Brexit and the Left Behind Myth

Brexit and the Left Behind Myth 

As an explanation for Brexit, it has been proposed that a large cause, and a similar argument is put forward in relation to the election of Trump, is that it was some outpouring of resentment by Les Miserables, of a great constituency of people who were left behind by the “neo-liberalism” of the last thirty years. This argument is much loved by Tories, who use it to blame Blair/Brown in Britain, and Clinton/Obama in the US, as well as using it to frighten off gullible Labour MP's in Northern constituencies, already prone, given their right-wing, nationalistic political inclinations, to look for easy populist explanations, to blame foreigners, and support protectionist measures, rather than blame capitalism. It is also promoted by the supporters of Lexit, who see every opposition to the status quo as a bandwagon to jump on, no matter how reactionary that opposition might be, as with their support for the gilets jaunes, and their support for various reactionary governments and movements across the globe on the basis of their supposed “anti-imperialism”. But, even at first inspection, the idea that Brexit was driven by a revolt by the “left-behind” is bullshit, and the same is true about the support for Trump. 

Firstly, in relation to Trump, analysis shows that his main vote did not come from those “left-behind”, but from higher-income groups. Secondly, analysis of the Brexit vote shows that around 65% of the Labour 2015 vote, and 70% of its 2017 vote, voted Remain, whilst around the same proportion of Tory voters voted Leave. So, unless we are to believe that the typical Tory voter is someone who sees themselves as having been left behind, as a result of 40 years of what many call "neoliberalism", but I call conservative social-democracy, then, even at first glance, the argument is patently false. The average Tory voter, is not someone who feels left-behind, and nor have they been left behind, as with the average Trump voter. Far from it, they are people who largely benefited from 40 years of conservative social democracy, starting with the election of Thatcher in 1979, and of Reagan in 1980. 

The typical Leave voter is the child of the Thatcher revolution in Britain, just as the typical Trump voter is the child of the Reagan Revolution in the US – though, in fact, as I will show later, the term child here should not be taken literally. In Britain, far from being some seething mass of discontentment, waiting to be mobilised by Lexit into a revolutionary fervour, they are far more likely to be one of those that benefited from Thatcher's Sale of the Century of council houses, and of nationalised utilities. If they had not already benefited from having bought their own house in the 1960's, when houses were dirt cheap, compared to today's astronomically inflated prices, then they would have bought their council house in the 1980's, with the 60% discounts that Thatcher was bribing them with to do so. And, during that period, they are more likely to have agreed with Thatcher that trades unions were too strong, and that the closed shop should be scrapped so that they could get out of belonging to them; they would have agreed with her condemnation of “Loony left” Labour Councils, and their idiotic policies supporting equality for women, and gays, and their meaningless policies of promoting Nuclear Free Zones, and so on. In fact, all the subsequent polling of Leave voters, shows that they hold these bigoted views alongside their bigoted views on immigration and the EU. 

They are far more likely, during the Miners Strike of 1984-5, to have been scabs, or supporters of scabs, backing Thatcher's war against the NUM. It's no wonder that a centre for the idea that it is Labour voters, “up North”, that backed Leave, is Nottingham, because, during the strike, the Nottinghamshire coalfield was scab central, the base of operations for the Thatcher supporting UDM. The idea that it was Labour voters in these constituencies that voted Leave, is disproved by the actual data, but it is promoted by nationalistic sections of the Left that want to promote Brexit, and who have this nonsensical idea that every revolt against the status quo is somehow spontaneously progressive, or in their short-term view, an opportunity for them to sell a few papers, and gain the odd recruit. 

It is promoted by the Tories, and the Tory media, for the simple reason that they know that to the extent that they can get Labour MP's to back Brexit in those seats, those MP's are far more likely to alienate their existing Remain supporting voters than they are to pick up any additional Leave supporting voters. Labour MP's in those seats that back Brexit, will split the Labour vote, sending their Remain supporting majority into the hands of the Liberals, Greens, (and, in Scotland and Wales, the SNP and Plaid) or else simply into disillusionment and apathy, so that they just stay at home. They will then enable the Tory vote to come through the middle to take the seat. 

If we look at the analysis of those voting Leave, we see that not only is it the case that, based on the 2017 election, around 70% of  Tory voters backed Leave, as against only around 30% of Labour voters, but the other striking difference is the age of those that voted Leave. Again, even at first glance the evidence disproves the idea that the Leave vote was some vote of the dispossessed or left-behind. Younger voters voted overwhelmingly for Remain. More than 70% of 18-24 year olds voted Remain; 60% of 25-34 year olds; 55% of 35-44 year olds, and even 44% of 45-54 year olds voted Remain. Only amongst the over 55's does a sizeable majority for Leave appear, with 61% of 55-64 year olds, and 66% amongst 65-74 year olds, 63% amongst the over 75's, although further surveys show higher percentages amongst those in the 80's, and over. 

Again, typically, this does not indicate a correlation between Brexit and the left-behind. In the US, for example, wealth is concentrated in those aged over 55. In Britain, the over 55's are people born before 1964. They are people who entered the workforce at a time of high levels of prosperity, and when the rate of unemployment was between 1-2% or less than half its current low level. In absolute terms, it was below 600 thousand, made up mostly of those moving between jobs. They became adults at a time when lots of houses had been built in the post-war period, and when house prices were relatively low, certainly compared to today's levels. The mortgages they took out on those houses, were quickly eroded by rising levels of inflation and wages. In the years after the 1970's, when many of them would by then have paid off those mortgages, they saw the price of the houses they had bought quadruple during the 1980's, and quadruple again from the early 1990's until the financial crash of 2008. They certainly are not part of the demographic that was left behind by astronomically rising property prices. 

Moreover, having paid off their mortgages by the 1980's, they are also part of the demographic that had disposable income to be used for savings, to put into the privatisation shares, sold off, on the cheap, by Thatcher, or to put into the ISA's, and other tax free funds, promoted by Thatcher and her heirs, in the 1980's and after, which increased in price, if anything, by even larger proportions than the rise in property prices. For those that did not buy their own home, they had been able to obtain Council houses, in the 1950's and 60's relatively easily, including those built to replace older terraced slums. Come the 1980's, they were able to buy those houses under Thatcher's Right To Buy scheme with 60% discounts, meaning they could often be bought for less than £10,000 (ten thousand pounds). 

Moreover, the argument about Brexit being a consequence of a group of people who feel that they have been left-behind by the impact of neoliberalism (conservative social-democracy), simply does not tally with the existence of the same racist and bigoted views that underpin Brexit, in previous times. Up until the early 1960's, there effectively were no immigration controls in Britain. The talk about restricting free movement, today, is rather anachronistic, because until the early 1960's, Britain's borders were open to all comers. Indeed, after WWII, Britain sent envoys out to the Commonwealth to actively recruit immigrants, required to fill severe job shortages, the manifestation, more recently has come in the form of the Windrush scandal. 

The clamour for immigration controls in the early 1960's, certainly had nothing to do with British workers, at that time, not having access to jobs, or houses, or healthcare etc. or any of the other excuses used to explain racism today. Yet, in the 1960's, the elements that marched in defence of Enoch Powell, after he had been sacked by Ted Heath, following his “Rivers of Blood” speech, were not the left-behind, but well paid, militant, London dockers. It wasn't the left-behind, but Tory voting landlords who put notices in their windows saying “No Dogs, No Blacks, No Irish”! 

In 1975, with the Tory Party being firmly under the control of its social-democratic, EEC supporting wing, epitomised by Heath, those opposing the EEC, like Powell, were mavericks, with the support of a tiny group of fascists in the NF, and other splinter groups. The large majority of the Tory party backed the EEC, which is why, in 1975, the electorate voted 2:1 in favour of staying in. At that time, the issue of the EEC and immigration was seen by most people, and particularly most Tory voters as two different things. They saw opposition to EEC membership in terms of it being a hobbyhorse of the far-Left, which opposed it, and as they opposed the Left, something they should back, on the basis of my enemy's enemy is my friend. They saw it in terms of facilitated foreign holidays, and so on. As far as immigration was concerned, they saw it, as with the later TV series “Auf Wiedersehen Pet”, as something that British workers were more likely to do, than vice versa, and in any case, at that time, whilst they might refer to Deigos, derisively, the main concern they had over immigration was the immigration of blacks from the Caribbean, and Asians both from the sub-continent, and those being expelled from Africa. 

Whilst a majority voted against leaving the EEC in 1975, had the referendum been to ban immigration, it would have received a similar vote in support of it as did Leave in 2016. It had nothing to do with people being left-behind then, and nor does it today. Its real basis is the deep seated bigotry amongst sections of the British population that goes back to its colonial empire, and the feelings of natural superiority that were engendered by it amongst its population. That is one reason that those ideas, and that bigotry are entrenched amongst the older cohorts of the population that grew up in the afterglow of that imperial majesty, and is reflected in the support for Brexit and other reactionary views, but is absent largely from the younger sections of the population. Indeed, one reason that the Tory Brextremists are desperate to push Brexit through now, and to avoid a further referendum, or a General Election in which Labour would call for Brexit to be scrapped, is that this is their last chance to achieve that goal. 

The older voters infected with that bigotry, as Peter Kellner has shown, are literally dying out. They are being replaced by younger voters that do not have those same bigoted views, and overwhelmingly oppose Brexit. Already, as Kellner has shown, just from that fact, Remain would now have a majority, and as every year goes by, the majority for Remain will increase, as ever more young people join the electorate, and the old people die off. The same process is what lies behind the inevitable decline of the Tory Party itself, and similarly of the Republican Party in the US. 

In 2016, unlike 1975, the primary concern of Leave voters was not the EU itself, but was the issue of immigration. But, unlike 1975, immigration was now seen as inextricably linked to the question of the EU. It was now not just Western European migrants coming to Britain in relatively small numbers, and of little concern to those whose main gripe was over the immigration of people with darker skins, but was migrants from Eastern and Central Europe, some also with darker skins, and of refugees, and migrants from further afield that came up through the Middle East and Turkey, and that migration was conflated, in the minds of bigots, with all other migration, and the existence of communities of immigrants from previous generations. So, after the Brexit vote, just as we have seen some of the less intelligent bigots confuse paedophiles with paediatricians, so we saw the same kinds of elements tell anyone with a darker skin, or an accent that they had to “go home”. 

Some years ago, long before the Brexit vote, I wrote that this bigotry, of racism, homophobia, misogyny and so on, was the result of the shit of ages that had been passed down over the centuries, and which was not actually conducive to the interests of modern capitalism. Yet, the bourgeoisie itself, in its more enlightened sections, having divested itself of those ideas, had not undertaken the required ideological struggle, against that bigotry still prevalent amongst its less enlightened sections. In other words, racism and other forms of bigotry have existed in various forms for centuries, long before capitalism. The enlightened layers of the bourgeoisie, amongst the top 0.01% have largely divested themselves of it, as have those that act as their representatives in the management of the big companies. It is an encumbrance to the kind of social-democratic polity they require for efficient capital accumulation. Not so, for all of those small capitalists, market traders, shopkeepers, and sweatshop owners that comprise the numerical majority of the ruling class, though not its economically dominant element. 

The former have failed to purge those ideas from the class as a whole, because to do so would have required an all out political struggle with that section of its own class, and that would have exposed it to the potential of attack from the working-class itself, particularly the more advanced sections of the working-class. Yet, in truth, they need not have feared. The leaders of the workers movement have themselves been motivated by an ideology of Economism. Faced with the existence of bigotry within the ranks of the working-class, rather than confront it, they have accommodated to it, preferring instead to concentrate on the “bread and butter” issues of jobs, pay, the welfare state etc. That is why they quickly buckled, and agreed to introduce immigration controls in the early 1960's, which in turn created the conditions for the Windrush Scandal. 

The Militant tendency was infamous, in the 1980's, for quickly dropping any kind of principled position in relation to women, gay rights, the occupation of Ireland, and so on, if it thought it might alienate any of its industrial militants, or potential recruits. The same was true of the SWP, which was also infamous in more recent times for subordinating its positions on women's rights, gay rights and so on, to its attempts to recruit amongst reactionary forces within the ranks of supposed “anti-imperialists” such as Hezbollah, or Hamas, as well as trying to avoid alienating its reactionary allies in groups such as Respect. 

For the last three quarters of a century, the dominant elements within the bourgeoisie failed to engage in a political struggle in its own ranks to root out the last vestiges of bigotry, even though it was contrary to its own interests in developing a social-democratic framework within which large-scale capital accumulation could take place. That failure has come back to bite it, as those reactionary elements within its own class, based upon the large number of small private capitalists, have captured the Tory Party in Britain, the Republican Party in the US, and a similar picture has occurred across Europe. It has now created the conditions for undermining one of its main post-war achievements, the creation of the EU, and via Trump, looks set to undermine the other social-democratic organisations created at Bretton Woods, such as the WTO, and so on. 

Similarly, in the post-war period, Stalinism following its national-socialist ideology of socialism in one country, promoted a programme of economic nationalism, including the reactionary protectionist ideas of establishing immigration and import controls that act to shift the blame on to foreigners, and particularly foreign workers. Social-democracy, which had originated as a nation state based ideology, burst asunder that limitation after WWII, as it became apparent that social-democracy itself could only exist at an international level. But, typical of the managerialist, bureaucratic nature of social-democracy, it attempted to manage that transition by bureaucratic rather than democratic means. It developed the EU by such bureaucratic means, thereby enhancing the democratic deficit, and it responded to bigotry likewise by bureaucratic means, establishing laws against bigotry, as though that could change what was in people's minds, and creating numerous quangos to police what people said, when what was in their minds occasionally slipped out. No wonder, that having failed to actually deal with the underlying bigotry and reactionary ideas, for more than 40 years, and instead having tried to hide it under the carpet, when the Brexit referendum, lifted up that carpet, all of the stored up bigotry rushed out and resulted in the Brexit vote! 

That vote was not the result of people who have been left behind. It was the result of centuries of bigotry and reactionary ideology that have not been thoroughly confronted and defeated. We need social-democratic parties, and factions of parties to undertake that political struggle, on the same kind of basis that they would undertake a political revolution, because essentially that is what is taking place. It is a political revolution in which the interests of large-scale socialised capital, and of the social-democracy that rests upon it, must assert its dominance against the attempts of small-scale privately owned capital, to turn back the clock, and to install a reactionary political regime that is designed to meet its interests, and, like fascism, seeks to do so by mobilising behind it, the atomised, backward layers of society, by appealing to all of those bigoted ideas and prejudices that have been cast down upon it, like shit rolling down hill. This is an all out political battle against those forces of reaction. It is a defining point of departure for our epoch.