Brexit and Newport West

The Newport West By-Election burst all of the illusions that the supporters of Brexit, on both right and left, have been purveying.  It should act as a wake-up call for Labour, and those within the ranks of the Shadow Cabinet that continue to peddle the myth that Labour's electoral fortunes depends on persisting with the support for the reactionary Brexit agenda.  Labour's vote share declined by 12.7 percentage points, but that represents a percentage fall of 24.28%, i.e. a fall of more or less a quarter of its vote share.  By contrast, the overtly anti-Brexit parties increased their vote share massively.  Although it rose by 11.5% points - representing clearly a straight switch of disgruntled Remainer Labour voters to these Remain supporting parties, in percentage terms it represents a huge increase in their vote share of 198%, in other words, more or less a trebling of their vote share.  If they were to form an alliance, and stand a single candidate, a further rise in their vote share of these proportions would wipe out Labour's majority, even in a Labour stronghold like newport West, and see the seat fall into the hands of the Liberals, Greens, Plaid, or possibly even the Small Change UK Blair-right opportunists.

Despite the fact that all of the research done into the 2016 EU Referendum showed that Brexit is a right-wing project, pushed by the far-right of the Tory Party, in pursuit of the interests of the most reactionary, most backward, most anti-working class elements of the British ruling class, amongst the plethora of small, and often very small private capitalists, the myth has continued to be fostered that Brexit was somehow a project designed to reflect the needs, and anger of a “left-behind” working-class, who represent a core of traditional Labour voters. The idea was fostered that it was this “left-behind” working-class base of the Labour Party that voted for Brexit, despite the fact that all of the analysis shows that the main support for Brexit came from elderly Tories, who far from being “left-behind” are the people who have benefited from massively inflated house prices, and massively inflated prices of the financial assets that they were able to accumulate in the shape of pensions, ISA's, and so on. On the basis of this myth, it was suggested that Labour had a problem of trying to simultaneously meet the needs of its Remain supporting, younger voters in the South and metropolitan areas, at the same time as meeting the needs of its core base of traditional working-class voters in the North and Midlands. The other myth that has been purveyed is that, if Brexit is not implemented, even as a result of another referendum arriving at a different democratic decision, that this would result in a wave of anger, from furious people who would thereby be attracted to far right organisations like UKIP, and its allies within the EDL, BNP etc. All of it complete bunkum, as a look at the facts would have shown, but which the Newport West By-Election has now shown in practice. 

In 2016, Newport West voted 44% Remain to 56% Leave. Newport West has been a Labour seat, held by Paul Flynn, continuously for the last 32 years. Newport, situated in South Wales, is typical of a core Labour seat, in a traditional working-class area. But, Newport also illustrates what is wrong with the old narrative that the myth about the “left-behind” working-class represents. Situated in South Wales, an area founded upon the traditional industries of coal mining, and steel production, it should fit well with the idea of a left-behind working-class, disillusioned with a globalised world, and ready to vent its spleen by voting for Brexit. And, indeed, the 56-44 vote in favour of Leave in 2016, does indeed show a majority of voters in Newport West favoured Leave, and did so in larger numbers than for the UK as a whole. But, as I have pointed out previously, what that global figure does not show is who voted for Leave. We know that for the UK as a whole 66% of Labour's 2015 voters, voted Remain, as against 34% Leave. For Wales that figure was 64% voted Remain, as against 36% voting Leave. Taking the 2017 Labour voters, when many younger, Remain supporting voters came out to vote Labour, some of them coming from the Liberals and Greens, around 70-75% of Labour voters nationally supported Remain, with only around 25-30% backing Leave. 

In other words, its silly to assume that because a constituency votes Leave that this Leave vote is comprised in any way equally of Labour and Tory voters. It is similarly silly to assume that just because a seat is a Labour held seat, including a Labour held seat in a traditional Labour area, that just because it votes Leave, even that it votes Leave heavily, that this means that a majority of Labour voters in that seat also back Leave. It means no such thing. Just do the maths. For ease of calculation, assume a seat has an electorate of 100,000, 70% of whom vote. Labour has 50%, or 35,000 votes, Tories 40% or 28,000 votes, Liberals 5% or 3,500 votes, with the remaining 5% going to UKIP and other fringe parties. If, 40% of Labour's voters vote Leave, and 60% vote Remain, that means 14,000 Leave votes. If 80% of Tories vote Leave that is another 22,400 Leave votes. If 30% of Liberal voters vote Leave that is another 1,000 votes, and if 90% of the others, mostly UKIP, vote Leave that is another 1,600 votes in total. But, in such a seat, we might expect, that a chunk of those voters who never usually vote will turn out to vote Leave. If only a third of them were to do so that is another 10,000 Leave votes. That gives a total of 49,000 Leave votes, out of a total of 77,000 votes cast, which gives a majority for Remain of 64:36. Yet, only 40% of Labour voters here have voted Leave, as against 60% backing Remain, with only 30% of Liberals voting Leave. 

And, as I've set out previously, this is what we have seen, across the UK. The large majority of the Leave vote, came from Tories and those to their Right, including from a mobilisation of a part of those who usually do not bother to vote, but who are far from being traditional Labour voters, and form part of that layer that is traditionally attracted to fascist and authoritarian groups. It only requires that the proportion of Tories voting for Brexit is a bit higher than the national average, and the proportion of Labour voters backing Remain to be a bit lower than the national average to obtain such a result. 

In places like Newport, or Stoke, or Sunderland there are undoubtedly still people who are suffering from the fall-out of Thatcher's policy of deindustrialisation in the 1980's. They will generally be those of the older generations, and particularly those without any kind of formal qualifications. They may be amongst those in the older generation that did not benefit from buying their council house, who did not buy a house in the early 1960's, or 1970's, and then see its price soar to astronomical levels. And, similarly, they may not then have been able to save money from their incomes to put into a pension or ISA, and so on, whose value has also soared over the last 40 years. Its undoubtedly from this group that the slightly lower support for Remain, amongst Labour voters, in such seats, arises. But, it is nevertheless a minority of that Labour vote, and not a majority. The fact remains that the vast bulk of the Leave vote, in these constituencies, as elsewhere, comes from Tory voters, particularly elderly Tory voters, who have been far from left behind over the last 40 years. 

Newport also illustrates the changing nature of the working-class, and why the view of the working-class Labour voter as someone who is a manual worker, that has been left behind, as a result of the closure of those old industries, is facile. In the same way that South Wales, and other parts of the UK benefited from globalisation, as a result of Japanese and other global firms siting plants there, as a cheap manufacturing base, with frictionless access into the EU, which is the world's largest single market, so Newport has seen Airbus Defence and Space locate there. It is home to the ONS, the UK Intellectual Property Office, Lloyds TSB General Insurance, Panasonic, International Rectifier, GoCompare, Wales and West Utilities HQ, HM Prison Service, the Passport Office, to name but a few. In other words, it is a reflection of the fact that today, 80% of the economy is based upon service industry, and that is where the same proportion of today's working-class is employed, with less than 20% now employed in those old manufacturing industries. A strategy based upon an appeal to minorities, especially minorities that are becoming smaller by the day, is one that is doomed to fail. When that appeal is based on the idea that progress should be halted, or worse that the clock should be turned backwards – which is what Brexit represents – it is not only doomed to failure, but from a socialist perspective it deserves to fail, because it is reactionary. 

That the Tories, now dominated by reactionaries, representing the interests of a reactionary section of the British ruling class, should pursue Brexit is entirely logical and understandable, because they are pursuing the interests of the large majority of their membership, and core vote. According to latest polls, 80% of Tory members and voters support not just Brexit, but an immediate no deal crash out. But, it makes absolutely no sense for the Labour Party to pursue a similar reactionary course. And, the Newport West By-Election demonstrated that. 

The turnout was 23,000 compared to 43,000 in 2017. This halving of the turnout explains most of the fall in Labour's majority over the Tories from 5.600 to 1,900, though it shows a slight swing from Labour to Tories. But, that is misleading. It's quite clear that this was not a matter of Labour voters switching to the Tories. It is the result of the fact that the Tory vote declined marginally less than did the Labour vote, but what is significant is where these votes went. 

The Tory vote dropped by 8%, and most of this clearly went back to its home with UKIP, whose vote rose by 6%. UKIP's candidate was the notorious Neil Hamilton, who rose to infamy as a result of the 1990's “cash for questions” scandal that rocked the Major Tory government at that time. Having lost his Knutsford seat to the BBC's Man In A White Suit, Martin Bell, Hamilton and his wife then entered into a lurid career of TV appearances, in which they showed that there was no depths they would not plumb in order to earn a buck, and keep themselves in the public gaze. Whether Hamilton's notoriety was, therefore, a help or a hindrance in terms of his vote is hard to determine. UKIP's vote, in the seat stood at around 1,000 from the early 2000's, rising to 6,000 in 2015. But, in 2017, it lost all those gains dropping 12.7%, as UKIP started to go into meltdown, and the Leavers had a new champion in the Tory Party. The Tories rose by nearly 7%. 

At the same time, in 2017, Labour's share rose by 11%, and it's clear that, as a large number of young Labour voters, mostly backing Remain, and aghast at the prospect of a hard Tory Brexit, shifted their vote to Labour, the rise in Labour's vote came not just from this mobilisation that the Corbyn leadership engendered, motivated by the idea of a more radical politics, but that it dragged with it votes from the Liberals, Greens and Plaid. That was based upon the idea that only Labour could prevent a hard Tory Brexit, whilst holding out the prospect that the opposition to Brexit itself, which was the position of the vast majority of Labour members, would see the party eventually come out to oppose Brexit. The votes of the Liberals, Greens and Plaid, in 2017 fell by 1.7%, 2%, and 1.5% respectively. 

What has happened in the by-election is that, as May has floundered over Brexit, UKIP votes that had gone to the Tories in 2017, have gone back to UKIP. Similarly, but to a greater extent, the Liberal, Green and Plaid votes that were lent to Labour in 2017, in the hope that Corbyn would oppose Brexit, have gone back to those parties. Labour's vote share dropped by 12.7%, whereas the vote share going to parties that openly oppose Brexit, rose by 11.5%. 

Ruth Jones is a Pro-Remain Labour candidate, but it's quite clear that Labour lost votes to openly anti-Brexit parties in the election because, Corbyn and Labour nationally have been seen to be proposing an almost identical pro-Brexit position as Theresa May. Indeed, in the days leading up to the election, May had called Corbyn into talks to try to save her Brexit deal on that basis. Contrary to the claims being made by Labour Shadow Cabinet members like Ian Lavery, Angela Rayner, Richard Burgon, and Rebecca Long-Bailey, alongside right-wing Labour MP's such as John Mann, Gareth Snell, Ruth Smeeth, Kate Hoey, Caroline Flint et al, it's clear from the by-election that Labour's pro-Brexit stance is doing the party harm, and causing it to lose votes in solid Labour seats, like Newport, because, Leave voters will continue to support the real proponents of Brexit, be it the Tories or UKIP, at the same time that Labour haemorrhages its core votes to parties backing Remain. 

If we look at the vote in terms of Leave and Remain, then we can divide the Leave voting parties into Labour, Tory and UKIP on one side, with Liberals, Greens, Plaid and Renew on the other. The Tory vote share dropped by 8%, but the UKIP vote share rose by 6%. Labour's vote share dropped by 12.7%, meaning that the total vote share of all Leave supporting parties dropped by 14.7%. Meanwhile, the vote share of the Liberals, Greens, Plaid and Renew, in total, rose by 11.5%. Putting together the fall in the vote share of the Brexit supporting parties with the rise in the vote share of the anti-Brexit parties that represents a massive swing away from Leave towards Remain. 

Its true that the total combined vote of the anti-Brexit parties still amounts to only 17.2%, but that is twice the vote share obtained by UKIP, and in a seat where none of these smaller parties would have expected to win, and where, therefore, many of their voters would have stayed at home, or still voted Labour to keep the Tories out, we would expect that vote to increase considerably, in more favourable conditions.. But, it does show a serious threat to Labour in more marginal seats, where its pro-Brexit stance, gives no reason for anti-Brexit voters to give their vote to them, especially as we know that, now, 40% of people identify themselves as either Leave or Remain, as opposed to only 8% who identify as Labour or Tory, and, so, where they are more likely to switch to pro-Remain candidates. If, in the upcoming European Parliament elections, those opposing Brexit can organise themselves into a progressive alliance standing common candidates, they will have a good chance of winning. Already, in this Labour stronghold of Newport West, the combined vote of 17.2% represents nearly half the vote share obtained by Labour. 

The EP elections will be a good test of that. Exploding the myth that enraged Brexit supporters would turn out to vote against Labour and Tory, and to support hardline Brexit candidates the opposite has been true. There was no mass turnout of Brextremist voters in Newport. On the contrary, the Leave vote share dropped by nearly 15%, and it was the Remain vote share that rose substantially, by 11.5%. That is consistent with the fact that we have seen more than 6 million people sign the petition to revoke Article 50, whereas only 300,000 have signed a pro-Brexit petition, as well as the fact that whereas anti-Brexit campaigners mobilised over 1 million to march against Brexit, Farage could only manage a few dozen stragglers, and even when combined with the forces of Leave Means Leave, and of UKIP/EDL/BNP they could manage only around 3,000 to protest. 

The idea that stopping Brexit will lead to a mass revolt is absurd. The wind is in the sails of the anti-Brexit forces, as the Leavers continue their steady decline. It is far more likely that if we see a revolt it will be if Corbyn and Labour facilitates May's Brexit, leading to millions of voters, particularly radicalised, young Labour voters, being outraged at being denied a vote on the most important issue for a generation, and one that will affect their lives adversely far more than for anyone else. When that Brexit, as it inevitably will, results in a deterioration in living standards, a loss of jobs, and threats to the rights of millions of workers, they will not be alone in expressing that outrage against all those that brought it about. 

Labour needs to change course quickly, and declare its militant opposition to the reactionary agenda of Brexit. It must commit to scrapping it if returned to office in a General Election. It should set out, instead, a progressive social-democratic agenda of working with socialists and social democrats across Europe, to bring workers together in a common struggle against austerity, and attacks on workers rights, including the right to freedom of movement.