The simple fact

The simple fact is that a culture which for any reason induces its members to work for its survival, or for the survival of some of its practices, is more likely to survive. Survival is the only value according to which a culture is eventually to be judged, and any practice that furthers survival has survival value by definition.

B. F. Skinner - Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971)


This is so obvious it hardly needs to be said, yet it does need to be said because in Skinner’s sense, survival has become politically unacceptable. To talk about it has become socially dubious, even politically far right whatever that means.

Yet survival is a powerful driver, perhaps the most powerful driver of our behaviour. In which case the obvious question arises – survival of what beyond family and friends? Not our culture, that has been dealt with.

Many voters have strong cultural memories though, and the political class knows it. Here's "Sir" Keir Starmer trying to convince us that there is still something left for him to put right.

Starmer’s embrace of Thatcher is no harmless exercise in political cross-dressing

Sir Keir Starmer wrote an article for The Telegraph last weekend. That is startling enough, for a one-time contributor to Socialist Alternatives, but what he said was more extraordinary and – for many – more inflammatory.

The Labour leader, explicitly ‘extend[ing] the hand of friendship to those who voted for the Tories’, attempted to portray himself as a change-maker, a transformative politician in a glorious tradition. Conjuring up that tradition, he cited Clement Attlee, as any Labour leader must, but sailed closer to the wind by naming Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. The eruption of fury from the left of his party may have been part of his intended achievement, in the hope that it will conversely endear him to voters of that quicksilver centre believed to be the key to unlocking electoral success.