The class bias of the Brexit debate

If the organisers are to be believed, and why would they lie, around one million people were on a demonstration last week calling for a second referendum. Or perhaps not a second referendum, but rather revoking article 50 altogether. No matter, the demo was certainly large and included Labour frontbenchers John McDonnell and Diane Abbott both of whom spoke after finishing the business of derailing the Government’s Brexit plan in Parliament.

The size of the demo has prompted some, including Alistair Campbell, to claim that such a large show of public support cannot be ignored. The organisers have claimed that it was the largest peacetime demo in the UK, conveniently forgetting the march against the Iraq War which was attended by between 2-3 million people and duly ignored by a Government one of whose chief advisers was, you already know the punchline, Alistair Campbell.

I did not attend the demo on 22^nd October because I was watching the Rugby World Cup, but more importantly because I fundamentally disagree with its demands. I have not been an advocate of a second referendum and have stated so in this blog, and the same reasons would clearly lead me to reject calls to revoke Article 50.

I have written before about why I think the claims that the mood of the country has changed are based on a flawed analysis of some very selective polls, and won’t bore you by making the same arguments here. Rather, I was intrigued by a claim in The Observer that “this may well be the most good-natured and well-mannered of protest movements the country has ever mustered.” I am not sure what protest movements Observer journalists attend, but having been on marches against pit closures, against nuclear weapons, against Clause 28, against the Poll Tax, against student loans, against various wars including Iraq (I’m not boasting here, my marching has taken place over a number of years) I can honestly say that the only time the good humour of the marchers is broken is when they have been attacked by the police. But, I guess the point being made is to contrast the polite, and witty, remainers with the coarse and uncouth Brexiteers. And, here lies the rub.

We are now told that the fault line running through politics is one of remain or leave. What this ignores is the class nature of the entire Brexit debate, and the way in which remain and leave have come to represent very different social  constituencies.

There was a banner on a previous ‘People’s Vote’ March which read “52% thick, 48% right”. Whilst this was only one banner on a large demo I think it gives away something of the social snobbery of ardent remainers.

We have to go back to 2016 to the referendum to remind ourselves that the remain campaign was supported by, almost, the entire British establishment. The only political party that were unequivocally pro-Brexit were UKIP who despite not having a single MP were never off Question Time and had done enough to spook the Tory Party into calling the referendum in the first place. The Institute of Directors, the Confederation of British Industry, the TUC, even the Institute of Fiscal Studies were in the remain camp. A handful of businesses, most notably Witheringspoons, and a cross-section of the more “eccentric” (I believe it is politically incorrect to refer to them as a bunch of nutters) MP’s including Kate Hoey, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Peter Bone were in the leave camp. The point is that you did not have to be in any shape or form ‘radical’ to be for remain. Indeed, some radicals, including the Communist Party, were on the leave side and whilst by no means a significant number, many socialists took a Bennite position of regarding the EU as a capitalist club we were best out of. To be fair there is considerable merit in that argument but it barely got a hearing during the campaign.

The remain campaign was dominated by an establishment elite who took it for granted that ordinary people would do as they were told and vote to remain in an EU the same remain-supporting establishment had spent 30 years criticising and scapegoating.

Nobody knows for certain how different social groups voted, but according to IPSOS-Mori “Younger, more middle class, more educated and BME voters chose to remain; older, working class, less educated and white voters opted to leave.” That is not to say that all young people, or all middle class people voted to remain or vice versa that all working class people voted to leave. And, even if those broad categories are correct it does not tell us why they chose to vote that way.

In a recent report Matthew Goodwin, a leave advocate, cites his own research in which he claims that leave voters, far from being ‘thick’ knew exactly what they were voting for:  “The two dominant motives were to return powers from the EU to the nation state and to lower the overall level of immigration into Britain.” It doesn’t matter whether you agree with them or not, the point is that they had a very clear idea of what they wanted. It also matters little whether you believe that this is what they will actually get. That people are, in your opinion, wrong is not a good reason to void a democratic vote.

But, I have come to the conclusion that for ardent remainers all these arguments are a smokescreen masking what they really feel. Let’s be honest, the remain campaign is, essentially, made up of the middle classes. Now to be sure whilst many of these people do not normally turn up to demonstrate a good few of them will consider themselves to be on the left. They may not be political Conservatives but many are certainly socially conservative. The reason is that mostly they do quite well out of the system.

Whilst the middle classes have felt squeezed they do tend to have good jobs, often in the public sector, they have pensions, nice homes in areas with good schools and can afford a holiday or two abroad most years. I don’t resent them any of this (it pretty much describes where I ended up, after all), neither do I doubt their passion for remaining in Europe.

But, the middle classes have a tendency to expect things to go their way, and they also have a tendency to think of themselves as better than the working classes. Often they take a condescending attitude to those they consider their social inferiors, and whilst they treat their cleaners, or those who serve them, well they do not see them as their equals.

So, when those poorly educated, uncouth, types lacking in manners and the social graces won the referendum it could not but end in acrimony. If the middle class, with their education and manners, were convinced that staying in Europe was right, then it must be right. And, if it was right how could parliament be permitted to respect a referendum which had to be flawed, unlawful, misunderstood or the work of racist thugs. The only right thing to do in such a scenario is to ignore those who were too thick to understand the consequences of their own actions and have a second referendum.

And, that was their demand. Until recently. Their enthusiasm for a second referendum has been based on the assumption that this time they would win and their rather cosy lifestyles could continue. As could poverty, austerity, anti-trade union laws and a system that sees the rich get richer, the middle survive and the poor get poorer.

But, something changed as it became apparent that a second referendum was a huge leap in the dark. It is apparent from recent opinion polls that a remain victory is not the taken for granted that was once thought. Democracy it turns out is dangerous because those thick, uncouth types could win again. So the demand has changed to simply call the whole thing off and revoke Article 50. As if it was all a mistake. It is a very British response to losing.

The beauty of this approach is it reminds the working class of their place in society. They can have opinions provided they remain deferential. They must not think that, collectively, they can change things. Better to maintain the illusion of a meritocracy by allowing the odd working class person into the middle class. After all, so long as there is a willing supply of people prepared to do the work that middle class people see as below them, that is not a problem.

But it is a problem. A problem of class bias, where a class with the means to block the progress of a subordinate class do so not simply by formal barriers but by ensuring that their own offspring have all the best opportunities. Ask yourself where the journalists, the judges, the auteurs come from. It is now almost impossible to break into a middle class career by effort and talent alone without having a parent or sibling to open those vital doors for you.

This has nothing to do with Brexit. Class privilege and class prejudice has been a persistent feature of British society for decades. But Brexit is the middle class asserting itself as the class with the right to make decisions for the working class against a situation where the working class were given the opportunity to defer to their betters and refused.

When I see a million people on the streets of London marching to remain in the EU I see a group of people who have split the country into two halves. The right half, them, and the wrong half, everybody else. I accept that they are sincere in their beliefs but I wonder whether any of them recognise the irony of demanding, in the name of democracy, that a democratic vote should be ignored because the wrong side, albeit with a majority, won.

I wonder also how many of these people cared so much about Europe that they bothered to vote in Euro elections prior to the referendum. In 2009, the last elections in the UK prior to UKIP using them as a means to argue against the EU turnout in the UK was just 35%, compared to 43% across the EU as a whole. Perhaps all those people on the streets were enthusiastic Euro voters who could name their MEPs and explain the principle of subsidiarity, but that would be a remarkable coincidence.

 I wonder also how many of those people understood the economics of the EU sufficiently to explain why they imposed public sector spending cuts on Greece in 2012 which led to  the suspension of 30,000 civil servants on partial pay. Or why the EU forced the Irish Republic to slash Government spending by 4bn euros, with all public servants' pay cut by at least 5% and social welfare reduced. Meanwhile, the EU agreed to bail out Portugal in January 2012 in return for widespread privatisation, which led to unemployment rising to 14.8%.

Perhaps some of those million people can explain how this represents “the best deal we can get” but they might argue that this is in the past and the EU is a beacon of justice and equality now. Which does raise the question of why the EU has not lifted a finger to help Catalan independence campaigners as the Spanish government have imprisoned its leaders for up to 13 years.

I’m not saying that the EU is uniformly bad or that membership of the EU is necessarily a bad thing, but I find it odd that a million marchers, predominantly employed in the public sector, put such faith in an institution that has shown clearly that in a debate between private profits and public provision there is only ever going to be one winner.

Many on the March would no doubt balk at the suggestion that they are part of the establishment. Many, probably the majority, have never voted Tory in their lives. Many are no doubt members of trade unions and if they take a paper it is more likely to be The Guardian than the Daily Mail. But compare the kid gloves treatment of one million people on the streets of London to the hostile reaction of the Metropolitan Police to a handful of Extinction Rebellion protestors.

Could it be that Extinction Rebellion get that reaction because they are a threat to the establishment, whilst the remain voters not only represent no threat to the establishment, they are a part of it. We are constantly told that class politics are a thing of the past, perhaps what Brexit has shown us is that class politics are very much alive and kicking, and that the class with economic power are not necessarily just those who own the means of production but those who benefit from the exploitation of the class with nothing to sell but their labour power.

After the election

In an interview with GQ magazine this week John McDonnell enraged many Labour supporters by telling Alistair Campbell that if Labour did not win the forthcoming election Jeremy Corbyn would follow tradition and stand down. There now seems little doubt that we are going to have a General Election very soon, perhaps by Christmas. This gives us the very tantalising prospect of a Labour Government led by a leadership with a genuine commitment to radical change. 

However, McDonnell’s comments, whilst not as hostile to Jeremy Corbyn as many assume, do remind us that victory is not a given and that a loss whilst clearly catastrophic for the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society, could also give rise to a period of Labour introspection.

In this post I want to consider the possibility that Labour suffers a heavy electoral defeat and what that might mean for Labour’s left. Whilst hoping and working for victory, we need to prepare ourselves for the worst. Labour could lose in a manner which makes Jeremy Corbyn’s continued leadership untenable. Were that to happen the right-wing of the party would rejoice and the left in parliament would quiver. 

The headline no Labour voter wants to see
repeated

In such a doomsday scenario it is not just the replacement of a leader, but the replacement of an ideology that is at stake. There is little doubt that many on the left will campaign tirelessly for a Labour Government, even in seats containing right-wing Labour candidates. It is a strange phenomena in the Labour Party that whilst the right will not lift a finger to assist the left,  the left still provide the backbone of any parliamentary election campaign, regardless of whether the candidate will then denounce them as “Trotskyist dogs” or other terms of endearment.

A General Election, particularly one in which we lose, is going to leave many activists burned out and disillusioned. Moreover, we will be subjected to a gloating Labour right, supported by the massed ranks of the media, telling us that Labour lost a ‘winnable’ Election because it was too left-wing. Some MP’s we currently consider to be on our side will join in with the demand that we must pursue “sensible” policies for there is no point in having great policies if you cannot implement them.

It almost goes without saying that if we do lose it will have little to do with our policies but will be a consequence of a campaign waged by the right wing to destabilise a left they despise, and Brexit where Labour have been forced into a position of supporting a second referendum in order to keep ultra-remain MPs on-board. A policy shift, incidentally, which failed as those same MPs having got the commitment to a second referendum immediately changed their tack to revoke article 50, a policy adopted by their friends in the Liberal Democrat’s.

The establishment would like to pick the next Labour leader
but it is not going to happen

In the event that Jeremy were forced by circumstances to stand down, we would need a new leader. There will undoubtedly be attempts to change the rules to prevent that leader being anybody who can utter the word socialism without choking. In reality, the rules as they stand make it unlikely that the members will not choose somebody seen as a close ally of Jeremy. It is also likely, as McDonnell suggests in GQ, that the party would seek to elect a woman as Labour leader for the first time. For the benefit of any Times journalists who happen upon this there is absolutely no chance that this would be Jess Philips.

But to elect a new leader who sees the problem for Labour as primarily caused by Brexit and not a radical manifesto which has huge public support will mean members bottling their disappointment and disillusionment and working to ensure that the project is not derailed.

Whoever becomes leader will have a massive task on their hands. They will be faced with a resurgent Labour right determined to return to the days of Tory-lite, a nervous parliamentary left looking for a compromise to hold the party together and a diminishing membership by no means convinced that eventual victory is achievable.

How do I know this? Because I first joined Labour in 1983 and saw Michael Foot replaced first by Neil Kinnock and eventually Tony Blair. I saw Kinnock take on and expel good socialists, and Blair complete the job with the removal of Clause 4. Like many, following the miners strike I left the party because it no longer seemed relevant in socialist terms. Over those years I saw Kinnock and Blair move the party further and further rightward and abandon any hope of a radical alternative to Tory individualism and attacks on working class communities.

We need to reinvent our trade unions 

One of the great mistakes made by the left following the defeat of the printing unions at Wapping and then the historic defeat of the miners was to allow trade unionism to be demonised as part of the problem rather than the answer to the economic problems that still confront us. A strong trade union movement would not have allowed local services to be undermined, or swathes of the NHS to be sold off. They would not tolerate zero hours contracts or need a government imposed minimum wage. A strong trade union movement would have stood together, because unity is strength, and opposed austerity and all the devastation that it has brought.

So, if we lose (and I hope we don’t) we must prepare ourselves to re-invent trade unions as part of a left movement that rather than relying on parliamentarians to save us, encourages working people in their workplaces and communities to defend themselves. 

One policy announcement at Labour Party conference that is probably three decades too late is the commitment to repeal the anti-trade union laws enacted by Thatcher and every Tory Prime Minister (and that includes Blair) that have followed. Had the trade union movement had stronger leadership those laws which tie their hands would never have been allowed to be enacted in the first place. But, many so-called moderate trade union leaders have no stomach for a fight to defend our working conditions. They are, in essence, bureaucrats who are only too happy to accommodate the demands made on workers by unscrupulous bosses.

It is unlikely that the commitment to democratise workplaces is a major vote winner, particularly amongst those with no workplace or in non-unionised workplaces. But trade unionism was the reason why the Labour Party came into existence in the first place and it may, ironically, be the thing that saves it in the future. At times, with some honourable exceptions, union leaders have seemed like a bloc to radical change. Their interest has been to maintain their own powerful positions both within their own unions and the wider party.

It has been difficult to democratise the Labour Party against the obstructive presence of a right-wing led Labour establishment. That establishment has allies in the massed media who have successfully managed to lose the right-wing tag in favour of calling themselves centrists. This was no accident, these people know full well the importance of language. Right wing puts them in the same company as Tories and fascists, centrists makes them sound reasonable and moderate. This shift in language is explained in the film ‘Vice’ if you doubt my interpretation.

From: thecounter.org

I do not need to remind readers of this blog that there is nothing reasonable or moderate about policies that support austerity, dehumanise benefit claimants, support wars, or help to privatise the NHS. But, the term left-wing is still used to signify something far more sinister than a desire for justice, equality and peace.

Should Labour lose the next General Election the reasonable and moderate centrists will want to ditch any policies that can be labelled left-wing. Of course, they will keep the veneer of radicalism by championing the downtrodden. But whereas the right of the party see poverty as a chance to do something for the poor, the left need to emphasise policies that allow the poor, the dispossessed, the marginalised, and all those currently voiceless to do things for themselves. It has always been difficult to argue against alleviating poverty. But, our goal should not be the alleviation of poverty but its elimination. That task will be made even harder following a Labour defeat because there is little doubt that in order to reward their corporate and financier backers, the Tories will want to reduce taxes on the richest by reducing state aid to the poorest.

The task facing the left will be greater still because a victory for Boris Johnson, quite likely propped up by Jo Swinson, will bring such devastation to our communities that in addition to facing a massive internal battle we will be confronted with a tsunami of hostile policies from an emboldened Tory right-wing determined to shred the last vestiges of public provision and to create a society in which their elitist class will be further empowered to enrich itself at the expense of the rest of us.

Parliament is not the only way to change things

With a Worldwide economic recession looming (which is entirely independent of Brexit, by the way) the stakes in the next election have never been higher. The planet, as Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg remind us, is in crisis, but so is the social system that relies on producing more and more profits by producing ever greater amounts of consumer goods from ever diminishing natural resources.

If it turns out that we cannot rely on parliamentary means to socialism, then we will have to start looking more closely at alternative models. But even if Labour win we should not rely on Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell et al to deliver socialism for us. Rather the task of developing democratic institutions will be more enduring if done at a local and community level. Socialism will be the exact opposite of the “nanny state” it will be a state in which ordinary people will no longer be acted upon but will act for themselves, collectively and democratically.

Reforming elderly care

At its annual conference the Labour Party announced a new commitment to provide personal care for all elderly people. Whilst this policy may not get the headlines amongst some other radical policies, it has the potential to really change the lives of people currently coping with the twin difficulties of an unexpected and debilitating illness and a punitive DWP philosophy which is seeing claimants literally driven to suicide.

It is estimated that there are currently around 850,000 people in the UK with dementia. This means that there are a further 850,000 partners who suddenly find themselves as carers at a time in their lives when they had expected to enjoy their twilight years as a couple. Yet, once a diagnosis of dementia is given the responsibility of the state seems to end.

My father served in the Royal Navy during WW2

My father is 93 years old, fought in the Second World War, worked for the rest of his life, and never took a day off through illness. He is now forced to live in a “care home” because my Mother, herself 89, simply could not cope with the demands placed upon her of his dementia.

I use inverted commas around the words care home because, despite my mother using the majority of her savings to put him in an expensive home, from what I can see what the owners of the home care most about is their profit. This is not to say that the staff do not care, they clearly do, but that the overall aim of the company is to reward its shareholders, not its employees.

Is it a home? In a recent conversation my father described it to me as “like a prison”. He clearly understood that it was not a prison, but like all institutions it is regimented. There is little choice afforded to residents who have to fit in with the institutional demands of set meal times, bed times, washing times etc. Of course, from the perspective of the institution regulation allows for the organisation of the working day. But for the individuals subjected to this the ability to choose, for example, to have a lay in or stay up late, is totally absent. In such an environment people become institutionalised.

Dementia is a progressive disease

People with dementia are often treated as if the diagnosis itself steals their personality. They are treated as if they have no agency, no ability to choose between competing options and no right to be treated with dignity. That tendency may exist among family members, particularly as the disease progresses, but it is 

prevalent among carers who, despite 

their best intentions, almost inevitably find themselves infantilising their charges. That is not a criticism of individual staff many of whom are very dedicated but it is easy to slip into a parental role when a person 

cannot dress themselves,  feed themselves or go to the toilet. Their humanity can be undermined by processes designed to assist them.

For dementia sufferers in their own home the demands upon their nearest and dearest are huge. From having a partner who has opinions and can make 

decisions the partner finds themselves recast as carer. This role may be easy for some and almost impossible for others. But even for the saintly the importance of the Labour Party policy cannot be understated. Currently there are benefits for carers but these are, essentially, a pittance. Around £81 a week.

Compare the benefits with the cost of buying in support. A home package can cost as much as £400 per week whilst an institution will cost upwards of £1000 per week.

Cate providers are big business 

According to a report in the Guardian some 84% of the care industry is now in private hands. One such company is Barchester which, according to a report in the Financial Times,  owns over 200 homes, employs 17,000 staff and houses 11,000 elderly residents. Barchester, along with many of the private 

care suppliers, was recently put up for sale by the three horse racing tycoons who own it. It’s price? £2.4 billion. If that sounds incredible it’s annual profits are close to £165 million and rising year on year.

Barchester was considered to be particularly attractive because many of its residents are paying privately rather than relying on local authority funding. Costs for long-term care are upwards of £1200 per week, which is over £62,000 per year.

You might think that you would have to be incredibly rich to afford such a cost. My parents are far from rich. As I think I’ve mentioned before I was born in a council house. My Dad worked for a fruit and veg wholesaler and by the end of his working life earned a little above the average wage. He did not have a generous private pension, but because my parents had managed to save a little over their lifetime their entire savings are now being whittled away very quickly by care costs. 

Currently there is no state support for anybody with savings over £23,600. The 

cost of dementia care is falling disproportionately on ordinary people who have 

tried to save a little for their old age. The beneficiaries of this are companies like Barchester who milk every penny they can to provide only basic care.

Labour’s policy to provide a personal care package for all elderly people is welcome. It would mean that everybody over 65 would be able to access care in their own homes to assist them in their daily routines and allow the elderly to retain their dignity. Labour has also pledged to bring social care back under local authority control and end the use of zero hour contracts.

It is certainly a radical start but as both the Kings Fund and the Nuffield Centre have pointed out it does not go far enough. Of course, if Labour were to go further they would face endless questions about the affordability of their plans, so politically establishing the principles may be more important than the detail.

For myself, and drawing on my own experiences, I would suggest the following reforms. First, social care should be brought within the NHS, perhaps in partnership with local authorities. Healthcare should be based on need not profit or ability to pay. Staff should be both properly remunerated and trained. Given the scale of the problem we need far more care staff than we currently have. Support packages for carers need to be integral to the reforms. Currently organisations such as the Alzheimer’s Society and individuals such as dementia sufferer Wendy Mitchell do a fantastic job of providing support, but respite and education for carers is every bit as important as the care provided for the victims of a disease such as dementia.

I know from personal experience how devastating the diagnosis can be. My mother has struggled to understand what is happening to the husband she has loved since she was 16 and to the life she thought they would live out together.

For the medical profession the diagnosis is the end, for the sufferer and their families it is just the beginning. The dementia journey can be a long and tortuous one. Carers need support but they also need to understand what is happening.

We live in one of the richest countries in the World. The elderly have played a major part in creating the wealth and opportunities we all take for granted. We should not discard them because they are no longer economically active. They have done their part to provide for us, it is now our turn to care for them. That is not just a socialist demand but a human one.