Contrary to Comrade Douglass's suggestion, Brexit, indeed, “was a largely Tory affair”, as Paul Demarty had said. In Tory held seats, the Labour vote, by definition, represented a smaller proportion of the total vote, than in Labour held seats, and so was unlikely, no matter how solidly it was behind “Remain”, to outweigh the bloc of Tory votes behind “Leave”. It is mainly in those Conservative seats, in which the professional, white collar, middle-class provides the backing for the Conservatives – the so called Blue Wall – that Conservative held seats voted “Remain”, because, in those seats, that vote, plus that of Labour voters, Liberals etc., outweighed the votes of the petty-bourgeoisie. Its in those seats that the Tories lost, in 2017, to Labour and Liberals, and where the Tories, today, are again losing to Liberals.
As I have set out before, Labour voters everywhere, including in Labour held seats that voted "Leave" – the so called Red Wall – voted by a large majority for “Remain”. So, in the North, referred to by Comrade Douglass, 57% of those that voted Labour in 2015, voted “Remain”, in 2016. In the Midlands, 60% voted “Remain”, and in Wales, 64% voted “Remain”. That was not much different to the proportion elsewhere in the country, other than London, where 74% of Labour voters voted “Remain”. But, that was a proportion of Labour's 2015 vote. In 2017, Labour's vote increased massively, as a result of large numbers of young voters, and former Liberal and Green voters, swinging behind Corbyn's Labour, in the hope of stopping Brexit. In 2015, Miliband's Labour secured 9.3 million votes, whereas, in 2017, Corbyn's Labour won 12.9 million votes, an additional 3.5 million votes, or around 40%, more votes, nearly all of whom would be “Remainers”. In other words, taken as a proportion of Labour's 2017 vote, rather than its 2015 vote, around 80% in the North, 84% in The Midlands, and 88% in Wales could be estimated to have voted “Remain” in 2016.
In 1975, despite the fact that even more of the Trades Union leaders, and at a time when trades union membership was much greater than it is, today, and much of the Labour Left, opposed EEC membership, the working-class voted overwhelmingly, in favour of EEC/EU membership. The vote was 2:1 in favour, and given that, again, that reactionary petty-bourgeoisie voted fairly solidly against membership, that means that the pro-EEC vote was overwhelmingly a working-class vote. I doubt that, Comrade Douglass, however, was in favour of tailing that working-class, in the way he proposes, now. The reality was that the working-class, in that respect was ahead of the “Left” union leaders, the Stalinists, and other Left nationalists. The workers, in subsequent elections, and polling continued to overwhelmingly back EEC/EU membership, in the same proportion, which is why, the Labour Party, eventually, had to drop its anti-EU stance, in 1987.
What is different, today, compared to 1975, is not any significant change in the attitude of the working-class, but is the fact that the size of the petty-bourgeoisie has grown by 50%, since the 1980's, and its social weight, in particular its electoral weight, has risen with it. In addition, the process of deindustrialisation, which caused that growth in the size of the petty-bourgeoisie, diminished the size and social weight of the organised, more advanced sections of workers, whilst there has also been an increase in the number of atomised, precarious workers, as well as pensioners, longer-term unemployed, and so on, who always form the cohort of least advanced, and even lumpen workers, prone to the approaches of fascists. It is that fact, of the relative increase in the size of the reactionary layers of society, and relative diminution in the weight of the working-class, that explains the narrow majority for Brexit in 2016 – not, even, then, of course, a majority of the electorate (only 37% of which voted for it), but only of those that were allowed, and who turned out, to vote.
What is worse, for the argument of the Left Brexiters, such as Comrade Douglass, is that, no sooner had that rigged referendum taken place than even its narrow majority disappeared! That was not just because many of those older voters that were its main age-cohort died off, but, also, because of an almost immediate buyers remorse, as even those that voted for it, realised they had been sold a pup. In every subsequent opinion poll there was a majority for “Remain”, and of those who said the decision had been a mistake. That was also, true in actual elections, where a majority repeatedly voted for parties which opposed Brexit, compared to those that supported Brexit.
The most obvious example of that was Labour's vote in 2017. And, in contrast to that, in 2019, when Corbyn reverted to his previous anti-EU views of the 1970's, Labour got slammed, with a large chunk of its 2017 vote going back to the Liberals and Greens, or else sitting on its hands. It is similarly notable that as Starmer has embraced Brexit nationalism and jingoism even more ardently, the votes for his Blue Labour have fallen significantly even compared to the poor showing of Corbyn's Labour in 2019, and disastrously so, when compared with that of 2017.
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