All of life, including political life, depends on our ability to tell stories about who we are, what we are, what we think and what we hope for. In that case you would have thought Labour would have defined its story about what its latest iteration is by now, but it hasn't. As far as I can see, it has no story to tell about what it is, what it believes and what it is for. No wonder it is in a mess.
The audio version is here:
This is the transcript:
Labour hasn't got a story to tell, and that really matters.
The way that we as human beings understand life is by telling each other stories. The way we even understand our own lives is dependent upon the way we tell our own story to ourselves and to others.
There is, after all, no absolutely certain fact about most things in life. Everything comes down to the way we see things, the way we interpret them, the way that we choose to understand them, and the language that we use to explain them.
And these things will also change over time. You know that if you retell a story, it won't be the same as last time. And that's okay. That's what humans do. This is how we seek understanding, not only of ourselves but of each other and the world all around us. Therefore, stories are one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful thing, that defines us as a human being. Because without those stories, well, we're nothing. Are we human? I ask the question in all seriousness.
And that matters when it comes to politics. Because over history, politics has of course been about storytelling.
We can go back not that long ago and quite clearly define the stories that were told by our major political parties. We had the Conservatives, who were basically there to maintain the status quo and all the power structures within it, which had an implicit bias in favour of wealth.
We had Labour, who arose out of the Methodist Church and the trade union movement, and were there to have a bias towards those who were working people. That was its purpose, and that was what it wanted to achieve when in power.
We had the Liberals. What were the Liberals for? They were there to ensure that liberal ideology - a flexibility about the choices that we could make about the ways that we lived - were respected by society.
And if we go to other political parties, well the SNP were in favour of independence, although there are plenty of its own members at present who question whether that is still the case with regard to Scotland.
And let's look at Plaid Cymru, much the same story, but I think, in that case, still being lived.
And with the Greens, again, by and large, we can identify the story.
But can we identify the story for Labour anymore? That was my opening question and the point that I will now return to. Does Labour have a narrative that helps us understand what it is doing? And my answer is simple and it's straightforward, and as far as I'm concerned, the answer is no. I can't identify a narrative within what Labour is saying.
And that is deeply troubling. Because without a narrative, Labour hasn't got a reason to bind its own MPs to what its leadership is doing, let alone bind its party to what it is doing, let alone persuade us that what it is doing is right.
That storytelling. is what politics is all about. But if you can tell me what Labour is about right now, good on you. Because I honestly do not know.
It seems to be in favour of wealth. It's refusing to increase taxation on wealth, for example. But that is not the story which Labour has ever told before.
It appears to be in favour of means testing. But by and large, Labour was the proponent of universal, non-means-tested benefits.
And Labour would appear to be in favour of privatisation now, and yet it was once the party of nationalisation.
It's a deeply confused place to be if you're a Labour minister, let alone a Labour MP or member of the Labour Party at present, because there's nothing to bind you to a narrative, and that's what worries me about the next five years.
Unless Labour has got a narrative that will underpin its time in office - and five years is a long time to be in office - then there will be no cohesion as to what it is going to do, no identifiable delivery that will make it clear that this explains their purpose, and no story to tell at the end of this which will give them a chance of re-election.
I would prefer, all things considered, that Labour was re-elected in 2029, if they last that long, than the Tories were re-elected, simply because I saw what the Tories did between 2010 and 2024. It was not good. I would prefer they don't return.
But right now, unless Labour is capable of developing a story about what it's going to deliver, I don't see any chance that it's going to return to office at that time, and we could return to Tory rule with all the mayhem and confusion that appeared during that era.
I'm troubled by all this.
I wish Labour did have a story to tell.
I wish it would tell it.
But at the moment, it appears they are clueless as to what that narrative is.
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I don’t think that the party itself is clueless, the back benchers in particular – who are held in check by the enforcing whips.
I think that you are being too kind.
The Labour front bench knows what it is doing. It got into power to hold the line of those free market fundamentalists who control politics handing out money and free clothes. So Labour will struggle to balance the informal corruption they are influenced by, with the wishes of those who voted them into power.
This is how the Establishment will judge and reward them – how they manage that balance. That is the story that Labour has to tell. But can’t.
100% agree. LINO levers of power (who is MP, who is not) are in the hands of those following the instructions of assorted neo-libs.
This was the reality as soon as Starmer won – in 2020. Since then the narrative (“oh he/the party won’t be so bad once in power”) has been proved to be wrong, repeatedly.
Starmer hid the donations made to his leadship campaign & LINO hid the donations made prior to the elections.
Liars & crooks, the pack of them & indistinguishable from the Tories in that respect – LINO = no-change.
I tend to agree re backbenchers but not just them. Many in the Lib Dems, Greens, and the Nationalist Parties share a view which is about trying to ensure everyone has access to the means to a decent life. That means in health, housing, education and equal opportunity and a re-distribution of the immense wealth that has been concentrated in a few hands. And really in favour of a rules based international order.
The other part of the party-who control it- like to tell a story with words like ‘innovative’, ‘modernising’, ‘reformist’, patriotic ( we give interviews in front of flags too) and ‘financially responsible’. There are others. They deal in image.
These are fairly vacuus terms beloved of the cult of managerialism. When pressed -as a minister was this morning by Kay Burley on the subject of gifts-they struggle with specifics.
In counselling there is the concept of false self as defined by Donald Winnicott. It is a defensive facade or mask which limit spontaneity and empathy. Because it is not rooted in reality, it will fail.
Jonathan Reynolds was weak.
The argument that all is okay because disclosure has been made is ridiculous.
Agree
I couldn’t think of his name. However, Reynolds is forgettable
Agreed
It’s so depressing. Labour membership soared when Corbyn was leader because he had a story and vision. I’m not sure he was the right leader to make it happen but the big membership climb has now disappeared and I don’t think Starmer is that bovered now he has business money behind him.
The Independent is already looking for Starmer’s successor. I do not think they are looking in the right place.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/wes-streeting-save-nhs-keir-starmer-successor-labour-leader-b2612319.html?lid=e3ixed9tjuif&utm_medium=email&utm_source=braze&utm_campaign=Health%20Check%20Newsletter%2019-09-24&utm_term=IND_Health_Newsletter
May I expand Richard’s excellent piece just a little?
We all also tell our story non-verbally; ie by our actions and the choices we make. Other people understand what they see each of us is doing as being an integral party of us as a human being. So Labour now has changed its story; its story is still being told and it is there for all of us to see and interpret. We can all interpret what we see and hear from them and their actions, and we can then use that information to predict what might be their future actions.
Currently, many are likely to be confused because a year ago, I suspect, few of us would have predicted what we see them doing now. We are all analysing their actions now to predict the near-middle term future and it is at odds with the answer were getting just a few short months ago. The dissonance is deeply unsettling.
So, Labour has changed; we just have to get over that hump and change our future actions. But what to, and how should we all now act and think?
Politically, I know I will never vote Tory and now Labour have moved themselves into my politically unacceptable box too. I suspect I’ll end up voting LibDem. But the question that today’s blog has asked has prompted me to wonder, “Do I feel strongly enough to act, to do something to oppose the wolf in sheep’s clothing that is today’s Labour Party?”
I just don’t know. I need a walk on the hills to think it through, although I will probably just get lost in nature’s beauty.
No harm in that….
The story is what Labour won’t do.
This morning talking about an Extra Care scheme with a housing officer and how the bedroom tax makes even this unaffordable accommodation for people who apparently need it.
I cannot understand why this nasty policy was not ripped up from day one of their taking power. It is causing untold misery as people have become victims of the bricks and mortar shortages that are not their fault.
This is a huge injustice – as bad as that two child benefit cap.
Thatcher, her guru Keith Joseph and some others were clever in that they captured the terms of the debate, they decided what “story” was to be told and the language to be used in telling it. We all know the “killer” metaphors and “truisms”, like the household analogy and that “there’s only taxpayer’s money” etc.
Maybe we consider them banal and untrue but they struck a chord with voters and others and even 40 years later we hear a Chancellor using the same sort of language.
I don’t think Labour can tell a better story until they ditch the fantasy created by Thatcher’s take on neoliberalism and realise there is a better, “truer”, more hopeful story to be told about the way government can care for the most disadvantaged through tackling poverty and inequality and building a better society for all.
If the contents of “Taken as Red: How Labour Won Big and the Tories Crashed the Party” by Anushka Asthana, as reported in the Observer on 14th September are a relible guide, then the only ‘story’ the current ‘Labour Party’ has to tell is, like the secret maneouvres used to fund and create Labour Together, a story they would rather we never get to read.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/sep/14/corbyn-had-flown-too-close-to-the-sun-how-labour-insiders-battled-the-left-and-plotted-the-partys-path-back-to-power
The only central message is that LINO should be not the party of Corbyn – even at the price of Labour Together’s svengali, Morgan McSweeney claiming that ‘one of the key problems the group might encounter was “a Labour government” – making explicit that his concern was not whether Corbyn could win, but that if he were to become prime minister it would prevent the renewal they were focused on.’
And so it has come to pass. Starmer’s very personal faux ‘Labour Party’ only tells the empty tale that it isn’t anything like the Labour Party of Corbyn – but it can pretend to whatever shape-shifting it thinks will creep below the radar of public suspicion. Given that their original scheme was, apparently, to be to be inspired by the Greenpeace logo – ‘soft branding that made them seem warm and cuddly’ – it would seem that stealing the universal WFA benefit has cooked that goose to a turn. Maybe, now that they themslves ARE the problem of a Labour government and one without any apparent moral purpose, they will discover that the electorate will write their own more honest account of what is put in front of them. Branding and generous, if late-reported, funding may have bought them a Party – but the public are likely to be tougheraand vastly more cynical customers second time around.
“… let alone Party Members”
I’ve just resigned from the Labour Party, on these grounds, among others. Institutions, just like branded product companies, need a coherent, comprehensive and believable story to support the public’s understanding of their actions. You know there will be trouble ahead when the stories about itself and its actions presented by an institution and the stories repeated by the public become increasingly contradictory (examples come easily to mind.. the Metropolitan Police, the Post Office, politicians in general).
What a story NOT to tell:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx247wkq137o?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Clearly not many members left in the Labour Party now with a moral compass and therefore unwilling to tolerate Starmer’s behaviour. This party is dead in the water!
I think you give too much credit to changes being recent in Labour. Midway through Blair’s decade the current form of Labour was emerging. I always look at Alan Milburn’s trajectory, from thrust into office on a real landslide to, five years later, capitalising on his position to build a personal private empire. Likewise Blair, now a multi-millionaire pal of dictators.
The Blair minions that permeated the party by 2007 were centre, drifting right too, and they established in many areas an iron grip on the levers of CLP and regional organisation. Most regional organisers are Starmerite, having been Blairite years before. This enables them to either promote or suffocate with no accountability, and overrule in every sense of the word. Corruption has a long Labour history too, from the North East in the 1970s through to rotten boroughs of today. Starmer is simply the heir of a long tradition.
Starmer has 411 mps to keep in line. That’ll never, ever happen.
Now is the time for proper labour mps to garner support from their constituencies, the broader membership and the TUC and to force out the imposters before the Tories get back in in 2028
And as it happens, the lack of a story is the front page of today’s New Statesman
I’ve heard quite a clear story from Labour, it goes like this:
– Whatever the public need, we can’t afford it.
– We got rid of Corbyn.
– Liz Truss crashed the economy.
– The Bank of England Governor is always right.
– Freebies are welcome.
Sadly, that very clear message isn’t going down at all well with my fellow Omnibus passengers.
Agreed
I can see your other comment and am musing on it
Please ignore the first comment, my later one was effectively a repeat bec I thought I’d messed up submitting the first one, & didn’t have a copy.
A former boss of mine was an engineer. He liked original design and he liked original designs to be made as prototypes. Right from the first time I met him he talked about brilliant designs that had failed. He said that often, very often, designs ran aground because of “the human factor,” by which he meant a failure to take account of how people think, feel, behave. The design killer was disregard of human psychology.
The _story_ is central to human psychology, yet is, as you record, absent from the government’s plans to fix things … to order things for the governed that it regards as close to cyphers.
The absence of the story covers the entire Starmer period. Why should it change with government?
As you pointed out in relation to the NHS – The plan is first for change and then for funding.
Staff struggling to provide some quality of healthcare in disintegrating surroundings, as they have been struggling for years. Certainly (psychologically) the ideal time to ask more of them.
Only 12 per cent of the British public said they trusted political parties according to a recent survey.
Isn’t LINO’s job now to try and gaslight the few remaining believers in democracy that democracy still exists? Predominantly those that despised the Torys and hoped for change for as long as they can get away with it? Perhaps, also to fundamentally slam home the notion to the majority of the public that it simply doesn’t matter who you vote for, they are all the same, the regular thing I hear people say when discussing politics. Get the populace to totally give up and they can force through whatever they want, especially with the draconian protest laws at play.
https://www.ft.com/content/c0b3a1d1-b887-4b67-ba0e-b6e745e1df7b
Recently some wit on The Guardian cif posted: the Overton window has now moved so far to the right that it has left the building. I agree. Starmer’s Blairite redux LINO seem to have been entirely captured by private equity. Although this Robert Reich private equity explanatory video is about the US I think it also does some way to explain the economic reasoning behind the cognitively dissonant political decisions being made by Starmer, Reeves & Co.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DaSn0iqzVv4
I was thinkling of posting it here…when I have looked at it
Look at it as soon as you can, because it is worthwhile. There are two great points, one in your wheelhouse, Richard; the use of lower capital gains taxes to circumvent higher income tax. The other is the use of the target’s assets as collateral in an LBO. In the UK at least, wasn’t this illegal? In the US Reich insists it should be illegal.
Private Equity = higher prices, lower quality. And rip-off profits for the rich. That is Reich’s takeaway.
Tomorrow…