Left adrift, p.21
Left Adrift, page 21
91 “Obama Doesn’t Need Right-Leaning Whites Anymore”: Ronald Brownstein, “With New Support Base, Obama Doesn’t Need Right-Leaning Whites Anymore,” National Journal, February 1, 2013, available at https://web.archive.org/web/20130204041222/http://www.nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/politics/with-new-support-base-obama-doesn-t-need-right-leaning-whites-anymore-20130201.
91 months in advance with uncanny accuracy: Sasha Issenberg, “How Obama’s Team Used Big Data to Rally Voters,” MIT Technology Review, December 19, 2012, available at www.technologyreview.com.
92 barely 10 percent of Democrats called themselves conservatives: Lydia Saad, “Democrats’ Identification as Liberal Now 54%, a New High,” Gallup, January 12, 2023, available at www.gallup.com.
93 “genuine grassroots movement”: Scott Rasmussen and Doug Schoen, Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 5.
93 “mistake the anger of populists for ignorance”: Rasmussen and Schoen, Mad as Hell, 29.
94 received a barrage of emails urging (and urging, and urging): Stanley Greenberg, “How She Lost,” American Prospect, September 21, 2017, available at www.prospect.org.
94 “In 2008, Hillary had working class voters”: “Campaign 2016: Future of the Democratic Party,” C-Span, July 28, 2016, available at www.c-span.org.
94 a purely anti-Trump message was “not enough”: Greenberg, “How She Lost.”
95 overseeing low-drama campaigns and wrangling big egos: Andy Kroll and Patrick Caldwell, “Robby Mook Just Took the Hardest Job in Politics—Saving the Clintons from Themselves,” Mother Jones, April 9, 2015, available at www.motherjones.com.
95 key battleground states like Michigan and Wisconsin were safely in their column: John Wagner, “Clinton’s Data-Driven Campaign Relied Heavily on an Algorithm Named Ada. What Didn’t She See?” Washington Post, November 9, 2016, available at www.washingtonpost.com.
96 “when Democratic leaders stopped seeing the working class”: Stanley Greenberg, “Democrats, Speak to Working-Class Discontent,” American Prospect, February 14, 2022, available at www.prospect.org.
96 “You can’t run a party based on New York”: “Doug Schoen Breaks Down the Clinton Collapse,” Fox News, February 4, 2017, available at www.foxnews.com.
97 “feel that there is some point in the whole game”: Schoen, Powell, 233.
97 “Voters think they live in a democracy”: Greenberg, Dispatches, 326.
97 when Trump flipped Macomb County back into the Republican column: “2016 Michigan Election Results,” Michigan Department of State, available at https://mielections.us.
CHAPTER THREE
99 “and more a collective trauma”: Gould, Unfinished Revolution, 147.
99 “Stan is anxious to meet you here in Little Rock”: Gould, Unfinished Revolution, 158.
100 Labour was less than a century old: Andrew Thorpe, A History of the British Labour Party, rev. ed. (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 36–58.
100 94 percent of the country identified as white: The 1991 census was the first to produce data on the country’s racial demographics, on which see K. Sillitoe and P. H. White, “Ethnic Group and the British Census: The Search for a Question,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 155, no. 1 (1992), 141–163. For the United States, see “Population by Race and Hispanic or Latino Origin for the United States: 1990 and 2000,” United States Census Bureau, April 2, 2001, available at www.census.gov.
100 modified versions of attacks that Gould had just seen take down Labour: E. J. Dionne Jr., “Bush Said to Import British Tactics,” Washington Post, October 8, 1992, available at www.washingtonpost.com.
101 Blair laid out his case: Tony Blair, “Let Us Face the Future: The 1945 Anniversary Lecture,” Fabian Pamphlet 571 (1995).
102 Labour had never held two full, consecutive terms: Richard Cracknell, Elise Uberoi, and Matthew Burton, UK Election Statistics: 1918–2023, A Long Century of Elections (London: House of Commons Library, 2023), 16.
102 “is that 1945 was the exception and not the rule”: Blair, “Let Us Face the Future,” 3.
102 where two-thirds of workers did not belong to a trade union: “Trade Union Membership, UK 1995–2021: Statistical Bulletin,” Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy, May 25, 2002, available at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk.
103 “making sure every stone is put in its rightful place”: Blair, “Let Us Face the Future,” 5.
103 but he didn’t feel the cause in his bones: On Blair’s early life, see Anthony Seldon with Chris Ballinger, Daniel Collings, and Peter Snowden, Blair, 2nd ed. (London: The Free Press, 2004), 3–199.
104 “is a far more intellectual exercise than people ever think”: Tony Blair, “Foreword” to The Unfinished Revolution: How New Labour Changed British Politics Forever, by Philip Gould (London: Abacus, 2011), xv.
104 “is a new political consensus of the left-of-centre”: Blair, “Let Us Face the Future,” 4.
104 “a normal person’s view of politics”: Tony Blair, A Journey: My Political Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 70.
104 and he wanted almost everyone to be part of it: Blair, “Let Us Face the Future,” 13.
105 “tolerant, fair, enterprising, inclusive”: Blair, “Let Us Face the Future,” 12.
105 but the reference to building “one nation”: Although the concept is often associated with the nineteenth-century statesman Benjamin Disraeli, the term “one-nation conservatism” was coined in 1924 by Tory prime minister Stanley Baldwin, on which see Emily Jones, “Impressions of Disraeli: Mythmaking and the History of One Nation Conservatism, 1881–1940,” Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique XXVIII, no. 1 (2023), available at https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb.
105 “If socialism is not [to] be merely an abstract moralism”: Blair, “Let Us Face the Future,” 13.
106 “became a kind of defining text for me”: Gould, Unfinished Revolution, 167.
106 “an elitist and suburban party with contempt for working Americans”: Greenberg, Dispatches from the War Room, 182.
106 “New Labour was always about challenging the assumptions of elitism”: Gould, Unfinished Revolution, 418.
107 “almost above everything”: Gould, Unfinished Revolution, 167.
107 “either we trust the people or we don’t”: Gould, Unfinished Revolution, 468.
107 “however powerless, however marginalised”: Gould, Unfinished Revolution, 467.
107 like evidence of wildly misplaced life priorities: Gould, Unfinished Revolution, 416.
107 “Voters,” he said, “need relentless reassurance”: Greenberg, Dispatches, 191.
108 “things that matter to people in their lives”: Gould, Unfinished Revolution, 253.
108 “are in the hands of the many, not the few”: Lucy Ward, “Fabians Split on Blairite Makeover,” The Guardian, August 20, 1999, available at www.theguardian.com.
108 “were far more likely to be tough than soft”: Blair, Journey, 57.
109 “The Conservatives work for the privileged few”: Greenberg, Dispatches, 192–193.
109 “I didn’t like division or discord”: Blair, Journey, 28.
109 “I just don’t believe the problem with Britain is the few at the top”: Greenberg, Dispatches, 232.
109 “I never heard a real voter longing for unity and deploring division”: Greenberg, Dispatches, 203.
110 “they are not addressing a problem that people think needs solving”: Greenberg, Dispatches, 194.
110 “in which all of the people, not just a few, can share”: Ewen Macaskill,“Blair’s Promise—Everyone Can Be a Winner,” The Guardian, October 2, 1996, available at www.theguardian.com.
110 “Not just” was the key flourish: Greenberg liked the formulation so much that he borrowed it when he came onto Al Gore’s 2000 campaign. “Let’s make sure that our prosperity enriches not just the few, but all working families,” Gore declared in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, just a few weeks after hiring Greenberg.
111 “The pledges worked better than anything else I have ever tested”: Gould, Unfinished Revolution, 265.
111 “I spent most of the rest of the day in a state of shock”: Gould, Unfinished Revolution, 382.
111 was assuming a “classless quality”: Greenberg, Dispatches, 191.
111 described a “class collapse” in their polls: Greenberg, Dispatches, 208.
111 “that was more important than maximizing his vote”: Greenberg, Dispatches, 208.
112 in greater numbers than at any point since the 1970s: “Vote for Labour Party by Income Group, United Kingdom,” World Political Cleavages and Inequality Database, available at https://wpid.world.
112 Labour won college-educated voters for the first time in its history: “Vote for Labour Party by Education Level, United Kingdom,” World Political Cleavages and Inequality Database, available at https://wpid.world.
113 a 7-point drop from the 1992 campaign: Cracknell et al, UK Election Statistics, 29. For more, see Harold Clarke, David Sanders, Marianne Stewart, and Paul Whiteley, “Britain (Not) at the Polls, 2001,” PS: Political Science and Politics 36, no. 1 (2003), 59–64, and Geoffrey Evans and James Tilley, The New Politics of Class: The Political Exclusion of the British Working Class (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 170-190.
113 weren’t the only people trying to find their place: For Greenberg’s reservations, see Dispatches, 218–219.
113 “For the first time,” Gould remembered, “I felt exalted”: Gould, Unfinished Revolution, 384.
113 shrugged off the historical baggage and resurrected the phrase: Tony Blair, “The Third Way: New Politics for the New Century,” Fabian Pamphlet 588 (1995).
114 “so we can occupy the territory”: Quoted in Lily Geismer, “How the Third Way Made Neoliberal Politics Seem Inevitable,” The Nation, December 13, 2022, available at www.thenation.com.
114 that Labour was delivering on its pledge to modernize Britain: On New Labour’s mixed domestic record in Blair’s first term, see Seldon, Blair, 423–439.
115 launched a consulting firm in London: John Rentoul, “Labour Conference: PM’s Poll Winners Put Their Skills Up for Hire,” Independent, October 3, 1997, available at www.independent.co.uk.
115 “modernization without concrete gains for the middle class loses meaning for voters”: Greenberg, Dispatches, 219.
115 “a whole raft of often confusing and abstract third way messages”: “Full Text: Philip Gould’s Leaked Memo,” The Guardian, July 19, 2000, available at www.theguardian.com.
116 “we are not believed to have delivered”: “Leaked Memo,” available at www.theguardian.com.
116 “battle for real things”: Greenberg, Dispatches, 226.
116 with a list of watchwords for the looming campaign: “Leaked Memo,” available at www.theguardian.com.
116 “It’s just that I was choosing not to take it”: Greenberg, Dispatches, 232.
116 “human potential, economically and as citizens”: Greenberg, Dispatches, 237.
117 the lowest in almost a century: Cracknell et al, UK Election Statistics, 29, Clarke et al., “Britain (Not) at the Polls,” 60–61; Greenberg, Dispatches, 258.
117 support for Blair in the bottom half of the income distribution: “Vote for Labour Party by Income Group, United Kingdom,” World Political Cleavages and Inequality Database, available at https://wpid.world.
117 “‘Being in touch’ with opinion was no longer the lodestar”: Gould, Unfinished Revolution, 417.
118 “between his own thoughts and what the groups seemed to say”: Blair, Journey, 298.
118 he accepted a diminished place in the race: Greenberg, Dispatches, 261.
118 a “polling war” between the dueling American strategists: Gould, Unfinished Revolution, 485.
119 it was still hovering around historic lows: Cracknell et al., UK Election Statistics, 16, 29.
119 left the public uncertain about the real Tony Blair: Greenberg, Dispatches, 265.
120 “but failed to substitute a new political choice”: Greenberg, Dispatches, 268.
120 “whether Labour represented the working or middle class”: Evans and Tilley, The New Politics of Class, 61.
120 “gives the opportunity for the Conservatives to reinvent themselves”: Quoted in Seldon, Blair, 430.
120 Euro-skepticism blended with hostility to immigration, crime, and welfare abuse: Gould, Unfinished Revolution, 430.
120 “Labour’s achievements were just swept away by what was effectively racism”: Gould, Unfinished Revolution, 474.
120 “was not a process over which the electorate felt they had sufficient control or influence”: Gould, Unfinished Revolution, 433.
121 “The one thing that could lose me the next election is immigration”: Nicholas Watt and Patrick Wintour, “How Immigration Came to Haunt Labour: The Inside Story,” The Guardian, March 24, 2015, available at www.theguardian.com.
122 The essential struggle of the new era: Patrick Wintour, “‘Cross-dressing’ on Political Policy Is Here to Stay, Says PM,” The Guardian, July 31, 2006, available at www.theguardian.com.
122 “the most disconnected and rootless speech ever made by a Labour leader”: Steve Richards, Whatever It Takes: The Real Story of Gordon Brown and New Labour (London: Fourth Estate, 2010), 235.
123 his advisers told themselves: Richards, Whatever It Takes, 434.
123 No party had enough seats to form a parliamentary majority: Cracknell et al, UK Election Statistics, 29.
123 Greenberg’s firm was back on Labour’s team: Patrick Wintour, “Labour Conference: What Is the Inspiration Behind Ed Miliband’s Speech?” The Guardian, September 27, 2011, available at www.theguardian.com.
124 support for gay marriage and action on climate change: Jim Messina, “What My British Win Taught Me About 2016,” Politico, May 17, 2015, available at www.politico.com.
125 “the candidate who provided the clearest economic vision looking ahead prevailed”: Messina, “British Win.”
125 that might break up the United Kingdom: Patrick Wintour, “David Cameron warns of Labour-SNP ‘Coalition of Chaos,’” The Guardian, April 17, 2015, available at www.theguardian.com.
126 “America is a genuinely exceptional nation that embraces its multiculturalism”: Stan Greenberg, “Right-Wing Wins Come at Too High a Price,” Politico, May 17, 2015.
127 “You can be successful and care,” he insisted: Blair, Journey, 10.
127 not even a herculean capacity for self-destruction could endanger his place at the top: For a full accounting of those impulses at work, see Tom Bower, Boris Johnson: The Gambler (London: Ebury Publishing, 2020).
127 “an alienation of the people from the power they should hold”: Boris Johnson, “There Is Only One Way to Get the Change We Want—Vote to Leave the EU,” Telegraph, March 16, 2016, available at www.telegraph.co.uk.
127 “I’m never coming back to wherever this is.” Heather Stewart, “Labour Europe Minister Apologises After Calling Voter a ‘Horrible Racist,’” The Guardian, May 19, 2016, available at www.theguardian.com. On how this divide expressed itself in the Brexit referendum, see Evans and Tilley, The New Politics of Class, 201–207.
128 allowing him to transcend the conventional left-right divide: Blair, Journey, 70.
128 “The party system does not map to how normal people think”: Andrew Sullivan, “Transcript: Dominic Cummings on Boris, Brexit, Immigration,” Weekly Dish, April 7, 2022, available at https://andrewsullivan.substack.com.
128 “which completely bamboozled the media”: Sullivan, “Dominic Cummings.”
128 in a referendum with higher turnout than any election since 1992: Cracknell et al., UK Election Statistics, 98.
129 Corbyn joined the House of Commons after the same 1983 Thatcher landslide: On Corbyn’s unlikely rise, see Alex Nunns, The Candidate: Jeremy Corbyn’s Improbable Path to Power (New York: Or Books, 2018).
129 “a slightly quaint irrelevance”: Quoted in Sam Knight, “The Astonishing Rise of Jeremy Corbyn,” New Yorker, May 16, 2016, available at www.newyorker.com.
129 beating even Blair’s total in 1994: Rowena Mason, “Labour Leadership: Jeremy Corbyn Elected with Huge Mandate,” The Guardian, September 12, 2015, available at www.theguardian.com.
130 “Together, we’ll take on the privileged, and put the people in power”: “Full Text: Jeremy Corbyn’s Speech,” Spectator, September 24, 2019, available at www.spectator.co.uk.
130 the real story was Labour’s collapse: Cracknell et al., UK Election Statistics, 16.
130 with fewer seats than at any time since 1935: A transformation analyzed in David Cutts, Matthew Goodwin, Oliver Heath, and Paula Surridge, “Brexit, the 2019 General Election, and the Realignment of British Politics,” Political Quarterly 91, no. 1 (2020), 7–23.
131 were drifting apart: For data on 2019, see “How Britain Voted in the 2019 Election,” Ipsos, December 20, 2019, available at www.ipsos.com. On the divide within the British elite, see Piketty, “Brahmin Left Versus Merchant Right,” 128–130.
131 “to lose your advantage in the very working-class communities which the Labour movement was founded to represent”: Cutts et al., “Realignment,” 17.
131 one of the party’s most high-profile strategists—Stan Greenberg: Kate Devlin, “Blair and Clinton Strategist Stan Greenberg Switches to Help Lib Dems Get Elected,” The Times, July 19, 2019, available at www.thetimes.co.uk.
132 the sweetest victory in the election: Mike Corder and Jill Lawless, “Boris Johnson Goes North to Celebrate Crushing Election Win,” Associated Press, December 14, 2019, available at www.apnews.com.
133 making him the wealthiest resident of 10 Downing Street in British history: Rupert Neat, “Does Rishi Sunak’s £730m Fortune Make Him Too Rich to Be PM?” The Guardian, October 22, 2022, available at www.theguardian.com.
134 when Corbyn was barred from running as a Labour candidate: Jim Pickard and George Parker, “Keir Starmer’s Ruthless Remaking of the Labour Party,” Financial Times, June 7, 2023, available at www.ft.com.
