Quick thoughts on the Hartlepool by-election and more.
I was raised as a pescetarian because my parents believed it would be healthier. I also have a daft double-barrelled surname. Not because I am an aristocrat but because I am a bastard, and my mother believed marriage to be a patriarchal institution. That should be all you need to know about me and my cultural background.
But I’ll open up and tell you a few more things.
My dad was sniffy about the fawning adulation of Captain Tom. Sinful, I know. While he respected his charitable achievements, he felt uneasy about what he saw as a jingoistic underbelly to his memorialization.
Like my dad, I have an unease towards what I view as excessive sentimentality and I am often uncomfortable when individuals are idolized (see Corbyn). For me, Captain Tom’s military past was neither here nor there, but I too was a little sniffy about the £32.8m raised for the NHS Charities. After all, a sum like that would fund the NHS for… minutes?
One of my favourite made-up quotes is, “charity is a cold grey loveless thing. If a rich man wants to help the poor, he should pay his taxes gladly, not dole out money at a whim.” It pithily sums up my view towards charity and my belief in a redistributive state and my bullish, collectivist outlook.
And while there are many voters in England & Wales’ towns that might agree with my support for redistributive economics and an interventionist state, this feels… frankly, less and less important. What feels more important is my attitude to Captain Tom, my attitude towards charity, my attitude towards marriage, my attitude towards, well, everything!
Every time the Tories win an election, you’ll find lefties looking up at the sky, offering a derisory howl at the working-class voters who ‘voted against their economic interests.’ And yes, perhaps they did vote against greater investment in healthcare, social care services and early years education that would be hugely beneficial to their material reality. But perhaps that wasn’t at the forefront of their mind.
Perhaps they voted to protect and further their own cultural interests?
I vote Labour not just because of economic self-interest, I vote for them due to a melting pot of value and tribal alignments. From the Big P political to my daily interests and focus - to my seemingly insignificant cultural tastes — I fit a tribe and vote for those who I think will further build the world, city, and neighbourhood I want to live in.
For example, I believe that broadly, ‘prisons as punishment’ do not work as a crime deterrent and that the causes of crime are structural, rather than an individual moral failing that we can be metaphorically beaten out of someone. I think we should move to a Norweigian style prison system, based on the principle of rehabilitation. This is the big P, political. Moreover, my liberalism and my belief in the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms, even at the possible detriment to tackling serious crime — is integral to my worldview.
I wonder how that compares to the average voter in Hartlepool?
When asked what should be the primary reason for prison, leave voters said, “to punish the criminal” (35%), to “act as a deterrent” (24%) or to “get violent criminals off the street” (20%). By contrast, 41% of remain voters said the main purpose of prison should be to “rehabilitate the morals and skills of criminals”.
Now, take this statement — “more should be done to help the security forces combat terrorism, even if this means the privacy of ordinary people suffer” — 64% of leave voters agreed with it, compared with 44% of remain voters.
This says something.
On classic big political/cultural issues, I am a million miles away from leave voters that make up our suburbs, towns and rural areas. And while Labour can say they’re “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” and seemingly appeal to both ‘tribes’ — dig behind us and you can sense that with today’s Labour spokespersons, their heart isn’t quite in the first bit.
While writing this blog, I retweeted a statement celebrating ‘woonerfs’. I have to sometimes laugh at myself…
Woonerfs are pedestrianised ‘shared spaces’ that are essentially the endpoint of the liberal elite ‘war on cars’ — cars haven’t been wiped out, but they’ve been humbled on the battlefield and surrendered to a life of going slowly, keeping to their designated highways, and bowing down to pedestrians and cyclists.
As I wait for Sadiq Khan to sleep-walk to a crushing victory over Shaun Bailey’s Conservatives, I sit in befuddlement at how London’s low traffic neighbourhoods have become a culture-war battleground.
But then again, if I were to knock on a door in Crayford and ask, “but wouldn’t you like to live on a woonerf?” what would be the response?
“What did you just call me?”
Shaun Bailey won’t win many wards in Greater London, but the ones he does take will likely be the ones that voted heavily to Leave. He will likely win in Crayford.
And what if we take this even further? Beyond criminal justice policies and beyond transport infrastructure and planning? What if we look at attitudes toward the BBC, towards gollies, towards Princess Diana, towards diet, towards HOW STEAKS SHOULD BE COOKED?
I love the BBC, gollies are dinosaur-trash, I don’t eat meat but I like my tuna steaks rare. My earliest memory is being pissed off that the coverage of Princess Diana death was taking over the cartoons I wanted to watch. When Prince Phillip’s passing dominated the news, the refrain of the Smith’s song Panic — “It says nothing to me about my life” — reverberated around my head. I bit my lip at amusing and mocking memes about Princess Diana awkwardly meeting Prince Phillip in the afterlife…
And I might be an extreme example, in both my sensibilities and my honesty about them. But voters get this stuff anyway, they feel this stuff.
Guacamole on your fish and chips isn’t about guacamole on your fish and chips. Guacamole on your fish and chips is about your attitude towards the death penalty, towards climate change at the expense of having cheap nice stuff, towards your attitude on tackling crime, towards your attitudes on cycle lanes and car use.
People keep saying ‘Labour needs more working-class MPs’, but I think they’re missing the point. Look at Labour’s working-class MPs such as Wes Streeting, Darren Jones or Rosena Allin-Khan — they went to top universities, had professional careers and now inhabit a politically and culturally milieu that reflects that.
Most of my friends are either averagely middle class or working class, but they all have degrees, they nearly all have professional jobs, and they all live in inner major cities. They left places like Bradford, Rochdale and Sunderland to get an education and moved to our major cities, not just for work, but to be surrounded by the types of people who share their worldview and their cultural and their political tastes.
Like many people my age, I am pondering moving out of London due to its oppressive cost-of-living. I am scouring more affordable places to live across England and the constituencies I’ve considered? Manchester Withington, Liverpool Riverside, Newcastle East, Sheffield Central. It says it all really.
Hartlepool, you’d be surprised to know, hasn’t featured on my Rightmove searches.
Voters are increasingly voting on cultural values rather than economic values. And voters are damn perceptive. It doesn’t really matter if you were born in a townhouse in Hampstead or a council flat in Walsall if your cultural values are now detached from the medium voter from your home.
Standing on the doorstep in Hartlepool, voters know how I like my steak. And that’s Labour’s problem.
