HAROLD WILSON once said that “if you can’t ride two horses at once you shouldn’t be in the ruddy circus.” To judge from his recent performance, Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour Party’s leader, can’t ride a pet donkey, let alone two horses. He declared that he took full responsibility for the May 6th massacre in local elections and a by-election, only to turn on the party’s popular deputy leader, Angela Rayner. The resulting outcry united the squabbling party against him and forced him to give her several new roles.

With Labour’s two driving forces parting company, equestrian skill is increasingly important in Sir Keir’s job. The Labour Party has always depended on a “progressive alliance” between two very different groups—what were once called “workers by hand” and “workers by brain”. The first provided the numbers and the second the intellectual élan. The party’s founding commitment to nationalisation, Clause Four, was drafted by two professional scribblers, Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Labour’s most radical prime minister, Clement Attlee, was educated at a public school, Haileybury; his cabinet included four old Etonians.

These two groups didn’t always get on. Beatrice Webb confessed to her diary that “we have little faith in the ‘average sensual man’. We do not believe that he can do much more than describe his grievances, we do not think that he can prescribe his remedies.” Hugh Dalton, Labour’s postwar Eton-and-Cambridge-educated chancellor of the exchequer, once told G.D.H. Cole, the party’s leading intellectual, that Labour needed to do more to appeal to “the football crowds”. Cole “shuddered and turned away”. But the two groups agreed on the essential things: building the welfare state and expanding opportunities.

The relationship is now in ruins. One reason is the shift in the balance of power. The “workers by hand” feel that they have had their party—and indeed their country—stolen from them. In 1951, 70% of voters were manual workers. Today that figure is less than 40%. In 1945 only a few thousand school leavers went to university. Today more than half do. The proportion of Labour MPs who have done a working-class job at some point has declined from 33% in 1983 to less than 10% today. Almost 80% of Labour Party members fall into the official definition of middle-class.

Suzy Stride, who stood for the party and lost in 2015, compares the attitude of middle-class activists trying to get out the working-class vote to Ryanair passengers “having to stomach a couple of hours’ flight with people they shared little in common with: it could be uncomfortable but it got you where you needed to go.” Now the two groups can no longer agree on the destination. In their recent book “Brexit Land” two academics at the University of Manchester, Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford, argue that today’s political divide is cultural rather than economic. The university-educated classes define themselves by their cosmopolitan values—their enthusiasm for immigration and fierce hostility to racial and gender-based prejudice. Voters from the old working-class define themselves by their fealty to “traditional values” of flag, family and fireside. And a large new Labour block—immigrants and the children of immigrants—usually sides with the first group despite being more culturally conservative. Originating in long-term changes such as the expansion of the universities and the rise of a multicultural society, the division has been supercharged by Brexit.

What is a leader riding these two diverging steeds to do? Sir Keir’s decision to appoint Deborah Mattinson, the author of “Beyond the Red Wall”, as his chief strategist suggests that he wants to focus on the old working class. But the strategy isn’t working. The progressive vote in the south is fragmenting among Greens and Liberal Democrats while the Conservatives are continuing to make gains in the North.

Many people in the party, from Blairites to young progressives, favour a different approach. They want to embrace the “coalition of the ascendant” in the form of university-educated professionals, young people and ethnic minorities. Tony Blair did exactly this to bring about the longest winning streak in Labour history. Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by mobilising the same coalition, stretching from Black Lives Matter activists to suburban mothers. The rise of the Greens in Germany suggests that the old progressive coalition is capable of reorganising itself around new problems and new values.

But this strategy is also risky. Mr Blair’s politics had a downside: about 5m mainly working-class voters gave up voting during his long period in power, and many of them are now voting Tory. It is doubtful whether he could win in today’s circumstances. Labour has lost its vote-vault in Scotland and the culture wars are far more divisive than they used to be. Mr Biden won only narrowly, even though he was up against an opponent who had suggested, among other idiocies, that people should fight covid-19 by injecting themselves with bleach. Britain’s constituency-based electoral system also makes it more difficult to pursue a broad realignment because the left’s votes tend to pile up in the cities. Labour already has 20 of the 25 largest majorities in the country while the party’s internal analysis of its 125 “must win” seats shows that more than half of them are in largely working-class areas.

There is a long tradition of predictions that Labour’s internal contradictions will lead to its demise. Plenty of people pronounced the party dead in the Thatcher-Major era only to see Mr Blair ride it to three election victories. But Labour’s internal contradictions have grown since then. The “coalition of the ascendant” is too small to win on its own but too preoccupied by cultural politics to make its peace with the old working class. Perhaps the “coalition of the ascendant” will one day be big enough to canter to victory alone. Perhaps the culture wars will eventually cool down. But for the time being the problem is not just Sir Keir’s horsemanship but the configuration of the whole ruddy circus. ■