The dynamic of
today’s service based economy means that social liberalism is in
part generated by class.
Imagine someone with
a piece of thin card. They draw a circle with a compass and cut out
the circle. Two people arrive and pick up the card. One says look,
someone has cut out a circle. The other says there is no circle, its
just a thin bit of card. The debate over Brexit within the Labour
party is in danger of following a similar structure.
For most Labour
voters and members its position should be absolutely clear. Labour
should stand for openness and international cooperation. Brexit is
the opposite of these things. However a minority says that many in
Labour’s working class heartlands support Brexit and we should not
abandon them. The first side sees a circle but is in danger of
ignoring that it is made out of card, and the second side sees only a
piece of card.
We need to think
about politics in two dimensions rather than just one. The first
dimension is the traditional left/right division that used to be the
mainstay of politics. The second is the dimension of culture or
identity. At one end of the cultural dimension you have social
conservatives, who value local communities and the nation and are
suspicious of outsiders, where being an outsider can involve sexual
norms, race or religion. At the other end are social liberals, who
value diversity and tolerance, and who dislike borders of most kinds.
People see in three
dimensions, so the card circle is both a circle and a piece of card.
Equally people care about issues in both the left/right dimension and
the cultural dimension. For most people Brexit is an issue on the
cultural dimension. The call for Labour to represent Remain is
straight forward. Labour has for decades been on the liberal side of
the cultural axis, and so they should support Remain. It is the main
reason why the majority of Labour voters and members support Remain.
The response of a
minority in the Labour movement is to talk about Labour’s
traditions as a working class party. Examples are John
Cruddas or Lisa
Nandy. It is a powerful argument for Labour party
members, who both respect the traditions that Labour represent and do
want the party to represent the working class. It is particularly
powerful because there is some guilt that the Labour party, like
other parties of the left, has moved from a party of the working
class to being a party of what Piketty calls
the Brahmin left, and Paul Mason calls
the new core of the Labour project. But this argument could be
accused of seeing the card circle as a piece of card.
Of course Labour
should represent the working class along the familiar left/right
dimension, in terms of labour market policy, industrial policy,
reducing inequality and so forth. Cultural politics in no way
replaces
class politics. But just because working class communities tend to be
more socially conservative than professional classes does not mean we
should abandon Labour’s liberal stance on issues like immigration
and, of course, Brexit. Labour should represent the working classes
in the economic dimension but not the social dimension.
To reinforce this
point Danny Dorling points
out that Leave was as much a middle class as a working class vote.
Furthermore, as I noted here,
once you take London out of the equation the North is now only
slightly more pro-Brexit than the South, and there is as much a
divide between the West and the East. Why should Labour be the party
that supports middle class social conservatives?
Adding the
dynamic of today’s big cities
This
conceptualisation of Brexit as essentially a culture war and not a
class war is powerful and contains a lot of truth. But it leaves some
puzzles unresolved. The first is geographical. If Brexit is a guide
to people’s position on the cultural axis, why is London along with
other dynamic cities full of social liberals and the towns, depressed
cities and countryside much more socially conservative? The second is
about class. Again if Brexit is a measure of social conservatism, why
is the working class more socially conservative than the professional
class? If where we are on the culture axis reflects innate
preferences, why don’t we find as many social liberals as
conservatives in different regions and classes?
One possible answer
may relate to the geographical and social dynamics of an advanced,
service based economy, where towns and cities based around
manufacturing plants are an exception rather than the rule. Suppose
in countries of this kind, where the state does little to intervene
(it is neoliberal), it is the cities that provide the dynamic that
propels the economy forward, while cities based on old industries and
rural areas are more stagnant. This does seem
to be true for the UK and other advanced countries. In addition,
people flow constantly between the dynamic and stagnant areas, in
part because cities tend to be younger.
If this is the case,
then this dynamic could play a geographic sorting role. Those who are
more open, who like change and diversity will move to the city. Those
who prefer continuity and community will stay, or may even move from
the city to the town after a time. So over time you will find the
more socially liberal tend to be in cities, and the more socially
conservative tend to be in more rural areas.
In addition, those
from middle class backgrounds will find it easier to gain the skills
that the city needs, while those from working class backgrounds will
find it harder through no fault of their own. The less the state
intervenes to assist social mobility, the more this will be true. If
you are middle class the more likely you are to be in environments
(universities and then cities) that are diverse and therefore
encourage social liberalism, while if you are working class you are
more likely to get stuck in towns or stagnant post-industrial
cities. This helps explain something else about Brexit: lack of
education is one of the strongest predictors of support for Brexit.
I would like to add
one additional dynamic here. The more educated you are, the more
likely you are to be familiar with multiple sources of information,
and the more open you will be to different perspectives. You are more
likely to value expertise because your position in the labour market
depends on your own expertise. As a result, you will be less likely
to be influenced by what you read in one newspaper, and more likely
to seek out what experts are saying on issues like Brexit. In my view
newspaper coverage, both of immigration and then of Brexit itself,
were important factors behind Brexit, and may be part of the reason
that Scotland voted for Remain.
This suggests two
social processes. First, this economic dynamic based on growth in
cities sorts those at different points of the cultural axis by
geography. Second, and I think more importantly, where you are in
this cultural axis may not just be the result of your genes, but may
also be a result of this sorting process itself. Liberal attitudes
may be encouraged by a university education and working in dynamic,
diverse cities.
In a dynamic
environment where there are plenty of opportunities, diversity seems
like a natural consequence of that dynamism. Indeed it may even be
seen to contribute to the dynamism, which in fact it does. And of
course a university education often gives you a skill set that
defines your class position. In contrast, if you live in areas that
are economically stagnant you are more likely to see things in terms
of a zero-sum, us and them mindset. If immigrants arrive, or you fear
they might arrive, you naturally think that they must take away
something you already have. These are all tendencies
of course. There are plenty in the cities who see little benefit from
their dynamism, and plenty in the countryside who are much wealthier.
There are Leave voters in dynamic cities and Remain voters in the
countryside.
Power and
Populism
There is one
additional point about this segregation between dynamic cities and
more stagnant towns. Political power generally resides in dynamic
cities, and this leads to a perception at least that the political
elite acts only in the interest of the cities. As a new and
fascinating paper
by Will Wilkinson argues for the US, this economic divide that both
sorts for and encourages certain social attitudes among those in
cities can cause resentment and alienation in the rest of the country
to a degree that can create the conditions for populism to flourish.
Trump’s support,
like support for Brexit, comes from rural America or areas of
industrial decline, while most in dynamic cities view this type of
populism with incredulity. Population sorting, where power and
growing wealth lie in cities where the governing elite rule, leads to
self-reinforcing resentment against the elite from those who live
elsewhere. That resentment can manifest as simply protest, as
happened
with the gilet jaunes in France, or it can be captured by politicians
or policies that pretend to attack the elite.
Where does that
leave our original two dimensional conception where most of the
Brexit action takes place on the socially conservative to liberal
axis? We can now add two key caveats. First, while a position on this
axis is often portrayed as reflecting innate characteristics, it may
also be in part a consequence of economic forces and class. Second,
support for Brexit may in part reflect some basic economic forces to
do with the geography of economic dynamism in predominantly service
economies.
Does this mean those
arguing that Labour should support Brexit because the working classes
are more likely to support it are right? Of course not. Brexit, like
Trump, will do nothing to help the working class, and Labour should
never become a socially conservative party. Indeed Brexit will do
precious little to help any of those that voted for it: it is an
utterly
stupid policy. But equally seeing this as a culture war that the
progressive side have to win is much too simplistic. The roots of our
current populism are based on an economic dynamic where growth occurs
in large cities, and an economic system that does not spread enough
dynamism, knowledge, wealth or power to the rest of the country.
