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1/ Despite the covid massacre and eleven years of economic failure the Tories still command over 40% in the polls. I believe this is because they command an almost entirely tribal support which is largely immune to policy failures.
2/ Political tribalism is like support for a football club, largely unshakeable by failure. There's always been a fair degree of it in the UK, but it is far more intense on the right than in past decades.
3/ There are several causes for the rise in tribal Tory support. One factor is the crumbling of old industrial Britain and the working class communities and organisations it underpinned. For those frightened by this decay the only hope of protection is the nation-state.
4/ We should note that in the last election support for the parties was pretty much equally divided between socio-economic categories. Modern political affiliation isn't class based.
5/ Rapid social change, and especially the crumbling of working class communities and organisations that had endured for generations, has made many people, especially the old, vulnerable to cynical nationalist fear-mongering.
6/ With the hollowing out of the old industrial communities and organisations such people might once have identified with, they have put their hopes in the nation state as the protector and embodiment of what is basically a somewhat aging white native tribe.
7/ Like support for a football team, tribal affiliations, once made, are seldom undone. This is a politics driven by emotional loyalty, not by rational responses to events.
8/ Labour could perhaps make inroads, but to do so would require its rhetoric to become highly nationalistic. And not just nationalistic. It would require Labour to pose as the party of an insecure white native tribe.
9/ I don't think Labour should try a shift towards tribal nationalism. For one thing it would lose huge chunks of its existing urban and young support. And it would be adopting a political line that would have to be tinged with racism and xenophobia.
10/ So my view is that Labour must accept that around 40% of the electorate will stick with the Tories come what may. Under FPTP that means that unless the main opposition parties cooperate in elections the Tories will almost inevitably win.
11/ Electoral cooperation requires that the main opposition parties are sufficiently aligned on certain key issues to obtain the votes of each other's supporters in seats where all but one party stands down. There is a lot of work to be done here to ensure grassroots support.
