Tagged with Working Class MPs

Re-engaging with the alienated “untouchables”

proud to be working classThe Labour campaign continues to make good progress whilst the Tories lurch from one failed artifice after another, and Ed Miliband is increasingly taking command with growing confidence. The election has nevertheless drawn attention to a disturbing penumbra of alienation from the whole process.

In poor white working class areas the number of households who say they never vote/haven’t made up their minds/believe there’s no point in voting because nothing changes or they’re all the same anyway, is alarmingly high. Of course there has always been a substratum of the population who felt and talked like that, but it has grown uncomfortably over the last 5 years. In a sense these patches of territory in England begin to resemble what has happened on a broader scale in Scotland. They feel they have regularly voted for Labour in the past, but it seems to make no difference because nothing changes (however unfair this judgement might be). This is not something that Labour can or should neglect: why has this happened and what needs to be done to regain these voters from their sense of abandonment? Continue reading →

UKIP’s surge makes working class Labour candidates more vital than ever

class inequalityThe initial Labour reaction to the success of UKIP at attracting working class voters in many areas has focussed on the right policy response. But as Matthew Goodwin and Robert Ford, authors of Revolt on the Right: Explaining Public Support for the Radical Right in Britain, say in tomorrow’s Guardian the voters with “white faces, blue collars and grey hair” who are voting UKIP do so because of the “dominance of a university-educated, professional middle-class elite whose priorities and outlook now define the mainstream“.

Ed Miliband notes in  his speech today that “millions of people now feel that our country does not work for them, politics does not listen to them and cannot answer them“. As he so often does, his only use of the word “class” was in the context of his ever-repeated notion of One Nation where he expressed the aspiration to lead on behalf of people “from all walks of life, all backgrounds, all classes.” Continue reading →

Labour voters don’t want rich tax dodgers or Etonians as MPs – no-one wants SpAds

workers in the commonsA YouGov poll for the Times revealed today what we always suspected. No party’s voters want a SpAd as their MP. Not Labour voters, Tories, Lib Dems, nor Ukippers. Especially not Ukippers. Not just SpAds actually but anyone who’s “never had a ‘real’ job outside the worlds of national politics/think tanks/journalism/local government before becoming an MP“. Which would exclude Cameron, Clegg, Ed Miliband and an embarrassing proportion of the Shadow Cabinet.

A majority of Labour voters and Ukippers don’t want old Etonians or wealthy tax dodgers either – though Tories and Lib Dems are relatively relaxed about these things. And very few people are particularly bothered about sexual or financial peccadillos, youthful indiscretions or other ‘skeletons’ for which the Daily Mail is so keen on scouring politicians’ closets. Continue reading →

Aberavon selection: anyone but a working class candidate?

Hywel Francis (Credit: BBC)What a difference a day makes! Yesterday, we questioned whether Stephen Kinnock, who sent his daughter to a Danish private school, was a suitable potential Labour MP. Since then, we’ve heard that Kinnock now stands little chance of winning the Aberavon constituency selection. His all-star strategy has backfired. Paying to opt-out of state education hasn’t gone down well in a working-class constituency, and neither has flying over Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt – his wife – for a party dinner. As such, Kinnock has not won a single branch nomination – and thus won’t make it onto the shortlist. Instead, it seems party hacks have thrown their weight behind lawyer, Oxford graduate and former Progress NPF candidate Jeremy Miles as the man best-placed to beat the left-winger. Continue reading →

Progress, class and parliamentary selections

I am one of those who wants to see more working class people – and a bigger range of people generally – active in the highest levels of politics. So I welcome the emphasis the party is placing on broadening the social composition of parliament. That process is certainly not going to be resolved across the course of one term. The work that is done in this period will help lay the groundwork for what needs to be achieved and then sustained.

But I am sure that the one way not to broaden representation in Parliament is to follow the advice of those who would give full advantage to a privileged layer of professional activists and members of the existing political class. Continue reading →