In the 2019 general election, the Labour Party faced it’s worst return of MPs since 1935. This was largely due to a collapse in support from its traditional northern heartlands. While Corbyn supporters tend to blame this on Brexit and Blairites on Corbyn, a more accurate and unbiased view may be that the Labour Party has recently failed to genuinely represent and stand up for the working class that it has historically derived its support from.
While populists and the far leftists have long held the view that Labour doesn’t represent the working class, it’s a view that’s become more and more common as the debate over Britain’s EU membership intensified. Over the last few years it’s became clearer that working class voters, particularly in Wales, the midlands and the north - the very people that Labour claim to represent - heavily support Britain's withdrawal from the EU. But does that mean that Labour supports Brexit? Does it hell?! With the exception of a few MPs and grassroots members, the party resisted at all stages, with many (almost always middle class) members implying-that working class people are thick, ignorant and even bigoted because of how they voted in the referendum, unashamedly ignoring the suffering that the EU has inflicted on the working class. No party that truly represents the working class would challenge the democratic will of and look down on them in the way that MPs from the Labour Party have.
But that’s sort of inevitable. Both the left and right and of the party are dominated not by the working class but by white middle class people, white middle class people who have little to no understanding of the issues working class people face. And what makes this even more ironic is that many of the party’s members are gentrifiers, meaning they’re forcing the real working class people out of the area they move into and then acting like they’re doing us a favour because they’re involved with a political party that claims to represent us. As a working class Mancunian, I can tell you for a fact that they’re not doing us a favour.
And to add insult to injury, many of its members (and politicians) view the working class with nothing but contempt. As a former member, I remember attending a meeting where, while discussing the unpopular Labour councillors that North Reddish, a deprived ward comprised mostly of council estates, has, a member said, and I quote, “North Reddish gets what North Reddish deserves”. In a room full of self proclaimed ‘socialists’, I was the only person who challenged him over what he said. For me, that discussion perfectly summed up Labour’s view of the working class. They resent us and see themselves as better than us, yet expect our votes.
A more prominent issue that illustrates this view however is Scottish independence. Almost the entire party is against independence, and in most cases, not because of the merits of Scotland remaining in the union, or the drawbacks of it leaving, but because if Scotland did leave then winning elections would become far easier for the Conservatives. This, probably better than any other well known example, shows that they only care about working class votes, and not working class people, and therefore fail to stand up for working class people or working class interests.
However, one thing that is worth noting is that each ideology and section of society has a different idea about who does represent the working class-for populists it’s probably been UKIP or the Brexit Party in recent years, for Scottish and Welsh nationalists it’s the regional parties and for an increasing number it’s the Tory party, but for a large proportion of the working class, and for Marxists, no current party represents the working class, who’ve been neglected and seemingly abandoned by political party and are (quite understandably) running out of patience with electoral politics.
Written by Josh Rowe - Instagram @joshrowe03
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