Some basic truths every Labour activist needs to hear

By Pete North - May 5, 2021

First off the bat, everyone is tired of you making everything about race. Most people aren’t racist. They don’t want or need lectures from you. Slavery was bad. Everyone knows about it and nobody is saying it was good. Pulling statues down accomplishes nothing. Renaming streets accomplishes nothing. Purging museums does nothing. All you’re doing is provoking a fightback in a long culture war that you will lose.

In other news, You can’t change your sex. Trans women are not women. You can surgically modify yourself and wear different clothes which may temporarily remedy a mental illness but in the long run will create more misery and illness. The vast majority of people claiming to have been born in the wrong body need therapy, not surgery. Let’s make sure they get the mental health help they need.

Putting pronouns in your Twitter bio and email signature is a great way to broadcast you’re a special snowflake. It means normal and sane people will avoid you because in all likelihood you’re a pretentious twat who will try to make everything about you.

Nobody cares about Israel. Like most countries on earth, and just like America, settlers moved to an area, colonised it and secured it. Jews were pretty good at it and they’ve established a great country. Fundamentally its enemies want to destroy it. Israelis disagree and use the maximum force to ensure they don’t succeed. You can take the view that their colonisation of the West Bank in contravention of previous agreements is an outrage, but criticism of Israel is seldom ever just about that. And again, nobody cares.

There isn’t a chance of re-joining the EU. Brits are pragmatists. What’s done is done. A lot of Britain might come to regard Brexit as a foolish mistake. But they won’t vote to re-join. There’s a case to be made for a deeper, more comprehensive partnership with the EU. There’s a case to be made for a liberal visa system between us and the EU. There is scope for improving the TCA. There are ways to rebuild single market membership. But re-joining the EU or a customs union is simply not going to happen.

Immigration control is not racist. The vast majority of people want lower levels of immigration. It impacts on a whole range of things and if you want to get near power you have to accept that. Illegal immigrants masquerading as refugees are not welcome.

Tories are not evil. Tory voters are not stupid. The worst of the Tories are indeed godawful twats and most people know this but most people just want to get on in life and want the government to either help them or get out of their way. Most people do not share Labour’s fringe hobby horse concerns. Twitter is not public opinion. Owen Jones is not a political oracle. He has zero expertise and nobody serious about policy and government knows or cares what he thinks. He’s a slippery little worm.

Britain hates virtue signalling. I know it’s an overused term and everyone is sick of hearing it, but everyone is tired of corporates parading their LGBT credentials. Ribbons, badges, rainbow flags etc is super annoying and always the mark of a sanctimonious hypocritical bore. The more you ram this stuff down our throats the less receptive we are, and if you keep it up, things will start to regress.

Stop importing American political fads. America was once a systemically racist country. There are legacy issues for that era. These are American problems for American people to sort out. Britain has never had segregation. Britain has different problems with race and culture that require a distinct debate and different solutions. Bleating about “whiteness” and “white privilege” tells us you’re marinated in American inspired critical race theory and you’re not thinking about British solutions to British problems, thus are not fit to govern.

Nobody really cares who owns the railways. Nationalising them is a solution to no problem I currently have. There might be a good argument for it but it’s nowhere in my top ten list of concerns. The cost of travel might well be a London concern, but London isn’t the problem for Labour. Ending the gas, water and electricity rip off might be something worth talking about though. But then you’d need an energy policy that isn’t steeped in climate dogma (which most voters aren’t buying). Nobody wants Net Zero.

The NHS, on balance, in principle, is a good thing. Your weird cultish worship of it though, is deeply disturbing. Same goes for the BBC. The former is just about adequate and the latter is relic of yesteryear. Most people aren’t wedded to them. Most people are ok with a degree of privatisation if they get better service. No one cares who owns it so long as it remains essentially free. And it is. It’s not unreasonable to expect that those who can pay do pay for routine health procedures and medicines.

Labour has become a coalition of looney fringes on all of these issues. It is not talking about the worries of the majority of people which is why the majority of people aren’t even listening to Labour let alone voting for them. Most people are worried about their immediate financial security and their long term financial security. Britain is sitting on a pensions and savings time bomb. Generation Rent has no idea how they’re going to keep a roof over their heads in retirement. People want decent sized affordable homes and they want them now. They want access to skills training that doesn’t leave them with mountains of debt. Talk about the circumstances, prospects and concerns of real people and you’ll get their attentions. Insult them while bleating about your sixth form politics and they will vote for literally anyone but you.

Hope that helps.