In the aftermath of its poor showing in the 2019 election, many Labour supporters thought that the party had hit rock bottom and that the only way was up. Not so, if Labour’s by-election defeat in a former stronghold such as Hartlepool is anything to go by. The resounding loss of a seat that has been in Labour hands since it was created in the 1970s indicates that the party has broken through rock bottom and is now plumbing new depths. As it embarks on its latest bout of soul-searching, Labour faces a familiar question: why isn’t it doing better?
Perhaps surprisingly, there are hints of an answer to this question in the work of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. In his 1981 book After Virtue, one of the classics of 20th-century moral and political philosophy, MacIntyre argues that humans are essentially story-telling animals. We make sense of the world we live in by telling stories that aspire to truth. There is, MacIntyre argues, no way to give us an understanding of any society, including our own, except through a stock of stories about who we are.
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