Has The Labour Tribe Fractured?

It's a tradition of British elections that there is always a focus on whether the Labour Party is on the verge of extinction.  In 1945 George Orwell said that supporting it was like being a doctor.  As a scientist he would know the patient was near death.  But as a physician he was obliged to keep going even though it was a hopeless case.   The 1951 election defeat was taken as proof that the workers no longer supported Labour.  Wilson's leadership - him being an Oxford don - was a sign that the party had been taken over by technocrats who has misplaced the party's soul.  Michael Foot was evidence that it was now so far from the political centre as to unelectable.  And so on....


At the moment  we are being told that Labour's leader is a Marxist who supports terrorists and is anti-semitic. The latter one relies on defining anti-semitism as not having any way of stopping the media continually talking about anti-semitism - but I suppose it would be dull if they ran the same scares every election.  On top of that the party is being deserted by its traditional supporters and becoming London centric.  It no longer appears to its traditional white working class base.

I am not sure I buy that.  The white working class is nowhere near as white as it used to be.  I'm as Anglo-Saxon as they come but I find that in big family gatherings there are muslims, Jews and even some French people to whom I am related.  So I have a feeling that a lot of white working class people are quite used to having non-whites around and don't regard immigration as the end of the world.  Maybe they did back in the days when the London dockers would march in favour of Enoch Powell, but I just don't think they do now.

The educated intelligentsia are all broke.  I don't think the ones that used to be Labour inclined are any less than they used to be.

And ethnic minorities aren't quite as Labour as they were, but that's still the default setting.  Older working class people are drifting away but old people in general are.  I think that's the reason so many 'northern heartlands' are apparently deserting for the Tories.  The youngsters are as Labour as ever but have moved elsewhere to get jobs that sound a lot more middle class than what there parents did, but which still contrive to not pay very much.  So I'd say the Labour tribe is still intact and available to be mobilised.  Labour has a problem for sure, but that problem is with older people not working class people.

(Caveat - I have based the above entirely on my gut feelings, impressions and my personal experiences which obviously don't form a scientific sample.  But in my defence, none of the pundits in the papers are any better informed.)