Personal analysis and explainer as to why Labour has done so badly in the polls nationally and here in Tower Hamlets. With a possible way forward to rebuild an electoral coalition to win elections.

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Another Election, Another Autopsy

Regardless of what part of the Labour movement you belong to, we can all agree on the last few days were an electoral earthquake. The old assumptions of working-class communities electorally identifying with the Labour Party are no longer there.

Nationally, in Hartlepool, generally in the north-east and the midlands, we saw traditional working-class communities turning their backs on Labour and turning to Conservatives. The message from voters in various voice pop found in the media was, that Labour has taken these communities for granted, not met their concerns therefore people have given the alternative a chance.

Class Warfare against the working classes by Tower Hamlets Labour?

In Tower Hamlets we saw the spectacle of the referendum, a campaign organised by the local Labour establishment, with posters and videos, wholeheartedly rejected by the electorate to a margin of 4 to 1. 

Again the same message, a Labour Party that is seen not to be working in the interest of communities it says it represents. An explainer to this, I found when I received a WhatsApp message from a resident in the middle of the night before the vote. It was from a successful local lawyer, brought up and educated in Tower Hamlets. His family had a long history of being active in the Labour Party both in Tower Hamlets and in London, both as activists and donors to the party. It was a message that accused the local Labour Party of institutional discrimination, the referendum campaign is one of them.

On the day of the election, I received phone calls after phone calls from angry residents. The message was the same, all angry about an absent Labour Party, that suddenly has decided to turn up at their door step, or outside the polling station to tell them which way to vote on a referendum. 

The result spoke for itself, more a vote against a detached political establishment than a vote for a system to run the local council. As the results were announced, social media was buzzing with the thumbs up to a David and Goliath confrontation, between the community and the local Labour Party.

The case against ‘political hedonism’. It’s the vision stupid.

One of the common feedback from voters throughout the country, following the recent election results was that no one knew what Labour stood for, there was a ‘lack of authenticity’. The same feedback, I heard from voters in Tower Hamlets. Instead, in the self created vacuum, people saw a political party more interested in political manoeuvring, than giving a substantive vision. Nationally we saw a Labour Party being whipped to vote for a Brexit deal, which itself has stated was bad for the country. In Tower Hamlets, people perceived a local Labour Party being scared of any criticism, fiddling the system to fend off an independent challenger in the forthcoming elections.

The philosopher Robert Nozick explained the above impulse of human beings for authenticity, in this thought experiment of the ‘experience machine’. That people will always prefer real authentic experience to those that are artificially constructed, no matter how aesthetically attractive the machine generated experience is.

This was made famous in the movie, ‘The Matrix’ where Morpheus offered the choice of the blue and red pill to Neo, the hero of the movie. A choice between the willingness to learn a potentially unsettling or life-changing truth, by taking the red pill, or remaining in contented ignorance with the blue pill. When faced with a similar choice, the electorate like Neo will always choose the red pill.

However, given the reactions here in Tower Hamlets and nationally in Labour HQ, it appears to the electorate, that they are stuck on the Island of the Lotus Eaters, oblivious and peddling more blue pills. Or as Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in his play ‘No Exit’, “Eh bien, continuons…” (“Well then, let’s get on with it…”).