by Tom Clements
It is impossible to overstate the position that our country and our party faces after the most tumultuous of weeks in British politics.
Like so many of us, I have been completely blindsided both by the result of the referendum and the rapidity of the changing news cycle. It would be too easy to continue our Brexit hangover and concentrate purely on the machinations of Labour’s impending leadership contest or shudder at the thought of Andrea Leadsom as our next Prime Minister.
But now it’s time to take a step back.
The people of Britain voted to leave the European Union.
Whilst I believed passionately in the need for Britain to stay in the European Union, I don’t believe that we should dispute the result. The people of Britain made a choice and we should accept it. To fail to do so would reinforce every negative stereotype about politics and politicians.
Economic collapse, our union breaking apart, racial tension, punitive immigration, the most right-wing Conservative Party leader in a generation. The potential negative consequences of leaving the European Union don’t bare thinking about.
So it’s time for us to step up.
We should use this as an opportunity to build a more progressive Britain.
The Labour party shouldn’t shrink away from this challenge. Article 50 will invoke a prolonged period of uncertainty. It has the potential to divide and tear apart our country. But it won’t if Labour takes the lead, whoever our leader is.
We have an opportunity to ensure that the Britain of tomorrow is a country of social justice, equality of opportunity and hope for all. Whilst a majority voted to leave the European Union; they did not vote to make Britain a sexist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic nation that some leave voters seem to believe they have been given a license to create. The people are waiting for a positive vision; an outline of how their lives will be made better. But they won’t wait forever.
In order to build a country that we will be proud to pass on to our children, we must first address the reasons why so many people decided to vote leave and to use this to build a new country based on our values and principles.
To start with, we need to heal our broken communities. We need to seriously consider – properly and not as some superficial public-relations exercise – why so many traditionally Labour areas voted to leave the European Union. This means that we need to listen, without judgement, and to use our values to act upon what we hear.
It would be too easy to just blame immigration. And by immigration mean racism and stupidity. Instead we need to delve deeper to understand what people really mean when they mention fears immigration.
To many people, in places like Boston and Pudsey and Mexborough, immigration is an umbrella term for a whole range of issues. It means a shortage of good quality housing and a perception that immigrants are being given preferential treatment. It means the fear of losing your job because some unscrupulous business owners will exploit people trying to make a new start in Britain. It means walking down your high street and seeing independent businesses replaced by pawnbrokers and pound shops. It means being frightened that your children won’t be able to get into their local school due to a shortage in school places.
But these problems aren’t failures of immigration; they are failures of government.
And if we fail to engage with people’s fears and concerns; if we continue to label all people concerned with immigration as racist; then we will never have the opportunity to form a government and rebuild our country for the better.
Because, make no mistake, complaints about immigration are merely a symptom, not the disease. And if we truly want to win back these forgotten communities, then we have to be accurate in our diagnosis.
These communities have been left cast adrift for far too long; left alone to be pummelled by every passing storm. Deregulation in the 1980’s; under-investment in public services under Major in the 1990’s; focusing on financial services under New Labour; and today, free movement of labour across the European Union.
And with each passing wave, hope has eroded further and the drift has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
These communities have never recovered from having their industrial and manufacturing heart ripped out of them several generations ago. Skilled, well paid, long lasting jobs replaced by short term, low skilled work. The pit or the factory replaced by a big supermarket.
If Labour is to win back these communities, it needs to give them hope once more. We need to stand up for those people that the 21st century has ignored for too long. We can put the life back into these communities and regenerate them for generations to come in a sustainable way.
These communities can be the backbone of Britain’s next technological revolution. Let’s create enterprise zones in regions such as South Wales, the North East and South Yorkshire with corporation tax reductions based on the number of apprentices that they train. We should invest in later year education to help accomplished manual labourers transfer their skill set to the demands of modern technology. We could embrace the academy and TeachFirst programmes to get talented teachers into schools in these areas to raise aspirations for young people who have been conditioned to believe that they have no hope of a better future than their parents.
By putting the economic soul back into these areas, fears about immigration and globalisation will become hurdles that can be jumped.
But to do this, we have to stop blaming people for voting to leave and stop calling for a second referendum. Instead, we must embrace the possibilities that Brexit now offers the country and take advantage of them to build a fairer country.
We should pledge to match the money that the European Union invested in environmental protection to create new jobs in environmental technology. Crack down on undercutting businesses by increasing the punitive measures for failing to pay the minimum wage. Manage immigration effectively to ensure that migrants will complement the community that they are joining.
Leaving the European Union is not what the majority of us, as Labour members, wanted but it is the hand that the British people have chosen. They are waiting for a party to take the lead and deliver the better future for themselves and their families. If we don’t, then they will never forgive us and we will be out of power for another generation – if ever again.
We have the opportunity to make our values relevant once more to those people who have been left behind for too long. By embracing the possibilities, rather than focusing on the negatives, we can make a real difference once more.
To quote a previous Labour leader, speaking in very different circumstances, “the kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle. Before they do, let us reshape the world”.
This is our challenge.
Let’s shape Britain for the better.
Tom Clements is a history and politics teacher in Leeds
Tags: Article 50, Brexit, EU referendum, Jeremy Corbyn, Tom Clements
Examples of UK Parliament at work on “equality”
London gets 24 times as much spent on infrastructure per resident than north-east England
Transport spend per head is £2,700 for London but £5 per head in North East
Northern secondary schools receive £1,300 less per pupil than London
Conservative Austerity Measures Officially Breach Human Rights http://www.konbini.com/en/lifestyle/austerity-un-human-rights-breach/
UK Government (including New Labour who saw middle class in marginals as key voters) have been doing its level best to maximize inequality in the UK, reliant on doublespeak to fool the voter.
What a surprise – the voter has noticed!
Labour needs to take a step back and be clear about our post-Brexit agenda
Before it does that it needs to adopt a policy of accepting BREXIT whether it likes the idea or not and agreeing to do all it can to assist the Government make it work. At the moment the PLP has effectively sidelined itself into irrelevance because of it’s petty squabble over leadership.
You can worry about afterwards when you know what afterwards is going to look like. For now, worry about helping shape that afterwards.
You say
“We need to seriously consider – properly and not as some superficial public-relations exercise – why so many traditionally Labour areas voted to leave the European Union. This means that we need to listen, without judgement, and to use our values to act upon what we hear.”
Then go on to say
“It would be too easy to just blame immigration. And by immigration mean racism and stupidity. Instead we need to delve deeper to understand what people really mean when they mention fears immigration.”
Which means you have paid absolutely no attention to what has been happening to your core blue collar vote and have been ignoring what they have been saying for a decade and more.
So I will repeat it for you again, we’ll see if you a)Listen and b) Act upon it.
1. No more uncontrolled immigration of low skill/no skill immigrants. From anywhere.
They are causing far too much downward pressure on the wages of the low paid. Fobbibng them off with tax credits uinstead of decent pay is demeaning and insulting.
2. ALL infrastructure required by immigrants is to be put in place BEFORE they are allowed in. Schools, hospitals, doctors, housing etc etc. There must be no competition or pressure on the indiginous population.
3. Immigrants – no matter from where, should only be allowed into the country if they already have a job to go to AND somewhere to live AND a means of paying for their and their families healthcare. We need a points system so that we target immigration to fill skills shortages. We need a system where we choose who comes, what for and for how long. Not a free-for-all as we have at present.
4. No allowance should be made in normal life for people who wish to follow non-western values. If you want to treat your female family members as chattels, force them to wear non-western clothing or expect the indiginous population to skirt around your religion then you are not welcome. If you want to settle here then you settle here as British and adopt our culture and way of life as your own. You do not exclude yourself or your families from our lifestyle because you don’t like it. If you don’t like it don’t come.
5. Immigrants must not get access to the benefits system – including housing costs, in work benefits such as tax credits, child credits, sick pay, and unemployment benefits for a minimum of 4 years. Likewise access to the NHS should be denied for a minimum of at least 2 years.
6. Any immigrant convicted of any crime involving child abuse, spousal abuse, violence, fraud, drink or drugs is to be detained until they are deported – including juvenile crime If they wish to appeal deportation they can do it from their country of origin.
Do you understand what your blue collar vote wants now? And are you going to accept and deliver it. Or are you – much more likely – going to start preaching down to them from a frankly ridiculous and irrelevant middle class position like you normally do.
Answers on the back of the normal extraordinarily small postcard.
Thank you Tafia for your post. I agree with every word. No chance however of the Labour Party divesting itself of the bien pensants. I have lived in London for 50 years but I grew up in the north east. I visit there frequently. 50 years ago working class boys from the north provided many of this country’s engineers. Now ……. it breaks my heart.
Tom says we ‘must accept the result ‘. Why? As a historian he will be aware of two momentus decisions in the last century when the public mood got it utterly wrong. The first was Munich in 1938 when the fear of a new trench war trumped the reality of Hitlerism. The second was Suez on 1956 when anger over the loss of our colonies trumped the illegality of our military intervention.
No one now defends Munich or Suez, and we can see at this very time a recoil from the ballot box results of the 23rd June. In my book there is a clear case for parliamentarians to call for a re-run.
“These communities can be the backbone of Britain’s next technological revolution. “
So they have all got degrees in IT and CPU design or are skilled programmers?
The writer is living in a different universe. If you have not got the required skills, you are unable to participate in a “technological revolution”. And if your willingness to work hard is not there, you will be of no use.
So by definition, anyone living there and out of work is unlikely to be employed in such a revolution. If they had any such knowledge and get up and go, they would have long gone and be employed elsewhere.
This is all very basic stuff … so we can treat the rest of the article in a similar vein.
Eagle voted for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and repeatedly voted against various proposals for investigations into the war in 2003, 2006, and 2007. She voted in favour of bombing Syria in 2015.
Foreign policy isn’t one of her strong points!
The real question is, how many of those who voted for Jeremy for leader, who weren’t fully signed up to the EEC(common market is capitalist,and we want clause 4 to control the mearns of production) be they Union affiliates,or £3 voters who genuinely have voted labour, voted for Brexit last week due tobe anger that they had been forgotten by the political class and ,saw the EU as an example of that.
I ,just admit I put down Jermeys sucsess to a mixture of people not thinking Much of the other 3 ,those who’d joined in the last 5 years,and felt Ed M had lost to being not left wing enough
Or those who were in he centre and thought we’d lose theft lecion anyway so we might as well have 3 years of Jeremy to see if he can prove himself. swatantra Naswander view
But now I realize ,among them especially conservative, possibly over 60 blue collar working class members/Affiliates, that there genuine anger that, a closed shop of who can decide what’s labours policy, wa doff putting,if even say that fromKinnock onward,s the fact that eparty has let, itself be offutting to middle England a control freakery of , regions advisors to target CLPs has seen, the party try to control areas where we win councils that in theist had a ‘ bad reputation’ with the press,
Something’s that RushAnara Ali mentioned in her doomed deputy leadership bid, where the other candidates were an example of the cliques in the Party, Bradshaw appealed to Essex Man, Eagle appealed to the North, Watson appealed to the unions, Flint, the last vestiges of Bliroem, and Creasy, the un tarnished, anyone but Watson ,candidate
So of those 37% of current labour voters,who voted brexit,excluding Tom Harris Blue labour people in Scotland, or the few who recall Andy Burnhams working class routes, how many of those who voted. Corbyn and voted Brexit, would have voted for a different leader or remain,if we only had a common Market and had a leader who wSnt obsessed with cliques that have no relevance to people’s every day lives, the Freunds of X Country or trying to be all things to all people and nothing to no one
If the Observer is to be believed senior Labour figures are now in discussion with pro Europe Tories to merge which can only mean a) an attempt to destroy the Labour Party is underway and b) an undemocratic coup against the will of the British people – including most working people – is being planned.
As someone from the former Labour Right(non Blairite, working class, social democratic, patriotic and in Orwell’s terms decent), I opposed Corbyn and was dismayed by his victory. I now think his leadership needs to be protected against this very British coup though I do think Corbyn should have made his actual opposition to the autocracy of the EU very clear. I am assuming that his ‘conversion’ on this was an attempt to appease Blairite Euro extremists. They don’t seem to be returning the favour. Be that as it may and despite Corbyn’s flaws – though I thought his speech about Iraq was magnificent – his opponents actually turn out to be worse than bad losers: they don’t believe in either the Labour Party, working people, or the will of the majority. Shocking stuff.
For Labour to represent the bottom level of society, it should be against the anti-democratic and corporatist European Union.
The problem lies not with the people who voted to leave, but with the Labour hierarchy’s state of mind.
And please lay off the ‘P’ word – nobody at street level understands what the hell progressive means; it just reinforces the idea of a university-educated class with an agenda that has nothing to do with the people at the bottom, who are struggling with low wages and unemployment.
And the one thing that seems to elude the ‘history and politics’ teachers – peoples are built on communities, and those communities have identities; as Tafia mentions above, if you throw large numbers of people into those communities, you will create tensions caused by different values.
The people of this country have fought for a thousand years to establish a society built on free speech and freedom from fear of religious tyranny. The Labour party seem to be intent on returning us to the 16th century, and the people at the bottom are the ones who suffer for Labour’s arrogance – see Rotherham.
labour simply needs to get back to its roots…representing the ordinary punters and listening to their needs. simple.
It’s not just about providing jobs and infrastructure – it’s about LISTENING to ordinary working people and treating their views and concerns with respect. So often in the past couple of decades Labour has given the impression of regarding them with contempt and disdain. Ask Emily Thornberry.
If Tafia is correct then we are in for a US style realignment of politics with cultural values trumping socio economic interests amongst large sections of the poor. Left liberals like me won’t and shouldn’t sign up to his Xenophobic and reactionary fairy tale. Even if it weren’t retrograde a better yesterday isn’t deliverable in office. If such communities think they can get a better deal from a Conservative government or a redefined Red UKIP then good luck to them.
“Whilst I believed passionately in the need for Britain to stay in the European Union, I don’t believe that we should dispute the result. The people of Britain made a choice and we should accept it. To fail to do so would reinforce every negative stereotype about politics and politicians.”
This is a remarkably silly argument that neglects the basic premise of democracy – the people can and do change their collective mind. That’s why we have elections – and the Remain people have every right to argue their case and try and change the minds of those who disagreed the time before.
As for Tafia’s attempt to appease UKIP – it’s entirely unrealistic and will do nothing but harm the economy. British businesses will hire immigrants because they can and will do the job cheaper and better than the notoriously low-productivity British worker. If you deny business the workforce it requires, it will simply move away from Britain to Bangladesh, the Philippines, Mexico, China, India etc – and the tax revenues from those businesses will vanish with them, as will the pay packets being spent in British shops, leading to further closure of local shops and unemployment. Rinse and repeat and see where UKIP’s understanding of economics gets you. This is something that should be obvious,but there’s always a UKIP spokesman to assure you that this time the rules can be magically suspended because WE’RE ENGLISH! And when the rules remain in place and England is poorer because of UKIP’s idiocy, where are all the UKIP spokesmen then? Oh that’s right, down the pub whining about how life ain’t fair and everyone’s against them.
Remain people have every right to argue their case and try and change the minds of those who disagreed the time before. Except that there is not going to be a second Referendum. So that’s a pointless argument. Article 50 will be invoked before Easter next year. We will be out of the UK before the next General Election in 2020.
As for Tafia’s attempt to appease UKIP Labour’s blue -collar core vote actually. And without their vote, it is impossible for Labour to win an election.
British businesses will hire immigrants because they can and will do the job cheaper and better than the notoriously low-productivity British worker. The reason productivity in the UK is so low – from management downwards, is precisely because business has been using cheap imported labour as opposed to investing in more efficient production methods. Unless of course you think the Chancellor is lying, the Shadow Chancellor is lying, the LibDem spokesperson is lying and more importantly, Mark Carney is lying.
Would you like me to deride and ridicule the rest of what you wrote? It’s not difficult.
If Tafia is correct then we are in for a US style realignment of politics with cultural values trumping socio economic interests amongst large sections of the poor.
Unless this is all passing you by and you haven’t noticed, you are about to see the biggest political shift in this country since Cromwell and the Civil War.
NickT – As for Tafia’s attempt to appease UKIP
NickT, these are black and white issues for the Labour core vote So for you to not be in favour, means you support women being treated as chattels, that you don’t think violent criminals should be deported and you believe that anyone should have full access to the benefits system the minute they get here. Do you fancy winning an election with those views? Your blue-collar vote hasn’t gone to UKIP because it supports them – it’s gone to UKIP because it’s given up on you ever putting their needs first.
Labour is supposed to be the democratic socialist party of the workers NOT a middle class liberal joke.
What so many of the Leftist Brexit apologists do is compromise with the devil ( UKIP) and believe that the EU is a distant topic far from the everyday reality of Labour heartlands. This partly explains why Labour lost. Corbynite inactivism in many areas even when this cause involved the interests of the young and the well being of the low paid & working class people.
For Corbynites like their leader the economics was unexplained: the coming shrunken Brexit economy, the consequences…reduced tax revenue, cuts to all our services, tax transfers, benefits & regional EU grants , 5 or more years of economic /trade uncertainty, the burden of tariffs, the price rises, capital and jobs flight, the hit to services, universities, technology and health care, the disinvestment of EU and city companies , the loss of tax revenues from London, the fall in pension values for working men and women …it goes on and on. Brexit needs constant re-examination if only because the impoverishment hits Labour and Brexit voters the most.
What so many of the Leftist Brexit apologists do is compromise with the devil ( UKIP)
That is pure uneducated rubbish. For example, have a look at Keir Hardie’s opinions about immigration – and UKIP didn’t even exist then. Or UKIPs opinions on the NHS, state pensions etc – virtually identical to Labour’s – so is Labour appeasing?
Your problem is that for so long the party has been infested at all levels with liberal left middle class fannies that it no longer identifies with it’s origins, original purpose nor more crucially a huge chunk of it’s supposed natural support. And even more crucially, that same huge chunk of it’s supposed support no longer identifies with Labour – because it’s actively working against their best interests in their day to day lives and despite them telling you, you ignore them or you lecture them. Well now they don’t like you and now they no longer believe a word you say – and it’s your own fault.