You may hate the Tories’ propaganda. But don’t assume it’s not working.
I sense a lot of overconfidence on the British left right now.
After the so-called partygate scandal, the previously rock-solid Tory vote has declined in polls from around 40% (give or take) to maybe 32 or 33%. This is great news for Sir Keir Starmer, as it’s allowed him to take a fairly solid — if modest — lead over the government and raise expectations that he might be able to form his own administration in 2023 or 2024.
At the same time, a sizeable band of Tory lawmakers has now realised the damage inflicted by the man who styles himself as ‘Big Dog’.
Johnson made the rules during the Covid pandemonium, broke the rules and then lied about breaking the rules. He is a liability for the Tories now, whatever his supposed appeal was back in 2019. Nearly 150 of his MPs voted for the crazed canine to be evicted from his kennel, but they couldn’t achieve a majority in the confidence motion sparked by letters to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee.
In many ways, this was the best possible result for Labour. Johnson stays in power, severely weakened. Another reason for optimism.
What’s clear, however, is that there is now a concerted Tory fightback led by the Cabinet and some pretty shrewd advisers. The campaign is being waged with a very clear aim: to win back voters who previously voted Tory (many as recently as 2019), but who have drifted away in disgust at the Downing Street party culture.
There are three trigger issues and each is an absolute nightmare for Labour.
The first is the draconian policy of Home Secretary Priti Patel to send asylum seekers on a journey of thousands of miles to Rwanda. This morally reprehensible idea, which many organisations (including the UN) claim is illegal, is not something that any self-respecting Labour politician would want to endorse. It does, however, have the support of the general public by a narrow majority and is backed by about three quarters of Tory voters.
There has been a fair bit of debate over whether the government really intends to send people to Rwanda or whether the scheme is ‘performative’. To be honest, they probably don’t know themselves. If no one ever goes to Rwanda and the policy is frustrated by ‘lefty lawyers’ and the European Court of Human Rights, that’s a win for the Tories. If people are eventually deported and the government has been seen to act tough, that’s a win too. They just don’t care if real trauma results and lives of desperate people are turned upside down.
The second issue is superficially more obscure. It’s the boneheaded attempt to rewrite the Northern Ireland Protocol, which was a Brexit compromise previously agreed by the UK government. Unionist politicians have been pressuring the government to act, but the motives in Downing Street are entirely cynical. Certainly, the Tories have a reckless disregard for the fragile peace established in Ireland a quarter of a century ago. But they are not pursuing the policy on the protocol out of loyalty to the Loyalists. They see it as wedge issue in their domestic campaign to reheat the debate over Brexit.
The threat of the UK reneging on its commitments has understandably caused consternation in Dublin, but is anathema to the wider EU. The policy brings the Johnson government into direct confrontation with Brussels. And that’s exactly how the Tories want things to be over the summer and into the autumn, as they seek to claw back a few points in the polls. (The immigration and Europe issues are not just intended to influence the by-elections coming up, which are probably already lost, but part of a longer-term plan.)
When Yvette Cooper was challenged recently on Labour’s solution to the current trade issues in Northern Ireland, she found herself uncharacteristically embarrassed. That’s because the party cannot be seen to support an abandonment of Brexit or a return to the single market and/or customs union. It therefore knows that the protocol, or some modified version of the protocol, is the only game in town.
It is an accord which papers over the cracks of the economically disastrous decision taken back in 2016. What’s more, the EU has bent over backwards to be accommodating. That’s where we are and that’s where we’ll stay, unless we want to risk the UK’s international reputation and the Good Friday Agreement. Labour can only really argue for the status quo, which is tricky.
The third issue on the Tory propaganda agenda has been gifted to them. The strike by the RMT on Britain’s rail network looks set to be the most disruptive since the late 1980s. While many people will have sympathy with workers over the cost-of-living crisis and the desire for wages that match inflation, their support will be sorely tested very quickly. But, of course, the Tories aren’t interested in the population as a whole. They are targeting people who are natural Conservative voters, but have drifted away.
The past week or so has seen a relentless campaign by the government to associate Labour with the strikes, despite the fact that the RMT is a militant union which disaffiliated from the party during the Blair era. Wes Streeting, the likeable and articulate shadow health secretary, blundered into the debate by saying that if he were a transport worker, he’d have voted to bring the network to a standstill. This was the equivalent of launching a lifeboat towards a sinking Conservative ship.
Tory minister Sajid Javid challenged Streeting in a letter about the strikes, leaving the Labour man to strike back with a series unanswered questions about Saj’s tax status. Left-wing opinion on Twitter seemed to see this as a win for Labour and a sign of desperation on the part of the Tories. I’m not so sure.
There is a dangerous narrative taking hold in Labour right now. It says that the Tories are on the ropes and the cost of living crisis is really biting hard. As a result, there is public sympathy for strikes and the party loses nothing by being true to its roots and backing the workers. The 1970s are a dim memory and the messages from the Tories are a broken record that have less traction than services out of London Waterloo this Tuesday.
My word of caution: don’t forget the Tory propaganda can be shrugged off by most of the population, but Labour is in big trouble if the government message hits home with just a small proportion of the electorate. There are plenty of people out there in their early 60s or older. They remember the Callaghan government. They are instinctively anti-union, anti-Europe and anti-immigration.
These people would naturally be voting Tory if it weren’t for Boris’ boozy lockdown antics. The Conservatives want to give them reasons to return.
