Why Lisa Nandy is the right person to reconnect Labour with the working classes

The Brexit culture war has meant that the party's traditional base doesn't trust them anymore, and that needs to change

I’m on what we call the ‘soft left’ of the Labour party. I marched against the Iraq war and believe that Blair’s government didn’t challenge neoliberalism enough. But nor do I think nationalisation is the sole answer to capitalism’s failures. In other words, I sit somewhere between Corbyn and Blair, and I think most Labour party members do too.

This is partly about why remainers couldn’t stop Brexit. This is partly about why Lisa Nandy should be Labour’s next leader. This is partly about me. But this is mostly about the people of this country, a country I’ve grown to love and appreciate more as I get older.

I spent my secondary school years growing up on a council estate in west London, sharing a room with an equally opinionated brother. We both went to local schools, a mix of Asian and white kids. At 13, I had just moved back to London from India and had to make new friends. Having a strong Indian accent didn’t help.

Friendships can be weird and unlikely. I got to know some white lads from working class families, over a shared love for rave music and The Prodigy. They weren’t politically correct, but they weren’t racist. Or to be more specific: they were racist against everyone, including their own kind. One of them, Daniel, used to call me a “sweaty Arab” and in return I called him a “dirty honky”.

It was our way of being open about our differences, without being awkward. They welcomed me into their homes and I met their parents. We didn’t share a background, but we did find a way to bond together.

Our area was becoming increasingly Asian dominated. Southall was nearby and you could play ‘spot the white person’ there. But I noticed something interesting: my council estate always had far more interracial couples than the leafy middle class areas.

Working class whites were the first political allies immigrants in Britain had.

This fact has largely faded into history but it's true. The anti-racist movement was mostly made up of working class men: from cultural movements like Rock Against Racism to street ones like the Anti-Nazi League. Trade unions too played a pivotal role in mobilising white working class people and politicians against racism.

I don’t want to romanticise this too much. Many in the unions were racist and the National Front were working class lads too. But so were our allies. The middle class joined this movement much later.

But this alliance has broken down.

Over the last five years, Britain fell for a culture war, stoked up on the front pages of our newspapers. Remainers were baited by Nigel Farage and his allies – and we fell for it. Their racist dog-whistles brought out the worst in us, and they used that to mobilise their side. We called Brexit-voting (largely, white working class people) “thick”, “racist” and “uneducated”.

We knew what was good for them better than they did. We jumped on any video, article or tweet to reinforce our view. And it worked brilliantly for the Leave campaign. We fell for the culture war they wanted. Hardly any Leavers changed their minds, because we were unable to convince them we had their interests at heart.

This problem preceded Brexit.

As popular British culture has become more urban and middle class, white working class voices have been phased out. Instead black and brown faces have been painted in. Non-white Britons replaced the white working class, instead of standing alongside them. Unsurprisingly, the white working class started to resent the metropolitan middle class that dominates British culture and we, non-whites, were seen as part of that elite – rightly or wrongly. Our hostility to working class patriotism (“racist!”), exacerbated this divide.

Arrogance breeds disdain and builds caricatures. The last few years have torn apart important historical alliances, because we stopped behaving like allies.

We cannot build a broad anti-racist alliance by shaming people into it. We get it by building coalitions where everyone benefits. We do it by finding something to bond over, even if there are uneasy moments.

There can be no progress on racial justice without an alliance with the white working class. And there can be no Labour victory without that alliance either. There is no way around this. Yet we treat each other with suspicion.

You don't cancel your allies. You talk about it.

People will assume my school mates were racist. But it's more complicated than that. Prejudice infects all of us, it just comes out in different ways. It's our guilty secret. So we have to give each other the benefit of the doubt – in real life, and in politics. Especially with allies. Labour already does this with religious minorities - it needs to do the same with white working class communities.

What makes Lisa Nandy’s candidacy different is that she gets all of this.

She is the only one running for leader who openly warned against the Brexit culture wars and wanted a compromise. If we had listened to her then, Labour would be in a better state. And remainers would have more than they have now.

More importantly, she uses one word over and over again: “trust”.

We lost their trust in politics. We need to get that back. Labour’s glaring problem isn’t policy or ideas, but a deep lack of trust. People care about how we sound as much as what we say. If we sound patronising, like people need to know what’s good for them – they will ignore our policies. It doesn’t matter how good they sound to us.

Nandy talks about towns because that is where our former allies still live. She talks about transport, not because she’s a bus nerd ( although she may well be), but because that would rejuvenate towns better than most other policies. And it would make them less angry at a political establishment that has long ignored them.

I wonder if my school friends now would feel reflected in the modern Labour party. I doubt it, but it's not impossible. We didn’t come from the same background, but we found something to bond over. We still looked out for each other even if we called each other names. We need to do that within Labour and in the anti-racist movement.

I’m not saying Keir Starmer is a bad candidate. But he is far too attached to the Brexit culture wars and is the safe choice. He won't reach parts of the country we need back. Lisa Nandy is the only one who recognises the scale of the challenge ahead.

And as Labour’s first woman and BAME leader, she would be a historic figure. Lisa Nandy is the bold choice, and the right choice.