People vote Labour for several reasons. One is tribalism, as in 'My family have always been Labour'. It is difficult for such individuals to to change their allegiance as voting for another party would seem like a betrayal of their family or community. Another is self-interest. Workers in the public sector, for example, are more likely to vote Labour since this is the party committed to state rather than private enterprise. So why would they vote for any other party? But there is also a class of people, to which I suspect several of the contributors to Putney Forum belong, who vote Labour because of what they would call a social conscience. They believe that Labour is the party most likely to help the disadvantaged. Their party allegiance is part of who they are. Voting Conservative would be tantamount to going over to the dark side. Some individuals, of course, are motivated by all three considerations at once.
What these groups have in common is that they are on the whole impervious to rational argument. When presented with evidence contrary to their beliefs they employ various strategies. One is silence. So far example, there has been comparatively little discussion on the thread about the Budget, which has dominated the News over the past two days. Another tactic is to blame the Conservatives for everything that has gone wrong since Labour came to power, whether it's Brexit, or Boris Johnson or Liz Truss (though, oddly, Rishi Sunak is never mentioned, perhaps because he actually got inflation down to 2% as opposed to its current level of 4%). A third strategy is to pretend that things are going in the right direction e.g. net migration is falling (mainly due to the last government's visa restrictions), even though 36 000 unauthorised migrants have crossed the Channel this year..
The elephant in the room is the enormous level of debt which costs the government over £100 billion each year to service. This burden is simply unsustainable and will eventually bankrupt the country. Unfortunately Labour's decision, under pressure from its backbenchers, to adopt a tax and spend policy will only make the problem worse. Spending money you haven't got obviously increases indebtedness while increased taxation slows growth and reduces revenues. Tax and spend, which I suspect several contributors to the Forum support, was just about possible under Gordon Brown in 2000 when the ratio of public sector debt to GDP was 29%. But now under Rachel Reeves it stands at over 95%. The party's over but unfortunately the revellers won't go home.
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