Paul Mason: Without a transformation on Brexit, Labour’s election chances are dead
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/07/without-transformation-brexit-labours-election-chances-are-dead
To stand any hope of winning power,
the party must make itself the champion of progressive Britain once more and lead the resistance to the right
Among the right-wing electorate, support for a no-deal Brexit has grown.
As defined by who wants it, Brexit is now a right-wing project
...
a majority of the electorate now supports Remain.
The switch has been strongest among former Labour leavers: working class women, young people and ethnic minorities.
As cultural xenophobia has blossomed on the right,
the socially liberal majority of the working class have taken to their own cultural barricades.
....
For some in the labour movement, the words “working class” have come to mean something wholly anachronistic.
When the party chairman, Ian Lavery, barrels around the corridors at Westminster declaring that “the working class wants Brexit”, he means that a section of older, white, former industrial workers in parts of England and Wales want Brexit.
And he is right.
Judging by what they say in focus groups and how loudly they chant “Ni-gel, Ni-gel” at the Brexit rallies,
it is what a section of the working class wants.
Lisa Nandy, the MP for Wigan, argues explicitly that,
no matter how far they have drifted away from Labour’s values of tolerance and internationalism,
pro-Brexit workers in small towns have a some kind of moral veto over the party’s leftward evolution.
She writes that, because they
“come from families who worked in the mining, railway and textile industries to build this country’s prosperity and influence in the world”
and have supported Labour for a century, the party has a “historic duty” to them.
I agree.
We have a historic duty to tell them that xenophobia and anti-migrant racism are a dead end,
just as socialists in London’s East End had to tell this straight to the dockers on the Powellite strikes and marches of 1968.
But our primary historic duty is to represent the actual British workforce of now,
which exists in globally connected manufacturing, services and the public sector,
is concentrated in cities and large towns, is multi-ethnic,
and includes 2.7 million European citizens who don’t get a vote.
These are the workers losing their jobs hand over fist at Bridgend, Swindon and Scunthorpe, due to Brexit,
and in the case of EU migrants, losing any sense of certainty about the future.
Labour’s path to power is to build an alliance of these workers, together with millions of young voters
and, yes, the 41 per cent of the British workforce classed as professional and managerial grades:
the nurses, teachers, aerospace engineers, software designers and people in Britain’s huge cultural sector
Call them “middle class” if you want - but they are the backbone of union membership.
That is where Labour’s mass membership is concentrated.