A Revolutionary Idea: Politicians Should Try Not Betraying Their Voters

As of April 29th 1995, the Labour Party could finally relegate concern for the working class down its list of priorities when, at a ‘special conference’, new leader Tony Blair managed to revoke Clause 4 from the Party’s constitution.

Socialist MPs and union leaders such as Arthur Scargill recognised this betrayal for what it was, but it took another 19 years before the penny dropped for many of the working class to catch on to the reality that Labour held them in total disdain – when Lady Nugee, better known as Emily Thornberry, posted a picture of a white van in front of a Rochester house bedecked with three St George Cross flags and the disparaging tweet, “Image from #Rochester”.

Dumping Clause 4 achieved two things: it allowed the Party to switch the focus of its campaigning from the working class to ‘Worcester Woman’ and for Party activists to look for new, deserving groups upon whom they could bestow their political energy.

Labour’s North London intelligentsia, who had always found the working class boorish, uncouth and patriotic, finally got their way.

At about the same time, along came the concept of ‘intersectionality’, presenting a smorgasbord of the ‘oppressed’: women, LGBTQ+, the disabled, immigrants, asylum seekers, eco-warriors and social justice warriors – all ripe for Labour activists’ campaigning zeal.

‘Worcester Woman’, while helping Blair into power, held no interest for Labour activists. Disinterested in political or economic theory, her focus was essentially consumerist. Worcester Woman and Mondeo Man were essentially Barbie and Ken. In the same way that 19th-Century explorers could win over an African tribe with a few mirrors and baubles, so Worcester Woman and Mondeo Man could be won over with Blair’s winsome smile and the promise of a lower mortgage rate.

The emasculation of Clause 4 had really ended the role of political theory on the Left of British politics; thereafter elections were won by the lot who could most effectively ‘relate’ to voters and had the best consumerist offer.

Gordon Brown’s denunciation of Gillian Duffy as that “bigoted woman” fatally undermined whatever ‘relatability’ he had; the mask had truly slipped, allowing David Cameron’s Conservatives and Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems to turf out Brown in 2010.

Promptly, Clegg betrayed his own voters by reneging on his election promise to abolish student fees and instead raising them. Abolishing student fees was probably the Lib Dems’ only recognisable policy in the last 50 years.

With the exception of their student fees promise, the Lib Dems always relied on saying nothing that might scare the horses, in the hope of picking up disgruntled Tory and Labour voters who couldn’t quite bring themselves to cross all the way over to the enemy camp.

Once shorn of the Lib Dems, having won their very own majority in 2015, the Tories set about betraying their own voters with gusto. Asking them to vote in the 2016 Brexit referendum could do nothing but split the Party. Ask most people in the street today which side the Tory leadership campaigned on in the Brexit vote and the majority would say ‘Leave’. Inevitably, half the Party’s supporters felt betrayed.

Brexit was followed up by Mrs May’s inept negotiations that managed to betray the Tories’ ‘Leave’ voters just as much as their inept ‘Remain’ campaign had disillusioned their ‘Leave’ cohort.

The whole Brexit debacle was followed in swift order by Mrs May’s gold-plating of Net Zero and the suicidal advocacy of ‘self-identification’ by the likes of Penny Mordaunt and Maria Miller.

Boris may have conjured an enhanced Parliamentary majority with his commitment to ‘getting Brexit done’, but without missing a beat he plunged into his disastrous Covid farrago – upending his supposed commitment to ‘libertarian’ principles as he copied the CCP with enforced house arrest, £10,000 fines for breaching lunatic regulations and forcing under-tested, unsafe medical products on most of the population, all to fight a viral infection with the lethality of flu.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Boris, having supposedly wrested control from the EU for our own migration policy, promptly opened the borders to millions from outside Europe.

In the 10 years since the Emily Thornberry tweet in 2014, the three leading ‘legacy’ parties had each managed to betray their own base. No wonder two new forces stepped into the resultant vacuum – Reform on the Right and the Greens on the Left.

In the same way that Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment had revealed her own true feelings, so had Cameron’s description of UKIP supporters as “fruitcakes and closet racists” – yet here we were just a few years later, and Cameron’s own troops demonstrated how out of touch he had been as they rallied in their millions to Farage’s vehicle, Reform.

However, it wasn’t long before Farage decided he wasn’t either an economic Thatcherite or a Trumpite ‘re-migrator’ and emerged as a kind of Social Democratic tribute act, freeing up space on his right flank for Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain.

It had taken the Labour Party 77 years to abandon the working class, about 200 years for the Conservatives and the Liberals respectively to upend their own values, and only a year or so for Reform to perform its own U-turn. But let’s not forget the Greens, whose comprehensive betrayal of their founding principles takes the biscuit.

The Greens are essentially a coalition of four distinct groups: the Light, Bright, Dark and Islamic Greens.

The ‘Light Greens’ are the founding fathers of the modern Green movement. More surprising are the names of some of those who did so much to popularise 1980s environmentalism: Sir James Goldsmith, David Bellamy and, in his own way, Richard Branson who, as Mrs Thatcher’s ‘litter Tsar’, championed the kind of local, practical issues that proved so popular.

Light Greens were the spiritual inheritors of Blue Peter: they looked after water voles, dredged village ponds, participated in initiatives promoted by the BBC, recorded garden birds and butterflies. They went out watching badgers and counted tree species in hedgerows.

Bright Greens once saw Elon Musk and possibly Bjørn Lomborg as their patron saints – figures now broadly demonised by the wider Green movement. But Bright Greens continue to believe in technological solutions. Who knows; in the privacy of their own homes some might still admit, albeit furtively, to an enduring admiration for Musk and others of his ilk.

Bright Greens believe in the redemptive power of EVs and the game-changing prospect of data centres in space; that genetically modified crops will solve the food crisis and that nuclear power, nuclear fusion or some future breakthrough offers the prospect of unlimited, risk-free energy.

However, Dark Greens now rule the roost. Created in the image of Greta Thunberg, they despise Light and Bright Greens alike. Dark Greens want ‘de-growth’, though apparently with smartphones, modern dentistry and possibly Dobby-like characters to produce the food, wash their clothes and generally clean up after them. They appear to have no interest whatsoever in energy generation.

Islamic Greens mysteriously make up the fourth strand of modern Greenism. Despising all things LGBTQ+, overtly suppressing women and harbouring a distinct preference for conspicuous consumption of the most garish kind – no Islamic wedding is complete without a fleet of supercars – Islamists’ sole link to Greenism appears to be their choice of favourite colour. Islamic Greens appear to have latched on to the Dark Greens, acting as a kind of Praetorian guard, biding their time while the rest of the Green movement manoeuvres itself into positions of democratic power.

At some point in the near future, the Light and Bright Greens will realise they have been betrayed. The Light Greens will mostly drift off to the Lib Dems and Labour. The Bright Greens could go anywhere; they are essentially believers in capitalism, so the Conservatives have every chance of picking some up. The Islamists, as the polls tighten, will form a caucus within the Labour Party, taking over key urban constituencies. The Dark Greens may stay the course, but electorally they are irrelevant.

So, there we have it. The entire electorate – with the exception of the Islamist vote, which operates on group self-interest – has been betrayed. Political theory has been abandoned. Parties have proliferated as economic cohorts splinter after each fresh betrayal.

But retaining your voter base shouldn’t be that difficult. In the words of the old music-hall song: “Dance with the one that brung you!”