Tories instigating ‘culture wars’, Labour will deliver on pledges: Reynolds

Shadow business secretary says party will ‘punch through’ voter cynicism

• Sarwar Alam
• 06 June, 2024

By: Sarwar Alam

THE Labour MP and shadow secretary of state for business and trade, Jonathan Reynolds, has accused the Conservative party of instigating “culture wars” to deflect from their failings as he insisted his party will deliver on its pledges.

Ahead of the general election on July 4, Reynolds believes voters will choose Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer over Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak as key issues such as the cost-of-living crisis, the economy, the NHS, and immigration have all “got worse” under Tory rule.

“It’s wrong to give people hope by promising things you can’t deliver. Sometimes you hear big things from politicians; well, if you can’t deliver them, they’re not big things – they’re just words,” Reynolds told Eastern Eye in an interview.

“What Labour is offering on housing, employment rights, immediate improvements to the NHS, more money for state schools, change in taxation and private schools – they’re all deliverable things.”

Sunak on Monday (3) denied stoking a culture war with his pledge to overhaul equality laws to make clear sex means “biological sex” rather than gender (see related story on page 13).

Reynolds told Eastern Eye, “The Conservative government is trying to find excuses or trying to divert away from the fact that people find themselves in really difficult circumstances.

“This culture war stuff, they’re trying to find division because they can’t run on their core record, because people are not better off than they were 10-14 years ago.”

The Labour MP said he agreed with his colleague, Lisa Nandy MP, who told Eastern Eye last month that people had lost faith in the ability of politicians to “transform lives”.

“We have to punch through quite understandable cynicism that things can actually get better,” said Reynolds. “Punching through cynicism is about delivering things, not just having very big promises. If you can’t deliver, you’re only going to make that cynicism worse.”

He added: “We also have to look at how we conduct politics and how we communicate what it means to us – to represent diverse communities and how we want to focus on the core job rather than have this culture war, which is just a diversion from how things really are.”

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Labour itself was last week caught up in allegations of racism after one of its members, Faiza Shaheen, claimed she had faced “a systematic campaign of racism, Islamophobia and bullying” from within the party.

Shaheen, an economist, was blocked from contesting the Chingford and Woodford Green seat in north London, held by Tory MP Iain Duncan Smith, after she liked social media posts that criticised Israel and its actions in Gaza.

Labour had a “problem with black and brown people,” Shaheen claimed.

“Any situation where a candidate is going to be replaced, it is really difficult. The Labour party does take that process really seriously, because frankly, in previous general elections, we did not do enough,” said Reynolds.

“I don’t know the individual case (of Shaheen), the circumstances, the evidence, so I wouldn’t like to make a comment on that because it’s got to be independent.

“In relation to the allegations of discrimination, Islamophobia, anything at all like that, I expect the Labour party to take them very seriously and investigate.

“I would ask people to look at the whole range of Labour candidates standing across all the constituencies and look at the incredible quality of those people and the incredible diversity of those people as a genuine reflection of Britain today.”

A poll by YouGov on Monday found that Labour is on course to win 422 seats, up 222 compared to the 2019 results, based on new constituency boundaries. This is the highest number of Labour seats on record, and a much bigger majority than anything else since the Second World War.

Labour has traditionally been the preferred party for minorities, especially Asians and black people. They secured 63 per cent of the votes from Asians in the 2019.

Reynolds rejected suggestions that Labour was taking the Asian vote “for granted” because they were so far ahead in the polls.

“First of all, we take no one for granted. There’s no complacency in the Labour side that’s related to being ahead in the polls,” said Reynolds.

“Let’s be frank, we usually lose general elections and we lost the last one really badly. If anyone thinks that anyone in the shadow cabinet or senior ranks in the party is going to take anyone for granted, that is just genuinely not the case.

“Second, I grew up in a non-diverse part of the UK, the Sunderland Durham area, but lived in (diverse areas) Greater Manchester and came to represent Stalybridge and Hyde.

“The relationship that someone like myself has with British people who have heritage and a history from southeast Asia is one that is just genuinely cherished in terms of what that has meant for me personally, not in political terms, just in personal terms – family links, personal friendships.

“What I learned about different communities for having not grown up in that diverse place is something – if I stopped being an MP tomorrow morning – it would have enriched my life in a genuinely important way to me,” Reynolds added.

In 2005 the war in Iraq meant some Muslim voters failed to turn out for Labour, but by 2010 they did return to the fold.

This time, there is some concern that the war between Israel and Hamas in Palestine could affect turnout and support.

When former Labour MP, George Galloway, won the Rochdale by-election, under Workers Party of Britain banner, by almost 6,000 votes at the end of February [29], he declared, “Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza.”

In the West Midlands mayoral race, the independent candidate, Akhmed Yakoob, ran on a pro-Palestine ticket. He took almost 70,000 votes – which some commentators believed would have gone to Labour because it refused to back a permanent ceasefire in the current conflict.

“Issues around the Middle East, in particular in Israel, Gaza have been really difficult issue and we saw that in the local elections,” Reynolds said.

“I know how strongly people feel about it, especially the younger generation of voters from every diverse community in the UK.

“Of course, they’re frustrated and of course, like everyone else, they’re appalled by the immense suffering on both sides.

“We look forward to articulating the Labour position in full during the general election which is not just for an immediate ceasefire and the freeing of hostages, of course, that in the end of the conflict as it stands right now, but also those ambitions for a two-state solution that genuinely goes forward based on the 1967 lines,” he added.