Politics and Values in England
Welcome to this seminar on English politics and values.
I'm John Denham and I'm the director of the Centre for English Identity and Politics at Southampton University.
Welcome Seminar, we've got some great speakers today, just a couple of the usual housekeeping things.
Please do use the chat function to talk amongst yourselves while the seminars going on and to pursue side discussions, please use the Q&A button if you want to ask a question and there is a function there where you can upvote or like other people questions which will help me later on.
Deciding which which issues to prioritize.
We've got some great speakers are who are introduced in just a moment just to give people the background to this seminar.
We're really discussing today a group of voters who we can reasonably say have reshaped the politics of England and of the United Kingdom and arguably of Europe too.
Over the last 20 years without.
Them or as Johnson wouldn't be going to Brussels today.
They're a group of voters who are predominantly from working class backgrounds.
20 years ago they whether they voted or not, they would have described themselves probably as labor or coming from labor families or labour communities.
As the 2000s went on, they aligned themselves increasingly with an older strand of conservative euroskepticism to vote for UKIP.
In such numbers that David Cameron ultimately felt forced to offer a European referendum in his manifesto in 2015, there's an arguable case that some of these
Voters at least helped give David Cameron his majority because they didn't like the idea of SNP. MP's telling a minority Labour government what to do.
And certainly they were the decisive voters in England Brexit vote in 2016, and again in the election of Boris Johnson last December.
So that's the group of voters in very broad terms that we're talking about today and hopefully not introduce too many stereotypes.
I of course, because I happen to be a professorial fellow on English.
Identity and politics tend to focus on the fact that these voters, if asked, tend to identify themselves as more English than British.
But that's not actually the focus of today's discussion as such.
That's part of the background that we can.
Part because I certainly have the view as many of you will do on this on this webinar that anybody who comes along and says I have got the one single explanation that explains why people do what they do is almost certainly wrong and we'll only get a rounded view of this part of the electorate.
If we take a number of different perspectives.
And that's exactly what we're going to do in this.
M&R and Paula storage from Bristol University has written extensively on that values and how they influence political behavior.
Simon Winlow has written about the relationship between the Labour Party and working class voters and his co-author of a study of the Rise of the English Defence League.
John Lawrence from Exeter has revisited some of the Great Sociological studies of working class communities over the last 60 or 70 years to look at what they tell us about identity and community belonging and.
Autonomy and David Lammy will certainly need no introduction.
Very prominent campaigning.
Labour MP now at Shadow Justice Secretary.
So there will be our speakers.
I've asked people to to aim for 8 minutes.
Each, and then we'll have plenty of time for discussion afterwards, so we'll start please with Paula, thank you very much.
Thank you John.
I'm just going to take one minute to share my slides with you all and hope this works first time.
There we go.
Hope you can all see that so.
As John said.
My main interest in this is in the relationship between core political values and political behavior and the introduction John just gave.
There talked about this group of voters.
That have been discussed extensively over the last few years, but quite often in very binary terms.
So the left behind and the white working class, the somewheres and so on always set-up in opposition to another group and one of the things I want to argue and have argued elsewhere is that that's an oversimplified view of the groups of voters within the electorate, and that we need to understand them.
As groups that are multidimensional in character and move beyond binaries to look at how English politics but politics across the whole of the UK and indeed Europe has been fragmenting over time rather than polarizing.
Right now I just got to work out how.
To make the slides.
Move along there we go.
So just very briefly because John said eight minutes and it didn't mean 8 minutes per slide, I don't think.
This is how I am conceiving of values.
I'm not going to go through all the items.
These are fairly standard now and measures of core political values which have appeared on Sir.
Today's going back to the late 1980s so they don't tap into particularly issues of the day.
That's that they're.
Designed to be more enduring than that, they don't tap into moral issues and they don't have anything directly about welfare, which I think is.
And an element that's missing.
I use these two value scales to think of the electorate as being broken up into groups.
Now I don't want to uhm say these are hard boundaries in the same way that when we come to talk about class later on, the boundaries around a particular class are a little bit fluid.
Although we can identify a class group, I think the same is true of values.
Groups and I I do what I do with these values groups to try and understand this is to break each of these dimensions into three parts.
So on the left I've got a left, a center and a right group, and on the liberal authoritarian scale I've got a liberal, moderate and authoritarian group, not.
Always overly happy with the labels and I'm sure that's something someone will want to challenge later on.
For information, this is how the English electorate were distributed across those groups and based on data from the 2019 British election study, Internet panel, and so the weight of voters in England is to the left. But within each group.
The weighting is also towards the moderate or authoritarian end of the liberal authoritarian dimension.
And critically, for understanding the voters that we're going to be talking about in this session, many of them are in the left-leaning but not liberal groups, and these are actually some of the largest groups in the electorate which helps to explain why they've been so influential. Because actually, as a group they make up a significant chunk of.
The electorate.
Now what I thought.
Would be useful for the purposes of this seminar was to look a little bit at the social characteristics of these groups.
Of of of these values groups.
And again, mindful of the fact I didn't have very much time, so there's a lot of information on some of these slides, but what you what we've got here are for each of these values groups the proportion of that group who are either in a working class occupation defined by the semi routine and routine groups of the NS set.
Or in in the second chart, have a degree or higher level qualification so you can see that there are two things that stand out about.
This group of.
Uhm left-leaning but more authoritarian voters. Firstly, they are more likely to be from working class occupations than other groups.
Although they are by no means dominated.
By working class voters.
And they are also much less likely to have a degree or higher level of education and than the other groups of voters on the left.
So that if you like is a very quick look at their objective social characteristics, we can also look in the same way at the identity of those groups.
So here I've looked at their national identity, measured through Englishness and whether or not they hold a class identity when asked.
So the first chart.
Is the average.
Englishness on a 1 to 7 scale.
Of each group.
And I think it's really useful to note here that there is a a relationship here.
A pattern in that the more liberal the voters are, the less English they feel, and vice versa.
But there's not much of a relationship here between left and right, so Englishness is a identity that connects.
With that second social dimension of values rather than with the economic dimension of values.
We can also see here that those on the left are much more likely to still claim a working class identity, and amongst those with left wing economic values but with less liberal social values more than half actually still identify as working class.
So quite high levels of working class identity among these groups.
And I'm, I'm sure following speakers will pick up on that a little bit, but it's something that we need to further understand and explain how different political actors have been able to activate that working class identity in particular ways.
So what does this mean for their actual political behavior? I've the chart I'm showing you here focuses only on change between 2017 and 2019 actually.
The this process of movement amongst these different groups of voters has been happening for quite a long time. If you go back and look at the 1997 data, you'll see that.
The Labour were able to win voters across all these different categories in roughly equal amounts in 1997, and then from 2010 onwards.
There's been this increased gradient within the voters on the left, whereby Labour been able to win.
More of the.
Liberal voters fewer of the authoritarian voters.
And where labor?
As increasingly.
Lost out on the vote in the center of the economic left right scale and to the Conservatives you can't see the levels in in this chart, unfortunately, but what I wanted to bring out from this chart is 2 factors to two things about the changes between 2017 and 2019.
Labour lost the most the largest share of the votes from those that were on the left authoritarian.
Part of this value dimension.
The Conservatives similarly were able to consolidate votes, and they gained about 10 percentage points amongst that group between 2017 and 2019.
But the story of English voters is more complex than just that group that have variously been identified by the labels John used at the start.
Because actually the labor vote share fell across all these groups and there was no group in which there was any kind of compensation.
For the loss of these left, moderate, and authoritarian voters in particular.
So that's a problem for the Labour Party in terms of what it can do to win voters back, because actually the vote is fracturing everywhere.
And if we focus only on the voters that are the topic of today's seminar, then that might cause frictions and tensions elsewhere.
And for the Conservatives they were able to eat into that left wing authoritarian group, which is quite astonishing, really, when you consider that in the previous slide, I showed you such high levels of working class identification amongst this group that the Conservatives and.
Led by someone from Eton with the private back.
Private school background and so on.
Not in any way an epitome of working class nurse.
That's not a word, but I'm sure you understand what I mean.
We're able to take votes in this group of voters who themselves identify.
As being working class and I think that's something else that we haven't really fully understood.
Didn't have time to create another slide with this on it, but one thing that I think has been really overlooked in this story and I don't have 2019 data for it yet, but that group of voters has also increasingly stayed away from elections as well, so they're now becoming less likely to turn out in elections.
As well as switching their votes between labour and conservatives, so there are two processes going on there in terms of the disconnection of that group of voters from their traditional.
Party positions and I lost track of how I'm doing for time, but I.
Don't think that was too far off the.
Too far off the 8 minutes and nothing.
That was that.
That was great Paula.
Thank you very much indeed and I think that's set the scene perfectly with.
With that view of this particular group of voters, and I'm gonna move on straight away now.
Well, just providing straight onto to Simon.
Just reminder to the audience that over 100 people out there do use the chat function.
If you want to discuss.
Things amongst yourselves and please do start putting questions into the Q&A which will help me later on. So thank you very much and over to you Simon.
Hi nice to meet you.
I have no original data or any research to present you instead.
What I'm going to talk about is based upon.
Many years of detailed empirical research in neighborhoods that were once the seabeds of democratic socialism.
For the most part I have been looking at the criminal, logical and sociological effects of deindustrialization.
Of course I'm sure it will come of no surprise to you that the majority of these effects have been overwhelmingly negative.
The philosopher Adrian Johnson concept of deactivation is useful here in capturing the reality of these populations.
The ideologies that once sustained these places gave meaning and color of their lives and whatnot, and now, increasingly.
Rather than adapting, these places are deactive.
The people have effectively fallen out of history.
Through no fault of their own, and this has inspired a sense of abandonment.
A growing sense of irrelevance.
And this informs the politics of these places.
And I'll be absolutely honest.
For me, their feelings of abandonment are entirely justified.
We have indeed been forgotten.
They have indeed been ignored.
Certainly throughout the neoliberal period, by the organized left in this country.
Their worries about future generations which they talk about at great length, are also entirely justified.
I can't see anything particularly positive on the horizon for young people growing up in these red wall constituencies.
I think the anger that's spilled into the Brexit vote is also justified.
If we were in that position, Wakefield, Angry 2.
And this is the background against which work we see the rise of the EDL in Britain first.
But the failure of these men and women who got involved in the ADL Britain first to identify their true adversary, the true 'cause of their downward mobility and growing irrelevance, is suggestive of other important changes.
And that's really what I want to come onto now.
I've spent a huge amount of time investigating the evolution of the political left in this country, and I to cut Long story short short, the left has displayed marked disinterest in political economy, especially since the 1960s. What we've seen is an inculturation of leftist politics.
An almost deliberate withdrawal from the field of political economy and the general faith that all of the key battles to be fought.
From now into the future, or will be waged on the field of culture.
The less capitulation to neoliberalism is being devastating.
Its acceptance of austerity, its imposition of those austerity measures caused global financial crisis is devastating.
Well, that's not the only issue at stake.
The leftist feel that construct a compelling story about a better future.
It hopes to create.
A better future that will allow these populations to look to the future with optimism.
That jobs will be available.
Community will have will be sustained and will become a vital feature of their lives.
And all of this stuff you know, once, once core to the political left in this country, the left themes are clustered around collectivism and universalism.
The old discourse subclassing justice is the primary example.
Rather than hoarding difference on high that left traditional discourse sort of make cultural differences unimportant.
When we suffered, we suffered for the same reasons when we moved forward, we.
Moved forward as one.
The latter present cultural agenda ignores collectivism and universalism, and so inevitably leaves many people feeling left out.
For me it is very strange to see many notable leftists present.
The bulk of the English working class as being somehow the beneficiaries of historical injustice.
And in my empirical research, when I walk the streets and talk with these people.
It strikes them as just odd to listen to a.
You know whoever might be talking on Channel 4 News or.
Something like that.
About the benefits that have accrued for the English working class.
You look around them and say nothing, but decline.
Their neighborhoods are declining their job.
Opportunities are declining, and yet here they are.
Being told that there are some kind of historical beneficiaries.
It's simply unproductive politically for.
The left to pursue this course.
It needs to return to collectivism.
It needs to return to a narrative of togetherness and sameness, rather than difference if it is to move forward.
This brings me onto the theme for today, which is working class conservatism.
And as we've already heard, what gets called cultural conservative is a complex mix of tastes, attitudes and dispositions.
It's not conservative in the traditional sense.
You know, we use that phrase in politics or whatever.
It varies from issue to issue, and of course it merges.
Very in a very obvious ways with traditional, especially Social Democratic political economy.
For example.
Attitude surveys will suggest that since the 60s, people generally don't believe that they hold racist attitudes, but many in these red wall constituencies are also keen to restrict immigration.
They're keen to tear key utilities back in the public ownership and things of that nature, and of course, mostly patriots.
This clashes with the increasingly liberalized left.
Some on the left now seem appalled at the history of of England, and of course this isn't a good cell in red wall constituencies.
This especially came to the fore after Brexit, where we heard you know newspaper columnists saying they were heading for the borders they wanted nothing more to do with the country.
And that obviously isn't a good look for the political left if we are serious about being successful in the future.
Historically, the left has profited from criticising injustice in England.
But it was always offered a critique based upon the assumption that England was worth fighting for that there was something there that needed to be defended and.
Nurtured back to health.
And their critique was always about rescuing something fundamental rather than simply discarding history and move it forward into some undefined.
I think generally speaking, to wrap it up, we need collective identities.
We need a sense of mutual interests and these things should be at the core of life.
And I just wanted to finish by pointing to the future.
Become aware that we're now drifting towards a fundamental shift in global political economy and real historic change is taking place in the background.
What's called the great reset is now coming into view.
At the moment, across the world, the left has been remarkably disinterested in this event and what it could mean for the future.
But what the great reset looks like could be shaped by an informed and economically literate left.
Big changes we see.
Now could be driven forwards by the spirit and the interests of all.
But what looks like happening is that the key beneficiaries will be global oligarchs.
You take a look at the recent trends in the wealth of Cardinal Elon Musk in people like that, you get a sense of where power lies and how what we need to.
Do to challenge.
Those injustices?
And the left of course, is locked in its fragmentary battles around cultural politics.
And I think this is counterproductive.
And I agree, you know, with lots of people talking today that the key battles will be between these kind of generally socially conservative economically Social Democrat groups and cultural liberals.
But that bar is prefaced by a failure of the left to tie diverse cultural groups together in a project and collective betterment.
That's all I wanted to say, thank you.
Simon, thank you very much indeed and a really fascinating different angle on the relationship between voters and political parties to to put alongside Paula slides, looking at how voters have changed and and and shifted.
I'll move on straight on now then to John Lawrence to give us a third perspective on the same people.
Great, I'm going to try and share screen.
I've had some failures lately so.
Fingers crossed this works.
We've got a backup.
If it doesn't.
Yes, we have a backup plan.
Sony and Zoom have been at war lately, just a second.
OK can you?
I'm trying to get the presentation to come is the presentation showing.
Or is it?
No, not at the moment.
No, that's what I feared.
Is anything showing?
No, it's a blank screen apart from the icon.
It's not working at all.
What they'll do is.
Sophie, Sophie, could you have a go at running the slides?
Yes, I can get them shared.
That's great.
I will start talking service.
There we go.
No, they're at home.
Put it in presentation mode.
That's great.
So, uhm.
If you could move to the second slide, so basically.
I'm talking here from material that's from the book I published quite recently called Mimi.
The search for community in post war England, and that's a very big book, as as you can probably see there, it's based on 10 re analyzing 10 different social studies over as John was saying 70 years.
Lots and lots of testimony.
What I've actually done is, I wonder if I've not followed entirely the brief because I've decided today to focus in on given that's 130 thirty thousand words to focus in on the little bits of that testimony that do speak directly to the themes around Englishness. But I'm looking across the long period of that 70 years to try and bring out.
What I see is sort of long term patterns.
The things that haven't, uh, not ephemeral, and have not disappeared over that long period, and try and bring out that there are more continuity than one might imagine in that.
OK, if we could have a second slide, please.
So one of the things that struck me when I went back to the actual notes that I'd taken and the the the testimony was that people talked more about Englishness and they didn't use that phrase, but about being English in the early testimony rather than in the later.
And I think the reason for that is not that that.
Discourse has declined, but actually the the taboos around talking about.
Ethnicity and race are much, much greater than they were in the 1940s and 50s, so you will see with some of the examples on that slide.
From Bermondsey, in the 1940s that essentially you find 2 things you find.
A sort of.
Naive racism, but real racism people shocked just at the idea that a female anthropologist might sit down in a village with a black man and the sense of the racial other is extraordinary.
But it is very.
Naively expressed as, say, in in these things.
But also a very powerful sense of Englishness as an identity, which I was surprised to find I haven't actually talked about it in.
The book but.
This is one example of a number where it's clear that people are emphasizing that they're.
They're English, and it's not just in that sense about whiteness, and in fact, in the Bermondsey case notes.
Both in the 1940s and again they went back in the 50s. There was an enormous amount of anti Irish sentiment at that time, and in fact in the local idiom of of that moment Irish meant foreigner in in the local lingo lingo. So what I would be saying here, what this sort of take away message is that.
The ethno Englishness that that David talks about in his book the Ethnic Strand of English. Nationalism has a long route. It's not just in the last 1020 years that it's.
Found expression, but it's finding political expression.
I do think that that is an important theme.
So third slide. This is from the late 1950s and really here I just wanted to sort of bring out a few of the different ways in which.
People were talking about the loss of empire, which was happening around them and the changing patterns of immigration, which actually probably wasn't happening around them in Stevenage.
But many of the people in Stevenage had just left London.
And I would says I put up here a particularly offensive comment that one of the ex Londoners made to to Samuel researchers.
Because I wanted to be clear about how the taboos just weren't there, people felt able to say these things, and indeed to record them in ways, ways it disappears in my later testimony, I don't get any overt racism.
But it was all.
There were a lot of emotional feelings about the loss of empire, and I'm not entirely convinced that they, although we're talking here 70 years ago, that that that has entirely disappeared, there was like an undercurrent that is almost like a, uh, a memory of some of these feelings.
But again, the second example from the male artist.
Fitter scaled engineering worker again shows a much more classic economic form of ethnic exclusiveness.
The theme is about England again and again.
You see, the hostility to immigrant Irish labour undermining.
He feels wage rates, but then a more general.
Anti immigration comment.
In the second one so it's there in the early testimony it disappears in the later if you put up the next slide please come.
In the later testimony I don't find.
Anything like that now.
Just a few exceptions and I'm going to show them to you to get a sense of what they're about.
And I think it was because in the 1960s it was called racialism. We obviously call it racism. It did become something that people became aware of, and it creates a much greater self consciousness when people are talking to outsiders.
But in the examples I give you there, you should be to see that there's a unique.
You know, Powell argument where the working class people are very divided.
It should be stressed there.
They take both sides in the argument about Cole and indeed over immigration and somebody who is backing and over racist comes in with this argument about the fact that although he you know he kind of.
He's he's actually bending towards the the racist shipbuilding worker, but then he says, but actually, if they worked for a year before drawing the national assistance, then I don't mind that.
The second example from the 1990s is someone who actually does that apologetic thing I'm. I suppose I'm being a bit racist and then seeks to contrast the experience of older white people with welfare and foreigners, so there's definitely a racial dimension. But again, what you see in in both of these?
Is a dominant contractual argue.
The idea that welfare is something that is part of almost an individual contract that people have made, and I I talk about it in the book as the sort of deep roots of the original National Insurance scheme that they put down in our social system, which are much stronger than belief in welfare.
So belief in a contractual model of.
Welfare where you pay in and you get out.
In her case, and it's not uncommon, linked also to ideas about contributions to the nation, as in reference there to the war.
That is how a lot of.
People think.
So the final slide up.
As they in the latest.
Stuff I don't find much explicitly about ethnicity and.
What I think is going on.
Is is that the taboos around the ethnic type of English nationalism that David talks about in his book and what they're also speaking to is the absence of a non ethnic sort of vehicle for expressing English feelings that the great institutions of the state.
Are undoubtedly British.
ISH Parliament BBC rather than English the FA I've mentioned even also say the English National Opera.
There are a few national organisations that are English.
There aren't many, and so it's.
Civic nationalism, which is what dominates, say the politics of the SNP, is something that gets expressed in the in the English case through.
The belonging at the local level and where I live at the moment in Devon.
A lot of that is about county law.
Notice, but I'm from as I was saying before we started to to pull it from Bristol and in Bristol it's very much a civic patriotism of the city rather than anything broader, and those are incredibly intense, deeply rooted historical constructions.
A lot of.
Them are rooted actually in the experiences of the late 19th and early 20th century.
The making of new industrial communities, and when we're trying to understand the profound law.
Us that we have and I.
Agreed with what Paul has said about this given.
These sort of shorthand.
Homogenizing phrases like the left behind what we're looking at is something really profound that was constructed in that period, and itself needs its own history of the late 19th, early 20th century of a powerful pride in place.
And it's not just the taking away, therefore, the jobs or.
Even of the industries, but the destruction of a sense of pride in place.
And that is so powerful.
And I do think that if you're trying to work through this fundamental political problem that we have that English national feeling doesn't have an obvious vehicle of expression and can easily be pulled into these ethnic rather than civic dimensions, then the answer lies in the politics.
The place and it lies in building up a sense of pride in place and locality from the bottom.
And and the last thing I'd say about this is that one of the things that the book shows is that across the board.
The vast majority of people, whether they are born and bred in a place or mobile, feel that sense of connection to place and want somehow to be invested in communities, just.
As much as they want to be invested in family and the personal autonomy that is part of how they understand the post war world.
So that's where I lend.
Sorry about the zoom chaos.
John, thank you very much indeed, and that adds another layer to understanding about ideas of Englishness now and in the past, and people relationship to place as well as to the nation.
So I'd turn to our final speaker, David Lammy.
Welcome David David, the author of tribes, The which is about politics and identity, which John had just talked about David over to you.
Well look, thank you very much and.
John, what I want to do is just offer some reflections on some.
Some of what I've heard and in a in a sense to pick up on some of the themes that I covered in my book.
I am not seeking to speak.
If you like in some sort of manifesto.
Terms for the Labour Party, and because that would be, I think, going beyond my brief, I suppose my starting point is obviously to want to associate myself very much with what John.
Touched on and and to sort of be pretty upfront, which is what I try to do with my in my book about what, what, why, I come to things in the way I do.
And that is to say, I'm I'm very unapologetic about coming from Tottenham and north London and being the child of immigrant parents from the Caribbean, the Windrush generation.
And and all that that brings all that that brings in terms of a powerful sense of Britishness and a powerful sense in my own parents, of coming to the mother country, but also a powerful sense of some of the problems that they came into.
And certainly their children came into in Britain that were very present in the.
1970s and 80s and are well documented in things like Scarman and things like MacPherson, but also in my own sense.
I've always been very clear.
I'm not sure I would be a Member of Parliament were it not for my long seven years in the.
City of Peter
And it's in Peterborough, really, that I find a lot of the things that I have drawn on, particularly in those early years as an MP that enables me to sort of think very much about the country as well as just about my own.
Constituency and I spent a lot of time in Peterborough in order for me to listen to here to reflect on some of the things that I was hit with picking up.
Obviously, during the vexed Brexit debate and the powerful sense of belonging, but also the powerful way in which loads of communities have left labour behind.
And I've also been struck because I don't, you know when I'm campaigning.
I'm all over the country.
I'm not just in Tottenham by any means.
That there has been this sense, which I would certainly agree with, which is the premise really.
For for this occasion that somehow devolution has delivered for Scotland, there's a continued debate continues of course in terms of nationalism, but but it's delivered for Scotland in terms of identity and a continued debate.
About identity.
That is replicated in Wales.
Peculiarly, Brexit raised significant issues in relation to the island of Ireland and Northern Ireland, but somehow really when we think of feelings of ill at ease, they so much in England and it's the English.
It that we talk less about as a country and certainly my party seems to have less to say about, and I've been really conscious of that.
I'm conscious of that because I'm so conscious of.
MyHeritage and what makes me.
I can see that this is a really significant.
Issue when you look at the map.
Of where labor has been pushed back to, and it's obviously it's a strange business to be in Parliament with just our 200 colleagues to be reduced to the numbers we would reduce to in the last election.
You can see very clearly that it's not just about the red wall, which I think is an unfortunate phrase in many ways and.
Even if we were to get those seats back, and I happen to be of the view that what I found in those seats is the number one thing that came up in the last general election.
With Jeremy Corbyn.
It actually it's it's being pushed out of whole swathes of the South, southeast and southwest, and those Newtown seats that I suburban Britain really where where we're not present in any significant way.
So clearly the ill at ease with us, uh, is a is a much bigger picture of England than it has been.
Before and.
If you can see it in Parliament, my many of.
My colleagues are well.
Welsh, I've got one.
Well, what you know one one or two colleagues that are that, are that, are that are Scottish and and the rest of us really represents city areas of the country at the same time there are some truths aren't there. The north-south divide. I think in Britain is the biggest it's been since 1911.
Uhm, there are profound changes in the economic structure of the country that exacerbates this. And this is a heavily centralized country at a time where words like devolution sort of go over people's heads and don't seem to mean anything. Yet we have to be in the in the business of talking about place.
And home.
So in my book, stress belonging.
And proposed ideas like a national civic service that wasn't the sort of whole of the story, but it's a part of the story it's getting into having an account of the whole country, and I think that one of the things that cuts across this is it.
Clearly, the debate since the referendum.
Has exacerbated.
Something that I think was quite unusual in politics, which is.
That the dominant.
Political debate of our times has been absolutely about culture.
Immigration looming large within that powerful sense of who we are and what we are.
But that cultural debate that cuts across so many issues has felt larger than the economic debate on.
On the whole, in politics.
Uhm, for the last 20 years, on the whole, the truth that it's economics stupid that matters has dominated.
But things feel a lot more free feeble when it's culture that seems to dominate, and it's not.
Clear to me.
By the way, whether once we exit the European Union in a few weeks time and once we.
We move out of the pandemic stage of dealing with the pandemic into the tough economic waters that clearly we're moving into.
Do do economics come back as an account?
It does strike me that if that were to be the case, notwithstanding all the things that we've discussed so far or heard so far.
Some people have to trust labour on economics.
And there you know, this is not to align myself with austerity, but it is to say that it does feel to me.
That in the in the.
The UM, if you look at the Labour governments that have, we have had, and there haven't been many in.
The 20th century, which is why I slightly.
I mean, you know, I I.
Yes we need a leftist account.
But the truth is the British people have historically.
Turned to the left rarely.
In modern history, not a lot in, but I think 22 years in the 20th century and so there. So these these these trends when I think about at Lee, when I think about Blair, when I think about Wilson they they they did seem to me to have powerful accounts.
Of the future, the future economy, where the jobs were going to come from and where work could be found and a sort of Jerusalem type rebuilding, Britain was a powerful scene that ran through.
Through those 3 leaders of the Labour Party, I know that Wilson was in tougher, you know, economic waters than both in some ways than Blair and and and and and acting because I don't think anyone felt that labor was responsible for the war and and the and the economic damage that had been done to Britain at that time, or indeed.
The Conservatives, but nevertheless that we have to have an account of the future, and we have to have an account based.
If you like that comes from our soil and and you know where people are and what they are.
And and a sense that we can deliver for them.
Which is that we're trusted.
Uhm, I don't particularly want to get into the whole identity politics bit, but clearly I mean certainly in my book.
Whilst I'm not going to depart for standing up for minorities in Britain and having an account of Britain's colonial heritage, that gives us some of the issues that remain in this.
I do recognize that part of the politics of identity cannot be the beginning and end of the story, and certainly can't be the whole account that it's unlikely that that will be a sufficient thing to garner office, and therefore you know.
Colleagues have to be aware and sensitive to that I'm I'm.
I'm nervous about any ethnic nationalism.
I don't think that leads to a good place.
But I do think that you have to be in a civic place.
A civic nationalists or or or you certainly patriotism is important.
I mean I think people do that the great in Great Britain means something to people.
It seems to.
Me yesterday I tweeted about the Human Rights Act and and I suggested, rightly in both my article.
In the Telegraph and in terms of my tweet that Churchill was absolutely one of the forefathers.
Of the human rights settlement that we have in this country and that we have in Europe that is, a matter of fact.
I was surprised then I received.
So much abuse.
The last
For whom Churchill has clearly become a great bogeyman, and I understand pack, I did a documentary for Channel 4 on some of what he got up to in the First World War in relation to Africans who made a contribution.
The First World War.
I understand the the Bengal Famine and all those.
Issues, but that surely doesn't mean you can't say that both through the Second World War and after the Second World War, he had a powerful view about human rights.
That is its truth.
So the point is that it was.
It's worrying.
It's really worrying that colleagues.
Almost as a left politician, I couldn't say that for many on the left, in order to defend the Human Rights Act, which is today's issue.
You know, in in our country, so I guess my starting point is belonging and place the the language of devolution isn't sufficient to get us there.
We have to have an account of the future that resonates with people and that we're trusted to deliver, which does have an economic salient.
It's and I think we have to be a bit.
We have to have a nod to the people to the, to the British people that and not a general assumption that Britons always turn to socialism.
Because historically that is not true.
And and the Labour Party has to be a broad church. And I say this because I grew up poor and black in the 70s and 80s, listening to great socialist teachers and schools and university tell me successively that Michael Foot was going to win in 83 that Kinnock was going to win in 87.
And and, and and and that we were going to win in 1992.
And I believe them.
And then I come to realize that the folks who were losing out when we lost were people like me, not them who were liberal, left, and middle class.
So I came to understand, and I suppose my seven years in Peterborough also that we are a very broad church and we have to.
We we have to come to the country as a broad church in order to win and then one last point.
I've always thought it's slightly odd that there's an assumption that working class people will want to vote necessarily for a working class Prime Minister, because that's also not historically true and not tends to be what what they're presented with in this country.
In a way, I accept that Boris Johnson is a quintessentially English figure.
There was something that felt quite English to me about Tony Blair at the time in 1997.
Uh, and so.
The ingredients that make you offer something to what is the English people?
It seems to me do count for something and matter considerably.
It's not solely about class.
It's about.
Who you are.
Who you speak for, how you present yourself.
I'm I hope that I I'm not.
You know, I've not been as careful with my language as I could have been, but but I'm trying to speak as as freely as possible.
Thank you.
We we appreciate that.
And it it's all on the recording.
So well, I realized that.
But that was.
Very good and thank you very much indeed.
Now there's a.
Huge number of.
Themes coming up in the discussion and I'd encourage people to continue to put questions in.
I'm going to try and work from the questions you put in, but it becomes too laborious getting people to unmute and put their camera on and and all the rest.
Let me just pick.
Up probably for Paul just to start with to clear some ground.
There's a few questions that come in from John Wilson, Garth Young, and others about the liberal or authoritarian scales.
And one question is, do those liberal authoritarian values are they sort of fairly fixed over time, or do they change and evolve?
How people who's answer those questions according to the context of current debates and the related question, perhaps is whether we can equate or not equate the authoritarian end of the scale with anti anti immigration attitudes.
Thank you so I should in a longer talk on values.
I would set that ground a little bit more in that we conceive of these values as actually being a kind of enduring part of our political outlook, and they don't change very much over time.
They've been stable within the British electorate for quite a long period, and they are stable at the individual level.
And largely some people do change, obviously, but but not not generally rapidly, and we would we would be worried actually if they did change rapidly when we're conceiving them as measures of values that are supposed to be enduring over time, and so they don't change rapidly, they do connect with particular sets of issues.
This, but you can't.
Straightforwardly equate the values to individual political positions.
That actually is what changes with context is the connection between your values, which is the kind of.
Society that you want to live in and then the individual political issues that come up of the day.
So there's not always necessary.
Connections between particular issues and we see.
That at the moment.
You know the the endless media representations and attempts to connect attitudes to lockdowns and mask wearing and vaccines and everything else to come.
Some kind of Brexit divide just doesn't work because they don't connect in that way at all, so you have to move from the core values, which give you a kind of orientation a lens.
An identity almost for viewing the world to each individual issue.
It's not something that's an automatic read off.
OK, thank you very much indeed.
I'd I'd like to.
Throw a question out now if I could to Mr.
John and to Simon.
There there are two strands of two issues coming up in the chat and on the questions.
One picks up very much this sense of place, but also related questions.
Right, should we just be talking about place?
Should we be talking about nation as well?
So a politics of belong?
Meaning and the second theme that is running is about the economics of addressing the political economy of this section of the electorate.
Just want to tease.
Out in some senses of are these two separate exercises that one might try to do, which are about place and devolution, or the idea of the nation and the political economy.
Debate somewhere else?
Or do we in some way need to run the two so that the way we talk about the political economy also talks about the place?
Simon, do you want to do the political economy?
Sure, yeah, uhm.
I mean for me they overlap.
We've talked a little bit about culture and we've talked a little bit about political economy.
But the fundamental issue is our, you know, as a species we we strive to achieve security.
And the sense of the inability to reproduce ourselves economically.
Inspires insecurity that resonates throughout the life course it spills into human relationships.
Affects your attitudes towards immigrants.
For example as being threatening if we can establish a sense of security, that sense of continuity of our employment, the continuity of cultural traditions.
Not that they stay fixed, but they evolve gradually over.
Time, then this is the key issue that we we need to drag out.
It's not about how we can create a political economy that integrates all people, rather it's about how can we facilitate the sense of security that allows us to get a foothold in reality and create the forms of community that people find nourishing.
So for me that there are that the the two are intertwined.
Right?
Yeah, no I I would agree with what you say there Simon and actually Alongo wrote a piece about labor political language in the Inter War period in security was the the key thing that they moved to in the later 30s and became a dominant sort of theme and that idea that you could secure people.
And their children lives, especially from the the ravages of obviously in the 30s.
Mass on in.
Moment and it got linked into issues about the nation, so when you're.
Talking about how.
Do we see these things connected?
Because Ashley was very comfortable with making the you know security for the people and security for the nation link and just in terms of a play of words.
But to answer the the the place part of the question.
That you raised there, John.
So I totally agree what Simon Says, but I think on the issue of locality or nation, probably the Labour Party really does have to.
Bite the bullet.
Maybe not immediately, but it has to.
Make clear that.
If the Scottish people want to be independent, it believes in self-determination and believes in independence.
It cannot keep hiding behind the fiction 'cause Britishness really means almost nothing now.
Actually it has.
Residual meaning because it's a way of evading some of the unattractive ethnic meanings attached to English.
Yes, but if you're.
Welsh or Scottish, it's pretty meaningless now, so it's a it's a sort of polite way of saying you're English, increasingly because that's the reality of how things have changed in the last 30 years and and so that's got to be grappled somehow.
And that means thinking about political solutions that are relevant to.
Means not being squeamish about Starmer, saying he's English because actually it's an enormous asset for him that he is in lots of ways.
Given the the Psephological mountain he has to climb, which is exactly as Paul and David have described it, it isn't just about the northern working class seats.
All of them together.
Wouldn't give Labour a majority.
It's about North Kent and you know the suburban areas around Bristol where I used to live, which are all currently conservative, but we're solidly New Labour, so there's a really complicated challenge and.
Although I think the route to trying to make a non-toxic Englishness is probably local, I think that there are really bigger issues that the left has to grapple.
Around devolution
Thank you and then if I could follow that up, that last point up.
Certainly with David and again with Simon is.
How important is it that?
In politics, and I said, we've ended up talking about labor politics inevitably here that people talk explicitly about England.
I, I mean, David will know that last year, for example, the Labour Party was promising to rebuild Wales, rebuilt Scotland and to rebuild Britain.
So it was only promising to rebuild Britain in England and it didn't mention England.
And so to.
To what extent is it important that the Labour Party takes it becomes at ease with talking about England?
How does that?
Work, perhaps with younger voters in big cities who are less likely to identify as English than as British, and can that be done?
And to Simon, I suppose the question is but also to John or Paul if they want to come in.
In talking to the voters that you've talked to, who do identify as English?
To what extent is?
Talking about Englishness important to forming an identity with them, or is that in fact a way of expressing their frustration about being excluded in all sorts of ways from what's going on David, can I go to you first, then Simon and anybody else who wants to come in?
I think it's very important.
There there was something that John said that I didn't quite agree with that Britishness has almost died, but it may be that I misunderstood.
I think if you were saying what does Britishness mean?
If you're in Wales or in Scotland.
And that was where you were parking it, then I bet I can understand.
And clearly here in England.
Ethnic minorities, I think do attach themselves to Britishness because it it invokes empire and you can be proximate to that.
Britishness, and I think that cosmopolitan liberal types of whether they're voting labour or conservative, also find it quite.
Easy to attach themselves to Britishness.
But clearly Englishness is more of a problem and and and and clearly it's got to stop being a problem.
So I do think it's important to talk about England.
But I recognize it's not straightforward because the other, the other truth I think of the electoral maths, is that it's quite important that labour makes significant inroads in Scotland, and it may be that if you're banging on and on about England that's being heard in a slightly different way in Scotland, or indeed in Wales.
So you're back to the the the the challenge in politics of being able to talk about number of things all at the same time.
Uhm, so some of this is also about code and it is about the leader that you have and that leaders sense of speaking for somewhere on from something and not being afraid to lean into that thing that you are from and and part of.
Uhm, you know I'm fortunate enough to know Keir Starmer and to get to know Keir Starmer.
And he always strikes me.
And this is because I've got quite a lot of family.
Ummh that live on the Sussex Kent border.
As someone of Sussex and Kent.
I think that that's not a bad thing to be.
And and and you'd probably do quite well to lean into that, because it happens to be a part of England.
That's quite significant and important, and.
I think you can pick up things there.
That are that are.
That are significant when I've knocked on doors in successive elections for 20 years.
That the place I always say to my office.
You've got to get me up there is Yorkshire because I.
Think you know a Yorkshire man or woman and what they're saying on the doorstep is the key to winning elections?
That's just my, that's just my thing.
So so you have to be chiming with those people.
You have to be connected to those people and you have to they they have to look at you and recognize something.
And that's what I was getting at when I said that when they looked much that I didn't like.
Uh, politics.
When they looked at Margaret Thatcher they recognized something.
When they looked at Tony Blair, they recognized something.
When they look at Boris Johnson, I mean I can't stand it personally, but they do recognize I recognize it.
I saw bits of Boris Johnson in the queen jumping out of a plane in the Olympic ceremony.
Which for my taste was too much, but went down very.
Well in England.
So that that that that you know you can't talk about all of these things all at the same time, but the symbols that you set the priorities you set are very important.
I come back actually also.
So I think the English being generally speaking.
As a group.
They like a sense of fiscal responsibility with their money.
Just think that's that's my instinct about the English.
Certainly the people of Peterborough and Tottenham.
David, thank you, Simon.
Yes, well I I really haven't got much to add other than nation.
The idea of nation is one of the few forms of collective identity that is present in everyday.
And I think increasingly, we cling onto it in the absence.
Of all of.
Those traditional forms of collective identity, in particular class, which has much you know if I'm talking of class of students, they don't include put themselves in the position of class in the way that my generation did and the generation before mine.
So I think people are dipping into this as.
A form of.
Kind of as a means of rootedness.
And the absence of other things.
And of course, English nationalism as we move forward will be informed by our neighbors and the development of the forms of nationalism that have developed in Wales and Scotland.
And we feel, well, I must be English then and kind of drawing away from the traditional kind of idea of Britain into something more particular.
Is something we're going to see in the in the years to come and whether or not the Labour Party can harness that energy and remains to be seen, but I'm I'm.
Kind of somehow doubtful at the mall.
Thank you, please do keep putting some other questions in.
I hope that answered the question raised by Laurence Ellis and a number of other people.
But I'll come back to what governments might do in a moment, just following that through that idea of nation.
I, Paula, I'm, I'll let you answer that question.
I just put one to you as well.
One of the things that you mentioned in your presentation.
Is we don't really have attitudes on welfare in some of these value scales.
Something else we don't collect regularly as ideas of sovereignty, and where sovereignty should lie.
But we know that in the European referendum sovereignty was one of the very big issues reported by voters for voting leave.
To what extent does ideas of sovereignty play into the group of voters that we're talking about at the moment?
The DUP?
Pick up that earlier discussion first if you like before going on to that.
Yeah, I just wanted to pick up something about that earlier discussion, because understandably, we've talking a lot within the chat and within the panel about Englishness, but an awful lot of the trends that we see in terms of values are almost identical in Wales, so a very large.
Group of UM, I'll use the shorthand left authoritarian voters in some areas with very strong support for UKIP and Brexit party. Brexit party will still poll 1012% in parts of South Wales, even though they're basically inactive.
And so that's something that I think we have to be careful of putting too much of the way on Englishness because it's clearly not Englishness that's driving that in Wales.
And actually, people talk about the red wall now, as if it's something about something to do with the north of England, but it included a whole bunch of seats in North Wales as well when it was first talked about, so I.
Think that's something we just need to be?
A little bit wary of and think about.
Although these things correlate, that doesn't necessarily mean that we can view everything through this lens of Englishness and it, and it really explain what's going on.
I think we just need to be aware of that.
The the issue of sovereignty.
It's really hard 'cause I think you'd have.
To go into a.
A different mode of research.
I think you.
I think you'd have to follow David approach of going and talking to people on doorsteps and trying to.
I don't even know really what voters would have in their minds when you said the word sovereignty to them.
I mean, I don't even know that they would really have any meaningful engagement with that.
But one thing that I think might play into some of these.
Debates and some of the questions I've seen on the.
Chat is this distinction between different levels of devolution and different levels of identity.
So whether we're talking about national and regional identities, for example.
Uhm, I did some analysis of this using British social attitudes data earlier this year sometime this year is a bit of.
A blur if I'm honest and and.
One of the things that was really interesting to me.
It was about half of all the values.
Groups want the way that England is governed to stay as it is.
There's not a huge kind of outpouring of desire for an English parliament or any other change in arrangement.
But amongst the half that do want to see a change, the left liberals lean towards regional assemblies.
The left authoritarians.
Lean towards an English parliament so there is a different desire for where that idea of belonging and sovereignty might sit.
I think within these different groups and that.
If you start to talk about devolution, has the potential to pull apart your coalition of voters again because actually they see belonging at at very different levels.
OK, thank you.
And there was one thing I wanted to say that I one policy area that I explored in my book.
Uhm, that may be relevant here and it was immigration.
And and there has been, you know, I've.
Had some really good.
Ummh emails and follow up on that, which was I reminded readers.
That in some parts of Europe much more of immigration policy is devolved that there is a much greater scope for different parts of.
Germany to have a slightly different approach.
Two issues of immigration.
And and I think this goes back to some of what Simon was saying and John, but it perhaps if that were to be a position, it would allow areas of the country to have different views on their local economy.
And what was required in terms of employment but different views also about their sense of place?
You'd have to do it through National Insurance numbers and people arrive into the country where they're allowed to take their first jobs and where they aren't.
But but but the point is.
It's that sense of control and locality.
Economics and place that somehow come together for people.
And I I wasn't suggesting it as a label of platform, but I was putting it.
Into the book.
So that people can think about it because it's not actually.
People tend to see immigration policy in this country as totally centralized and then forced down.
Not understanding that there are other countries who.
Do it slightly.
OK, thank you.
Uhm John can I come to you with a question from Dan Taylor?
Because you might want to have a historical perspective on this.
I mean, he says parts of the left had been trying to reclaim patriotism for many decades.
He mentioned William Morris.
George Orwell.
Through to Billy Bragg and Blue Labor, whereas the evidence that this will actually gain the left any capital, I mean, a different view, might be that there were times.
When the left one, when it was seen as an explicitly Patriotic Party, I mean, do you?
Have a view.
Of how the people in the studies you looked at saw those those ideas of patriotism and the left in the past.
Well, uh, I mean the truth is in the vernacular.
Most people aren't very interested in party politics and most of the time.
And So what I'm looking at is, is is not political research, it's social science research sociology.
So it comes up pride of nation comes up quite often, but people aren't.
Distinguishing between the political parties very often.
There's a little.
Bit of that in the post.
Suez material and that's about it, really.
And as I say.
That is a very traumatic time for Britain and in in many ways you know.
Wilson navigates that quite skillfully.
That sense of national flux, and on the whole presents himself as a solid provincial patriot against the sort of decadent ways of you know what's happened to the former ruling elite of empire.
I mean, essentially all of the labor politicians have been successful.
Have aligned themselves with a.
A sort of.
A gentle form of patriotism, it's certainly true for Atlee. It's true for Blair, OK, things got a bit scary later on, but in 97 it was. That was the aim. Uhm?
So I mean.
I don't think the things I, you know the figures that are picked out there are obviously not people who are central to political projects, but there's never been.
Someone who is manifestly uncomfortable with nation and patriotism is successfully taken.
The Labour Party very far and there won't be.
Thank you question here from John Wilson following on the localism devolution theme.
Perhaps, uhm, he says.
How do we articulate a link between locality and nation? Isn't there a danger that Labor uses locality as a way to evade the nation, particularly given the dominance of Labour, MP's from places where locality is often articulated against the nation, IE London more than England or Britain, the north, the north or or Yorkshire?
Against the South, is there away from continue?
David perhaps, then, to Simon to to for review?
Can you balance those two?
You have to.
I mean you, you can't just disappear into locality, but I my starting point, you have to be off somewhere so.
Some of our most prominent politicians are clearly off somewhere, and I'm sure if you focus group tested that it's very clear Andy Burnham is riding high.
He is of somewhere Jess Phillips is of somewhere I am off somewhere very identified.
With Tottenham and with love.
And and.
But we have to be a team of people.
It's gotta be more than just some of the names that you're hearing.
So I think you can be a particularly in a changing economy.
Surely in a recession surely where high streets are going to come under such tremendous strain as some of retail.
Has not come back surely where you've got areas of the country where there are offices that will not come back in the same way, because why would you have five floors of an office block when you could have one and everyone else is danzou?
Surely in that context, any you would thought that you've got to be in a place that is where people are locally, but at the same time, because I suspect we're into a very tough.
Decade we have to have an account on an account that's of the nation I I'm not gonna, you know, I I it's not for me to start pontificating of where, where.
Scotland will end up in this, it's not.
My expertise, but.
But but clearly we have to have an account of England and a pretty powerful one.
I would at the same time I would have thought.
Yes, I I agree.
I think what we what we need is a kind of story of us.
Us together and our interests in our history and this is where the left can make a lot of capital.
I'm sure of it.
I eat in talk to people in that person next day.
Sorry, go for it.
So I know my broadband was.
Causing me problems there.
Made a story of us so yeah.
John, and did you?
Yes, so I I think.
Carry on Simon.
Carry off.
I was just about to say.
One of the great things now.
In the moment when we're decoupling from the European Union, we can create a positive story about a shared England and our economy and what we're going to build here in the future.
It is going to be better than what currently exists.
And this is what's been missing a story of something different and positive to look forward to, not the present.
Devoid of some negative characteristics, we don't like much but something that is different that we can commit to, and I think this is one of the great absences of the Labour Party throughout the neoliberal era.
Accepting the kind of austerity and or you know, Thatcher winning on the economy.
And all the rest.
Of the book, it needs a new one.
Well, actually I would just eat that Simon. I just dispute that slightly. My only slightly though my my my sense was in 1997.
I don't know if John agrees with this, that Labor had a powerful a crunch count of the nation.
It was largely British because it had a powerful account.
Of rebuilding public services at a point where people were just had had enough with schools with leaky rooms and hospitals that didn't work, and all the rest.
It's a bit so it did give us a kind of account of the nation that people wanted to latch on to and trusted us.
To deliver it.
And with new mechanisms.
Whatever you thought of it.
Like like PF, I and others of of then delivering it in what people thought at the time, might be a fiscally responsible way.
So so I, I think that we.
Now, I'm not sure that was all neoliberal.
I, I think some of that was deeply cultural.
People thought they deserved a better school than their kids were going to come.
They deserved, you know, not to have to wait for years in A&E or CAT. And and we had.
A really and in and in many ways in parts of the country where where public services run down, people also got employment.
Now we have to be in the business at the moment.
I mean, I see this.
You know those who are self-employed?
People talk about the white van man, but that whole community of people who who also work in the private have to come back to labour in a very serious way.
And and we have to be in the business of particularly on leaving the European Union of wealth creation of not just being a public service party, but also where?
Where does the money come from?
How do you create something and how is Labour on the side of those people that do that work?
OK John, did you want to come in?
Yeah, I just wanted to come in very quickly on what Simon was saying and I think it.
Coincides with what David saying as well, there, which is that I was really struck in the historical testimony that down to the 60s, there's a very powerful sense that there's no tension between personal and family.
Well, the phrase of the time was betterment and collective improvement in social conditions and people see themselves in a shared journey of progress and improving conditions and the job of politics is to construct firstly the belief that that's possible and you can deliver it.
And obviously more importantly.
To do so.
Because unless you do so.
The you know the narrative breaks down very, very quickly, so you need that vision, and so the politics that Simon is talking about of us, the idea of the politics of pronouns are always important, and all you know the book was called Mimi for a reason, and the idea is that you have to realize that it's much more, you know, the politics, even now is much more complicated than that.
And it could be us, us, us.
You've got to construct it.
And that's the building.
My my as David cheekily asked me a question 'cause I meant to be asking the question so my view of 97 was that there was a very compelling national story and I've always jibbed slightly the idea that everybody bought into neoliberalism. I think the reality was there was hugely over optimistic view about how quite limited tools.
Like the minimum wage and skills training and regional investment could address the problems of economic inequality that were being produced all the time by a globalized economy and.
Was that belief that much more could be done than could be?
Was the problem.
I'm just gonna say John Wilson and Srikandi have both said they want to ask questions.
I'm not bringing people into the conversation 'cause it never worked properly technically, but if both of them would like to quickly scribble down a new question, I promised to promise to come.
Ask it, can I throw out though quite a challenging one which we may or may not have skirted around.
To give.
The people that Simon has been talking about a voice, then they need to have their views, which includes views like real worries about immigration expressed as part of the national debate.
And how does that fit with those parts of our society for whom those views?
Are offensive or challenging or very uncomfortable or make people feel that they are being rejected and how do we negotiate a discussion in which people with quite contrasting views about what society should be?
Uh, can be?
How do we negotiate that discussion so that it works and produces the unifying story rather than the divisive story?
So can I put that either to David or Simon first?
Well, look, I think that I listen to.
Too many people friends.
In Peterborough, that had different views to me instinctively on immigration.
And I tried but I tried to listen and I wrote about it in the book.
From a from a position that wasn't one of judgment but was one of listening.
And and I suppose instinctively as a.
Lawyer or someone that's legally trained.
It is quite important that we as a country and as a nation are in the business of the forums for different perspectives on these very DIF.
So you know on challenging subjects like immigration, so it's it it it.
It can't be just your off with your view here, and it's how you know in any country any country in the world that's worth anything you are able to settle differences of opinion.
And for a period arrive at a slightly different place now, as I said in the book I.
I I wanted to at least reveal the way other countries have done that and they've done it with a slightly more federal model than the one that we have that does at least allow people to have a degree of local determination about change in their communities, and particularly where.
Economically, jobs are scarce or the local economy feels to be in a problematic way to allow people to say, well, you know.
We want to prioritize certain kinds of people in the employment market in this area.
And and and so that was the way I addressed that subject in.
I in in my book, at least before coming into government look I I I am.
No everyone knows this.
I I I'm deeply worried about the growing ethnic nationalism.
I'm deeply worrying about.
I think traditions that have always been very.
Present in in in the country as.
John demonstrated in his his initial contribution those traditions moving from what felt fringe into the mainstream, and I think there have been different points in our modern history where those views have felt way more mainstream and that that that worries me, because you see.
What I see in our country is a country.
Like many others, grappling with some really big issues, an aging population globalization.
Technology, AI inequality, pensions crisis big big big issues and then too many politicians that reduce those issues to being about immigration or it balbert moved in down the road and the problem with that politics is I'm afraid it ends badly empirically.
'cause it's not true.
It's not.
It's not a sufficient prescription for the problems that people see in front.
Of them so so that took that Rd.
I don't think ends in a great place historically.
On the whole, however, however, what one can't do is run from people feelings about their sense.
To sell it in place, you have to create a society in which people can negotiate and arbitrate with that and which could contest things or go in a particular direction.
It seems to me that's my that's my instinct and that's you know as as far as I felt I could go in exploring that.
In my book, but these are questions that obviously any government would have to settle, although I do note when you look that we ought to keep and have one social attitude surveys which do suggest that people, for example, are far more willing than they were 20-30 years ago for their.
No, this is this is a white Englishman for their daughter to marry a black guy or or an Asian guy there.
The figures all going and and and in fact the biggest growing ethnic group are those of mixed.
Despite all the doom and gloom and I.
Always think love is a good indication.
Of how people are actually.
Feeling about these things and actually also we've seen that.
Certainly, since the Brexit decision immigration is falling as an issue that people are prioritizing.
It's not, it's not.
There and in the top the top five issues people are raising and it's not coming up on the doorstep in the same way so.
So we've also got to be a little bit.
How politicians choose to amplify these issues?
Pretty Patel being a good example of that.
At the moment.
You know it's really important.
Very interesting.
Yes, I think just one of the perhaps more startling conclusions of of the book on the Rise of English nationalism and the far right.
Is that their principal objective?
Hatred was not the recently arrived immigrant.
There was plenty of hatred to go around.
But the the number one enemy was the kind of metropolitan liberal who believes that all of their anxieties about their life and their heritage and their jobs is rooted in some kind of kind of.
Racism or some kind of bigotry in somewhere, but it's backwards looking and negative.
And of course, when you go out to these places and you talk to these people, they identifying local issues.
They talk about things that are affecting them directly.
A lot of it, loss of institutions and things like that.
And I think one one of the things that the left must do to reclaim some capital in this arena, is to acknowledge the anxieties of ordinary people, who in many cases might not be racist or not imagine themselves to be racist, and yet still have grave anxieties.
About the speed of change and how it is affecting their world, so I think uh, of course there are problems with my panel in the Labour Party.
Now there's a movement towards opening borders.
Very practically creates all kinds of issues for the.
For the left to create a new political economy of nation.
But these issues need to be well.
How it picture?
We need to be respectful of people's personal experience and if we are to challenge what we believe to be bigotry, it has to be direct and informed and not uniform and blanket.
All of these people are racist.
It has to be nuanced.
We have to carry these people with us.
If we simply dismiss them as being the underfall racists.
Then we've lost them.
The correct thing for the left to do is to bring.
These people towards.
A progressive politics rather than simply to kind of daub them in there.
Colors of absolute evil.
Thank you Simon.
Paula, they were actually nearly up to time and I was going to invite David to respond.
Overall, I don't.
If you want to add anything to what you just said, David, you left on a pretty high note there, but I'll bring you back at the very end, but.
Does John Paul or anything else you would like to add to the discussion?
Well, I think just that, that last point really.
I mean that it seems to me and it's in Davies example about tweeting about church or that one of the obvious traps that Johnson will lay are culture war traps for the left before the next election, and the fact that we're trying ourselves to dig more traps.
And you know, in other words that the left is so determined to police these issues is a massive problem because.
Really, we have to shrug our shoulders and say it's Trumpism.
It's a deliberate culture trap.
What matters is you know, and and bring the debate to to concrete issues, whereas at the moment large swathes of left liberal opinion are as wrapped up in any of these issues.
As their foes, and I think it's it's going to play to Johnson, and you know, I'm I'm looking at all of the reactions to starmer's, hinting that he might call for an abstention, and the performance of.
The outrage of the liberal left is.
You know?
It's just bonkers.
If you want to win an election.
So yeah, I.
Very much agree with that sentiment, but I think it's really important that conversations aren't shut down even where they are uncomfortable for people to hear.
Because if we think about our own personal lives, if we think about the advice we get as parents, the advice is always.
To have those difficult conversations with people, not to sweep the issues under the carpet and ignore them, and and hope that our children don't take the wrong paths or take path, we wouldn't want them to take our of the advice is to have the conversations openly, and I think that's really important here as well.
I think that sense actually the.
That opinions aren't valued was one of the driving forces behind the disconnection of these groups of voters from politics, not just from the Labour Party, but from politics as a whole. To see in the data for 97 where we spent weeks talking about a youthquake.
That may or may not have happened, and actually older voters with these kinds of values that we're talking about turning away from.
Politics was really quite shocking and I think we have to have those conversations.
We can't keep trying to shut debate down if we're going to reconnect with those voters on on any meaningful level.
They keep David.
Look, I think I I, I think we've covered quite a lot.
So I haven't got that much more.
To add really, except I defend my right to.
Tweet positively about Churchill as well as.
To have a critique.
And I don't think Labour is winning.
If politicians like me don't think that to be honest.
Thank you David.
Can I thank all?
The panelists and all the people who've stuck with us for a.
Very long time through this discussion.
And as I said, that meaning what I hope we could do is by throwing different perspectives at a group of people would have a more rounded discussion, and I think actually we have, because we've covered a lot about people, fundamental values and the way they see their world.
We've also learned a lot about the actual language with which people talk about themselves.
And their identity, in their view of the world, we've explored how those values and what they want relates to the sort of economy that they live in and the opportunity of there being a different type of economy.
And I think we've also I've come away with a lot of confidence that.
Actually, we can have these conversations that make it possible to tell a national story about England and to govern England in a different way and to develop a politics of place that matters to people and which relates to them.
And I think that.
My hope in the seminar was was we would show that if we bring the different perspectives.
Together you get that rich outcome and I'm incredibly grateful to the four speakers.
For their lead offs and their contributions, and I hope that people who've been in this discussion will come back to future events at the center.
The next one, by the way, is on the 22nd of January with Carwyn Jones, the former First Minister of Wales, looking at once more at relations with the within.
The Union but for Dave, thank you very much indeed.
We will be posting the recording on the website in due course.
Thank you.