Why we woke to a full English Brexit under Boris Johnson and Labour’s demise – Matthew Flinders

Blyth is a proud town that grew around shipbuilding, mining and fishing; definitely more Billy Bragg than Melvyn Bragg. But one-by-one and chip-by-chip as the results came in Labour’s ‘red wall’ appeared ever more fragile.

Labour lose nine seats to the Conservatives across Yorkshire as Boris Johnson sweeps to majorityBassetlaw and Bolsover, Burnley and Bishop Auckland, Worksop and Wolverhampton, Stockton and Scunthorpe, Redcar and Wrexham, Workington and West Bromwich, Rother Valley and the Don Valley…names that were once synonymous with the Labour Party had suddenly turned blue. The UK woke up to a full English Brexit.

The great paradox which must now be explained is just why so many traditional Labour voters felt willing to cross the political divide and vote Tory, especially in deprived areas where the legacy of Thatcherism still casts a clear shadow.

Brexit may have created the noise but it was arguably the levels of endemic distrust that provided the deeper message. The ‘Boris bounce’ that has just occurred was not fuelled by positive hope and optimism but fatigue and frustration with a political system that appeared unable or unwilling to cope with the burdens of Brexit.

In this climate ‘Get Brexit done’ proved a simple and persuasive message. But this still doesn’t explain quite why Labour’s traditional heartlands appeared so willing to reject the party.

As I watched a succession of Labour candidates attempt to understand either their defeat or their much diminished majorities it struck me that it is to America’s deep south rather than South Yorkshire that we might turn in order to understand what appears to have happened.

Arlie Russell Hochschild is a left-leaning, grey-haired, mild-mannered sociologist from Berkeley who travelled to southwestern Louisiana in order to try and understand why white working class Americans were flocking to the Tea Party even though they were likely to be far worse off under Republican policies.

Operation Rebuild Britain starts now for Boris Johnson - The Yorkshire Post saysHochschild had read a variety of economic and cultural explanations but ‘found one thing missing in them all—a full understanding of emotion in politics. What, I wanted to know, did people want to feel, think they should or shouldn’t feel, and what do they feel about a range of issues?’

What she discovers is that large sections of American society feel completely over-looked and feel that they are looked down upon and mocked for their traditional values. ‘You are a stranger in your own land.

You do not recognise yourself in how others see you. It is a struggle to feel seen and honoured. And to feel honoured you have to feel – and [be] seen as – moving forward. But through no fault of your own, and in ways that are hidden, you are slipping backward’.

Although clearly set in a very different context, I can’t help but think that in its core findings and arguments Hochschild’s Strangers in their Own Land (2016) speaks to a deeper explanation for the Labour Party’s poor performance.

That is, a failure to understand exactly how traditional working classes feel, while at the same time sometimes slipping into a lazy characterisation of Brexit supporters as somehow backward, possibly even racist and culturally lagging behind the ‘more educated city-based cosmopolitan elite’.

Could it be that many working class communities also feel ‘strangers in their own land’ and therefore willing to enter into new political allegiances?

“Too many people feel ignored, forgotten and abandoned,” the re-elected MP for Barnsley East, Stephanie Peacock, suggested. In the neighbouring constituency, Dan Jarvis, went one step further and suggested that some white working class communities had been ‘vilified’ for their views when what was actually needed was a greater understanding of why those areas feel the way they do.

A thank you to the readers of The Yorkshire Post following the General Election campaignIt was at this point that Billy Bragg’s song A Full English Brexit came to mind with its attempt to look at the issue through the eyes of an elderly Leave voter.

I’m not a racist, all I want is

To make things how they used to be

But change is strange and

Nobody’s listening to me

And it’s this sense of ‘nobody’s listening to me’ that strikes me as central to understanding exactly why the Labour Party seems to have made such losses.

This is why Caroline Flint, the now former Don Valley MP, sent such a strong and passionate message to the ‘influential Labour figures, living in North London postcodes, who have brought us to this point’ and sought to ‘remind them that Labour cannot simply be a party of big cities and university towns, nor just the party of the young or devoted remainers.’

Only time will tell if the Labour Party can reconnect with its traditional supporters, or if the Conservatives can connect with the North of England. But all-in-all last night was not a good night for British democracy. No new political dawn has risen. The country is more divided than it has ever been. So this morning it’s not a full English Brexit for me.

Matthew Flinders is a professor of politics at the University of Sheffield.