Is wokeness really political kryptonite for the Left?

It was meant to be the big reset for the British Labour Party after years in the political wilderness under Jeremy Corbyn.

Instead the headlines were dominated by a transphobia debate in which opposition leader Keir Starmer said it was “not right” to say “only women have a cervix”.

Labour leader Keir Starmer.Credit: Getty Images

Starmer was correct, of course, trans men can still have a cervix. But it was probably not the outcome Labour was looking for as it desperately tries to make itself electorally competitive again.

It was also the latest episode in the culture wars and the other great debate: “Is wokeness like political kryptonite that is killing the Left?”

In the last two decades the major parties of the left have seen a significant drop in their vote in most advanced democracies.

When the Australian Labor Party won the 2007 federal election, it did so with a primary vote of 43 per cent. At the 2019 election, after two terms in opposition, its primary vote had fallen to 33 per cent.

Former Labor leader Bill Shorten concedes defeat in 2019.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

A 10 per cent drop in primary vote cannot simply be explained away by a problematic campaign. It is the result of deeper changes occurring in the economy, society and party system.

The likes of Tony Blair, James Carville, Joel Fitzgibbon, Mark Latham say the decline has been caused by the left-leaning parties’ embrace of identity politics which splits their voter base between their educated progressive white-collar supporters and their more traditional working-class conservative voters.

According to Blair the blame lies with the “far-left” and its “voter-repellent” approach to culture, gender, race and identity. While “left-leaning moderates”, without a clear position of their own, get forced into rhetoric and causes that socially conservative voters find abhorrent.

In a blistering critique of British Labour’s poor performance in recent local government elections Blair wrote: “people like common sense, proportion and reason. They do not like their country, their flag or their history being disrespected. They dislike prejudice, but they dislike extremism in combating prejudice. And they support the police and the armed forces.”

Former British PM Tony Blair blames the far left for splitting the vote.Credit: Getty

Legendary US Democrat political strategist James Carville says: “Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it”. The Ragin’ Cajun warns: “You can’t say ‘Republicans are going to call us socialists no matter what, so let’s just run as out-and-out socialists’. That’s not the smartest thing to do. And maybe tweeting that we should abolish the police isn’t the smartest thing to do either because almost f---ing no one wants to do that.”

While there are some searing truths in these critiques, there is also a need to keep some perspective.

In Australia the major party of the centre-left, the ALP, is enjoying one of the more electorally successful periods in its long history.

The ALP is in government in five of the nine federal, state and territory jurisdictions that make up the Commonwealth of Australia. It is a considerable improvement on where it was in 2014 when the party held office in just one state. The ALP currently holds 408 seats in Australian parliaments while the Coalition parties (Liberal, National, Liberal National, Country Liberal) hold just 329.

US President Joe Biden.Credit: AP

While political parties of the centre-left have struggled in recent UK and European elections, they have enjoyed renewed success in the new-world democracies of the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

So how are left-wing parties enjoying electoral success when their vote is declining?

The explanation lies in the fact that major parties on the right are also beset by problems, which are splitting their voter base and causing their overall vote to decline in a similar way to their counterparts on the left. This in turn, is also being driven by deeper forces at work in the political system.

A major political party is like a big tent that tries to bring into its fold a broad range of different constituencies and communities of interest. In an increasingly complex and fragmented society, it is getting harder for mainstream parties of both the left and the right to bring these groups together.

Major parties on the right are also beset by similar problems experienced by their counterparts on the left.Credit: File image.

The Labor party might be losing its progressive supporters to the Greens and its working-class conservative supporters to the Liberals and One Nation-types. But the Liberals are losing progressive supporters to Labor and the Greens, and more conservative supporters to the One Nation-types.

If Labor is split on climate change policy between “woke progressives” and “working-class conservatives” then the Liberals are just as split between “modern Liberals” and “conservative Liberals”.

The federal Nationals are so bitterly divided between agricultural interests and coal interests that they are barely functional. While the Coalition between Liberal and National parties has bigger cracks in it than an Antarctic ice shelf.

Perhaps more worrying for the non-Labor side of politics is that even when they are winning elections they are losing the big social and economic debates of our times. Time and again, you find conservative governments adopting policy positions that a few short years ago they denounced as “lefty lunacy”.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg counts neo-liberal grand dame Margaret Thatcher as a political hero, but nowadays he’s the king of Keynesian economic orthodoxy with a $1 trillion debt to prove it.

Conservative British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has committed his country to a world-leading 68 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2030 and says climate change is about jobs not “bunny hugging”.

Whether it’s LGBTI rights, Indigenous reconciliation, feminism, environmentalism, drug policy, family law and so on, the political trend is towards more socially liberal progressive policy settings.

For a skilled political leader, the challenge is to unify a big enough group of voters under a shared set of values and aspirations.

For Keir Starmer, it means showing how a debate about transgender rights is actually a debate about human rights, and his vision for an inclusive society in which everyone is respected and welcome. That is something all good and decent people can get behind.

Nicholas Reece is a principal fellow at the Melbourne School of Government at the University of Melbourne.