Giles Fraser writes:
The problem wasn’t that Jeremy Corbyn gave lacklustre
support to the remain campaign.
The problem was that he gave it any support at
all.
Imagine how different things could have been if he had come out
full-throttle for Brexit – like he did in the 1975
referendum.
Indeed, Corbyn may have been one of the few people in a
position both to acknowledge the righteous anger of forgotten
working-class communities and
also to steer that anger away from the unrighteous scapegoating of EU migrants.
He could have had a crucial role in stopping the far right from capturing that
anger and making it their own.
But he flunked it.
And if he had more openly expressed his natural Brexit sympathies, the
Blairites would have been handed another stick to beat him with.
But the
problem is that this current crisis is a much bigger issue than the treachery
of his fellow Labour MPs.
In fact, it’s a much bigger issue than the huge
support he has within the party.
The thing to focus on is the millions of
erstwhile Labour voters who voted leave.
Will they really want to come back to
a party that still seems to have no idea why they voted as they did and, since
the vote, has continued to mock them as stupid or bigoted?
The Labour party
exists to be on the side of working people, yet many of its elected officials
have stopped listening to their concerns.
It is the alienation of the party from its base.
This referendum was a battle over
globalisation and its discontents, between those who have become the
beneficiaries of a boundary-busting neoliberal economy and those who have been
left behind by it.
A few years back, I was in Stoke-on-Trent trying to
understand the appeal of the BNP in that area.
One of their leaders told me
about the pottery factory in which he used to work.
One day some Chinese guys
in suits came into the factory shaking everybody’s hand.
Then, the next he
heard, they had bought the company.
And a few months after that the kilns were
loaded on to the back of a series of flatbed lorries and driven away.
The
factory was closed and he was out of a job.
He joined the BNP.
And yes, it absolutely must be challenged, ripped out
and destroyed.
But there is something else that needs to be carefully attended
to – a cry of rage at the alien forces of a vampire capitalism that sucked his
community dry.
This was the rage that Brexit tapped into.
And the far right
were able to turn this against poor immigrants precisely because those who
should have been listening were too busy worrying about their children’s next
trip to Paris or what their friends at Glastonbury would think if they
challenged the liberal consensus.
Precisely the same people who are now saying,
incredulously, “but I have never met a leave person”, as if that were a good
thing.
There is indeed a mighty task
disentangling anger at advanced capitalism from anger redirected towards Poles
and Romanians.
And it is a dangerous undertaking – because to affirm the former
can feel uncomfortably close to affirming the latter, especially now that the
right have been given the freedom to secure that connection in people’s minds.
But distinguish the two we must.
The villains are not those who have come here
for a better life, breaking their backs picking strawberries in East Anglia.
The
villains sit behind their computer screens in the City of London and move money around the world
without a care as to how it effects local communities.
Had there been a stronger Labour
Brexit voice, this referendum and its meaning would not have been so easily
captured by the racists.
And Corbyn would now look like a prime minister in
waiting.
I know, spilt milk and all that.
But there is still all to play for.
Outside the Westminster bubble, the very existence of the Labour party is now
at stake.
The thing to focus on is the millions of erstwhile Labour voters who voted leave.
ReplyDeleteWill they really want to come back to a party that still seems to have no idea why they voted as they did and, since the vote, has continued to mock them as stupid or bigoted?
Indeed.
But Peter Hitchens has always been mystified at how ready the British are to vote against their own interests. The Tories and Labour despise the people who voted Leave last week. So why do they keep voting Tory and Labour?
Are they all just masochists?
I am about to do a post on that. They have not stopped voting Labour, and they are now joining it in droves in order to save Jeremy Corbyn.
DeleteAnd the far right were able to turn this against poor immigrants precisely because those who should have been listening were too busy worrying about their children’s next trip to Paris or what their friends at Glastonbury would think if they challenged the liberal consensus.
ReplyDeleteBore off.
Some of us actually wish to preserve British culture. It has nothing to do with animus against individual immigrants, just love of our own country.
Ah, that old chestnut.
DeleteOutside the Westminster bubble, the very existence of the Labour party is now at stake.
ReplyDeleteCry me a river.
If anything, Giles is wrong about that. Inside the Westminster bubble, the very existence of the Labour party is now at stake. Outside the Westminster bubble, the Labour party is doing fine.
Delete