The Labour Party - The Wilderness Awaits.

"Labour needs to recognise that the British ... are moderate people."

'Never believe your own bullshit!' That sage advice, given to me early in my police career, saved me from hubris. Well, not always. Anyway, the UK's Labour party would do well to take this advice, as it ruminates over the disaster of the 2019 election.

After all, getting a drunk crowd of middle-class kids at Glastonbury (£250 a ticket) to chant your name doesn't make a government. 

I have to say that all the ideological praise heaped on the bearded messiah, echoed around a silo. Meanwhile, the wider populace didn't buy Corbyn's nostalgic socialist narrative. 

In attempts to understand modern Britain, you need to move away from soundbites and the 24-hour news cycle. To keep abreast of matters while on lockdown, I recently acquired back copies of the New Statesman magazine.

This left-leaning weekly counter-balances the more rightist Spectator. Both are well-written. And they provide a respite from the daily apocalyptic headlines of click-bait newspapers. Their analysis is in-depth, insightful commentary on politics, the arts and culture.

Yes, the New Statesman and the Spectator each has an axe to grind that colours their coverage. But, fear not, people are capable of navigating this to make judgements. 

What strikes me is the amount of space the New Statesman gives to Labour's postmortem after the 2019 election catastrophe. In some issues of the magazine, one-third of the articles are ruminations on Labour's failure.

Hurt and stumbling around for answers, Labour apparatchiks come consumed by bereft feelings. 'Why would the working-class reject us?'. 

Ok, time for some hubris. I predicted this outcome in May 2018. If I could foresee the result from 6000 miles away, why couldn't others see the coming disaster? At that time, I asserted that Labour leader Corbyn was the best asset the Tories had. And so it proved — Corbyn put Boris Johnson in power. 

Anyone with an inkling of public sentiment would know that traditional Labour voters could never back Corbyn. These people may have moderate left-leaning views but hold themselves patriotic.

Thus, Corbyn's dalliances with terrorists and his anti-British sentiments drove them away. The cover-up of anti-Semitism, facilitated by Baroness Chakrabarti, didn't help. That Corbyn then rewarded her with a seat in the House of Lords confirmed his willingness to play dirty. 

Corbyn's blind and ardent support for the awful regime in Venezuela as it trashed the economy, locking up opponents, spoke to his dogma. 

Back at home, the lawyers and Oxbridge crowd — who fill the upper echelons of the party — appeared to view the voters as useful idiots. Instead of listening, they dictated with a condescending tone. 

As a consequence, Labour lost scores of working-class constituencies it had held for generations, surrendering large parts of its northern heartland to the Conservative Party.

​Rother Valley, a mining community in South Yorkshire, had been in the party's hands since 1918. Gone. Sedgefield, held by Labour since 1935. Gone. In 1997, Tony Blair won this constituency with 71 per cent of the vote.

Reading the News Statesman, I'm convinced that Labour has commenced the process that will keep it out of power for decades. With precision, they are picking over policy decisions and the minutiae going back years.

To me, this is bizarre. When the country is facing a crisis of epic proportions, Labour is burning energy examining bellybutton fluff.

Besides, many of the people leading the discussion were complicit in Corbyn's rise and reign. How can Labour expect any honest reflection from these culprits? 

Much of this flagellation is an attempt to rewrite history or draft multiple accounts to see which holds up best. Yet none of it changes the fundamentals. First, Labour lost and not by a small margin, but by a large measure. It's a seismic change, that prompts me to think is the old category of 'working-class' voter relevant?

Second, people tire of the default racist label if they dare to raise legitimate concerns about immigration or integration. Remember Gillian Duffy. 

They are also tired of a progressive agenda that promotes the rights of tiny special-interests groups over the majority. They've not forgotten that the police and other officials, under the sway of progressives, ignored rape gangs fearful of a backlash. 

But, the same police proved more than willing to check the language of citizens who dared to speak out. All these uncomfortable subjects played into the decisions voters made.

Third, people want security, respect and are aspirational. Corbyn and his crew signalled that folks should 'stay in their lane'. Then with Corbyn sitting on the Brexit fence and thinking this was clever, he tacitly poured scorn on the majority who voted out. 

Now Labour has a new leader, Sir Keir Starmer KCB, QC, MP. He only became an MP in 2015. Before that, he served as a Barrister and in the Crown Prosecution Service. In that former life, he helped drive the campaign to secure justice for Stephen Lawrence. 

Then in 2013 he somewhat stained his reputation. He now stands accused of adopting the role of 'witch-finder general' by pursuing a policy of 'always believe the victim'. 

They are suggestions that Starmer over-corrected after the Jimmy Saville imbroglio. As a result, many innocent men faced false allegations. One wonders if this will come back to haunt Starmer. 

Starmer is keen to shape the narrative by laying claim to working-class roots. He must think the electorate are fools to swallow that nonsense.

He is as much establishment as Boris Johnson. Furthermore, and this is my main point, the voters have moved on from the tribalism that defined the Labour movement. 

Yet, the fierce debate over what Labour should do next will continue. If they opt to dig deeper into the intersectional 'social-justice-warrior' narrative, it condemns them to the wilderness. They will remain a marginal party, a permanent protest movement without real power. Especially as the Tories, under Boris, will move to the middle ground.

The way things are shaping up, even after the UK's muddled Covid-19 response, Labour won't be able to make much headway. For now, the NHS is sacrosanct under the Tories — the Covid-19 scare affirmed its position as Britain's only state religion. 

So Labour lost that stick with which to beat the Tories. The evidence is shaping up that Boris has little to fear from Starmer.

Labour needs to recognise that the British, with some regional eccentricities, are moderate people. 'Don't overdo it,' 'For the sake of peace and quiet' and 'Order, Order' is the default national doctrine. 

​The challenge is, how does Labour distinguish itself as different and useful in opposition? For all that, the answer is unclear. But a sensible start would be to stop baiting the voters with marginal ideological positions. Next, cut the animus to your British identify.