The Ghost of '99 wrote:
I don't know how you've done it but you've conflated "wokeness" (whatever that is but it appears to involve right wing folk getting upset about people being nice to other people) with substantive policy issues. The first is a distraction from discussing the second for which there are a multitude of huge issues from the past decade of failure.
I suppose it might be an accusation that liberals are so up tight about their boomer relatives misprounouncing Vaisakhi or themselves deciding on whether trans women are at an advantage in sports vs cis women, that they don’t also have time to put forward a broad vision for national renewal.
Or it could just be that concerns about honesty and integrity in public life are now considered woke, maybe? Like ‘who cares if Johnson is a scoundrel, as long as he gets the job done?’. It then comes down to what we think the job is, and if some people think it is delivering a very hard Brexit, blaming the EU for the inevitable problems associated with that and installing Union flags in more living rooms, it can be argued he is delivering.
Labour now (or soon-ish) has to decide if it can offer an alternative vision that is attractive to a portion of those people, or if it has to borrow some elements of what they already like. Leading in a new direction or representing more of what already exists.
Biden beat Trump, despite being about 160 years old, because enough people saw Trump for what he is. Eventually, I hope, Starmer will see off Johnson, despite being a bit wooden, because enough people will see Johnson for what he is. That said, it is astonishing to me that so many people haven’t seen it already, so you never can tell.