UK Politics

Stephen Daisley - Why is Labour so Puritanical?

Can you be a progressive without being po-faced? I wonder sometimes, especially when I read that public health minister Andrew Gwynne is considering ‘tightening up the hours of operation’ for pubs. The Telegraph reports that Gwynne told Labour conference that changes had to be contemplated because of ‘concerns that people are drinking too much’. After 12 weeks of this government too much is nowhere near enough. It follows the suggestion earlier this month that ministers could ban smoking in beer gardens and other areas outside pubs. Not only would either of these measures send hundreds more licensed establishments to the wall, they give an early indication of the kind of bossy, finger-wagging, goody-two-shoesism we can expect from this government. It’s like waking up to find out Lisa Simpson got in with a landslide majority.

We are currently going through another bout of discourse on the nature and existence of a national identity. My own definition of Englishness is this: a fierce and instinctual hostility towards the sort of people who would interfere with the drinking of a pint of beer. Yet that is what Labour seems determined to offer: five years of nagging and tutting. You drink too much. Stop smoking. That’s high in calories. You can’t say that anymore. You’ve used the wrong pronoun. If you want a vision of the future, imagine a dreary barrister and a sensible bob reporting you to HR – forever.

Progressive priggishness is nothing new. Reflecting on her time in the Reagan White House, Peggy Noonan mused at how Hollywood portrayals of Democrats (hip, young, blue-collar radicals) and Republicans (middle-aged preppies in pinstripes) had failed to keep up with the political and cultural changes of the 1980s. She observed: ‘Up on the Hill or at the White House the young rough-looking guy from a state school is probably either a Republican or a conservative, and the snooty sniffy guy with a Thank You For Not Smoking sign on his tidy little desk is a Democrat.‘

In British politics, it probably goes back further than that. There has always been a preacher’s zeal to Labour. As a historical analysis, Morgan Phillips’s assertion that the party ‘owes more to Methodism than to Marxism’ is debatable, but as a description of what we might call the Labour tone it is more than apt. That tone is serious, certain, impatient, improving, and more than a little judgmental. It is the earnest hectoring of the young idealist, the scolding admonition of the schoolmarm, the icy disdain of the educated. Labour knows best, it’s for your own good, and you’re holding back the whole class, not just yourself.

Add to this the professionalisation of the party and its fixation, acquired in the wake of Michael Foot’s leadership, with image management. Patricia Hewitt once described Neil Kinnock as ‘very witty, very funny, very exuberant, bubbling over and very spontaneous’, and while that might sound unremarkable from his former press secretary, she meant it as a criticism. Kinnock’s singing, dancing and beer-supping were viewed with horror by his proto New-Labour advisors, who deemed such behaviour ‘un-primeministerial’. His successors have, with the exception of Tony Blair, been a dour, self-serious, personality-free bunch. It’s no coincidence that Kinnock is the most recent Labour leader you could imagine telling or laughing at a risqué joke, skulling a beer, or popping out of view for a fly smoke. Labour has become the teacher’s pet of political parties.

But deeper down the well of Labour’s puritanism lies an explanation the party would rather not confront: class. The professional party – the MPs, bag carriers and policy wonks – is a largely middle class enterprise and like many such outfits there is a profound suspicion of the masses. Most join Labour brimming with social democratic good intentions, eager to correct injustices and redistribute resources and opportunities from the privileged to those who are less so. These are noble sentiments, which is to say I largely agree with them, but there is a dark underbelly to them. Labour is more than a smidgen sceptical of the working classes. It doesn’t trust them, doesn’t trust their judgement, assumes they’ll make bad choices unaware of the risks.

Remember that quotation that got Jeremy Corbyn into grief a few years back? ‘Only Labour can be trusted to unlock the talent of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people.’ Labour believes that about the working classes too, and while the logic that social problems require social remedies is sound enough, there is still a sinister ring of ‘you’d be nothing without me’. A Labour party could very well draw out the potential of the working classes but this Labour party seems to think it put the potential there in the first place. It is this proprietorial attitude that leads Labour to believe it must save the masses not only from the market but from themselves.

You don’t have to be po-faced to be progressive. In ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism’, Wilde lists among the boons of a socialist society ‘an individualism expressing itself through joy’ and tells his fellow radicals: ‘One should sympathise with the entirety of life, not with life’s sores and maladies merely, but with life’s joy and beauty and energy and health and freedom.’ This is a far broader view of the mode and purpose of progressive politics than Labour would be prepared to entertain. Joy. It is hard to think of a word less suited to the reign of Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, those walking mirth sponges, with their fusspot paternalism and lanyard-knows-best petty despotism. Social democrats can redistribute wealth without confiscating pleasure, improving lives without micromanaging them. Labour should remember it believes in roses as well as bread.