With two million Conservative voters seemingly ‘undecided’ last
week and Labour voters preponderantly pro-Remain but susceptible to no-shows at
the ballot booth, it was tempting to presume before the vote that an event of
this magnitude might be decided by something so quintessentially British as the
weather. Come Friday morning, it was abundantly clear that was not the case.
The gap between Leave and Remain was just under 1.3 million votes, far greater
than can be explained by a June downpour. The outcome is humbling.
In due course the referendum defeat will become the textbook
reference for political hubris. Cameron’s referendum campaign showed a
fundamental underestimation of public mistrust with the political establishment
when it committed taxpayers’ money to the production of Remain leaflets. Similarly
an appeal to the eminence of its leading voices on the risks of Brexit –
prescient though they were – might work when it comes to winning over fearful middle
class swing voters in marginal seats, but alienated a large and sceptical
cohort who had not done particularly well since the 1990s. This played to
Leave’s strengths who were only ever going to run a populist campaign with
immigration as the issue ‘the establishment wouldn’t touch’. The more
establishment figures Remain wheeled on, the more remote they seemed.
The referendum loss symbolises Conservative leaders obsession
with tactics at the
expense of strategy. They built a machine to be elected not govern,
perfecting the art of winning small political skirmishes which embrangled them
in increasingly intractable commitments. Eventually one intractable position
was not going to hold.
So where does the referendum result leave things? Economically,
we are in a difficult place. The EU will push for an early exit to reduce
uncertainty in other EU countries. The longer negotiations are drawn out, the
more turmoil will be inflicted on our major trading partners within the EU - there
is a good chance they may move into recession, as seems unavoidable for the UK.
It is sadly true that they also must make an example of us or risk giving hope
to Leave movements elsewhere. Investment, already weak, will retreat until some
certainty returns. This is happening in real time, with huge swathes of
construction now put on hold. Financial markets are not as robust as we are led
to believe and the £250bn injection promised by the Bank of England - presumably
a bid to stave off a prospective wholesale run as bank stocks fell 30% – would
seem to support that. We have yet to see the effects of a ratings downgrade and
sterling devaluation on the economy. It is doubtful that the devaluation will benefit
the export sector radically: in four of the last six major periods of devaluation
there has been no impact at all. These are not the conditions under which the
politics of optimism thrive.
This takes us to the Leave campaign. The campaign was built
on an anti-establishment/anti-intellectual ticket led by an old Etonian and another
Oxford graduate. It traded on the conceit that many of the UK’s problems could
be solved by ‘taking back control’ – an organising metaphor abstract enough to
galvanise a body of voters with quite different perceptions about what this
meant. The usual accusations about Leave being ‘old, uneducated people in the
North’ have already surfaced but the reality is much more complicated: 43%
of ABs voted Leave, for example – that’s a lot of skilled workers and
professionals. Similarly, the geography of the Leave vote is split between
cosmopolitan centres like London, Bristol, Manchester and Liverpool on the one
hand and smaller towns and rural areas on the other. The most important
indicator of a Leave voter is value-based according to Ashcroft’s polling data:
in other words, we are witnessing the reawakening of a particularly cynical,
conservative English authoritarian personality which cuts across class and
geography. ‘Taking back control’ in this context signalled a variety of things:
release from the EU’s institutional sclerosis and immured power bases; rejection
of the neo-liberal grip on policy formation; devolution and an improvement in
accountability and sovereignty. But for many it primarily meant control of immigration.
And the Leave campaign was happy to let people believe that this was precisely
what we were voting for.
The problem now is that this puts Johnson and Gove in
precisely the predicament of Cameron and Osborne. The latter were outmanoeuvred tactically, but
it is Johnson and Gove who have the larger strategic quandary. The flipside of
the Leave campaign’s amorphousness is that all of its voting tribes will expect
their vision of Brexit to be delivered: that is the risk with summonsing ‘end-of-truth-and-reason’
politics. Putting aside the inconceivability of honouring the £350m per week to
the NHS pledge, they have a much larger problem regarding immigration. If they
opt out of the pledge to stop free movement, as pro-Leave campaigner Daniel
Hannan has already indicated, those who voted Leave believing it was a vote to
control immigration will feel betrayed.
This is ultimately why I am pessimistic. If you lead a
populist, anti-immigrant campaign on an anti-establishment platform, and then
support an EFTA model that retains free movement, you will discredit yourself
and the democratic process. Add to that a rapidly deteriorating economic
climate and the resurgent nationalism you were complicit in stoking, and voters
will begin to embrace the extreme right. It will take considerable political
skill for Johnson and Gove to manage this next phase should they replace
Cameron and Osborne. I am not sure it is within their capabilities. Both have a
facility with the blunt instrument of populism, but they do not possess the political
guile and sophistication to deal with the subtle intricacies of a perceived
volte face in such a febrile climate. Farage, however, does have the necessary
nous and aggression to point out their deceit.
Can the Left stop this? They are in a difficult position,
not least because we are seeing the working out of the legacy of New Labour - its
mishandling of the financial crisis and intransigence towards its heartlands. This
instilled a sense of injustice, of powerlessness, of being cut adrift. Atavism
fills the space left by the dismantled social and economic institutions that
build solidarity and community. The Labour Party were correct to move to the
left to reconnect with those communities as voters began to defect to UKIP, but
they have the wrong leader to deal with the fight to come. The Labour Party
needs a brawler, not a history teacher.
Whoever that might be, they will need to address some of the
profoundly reactionary sentiments of their ex ‘core vote’. Anti-immigration is
now a deeply ingrained and increasingly animating ideology that will be
difficult to reverse. A politics of trust, tolerance and understanding to
support vibrant communities of difference is needed. This requires a
redistributive politics to fund the rebuilding of the economic and social
institutions that embed harmony: better jobs, better public services, better
social housing. That may grate with the business elites of London and other
cosmopolitan centres, but social dislocation is not good for trade and growth
either. As Duncan Weldon has pointed
out: capitalism needs social democracy to function. The state now has a
duty to stabilise capitalism by acting against the interests of its most vocal
proponents and greatest beneficiaries. This is the challenge for Labour.
Stanley
