LEFT OUT OF THE PICTURE?
Owen Jones argues that the left must get back to basics and reconnect with the working class if it is to help roll back the attack of the right.
What went wrong? Capitalism is in crisis, but in June’s European elections, left-of-centre parties were wiped out across the Continent. It wasn’t only mainstream centre-right parties that did well. Scenes of jubilant British far-right extremists celebrating the election of Nick Griffin and his outright neo-Nazi colleague Andrew Brons were replicated across Europe. The extreme right are having a good war.
Here in Britain we are on the verge of the return of a Conservative Government, possibly by a landslide. The Tories and their allies have transformed a crisis started by bankers’ greed into a crisis of public expenditure. The consequences of universally accepted private sector excesses are being used as the excuse for an assault on the public sector dwarfing what Thatcherism accomplished. That Cameron can get away with this is more of a testament to the left’s failure to promote an alternative than to the tactical genius of the right.
It’s not that the left has been incompetent. The Conservative New Right exploited the economic crisis of the 1970s and broke the back of the labour movement. Our old core constituency was the industrial working-class with its high union density, large concentrated workplaces and sense of community. It was replaced by a hire-and-fire McJob service sector workforce marked by fragmentation, no meaningful unionisation and a lack of the old social solidarity. The last 30 years have been like a bad dream for socialists.
This has happened in a world where all shades of the left still suffer from the devastating consequences of the collapse of Stalinism. “It’s time to say: We’ve won, goodbye,” US neoconservative Midge Decter declared in 1990, in the resulting atmosphere of suffocating capitalist triumphalism.
Here in Britain, all of these factors conspired to produce New Labour. The Labour left remains paralysed and demoralised, unable to make progress in the repressive structures of the current Labour Party. The rest of the left remains a ragtag collection of idiosyncratic sects, lacking roots in the labour movement, squabbling over often bafflingly obscure ideological issues – and further than ever from achieving the century-long dream of creating a party to the left of Labour.
The question we need to start asking ourselves is: how do we go about creating a mass populist left movement? I want to set out a few ideas to get the ball rolling.
*First, we need to refocus on bread and butter socialism. The BNP has filled the vacuum created by the collapse of the left partly because they are community orientated. They offer reactionary solutions to the social problems facing working people on an everyday basis, like a lack of decent jobs and affordable homes. All too often the left is preoccupied with issues that appeal to middle class and student activists. Generally speaking, these are things happening thousands of miles away or abstract theoretical questions. We shall never win mass support if these continue to be our obsessions at the expense of issues that actually concern our base. We need to establish a presence in working class communities.
*Second, we have to start talking about issues of concern to working people that we have not traditionally been comfortable with. Take immigration: it regularly tops opinion polls as one of people’s main worries. We can’t just dismiss this as primitive racism that simply needs to be fought. Instead, we need to offer progressive solutions to these concerns: like building affordable council housing to defuse tensions arising from competition over scarce resources, and making sure that foreign labourers are employed on the same terms and conditions as British workers to stop the “race to the bottom”.
*Third, the left has ceased trying to appeal to the working class as a whole. All too often we focus almost exclusively on small minorities instead. Part of this is the legacy of the New Left of the 1960s, a movement which essentially felt that the working class had lost its revolutionary potential. They replaced it with oppressed minority groups like ethnic minorities, gays, or even students. But the truth is that between 80-90% of the working class in the UK is white. We rightfully put in a lot of effort to making sure that there are black people on our platforms. But how often do we fret about the absence of white office workers from, say, Swindon, Oldham or Aberdeen?
Of course we need to fight against the special exploitation of immigrant workers and attacks on benefit recipients, for example. However, we will never create a mass movement by stitching together a coalition of minorities like refugees and people on welfare. If we are serious about ever winning any political power, we also have to appeal to the working class mainstream.
*Fourth, when the left does talk about working class issues, our target audience is generally unionised public sector workers. These workers are a crucial group, especially now when both New Labour and the Tories are preparing an onslaught against public services. However, only a quarter of British workers are trade unionists, and only a tiny fraction of these are remotely active. Outside the public sector – where most people work – unionisation is practically non-existent.
We need to fight for a campaign to organise service sector workers, like New Unionism fought to unionise the unskilled a century ago, but this will be an epic struggle of generational proportions. In the meantime, we need to think about how we appeal to an overwhelmingly non-unionised service sector workforce. This includes dealing with low pay, job insecurity, or even the excruciating tedium of such jobs.
*Finally (and perhaps at the root of the problem), the people who make up the left are simply not representative of today’s working class. Most British workers are employed in the service sector. To say these workers are under-represented among the left’s ranks is an understatement to say the least. Put simply: the left has too many people like me. We have to put in as much effort ensuring that there are more people from the working class majority as we do with women and ethnic minorities. We often talk about the need for working class political representation, but we need to start a bit closer to home. If we don’t, we shall continue to fail to address the concerns of most working people.
The danger about the left is that we have become like a pub bore: eccentric, rambling, self-absorbed, humourless and disconnected from reality. We have a clear choice. We could start a genuine debate about how we gain mass support in a time of capitalist crisis. Or, we can keep to the same failed strategies and policy focuses – and continue our long drawn out terminal decline.
Owen Jones is a member of the Labour Representation Commmittee (LRC) National Committee. He is writing here in a personal capacity.
I think you are broadly and refreshingly honest about the problems facing the left and how to resolve them.
Talk to most non aligned working class people today and they will tell you that the labour movement exists to promote the interests of Hampstead liberals, benefit claimants and illegal immigrants.
If you continue to tell the voters they are wrong in their thinking on immigration instead of listening to what they are telling you all that will happen is you will not gain the support that you would have done otherwise.
Comment by Jabba — 22 October, 2009 @ 2:33 pm
Agreed. As a socialist I am sick and tired of politically correct liberals accusing those who raise concerns about immigration of racism. It plays straight into the hands of the BNP
Comment by attila — 22 October, 2009 @ 3:13 pm
I understand from Owen that this article is also appearing in Labour Briefing, and has caused some controversy.
Comment by Andy Newman — 22 October, 2009 @ 3:16 pm
In fact the whole concept of mulitculturalism needs a good boot. The French have it right. Multiculturalism is divisive and means the white working class think that minorities are getting speical treatment. Instead of celebrating diversity we should focus on equality. Everybody should be treated the same as citizens and workers with the same rights and responsibiilties regardless of race, religion, gender sexual orientation or anything else.
No unfair discrimination against people and no special treatment based on identity politics. The whole identity politics obsession is student union politics which is then promoted by New Labour hacks to convince themselves they’re still progressive even having abandoned the working class.
Comment by attila — 22 October, 2009 @ 3:17 pm
I don’t agree there Atilla.
The equalities agenda recognises that there are a number of obstacles to full participation and empowerment for people from various disadvantaged groups, and seeks to porvide a level playing field.
However, some issues are overlooked, and here Owen has a good point; one of which is that working class people, particularly manual workers or low level clerical workers are also disadvantaged and excluded; and there is a general bias towards London that also prvides an unrepresentative tilt, as the population demographics of London are very different from much of England, scotland and Wales.
So owen’s point about a structural bias in the political process against a white collar worker from Oldham is well made.
Comment by Andy Newman — 22 October, 2009 @ 3:23 pm
this article is bang on the money
http://www.iwca.info/?p=10146
Comment by attila — 22 October, 2009 @ 3:23 pm
Oh dear, here goes the valorization of some idealized “white worker”.
I live in Canada where with half the population of Britain we receive 250,000-300,000 new immigrants every single year. In fact, immigrants are key to the growth of Canada’s economy (which has been growing substantially faster than the British economy for quite some time). Key to immigrants being able to participate in the economy effectively is having those - gasp - special services, like settlement houses, free English as a Second Language courses in local high schools, funded community centres that target specific ethnic groups so that people from their own ethnicity, who speak their language, can help them find their way through myriad government services. There is racism in Canada - no doubt about it. And racism is something that the left has to take up - not because we’re being nice (though it’s nice to be nice) but because it is used to divide the working class. If the argument around racism is lost - so will it be around sexism and gay rights (And I will only note that the most vibrant movement at present in the US is the gay rights movement, which just had a quarter million people in DC).
And, lastly, if you’re going to talk about the “service industry” - and I worked in the restaurant industry on and off for 20 years - most of those in back-of-house jobs are non-white, from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, China, etc. It is a sector that badly needs to be unionized - as does the banking sector, the technology sector, etc. etc.
There’s no wishing yourself back to the 1890s because you wish the world were a simpler place.
Comment by redbedhead — 22 October, 2009 @ 3:48 pm
“The rest is the grisly history of the left’s retreat into the world of identity politics.”
Attila - this is simply misrepresentation as to how the new social movements developed. The Black Power movement grew out of the fight for civil rights in the US, where lynch law ruled and blacks were denied the vote and access to services. The women’s movement, partly inspired by the Civil Rights Movement with many of its activists cutting their teeth there, grew out of - you know - sexism: women earning half of what men did, lack of childcare services, lack of access to abortion - all these are working class demands.
Most of the working class are not straight, white men - even in rural England.
Here in Canada, the most militant unions in the 70s were the ones who pioneered maternity leave, equal pay, anti-harassment language and same sex spousal benefits. Abortion was challenged in Quebec by the union central setting up an abortion clinic in their head office and daring the state to shut it down.
People who see taking on racism and sexism and homophobia as a burden - rather than part and parcel of creating a united working class movement - are living in a dreamworld that has nothing to do with the real, actual working class.
Comment by redbedhead — 22 October, 2009 @ 3:54 pm
This talk of the “white working class” presumes that the non-whites are getting preferential treatment, which demonstrably is not the case. If you start accepting the language of the right uncritically, then you end up pandering to racism.
Multiculturalism has not failed - it exists in all major British cities. Despite the many problems we all encounter, black and white people continue to live alongside each other, reasonably harmoniously.
It is New Labour that has failed - it has failed to give the whole working class, black and white included, decent homes, jobs, services, and most of all hope for the future. In these miserable conditions people are bound to look for scapegoats.This lies behind the rise of the BNP.
I’m off to the BBC to protest at Griffin on Question Time.
Comment by SWP_John — 22 October, 2009 @ 4:18 pm
Getting smug metropolitan Asians like Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to shup up would help the debate along no end.
Comment by Hendre — 22 October, 2009 @ 4:18 pm
Maybe it’s different in the UK, but I have never noticed a dearth of white males on left platforms in the US. I am also a bit confused about the contention that “bread and butter issues” are being ignored by the British left. Say what you will, but it is my impression that the SP, CP, and SWP (at least, I don’t mean to leave anyone out) take them very seriously. Maybe not in an effective way - that can be debated - but from their publications it certainly doesn’t look like they are ignoring them.
Comment by christian h. — 22 October, 2009 @ 4:18 pm
“smug metropolitan Asians” - yes, it’s those bloody uppity darkies that are the problem.
Comment by redbedhead — 22 October, 2009 @ 4:22 pm
to immigrants being able to participate in the economy effectively is having those - gasp - special services, like settlement houses, free English as a Second Language courses in local high schools, funded community centres that target specific ethnic groups so that people from their own ethnicity, who speak their language, can help them find their way through myriad government services.
Of course but those things are not multiculturalist but about helping immigrants to integrate into the host country as equals. Teaching English is key.
The Civil Rights movement began as demand for black Americans to have the same rights as other Americans. Now we have a culture where they are encouraged to call themselves African-Americans.
To get rid of racism you need to arrive at a stage where you no more feel the need to lable an American with dark skin as African that you do a guy with blond hair and blue eyes as Anglo.
When affirmative action meant race quotas in the public sector for black Americans it helped drive working class whites to the Repbulicans. It was a spectacular own goal. If the US had a serious labour party, instead of the politically correct and utterly reactionary Democrats I’m willing to bet that the problem of racism in the US would be much less - but how do you build working class solidarity when desperately poor and vulnerable whites fearing for their jobs feel that their black co workers have an unfair advantage? PC is a gift for bosses seeking to set the working class against each other. It is utterly conservative.
We need to move away from the liberal American model to the French model of equality. It is no accident that identity politics was pioneered in America where the left is weaker than any other leading country in the West.
Comment by attila — 22 October, 2009 @ 4:26 pm
# 12
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s latest effort on a vision of Britishness referred to the ‘disengaged tribal English, Scots and Welsh’ and complained about the ‘white heartlands’. Who’s being racist here?
Comment by Hendre — 22 October, 2009 @ 4:27 pm
“When affirmative action meant race quotas in the public sector for black Americans it helped drive working class whites to the Repbulicans.”
This is just nonsense. Affirmative action was about rectifying centuries of “affirmative action” for whites by ensuring that racist admission boards and personnel departments hired and admitted blacks in proportion to their representation in the population. The backlash against the Democrats was because they attacked workers living standards under Carter. And before him under Johnson, who sent them to die in Vietnam. You are frankly engaged in blaming the victim.
As for the French model of equality it is a fucking disaster. The left has no implantation in the vast immigrant ghettoes - nor would they with the Left spouting the most racist garbage - attacking women who choose to wear the hijab (as though a generation ago women in France weren’t wearing kerchiefs on their heads and men wearing hats). France has traditions of struggle but is also weak on anti-imperialism with the smallest protests in Europe in the lead up to Iraq (never mind the utter lack of an anti-war movement during the Algerian War, France’s Vietnam).
Your “everybody integrate and be the same” motto is completely unattractive to most immigrants and so it should be. Because the “same” is code word for adopting English culture. Thank God the South Asians didn’t adopt that model in cuisine or you’d all be eating deep fried mars bars and bangers and mash. Ugh.
Vive la difference!
Comment by redbedhead — 22 October, 2009 @ 5:04 pm
Your “everybody integrate and be the same” motto is completely unattractive to most immigrants
That’s Yasmin A-B’s recipe for White Britons in a nutshell.
Comment by Hendre — 22 October, 2009 @ 5:09 pm
Hendre - Frankly, I’d say worse than that about you lot on the Isles. You’re a declining and thoroughly backward empire whose cultural contributions to the world ended as soon as you discovered deep frying and Benny Hill. You have the highest rates of drunkenness - I’ve never seen so much puke in the streets as when I go to the UK. The highest drop-out rates in the western world. The highest teen pregnancy rates. Your cities smell, your water pressure sucks and your food is even worse. Don’t get me started on the widespread use of instant coffee as a marker of cultural decline. And we won’t even get into the crooked picket fences you sport as teeth.
Don’t take yourself so damn seriously (if you like, I can do the same piss-take on Canadians.) You sound like a whiner. Meanwhile - whites in the UK have better jobs, higher earnings, better access to higher education, lower rates of incarceration, lower rates of poverty and its associated diseases. Put it in perspective and understand where Asian anger might originate.
Comment by redbedhead — 22 October, 2009 @ 5:11 pm
# 17 So someone who comments on an Asian commentator is a whiner?
Thank you.
You’ve just exposed exactly the problem we have had in Britain over a number of years when discussing race and immigration. The London elite (of which Yasmin is a member) has pontificated and no-one, but no-one, must question their orthodoxies. If why the BNP have been gaining votes.
Comment by Hendre — 22 October, 2009 @ 5:29 pm
This is just nonsense. Affirmative action was about rectifying centuries of “affirmative action” for whites by ensuring that racist admission boards and personnel departments hired and admitted blacks in proportion to their representation in the population.
Sounds fine but in practice it a)entrenches division by increasing resentment of blacks by whites b) undermines black managers by enabling anyone who doesn’t like them to say they only got there because of PC quotas and not merit. There might have been an argument for AA in the Seventies but now it’s way past its sell by date. It was a short term fix that is no substitute for working class solidarity and by making working class solidarity more difficult its harmed everyone. BTW there is as much resentment at quotas from Latinos as from Anglos if not more so.
The backlash against the Democrats was because they attacked workers living standards under Carter. And before him under Johnson, who sent them to die in Vietnam. You are frankly engaged in blaming the victim.
No I refuse to patronise minorites by defining them by the colour of their skin in the first place and goind on to assume they are permanent victims who can’t cope without liberal paternalism from the great and good of New Labour.
As for the French model of equality it is a fucking disaster. The left has no implantation in the vast immigrant ghettoes - nor would they with the Left spouting the most racist garbage - attacking women who choose to wear the hijab (as though a generation ago women in France weren’t wearing kerchiefs on their heads and men wearing hats)
In the mosque you take off your shoes. At school you take off religious symbols in a secular republican building. It’s about respect and respect cuts both ways.
Any culture that encourages differences between children in the playground is likely to encourage gangs and bullying.
France has traditions of struggle but is also weak on anti-imperialism with the smallest protests in Europe in the lead up to Iraq (never mind the utter lack of an anti-war movement during the Algerian War, France’s Vietnam).
News to Jean Paul Sartre and the rest of the movement. And where was the mass movement opposing British atrocities in Kenya at the same time?
Your “everybody integrate and be the same” motto is completely unattractive to most immigrants and so it should be. Because the “same” is code word for adopting English culture. Thank God the South Asians didn’t adopt that model in cuisine or you’d all be eating deep fried mars bars and bangers and mash. Ugh.
Yep Robin Cook points out that we all eat chicken tikka massala problem solved. That’ll see off the BNP…
Meanwhile - whites in the UK have better jobs, higher earnings, better access to higher education, lower rates of incarceration, lower rates of poverty and its associated diseases. Put it in perspective and understand where Asian anger might originate
If you happen to be living in shit accomodation paid peanuts at work etc. you really don’t feel any better off having a white skin and knowing the group statistics are on your side. In fact pointing that out is likely to make the white poor feel even more like losers and increase their resentment and desire for scapegoats so they can feel its not their fault for being a failure.
Comment by attila — 22 October, 2009 @ 5:47 pm
Ah, so it’s the Asians that are causing the BNP to gain votes. I see. I thought it was the capitalist crisis and the racism that is a key component of justifying imperialism. I thought it was scapegoating the most oppressed in society when the unions and the left fail (or are unable) to provide a lead for a fightback.
Nope - the problem is the complaints of the London (Asian) elite.
And you weren’t “commenting”, you were whining that she was racist (in any case impossible since whites are not oppressed - racism isn’t just about being mean and calling names, you know.) and somehow part of the problem - when the real problem is racism.
Comment by redbedhead — 22 October, 2009 @ 6:01 pm
BTW - the problem in Britain is that your economy is tanking for long term structural reasons and your politicians and media are blaming immigrants for taking jobs and the BNP are taking advantage of the groundwork that the mainstream have put in place. The problem is not that white people are being silenced. Please, turn on your TV and look at the names of the columnists and editors of your newspapers - they are very very white.
Comment by redbedhead — 22 October, 2009 @ 6:03 pm
I don’t understand why Yasmin A.B. would evoke so much ire, other than from a BNP racist.
She’s a very mild Liberal, married to an Englishman and her most recent book was called “Beyond Multiculturalism”. When I heard her speaking on it, her argument was entirely based on the need for ‘cultural integration’.
I think some of the problem is a (somehwat justifiable) anti-London resentment. London is qualitatively different to any other British city in terms of its size, demographics and its political influence within the UK. UKIP and the BNP tend to feed off this feeling along with fears over EU laws.
These fears can’t be challenged by simply counterposing liberal multiculturalism to the arguments of the racists. Not only are their politics more devious than they were in the 1970’s, but liberal multiculturalism is strongly linked to the ideas of free trade and the market.
In a world dominated by trans-national capitalist monopolies, both the reactionary little-Englander nationalism of UKIP-BNP and liberal capitalism are a largely a nonsense.
“Socialist protectionism” is a better description of what we would need to enforce to stop the corporations carving up the economy.
Socialists are also in favour of cultural integration as an inevitable feature of the development of capitalism. But this is something of a two-way process.
It needs to be voluntary, not enforced by the state.
Nor is it very useful to look at things in a white-black framework that ignores class.
For young workers in particular, housing and jobs are the two most important issues they face. There’s absolutely no indication that all the money the government has handed the banks is being used to deal with these issues.
More likely its creating a minor speculative bubble based on fictitious money, that will soon explode in their faces.
Comment by prianikoff — 22 October, 2009 @ 6:16 pm
# 19 No need to get on your high horse. I was merely testing the water.
As you haven’t cottoned on to the fact I’d better tell you that I belong to a colonized national minority – the Welsh. You have heard of white-on-white colonization? It’s a bit of a speciality in these islands.
My comments were deliberately brief but you’ve managed to read quite a lot into them. While white working class culture can sometimes leave much to be desired it’s this almost constant berating of white Britain (which you do very well) that has feed into a more general mood of resentment against ethnic minorities.
Britain has changed significantly over the last 40 years or so in terms of racial composition but it’s been to difficult to have a debate on the ramifications of this without being accused of being racist or reactionary by the liberal left.
Comment by Hendre — 22 October, 2009 @ 6:27 pm
# 21 Yasmin A-B told a conference in Wales that the only reason Welsh people wanted to speak Welsh was to exclude ethnic minorities. Being Welsh and over-sensitive I take great offence at the suggestion!
Comment by Hendre — 22 October, 2009 @ 6:35 pm
“it’s this almost constant berating of white Britain (which you do very well) that has feed into a more general mood of resentment against ethnic minorities.”
No - berating “white britain” hasn’t caused racism - imperialism, justified on the basis of crude ethnic stereotypes has caused racism, along with a persistent capitalist crisis and neo-liberalism which seeks to divide and conquer both ideologically and economically by creating a lower strata of immigrant workers to take crappy jobs at lower pay.
As for your Welshness, I’m afraid being Welsh doesn’t give you special access to the truth on multiculturalism. I don’t hear you complaining about signs in the Welsh language or Welsh being taught in schools as being divisive.
Comment by redbedhead — 22 October, 2009 @ 6:37 pm
# 24 I agree. The berating hasn’t caused racism but it hasn’t done anything to alleviate it either.
Are you suggeting the Welsh should voluntarily assimilate as per the extirpation clause of the Laws in Wales Act?
Comment by Hendre — 22 October, 2009 @ 6:41 pm
I’m not suggesting anything. But if you join in bashing “multiculturalism” and then support the preservation of a minority culture in Wales - but not for anybody else on the island, then you’re being hypocritical.
The berating is irrelevant. And the focus on it is symptomatic of a retreat to the right, a half-acceptance of the argument that blacks are responsible for causing racism. There were remarkably similar arguments deployed during the Civil Rights Movement in the US South when blacks who sat-in at whites-only lunch counters and refused to leave were accused of aggravating white people. The problem isn’t angry black people - the problem is racism.
Comment by redbedhead — 22 October, 2009 @ 6:56 pm
#23 Yasmin A-B said that? Honestly? Astonishing ignorance if she did. When? Where?
Comment by Dai o'r Graig — 22 October, 2009 @ 8:44 pm
Yeah, it’s sad to see such obvious pandering to racism as a policy idea on a website that calls itself ‘Socialist Unity’. Emulating the language of the BNP won’t help anyone.
Comment by Tom — 22 October, 2009 @ 9:29 pm
A very good article and it been a long time coming ,for me the term mulitculturalism is just a divide and rule by other means and as it been show equaliy is the key to bring all kinds of working poeple together .
Some on the far left need to get the head out of there text books and talk to workers a lot more
I think the likes of Yasamin A-B just patronise and unhelpful in there ways
Comment by steelcityred — 22 October, 2009 @ 9:30 pm
“Some on the far left need to get the head out of there text books and talk to workers a lot more”
hey, mate - as a worker, let me tell you something: not all workers are straight, white guys. Get over it and start relating to the real working class and not some social realist fantasy from the 30s.
Comment by redbedhead — 22 October, 2009 @ 9:33 pm
It’s pretty simple. There have been huge attacks on the entire working class in the last few decades, of all races, religions and nationalities. Living in Britain today is a desperate race to survive, and if you’re at the bottom of the heap your resentment and alienation is heightened by being told by the powers that be that it’s your own fault.
The difference if you’re white British is that you have an easy scapegoat in the form of immigrants, foreigners and Muslims- life would be so much easier if they weren’t taking your jobs and blowing themselves up on the streets. This attitude is encouraged by both of the main political parties who want to harness this resentment for their own ends.
The BNP’s support is a consequence of the brutal economic policies pursued over the last 30 years. It’s much easier to love thy neighbour if you’re not both competing for the last council house on the estate. We should hammer home this point and not be drawn into bashing affirmative action or championing militant secularism.
Comment by Jon — 22 October, 2009 @ 10:01 pm
but in many ways we going back to the 30s ,
ps I know that all worker are not are straight,white guys so please do not patronise me.
Comment by steelcityred — 22 October, 2009 @ 10:04 pm
well put Jon
Comment by steelcityred — 22 October, 2009 @ 10:06 pm
# 27 Where have I attacked multiculturalism? My point is that Yasmin A-B appears to resent the multicultural nature of white Britain i.e. being Welsh, Cornish, English, Scots and Irish. We’re ‘tribal’ apparently I wouldn’t say she is racist but she is being culturally insensitive. That agenda might go down well in cosmopolitan London but it doesn’t ‘read across’ particularly well to the rest of the UK. I contrast Yasmin with someone like Diane Abbott. Diane is a Londoner/London MP who cheerfully admits to not quite understanding Labour politics in other parts of the UK, not because she is black but because she is English.
# 28 The ever reliable(!) Western Mail is my source – a couple of years back.
Comment by Hendre — 23 October, 2009 @ 9:40 am