Labour is no longer the party of the working class.  This was confirmed by last year’s general election, which saw Labour slump to its lowest seat-share in over eighty years and lose a significant number of its ‘heartland’ constituencies to the Conservatives.  The Tories’ breach of the so-called ‘red wall’ portends a bleak future for Labour.  Without reconnecting with working class voters, the party will likely be out of power for at least another decade.  Yet there is little sign that Labour is capable of winning these voters back.  In fact, the political thought that prevails in the party works against this outcome, a point that is most clearly illustrated by the issue of culture.

Culture now sits alongside economics as a major political faultline.  In Britain, this was revealed most starkly by the EU referendum.  Though the classic left/right divide mattered to this vote, its result was primarily shaped by a value cleavage.  Broadly speaking, the culturally conservative backed leave and the culturally liberal backed remain.  Working class voters on the whole were in favour of Brexit, a position that reflected their desire for more economic and cultural security.  This demand for cultural security may be thought of as patriotism, defined by George Orwell as “devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life”.

Under Boris Johnson, the Conservatives have grasped what many blue collar Britons are after, as shown by their policy platform of moving left on economics while delivering Brexit and a tighter immigration regime.  The best that can be said about Labour is that its Corbynite policies have spoken to the working class’ economic concerns.  But that is all.

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