Starmer and the left’s “Hard Labour” problem

Hard Labour, according to both him and his sources, “rejects default progressive orthodoxies and the pieties of left-wing virtue-signalling. It does not believe that liberalism will inevitably prevail in a disorderly world. It believes in the centrality of the nation state and strong borders. It champions rearmament and reindustrialisation.”

More than that, it is – naturally – “realist”, and wants “nothing less than to formulate a new post-progressive politics of the centre left that will set the political agenda for a generation”.

Now, different people may get different things from this statement of intent. I can only speak for myself, of course, but reading those sentences only made me think of one thing: gender.

“Hard Labour”, as far as I can tell, is Labour For Men. It doesn’t like stupid, pink things like feminism or LGBTQ rights – sorry, “left-wing virtue signalling” – and, like its cousins across the Atlantic, it thinks that Real Jobs are the ones in factories, where Men Make Things, and not in, say, offices, where women tippy tap on their little keyboards. Sorry, did I say men? I meant Labour For Boys.

It is striking that the piece is almost entirely populated by male figures – Keir Starmer, his senior adviser Morgan McSweeney, defence secretary John Healey, Blue Labour supremo Maurice Glasman, Spectator editor Michael Gove and think tanker Jonathan Rutherford. Chancellor Rachel Reeves is mentioned a few times but, rest assured, it is mostly to chastise her, and insinuate that she isn’t really “in charge of economic policy”.

In an ideal world, it should be easy to ignore a solitary comment piece, but Cowley does unfortunately seem to be onto something there. Many journalists – this one included – publicly worried about the boys’ club at the head of the Labour party even when they were in opposition, and getting into government doesn’t seem to have solved anything.

It is a shame both in and of itself, as the left ought to do better than the right on these matters, and because the times we are in should call for quite a feminine touch. Sure, it’s a silly way to phrase it, but they started it and hey: it works. It is absolutely true that we are sailing on choppy waters, and we do need to make sure Britain is ready for anything, but iron fists alone cannot deal with turbulent times.

People are worried about the state of the world and millions of them are worried about the precarity of their own lives as well. Jobs are often too poorly paid or simply unfulfilling; many who want children simply cannot afford them, especially if they are also left to care for older relatives, and there is widespread pessimism about the way things are going.

A government seriously attempting to solve these issues should realise that it needs to be softer, and more caring. The whole nation spoke of Adolescence and the dangers of incelhood only last month; one way to make men feel happier again would be to free them of the prison of gender expectations. No-one seems able to solve the productivity problem: it seems likely that addressing the cost of childcare and the broken care system, among other things, would go a long way to change things for the better.

There are plenty of policies out there that could revolutionise Britain, but they are currently being ignored or downplayed because the only people in the rooms that matter look and sound the same. McSweeney and his ilk may have decided that progressive politics are boring and passé, but that may well come to bite them in their manly, manly bottoms further down the line. 

Being a realist means getting to grips with the fact that not everything is about what you personally find titillating. They may give us bread but hell, they better give us some roses too.