It must be a day ending in a Y because some technocratic centre-left dullards are belling about “British values” again.
“MAN WITH FLAGPOLE IMPALED IN SKULL LEADS LABOUR PARTY TO LANDSLIDE VICTORY” scream the headlines in 2024. Say what you like about Phineas Gage, he was at least a good union man (unlike Starmer, whose relationship with the unions, including the one he’s a member of, has thusfar been patchy at best).
The wing of the party that has been dead against the best kind of populism (the economic variety) for the last five years is now in charge and determined to have a crack at the worst kind of populism (the cultural variety). Except the moderates, being of solidly corporate, managerial stock, have not been at all convincing in their attempt at shifting gear from the slick, pro-European, metropolitan professionalism of New Labour to a half-baked idea of earthy authenticity.
Labour could try to be the party of all working people, regardless of their relationship to “British values”, regardless of how deeply they inhale the Union Flag’s heady jingoistic scent before masturbating violently onto a commemorative plate of the Queen Mum, but is instead trying to simultaneously be the party of all Patriots regardless of class (by now the Conservative Party’s job, having expanded their base far beyond the upper and upper-middle classes) and the party of Patriots whose weekly frantic flag-wanking sessions feature not just the British but European flag as well (which is surely the Liberal Democrats’ job).
(Corbyn, meanwhile, has gone down the liberal NGO route. Good for him. Leave him to it. He’s no use to us any more. Let him enjoy his retirement from the cesspit that is British politics. Hopefully he’ll have the stench out of his clothes soon.)
“Buddy, they won’t even let me feign sincere adoration for the flag.”
There is a crucial distinction to be made between Blue Labour’s flag shagging and this new, unconvincing strain, from the centrist faction.
Blue Labour’s flag horn was at least genuine (but no less embarrassing); this new nonsense from the Canary Wharf wing of the PLP feels like pure marketing. It’s all virtue signalling, as with every other gesture Starmer has made since becoming leader. Taking a knee while being dismissive of Black Lives Matter, for example. Or sacking Rebecca Long-Bailey to signal zero tolerance for anti-semitism (without actually tackling the problem). Subsequent sackings signalled zero tolerance for the left, as a sop to the British media’s rabid, ranting McCarthyites, so close and in our faces we can smell the torn human flesh on their saliva. And all of this flag waving and tub thumping, coupled with a lurch towards what can be euphemistically described as “culturally conservative” values (read: racism and various LGBT phobias), is virtue signalling of the worst sort because it doesn’t actually fucking signal any fucking kind of fucking virtue beyond “I HAVE A BRITISH FLAG AND I AM GOING TO WAVE IT AS THE QUEEN GOES PAST LIKE THE FUCKING GORMLESS DROOLING IMBECILE I AM”.
Labour wants clinical, depoliticised, emotionally disconnected flag shagging. Labour wants to encourage more flag waving, more tubthumping, more hollering about how you want to suck the Queen’s toes and defend the Protestant ascendancy to the death, but without any nasty nationalism attached to it. Labour wants to provoke a great swell of patriotic fervour while micro managing its side effects and making sure the masses don’t react to it in an unpredictable or uncontrollable way. Their ideal “patriot” is a middle manager who owns property in Clapham, drinks Pimms on Henman Hill, attends the Proms and waves the flag without raising their voice or getting too lairy. People whose #VeryBritishProblems amount to having too much milk in their tea or getting crumbs on their Keep Calm And Carry On poster, rather than, say, the effects of 10+ years of austerity.
I’m not saying sincere flag shagging would be any better, unless combined with genuinely good left economic policies (which would be decried by the Sensibles as Red-Brown Politics anyway).
What we have here is the belief, held by Policy Wonks from the Oxford Society of Politics Understanders, that what will really sell Labour’s policies on the doorstep is dull, dry, prescriptive, focus-grouped, bloodless patriotism with benefits means tested by how many flags you have outside your house.
In the end, it all comes down to a patronising distrust of (if not downright hostility towards) the Ordinary Folk the Labour moderate wants to engage with. The difference between the left and the core of the PLP is that the left doesn’t think your average voter is stupid or gullible enough to buy Labour’s “more flags” spiel.
It turns out that it is not the left who thinks the UK electorate is made up of grunting Neanderthals who get a Pavlovian stiffy when they see a Union Jack after all. It would, in fact, suggest that the left was correct all along in warning against dismissing Brexit voters as jingoistic meatheads who don’t know what’s good for them.
Who knew!
