There are few things more damaging to a voting bloc’s long-term interests than the perception its members have nowhere else to go. One man who understood this was the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Six years before he ran for the 1984 Democratic nomination for president, Jackson, a leader in the civil rights movement, accepted an invitation to address the Republican Party in Washington, D.C.
He told assembled guests that their party “needs black people“. But Jackson also understood that black people needed the Republican Party. “The only protection people have politically is to remain necessary. We must pursue a strategy that prohibits one party from taking us for granted and another party from writing us off,” he said.
My point isn’t to directly compare the political project to address systematic injustices faced by black people in the United States with the situation facing Londoners in today’s Britain. That would be absurd. It’s just that I’ve rarely heard the political truth Jackson identifies so clearly explained.
London is a Labour city. Even at the 2019 general election, when the party secured its lowest number of parliamentary seats since 1935, Labour won 49 of the 73 seats in the capital. And under Keir Starmer’s leadership, it is set to pick up several more. Kensington, Chipping Barnet and Chingford and Woodford Green all require a swing of less than 2% to go Labour. Five further constituencies less than 10%.
But does this leave the capital open to the problem Jackson set out above – written off by one party but taken for granted by the other? Labour’s paper on constitutional and devolution reform suggests it might be.
As our Political Editor Nic Cecil reports, the plan involves plenty of words and phrases that could have been found in a Gove-ian levelling up document. The 155-page report contains a lot, not least the abolition of the House of Lords, but specifically on London, key recommendations include:
- Moving 50,000 civil service jobs out
- Having an explicit constitutional requirement to rebalance the UK’s economy
- Giving the British Business Bank a new remit to promote regional equality of access to investment capital
- Giving the UK Infrastructure Bank an explicit mission to address regional economic inequality
Granting more transport funding in the regions Will it work? If the point of this document is to radically transform the British economy, streamline the constitution and suck the life out of the Scottish independence movement, the answer is probably ‘no’.
Not because Starmer’s central conclusion is faulty – there is a connection between the UK’s economic stagnation and our hyper-centralised system of government tinged with dramatic regional inequality. But it’s not obvious this document alone will change that. Then again, that isn’t really the point. It’s about direction setting.
Starmer’s first two years in post were characterised by scores of policies that no sane person had noticed. The run-up to the next election is more about vibes. A similar principle lies behind Labour’s popular pledge to end charitable status for private schools. Maybe it raises £1.7bn, maybe it doesn’t, but alongside the non-dom policy, it is at least something the shadow cabinet can point to during difficult interviews to demonstrate fiscal credibility.
Today was about saying some nice things on devolution, with House of Lords reform thrown in to imbue Starmer with an air of radicalism to offset the stodgy social democratic pitch he intends to make in 2024.
As for Londoners, well, the polls suggest you really don’t want a Conservative government. So Labour has reasonably concluded, levelling down or not, who else are you going to vote for?
In the comment pages, Stephen King warns that the Bank of England’s policy means interest rates could stay sky-high for years. While Robbie Smith looks forward to Saturday’s semi-final with France, a rivalry we can really get our teeth into.
And finally, from ‘bonkers’ Covid plans and Boris Johnson’s vaccine dance to his post-affair ‘misery’: 13 bombshells from Matt Hancock’s pandemic diaries.
