Woke Warriors Help Turn The Tide
The idiotic behaviour of these 'woke warriors' has helped turn the tide in favour of common sense, women's rights and single sex spaces.
Wokeism and the Vocal Minority (December 07, 2021)
The trans zealots who protested outside JK Rowling's home must be the kind of people Tony Blair had in mind when he wrote this opinion piece about rejecting 'wokeism'.
We should openly embrace liberal, tolerant but common-sensical positions on the “culture” issues, and emphatically reject the “wokeism” of a small though vocal minority.
I'm not religious - I don't believe in God, but I would never dream of standing outside a church, synagogue, mosque or a temple to protest against the views and beliefs of the people inside.
Yet these 'woke' warriors think it's OK to gather outside someone's house to protest their views and beliefs which, apart from anything else, are protected under the law.
Tony Blair: Reject Corbynism and the culture wars — how Labour can win again
By Tony Blair - The Times
Boris Johnson pulls a pint with Paul Howell, the new Conservative MP for Sedgefield - Tony Blair’s old seat in County Durham – after the 2019 general election - Photo LINDSESY PARNABY/PRESS ASSOCIATION
The latest comprehensive poll of Labour voters past and present from one of Britain’s leading political analysts shows that the opposition’s problem is not complex but simple.
Essentially, the working class vote has substantially declined over the last half century. The lines between middle class and working class have become blurred. The trends visible in 1997 have become more pronounced, with much less voting by tradition and much more voting independent of tradition.
Two thirds of the British electorate who have switched from Labour define themselves as near the political centre, and that is where a plurality of both main parties also resides.
Therefore after the 2019 defeat, and after a decade or more moving in the direction of the traditional left, Labour has a cultural problem with many working class voters, a credibility problem with the middle ground, and is seen as for everyone other than the hard working families who feel their taxes aren’t spent on their priorities.
The tragedy for Labour is that this is not new: it mirrors almost exactly what happened in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This was the last time the far left came into a position of power in the Labour Party — though not in control of it – and when Labour suffered its second worst defeat ever (discounting the anomaly of 1935.)
In 1983, we lost a swathe of traditional Labour seats. My majority in Sedgefield was 8,000, not the 19,000 of 2005 and in County Durham all the majorities were down and Darlington was Tory.
I remember saying to my agent on the Sunday before the election: “Thank God we’re voting on Thursday because another two weeks and we will lose this seat.”
In 2019 — this time with the far left in control — we suffered our worst defeat; and for pretty much the same reasons, but this time without that engraved Labour vote.
A rational person may conclude that our electoral history shows that a lurch to the far left was not, is not and will never be electorally successful.
The Labour Party under its new leadership understands this and the Labour conference and the performance of much of the Labour front bench since then marks a “turning of the corner.”
But the challenge, as we found in the 1980s and early 90s, is that moving from positions much of the British public regards as extreme, is necessary but insufficient.
We don’t need to repeat the long journey back from 1983, step by agonising step, to 1997. And, frankly, the country can’t afford it.
For the best part of the last half century, Labour has needed to reconcile the Labour and non Labour progressive traditions of British politics, in order to win power and govern sustainably.
This was the philosophy behind New Labour and the social changes this poll reflects, makes that more, not less, important today.
New Labour succeeded until the pressures of power, longevity in office, and the divisions in progressive forces left Labour vulnerable as a government, and the Lib Dems with an opportunity too juicy to resist.
But the consequences for both have been baleful.
Labour retreated to its perennial trope of a Labour government defeated by Tories because betrayed by its leadership. The Lib Dems entered a coalition with a Conservative government only to find that it had to take decisions inconsistent with the basis on which they had challenged Labour.
Labour now has an opportunity to become again the party of government, and its enemy is caution. It can move to a winning position, but it means complete clarity of purpose and direction.
The leadership should continue to push the far left back to the margins. The country must know there is no question of negotiating the terms of power with them.
The party needs a new future oriented policy agenda based on an understanding of how the world is changing which rejects both the old fashioned statist view of the left and the status quo politics of the right. I have suggested before that the technology revolution should be at the heart of it.
We should openly embrace liberal, tolerant but common-sensical positions on the “culture” issues, and emphatically reject the “wokeism” of a small though vocal minority.
We should go out and seek the best and brightest from the younger generation to come and stand as Labour candidates. And make a virtue of doing so.
All of this is difficult, but none of it is impossible. The poll shows it is necessary if winning is the aim. As it should be — not for power, but for principle. The last Labour government had many faults, as all governments do. Even the best end eventually, and the anger at some of the decisions — particularly Iraq — was understandable.
But there were radical improvements in public services; large reductions in poverty; some things like the Northern Ireland peace process which took years of patient effort, and some such as trebling the development budget or the minimum wage, which took political will. And much we did — on a daily basis — spoke not just to different policies, but to different values.
Labour could do it again. Its leadership today is capable of governing and confidence is returning. The corner is turned. But the road ahead is long and the vehicle requires an engine which can accelerate at speed. We just require the determination to do it.
Tony Blair is a former prime minister and leader of the Labour Party. This piece originally appeared as a foreword to From Red Walls to Red Bridges: Rebuilding Labour’s Voter Coalition, a report from the Tony Blair Institute, Peter Kellner and Deltapoll
