UK’s Labour party is wounded by three Cs

Peter Mandelson, spirit guide to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, blamed the two “C”s for the Labour Party’s shattering defeat in a parliamentary by-election last week: “Covid and Corbyn.”
The opposition party put up a poor showing in important local contests across the country, but the loss of Hartlepool to Boris Johnson’s Tories cut deep. On the doorsteps of the northern English constituency he used to represent, Mandelson claimed that he heard voters praise the Conservative government for its vaccine rollout. They also singled out Labour’s previous hard-left leader, Jeremy Corbyn — who often appeared to have more affinity with Havana than Hartlepool — as a reason for the party’s lingering unpopularity with working class voters.
Since 1945 a governing UK party has won an opposition seat in mid-term only four times before. Hartlepool, a former steel and shipbuilding town, has only been captured once by a Tory in modern history. It took a war hero to do it: Commander John Kerans, whose ship escaped Mao’s China in 1949 under fire on the Yangtze river. Labour’s choice this time of a pro-European candidate in a constituency that voted 70% for Brexit in 2016 was bizarre.
And yet, we should add a third “C” to Mandelson’s list: cultural conservatism, which is becoming more important than class solidarity in determining party allegiance in Britain. Labour is being squeezed in a pincer movement by pro-Brexit Tories and leftist nationalist parties from the Celtic nations. This poses an existential threat to the party, whose ideas on identity tend more towards gender and race than sovereignty. While the UK is unique, center-left parties face similar problems across Europe, which has seen the cord cut between internationalist, social democratic parties — led by middle class activists — and a hitherto loyal working class bloc vote. US President Joe Biden avoided this trap. He learned the lessons of Hillary Clinton’s defeat by largely avoiding the cultural politics that would have alienated blue collar voters. Doing this let him unify a broad class coalition.
The West’s old working class has fragmented. The decline of manufacturing employment in Europe (and with it trade union membership in the private sector) has eroded its solidarity. In Britain home ownership — the Tories many years ago gave tenants the right to buy their social housing — means voters have more of a stake in capitalism.
Labour’s members of Parliament are often recruited from the ranks of progressive young graduates, public sector workers and middle class metropolitans, but the working class has stayed small “c” conservative in its cultural assumptions, while retaining a fondness for high public spending. These voters dislike “woke” agendas, support patriotism and fail to show interest in the topics that fascinate London’s elites.
My wife’s family hails from northeast England — where it was said that you could pin a Labour rosette on a donkey and it would be elected. Some have seen better days, but look more closely and you’ll find places where cheap property prices have created a homeowning base among working class families.

—Bloomberg