There
was extensive analysis
after the UK EU referendum of the characteristics of those who voted
for Brexit and those who didn’t. A robust finding was that those
who voted for Brexit tended to be older and had less years of
education. But some noted a link between a tendency to vote Leave and
areas of deindustrialisation. The idea of the ‘left behind’ was
born. It gained force when rest-belt states in the US swung to Trump
in the same year.
This
characterisation of the left behind was attractive to many on the
left, who have been critical of the globalisation they saw as the
cause. Yet as Martin Sandbu points
out, the period of what is often called hyper-globalisation is the
1990s, and much deindustrialisation occurred before then. Some of
that was a result of automation rather than globalisation, and in the
UK 1980s deindustrialisation was hastened by a large appreciation of
sterling caused by a combination of discovering North Sea Oil and
monetarism. Why the 30 year delay for the left behind to finally find
its political voice?
If
we look at the geography of the Brexit vote, areas of
deindustrialisation is not the only thing that strikes you. Much more
obvious is that people in large cities voted against Brexit, and
those in smaller cities or towns or the countryside voted for Brexit.
The same was true for Trump, and Trumps core support comes
from rural areas. Is this simply a consequence of differences in age
and education already discussed?
It
could well be. As the Centre for Towns showed,
UK villages and towns have been getting older and cities have been
getting younger. Jobs that attract the university educated tend to be
in cities rather than in towns and villages.The old tend to be more
socially conservative, and so are attracted to the anti-immigration
message that was a key part of the Leave and Trump campaigns.
There
is no doubt these factors are important, but do they explain all the
the geographical nature of the support for Brexit and Trump, or is
there more to it? I think the gilet jaunes from France can shed some
light on this question. As John Lichfield outlines,
the gilet jaunes come from peripheral France: the outer suburbs and
countryside. That may include some areas of deindustrialisation but
it goes well beyond that. Their protests are self-organised and
remarkably persistent. They do not fit any clear left/right
categorisation. Immigration, or race, are not high up among their
concerns, which is why they do not feel represented by the far right
party of Marine Le Pen.
What
do the gilet jaunes want? Specific demands are varied and often
contradictory. But a dominant theme is that they want to be valued
and represented. They feel that the centres of power in France, the
government but also other organisations, do not speak for or even
respect them. They think the major cities are getting all the
benefits of growth while they are falling behind.
The
gilet jaunes tend
to be working or lower middle class, sometimes self-employed,
sometimes retired. Initially their protests were sympathetically
viewed
by most French voters, which was one reason why Macron responded with
tax breaks for pensioners and low income workers. As time goes on and
the violence has continued their popularity among French voters has
waned. Whether they have a future as a coherent force may depend on
whether they can transform themselves into a conventional political
group that wins seats in the forthcoming European elections, a
process which has already led to some fragmentation along traditional
left/right lines.
Macron’s
election as President of France had led many to think that the wave
of populism influencing democracies around the world could be held
back or even beaten. What the gilet jaunes show is that this cannot
be done just by electing a charismatic President. Indeed the
character of Macron, clearly part of an affluent city elite, may even
have been a provocation.
Can
the gilet jaunes tell us anything about those who voted for Brexit or
Trump? All three movements come from outside of the main cities, so
perhaps geography is more than just an incidental factor. What is
unique about the gilet jaunes has been self-organisation, made
possible through social media, and the variety of their political
demands. In contrast Trump is a Republican, and Brexit is a very
specific cause. But perhaps this difference just reflects the ability
of some politicians and parts of the media to capture the discontent
of the geographical areas that feel left behind?
The
EU was not considered an important issue among most voters until the
referendum. Immigration was, but a good part of that was because the
government and press had managed to deflect anger at declining public
services and wages on to immigrants rather than their own policies.
Whereas the gilet jaunes had to organise themselves using social
media, Brexit and to some extent Trump had sections of the
conventional media to do that job. While many gilet jaunes want to
overturn the government, Brexit supporters succeeded because they had
the help of politicians and the media.
Underlying
causes in all three cases include geographical and financial
inequality, and a feeling of being ignored by conventional politics.
In the UK, looking mainly at the first decade of the century, a NEF
report
found that nearly all of the 20 fastest growing constituencies were
in cities. Often the prosperity of towns depends
on the success or otherwise of a nearby city. Those in the periphery
see money going to projects like crossrail or HS2 while local bus
services are cut.
People
look at others to measure their own prosperity but they also look at
their own past. In the UK real wages are still below levels before
the financial crisis, and in the last year the disparity between the
incomes of most people and those at the top of the income
distribution has started
to increase again. (It is one reason why the Chancellor is getting
more tax receipts than he expected.) In the US most of the proceeds
of growth have for some time been going
to the top of the income distribution.
We
can see the same thing, although to a lesser degree, in France. Here
is a revealing graph from a study
by Thomas Piketty and colleagues. It shows how average annual growth
rates of pre-tax income has varied by where people are in the income
distribution over three time periods. To the right we have the richer
income deciles, including at the end the top 1%, 0.1% and 0.01%
respectively. In the two periods before the 1980s incomes at the top
grew less rapidly than all other groups. From 1983 to 2014 the
opposite has been true: growth rates of top incomes have been up to
three times those of everyone else. In addition the growth rate of
incomes of the non-rich have been historically low.
Low
average growth in most incomes together with much faster growth in
incomes at the top is provocative, particularly if you are in parts
of the country that are stagnating with few prospects. I do not think
it is any coincidence that a week ago we saw
the gilet jaunes targeting the exclusive shops and restaurants of the
Champs-Élysées.
Inequality
based on incomes or geography is not enough to get the gilet jaunes
on to the streets, to get UK voters to want to take back control, or
Trump voters to vote for the worst President in a century. This also
requires a feeling that your voice is not heard in the political
process. In the UK a feeling of powerlessness was hijacked by
politicians and the press who pretended it was a result of the EU, or
in the US by Trump who pretended to speak for ‘real America’.
Speaking
up for those left behind should naturally be something parties on the
left do. Yet in the UK, as the NEF report shows,
Labour have been increasing their vote share in dynamic cities and
the Conservatives from areas in decline. This may be part of a longer
term trend in both the UK, US and France, where the left party that
once represented the less educated now is the party of the educated.
The chart below taken from another study
by Piketty shows this trend, which he calls it the emergence of the
“Brahmin Left”.
Yet
I think this alone is an incomplete explanation. To explain recent
developments we should add the adoption by traditional left parties
of a neoliberal framework which discouraged regional, industrial and
redisributive policies that might have transferred more of the
benefits of city dynamism to the periphery. That created a left
behind that went beyond areas of deindustrialisation, that felt
unrepresented and deprived, and which in the UK and US was open to
capture by a populist right.
