Keir Starmer and the Case of the Missing Shark

Or, why we need to stop talking about the definition of working people if we're going to change anything.

Imagine if  Jaws was set up as “beach people” being in danger and they just didn’t mention the shark.

Someone asks “well, if I go to the beach during the summer when I’m on holidays here but the rest of the time I live somewhere without a beach am I a beach person?”

Someone else responds “no, because a beach person is someone who goes to the beach everyday,” so our holiday goer shrugs and goes for a swim, only to tragically be eaten by a shark.

You are either a shark or you are not a shark, but trying to define the difference without referencing the shark doesn’t really work. Even if you said “humans swimming in the water” you’d have to field clarifications when you could just say “it’s us versus the shark.”

In a spin on the classic hero and villain narrative, Labour set us up for linguistic tension when they alluded to “working people” being the good guys without naming the bad guys.

Now politicians and commentators are making up fictitious small business owners with low incomes and asking a series of Buzzfeed quiz style questions to figure out if they are a working person and, uh, I think Labour might be the shark we’re all united against now?

This is what happens when you muddy the narrative waters. We don’t mean small scale non-beach people. We mean the big non-beach people with a big appetite and lack of responsibility. There’s too many people not at the beach, and they’re a problem too because we need people at the beach to keep the economy going*

If you have a sceptical disposition, it would be easy to think this confusion was at least partly intentional. After all, if we’re all bickering over who is and is not a working person, we’re not using that energy to join together to demand a better collective deal.

A more generous interpretation would be that they were trying to appeal to workers and business all at once and made a mess of it.

Either way, whether you’re an organisation or an individual, if you want to push for a budget that is pro-people and anti-evil shark, the important thing to do is to ring the alarm and cut through the noise:

“There’s a DEADLY SHARK in the water and what are we going to do about it?”

*If you’re trying to follow along with this beleaguered metaphor, small scale non-beach people= small business, big non-beach people  = wealth without contributing through taxes,  people not at the beach = people not working.

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Actionable Tips:

1. In situations like these, it can be tempting to engage in the discourse around definition to include who or what you are advocating for because it seems like an easy entry to engagement or coverage. It won’t be long lasting, though, so focus your time and energy on where you will have the most impact.

2. In most cases, you can have the most impact by redirecting the conversation. A simple way to do this is by framing your communications as why are we wasting time debating X, when the real question is Y? Examples of shark-busting questions are below.

3. Use the discourse to platform the demands of people who are being marginalised and negatively impacted. The disabled person who can’t become a working person because employers won’t make proper adjustment. The unpaid carer who is most certainly a working person, but doesn’t have a payslip to prove it. The person who is worried about getting to work because their job doesn’t pay enough for them to weather the bus fare increase.

4. Point out who you think the shark is, and what action should be taken to keep them in check. Is it multinational companies who make billions but don’t pay corporation tax due to loopholes? If more tax income is needed, might make sense to focus on them instead of freezing tax bands.

5. Point out bad faith arguments and why someone might be making them. Why is a CEO of a company that pays minimum wage but pays out to leadership roles and shareholders talking about hypothetical small business owners? Is it because they don’t want us to think about how exploitative employment puts pressure on state resources?

Shark busting questions

1. “Instead of trying to figure out if I’m a working person, I want to know what that 50% increase in the bus fare cap is going to be used for.”

2. “We could talk about who is or isn’t a working person, but we’re more interested in what the government is doing to stop greedy shareholders lining their pockets at the expense of everyday people.”

3. “On the subject of working people, I’d like to know if anyone in the government has consulted people who are long-term sick or disabled on why they can’t work?”

Extra Reading

I absolutely loved this piece from BBC News, which platforms people on different incomes and their challenges and worries. It doesn’t pit people against each other, and shows that most of us are finding things challenging, just in different ways. It’s a good reminder that in this economy, things like having children or living in the cheapest accommodation you can find instead of with family or in a caravan can feel like luxuries.