Breaking news. Labour’s-by-election-candidate-caught-in-scandal-shocker! I don’t like to gossip so this is just between you and me. Labour’s selected candidate for the Batley and Spen constituency, Kim Leadbeater, is friends with … (you won’t believe this) …. a Tory. I know. Disgusting.
How do I know this appalling smear is true? Yes, you guessed it, dear reader, I am in fact that Tory. Wow – it feels good to confess this appalling sin.
These despicable cross-party friendships are becoming increasingly rare. Large numbers of us – both here and in America – no longer have friends with a different political view. Two-thirds of committed conservatives in the US and half of committed liberals tell pollsters that they don’t have a single friend on ‘the other side’. Here in the UK, a fifth of Leave voters and a quarter of Remain voters don’t have a single friend who voted the other way.
We live in a puritan age. People don’t just ‘have a different opinion’, they have ‘unsafe opinions’. People are no longer ‘wrong’, they are ‘evil’. Today – after centuries of appalling race relations – nine in ten Americans say they would be perfectly happy if their child married someone of a different race. In comparison, only eight of ten Remainers would be happy if their child married a Brexiteer, only seven out of ten Republicans would be happy if their child married a Democrat and only half of Democrats would be happy if their child married a Republican.
Thing are no better online. A fifth of us have unfollowed or unfriended someone simply because we discovered they had a different political opinion.
If anyone has reason to fear where these divisions lead, it is Labour’s candidate. You might not have heard of Kim. You have heard of her sister. Her sister was the last but one MP for the area. Her name was Jo Cox. It will be the 5th anniversary of her death this month.
Jo is how I know Kim. I never met Jo but her belief that ‘we have more in common than that which divides us’ inspired me. After her murder, I joined a group of people committed to bridging some of these divides. In my second week on the job, Kim bounded into the office. Before I could warn her of my right-of-centre views, she had given me a massive hug. I have counted her as a friend ever since.
Jo’s murder was almost five years ago now. Since she died, our democracy has too often felt like a cultural battle. The opinion polls seem clear on who is winning that battle. It is less clear who is losing.
The obvious answer is the Labour Party. To say they are languishing in the polls feels overly positive. Labour’s voters fall into one of two groups: a working-class, older group and a younger, metropolitan, mostly graduate group. Both are pulling hard in opposite directions. Tony Blair once said that he wanted to make the Labour Party “the political arm of none other than the British people as a whole.” 25 years later, his mission seems complete. The Labour Party fully represents the country it seeks to serve. Just like the nation, it is totally divided.
Here’s the sad truth. The real loser from these divisions is all of us.
Democracy is about more than voting. It’s about more than mugging up on the manifestos. More than seeing your side win. Democracy is about compromise. It’s about seeing the other side’s point of view. Why? Because democracy only works if there is a ‘demos’ – a group of people who are prepared to compromise with each other.
On the other side of the Atlantic, compromise has become a dirty word. Democrats and Republicans are more like tribes than political parties. Unless we are careful we will end up the same way. That’s not the British way. Off twitter, the average Brit isn’t tribal. We don’t care who came up with an idea as long as it works. Our divisions threaten that. As America has shown, it’s much easier for a leader to convince their followers that half the country can’t be trusted, if their followers never meet half the country.
By her words, Jo Cox showed us that it doesn’t have to be this way. Our politics don’t have to divide us. By her friendship, Kim showed me she sees things the same way. That’s why this Tory will be cheering on his Labour friend on July 1st.