Is Labor going from red to blue in the UK?
Daniele Meloni's point on the Labor party conference
The Labor party goes from red to blue. No, it is not a change in the historic colors of the British and European left, but it is the turning point made by its leader, Sir Keir Starmer, to bring Labor back to government in 2024. Yes, because the emphasis on patriotism and pride of British affiliation are at the center of Starmer's plan to win back the votes in the urban areas of the north-east of the country that sensationally passed to the Tories on 12 December last. What does blue have to do with it? Blue is the color chosen by nationalist Labor at the end of the New Labor Era to emphasize how the party should have aligned itself more with the expectations and popular culture of the British working class and not just try to attract the urban middle classes to its cause. . The movement is called, in fact, Blue Labor, and its founder Lord Glasman, has been repeatedly accused of being a Tory disguised in red. Indeed, of blue.
Last week , in the first remote party conference entitled "Labor Connected", Starmer spoke from Doncaster, a northeastern part of the country that has remained loyal to Labor but surrounded by constituencies that have switched to the Conservatives, filling Johnson's majority a Westminster.
Three focal points of his speech: recovering the votes lost in traditionally Labor areas to return to being competitive in the elections (these areas also include Wales and, above all, Scotland); fierce struggle against anti-Semitism which returned to spread in the movement during Corbyn's leadership, accused, more or less covertly, of having done too little to eradicate it; the end of the policy in favor of a second referendum on the EU and the divisions on Brexit between europhiles and eurosceptics, which divided the party at a time when it could have taken advantage of the internal divisions within the Tories to re-present itself as a credible government force. Starmer, who had been one of the most convinced Europeanists in the Labor house, accepts Brexit but will maintain a critical attitude towards the government on the negotiations for the free trade agreement between the UK and the EU.
From Jewish Labor and, of course, from Blue Labor and the Fabiana Society (which includes Starmer and his deputy, Angela Rayner) there has been a chorus of positive evaluations for the new course, intended to lead Labor to more positions centrist with respect to Corbynian radicalism. Just the followers of the former leader, grouped in the Momentum movement, have expressed more than one perplexity as to how the new Sir Keir has closed the previous phase. For the "corbyinistas", however, these will not be easy times: in April, when Starmer was elected leader, the party's National Executive Committee was also renewed and almost all of Corbyn's affiliates lost their place within this fundamental body in the structure Labor party.
Having said about internal Labor issues, how did the British public react to the Labor conference? The coronavirus and economic emergencies have meant that Starmer's speech and his attempt to create a more familiar image in the newspapers (the choice fell on the Sunday Times) have taken a back seat. However, there was a fallout on opinion polls. According to the opinion poll institute Opinium, Labor would be ahead of the Tories in the polls for the first time since time immemorial: 42% against 40. Another institute, Kantar, keeps the Tories ahead of three points, 42 to 39. Finally, the choice of the Prime Minister: According to YouGov, Starmer would be better suited than Johnson to lead the country for the British: 37% in his favor, against 30 in favor of the incumbent. Labor exits the week of its conference reinforced but a public congress with greater media attention certainly would not have hurt them. If they are roses (… blue) they will bloom.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/il-partito-laburista-passa-dal-rosso-al-blu-nel-regno-unito/ on Tue, 29 Sep 2020 09:42:50 +0000.