How should Labour speak to England? The question that will not go away

By John Denham and Michael Kenny

The soap opera of Labour’s leadership election has absorbed a good deal of the party’s emotional energy and political attention for the past few months. Above all it has distracted Labour from some of the increasingly important questions about nationhood and state that are now pressing on the UK in the wake of the EU referendum. These issues barely featured in the leadership debates, yet pose considerable threats to Labour’s fragile support and may lead to the further reorganisation of the United Kingdom.

Who Speaks to England? Labour’s English challenge, a new book published by the Fabian Society and the Centre for English Identity and Politics today, begins to define some of the cultural, political challenges Labour face in response to questions of English identity and a new political settlement for England.

Over the past two years, the party’s electoral base has been torn apart by identity politics. Huge numbers of Scottish Labour voters abandoned party loyalty to vote for separation and then to dump the party itself. In England, voters feared SNP support for a minority Labour government, and many others turned to UKIP. In a further major blow, millions of former Labour voters, particularly those who felt mostly sharply English, backed Brexit. Faced with this tsunami of political rejection, the issue was simply airbrushed out of the leadership campaigns.

An increasingly insistent English dimension has been apparent in British politics for some time. The enhanced offer to Scotland in the vow made before the Scottish independence referendum was not universally popular in England. The claimed threat of SNP influence over a minority Labour government was a talking point throughout the 2015 general election, and may have influenced sufficient votes to deliver a Conservative majority. With the electoral battleground in each nation of the UK now contested by different parties, and with different victors in each of its constituent territories, the idea that England possesses interests of its own that are not always the same as those of the union is likely to grow.

Without a dramatic improvement in Labour’s fortunes in Scotland – something that is unlikely unless Scottish Labour can find the right blend of progressive politics and an answer to the complex politics of identity in Scotland – Labour has a better chance of doing well in England. In a complete and ironic reversal of its previous position, it makes sense for Labour to prioritise its efforts to win an English majority that – however far away – appears more attainable than a UK majority.

Labour needs to hold off the rising threat of UKIP, especially in northern seats, and winning marginal seats where a decisive swing to the Conservatives resulted in victory in the election of 2015. It is now in the largest territory of the UK that the fortunes of the party will be decisively determined in the next few years. But in large parts of England, Labour is struggling to be relevant to voters who, amongst other things, want a party that is sensitive to their English interests.

While a gathering sense of national rebellion was only one of a number of factors that fed into the Brexit vote, the tenor of the campaign that led up to it illustrates the responsiveness of large numbers of the English – north and south, middle and working class – to the idea of self-government, to a political appeal that puts scepticism about mass immigration at its heart, and to the notion of putting one over on the metropolitan political establishment. The desire to take back control spoke to a complex mood of frustration, disappointment and anxiety.

Without a major shift of focus, and a much fuller realisation that politics is now shaped by and configured around concerns associated with identity, belonging and territory, Labour will not get a hearing among the English voters it needs to reach. As the Fabian Society’s analysis shows, Labour needs 104 additional seats in England and Wales and 40 per cent of the vote to win. In marginal seats in England, 4 out of 5 of the extra voters it needs to win are from those who voted Conservative last time.

There are signs, however, that the need to recognise the salience and political resonance of English national identity is starting to make its way into Labour’s mindset, as the essays in Who speaks to England? – from figures associated with different parts of the party – attest. If they help to jettison some of the canards that often feature in Labour’s thinking – including the tendency to make a false separation between ‘internationalism’ and ‘nationalism’, and a visceral suspicion of homegrown patriotism – they will have done an important job.

The left is significantly inhibited by the dearth of serious attempts to reimagine England and different English futures – in both cultural and democratic terms. To many who feel a sense of pride in their national tradition, the only political voices who seem to speak this language are from the political right. Until progressives begin to engage a battle for the English imagination, this situation will not change.

Who Speaks to England? Labour’s English challenge, is published today by the Fabian Society and the Centre for English Identity and Politics at the University of Winchester.

John Denham is a former Labour MP and director of the centre for English identity and politics and Michael Kenny is a professor of politics at Queen Mary University.