Category Archives: Comment and Analysis

Lockdowns, sanctions, inflation: how Britain’s working classes lost out

August 24, 2022Comment and Analysis, Politics BlogBritain's working classes, Inflation, Lockdowns, Sanctions against Russia, UK politicsadmin

It was only a short while ago that Britain’s working classes were on the rise. Brexit was to a large extent a working class revolt against the status quo, and our ruling elite seemed to get the message: “we will … [shift] the balance of Britain decisively in favour of ordinary working class people”, declared prime minister Theresa May at the 2016 Conservative party conference. May’s calling of a snap election in 2017 led to her party losing its majority in the House of Commons, paving the way for a parliamentary impasse over Brexit. When this impasse was finally broken, working class votes were once again crucial. The December 2019 election saw many traditional Labour constituencies – the so-call ‘red wall’ – turn blue, giving May’s successor, Boris Johnson, an emphatic victory.

Following this victory, many commentators forecast that the Conservatives would become a blue collar party. The academic Philip Cunliffe wrote that “the Tories will now lead a working class revolt to overturn the neoliberal order”. There were solid grounds for thinking this. The Conservatives not only pledged a number of pro-worker policies – such as using post-Brexit state aid and procurement freedoms to revive industry – they also had a material interest in delivering: without the red wall, Labour would have practically no chance of forming a majority government, at least for the time being.

It was for this reason that Keir Starmer, upon becoming Labour leader in April 2020, quickly set about reaching out to the working classes, as shown by the emphasis he placed on patriotism. Though some took umbrage with this approach, arguing that Labour’s “old heartlands [were] gone for good” and that the party should focus on consolidating its support in big cities among young graduates and professionals, these critics ignore basic electoral realities: parties with geographically concentrated vote-shares struggle to win under first-past-the-post.[i] (You could also say that Labour has a historic obligation to rebuild the red wall since the party was founded to protect working class interests.)

By spring 2020, then, both the Tories and Labour had a political interest in, and seemed to be committed to, making life better for the working class. Yet over the last two or so years the policy choices of our rulers have made the working classes worse off.

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Why conservatism isn’t doomed

October 21, 2021Comment and AnalysisBritish politics and society, Conservatism, Conservative values, Progressive valuesadmin

Conservatism is a worldview that values tradition, belonging and place. Drawing on the writer David Goodhart, we may define it as a “somewhere” ideology. According to commentators from across the political spectrum, this ideology has a bleak future. The conservative journalist Ed West goes so far as to say that “conservatism is doomed”. I think West is wrong.

It may seem odd to talk about conservatism’s demise in today’s Britain. Arguably the most significant development our country has faced since the Second World War – Brexit – has been shaped in no small measure by conservative values. The Conservative party currently commands a large majority in parliament after more than a decade in power. And despite the challenges, errors and costs of the covid-19 pandemic, public support for the Tories has remained relatively stable, suggesting a solid social base. Meanwhile, the political left continues in its sorry state.

Yet West isn’t basing his argument on current electoral trends. He’s well aware that the Conservatives are on track for another decade in government. Rather, he thinks that conservatism will disappear because he agrees with Janan Ganesh, that politics is “downstream of culture”. Extant cultural trends, driven primarily by the universities, are leading us inexorably to a left-liberal, progressive destination, West maintains. That is why conservatism is doomed.

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Will Trump be re-elected?

April 14, 2020Comment and Analysis, Politics BlogAmerican politics, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, US electionadmin

Donald Trump has two clear structural advantages going into this year’s election. History shows that incumbent presidents have a distinct edge over their challengers, and the electoral college currently over-represents Republican-leaning states. But beyond these built-in factors the picture is unclear. Certain trends point to a Democrat triumph in November, while others point to a victory for Trump. How the president deals with current challenges will also influence the outcome.

The president’s approval rating suggests that the Democrats will win this autumn. Unlike every other post-war president – including one-termers such as Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush – Trump’s net approval rating has been negative throughout his presidency. This strongly implies that a majority of American voters are beyond his reach.

Of course, you could retort that Trump’s social base has held up remarkably well and he doesn’t need to win the popular vote to be elected, as 2016 showed. But alongside Trump’s negative net approval rating, two developments signal that pivotal swing voters will break for the Democrats this time round.

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Can Labour reconnect with the working class?

March 20, 2020Comment and Analysis, Politics BlogBritish politics, Labour party, Patriotism, Working Classadmin

Labour is no longer the party of the working class. This was confirmed by last year’s general election, which saw Labour slump to its lowest seat-share in over eighty years and lose a significant number of its ‘heartland’ constituencies to the Conservatives. The Tories’ breach of the so-called ‘red wall’ portends a bleak future for Labour. Without reconnecting with working class voters, the party will likely be out of power for at least another decade. Yet there is little sign that Labour is capable of winning these voters back. In fact, the political thought that prevails in the party works against this outcome, a point that is most clearly illustrated by the issue of culture.

Culture now sits alongside economics as a major political faultline. In Britain, this was revealed most starkly by the EU referendum. Though the classic left/right divide mattered to this vote, its result was primarily shaped by a value cleavage. Broadly speaking, the culturally conservative backed leave and the culturally liberal backed remain. Working class voters on the whole were in favour of Brexit, a position that reflected their desire for more economic and cultural security. This demand for cultural security may be thought of as patriotism, defined by George Orwell as “devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life”.

Under Boris Johnson, the Conservatives have grasped what many blue collar Britons are after, as shown by their policy platform of moving left on economics while delivering Brexit and a tighter immigration regime. The best that can be said about Labour is that its Corbynite policies have spoken to the working class’ economic concerns. But that is all.

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Machiavelli, liberal decline, and Britain’s selfish elite

July 11, 2019Comment and Analysis, Politics BlogBritish politics, elites, globalisation, liberal decline, Machiavelliadmin

Niccolò Machiavelli, the sixteenth century Italian political theorist, saw history as a recurring pattern of decline and renewal. This stemmed from his view of human society and human nature. Society could never have a natural unity nor could it be based on a shared understanding of the common good. Instead, Machiavelli believed that society is always divided by conflicting interests and all we can hope for is an artificial unity, attained by balancing competing social forces. However, our innate tendency towards selfishness means that we are prone to pushing our own interests too far, undermining any equilibrium that may have been achieved. At this point, decline sets in.[i]

Machiavelli’s view of history can be applied to the contemporary UK. Britain’s political settlement of the last few decades, which can be broadly defined as a commitment to liberal globalisation, is on its way out. Leave’s victory in the 2016 EU referendum is the biggest indicator of this, though we can point to UKIP’s triumph in the 2014 EU parliament election, to Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader in 2015, and to the rise of the Brexit party as further proof. It’s too soon to say what form a new political settlement will take, but the direction of travel seems to point towards greater cultural conservatism and economic protection.

Machiavelli may also help us understand why this decline has come about. In this respect, it’s important to emphasise that Britain’s political commitment to liberal globalisation wasn’t inevitable. It was neither naturally ordained nor was it the result of a societal-wide agreement. Instead, this commitment reflected the historically constituted preferences of certain social groups.

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Information or ideology? Why most leavers still back Brexit

March 7, 2019Comment and Analysis, Politics BlogBrexit, British politics, leavers and remainers, second referendumadmin

The British Labour party’s decision to back a second referendum has raised the hope of ardent remainers. The latter claim a “people’s vote is now inevitable” and “remain can win”.

Their optimism may simply be a matter of political manoeuvring. They may be talking up the prospect of overturning Brexit to build support for this option. However, their view of Leave’s victory in 2016 suggests they genuinely think they will prevail. Many of them believe this victory stemmed from information deficiencies. They see leave voters as being misinformed, uninformed, or both, implying that had they been exposed to more accurate information, they never would have chosen to exit the EU.

Some aspects of the Leave campaign were undoubtedly misleading. The UK doesn’t pay £350 million a week to Brussels, for instance, and Vote Leave wasn’t in a position to suggest that the money Britain saved by exiting the EU would be spent on the NHS. To say this campaign dealt in “lies and false promises” is therefore true.

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What if Brexit doesn’t happen?

February 3, 2019Comment and Analysis, Politics BlogBrexit, British politics, globalisation, leavers and remainers, People's Voteadmin

What will happen to Britain if Brexit is cancelled? According to the writer Larry Elliott, the UK will return to the status quo of the last few decades. That is, the country will revert to a regime of liberal globalisation that has mainly benefited the metropolitan middle classes. Elliott makes this prediction on the basis that no-Brexit will dampen popular “demand for deep and urgent reform” and so “the real grievances of those who voted for Brexit will be quietly forgotten”.

Those who want to overturn Brexit have said it is necessary to “address the grievances of those leave voters who were protesting about the state of our politics and economy”. This suggests that, if Brexit is stopped, a reversion to the days before June 2016 isn’t necessarily on the cards. Yet there are grounds for thinking that Elliott has a point.

While ardent remainers typically cherish the economic and cultural openness of liberal globalisation, they often fail to appreciate this phenomenon’s impact on many leave voters. Since the 1980s this form of globalisation has decimated blue collar jobs and unsettled attachments to community and place. For working class northerners and so-called Middle Englanders in particular, these changes have to varying degrees been felt as losses of livelihood, esteem and culture. And that’s not all.

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Corbyn’s contradictions: which side of Labour’s political coalition will lose?

January 20, 2019Comment and Analysis, Politics BlogBrexit, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour, second referendumadmin

Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the British Labour party, says he wants to “do far more to give a real voice to working class communities who feel they aren’t heard in politics”. He also says the EU has weakened the British working class by enabling the “wholesale importation of underpaid workers from central Europe”. Given that Corbyn is steeped in the Bennite socialist tradition, it’s fair to assume that these sentiments are genuine. After all, working class political representation and Euroscepticism are cornerstones of Bennite ideology.[i]

Corbyn’s stance is close to the preferences of working class constituencies, particularly those in the post-industrial north of England. The EU referendum shows this. Politically, many people from this background saw this vote as an opportunity to have their voices heard after decades of being ignored by mainstream politics. And economic and cultural anxieties were major factors behind their large-scale support for Brexit.

Yet despite this apparent affinity, many within the working class don’t like Corbyn. In fact, at the last general election voters from this background swung towards the Tories. A key reason for this seems to be perception. The working class tend see Corbyn as the spokesperson for a middle class, metropolitan politics that says little for their material interests and typically more conservative values. And in a way they’re right.

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