Labour’s class war hates anyone who works hard and is successful

I attended the same Trooping The Colour event at which the shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, now claims to have witnessed “a sort of demob happiness about [Conservative politicians], a sort of casual frippery, a certain kind of public-school smallness. They are not the class of people that Britain needs to run it now, and that’s what my own life story tells me.”

It’s unclear if the adoration of class-conscious comrades that Lammy is seemingly courting by his comments would be quite as forthcoming had they seen his entirely friendly and jovial (and long) conversation with Boris Johnson in the elegant confines of Dover House, the Whitehall headquarters of the Scotland Office.

But his snobbish and dismissive comments about those of an apparently different class and their unfitness to rule (he is aware, I hope, that he was there to celebrate the King’s birthday?) says something important about today’s Labour Party and the nature of its pitch to the British people.

In the same interview, Lammy was full of praise for his colleague Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader. “The Labour Party is full of people – Angela Rayner, for instance. I was with her yesterday, campaigning in Mansfield – she gets this.”

On the one hand, the fact that Lammy has not been at all visible during the campaign perhaps indicates the leadership’s lack of faith in his vote-attracting talents, which in turn might suggest that at the first meeting of the new Labour cabinet, someone else might be sitting in the seat reserved for the foreign secretary. Both of these observations speak positively about Keir Starmer’s judgment.

On the other hand, Lammy’s comments highlight a major flaw in Labour’s campaign messaging so far. He chose an interesting example of the kind of comrade who “gets” it. If anything, Rayner is a perfect example of a working class woman who has managed to climb up the social ladder, creating a comfortable lifestyle for herself and her family. She should be applauded for that, but one gets the impression that Lammy is more impressed by her accent than by her personal financial achievements, which include selling an old council house for a tidy sum.

Starmer is not shy of being compared with his election-winning predecessor, Tony Blair; and why would he be? Blair remains the most successful Labour leader in history, partly because of his electoral record but also because he dared to think and say the right things even when they were unpopular, particular with his party.

It was Blair who faced down the Left by ditching the old Clause IV of the Labour Party constitution that committed it to wholesale nationalisation or public ownership. But as brave as that act was, it was only the start. Having decided what the party should not believe, he went on to define what it should. And that can be summed up in three words: working class aspiration.

No other Labour leader had dared to say what everyone knew, that it wasn’t just acceptable for working class people to want to own their own house (a privilege resisted by successive Labour governments and delivered by a Conservative one) but was admirable, something to be encouraged.

While too many on the Left scorned, either privately or publicly, personal wealth and the luxuries of modern life, Blair recognised that ordinary people from poorer backgrounds had every right to want to improve their lot in life, to buy a bigger and better car, to take more foreign holidays, to afford an extension to the house, to send their children to a better school. And that latter aspiration was valued, not primarily because it made society better for all (although it did) but because working class people want their children to be successful and rich. Why shouldn’t they?

Blair shocked many by talking about this and by developing policies to make it a reality. But he not only won the voters over with his vision, but much of his party too – no mean feat in itself. His philosophy had the unique advantage, incidentally, of being the absolutely right one for the party. For any party.

But as much as Starmer likes to be compared with Blair, there has been vanishingly little in his own rhetoric or policies that replicates that inspiring insight that Blair had. There’s certainly a lot about communities and the importance of local decision-making and the NHS and all that. But we’ve heard precious little about how – and why – working people can – and should – improve their personal prospects and those of their children.

And while Peter Mandelson was spot-on when he declared that the last Labour government was “intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes” (my emphasis), there is no one in Labour’s ranks who would be brave enough to repeat that same sentiment today – certainly not David Lammy.

And so we head towards a big win on Thursday by a party that is coasting on the unpopularity of its opponents rather than on any new or exciting ideas of its own. Given Lammy’s out-of-date class war attitude, maybe he’ll fit into the cabinet better than I had assumed.