In the
wake of Brexit, we were told the vote was a great revolt by the white
working-class. We were told it was grounded in racist discontent with
an out-of-touch metropolitan elite. The Leave vote was entirely
composed of ill-educated, poor racists living anywhere between the
progressive bastions of London and Scotland. It's worth asking what's
wrong with this view.
Too
much bile has been directed towards the working-class for voting the
wrong way. It's as if europhilic liberals cannot bring themselves
to look in the mirror and examine the Remain campaigns for any
failing. And the EU is left beyond scrutiny. Instead the
working-class is supposed to play the scapegoat for an incoherent and
lacklustre campaign strategy.
There
are no legitimate reasons to advocate Brexit, in this view, the vote
is simply an expression of racism and ignorance. Importantly, the
European political terrain is increasingly split between liberalism
and nationalism with each side helping to constitute the other. This
basic antagonism has dominated the entire EU debate and, in turn,
shaped the way the working-class has been tarred by middle-class
journalists.
My
first reaction was to characterise Brexit as a "
fuck
you" vote. I still think it was, but not necessarily by
people who have been left behind by globalisation. As Zoe Williams
has pointed out, it was
the
Southern English middle-class that tipped the balance – not
working-class Northerners. This should not be a surprise.
Middle-class and elite votes play a major role in all elections, as
they dominate the whole discourse, the media and political agenda.
No War Like Class War
By
holding a vote, David Cameron hoped to resolve the tension within the
ruling-class and his own party. He did not believe he could lose the
referendum because he was so accustomed to winning on every occasion.
There was no game plan for an exit. So when the men who had always
won everything finally lost, they had no idea what to do – and they
still don't. But this is not the fullest account of the character of
the vote.
Although
the ruling-class was thinking of its own interests, the
middle-classes and the working poor were significant actors. The
breakdown
of the Leave vote in ABC terms of class, not necessarily the best
analysis, it must be said, shows 10 million upper/middle-class votes
and seven million working-class votes cast for Brexit. By contrast,
the Remain vote was made up of 12 million upper/middle-class votes
with around four million working-class votes.
Similarly,
the base of UKIP is often wrongly described as working-class and
eating into the Labour vote. Actually UKIP has primarily threatened
the Conservative Party, and often overtook it in Labour
constituencies because so few locals would vote Tory. The UKIP base
is petty-bourgeois with some elements of the poor and the rich
backing them. Nigel Farage may be the first ultra-rightist to lead a
party based on a cross-class alliance.
So we
find the narrative of a working-class revolt is somewhat inaccurate.
As in most votes, the working-class was present, but key roles were
played by elite interests and middle-class votes. This is not to
diminish the role of the votes cast by working-class people.
Certainly, the grievances of the working-class were a significant
factor. But the fact that the Leave vote was a convergence of
different class forces should not surprise us.
Likewise,
the vote was not a case of total white flight, though it is mostly.
Around
33%
of Asian voters opted for Brexit, alongside 27% of black voters.
Again, this is not to explain away the role of the racism. After all,
you can still cast a vote to limit EU migration on the grounds that
the system privileges EU nationals over migrants from other parts of
the world. This is why multiculturalism did not prevent Birmingham
from voting for exit.
In
fact, Nigel Farage often made this Commonwealth argument against EU
membership. The basic idea goes that the UK should become closer to
its former colonies and not the small cluster of European states.
This reveals more than a scintilla of colonial nostalgia is present
in the kind of nationalism invoked by Brexit campaigners. The wish to
"get my country back" can take a variety of forms. It harks
back to a dead empire.
The Left and Brexit
Still,
the key question for the Left is the role of the working-class. There
are those on the radical Left, who made the progressive case for
British withdrawal from the EU. Veteran agitators such as
Tariq
Ali and
George
Galloway rank in the Lexit camp. Many other socialists found
themselves sympathetic to this argument thanks to the EU's austerity
programme. Ultimately, the prospect of siding with Farage may have
been too much to stomach.
Economist
Paul
Mason warned against a Lexit vote on pragmatic grounds: the
timing was wrong, as the Left lacked a mass movement and leadership,
to overhaul the status quo. One might wonder if the time is ever
right. Others like John Pilger framed the Brexit vote as an "
act
of raw democracy" by
millions of ordinary people.
This repeats the idea that the working-class was in the driving seat
and this vote was a "fuck you" to the ruling-class.
Not
only is the working-class not in the driving seat, the sections of
the poor which supported Brexit may well have done so out of
nationalism. This does not mean there was
no
left-wing element in the Leave vote, though it is a fact that the
Left was divided over the EU – which, at once, stands for freedom
of movement and neoliberalism. Poor people fell on both sides of the
debate too.
Yet the
Lexit crowd wants to pretend that the working-class is vote was
devoid of racism. This brings us to one of the classic fixations of
the Left: if the working-class as a revolutionary agent, how is it
that capitalism has not been overthrown? The easy answer is that it
is deficient leadership on the part of trade unions and parties.
While this may well be true, it does not rule out the possibility
that the working-class is open to demobilisation, as well as
reformist and reactionary politics.
If
liberals are guilty of presupposing the inherent backwardness of the
working-class, then a number of leftists can be criticised for
claiming the working-class is inherently revolutionary or even
communist already. The working-class has agency, and the potential
for revolutionary agency, which means the choice is not between a
unwashed xenophobic rabble and a red flag-waving proletariat.
Revolutionary Ideals
Obviously, class interests are not self-evident axioms. Classes are
alive, they are not subject to test conditions, as they engage in the
world and face changing social conditions. If working-class agency
means anything, it means the ability to disagree and make independent
choices. But this does not extend to the terms of the choice itself.
Even if the proletariat is not on the cusp of a great revolt, it is
the Left that needs the working-class and, likewise, class politics
is the only way forward for ordinary people. Left-wing ideals without
class is a form of anti-politics. If a section of working people, or
even a majority for that matter, are not mobilised by the Left, this
would not vindicate those who say the poor are backward.
It is
worth acknowledging that the main demand of Leave voters was national
sovereignty, whereas immigration controls was a secondary concern.
Not that this changes the fact that the dominant character of the
vote was
nationalist.
Sovereignty is one of those few ambiguous demands backed by radical
elements across the spectrum.
Nevertheless,
the Left should not try to externalise racism from the working-class
in a bid to save its own romantic view of the workers. The problem
here is that it presupposes that the poor ought
to have the right set of ideas in order for socialists to stand with
them. In this sense, the constant yearning for a revolutionary agent
collapses into its opposite.
This article was originally published at Souciant.
