Uncut’s weekly review of the campaign looks at the events of week 4.
The good
Chuka Umunna’s interview in the Guardian
One of Labour’s most visible performers this campaign has been the shadow business secretary, Chuka Umunna. His polished media performances have ensured that he is on the Labour press office’s speed-dial when the toughest interview bids arrive.
Inevitably in an election campaign, interviews are about the issues of the day. It’s hard to see the person rather than the political position. Chuka’s interview in the Guardian probed a little deeper and offered a glimpse of what makes the man tick.
It revealed a personal biography which is a story of struggle, success, loss and revival. One which shines a light on who he is and the type of politician that he is maturing into.
Chuka’s father’s rise, from penniless migrant to running a thriving business, is clearly enormously influential.
Most immediately, it explains why Chuka is instinctively comfortable with business and able to put businessmen and women at ease with Labour, in a way that other Labour front-benchers cannot.
Yet there is more to Chuka than just being Labour’s business-whisperer.
The duality of being the child of an immigrant and a successful businessman creates a rare perspective. Most politicians lead their lives in a straight line – they are born into a class and remain in that class.
Chuka’s world was one simultaneously of disadvantage and privilege.
It’s why the rhetorical cadences from Ukip on race and identity are familiar to Chuka from his youth, as they are to anyone from a minority who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s.
What Ukip say today about Eastern European migrants was said about Asian and African migrants from the 1950s through to the 1990s.
The manner in which his father faced this and overcame it, informs the direct and robust way that Chuka addresses Ukip.
Chuka’s father’s achievements and Chuka’s upbringing have given him the self-confidence to challenge Ukip in a way that his party colleagues seem to lack.
The subsequent loss of his father when he was 13 was evidently and understandably a pivotal moment in Chuka’s life.
It also places him in a rather unique category of politicians.
The Phaeton complex describes the behaviour and development of children who experience the loss of (or separation from) one or both of their parents. It seems more than a coincidence that this group is so over-represented among political leaders –Winston Churchill, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair to name just a few.
Whether Chuka’s future will be as starry as some of the other political Phaetons is unclear yet, but in an election of dry photo-opportunities and endlessly rehearsed lines, the Guardian interview with Chuka offered something more than the standard, and increasingly stale, fayre.
Progress in righting some of the wrongs of the past (more…)
