Calling working-class Tories traitors won't make us vote Labour

Don't imagine that someone like me considers the Johnson family my mates. Politics is only tribal for a small minority; for the rest of us, it’s a balancing act between pragmatism and principle

A bunch of celebs have got together to tell us why they think we should be voting Labour. So I tried to cobble together all the openly Tory-voting people in the creative world... and here I am. The other blokes were busy taking instructions from the Kremlin.

I can understand the left’s anxiety with the election fast approaching: Labour has rallied, but are still behind. One eye-catching feature of recent polling is that the Tories are doing around 20 per cent better among working-class voters.

If the Tories do score a majority, prepare for a backlash against these voters. We’ve had a few over the years, each worse than the last: the “shy” Tories of 2015; the “stupid racists” of 2016; the “shy, stupid, selfish, racists” of 2017. I expect this one will be fiercer still.

It’s odd, really. The liberal left hasn’t been on the winning side of a national vote in the UK since 2005, but still uses the same playbook at every one. The NHS is “days from extinction”; working-class Tories are little more than “bootlickers”; they are Jedi, they Sith.

I discovered this first-hand when I did a bit of Facebook advertising for my recent tour (a form of BDSM in which I luff out good money to be insulted). The comments ranged from “twat” (the simplicity of which I admire) to holding me personally accountable for everything bad that’s happened in Britain and in their personal life since 2010. Plus that ubiquitous charge of “class traitor”.

Maybe these commenters think there’s some sort of silver bullet put down that’ll make working-class voters come around and say, “Sorry sir, I don’t know what came over me, like. You go back to parachuting some soppy PPE graduate into my North East constituency and we’ll go back to being angry about t’pits.”

The accusation of class treachery gains traction when Stanley Johnson defends his son by punching down on the proles, saying that “the Great British public ... couldn’t spell Pinocchio if they tried.” Incidents like these are used to demonstrate that someone like me shouldn’t vote for “them” because “they” don’t give a toss about the likes of me.

Some on the left tried to make a meal out of the moment, with one blue-tick Momentum activist declaring: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have our #Bigotgate moment” (a reference to when prime minister Gordon Brown was caught on mic calling a Labour supporter a “bigoted woman”). That seemed a bit of a reach: a prime minister dismissing a reasonable woman’s concerns about immigration in 2010 isn’t the same as the political version of Jack Whitehall’s dad mouthing off on Victoria Derbyshire. Then again, the incident had an impact on me, too: I no longer think Stanley Johnson should be prime minister.

If accusations of class treachery don’t work, you’re accused of naively voting against your own interests. You’re told you want to see the NHS sold, despite no solid evidence that it will be. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are plenty of Tories who’d love to sell the NHS – but they just can’t. In fact, their newfound alliance with working-class voters makes it even harder for these moustache-twiddling Dick Dastardlies to carry out their secret plan.

In the modern political era, the Conservatives simply cannot form a majority government without broad working-class support, and they won’t get it if nurses start asking if you whether it’s ok to tap for contactless.

It’s a mistake to imagine someone like me considers the Johnsons my mates. For a small minority, politics is a matter of tribalism or purity; for the rest of us, it’s a balancing act between pragmatism and principle. I suspect that most votes at this election will be cast with a degree of reluctance; there’ll be so much nose-holding you’d think the polling stations smelled of farts. A vote for the Conservatives isn’t an endorsement of Boris Johnson’s journalism, any more than a vote for Labour is a high-five for the way Corbyn’s handled antisemitism.

Imagine you’re me (some of you might dry-retch, but give it a go). You believe in honouring the Brexit vote, leaving with a deal and want to see significant but sensible increases in spending on public services. The Lib Dems may officially have the most prudent spending plan, but then there’s the small matter of their Brexit stance, not to mention Jo Swinson’s campaign resembling an excruciating interview with Claude Littner. Who else can I vote for?

If the Tories do win, it’d be dangerous to round on the people who voted for them. I first voted Conservative in 2010 and I suspect the stick I got for it made me more 40 per cent more Tory. The left should be trying to win people back, not radicalising their conservatism.

So if Labour does have another bad night next Thursday, maybe hold the insults this time.

Geoff Norcott's touring show Taking Liberties runs until 16 November and resumes from 25 January to 25 April 2020. Tickets are available here.