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Originally Posted by Chris
Yes, it is an opinion piece. Of course it adopts a certain grand polemical style. It stands in a grand British Press tradition of using this literary form to call out hypocrisy and misbehaviour. The point is, as an intelligent reader, you’re supposed to price that in and then engage with the underlying argument. And tellingly, you refused (or are unable) to do so. Ironic, given that the point you are perhaps wilfully missing is that the ‘New Left’ is characterised by an abandonment of intellectual curiosity and a refusal to engage in debate, substituting instead diktat vis a vis acceptable opinions and public behaviour.
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I think parts of his underlying point, that the modern left has become disconnected from some of those it seeks to represent, is valid and also that not talking about issues like the grooming gangs and immigration cedes those issues to the right but that isn't something we didn't already know and he spends most of the article with cliched examples of it. It isn't insightful beyond that.
We know this change has been slowly happening for a while but the terminally online examples he gives are a symptom of underlying democratic shifts as opposed to the left-wing being hijacked by people on social media.
I think several things are happening. The most obvious one is that the left-wing base in the UK and America has shifted from manual workers without degrees to university-educated service workers. Labour voters are now more likely to have further education and are trending younger.
These people are more likely to be socially liberal rather than just economically liberal which is what I think he is getting at when he refers to 'old left'. This is where there is a disconnect and I agree that the broader left has had a problem speaking to social conservatives. The left isn't one big cohesive block but some elements of the left, especially online, have a problem speaking to the country at large as well. The Corbyn faction of the Labour Party hated Starmer doing speeches in front of the Union Jack but these people are a minority of the left.
But I think he is also making a mistake in thinking the working class is one big monolithic bloc that isn't itself also more fragmented.
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The working class from which the old left emerged and whose interests it was their mission to defend and promote are despised by the new left and its fraudulent acolytes. They despise the language of the working class; the way they run their families; the way they eat and how they choose to entertain themselves.
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What language and what families? I think he is now just invoking a mythical version of a working-class person from an old era. There are plenty of working-class liberals around. There isn't one language of the working class, one way of raising those families, and one type of food or entertainment for the working class.
The left can speak very well to some of them and not at all to others. The disconnect is higher when it comes to culture, age and education as opposed to class.