Following the leaked report in 2019 that prompted the still unpublished Forde Inquiry we know that Jeremy Corbyn’s office had very little influence on party strategy during elections. Not only that, but party officials were working to sabotage Labour’s chances in order to force his resignation. This was in marked contrast to the recent elections when it emerged during the furore over Angela Rayner’s sacking, that Starmer’s office played a leading role in directing Labour’s strategy this time, including the short list of one for the drubbing in Hartlepool.  Needless to say, the pundits who called for Corbyn to go at the faintest whiff of electoral defeat have been doubling down to explain away Labour’s poor showing and shift the blame away from Starmer.

Jonathon Freedland writing in the Guardian last Friday believes the key to Labour’s poor performance is Brexit. He is broadly right when he says,

“Just as voting yes to independence in 2014 broke the taboo on defying Labour for many voters in Scotland, allowing them to back the SNP a year later, so Brexit smashed that same psychological barrier for traditional Labour voters in England, acting as the gateway to supporting the Tories for the first time.”

While drawing a veil over his own involvement, he even admits that the second referendum campaign was instrumental in the weakening Labour’s appeal between 2017 and 2019 and that efforts to obstruct the outcome of the referendum only deepened the divide between the Labour Party and those Labour voters who supported Brexit.

“In the Brexit case, the break was even more profound. Labour was not just at odds with many of its core voters in 2016: it pointedly failed to heed their wishes in the years that followed. That is a rupture that takes more than 18 months to heal.”

He goes wrong in suggesting that the real problem is that Labour’s working class base in towns in the North and the Midlands are more socially conservative than the young, progressive, educated electorate in the cities who are now its core support. Without its traditional base and their traditional values Labour cannot defeat the Tories. But it needs the cities as well. Can it have both?

“But Brexit itself was more symptom than cause, a function of the culture gap between Labour and the people it once reflexively represented, a gap that has been growing wider for years. Put aside the specific question of leaving the EU. If Labour now stands for what can be easily caricatured as remain values (urban and “woke”) while the Tories represent supposedly leave values (traditional and patriotic), that spells electoral disaster. There are far more leave-minded seats than remain ones.”

Here he comes dangerously close to suggesting that working class Leave voters in the Labour heartlands have moved away from Labour because of their antipathy to rights for women, blacks and gays. There is a grain of truth in this. If old fashioned Labour voters are persuaded that their interests are being neglected in favour of identity politics they will say, “What about our identity?” Divide and rule. The oldest trick in the book.

But you do not get round it by pandering. You do not get round it by preaching. First things first. You have to understand it. Everyone remembers dockers marching in support of Enoch Powell after his Rivers of Blood speech in 1968. But what about the anti racists dockers who built the Port Shop Stewards Committee and Dockers Against Racism, who led the strikes against the Tory government in the 1970s and saw off the National Front in the East End of London? You can get a flavour of their struggle from this interview with Mickey Fenn, white, working class and as “woke” as they come.

You build solidarity by demonstrating commonalities. The Yorkshire Miner used to feature page three style pinups until miners wives demonstrated their grit and courage during the strikes in the seventies. The lessons learned led Yorkshire miners to join picket lines in support of Asian women on strike at Grunwicks in North London. During the Great Miners Strike of 1984 gays saw parallels between their struggle and the miners and raised money for the strike fund. The miners responded by leading the gay pride march in London in 1985 and using their votes at the Labour party conference that year to pass a motion in support of LGBT rights.

Throughout the nineteen sixties and the seventies Labour support held up in its heartlands. This is despite Labour not just neglecting but attacking its traditional base. Labour governments closed more pits than Thatcher ever did. They brought in anti-union laws like In Place of Strife. They made swingeing cuts to health and social care at the behest of the International Monetary Fund. And at the same time pursued a socially liberal agenda promoting rights for women, abortion law reform, decriminalizing homosexuality and passing anti-racism legislation. They even had a divisive Brexit referendum in which the Parliamentary Labour Party backed Remain and the Party membership with significant union support supported Leave.

The key to Labour resilience in that period was not that the party covered itself in glory. Far from it. But it was a period of working class militancy with mass strikes, flying pickets, factory occupations and demonstrations. Those were not the times to vote Tory.

It was only when public sector wage freezes ushered in the Winter of Discontent and led to significant defeats for organized labour at the hands of a Labour government that disillusion, and demoralization finally led to Thatcher’s victory. She hammered home her advantage by defeating the big guns of the Labour movement like the miners and the dockers and by persuading a pusillanimous Labour Party leadership that the way to power lay through attacking the left and appealing to the right. Blair was a wannabe Thatcherite and Cameron was a wannabe Blairite. And the sorry mess continues.

Freedland ends by suggesting that Starmer learns from Biden who “casts every measure, including on the climate crisis, in terms of creating millions of well-paid, unionised jobs.” This in a week in which Starmer refused to sign a letter opposing the union busting tactic of Fire and Rehire. He could also learn from Biden that progressive parties are supposed to unite against the right. Biden has not moved against Sanders in the way that Starmer has moved against Corbyn and his supporters. But Starmer wont learn. He will continue to lead Labour to disaster because he believes the path to power lies in attacking the left and appealing to the centre right. And Freedland thinks the same. Which is why he will continue to give Starmer an easy ride with articles like this.