When I first saw some of the reactions to the result of the general election, I wanted to – and started to - record some of my thoughts. It all then got overtaken by other things, such as Christmas. But now, in the New Year, I feel like returning to it.
My first thought was that I could, for the first time in a few weeks, breathe a sigh of relief! But my more serious reflections caused me to realize that I was less surprised by the result than those who seemed to get airtime on the BBC. I confess that I was surprised, but as I say less so.
The opinion polls seemed (very alarmingly) to be suggesting the possibility of a hung parliament. Mercifully they were wrong. But I’m reluctant to blame them. Presumably they have to work on what they get told by the public. It follows from this that, to some extent, the public evidently lie to pollsters. But the interesting thing is that they always seem to lie in a left-wing direction – it has happened before. Meaning that the actual result tends to be that the Tories do better, in this case much better, than everyone is expecting. My conclusion is that too many people still think of the Tories as “nasty” quasi-fascist demons, so that when a pollster asks how they will vote they do a bit of virtue-signalling: “Oh, I’m a good person, I vote LibDem” - or whatever. And then, when faced with the stark reality of the possible consequences, they put the cross in the Tory box. As that great political philosopher Margaret Thatcher said, the facts of life are conservative!
But having said that, why actually, when it came down to it did lots of working class people vote Tory? Including working class people who had grown up hating Tories and certainly never dreamt of voting for them.
Fairly obviously, there were two principal reasons. The first was Brexit and the second Corbyn. Both these points give one food for thought – and make us see the increasing disconnect between the political Left and their natural constituency.
The whole issue of Brexit has shown this up; and the election results have demonstrated it rather dramatically - the division between middle class people, particularly those who think of themselves as being on the Left, and the general population, particularly working class people outside the M25. The former tend to forget, or perhaps never realize, that working class people are more anti-EU than the better off. There is, of course, a fairly obvious reason for this: they are more likely to feel threatened by east Europeans taking their jobs.
A friend told me that his children were very concerned about Brexit and that one of their concerns was a fear that they might not be able to get jobs on the continent so easily. This is obviously very much a middle class concern – not high, one would guess, on the worry list of the man in the street in Bishop Auckland or Blythe Valley. So we have the situation that middle class people, often those who are sympathetic to the political Left, take a position that is at odds with that of working class people - and is actually more in their own selfish interests, although they don’t think of it like that. I will return to this, but it does lead me to think that the distinction between Right and Left is no longer very meaningful.
Back to the election. On Corbyn, I just feel a sense of relief, as well as a renewed faith in the common sense of the British voter. He, and indeed she, was being told of the endless goodies that would be rained on him and her, but could see that it wouldn’t happen. Interestingly, opinion polls subsequent to the election have apparently discovered that, among those former Labour voters who switched to the Tories, dislike of Corbyn was a significantly bigger factor than support for Brexit. Not, to my mind, an unintelligent view. I was amazed that so many apparently intelligent people were contemplating a vote – for the Lib Dems, for example - that could have resulted in a hung parliament and a coalition led by Corbyn. (It would certainly not have ended the Brexit debate.)
One lesson we need to learn is that this situation may not last. I saw people on the television saying that this was a historic change. I wonder. Brexit will presumably happen. And Corbyn will presumably (eventually) go. The two main reasons for the Tories’ success will evaporate. Will the inhabitants of Bishop Aukland still want to support a party led by an old-Etonian if and when the Left get their act together and provide a sensible alternative? Who knows – but it does lead me to reflect again on what I do regard as a political change during my lifetime – a change in the focus of the Left, which, as indicated above has rendered the Right/Left distinction meaningless.
At its simplest the distinction must be that the Right tends to support the status quo and, frankly, the privileges of the better off, while the Left supports “the workers” or, in modern more politically correct terms, those less well off. Does this still make sense?
Brexit is an example of an issue where it doesn’t. Continued membership of the EU was broadly in the interests of middle class people – like me. We have access to nannies to look after our children, plumbers to fix our drains, builders to maintain our houses – all presumably on better terms than would be available without free movement of labour within the EU. Those privileged people with second homes in France (and other EU countries) may now face troubles as a result of departure from the EU.
By way of contrast, those who are less well off have some reason to be concerned about EU membership and the effect of free movement of labour (or, less politely, immigration) on their jobs and levels of pay. You might have expected the Left to be sympathetic to these concerns. But no - the liberal Left have supported the EU, tended to vilify the supporters of Brexit and, amazingly, managed to view themselves as occupying the moral high ground.
There are other examples of this. Climate change is one. There should be no debate about the need to protect the environment, to recognize what problems climate change may cause and to support policies to deal with these issues. But it is interesting that the policies being proposed and adopted, with the whole-hearted support of the Left, are policies that hurt the poor and even, to some extent, benefit the rich. An example is the investment of large amounts of taxpayer money in wind farms, some of which goes to the landowners on whose land the turbines are built. Wind power has been described as one of the most expensive forms of energy known to man. Also, studies have concluded that wind power gives rise to “little, if any, CO2 saving”. One would expect that skepticism about the desirability of wind farms, with their effect on energy bills, would come from the Left. It has not. Instead, one of the leading skeptics has been Nigel Lawson, the retired Tory politician, who set up the “all-party and non-party think tank” called the Global Warming Policy Foundation. He says that he has received more “personal hostility, vituperation and vilification” for his selfless activities on this than he ever did in his political career.
A final example of the way in which the Left, as represented by its middle class supporters, has parted company from its natural constituency is the whole question of Identity Politics. This is not a subject that I follow, so I may get it wrong. But I mean to include the various issues surrounding sex and gender, trans-sexual rights, ethnicity, glass ceilings – I’m sure the list could be expanded. But the only point I would make is that these concerns are essentially middle class concerns – again not high on the worry list of working class people. Indeed, I would suspect that it’s worse than that. I would suspect that traditional Labour voters would be more hostile to, and more upset by, some of the policies being put forward for, say, transsexuals than middle class people.
All of these things must represent a challenge to the Labour Party, and the Left generally, as they witness the curious spectacle of their traditional supporters voting for an old-Etonian Tory.
Tony Herbert
5 January 2020
Comments