electoral defeat by becoming more racist? No thanks buddy, nob off back to the EDL.' That was the gist of the response to @blue_labour's tweets on the same topic recently.
No. I'm saying that ID politics as a moral framework is woefully (some might say deliberately) inadequate for thinking about social class.
If Labour has any interest going forward in articulating the concerns of lower class people, rather than the preoccupations of the urban wealthy, then it needs a moral framework that can both account for and express those concerns. ID politics isn't enough, sorry guys.
If Labour is psychologically unable to let go of/expand the bandwidth of ID politics that's fine, but then it needs also to let go of the claim that it articulates the interests of the labouring class. Call yourself something else. The Smart Metropolitan Urban Group (SMUG) maybe.
After all, SMUG people need a political voice just like everyone else. Democracy is a fine thing, we'll all agree!
Labour will get a fairer hearing from the rest of the country if they stop pretending their base is something other than the SMUG & stop trying to proseletyse a socioeconomic group (townies, people without degrees) that today are politically more in conflict with them than not.
If Labour won't let go of the idea that their natural voters are townies and people without degrees they're going to have to let go of or at least adjust the SMUG moral framework. It's one or the other, guys.
