Every Vote Counts

Following the big BBC Debate last night, I thought I'd have just one more go at saying something about the extraordinary political machinations of the last month or so. I actually started writing this a couple of weeks ago having watched some 'vox pops' interviews on tv and the penny dropping as to something very interesting developing. 

'I'm voting Labour' said the man stopped in the street and asked for his opinion on the EU referendum. I suppose it made me feel uncomfortable because the piece would inevitably lead to the poor guy being ridiculed, but I now realise it was a graphic illustration of something quite scary indeed, the class divide. This referendum has brought into sharp focus some very unpleasant aspects of our society and some very uncomfortable truths about our 'democracy' and why we could well be making a momentous decision to leave the EU tomorrow. 

At this point it's probably worth reminding ourselves how we got into this mess in the first place. Basically, the rise of UKIP so put the wind up David Cameron prior to the 2015 general election that he felt obliged to promise a referendum in order to try and spike their guns. Despite this, UKIP won a staggering 4 million votes, but the disgraceful workings of our first-past-the-post electoral system delivered them just one MP - job done! How this is called democracy beats me - what if they were 4 million Green Party votes? - but having surprisingly won a 12 seat majority, Cameron realised this was one promise he had to deliver on, hence the referendum.    

It's all been very carefully planned of course and by now 'Project Fear' was supposed to have thoroughly scared us all witless by the extremely well-informed and sensible-looking Remain campaign, so how is it that the opinion polls began to show that the Leave campaign was getting ahead? I think the answer lies in our historic class-based tribal politics, enshrined and perpetuated by the first-past-the-post electoral system. 

It's the system that enabled the closet Tory Tony Blair to gain pre-eminence, move Labour to the right and lay the foundations for extending the privatisation agenda, but kept in power by the loyal white working-class vote. As a group they were cynically used whilst he worked on gaining a greater chunk of the middle-class vote. Of course it's the system that delivered a smoking ban, so loved by the middle-class, whilst the working-class were robbed of their right to a cig and a drink in comfort at either a pub or a bingo hall. It's about beer v wine; North v South; cosmopolitan v provincial.   

This by Lisa McKenzie in the Guardian:-

Brexit is the only way the working class can change anything

From my research I would argue that the referendum debate within working-class communities is not about immigration, despite the rhetoric. It is about precarity and fear. As a group of east London women told me: “I’m sick of being called a racist because I worry about my own mum and my own child,” and “I don’t begrudge anyone a roof who needs it but we can’t manage either.”

Over the past 30 years there has been a sustained attack on working-class people, their identities, their work and their culture by Westminster politics and the media bubble around it. Consequently they have stopped listening to politicians and to Westminster and they are doing what every politician fears: they are using their own experiences in judging what is working for and against them.

In the last few weeks of the campaign the rhetoric has ramped up and the blame game started. If we leave the EU it will be the fault of the “stupid”, “ignorant”, and “racist” working class. Whenever working-class people have tried to talk about the effects of immigration on their lives, shouting “backward” and “racist” has become a middle-class pastime.

Working-class people in the UK can see a possibility that something might change for them if they vote to leave the EU. The women in east London and the men in the mining towns all tell me the worst thing is that things stay the same. The referendum has become a way in which they can have their say, and they are saying collectively that their lives have been better than they are today. And they are right. Shouting “racist” and “ignorant” at them louder and louder will not work – they have stopped listening.

For them, talking about immigration and being afraid of immigration is about the precarity of being working class, when people’s basic needs are no longer secure and they want change. The referendum has opened up a chasm of inequality in the UK and the monsters of a deeply divided and unfair society are crawling out. They will not easily go away no matter what the referendum result.

--oo00oo--

Well, the beauty of a referendum is, unlike a general election where most votes don't count at all, suddenly the middle-class have woken up to the fact that every single bloody vote counts, even those of the 'uneducated', mis-informed or just plain thick working class. Of course the plan was that with the Labour Party officially supporting the Remain camp, this group would loyally follow, but with such an obvious half-hearted campaign the evidence shows that many Labour Party members either don't know what the policy is, or even worse think it's Brexit!   

I think it's much more than this though. The working-class have been royally shafted and ignored for years. Their concerns and interests are completely unkown to the middle class, the metropolitan political class that runs the country, but they're going to get a very rude wake-up call on Thursday because 1) they are fed up 2) they are going to turn out 3) they don't feel bound by any party loyalty and 4) their vote actually counts for once. 

Now this is so very worrying and dangerous for the middle-classes that I already detect the beginnings of an ochestrated campaign, firstly to blame the working-class for being ignorant and secondly ensure we never have a bout of democracy again where every vote counts. Clearly the working-class simply can't be trusted to soak up the reasoned rhetoric, be thoroughy scared of the dire warnings of all the experts and put the bloody cross in the right box! They can't be trusted to know what's best for them. 

Worryingly, here's a guy I really admire, Owen Jones, being patronising in the Guardian:-

Working-class Britons feel Brexity and betrayed – Labour must win them over

Too many working-class northern Labour voters are being seduced by Vote Leave’s disingenuous campaigning. The party has two weeks to reach them

If Britain crashes out of the European Union in two weeks, it will be off the back of votes cast by discontented working-class people. When Andy Burnham warns that the remain campaign has “been far too much Hampstead and not enough Hull”, he has a point. Even Labour MPs who nervously predict remain will scrape it nationally report their own constituencies will vote for exit. Polling consistently illustrates that the lower down the social ladder you are, the more likely you are to opt for leave. Of those voters YouGov deems middle-class, 52% are voting for remain, and just 32% for leave. Among those classified as working-class, the figures are almost the reverse: 36% for remain, 50% for leave. The people Labour were founded to represent are the most likely to want Britain to abandon the European Union.

When presented with a vote on the status quo, it is no surprise that those with the least stake in it vote to abandon it. The same happened in Scotland’s independence referendum. Threats of economic Armageddon resonate little with people living in communities that feel ignored, marginalised and belittled. “Economic insecurity beckons!” people who live in perpetual economic insecurity are told. A Conservative prime minister lines up with pillars of Britain’s establishment with a message of doom – and it makes millions of people even more determined to stick their fingers up at it.

--oo00oo--   

Finally, it's probably worth reflecting on how the 'Beast of Bolsover' and champion of the working-class, Dennis Skinner MP is going to vote - why Brexit of course.