He just thought he was being clever by pointing out where Labour hadn't done well, without considering where they had. Akala countered him very well.
I'm not sure that guy meant to include non-white people when he talked about traditional working class
Ha, Did Dimbleby read is name out in full? I still don't think it means the guy didn't rock up of his own volition, just that it provides the background to his obvious biases.
I imagined that by 'traditional working class towns' the bloke was just parroting what he'd read on the subject in the latest Telegraph article or whatever, thought it would make a snarky sounding gotcha question and not given it much further thought. I'd always lazily assumed it meant those towns born of the industrial revolution, that remained ever reliant on its fruits and were left damaged by the late 20th century switch to a service economy. Now you mention it though I guess in certain quarters 'traditional' might have a certain ethnic quality attached to it and to that extent it could be construed as some sort of dogwhistle. In the NW (at least) these traditional working class towns have huge numbers of folk that hail from all over the shop though so it still wouldn't make that much sense even if it was intended in that way.
I'd never thought of it along racial lines tbh. More thinking of people in mediocre at best jobs in crappy northern post-industrial towns, most of which have significant ethnic minority populations.
The questioner seemed this week's Tory plant, I don't think he was expecting such an eloquent evisceration of his insinuation
The question doesn't seem too bad to me. Sure, traditional working class areas will invariably stick with Labour, but he defined what he considered it to be when asked, and wants to know if their lack of success in some areas they'd normally be expected to do strongly in - not all, obviously - is a commentary on Corbyn.
"Traditional working class" is often used as a dog whistle for poor white people as a way of dividing poor white people and poor non-white people by way of excluding non-white people from the conversation.
As in America the phrase is used a cover for a certain kind of white voter. Hackney isn’t “traditionally working class” because it is too diverse, even though by economic standing those voters are 100% working class.
To check I wasn’t being unfair on Bolton and Dudley I had a look at demographic data:
Akala is pretty much the closest thing the left have in the UK to a Shapiro character. He’s an incredibly articulate debater.That Akala chap seemed to have a big mouth but 'no strong opinion' on most things!
I'm afraid the racism here is coming from you.
I'd suggest you listen to some more of what Akala has to say then, the guy is ludicrously talented and intelligent across the board. Last month he did a documentary for the beeb following the route of Homer's Odyssey and discussing ancient philosophy and language whilst composing a rap version that finished the programme. He runs a youth theatre company that takes Shakespeare into poor schools and shows kids the similarities between classic literature and verse and modern rap and has given Ted talks and debated African history at the Oxford union as well as being a maths prodigy. He self publishes music that is streets ahead of anything the mainstream labels would touch in terms of intelligent lyrical content and raps better than 99% of the chart acts driveling on about banging, bitches and blunts and in his spare time writes graphic novels that he then recreates as spoken word operas. Oh and he's a pretty good footballer too although he dropped out of the West Ham academy when he went off the rails a bit in his youth.That Akala chap seemed to have a big mouth but 'no strong opinion' on most things!
Maybe that's where I'm going wrong. Working class is just working class to me, and I assumed the UK had seen enough diversity in "traditional working class areas" for long enough to not need to see divisions in them.
Well said.
Yes, the real racism is pointing out that Hackney is much more ethnically diverse than Bolton and that might be why the right don’t consider it “traditionally working class”
Again, so what? He, tosser and dim though he was, wasn't the one to bring this up, you were.Yes, the real racism is pointing out that Hackney is much more ethnically diverse than Bolton and that might be why the right don’t consider it “traditionally working class”
Very interesting, talk about out of touch, I'd never even heard of the guy. Would be good to see him more active in politics though.
I wish he would. The likes of Akala and Lowkey talk far more sense than most of our politicians and could offer a better and broader perspective on how to deal with many of the issues facing the young and the poor in Britain as well as reining in many of our more dangerous interference in global politics.
Fair enough. My only visibility of him was on bbcqt - he just came across as a bit of the usual non-politician ‘all of the politicians are idiots, should just work together but are ineffectual anyway’. These sort of guys should get called out to attempt to run for office like Russell Brand was.
Tbh that's how he came across to me too.
) ask why Labour support had dropped in working class towns?Hackney and Islington have far greater diversity but that's not the reason they aren't referred to as traditional working class towns. The main reason is because they're boroughs in central London and from the POV of everywhere else their individual identity's long been subsumed by the sprawling capital they're a part of. The term 'traditional working class town' is definitely a bit vague and somewhat arbitrary but it certainly retains a sense of provinciality that tends to exclude places in or close to the capital. Blackburn is considered a traditional working class town, so is Oldham yet no distinction is really made between them and the likes of Bolton, Wigan or Burnley on that basis. At any rate Bolton still ranks as one of the most ethnically diverse towns in the country - ranked on a 'whiteness scale' out of the 296 English districts outside London it comes in 271st. It's an odd choice of town if you're wanting to highlight ethnicity.
It wasn't exactly the best set of questions for Akala to face and given the issues with the Grenfell enquiry, Windrush and the press and Trump's hard-on for knife crime I'm sure when he agreed to go on he wasn't expecting to only get a chance to discuss euthanasia, what sort of Brexit we want and whether 25 year olds should receive a 10k handout (where he had plenty to say). I'm sure both Akala and Lowkey have been asked to put themselves forward politically and like Brand they do more than most celebrities in getting the young interested and invested in politics and education and urging them to use their voice but they've likely all got things in their past that they know would derail any fledgling political career once the tabloid muckraking begun, youthful indiscretions outside of the Bullingdon club being fair game for the press of course.Tbh that's how he came across to me too.
He missed his opportunity imo, every question he "didn't have a strong opinion on"
Technically speaking, didn't the questioner (Tory plant or not
Last time I checked, Hackney isn't a town...
I agree, but that's kind of my point. The reason Corbyn hasn't done as well in the "traditional working class towns" has to lead to a discussion around national identity, attitude towards diversity and immigration, etc. The questioner wasn't prepared for that discussion at all. He wanted to blow on a whistle with racial connotations without understanding those issues.
But you see the problem here then, correct? Such a cop out (if indeed he does think that way).
Ok so what do you think is causing voters who have traditionally supported more socialist politics (by being lifelong labour voters) and other demographics that were majority Labour to vote for the Tories when they have an actual socialist they can vote for?
The biggest reason is that they don't believe Corbyn and McDonnell are capable of running a national economy successfully. Whether that's unfair or not would be a separate question of course.
