Elections come with their own logic, a sort of sports analysis. It’s a time that doesn’t naturally lend itself to discussing events or agendas in terms of whether things are correct or decent, but whether they are tactically useful. When the election is between a Labour party trying to unseat a Conservative one after what it considers to be its own failed leftwing experiment, that tendency to strip politics of all values, reduce it to gamesmanship and purge the sources of previous defeat becomes even more pronounced. The result is that by hewing as close as possible to established economic and cultural norms as set by the Tories in order to win back voters, Labour disfranchises others and makes a calculation that they don’t matter.
How else should you view Labour’s pronouncements on migration? “Read my lips – I will bring immigration numbers down,” Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, told the Sun on Sunday. We won’t rule out sending asylum seekers abroad to have their claims processed, Yvette Cooper told the BBC: “We look at what works.”
This strategy of tracking the Tories is potentially dangerous, both in terms of creating a growing vocal group of people upset with Labour, and in fomenting a negative, unstable political climate – one in which the party leadership and its supporters seek not to understand why some voters feel a certain way, but to condemn and dismiss them. This is neither useful nor logical. And yet it is understandable to those for whom getting rid of the Tories is a goal in itself that at least opens up some possibility of change. There is a frustration with voters concerned that the party does not have a sufficiently leftwing agenda because, well, have you seen the other guys? Yes, the other guys are bad, corrupt, a clown show, but “get rid and let’s see” is not a compelling enough vision to the many people who expect no less of the Tories, and expect much more from Labour. It doesn’t account for how, to Labour voters, their party’s agenda is personal, and so brings with it the sort of feelings that only run that sharp when they perceive its political programme as an abdication by their own leaders. And it doesn’t account for the fact that people make their minds up based on what they see and hear from Labour in the current moment, not on some unsubstantiated faith in what it might do once in power. If there is some internal Labour-leadership wink, no one outside that closed circle can see it.
They can, of course, see how bad the alternative is, but they can also see that they are not being offered any meaningful change other than Labour won’t be as bad. It’s a hostage situation where the stakes seem high on a political level – a Labour government, finally, after a calamitous rightwing reign – but are in fact low on a personal one. On all the big issues – the funding of public infrastructure, the NHS, the amelioration of the cost of living crisis, a benefits overhaul – the world isn’t set to look much different once the Tories are gone.
By any stretch, these are – to use a phrase that the left is never allowed to enjoy – legitimate concerns. Disregarding them only sours things at a moment when Labour claims to be embarking on a grand confidence-building, positive and stabilising exercise that cleanses politics of the Tory factionalism, bickering and infighting that has marked the past few years.
And worries about Labour’s economic policies are not just quiet, tortured ones about what the party cannot promise to deliver in terms of quality of life. They are also about fundamental principles. Foreign policy frustrations with how Labour has dealt with the war in Gaza, what seems to be an unfolding purge of leftwing candidates, and the message that Diane Abbott’s humiliation sends to ethnic minorities are a recipe not just for passive alienation, but active anger.
Such anger over issues that inspire a strong and visceral sense of exclusion and betrayal cannot be forced into comforting stereotypes of those who won’t support Labour any more. Luxury beliefs, indulgent strops, bitter remnants of the Corbyn era – these are all descriptions that classify those who don’t agree with Labour as faulty voters, irrational narcissists acting against their own self-interest. If they won’t be brought to heel, they should be ignored.
It’s a neat story, if that’s your thing. And God knows we twist ourselves into all sorts of shapes to justify our politics. But it’s a cop-out, because that’s just not how voting works. Democracy is an opt-in process. The onus is on political parties to persuade people to choose them, rather than expect them mechanically to navigate the narrow range of choices with which they have been presented. This is especially true in a two-party system during an election that does not promise dramatic regime change.
All voters are rational, in that their rationale makes sense to them. And that rationale is a complex mix of feelings, loyalties and impressions that has not been brewed by us, but by our immediate economic and political realities, and the parties that create them. If you have been made to feel that your party does not represent you, does not align with your values, does not even respect you, and does not provide you with a better vision for your future, these feelings become the source of your political behaviour. The threat of the alternative is remote, while your sense of marginalisation is immediate.
Over the past few months, the people I have spoken to who said they will not vote for Labour all share one thing: not childish anger or silly idealism, but relief. After giving the party several chances and grappling with their choices, the decision not to vote gave them a sense of congruence. Their political choices finally aligned with their values, and gave them a sense of autonomy in a system that felt totally out of their control.
Ignore that sense of empowering divestment or scold people for acting on it at your peril, as Labour found out when it thought that Abbott could be defenestrated without a fuss. The outrage, mobilisation of constituents and high-profile black figures, and noise in the media that followed the initial position that Abbott would not be allowed to run is an augur of the future. The same happened after Labour met with poorly managed (and revealingly unexpected) outrage over its initial position on Gaza and diminished its vote share among certain loyal constituents, turning previous safe seats into battlegrounds.
The scale of Labour’s win may be undermined by that sort of volatility, and its mandate in power made shaky by a large enough cohort of voters who are as furiously opposed to its policies and chaotic opaque processes as to what promises to be a nasty and extreme rightwing opposition. Overall voting numbers matter, but so do those who refuse to live in what they increasingly feel is a monoculture and still protect their right to live in a pluralistic political system. They have voices and platforms.
And there is galvanising clarity, unifying across their disparate groups. They understand that the deepening of the political consensus between the Tories and Labour on all the big things that matter to them means there are fewer and fewer benefits to pinching your nose and casting your vote for a party that appears to only take and does not give. Again, dismiss their passions at your peril.
In a system without proportional representation, politics is indeed often the choice of the lesser of two evils. But as the space between the two shrinks, people might begin to feel that – as Ralph Nader once said – “if you always vote for the lesser of two evils, you will always have evil, and you will always have less”.
Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
