Labour has a problem – but it’s not Keir Starmer

I see that Green campaigning groups are angry that the Conservative party has received donations from the aviation industry, because they are not in favour of aeroplanes. Or, at least, these campaigners are not in favour of aeroplanes until they need to use one to get somewhere. A holiday at some eco lodge in Indonesia, perhaps, where they get to gurn at an orangutan and chide the locals about logging.

The protestors, then, simultaneously want the aviation industry not to exist but still to avail themselves of its services: this is another marvellous example of the left’s flight from reality. It is all a little like the various institutions which have decided to stop their sponsorship agreements with petroleum and gas companies. The South Bank Centre and the British Film Institute both ended their sponsorship arrangements with Shell a couple of years ago because they do not approve of the exploitation of fossil fuels. It is a shame for the BFI, then, that many movies made are printed on a petroleum product, polyester (usually poly-ethylene terephthalate). Again, they wish we had no further exploitation of fossil fuels except, presumably, for the purpose of making movies.

Similarly, the National Portrait Gallery recently decided to end its sponsorship deal with BP. I assume the people who made this decision wish to stay warm this winter, and I assume they do not all have their own private windfarms or heat pumps or modular nuclear reactors in their back gardens. Further, I presume they are expunging from their collection all oil paintings, or perhaps putting up more of those stupid little signs underneath each portrait saying: ‘This work of art was made by raping the Earth of its precious resources and killing polar bears, plus it’s a picture of an old white man. We deeply apologise for all of these transgressions, much as we do for our own history, lives of privilege and general existence on this planet.’

The truth is that this is petulant, adolescent, performative, virtue-signalling cant, just as it is with the eco lobby who want to stop the Tories getting money from airline companies. It is hard to think of any corporation of which these people would approve, unless it is a firm which manufactures organichemp-based blankets for disabled unicorns.

The Labour party, meanwhile, gets its dosh largely from organisations which are striving to greatly lower the country’s carbon emissions by organising strikes so that the trains and buses don’t run. I suppose this is preferable. It is still, to my mind, more likely than not that we will soon have a government in which Labour is the largest party, and for those of you who suspect this may not be a fortuitous outcome, let me provide you with a little succour. The thing is not yet quite in the bag, I think – even if, given the government’s performance, it really should be. I know that I am not reading the room terribly well here, but I think Sir Keir Starmer has in general made a very decent fist of leading his rabble and comes across to the public as decent, honest and boring – three qualities which probably commend themselves to voters right now.

His problem, however, is that he has the Labour party to deal with, and beneath the surface it is still the convocation of young, perpetually outraged, comparatively affluent, white middle-class people who have nothing in common with either Labour’s voter base, such as it was, or indeed with the vast majority of people in our country. The obvious example of this came last week when Starmer announced that the Labour party would kick off its annual conference with a rendition of ‘God Save the King’. Cue an immediate uproar among the Momentumists who still believe they are on the express train to the Finland Station, with the royals firmly in their sights.

Long gone are the days when Labour could claim to be the voice of the working class, a working class which is deeply patriotic and has always adored the royal family. It is true that the party always had its high-born far-left element, which used to consider itself the ‘intelligentsia’ – but it is only in the past ten years that they have come to dominate. There is a fringe debate at Labour’s conference on the future of the monarchy, featuring Polly Toynbee (yes, hurry, hurry, get your tickets now!) and you can expect plenty of delegates to boo when the National Anthem is played.

Meanwhile, the left-wing MP Clive Lewis has delivered himself of the opinion that intimations about the Queen’s devotion to duty and service were ‘a lie’ and that he viewed the queues of people waiting to see the Queen lying-in-state with ‘bemusement followed by a touch of despair’.

It is in that very admission that the hope for the Conservative party resides. I suspect that the vast majority of Labour activists feel similarly to Mr Lewis. They find themselves utterly estranged from the majority of people in the country, especially those over the age of 30 and even more so those living in those famous Red Wall constituencies. Estranged on this issue as on many others – identity politics, for a start. But most importantly, estranged on the issue of patriotism and a concomitant respect for the history of country and its institutions.

It was this, as much as Brexit or Boris Johnson’s chutzpah, which won the 2019 election for the Tories. Voter after voter I spoke to in the lead-up to the election cited Jeremy Corbyn’s apparent hatred for his own country as the main reason they wouldn’t be voting Labour.

Keir Starmer understands this and has done what he can to persuade voters that the Labour party is no longer a self-loathing congregation of gobby deluded children. But the gobby deluded children are still there, in their hundred or so thousand.