There is a simple and obvious rule of thumb in politics about policy choices, and it is this: keep your attention ruthlessly focused on the issues voters care most about.
When Labour wins, it wins because it has thought about the things that really matter to the public; thought about what positive contribution it can make to them, in line with its values; and has promised to deliver them up on a plate.
It’s not exactly rocket science, agreed. But bear with me.
In contrast, it is common to hear friends and colleagues say “but nobody cares about that issue”, or “it never comes up on the doorstep”, as both David Lammy and Jess Phillips* have been heard to say recently. Now, in the main, that is a sound approach. People are rarely going to win parliamentary elections on the basis of constitutional reform, or international aid, because they are issues way down a voter’s list of priorities.
So far, so good.
Except that there is an exception to the rule. Let’s call it “the exception of stupid”.
Let’s suppose you have a policy or a position which is so monumentally stupid, so way out of touch with the views of most voters – or worse, morally abhorrent to them – that its mere inclusion in your programme shoots your credibility on everything else. It does not make people vote for you, but it makes some – a significant few but enough – people say, “I can never vote for them while they have that as a policy.”
Does this happen? Of course it does. Michael Foot’s programme in 1983 was terrible, but its most standout moment for many was the commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament. For me, coming from a military family in the middle of the Cold War, it immediately shouted from the rooftops that this was a party unserious about government. But it said to the same to pretty much any swing voter who had ever voted Conservative. It was therefore a “stupid” policy, a credibility-killer.
Of course, different policies turn off different segments, but you only need one or two stupids to turn off enough voters, such that the rest of your policies could be utterly brilliant and you would still lose.
Now, during the Corbyn years, enough people within the party managed to explain away antisemitism by dint of it being “Labour fighting with itself about Palestine” or “factional in-fighting” – continually downplaying it as an issue until it grew to such an extent that the party was eventually censured by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, a moment for many of shame unparalleled in the party’s century-long history. And it undoubtedly affected Labour at the ballot box.
How so, we ask, if it was not high on the voters’ list of priorities? Because it was a stupid position: most voters are not racist and the mere whiff of racism turns them off. For a while, antisemitism lingered under the radar but, once it had broken through and voters had seen what the party now really looked like in the cold light of day, they didn’t like what they saw.
And those credibility issues represent how the party really came to be trounced in 2019, not its (fairly anodyne) policy programme. We should have learned from that, but perhaps we are not that smart.
Fast-forward to the present day.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the party’s current position, in favour of trans self id, fully qualifies for the exception of stupid.
As Tony Blair put it in a New Statesman piece in April**,
That is, Labour is signing up to something the public is truly unlikely to wear once it understands what it actually means: that is, “anyone can enter a woman’s safe space by simply saying they feel like a woman”. Try proposing that on the doorstep to a few fathers with daughters, in the rougher parts of urban Britain, and see how you get on.
In short: we are currently putting ourselves into a place that soon we will not be able to back out of, as and when self id is shown to be a total disaster; in Scotland, for example.
When scandals erupt over detransitioning young adults. When sexual assaults occur in women’s safe spaces. When further academics, scientists, writers and artists are “cancelled”, because they challenged the “Emperor’s New Clothes” Stonewall orthodoxy, that biological sex is not immutable and can in fact magically be changed if you believe it hard enough.
Such incidents are already happening, but their severity and frequency will sadly increase. And a cohort of random people will suffer, whose suffering will be entirely preventable.
Oh, Labour will not be alone, that’s true. The Democrats are also busy painting themselves into a corner, as are the SNP, Canada’s Liberals and a bunch of other leftish parties across the world.
But there will be no safety in numbers when it all comes crashing down. None at all. Labour will be shown no mercy by the voters, and we will deserve it.
*Full disclosure: in general, I believe Jess Phillips to be an admirable politician, but also feel her to be terribly, terribly wrong on this and its impacts for women.
**Hat-tip to @JRogan3000 for the clip.