What kind of person voted Labour in the last UK general election? It’s a question we could answer in many ways, but perhaps we should begin by saying that only a person who been politically tamed would vote for someone like Keir Starmer.
Now, it is all tame. It was bad enough, thirty years ago, when it was still on the upward grade, economically. But then the old race of miners were not immensely respectable. They filled the pubs with smoke and bad language, and they went with dogs at their heels. There was a sense of latent wildness and unbrokenness, a weird sense of thrill and adventure in the pitch-dark Midland nights, and roaring footballing Saturday afternoons. The country in between the colliery regions had a lonely sort of fierceness and beauty, half-abandoned, and threaded with poaching colliers and whippet dogs. Only thirty years ago!
Now it seems so different. The colliers of today are the men of my generation, lads I went to school with. I find it hard to believe. They were rough, wild lads. They are not rough, wild men. The board-school, the Sunday-school, the Band of Hope, and, above all, their mothers got them under. Got them under, made them tame. Made them sober, conscientious, and decent. Made them good husbands. When I was a boy, a collier who was a good husband was an exception to the rule, and while the women with bad husbands pointed him out as a shining example, they also despised him a little, as a petticoat
D.H. Lawrence - Autobiographical Fragment (1936)
Today life is even tamer. Consider again those we elect as our representatives, those narrow, chair-bound creatures with damp handshakes who would manage our lives down to every little finicking detail. Only tame, domesticated voters would vote for them - and they did.
4 comments:
The middle class office workers who run the expanding state vote for him, and they are indeed tame to the point of extreme dullness. I'm not so sure of the Muslim vote, though. Lawrence's miners of old might have been a rough lot, but their misogyny had clear boundaries (beating, not stoning) and disrespect would have led to a kicking rather than cutting throats.
Sam - yes, middle class office workers seem to be running things via their spreadsheets and internal gossip. There is something shaky about it all even now, which feels quite odd this early in the game, as if Starmer's rabble aren't even capable of selling the narrative.
Anyone with a PPE degree, or a history of union leadership, should be automatically banned from standing for political office, including local elections.
Penseivat
Penseivat - I agree, without some relevant practical experience it's not the right qualification.
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