Ahead of party conference, the talk is of singing the national anthem. But that’s Labour, always fighting yesterday’s battles, says Guardian columnist Zoe Williams
Ahead of party conference, the talk is of singing the national anthem. But that’s Labour, always fighting yesterday’s battles
What they cannot escape, however, is the passage of time. Twelve years have now gone by, and it would be time-consuming and complicatedly disrespectful to recap how much hardship, how much lasting damage they have caused. They can and will start culture wars to plug the rhetorical gaps, but on the material realities facing most Britons, they have only one option: a narrative of impotence.
The bigger problem, though, is that they’re always putting out yesterday’s fires, dealing with the concerns of last year’s focus groups. This drags them irresistibly into the Tory narrative, that we’re mired in a broken system. To make matters worse, this decline narrative is the left’s comfort zone, and the obvious alternative – vague, high-minded visions of a brighter, better future – won’t cut it, having been tainted by the boosterish drivel of the departing Boris Johnson.
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