Plastic Labour

Ben Wildsmith

We frequently hear complaints about the ‘footballification’ of politics. The argument is that party politics have become some tribal as to preclude rational debate; politicians blindly follow their party line without considering its merits. I think the analogy goes further than that.

One of the reasons that top-level football leaves me cold is that players rarely have a genuine connection to clubs. As hired guns, they are loyal to whoever is paying their wages and have not usually lived anywhere near the communities from which their fans are drawn.

Today’s politics sees a similar phenomenon. As voters in Cardiff and Swansea have recently discovered, parties don’t require their favoured candidates to have any local knowledge of their proposed constituencies. Their bona fides derive from party officials rather than the communities they hope to represent.

Beyond that, though, the emergence of a professional political class has gifted us politicians whose guiding principles are careerist rather than political.

Freshers week

In the mushy, nondescript centre of UK politics, pliable middle-management type MPs seem connected to their parties by nothing more than a vague social association forged during freshers’ week.

The political philosophy, history, and culture of parties seem to be receding into irrelevance as the traditional outfits compete as rival management companies, leaving ideology to the populists.

Against that backdrop we learned this week that Homelessness Minister, Rushanara Ali, had removed four tenants from her £900 000 property before relisting it with the rent jacked up by £700.

I’m not going to insult your intelligence by pointing out the problems with that, they are bleedin’ obvious. I also understand that the minister claims various nuances to the story have been unreported.

Let’s turn, instead, to Rachel Reeves’ defence of Ali when the Conservatives inevitably called for her resignation. Instead of elucidating those supposed nuances, or pointing to work the minister has done, Reeves claimed she ‘didn’t understand’ the calls, as Ali had acted within the law.

Depressing

There are two possibilities here, and I’m caught as to which is the more depressing. Either Reeves was responding with dumb insolence, disingenuously failing to see an ethical problem where everybody else can, or she genuinely believes that if an action is technically legal then it has no ethical implications for the minister involved.

In this case, that would mean that Tory-authored rental legislation, drafted over decades to advantage landlords over tenants, is the only ethical consideration that a Labour homelessness minister should consider when conducting her private business.

Reeves is the perfect example of a politician who could sit in either major party without changing any of her positions. From winter fuel payments, to disability benefits, refusing a wealth tax and insisting on her predecessor’s fiscal rules, the Chancellor’s instincts would offend absolutely nobody in the party opposite her.

When she says she ‘doesn’t understand’ the problem with Rushanara Ali’s conduct, I’m inclined to believe her.

Childish pettiness

Meanwhile, her nemesis in Labour, and the frontbencher who is supposed to embody traditional Labour values, Angela Rayner, was in the news this week for encouraging councils to sell off their allotments.

Having had some experience of the childish pettiness at the top of Labour politics, I couldn’t rule out this being an attempt at trolling the nation’s most famous allotmenteer, Jeremy Corbyn. Whatever the motive, however, it betrays a staggering cluelessness about the soul of the party she represents.

Allotments are the living, photosynthesising embodiment of Labour values: modest, decent, communal spaces where ordinary people can grow healthy food for themselves and others.

They are, it is fair to say, the cultural opposite of knocking around on yachts with Jeffrey Epstein.

Paging Lord Mandelson.

Voting for Labour nowadays is like driving one of those Chinese-made MGs. The only item left from the original is the badge, and on closer inspection, it’s plastic.