The Lion and the Unicorn revisited – What Starmer can learn from Orwell

“As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.”

So begins George Orwell’s 1941 pamphlet The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius. Part cultural exposé and part manifesto, it was written at the height of the Blitz as its author grappled with questions of identity, empire, class and war. Whilst a Ukrainian or Gazan would recognise Orwell’s opening sentiment far better than you or me, the current political moment in Britain draws parallels from the rest of the work.

Whatever could exist of an English (or British) revolution was to be premised not on right or left, says Orwell, but “progress” or “reaction”; whichever won out for “the multitudes of unlabelled people who have grasped… that something is wrong”. His own preference was of course for progress, and, knowing what ‘reaction’ meant in wartime Europe, I assume most of ours would be too. 

READ MORE: ‘Labour’s Deputy Leader should articulate our future – by learning from our past’

We should be clear that the major threat today is not fascism. Assigning Reform UK that label at the very least patronises their growing base – one which needs no further invitation to mistrust “out of touch” Labour – and at worst is straight-up libellous. But the factors which gave rise to fascism in Orwell’s time are remarkably familiar – Inequality, distrust, atomisation. Clive Lewis situates last weekend’s ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march in the Polanyian tradition of ‘double movement’; “a demand for belonging” in an ever-commodified world. Its ideological zeal was confined to a minority. 

This doesn’t mean giving the Faragists a clean break, and of course we must call out the sinister intentions of the genuinely ‘far’ right à la Tommy Robinson. But without tangibly changing people’s lives for the better, their allure will only get brighter. As Orwell put it, “An army of unemployed led by millionaires quoting the Sermon on the Mount … cannot arise when we have once introduced a reasonable degree of social justice” This time they are led by Billionaires like Elon Musk – but the point remains.

Typical of Orwell’s contrarian existence as a “Tory anarchist” is the symbiosis he accords patriotism and progress. An ever-democratising society must “show a power of assimilating the past” because our past does mean something. National sentiment must be malleable, or its constituent parts wouldn’t have been ‘allowed in’ in the first place. The stakes of progress versus reaction are too great not to realise this fact. 

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It’s too easy to forget the scale of victory won by the Labour Party just 14 months ago. Whilst any public goodwill disappeared shortly thereafter, the government still possesses a 157-seat majority. 

Unlike Orwell’s wartime polemic, this article is not intended as a step-by-step guide on how to fix ‘Broken Britain’  (a term coined by the early Cameron-era Tories and reflected in Reform UK’s current messaging) nor indeed overhaul capitalism entirely. Rather, it serves to highlight three things.

First, that we have a unique chance to bring radical change to the country. It may not have been war, but coming out of a decade-and-a-half marked by austerity, Brexit and the pandemic, the 2024 general election saw doors throughout Westminster finally flung open to new ideas. The result? A government “less than the sum of its parts”, to put it mildly.

Second is that social-democratic policy need not threaten the web of stories, memories, sensibilities and idiosyncrasies that provoke such great affection by the people of Britain for their country. (Indeed, it should arrest the forces hijacking ‘Britishness’ or ‘Englishness’ to a more exclusive end). 

The third, and perhaps most crucial lesson our government could learn from Orwell? At least show us you believe in something. Any time I speak to someone and the conversation drifts onto the government, I can at least, whatever their own politics, extract the following statement – ‘Well I’d respect them more if I knew what they stood for’. Tony Blair showed us that Labour radicalism does not have to be premised on nationalisation and regulation; for that and Iraq his legacy is deeply contested. Not least by Blue Labour, one of the few factions in British politics acknowledging their inspiration from the aforementioned Karl Polanyi. But the messaging was clear –  “We have modernised the Labour Party and we will modernise Britain”. 

In the essay ‘Why I Write’, Orwell lists four reasons to put pen on paper: “Sheer egoism”, “aesthetic enthusiasm”, “historical impulse” and “political purpose”. Now imagine a speech by Keir Starmer. He wouldn’t be thanked for the first, nor does the public demand high prose to meet the second. But the fourth:

“Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.”

That is what needs to be heard, not platitudes about “phase two”. And what good is the third point, historical impulse – what Orwell calls “seeing things as they are” – if it all comes too late.

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Ahead of last year’s election Starmer was quick to endorse Will Hutton’s This Time No Mistakes, a “compelling” argument for political and economic reform. As the saying goes: ‘The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is…’.

Well ‘this time’ the consequences of failure won’t come wrapped in blue, but in turquoise. And, if that time arrives, let’s hope they don’t follow their American counterparts and take inspiration from Orwell’s most famous work of fiction. Donald Trump certainly seems to be doing his best ‘Big Brother’.

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