Outreach

[DonutHingeParty]

For the last five years we have taken comfort in our anger; we have shrouded ourselves in moral catharsis - we have flagellated and spat in the face of those who see things differently; calling them at best deluded and feeble minded.

What we haven't done, and what the failure of Labour has been, is to listen to those people. For 35% of people in the UK, the Tories are their best hope. They have heard their message, and liked it enough to vote. We can spit Dave Spart, Nye Bevan and Len McClusky's words all we like, but the more our foam-flecked mouths flick out vitriol, the more isolated we will become.

I urge people on this site to take time to find someone who voted Conservative this time around. Not as a method of anthropology, or in an attempt to beat them down with rhetoric, but to actually sit down and listen; let them make the arguments, and do them the courtesy of understanding where they come from and acknowledging that they may actually have a point.

Short of a backbench rebellion, which Labour would be a fool to support as it would only lead to a more right wing leader, Cameron is in for the next five years. Marching, shouting, blowing vuvuzelas and even striking will do NOTHING to change that. The only thing we can do is look not at an ideology, but at policy, and try to assess in calm, deliberate manner where we think the faults are. I've always said that I don't think the majority of Conservatives are evil, they just see things in a non-nuanced way, where solutions are quick, easy and self-evident. It's by presenting evidence and analysis that shows the effects of policy that we can win any argument.

We have to ask ourselves, what do we believe that differentiates ourselves? Fairness; freedom; opportunity? Any party could say that. I prefer to think of there being the party of the carrot, and the party of the stick. The party of the armbands, and the party of the dunk in the deep end. This is not evil, it is not callous, it is merely a different approach to achieve the same ends. It may be wrong, but we don't win people back by vehemently criticising their political choices, which may be as personal as any other lifestyle decision.

Go and hug a Tory today. I'm going to go to the local Conservative Club and talk to them in a spirit of inquiry. Who knows, maybe they do have something to teach us. They did win, after all.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Talked to a couple of Tory voters on Saturday. Its anecdotal and everything but a few things come through:

1) the SNP scare was a *big* factor, don't believe anybody who tells you different;

2) there is actually some agreement with the Labour critique of the present "recovery", and sympathy with some of their proposals this time - plus an agreement that the super rich are taking the proverbial. But they either didn't believe Labour would really do these things, or didn't trust their competence more generally;

3) whatever we may think, Cameron is seen by them as a fairly sensible moderate type holding back the "crazies";

4) despite the current MSM obsession that a return to Blairism is Labour's salvation, TB is mostly reviled by these types - they associate him with war, spin and greed (I actually ended up defending his record to them, which really does say it all )

Food for thought, methinks.......

[yahyah]

My neighbour came down for a chat, a hug & a cry today.

She had been away on an alternative therapy course until last night. and is the Green leaner I've mentioned. Today she yet again said 'I still can't vote Labour again because of Blair's betrayal and Iraq'.
But she agreed with me that the way the Axis of Anti-Austerity had attacked Labour had been damaging, and probably helped the Tories. & she has a reasonable person's dislike of the Sturgeon Nat bandwagon. Was not very complementary about Bennett's input.

But she said it was all about fear. She'd Facebooked and emailed since she'd been home and said she was shocked to find out how many of her friends had 'done something awful' out of self interest, meaning voted Tory. Fear of 'going back', fear of a left wing coalition all seemed to figure in some of her friends going to the right. Believing in the myths about Labour's economic record.

I know my neighbour well, she does not associate with right wing people, has little tolerance for them, so if she's found a move to the Tories happening then it is quite scary.

& Anatoly, I don't think it was just SNP, it was the idea of the small left wing parties that spooked people. My neighbour said one of her old friends, who has voted Labour in the past, said the idea of what they saw, what they considered was a very left wing bloc being behind Ed in Downing Street, was not something they could vote for.

So I haven't hugged a Tory.

But I have hugged a Green, and we cried together because we both know what the Tory win means, and her analysis of what happened confirms most of mine.
And I hugged her husband, who voted Lib Dem and told him I felt for him as he had to watch his party being destroyed.

[ephemerid]

Hello you two.

I agree with talking to people to find out why they voted the way they did, and what can be learnt from it.

There's a discussion going on on the main thread about it.

I've written a separate thing - I think that we need a grand (and very broad) coalition of the left; and that would need not a little co-operation from all involved and a spirit of community and shared values.

There is something very wrong when the most right-wing government I can remember is considered better than any Labour alternative.
I put a lot of this down to the MSM and its' regurgitation of the Tories' propaganda, because people believe what they read and hear.
They believed that Labour would be in the pocket of Salmond, they believed that Cameron is sensible, they believed that Osborne knows what he's doing, and they were particularly accepting of the scrounger rhetoric - and most of these things are largely untrue.

I've discussed this stuff with lots of people and the fact is they don't know the facts - on my specialities (NHS and social security) especially.
Some of the more right-wing people I've engaged with actually believe that all the cuts have made significant savings when the opposite is the case - and when I ask them to look at the evidence they say they can't be bothered.

That, I think, is the nub of the problem - apathy. People generally are not very politically aware. Patronising? Possibly - but my experience bears it out. Labour lost a significant chunk of the working-class vote to the Tories, and I cannot understand why they seriously think they'll be better off.
But that IS what they think. They don't seem to understand that the social security reforms will affect them - they're going to lose their tax credits and child benefits, their kids wont get any help if they live in an area of high unemployment, and they don't seem to realise this.
They like the idea of EVEL, they don't want the union broken up, and they think that would happen under Labour.
They have justifiable concerns on immigration and the EU, but fail to see that immigration has gone up under the Tories; those inclined towards UKIP ideas may want their referendum on EU membership, but the chances are Cameron won't deliver it.

I think that a lot of the "Old" Labour vote is slowly dying out. Anyone in their late 30s/early 40s have not known what an "Old" Labour government is like - they've never seen one. We've had 30 years or more of neoliberal governments, and a large proportion of the voting public is used to pretty much the same sort of thing. Blair is seen by many now as no more than a Tory in a pinkish tie. With good reason, to be fair.
Cameron and Clegg were seen as a breath of fresh air - but many of the policies they implemented have far-reaching consequences which we haven't really been hit with yet. Health, education, justice, and social security - these things have already been changed to a degree, but much worse is in the pipeline. When people can't get their operations, when the kids can't get a school place of afford college, when an unfair dismissal can't be challenged in the courts, when the ramped-up sanctions cause more people to have someone they love fucked over by DWP....THEN we might see people getting a bit more engaged with politics and what their votes actually mean for them.

What I am doing now is starting at home. I'm going to see what I can do (health allowing) locally - whether that's campaigning for allotments, setting up a residents group on my estate, whatever. Where I live we have some good community stuff going on, and that needs support and encouragement. I intend to keep campaigning on benefits issues, as this will be the next huge scandal - the deaths we have already seen are just the beginning, and things are about to get brutal for our poorest (and as a benefit claimant myself, I know how tough it's been already)

Yes, listening and learning is important - blaming is a waste of time. But we can, on forums like this and others, discuss what went wrong and is still going wrong for the left, and try to build a consensus on what to do next. While we do that, I am expecting the Tories to fuck up fairly spectacularly due to their arrogance - and I hope that Labour specifically and the left generally can come together and change together.