Will Labour Now Reject the Young?

By Gwydion M. Williams

This article was published in April 2020. It remains relevant because it details how Labour losses closely matched support for Brexit. Cast doubt on claims it was caused by being too left-wing.

Labour and Feed-the-Rich Economics

As expected, Keith Starmer has decisively won the Labour Leadership election.

But what this means remains unclear:

“[Starmer] has described himself as a socialist but not a Corbynite, and vowed to keep key policies from the Corbyn era, such as nationalising rail, mail and water and repealing anti-union laws.”[1]

Let’s hope he means it. Because in Britain, a majority of English voters under thirty were enthusiasts for Corbyn.

The young have rejected the right-wing excuse that the shift in income to the rich was a natural and unavoidable process. That it is down to more complex jobs needing more education at talent.

They know something is wrong. A society that is richer overall cannot give them the secure jobs and generous welfare that the previous generations got.

Though they may not understand why. May blame the wrong people. Some go over to right-wing populism.

The left has not helped by trying to contrast 1% against 99%, which would fit a picture of talent and work being rewarded.

The reality has been enormous gains for the richest 1%. And among them, the richest 0.1% and 0.01% have made the biggest gains.

The Next Nine – people in the top 10% of earners but not the top 1% – have held their own in the big shifts since the 1980s.

In terms of education, intelligence, skills or hard work, the Next Nine are not inferior to the Richest 1%. What they lack is the social power to demand gigantic amounts of money for some skill that will also make gigantic amounts of money for someone else.

The top sports people add no real wealth, but they do attract viewers for advertising.

Likewise a small number of musicians and actors and writers sell more and make huge profits if their names become known. They are often little different from the others.

And above all, the winners are business people.

From the 1980s, they have been left free to decide the true worth of people like themselves. So they pay themselves 10 or 20 times as much, while doing a rather worse job increasing the overall wealth of the society.

They also get rewarded for their blunders, if enough of them make the same blunders at the same time.

The crisis of 2008 was caused by a massive speculative bubble. But rather than nationalise banks and let Hedge Funds lose money or collapse, the government stepped in to subsidise the very rich. Paid for it by Austerity, a squeeze on those who had done nothing wrong.

It isn’t Economic Freedom – there are still as many rules as ever. But fewer for the rich.

Nor is it Low Tax or Small Government – tax and government are much the same as they were in the 1970s.

The true name is Feed-the-Rich.

Labour should start calling it that.

And Starmer could say that on economic matters, he wants to roll back a Tory Radicalism that has visibly failed. Keep actual innovation for social matters, where it is popular.

Say that Trade Union weakness has done at least as much damage as their strength did in the 1970s. That a sensible balance needs to be restored.

New Right policies let the strongest 1% grab wealth from the weaker 90%. A lot of the actual talent is found in the Next Nine, who have not gained or lost much.

And also in the 90%. Plenty of hard-working talented people, but not in a position to demand above-average incomes.

The argument that what’s being rewarded is superior work does not hold water. And younger people seem to be noticing this.

In the USA, the young strongly backed Saunders against Biden.

And it is not like the radicalism of the 1970s, which was often not realistic. Where the main attitude was ‘don’t take ‘yes’ for an answer’. Where radicals refused compromise and demanded more than ordinary people actually wanted. Where right-wing parties could claim to be speaking common sense – though Feed-the-Rich was their real intention.

Today’s radicalism is much more sensible and feasible.

Sadly, it now seems almost certain that the US Democrats will choose Biden. If elected, he will probably continue the policies of Bill Clinton and Obama.

The policies Hilary Clinton offered, and which helped get Trump elected.

Common sense, they’d call it. But common sense in a changing world is often wildly mistaken.

It used to be ‘common sense’ that white males must be dominant. That women could not do jobs outside of caring, nurturing and feeling strong emotions. That the non-white subjects of Europe’s empires could not run their own lives. That society could not last unless would-be homosexuals were discouraged as strongly as possible. That people fit to run the whole society came only from the old upper class. That respect for the monarchy was the foundation of social order.

We have revised ‘common sense’ so frequently in the 20^th century that there is no good reason to trust the current version.

For most people, ‘common sense’ is what you believed about the world when you were in your 20s. What you probably still believe at 50, 60, 70, 80 or 90, no matter how much the world has changed.

In both the 2017 and 2019 elections, English people under 40 overwhelmingly voted Labour.

Things were probably different in Scotland. Scots from 2015 have been abandoning Labour and voting Scottish Nationalist. Wales is probably the same, but Welsh views get swamped. But for England, where the bulk of the electorate live, age was decisive in both 2017 and 2019:

I had already noticed this back in 2017, and blogged about it.[2] Found also that educated people were much more likely to vote Labour. Felt that this was a good indicator of which party had the real political wisdom, considering that the educated generally have higher incomes and ought to be more likely to vote for right-wing parties.

And found also that it had not been true in 2015.

When Labour offered nothing more than another dose of Blair’s policies, there was no enthusiasm.

In the modern era, right-wing parties are led by clever, rich and unscrupulous people. And similar people in the wider society take a short-sighted selfish attitude and support them. But to hold power, they depend on the votes of the elderly and uneducated.

The intelligent and talented who are not rich are mostly found on the left. Including the bulk of scientists, whose jobs make them think objectively about the world.

There is a broad failure of once-popular New Right ideas. These had been in trouble in the late 1980s, and might have been abandoned after the massive economic crisis of 1987. That was a near-failure of capitalism that media dominated by the right and by the rich have managed to put out of popular historic memory.

But the Soviet collapse reinvigorated them.

Because Soviet socialism went badly wrong in the 1970s, it does not mean that the New Right were ever right about why it failed. Their theories simply cannot account for the economic success of the Soviet Union under Stalin, or of China under Mao.

To say that there was also a cost in lives does not explain away the awkward fact that such systems can work. And have been copied elsewhere without any unusual cost in lives any unusual cost in lives.

And studies are anyway biased, exaggerating Leninist errors and ignoring errors by the people they approve of.

Current Western accounts of Mao’s China are grossly dishonest. They mention only that there was a setback after the over-ambitious Great Leap Forward. Not that other highly risky and ambitious campaigns succeeded brilliantly.[3]

Experts publishing scholarly works not noticed by the popular press record a general improvement of life expectancy in Mao’s China. They see it as remarkable.[4] The setback following the failure of the Great Leap Forward was secondary. But this gets hidden from the general public. Books and articles on China seldom mention it.

The Soviet Union was overtaking the USA under Stalin, and in Khrushchev’s early years. Things went disastrously wrong under Brezhnev and his successors. But that was the ending of one particular socialist experiment. Not the end of socialism.

The young mostly vote Labour. But this seems to be a recent trend. Why?

The clarify my ideas, I looked at when the various groups of voters would have been born, and when they were 25.

Age in 2019	Born	Were 25
80	1939	1964
70	1949	1974
60	1959	1984
50	1969	1994
40	1979	2004
30	1989	2014
20	1999	Future
15	2004	Future

People favoured Corbyn-Labour if they experienced the 1990s and later decades while their minds were still flexible.

This wasn’t true in 2015, when Ed Miliband sounded ashamed of the excellent left-wing policies he was advancing. When Labour did indeed seem to be living in the past: but the recent past of New Labour that had visibly not worked for most people.

Corbyn a Disaster?

I am one of those who insist that the problem in 2019 was Brexit, not Corbyn’s return to serious socialism.

Corbyn is being blamed for ‘the worst result since 1935’.

1935 wasn’t that bad, if you think about political outcomes. If you don’t see Labour existing just to give nice jobs to ambitious MPs.

Labour under Corbyn can claim success for the remarkable return to government intervention and government spending we are now seeing under Boris Johnson.[5] He was able to push out a Chancellor who wanted to be ‘prudent’ and put in a man who was happy to spend more.

Labour should be celebrating this as a triumph for their ideas. Should criticise the Tories for spending on the wrong things, certainly. For not fully reversing the damage done by the years of Austerity. But also celebrate a victory, rather than seeing Labour as noble upholders of principle who are also doomed to a long defeat.

The broad aims of socialists were massively advanced from 1945 to 1979. And the economic reversal under Thatcher went along with a crumbling of Tory social values. By their replacement by things that had once been Fringe Radicalism.

I believe Thatcher was sincere in her hope of restoring the comfortable social values she had grown up with in Grantham. Or comfortable for her, and those like her who were well-off and did not wish not to go beyond the severe social limits of her day.

In turning a blind eye to obvious homosexuals and in trying to save love-cheats like Cecil Parkinson, Thatcher was being a traditionally Tory. Perhaps less competent: I find it puzzling that someone at the top of politics could not persuade some unimportant man to take responsibility for the child that Parkinson had fathered on Sara Keays.

I would rate Thatcher as a sincere and ignorant bigot. As someone not fit for national leadership. She naively believed the Tory version of New Right politics. And probably never read anything by Robert E. Heinlein.

Heinlein was a popular US science-fiction author who became a ranting enemy of socialism and fan of the rich. He also hoped for very much the disintegration of conventional social morals that did in fact happen.[6] And he was very popular among the more thoughtful of the New Right.

Labour could and should say that much of its social agenda was imposed on the Tories. The supposed defenders of Old Morality now have women and non-whites and open gays and lesbians at the top of their party.

Have a Prime Minister who doesn’t even pretend to be following traditional rules on marriage and philandering.

Tony Blair’s time in power was useful in establishing the new normal. But he had no need to accept Thatcherism.

The Soviet Union collapsing in 1989-91 was demoralising for many on the left. But as I mentioned earlier, the Western system had almost collapsed in the half-forgotten crisis of 1987.[7]

Earlier, Labour’s 1930s policies of clear opposition to Hitler and in favour of Welfare were vindicated in the struggle against Hitler. The expected 1940 election being postponed till the war was won, we got a dramatic victory in 1945.

Labour in 2019 certainly lost some traditional Labour voters by being clearly in favour of welfare and public ownership. But it gained millions more, by being clearly ready for radical change.

Blair’s timid performance after his 1997 triumph must have put off many voters. When he twice got re-elected, he still got far fewer votes than Corbyn did in 2017. Blair’s 2^nd and 3^rd victories were won against an unimpressive and unpopular Tory Party. Had they been led by someone like Boris Johnson, it might have been another story.

We lost old voters, particularly in 2017 and 2019. We also picked up millions of young voters.

We certainly lost some of those elderly voters by being clearly for racial and sexual equality. But do we really want those votes? Will we cater to the most prejudiced part of the working class? Or should we leave it to the Tories to say ‘if you want a nigger neighbour, vote Labour’. Which is exactly what they did in 1964 to win Smethwick, a seat that was normally Labour.[8]

The official Tory candidate denied that this was racist. Just like today’s Tories, with their much more subtle workings of widespread racist and anti-immigrant feeling.

Modern racists are a decaying breed, keen to think of themselves as victims. They lack the self-assured belief in White Superiority that previous generations of Britons had. The centre-right known how to work this.

You probably won’t find your library displaying once-popular works like Sanders of the River[9] or anything by Dennis Wheatley[10]. They were there when I was a teenager, and when open racism won Smethwick.

Those books are entertaining. But their blatant racism offended me less than it should have, though I was already a militant leftist.

You can get them via Amazon, if you doubt me. Or look at one whose blurb I posted, about Chinese and speaking of ‘slit-eyed intrigue’.[11]

Just as bad was children’s writer Enid Blyton,[12] whose work I never liked. But I don’t recall being offended by her racist gollywogs, who have apparently been replaced by race-neutral characters in modern editions.

Younger readers may never have heard of gollywogs. The Wiki has details.[13]

The amusing thing is that the leading Tories have long since ceased to be sincere racists. Not serious about preserving an All-White Britain, as Enoch Powell was. The entire Establishment had accepted multi-racialism, though with some glitches in the Royal Family.

Justified protests at racism always seem to miss this. Fail to rub the noses of the racists in their own weakness compared to what once existed. Don’t point out that Centre-Right politicians are using such people, and probably view them with deep contempt.

It is more enjoyable to pose as a defender of Eternal Truths. Things that ‘all sensible people know to be true’.

Except that historically, what one generation ‘knows’ will often be rejected by their children. And I don’t suppose that stops happening with us.

The smooth-talking moderates who dominate The Guardian don’t accept that Corbyn needed to shift public opinion, and in fact did shift it.

Boris Johnson is now saying things that sound to the left of anything that Labour dared say before Corbyn.

We may doubt Johnson’s sincerity. But just to have him junk much of the rhetoric of Thatcherism is a victory.

Yet many in the Parliamentary Labour Party are certain only a labour leader ashamed of Corbynism can win a future election.

They are not seeing the real picture.

In France, there are two large rival socialist parties, plus a strong remnant of the once-mighty French Communists. The traditional French Socialists got over 30% in the 1980s, and over 20% more recently. Fell to a miserable 7.44% in 2017.

Against them, still small but rising fast, is an alliance called La France Insoumise. Translatable as ‘Unbowed France’, ‘Unsubmissive France’, or ‘Untamed France’: I’d go for Untamed.[14] (Just as I’d translate Zola’s Les Misérables as The Underclass: calling them The Miserables would certainly miss the point.)

France also has destructive rioting – or had before Covid-19 came along. Long-running with the Yellow Vests, and more recently over an attempt to seize the pension rights of ordinary workers.

Similar things are happening elsewhere in Western Europe. Tamed Socialists are losing out. Right-wing populists are gaining. And we see riots by people who mostly don’t then vote for a party that might help them.

Western liberalism is widely despised, and deservedly so. But socialists cringing before liberal power also have a bad reputation.

Labour reverting to Tamed Labour would lose far more than it gained. And set a bad example for the rest of the world.

The more extreme believers in ‘Tamed Labour’ split from the Labour mainstream in 2019. They tried standing on their own, and got a derisory result.

The previous split, the Social Democrats, were justly ridiculed as ‘keep politics out of politics’.

They were absorbed into the old and corrupt Liberal tradition, leaving nothing behind except half of their name in the current Liberal-Democrats.

Who achieved very little in 2019.

In terms of seats, it was indeed Labour’s worse result since 1935. But a big chunk of that was down to the Scottish Nationalists, well to the left of New Labour. Not timid about it, as Ed Miliband was in 2015.

Labour used to get more than 50 Scottish seats, when Scots elected more than 70 MPS. More than 40 when this was reduced to 59 with Devolution.

40 Scottish Labour seats were lost in 2015, when the Scottish Nationalists dared defy the Tories and Labour would not. Corbyn recovered seven of these in 2017, but this time dropped back to one again.

In terms of votes in England, Corbyn in 2019 did better than Ed Miliband in 2015 or Gordon Brown in 2010. It was not so drastic in terms of seats, because 2010 was an exceptional high point for the Liberal-Democrats, never likely to be repeated after the way they endorsed Tory policies in the Coalition. And in 2015, UKIP got nearly 3.88 million votes, taken from both Labour and Tory.

Labour had a major problem during Brexit. We suffered by being unable to choose either Leave or Remain, when this was the main issue.

Dedicated Leave voters knew that Labour had no chance of forming their own government to renegotiate Leave. Many polls indicated a Hung Parliament, which would have probably given us months more of the same confusion we have had since Theresa May brought back her highly unsatisfactory deal.

Polls indicate that a Second Referendum would have rejected both May’s deal and Boris Johnson’s replacement. The narrow victory for Leave was helped by promised that the terms would be soft and easy, including the notorious promise of another 350 billion for the NHS. But it also turns out that 40% or 45% are absolutely committed to Brexit, regardless of what it may cost. That gave the Tories victory.

A new Labour leader offering the same Soft Leftism as Gordon Brown or Ed Miliband is unlikely to achieve anything. Probably they’d do worse than we’ve done in 2019.

Starmer has his options open. Accepting injustice to Palestinians to conciliate Jewish opinion is regrettable, but probably unavoidable. It is no worse that Roosevelt accepting the racial prejudices of the Southern Democrats in the 1930s, to get the New Deal voted into law.

A theoretical willingness to be part of a global nuclear holocaust is also a price worth paying to win elections. We’d be wrecked regardless, so losing Corbyn’s admirable idealism is acceptable.

But Starmer would be foolish if he went soft about imposing social justice on the rich 1% who have grabbed so much from the 1980s.

He should call it Feed-the-Rich. Make clear than the promise of the world as a global comfortable suburbia was always false. That the Tories never did want a world fit for ‘White-Van-Man’, and have not delivered it.

Make it clear that the targets are not the ‘Next Nine’, the people in the richest 10% but not the richest 1%. Who are in much the same position as they were before Thatcher, but facing a much nastier and more dangerous Britain.

And be aware that Corbyn restored Labour’s popularity when Blair’s attempt at New Labour ran into the sands. That it was only Brexit that derailed him.

Here in detail is what happened:^[15]

Votes Cast	2010	2015	2017	2019	Shift from 2017 to 2019
Tories	10,703,754	11,299,609	13,636,684	13,966,585	329,901
Labour	8,609,527	9,347,273	12,877,918	10,269,076	-2,608,842
Lib-Dem	6,836,824	2,415,916	2,371,861	3,696,423	1,324,562
Ukip / Brexit	919,546	3,881,099	594,068	665,120	71,052
SNP	491,386	1,454,436	977,568	1,242,372	264,804
Green	265,247	111,160	512,327	865,697	353,370

Percentage of vote	2010	2015	2017	2019	Shift from 2017 to 2019
Tories	36.1	36.8	42.3	43.6	1.30
Labour	29.0	30.4	40.0	32.1	-7.90
Lib-Dem	23.0	7.9	7.4	11.6	4.20
Ukip / Brexit	3.1	12.6	1.8	2.0	0.20
SNP	1.7	4.7	3.0	3.9	0.90
Green	0.9	3.6	1.6	2.7	1.10
Turnout	65.1	66.4	68.8	67.3	-1.50

New Labour lost Scotland. Overall voting for Labour looks much better if you look just at votes cast in England. Corbyn’s Labour got more votes even in 2019 than pre-Corbyn Labour had got since Blair’s first win in 1997. A better percentage of the vote than any since Blair’s third victory in 2005.

It is correct to look just at England, because Labour in Scotland declined massively in 2015. The Scottish Nationalists jumped from 19.9% to 50%. From 6 seats at Westminster to 56. Labour slumped from 40% to 23.4%, and lost 40 of its 41 seats.[16]

Scottish voters saw that a Scotland free of England might return to the moderate Welfarism and Mixed Economy that is normal in Continental Europe. The system that actually won the Cold War:[17] all the New Right did was sound militant and then abandon their doctrine to stave off an economic crash in the half-forgotten crisis of 1987.

You get the same picture if you look at the actual voting in the seats Labour lost. In Scotland, the Scottish Nationalists returned. In England, the fall in the Labour vote was always much larger than the Tory gain. And both shifts were more drastic in constituencies that were stronger for Brexit. I’ve got a detailed analysis for each seat posted on the web, for those who want to check in detail.[18] And the broad outlines at the end of this article.

Blair’s 1997 victory was based on a promise of real change. A promise that was not delivered, and his vote slumped. But so did the Tory vote – people by then had lost faith in them. Total voting slumped, and he won in 2001 and 2005 almost by default.

Year	Turnout	Tory Vote in England	Percent	Seats	Labour Vote	Percent	Seats	English Liberal-Democrat or Alliance Vote	Percent	Seats
2019	67.4	12,710,845	47.2	345	9,152,034	34.0	180	3,340,835	12.4	7
2017	69.1	12,344,901	45.4	296	11,390,099	41.9	227	2,121,810	7.8	8
2015	65.9	10,483,261	40.9	318	8,087,684	31.6	206	2,098,404	8.2	6
2010	65.5	9,908,169	39.5	297	7,042,398	28.1	191	6,076,189	24.2	43
2005	61.0	8,116,005	35.7	194	8,043,461	35.4	286	5,201,286	22.9	47
2001	59.1	7,705,870	35.2	165	9,056,824	41.4	323	4,246,853	19.4	40
1997	71.5	8,780,881	33.7	165	11,347,882	43.5	328	4,677,565	18.0	34
1992	78.0	12,796,772	45.5	319	9,551,910	33.9	195	5,398,293	19.2	10
1987	75.4	12,546,186	46.2	358	8,006,466	29.5	155	6,467,350	23.8	10
1983	72.5	11,711,519	46.0	362	6,862,422	26.8	148	6,714,957	26.4	13

While Blair was in government, the Tories made three unexpectedly bad choices of leader. William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard. Creeps I am delighted to be able to insult as The Three Baldies.

Those three were unpleasant and unpopular. The Tory voters lost in 1997 mostly did not return in 2001 or 2005.

Note that Blair in those years was very useful to the rich elite, keeping most of the Labour Party inert. Supportive of the disastrous invasion of Iraq.

The possibility that various greedy individuals and cliques manipulated things is not absurd. Certainly, my recollection is that the media was nothing like as hostile to Labour as it usually is.

Victory to Labour’s Timid Tendency?

If Starmer turns out to be a Blairite at heart, he is likely to face a major left-wing breakaway. Face a party of Untamed Socialists of the sort that has emerged in much of Western Europe.

Such a move would be harder, unless Britain’s grossly unfair first-past-the-post system gets reformed, which will be hard given the parliamentary majority of those getting the unfair benefits. But it could easily happen. Plenty of Hard Leftists would be happy with just a larger audience, even with no real hope of power.

Starmer will also face newspapers and news channels dominated by right-wing owners. People who mostly pay no UK taxes. And who help parties with ‘business-friendly’ attitudes with scares about Communism.

In his case, some loose Trotskyist connections when he was much younger, which Private Eye has drawn attention to. Private Eye is a magazine for people who hate the Establishment, but are terrified of all possible alternatives. Not just Communism, but also serious Democratic Socialism.

My own answer on Communism is that the various Leninist movements changed the culture in societies that needed it. Changed the whole structure of the economy and the society in ways that most people do not understand.[19]

For Russia, I can produce an unexpected witness – Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I’ve been reading his Red Wheel as it gets translated into English. To my surprise, he has contempt for absolutely everyone who might have been an alternative to Lenin and Stalin.

Solzhenitsyn’s original version of The First Circle is now available, in place of the self-censored version he tried to get published in the Soviet Union in 1968. There he seems to see the revolution that overthrew the Tsar as a hopeful movement subverted by a wicked Bolshevik coup. But his researches since then may have undermined that view. The Constitutional Democrats (Kadets) are weak fools. Kerensky, leader of the relatively moderate Social-Revolutionaries, is a vain posturer.

I’ve been told by someone who read it in French translation that the final parts of The Red Wheel continues this theme, with Lenin’s arrival.[20] My French is too poor for serious reading, so I await with interest the English version.

Solzhenitsyn’s original plan was to carry through till 1922. But his published works get no further than April 1917. Maybe he disliked where his own work was leading him.

For People’s China, which now reasserts its Leninist roots, a very smart British writer said in 1950 that Mao as China’s ruler would be out to change the culture.[21] And Mao succeeded in making a fair copy of Stalin’s Soviet Union. He tripled the economy, doubled the population and in the 1960s got death-rates down way below the poor-country norm for the era. Even in the crisis after the failed Great Leap Forward, death-rates were no worse than average for many poor countries.[22]

A number of books written to ‘prove’ that Mao failed all ignore this and much other evidence of solid achievement. They don’t say why they think that the data is wrong: they simply say nothing about the off-message facts.

Jung Chang in her bitterness against Mao is being true to her heritage as granddaughter of a Chinese warlord.[23] A surprising number of Chinese critics of Mao are descended from the sort of people who made a complete mess of running China before 1949.

The media have convinced many Westerners that Mao is guilty of tens of millions of deaths, but this is nonsense. Had a miracle happened and China got a nice liberal government like in India, death rates would on average have stayed high. Millions of ordinary Chinese had longer better lives thanks to Mao.[24]

Mao’s work has also lasted better than that of Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru. Multi-party democracy has delivered power to Hindu extremism. Mr Modi gets blamed personally, but I suspect he is a moderating force at the head of a much wider right-wing movement.

Modi flourishes at the same time as Trump in the USA, Illiberal Democracy in Eastern Europe, Islamic Populism in Turkey and Hard-Line Islam elsewhere. Very different ideas, but flourishing thanks to liberal selfishness and neglect of ordinary people.

Mao left behind a China that Deng could then open to foreign investors and raise up as a world centre of manufacturing. Before that, and sensibly fearing it, Mao attempted something much more radical in his Cultural Revolution. This got reversed after his death: but the popular-democratic aims were things many would wish to see done, by less drastic methods.

Deng in using capitalism to cure backwardness was more of an orthodox Marxist than Mao was.

So too is Xi. Private commerce is a means to an end, not the final goal.

In the West, we still have the Mixed Economy created in the 1940s. But now fine-tuned to favour the rich.

In the West, the culture has been reformed massively from the 1950s. Done without much violence, but the possibility of violence was always there.

Violence was actually expressed by Irish Republicanism in Northern Ireland, and their political wing now share power in government. And have become the single strongest party in the Irish Republic. They can hope to achieve Irish Unity in the next couple of decades: perhaps much sooner with the chaos over Brexit.

Claiming that ‘violence does not work’ sounds plausible, only if you carefully avoid looking at all the cases when it did work for those who began it. Or who handled it best – there are always disagreement about who began what.

The British Empire is the most dramatic case. The Empire is gone, but English is the ‘hub culture’ for a very diverse world.

Violence and terrorism by Irish Republicanism has always had powerful sympathisers in the USA. So a sycophantic media mostly does not talk about it in the same terms as other violence and terrorism.

Beyond Ireland, most of the radical changes in the second half of the 20^th century happened when the ruling class feared they’d lose the Cold War. Class barriers became more flexible, and lots of snobbish rules were abandoned. All sorts of concessions were made to women, and to those previously considered Inferior Races. Changes happened that might otherwise not have happened.

The concessions extended to gays and lesbians, which was more radical than Leninism ever intended. China softened its previous intolerance in the 1980s, amidst a general flood of Western values.

Right-wingers might say ‘over my dead body’. Leninists might answer ‘yes, that’s what we had in mind’. And at that point, moderates summoned up the courage to take on the right-wingers and make moderate reforms.

Liberals believe in moderation in all things – including social justice. But when liberals see their comfortable privileges at risk, almost anything is possible.

European Communism had some justification up to the 1950s. And little thereafter, when most of their sensible demands became plausible as policies for Democratic Socialists When we might have had Workers Control, and also secured more social justice through an incomes policy.

European communism carried on hoping for total victory with the collapse of ‘capitalism’, up until their own system collapsed. The chance to move the Mixed Economy further towards socialism was opposed and was lost.

The main alternative on the left were foolish Trotskyists, too soft for real revolution and too militant for successful reformism.

Between them, they paved the way for Thatcher. As super-militants, they undermined sensible Labour Party policies.

But now the young have a new enthusiasm for a Mixed Economy with more socialism.

Clearly there is also old-fashioned racism and male-chauvinism among the lost Labour voters. In my own constituency, Coventry North West, a young black lady called Taiwo Owatemi only just won. She got some 6,000 votes less than white and elderly Geoffrey Robinson, an excellent but conventional MP who had stepped down after 43 years.[25] Here, the Brexit vote was actually more than in 2017, but the Tory got an extra 2,500 votes. Ex-Labour racists, maybe: but should we throw away all of our principles in the hope of keeping such votes?

For some Labour-to-Tory switch-voters, the main issue was that a Tory victory meant Brexit for certain, while Labour leaned toward Remain.

Taiwo Owatemi got more votes than Geoffrey Robinson got in 2015. Marginally fewer than he got in 2010, and a thousand fewer than he got in 2005.

Geoffrey Robinson in 2017 got by far his biggest vote since 1997, when Tony Blair promised much that he never delivered. Blair also delivered much that no one had expected, including an unprecedented state funeral for Thatcher and a horrible war in Iraq.

Tories in the bad atmosphere created by Brexit had success in massaging old-fashioned racism and male-chauvinism. And it is just massaging. They are the party of business, which now lives in a multi-ethnic world with penalties for serious racism. With women increasingly less unequal, and pushing strongly for more. So they have never given such voters more than a few crumbs. Treated them like idiots, and it is yet to be shown that they are mistaken.

Someone with a voice powerful enough to be heard nationally should point this out. Say that while Tories always cater to racists and sexists, they always cheat them. Prefer militant young females, and those who’d not be classed as part of the White Race.

Labour is also not dependent on racists and sexists. Catering to them is not even real pragmatism, since Tories will generally do it better.

Yes, some former Labour voters switched to Tory, or failed to vote. But Labour also picked up many young people who failed to vote before. And by 2024, the expected date for the next General Election, many more young people will have the vote.

Those young people would probably not vote for a Labour Party that was a lukewarm copy of Tory policies. If Labour is foolish enough to reject Corbynite radicalism, it will gain a few votes from the Timid Centre. But lose far more from people who know that many things are seriously wrong.

Labour lost in 2019, because about 45% of the population wanted Brexit no matter what the cost. For them, what had gone wrong since the relatively pleasant 1960s was Immigration and ‘Brussels Bureaucrats’.

Some of these voted Tory, who would not normally do so. Some would not, but did not vote Labour. It all added up.

Brexit would probably have lost had its opponents rallied behind the demand for a Second Referendum. It would have been a just demand. The original vote was won on the false promise that Brexit would be soft and easy. That it would release vast sums to spend on the NHS.

The vote was won with 51.9%, which I’d guess to be a combination of 45% Brexit-at-any-cost and 7% ‘Soft Brexit’. Polls indicated that a second vote would have chosen ‘Remain’.[26] But sadly, there was never a clear parliamentary majority to ask the people if they were still set on Brexit. Ask if they were confident now that the rest of Europe had held firm and refused to let Britain have the benefits without the cost.

Quitting on the terms accepted by Johnson is likely to be very nasty. Likewise those offered by May. So I am very glad that Labour repeatedly refused to abstain and let either deal be carried through. It certainly got us mauled in 2019. But from now on, the guilt will be entirely Tory.

And the same applies to Covid-19. Boris Johnson delayed by several critical days or weeks before applying the right controls. Controls that Labour called for earlier.

And the backwash from Brexit may not be so bad in the long run. With Britain gone, the European Union might get more serious about integration and welfare policies. I am 69 years old and may not live to see it, but I like to think long-term and for the general welfare. Anything else I would find unbearably squalid.

I am also sad that Labour failed to draw the correct lesson from the Crisis of 2008. The Tories said it was down to excessive government spending. Labour was weak in saying that it was speculators. Went along with policies of Austerity for most people and a vast bail-out of banks that should have been allowed to collapse. The gibberish name ‘Quantitative Easing’ was used, but it was a bail-out for rich speculators. The wealth of the rich was protected, with Obama doing just the same thing in the USA. So the Tories revived and Labour slumped in 2010 and 2015.

2015 also saw the collapse of the Liberal-Democrats. Foolishly, they had not demanded a fairer voting system after 2010, when it would have been impossible to form a government without them. They agreed to a referendum on a possible reform, and lost it. Lost most of their voters and seats in 2015, and have not really recovered since. They picked up some dedicated Remainer votes, but still less voters than before they made themselves doormats to Tory policies in 2010-15 coalition.

My Generation and the New Generation

It is true enough that some former Labour voters refused to vote for Corbyn regardless of Brexit. But that is mostly the elderly.

Born in 1950, I am part of the Baby Boomer generation.

More accurately, the wave of young people often led by War Babies, those born from 1939 to 1945. Baby Boomers are commonly defined as 1946 to 1964. But the difference in outlook is minimal.

All four members of The Beatles were War Babies, as was Mick Jagger. Slightly older than the rest of us, and so were the leaders in thought and music.

Here, I am mostly talking about Thought. But also pop music as reflecting thought, and also helping to created it.

The faults and the successes of my own generation.

Most Baby Boomers opted for Thatcherism, and are now offended by the modern world they helped create.

My generation: and I remember well that a majority of them were only interested in radicalism when it served their own selfish interests.

They were greedy then. And as they aged, they have got worse.

Rebels against The System even when they became The System. It does not make for good government, as the current Covus-19 crisis is vividly showing.

The triumph of the Baby Boomers was a cultural liberation. But a liberation that also weakened or destroyed the security and welfare of the less fortunate.

People born since the 1960s may not have heard of a pop group called The Who – though that generation as a whole were highly creative, and their influence lingers. They were born between 1944 and 1946, as it happens, spanning the supposed gap.

Songs from The Who were catchy, but even at the time I had a low opinion of them. Saw them as silly little whiners. Much worse than most of the whining selfish majority of a generation whose commitment to others was weak.

Even The Beatles, far more positive than most, broke with tradition in simply ignoring requests for free charity work that previous musical successes had respected.

Later bands were much more negative. The Who are the worst case known to me.

And the 1965 hit song My Generation is the one that most offends me now.

At the time, my late mother got very offended by the line ‘Why don’t you all fade away’. Young people with no gratitude for the older generation who had made an excellent world for them. A world better than any generation had inherited before them.

And in many ways better than what generations after the Baby Boomers would get. When they got older and more prosperous, a majority of Baby Boomers began seeing the taxes that had funded their comfortable upbringing as an intolerable burden. And twisted logic to deny the obvious fact that Social Welfare had been a grand success.

This was helped by most of the left whinging about what was still imperfect. Not mentioning how much good had been done.

Good done by people who were neither Trotskyists nor Anarchists nor post-Stalin pro-Moscow Communists.

Socialist successes were bad-mouthed by people with few positive achievements. People whose rise coincides remarkably with the decline of socialist prestige and power.

I never forgot my mother’s words. This and other things she said come out as quite as relevant as the published work of my father Raymond Williams. Who indeed would almost certainly not have become the productive and successful man he was without my mother’s support. Indeed, in the Forward to Culture and Society, he says she was “virtually the joint author”. It is a pity he did not make her such: she always hesitant about asserting herself. I’d suppose that in today’s changed world, even much less deserving wives or other partners do get listed.

And re-checking details of My Generation, I learn that the song was sparked at a minor exercise of authority by the Queen Mother. She allegedly had a Who member’s 1935 Packard hearse towed off a street in Belgravia because she was offended by the sight of it. [27]

Whatever her faults, the widowed wife of George 6^th did show real concern for those less fortunate than herself. Something the new wave of pop stars seldom bothered with. And though her appearance in a film called The King’s Speech may bend history a little, I think the full picture would be even better.

Reading and checking the full lyrics of My Generation, I was struck by a line I had forgotten: ‘I hope I die before I get old’.[28] Not something they or their kind stuck to, when they really did get old. Keith Moon killed himself with drugs and alcohol in 1978: one of a string of premature deaths within a self-indulgent self-destructive culture. But the others lasted into the 21^st century, with two of them still alive.[29]

Paul McCartney showed a much more serious and human sentiment, writing ‘Will you still need me / Will you still feed me / When I’m sixty-four?’ when in his mid-20s.[30] He is still going strong at 77.

The elderly mostly vote Tory. They remain well-fed.

They are also much more likely to vote.

Younger people have often been persuaded that it is a waste of time voting. And are very puzzled to find themselves neglected.

And what next?

Millions of young people voted Labour, who had not voted before. And they are the future.

The world’s future.

The future for Labour, only if Starmer quietly accepts that Corbyn was right about social justice and inequality.

If Labour does not scuttle back to the policies of weak acceptance of injustice that led to a falling-away in 2001 and 2005, followed by defeat in 2010 and 2015.

Blair won his second and third election victories almost by default. Turnout slumped dramatically, from 71% to 59% and 61%. The Tories before Cameron had a string of unpopular and unimpressive leaders: the men I called The Three Baldies. They tried to tap into right-wing Populism, but were not convincing as demagogues.

Cameron managed to present himself as sensible and safe, though he was neither. But Boris Johnson represents a Populism that can win voters not tied to the classical left-right spectrum.

In the USA, polls for the 2016 election showed that Bernie Sanders had a better chance of beating Trump than Hilary Clinton did. Hilary actually got more votes than Trump, but lost because these were translated into Electoral College votes that favoured small and mostly right-wing US states. But there were many discontented voters whose first choice was socialist Bernie Sanders, but whose second choice was anti-Establishment Trump.

The Saunders-to-Trump voters should have been asked, ‘do you really think that a very rich man is going to look after the poor and ordinary, rather than look after his own sort?’ Because that is what he has mostly done.

Yet people still get fooled. We’d probably get the same in Britain, if Starmer rejects Corbyn and moves back to re-gather elderly unhappy voters. No doubt we would win some. But we would lose enormous numbers of young people who want something different. Labour would slump again.

Elections are a funny business. Labour won big in 1945 and lost in the elections of 1950 and 1951. But Labour got a majority of the votes in both those elections, and far more than they got in 1945.

What also happened was that the Tory vote recovered: from under 9 million in 1945 to 12.5 million in 1950 and 13.7 million in 1951. Several million voters must have wanted some change in 1945, or at least did not fear a Labour government. By 1950 they perhaps felt that change had gone far enough. And the Tories then, and up until Thatcher, respected the main changes Labour had made.

But the returned Tory voters did not in fact mean a Tory majority. Attlee in 1951 got over 200,000 more votes than Churchill. But the oddity of constituency boundaries meant that Churchill got the parliamentary majority.[31]

Labour in government had agreed to a redrawing of constituency boundaries that satisfied some abstract notions of justice, but had the predictable effect of allowing the Tories to win more seats with less votes. Playing things much too clean, which the Tories never would.

Tories also know that the media are often deluded, and commonly corrupt. Will howl about ‘bias’ when the bias is not as strongly in their favour as they would like. Managed to tame the BBC that way.

Much louder protests by the left are needed, tapping into the large mass of discontented.

Selective Horror About Anti-Semitism

When the row about Labour anti-Semitism surfaced, I immediately checked for what I suspected was the weak point. My own experience told me that Labour activists would often be hostile to Zionism, but not to Jews as such.

Even if you thought that all anti-Zionism was disguised anti-Semitism, there was still little difference between the major parties.

I tried illustrating this by imaging some tabloid using a misleading headline:

“Tunbridge Wells has a Drugs and Murder Problem”

For those not familiar with Britain, Tunbridge Wells is famous as an archetype of respectable English identity. It is not free of either murder or drug abuse – but it has less of a problem than the British average. For that matter, Britain is by no means bad compared to other advanced Western states. We do not have the mass shootings or massive opioid epidemic of the USA.

I detailed how it was unfair to pick on Labour, when hostility to Jews existed in all parties. And when it was not distinct from other sorts of communal hatred. Chinese get less than most, most of the time. But Chinese who have not lived there for years are now being blamed for Covid-19.[32]

I felt Labour should emphasise that Labour was being falsely accused of having more anti-Jewish feeling than other parties. And it was no accident that this happened when Labour had a leader sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

I wrote about this in the magazine Labour Affairs back in May 2015.[33]

Sadly, I seem to have been classified as a Person of No Importance, if I am noticed at all. A defence that might have made a massive difference was never used by anyone else, as far as I know.

The issue remains. And I’d suggest that Labour should commission YouGov or some other respected and impartial agency to redo the survey. And also to produce separate figures for racial and religious groups within the political parties.

My expectation would be that most of the Labour Party members suspicious about Jews as such would be Muslims. But foolish prejudices are also found among some people of African or Afro-Caribbean origin. The minorities that the Tories were happy to pick on before they became so numerous that their votes were needed. Minorities that Labour helped integrate into the society, risking and sometimes losing its supporters among the traditional working class.

The poet Auden saw it nicely when he said ‘Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return.’

That was actually said about Germans supporting the Nazis, which may upset some people. And those people need to be upset: jolted out of blind prejudice. Germany did evil because of the massive injustices done to them after World War One.

Britain might have been as bad and even as hostile to Jews had Britain been an abused loser after a German victory. And in real history, Britain had been in alliance with Tsarist Russia despite its vicious anti-Semitism. And despite being victors, the London Times was willing to believe the Protocols of the Elders of Zion until it was proven plagiarised from a French denunciation of Napoleon the Third.[34]

In World War Two, the Allies refused to bomb the railway lines leading to the death camps. Bombing the camps themselves might have killed the victims, but anything that slowed the shipment of Jews and others to specialised killing centres would have helped.

Churchill also decided to entirely neglect the Bengal famine of 1943.[35]

“Churchill was quoted as blaming the famine on the fact Indians were ‘breeding like rabbits’, and asking how, if the shortages were so bad, Mahatma Gandhi was still alive.”[36]

This reminds me of the Holocaust-deniers who cast doubt by pointing to various survivors. By that same logic, perhaps no one drowned on the Titanic.

Hostility to Jews is foolish and sometimes evil. But it is not separate from general prejudice and general suffering. And to pretend otherwise is not even intelligent selfishness. The media will go along with the pretence that prejudice against high-status people is quite different from prejudice against the unwanted and marginal. But that will only increase the resentment and possibility of violence. I’ve explained elsewhere why I have a dismal expectation that Zionism’s hard-line will in the long run prove suicidal.[37]

If you want the hard facts about resentment specifically against Jews, one sample is available free in a PDF document called Antisemitism in contemporary Great Britain: A study of attitudes towards Jews and Israel, by L. Daniel Staetsky.[38] If you’re in a hurry, page 45 has the key facts, which I display here.

Unsurprisingly, Muslims have the strongest feelings.

In Britain as a whole, there is more prejudice against Muslims, non-Muslim Asians and people of African or Afro-Caribbean origin. Some against East Asians. And of course those groups are often very prejudiced against each other. Ordinary Chinese do not like Black Africans living in China, though they will accept high-spending foreign tourists.

It is also a fact that US and European prejudices were reduced when we had a smooth-running Mixed Economy. That they increased as inequality and unemployment grew. Jews are just one of many possible targets.

Real Cures for Anti-Semitism

The basic cure for prejudice and hatred is to return to the milder inequality and greater economic security that the West had before following the delusions of Reagan and Thatcher.

But there are other things that could be done about the specific prejudice against Jews. I had some ideas for useful media projects. I believe they could make a difference, if people with the money and professional skills would take and interest:

1. The True History of the Protocols of Zion. I’ve given the basic story as part of a wider study in Issue 30 of Problems magazine: Hitler – the 13th Chancellor.

It starts with a man called John Robison, who invented the siren and also worked with James Watt on an early and impractical steam car.[39] Who knew Adam Smith. And who was judged crazy when he produced a conspiracy theory about the French Revolution being caused by Freemasons – Jews were of no interest to him.

Variations that included Jews swiftly followed. Most of them demented and unimpressive.

Most of what raises the Protocols above the usual right-wing trash was stolen by an unknown plagiarist from the work of a depressed French radical called Maurice Joly. A man who 14 years later committed suicide.

Joly was not concerned about what Jews might be doing. But his bitter denunciation of the corrupt liberalism of Napoleon the Third’s Empire include insights into both liberal failings and newly-developed methods of social control. Stuff that you do find a few Jews involved in, but most of those involved are not Jews. Stuff that most Jews are not involved in, and some have been dedicated opponents of. But when people get hooked on hatred, critical thought is lost. Some Jews are found: it must all be a Jewish plot.

2. Haym Salomon and the making of the USA. This associate of the Rothschilds played a large and heroic role, and is largely forgotten.[40] An authentic conspiracy, but one whom most of the world would approved of.

Foreigners might wonder if Britons might blame Jews for losing them their first Empire. Myself, I’m sure that would be too crackpot even for the Far Right. Most Britons followed Edmund Burke in seeing the American Revolution as justified. A defeat that helped moderate reform in Britain.

Robert Graves’s Sergeant Lamb novels are exceptional in being sympathetic to those Britons who fought against US independence. There is also Bernard Cornwell’s The Fort, which is a neutral description of a minor incident in that war. Neutral apart from presenting the famous Paul Revere as a sham hero.

3. The Rothschilds – a faded legacy. How it is decades since they counted for much in International Finance. And were never important on the scale of the Medici and similar true powerhouses.

4. The Jewish Mother of Fascism. The remarkable life of Margherita Sarfatti, who may have been the brains behind Mussolini’s new politics. The story could include other Italian Jewish Fascists, most of whom fled or perished.

5. The Bronsteins of Petrograd. A soap-opera beginning in 1914, but set mostly in 1917. An extended Jewish family with the same surname as Trotsky, but not related to him.

Have the various family members of both sexes spread across most of the politics of the time – Bolshevik, the pro-war and anti-war Menshevik, Trotsky’s own small faction, Zionists, Bundists and Liberals.

Bundists in particular are worth remembering. Mocked as ‘Zionists with sea-sickness’, they had the sensible idea of strongly asserting Jewish identity within the multi-cultural and multi-ethnic states where most Jews then lived. And favoured Yiddish rather than a revival of Hebrew.

Bundists understandable vanished as a major movement after the mass slaughter of Jews in the places where they had tried to co-exist. But they are worth remembering.

As an extra, a young teenage girl among the rival Bronsteins could be friends with another young Jew called Alisa Rosenbaum, later famous as right-wing libertarian Ayn Rand. And fascinatingly, one of her closest friends was Vladimir Nabokov’s younger sister. Have the little Bronstein encounter the man himself, then aged 18. Have her not like the way he looked at her.

Nabokov, incidentally, had synesthesia.^[41] A muddling of the senses that is sometimes linked to high creativity. His account of his odd visions in his autobiography I found fascinating, while Lolita I found simply debased. A synesthetic vision should make good television, if anyone dares go beyond the usual conventional negativity that now dominates drama.

But politics should be the backbone of such a drama. It should be emphasised that there were not overall many Jewish Bolsheviks before the October Revolution, even though there were a lot of Jews among the leaders. One estimate is that at the start of 1917 there were 300,000 Zionists in Russia, 34,000 Bundists, and less than 1000 in Lenin’s faction^[42] The largest faction within Russian Marxism, with everyone using the term Social-Democrat till Bolsheviks revived the old term ‘Communist’ in 1918.

Rather more Jews supported the Mensheviks, who opposed the October Revolution. And when it came to voting, most Jews supported Russian liberalism.[43]

“The Bolsheviks had very little support among the Jewish population, possibly the lowest amount of any of the multiple parties vying for support ‘on the Jewish street.’… More Jews, though hardly a great number, supported the Mensheviks…
“The Jewish population broadly rejected socialism in any guise, Jewish or not, as the solution to the problems of the Jews in Russia.
“Far more Jews, though still a minority, supported the liberal party known as the Kadets (the acronym for the Constitutional Democrats)”.[44]

The Kadets had not always been friendly to Jews. The majority of Jews seem to have voted for independent liberal Jewish parties.

In the overall vote for a Constituent Assembly, the Socialist-Revolutionaries got 37.61. The Bolsheviks got 23.26. The Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionary Party and its allies got 12.68. Mensheviks 3.02%.[45]

The Kadets, the main force of Russian liberalism, got a mere 4.58%. The most significant defender of the Old Order, the All-Russian Union of Landowners and Farmers, got a derisory 0.5%: less than a quarter of a million votes.

The population of the Russian Empire voted overwhelmingly for some sort of socialism. And to judge by the confusion and failure of other revolutions, probably only Lenin setting up a dictatorial regime could have actually delivered it. So no one on the left need apologise for finding positives in the Soviet past.

Russia’s pro-Western liberals in 1917 got much the same as modern Russian liberals get after their brief popularity during Yeltsin’s rule. The Western media hype them, but the main opposition to Putin is and always has been the revived Russian Communists.[46]

Back in 1917, Jewish national lists got 1.25%: probably a majority of voters among the Tsarist Empire’s Jewish minority. Most of them then tried to be loyal Soviet citizens, but got treated with suspicion after 1947 when many of them also went beyond Soviet policy in supporting Israel.

These facts are little known even among those who take a strong interest in politics. Popularising them in the easy form of a dramatic soap-opera has to do some good.

You don’t cure Bad Thinking by having the media and politicians gang up on offenders and scream Bad, Bad, Bad. You do it by supposing that most of them are normal humans being, with mixed motives but able to be reached by arguments. And particularly by dramas that are both entertaining and broadly factual.

Appendix – Details of Labour Losses

Below is the full list of seats lost by Labour in the 2019 general election, as given by ‘Labour List’.^[47] I added the gains and losses from 2017. Also Labour gains compared to 2015, when the Labour Moderates were not challenging Austerity and Brexit was not a major issue.^[48]

In many cases Labour got more votes in 2019 than they had in 2015. But in 2019, most of the Brexit vote went to the Tories.

Seats	Leave	Remain	Tory Gain (%)	Labour Loss	2017 gain from 2015	Special Factors
Ashfield	70.5%		-2.4	18.1	1.6	“Ashfield Independents” 2nd
Barrow and Furness	57.3%		4.8	8.2	5.2
Bassetlaw	68.3%		11.9	24.9	3.9	No UKIP / Brexit in 2017
Birmingham Northfield	61.8%		3.6	10.7	11.6
Bishop Auckland	60.9%		6.8	12.1	6.7
Blackpool South	67.8%		6.5	12.0	8.5
Blyth Valley	60.5%		5.8	15.0	9.6
Bolsover	70.4%		6.9	16.0	0.7
Bolton North East	58.1%		3.2	6.1	7.7
Bridgend	50.3%		3.3	10.3	13.6
Burnley	66.6%		9.4	9.9	9.1
Bury North	53.7%		1.8	7.6	12.5
Bury South	54.5%		2.3	10.2	8.2
Clwyd South	59.9%		5.6	9.4	13.5
Coatbridge		61.2%	-3.6	7.6	8.7	Scottish Nationalist gain
Colne Valley	50.1%		2.2	7.7	12.8
Crewe and Nantwich	60.3%		6.1	9.7	9.4
Darlington	58.1%		4.8	10.1	7.7
Delyn	54.4%		2.2	10.8	11.6
Derby North	54.3%		0.8	8.7	11.9
Dewsbury	57.2%		1.3	7.3	9.2
Don Valley	68.5%		1.4	14.8	6.8	Caroline Flint.^[49] Anti-Corbyn and voted Leave.
Dudley North	71.4%		16.6	14.9	4.7	Previous MP quit Labour
Durham North West	55.1%		7.5	13.3	6.0
East Lothian		64.6%	-6.6	3.1	5.5	Scottish Nationalist gain
Gedling	56.3%		2.6	7.8	9.6
Glasgow North East		59.3%	-2.4	3.5	9.2	Scottish Nationalist gain
Great Grimsby	71.5%		12.7	16.7	9.6
Heywood and Middleton	62.4%		5.1	11.6	10.2
High Peak	50.6%		0.5	4.9	14.4
Hyndburn	65.8%		8.9	11.8	11.2
Ipswich	56.5%		4.6	8.1	10.3
Keighley	53.3%		2.0	2.6	8.4
Kensington		68.8%	-3.9	4.3	11.1	Liberal-Democrat vote doubled
Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath		56.7%	-3.2	4.2	3.5	Scottish Nationalist gain
Leigh	63.3%		9.4	15.1	2.3
Lincoln	57.4%		3.2	6.9	8.3
Midlothian		62.1%	-3.7	6.7	6.2	Scottish Nationalist gain
Newcastle-under-Lyme	61.6%		4.4	12.3	9.8
Penistone and Stocksbridge	60.7%		4.7	12.5	3.8	Previous MP quit Labour
Peterborough	61.3%		-0.1	6.7	12.5	Ignoring a 2019 by-election
Redcar	67.7%		12.8	18.1	11.6
Rother Valley	66.7%		4.8	16.0	4.5
Rutherglen and Hamilton West		62.4%	-4.5	3.0	2.3	Scottish Nationalist gain
Scunthorpe	68.7%		10.3	15.3	10.3
Sedgefield	59.4%		8.4	17.1	6.2
Stockton South	57.8%		3.8	7.4	11.5
Stoke-on-Trent Central	64.9%		5.6	8.2	12.2
Stoke-on-Trent North	72.1%		7.0	14.3	11.0
Stroud		54.1%	2.0	4.9	9.3
Vale of Clwyd	56.6%		2.3	8.7	11.9
Wakefield	62.8%		2.3	9.9	9.4
Warrington South	51.1%		1.3	6.1	9.3
West Bromwich East	68.2%		8.5	16.7	7.8
West Bromwich West	68.7%		10.9	12.5	4.7
Wolverhampton North East	67.7%		11.4	13.0	6.7
Wolverhampton South West	54.4%		4.1	5.1	6.1
Workington	61.0%		7.5	11.9	8.8
Wrexham	57.6%		1.7	9.9	11.7
Ynys Mon	50.9%		7.7	11.8	10.8

You can find details of some of the seats where Labour got more votes when losing in 2019 than they had when winning in 2015 on my website, https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/editorials-from-labour-affairs/the-brexit-defeat/labours-lost-seats-causes/. Note that it was in part the Tories getting Brexit or UKIP votes:

Except in Scotland, the bigger the Leave vote, the better for the Tories and the worse for Labour. The table below is sorted by Leave vote.

Seats	Leave	Remain	Tory Gain (%)	Labour Loss	2017 gain from 2015	Special Factors
Stoke-on-Trent North	72.1%		7.0	14.3	11.0
Great Grimsby	71.5%		12.7	16.7	9.6
Dudley North	71.4%		16.6	14.9	4.7	Previous MP quit Labour
Ashfield	70.5%		-2.4	18.1	1.6	“Ashfield Independents” 2nd
Bolsover	70.4%		6.9	16.0	0.7
Scunthorpe	68.7%		10.3	15.3	10.3
West Bromwich West	68.7%		10.9	12.5	4.7
Don Valley	68.5%		1.4	14.8	6.8	Caroline Flint, details above
Bassetlaw	68.3%		11.9	24.9	3.9	No UKIP / Brexit in 2017
West Bromwich East	68.2%		8.5	16.7	7.8
Blackpool South	67.8%		6.5	12.0	8.5
Redcar	67.7%		12.8	18.1	11.6
Wolverhampton North East	67.7%		11.4	13.0	6.7
Rother Valley	66.7%		4.8	16.0	4.5
Burnley	66.6%		9.4	9.9	9.1
Hyndburn	65.8%		8.9	11.8	11.2
Stoke-on-Trent Central	64.9%		5.6	8.2	12.2
Leigh	63.3%		9.4	15.1	2.3
Wakefield	62.8%		2.3	9.9	9.4
Heywood and Middleton	62.4%		5.1	11.6	10.2
Birmingham Northfield	61.8%		3.6	10.7	11.6
Newcastle-under-Lyme	61.6%		4.4	12.3	9.8
Peterborough	61.3%		-0.1	6.7	12.5	Ignoring a 2019 by-election
Workington	61.0%		7.5	11.9	8.8
Bishop Auckland	60.9%		6.8	12.1	6.7
Penistone and Stocksbridge	60.7%		4.7	12.5	3.8	Previous MP quit Labour
Blyth Valley	60.5%		5.8	15.0	9.6
Crewe and Nantwich	60.3%		6.1	9.7	9.4
Clwyd South	59.9%		5.6	9.4	13.5
Sedgefield	59.4%		8.4	17.1	6.2
Bolton North East	58.1%		3.2	6.1	7.7
Darlington	58.1%		4.8	10.1	7.7
Stockton South	57.8%		3.8	7.4	11.5
Wrexham	57.6%		1.7	9.9	11.7
Lincoln	57.4%		3.2	6.9	8.3
Barrow and Furness	57.3%		4.8	8.2	5.2
Dewsbury	57.2%		1.3	7.3	9.2
Vale of Clwyd	56.6%		2.3	8.7	11.9
Ipswich	56.5%		4.6	8.1	10.3
Gedling	56.3%		2.6	7.8	9.6
Durham North West	55.1%		7.5	13.3	6.0
Bury South	54.5%		2.3	10.2	8.2
Delyn	54.4%		2.2	10.8	11.6
Wolverhampton South West	54.4%		4.1	5.1	6.1
Derby North	54.3%		0.8	8.7	11.9
Bury North	53.7%		1.8	7.6	12.5
Keighley	53.3%		2.0	2.6	8.4
Warrington South	51.1%		1.3	6.1	9.3
Ynys Mon	50.9%		7.7	11.8	10.8
High Peak	50.6%		0.5	4.9	14.4
Bridgend	50.3%		3.3	10.3	13.6
Colne Valley	50.1%		2.2	7.7	12.8
Stroud		54.1%	2.0	4.9	9.3
Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath		56.7%	-3.2	4.2	3.5	Scottish Nationalist gain
Glasgow North East		59.3%	-2.4	3.5	9.2	Scottish Nationalist gain
Coatbridge		61.2%	-3.6	7.6	8.7	Scottish Nationalist gain
Midlothian		62.1%	-3.7	6.7	6.2	Scottish Nationalist gain
Rutherglen and Hamilton West		62.4%	-4.5	3.0	2.3	Scottish Nationalist gain
East Lothian		64.6%	-6.6	3.1	5.5	Scottish Nationalist gain
Kensington		68.8%	-3.9	4.3	11.1	Liberal-Democrat vote doubled

You get the same picture if you sort by the severity of Labour loss. And note this is just where Labour lost.

Seats	Leave	Remain	Tory Gain (%)	Labour Loss	2017 gain from 2015	Special Factors
Bassetlaw	68.3%		11.9	24.9	3.9	No UKIP / Brexit in 2017
Ashfield	70.5%		-2.4	18.1	1.6	“Ashfield Independents” 2nd
Redcar	67.7%		12.8	18.1	11.6
Sedgefield	59.4%		8.4	17.1	6.2
Great Grimsby	71.5%		12.7	16.7	9.6
West Bromwich East	68.2%		8.5	16.7	7.8
Bolsover	70.4%		6.9	16.0	0.7
Rother Valley	66.7%		4.8	16.0	4.5
Scunthorpe	68.7%		10.3	15.3	10.3
Leigh	63.3%		9.4	15.1	2.3
Blyth Valley	60.5%		5.8	15.0	9.6
Dudley North	71.4%		16.6	14.9	4.7	Previous MP quit Labour
Don Valley	68.5%		1.4	14.8	6.8	Caroline Flint, details above
Stoke-on-Trent North	72.1%		7.0	14.3	11.0
Durham North West	55.1%		7.5	13.3	6.0
Wolverhampton North East	67.7%		11.4	13.0	6.7
Penistone and Stocksbridge	60.7%		4.7	12.5	3.8	Previous MP quit Labour
West Bromwich West	68.7%		10.9	12.5	4.7
Newcastle-under-Lyme	61.6%		4.4	12.3	9.8
Bishop Auckland	60.9%		6.8	12.1	6.7
Blackpool South	67.8%		6.5	12.0	8.5
Workington	61.0%		7.5	11.9	8.8
Hyndburn	65.8%		8.9	11.8	11.2
Ynys Mon	50.9%		7.7	11.8	10.8
Heywood and Middleton	62.4%		5.1	11.6	10.2
Delyn	54.4%		2.2	10.8	11.6
Birmingham Northfield	61.8%		3.6	10.7	11.6
Bridgend	50.3%		3.3	10.3	13.6
Bury South	54.5%		2.3	10.2	8.2
Darlington	58.1%		4.8	10.1	7.7
Burnley	66.6%		9.4	9.9	9.1
Wakefield	62.8%		2.3	9.9	9.4
Wrexham	57.6%		1.7	9.9	11.7
Crewe and Nantwich	60.3%		6.1	9.7	9.4
Clwyd South	59.9%		5.6	9.4	13.5
Derby North	54.3%		0.8	8.7	11.9
Vale of Clwyd	56.6%		2.3	8.7	11.9
Barrow and Furness	57.3%		4.8	8.2	5.2
Stoke-on-Trent Central	64.9%		5.6	8.2	12.2
Ipswich	56.5%		4.6	8.1	10.3
Gedling	56.3%		2.6	7.8	9.6
Colne Valley	50.1%		2.2	7.7	12.8
Bury North	53.7%		1.8	7.6	12.5
Coatbridge		61.2%	-3.6	7.6	8.7	Scottish Nationalist gain
Stockton South	57.8%		3.8	7.4	11.5
Dewsbury	57.2%		1.3	7.3	9.2
Lincoln	57.4%		3.2	6.9	8.3
Midlothian		62.1%	-3.7	6.7	6.2	Scottish Nationalist gain
Peterborough	61.3%		-0.1	6.7	12.5	Ignoring a 2019 by-election
Bolton North East	58.1%		3.2	6.1	7.7
Warrington South	51.1%		1.3	6.1	9.3
Wolverhampton South West	54.4%		4.1	5.1	6.1
High Peak	50.6%		0.5	4.9	14.4
Stroud		54.1%	2.0	4.9	9.3
Kensington		68.8%	-3.9	4.3	11.1	Liberal-Democrat vote doubled
Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath		56.7%	-3.2	4.2	3.5	Scottish Nationalist gain
Glasgow North East		59.3%	-2.4	3.5	9.2	Scottish Nationalist gain
East Lothian		64.6%	-6.6	3.1	5.5	Scottish Nationalist gain
Rutherglen and Hamilton West		62.4%	-4.5	3.0	2.3	Scottish Nationalist gain
Keighley	53.3%		2.0	2.6	8.4

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52164589

[2] https://www.quora.com/q/mrgwydionmwilliams/British-Tories-rely-on-the-Old-and-the-Uneducated

[3] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/recent-issues/2019-11-magazine/2019-11/, https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/m-articles-by-topic/m99-topic-menus-from-long-revolution-website/42-china/china-three-bitter-years-1959-to-1961/

[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4331212/

[5] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/14/this-tory-budget-is-keynes-reborn-will-hutton

[6] Heinlein began as a fairly normal writer by US SF standards. I would recommend Citizen of the Galaxy as a good read and a humane story, though not realistic in imagining space-age slavery.
From the notorious Starship Troopers, he preached fantasy versions of the ideas later realised as the New Right.
Many people were bored by his later books, from Time Enough for Love.

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_(1987)

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smethwick_in_the_1964_general_election

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Wallace#African_novels_(Sanders_of_the_River_series)

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Wheatley

[11] https://www.flickr.com/photos/45909111@N00/6447307721/in/album-72157608614718792/, https://www.flickr.com/photos/45909111@N00/6447307275/in/album-72157608614718792/. Published 1961!

[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enid_Blyton#Racism,_xenophobia_and_sexism

[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golliwog

[14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_France_Insoumise

^[15] All details from the Wikipedia. UKIP in 2019 got just 22,817 votes. The Brexit Party did not stand against Tories

[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:General_elections_in_Scotland_to_the_Parliament_of_the_United_Kingdom

[17] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/problems-magazine-past-issues/the-mixed-economy-won-the-cold-war/

[18] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/editorials-from-labour-affairs/the-brexit-defeat/labours-lost-seats-causes/