Commonalities both here and abroad
9th September 2019 · 0 Comments
By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Columnist
The Battle over Brexit reduced the Mother of Parliaments to near-chaos last week. The subtext of the fight, though, has larger implications for not only Britain and the EU, but across the world – and certainly for working people in the United States and especially Louisiana.
Supporters of Brexit view the fight as the restoration of U.K. national sovereignty against faceless Brussels-based bureaucrats. Yet, the reason that the referendum to leave the EU succeeded three years ago, especially in the poor Labour-voting heartlands of the North of England, amounts to much the same reasons that “Make America Great Again” continues to motivate traditional Democratic voters in U.S. Rust Belt (despite little ostensible change in three years). Put simply, families are strained. People are scared. And the economy does not seem to be working anymore — at least not for the aspirational middle class.
These working class voters want somebody who “fights for them,” and so cheer on Boris Johnson & Nigel Farage in the U.K. and Donald Trump in the U.S., even as they acknowledge that the higher tariffs could harm the overall economy — whether those tariffs come from France and Germany or in America’s case China.
As the economy both globalizes and automates, their communities are already gutted. It’s easy for them to blame immigration or exterior factors for their problems. That’s the danger for Democratic and Labour Parties in both countries. It stands as the reason that the Tories could win the coming “snap” election despite the falling pound, and why Donald Trump still remains strong in the Great Lakes despite his falling poll numbers in traditional GOP suburbs, and ironically why Republican Gubernatorial candidate Eddie Rispone has gained so much traction when he screams about “sanctuary cities” as he seeks to unseat Gov. John Bel Edwards here in Louisiana – something that has nothing to do with the LA Governor’s contest.
It is curious that the communities with the least amount of immigration rank as the ones most vehemently opposing it, whether they be in Yorkshire, U.K.; Scranton, PA; or Winnfield, La. Too often, opponents of Brexit (or Trump) classify these resistances to immigration — and the world — as simple racism, as occurred in the House of Commons last week when one pro-EU ‘Remainer’ labeled his working class Brexit opponents as a bunch of “Northern racists.”
That is a sure way to lose any election, especially as these voters quite recently constituted the core electorate of the Center-Left. Of course, little doubt exists that racism fuels some of the appeal of both Tory-Brexit and Trump. Charlottesville proved that in the U.S. Moreover, each’s equal focus to close the Southern Borders (especially as dark-skinned refugees and migrants approach from even more southerly locations) cannot be quickly dismissed as nonsense by each’s pro-nationalist defenders.
Nevertheless, simply labeling your opponents as racists will not win the coming elections. That is quickly becoming apparent in the polls in the U.K., as well as the rise of Rispone in Louisiana. If both Brexit and Bel Edwards fall by November, Democrats should conclude that Trump could triumph as well next year despite the almost daily idiocies tweeted out.
There needs to be a change in political strategy by the Left that acknowledges that Teamsters worried that automated semi-trucks will put them out of work have real fears worth addressing. The staff of Louisiana Chemical plants, watching their jobs dwindle, should not be dismissed by Democrats—yet often are as surely as the coal miner or industrial worker in the North of England has been by hid one-time Labour champions.
As the prosperous suburbs have joined the Democratic & Labour coalitions, a more internationalist outlook has captured the imaginations of the progressive partisan elites. Openness to the world economy, focus on environmental rather than Union concerns, and a commitment to transnational relationships seems simply logical, from these global perspectives. When voting patterns, at least amongst whites, has more to do with one’s level of higher education than income, a loss of focus on the working class is not so surprising. Very little of the “Green New Deal” speaks to the needs of a 50-year old unemployed autoworker, after all.
Lip service is given to the struggling working class, yet most of the professional leadership of the Internationalist Center-left just cannot understand why Trump’s raging against China and Johnson’s against Brussels has such an appeal to people who seemingly are not directly affected by either. After all, for the suburban middle class, the economy is pretty good. The economic indicators all prove positive. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up last week. The U.S. added 130,000 jobs. Despite hiccups, Western economies seem to be growing — for some at least.
That is the Brexit disconnect. It’s fine to talk about a $15 minimum wage, but when a robot can do a job more efficiently than a human, what difference does it make? Better to focus on something you can control, like immigration or national sovereignty, then hear empty promises from the left that really don’t impact the average voter. Or some, however laudable, proposed by the environmentalist-left that may take away the few jobs that remain.
Solutions that might reverse the collapse of neighborhoods and rural communities are strangely absent in today’s Democratic and Labour Party platforms — at least from the perspective of the average voter. Meanwhile, hopelessness captures the young, and working class parents with a high school education realize their children will not have jobs equal to theirs – at least in the communities from which they hail. Methamphetamines and drug abuse replace churches and civic involvement, and it seems, to so many, that their personal worlds are falling apart.
Appeals to nationalism become attractive under those circumstances. Propositions to defend “our sense of place,” our homes, our neighborhoods, our cities, WIN elections — especially if the main stream candidates of the left-wing parties really cannot provide any tangible solutions or speak to the needs of someone struggling and ‘barely making it’ in a 40 hour per week job. Here explains why Trump could win next year, as could the supporters of Brexit next month, as surely as Eddie Rispone could defeat John Bel Edwards due to many of the same emotional appeals.
Of course, the British exit from the European Union brings up real questions of sovereignty, to which any American from the time of the Declaration of Independence can relate, just as Trump’s tariff war against China recognizes real economic and political abuses that authoritarian nation has committed against the United States — and its own citizens. Still, the rise of nationalism across the planet demands that the center left come up with better solutions to counter the tide of nativism. A world in which the only compensation to the pains of economic change is the reward of greater struggle fuels the rise of authoritarian regimes from Hungary to Turkey to Russia, and even perhaps most recently challenges to freedom in the world’s largest democracy in India.
So as the international liberal order across the world cheers that they have stopped Boris Johnson from achieving Brexit by Halloween, defeating him in votes in the House of Commons, insuring that the U.K. will Remain in the EU for the immediate future, and forcing Prime Minister to expel 21 Remainder members of his own Conservative Party – including Winston Churchill‘s grandson, progressives should also see the warning signs.
Absent a real answer to help working people in a globalized economy (perhaps Andrew Yang’s UBI), the opponents of Brexit, like the opponents of Trump, have only achieved temporary victories. After all, the U.S. president can win reelection if he carries Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Great lakes region, just as Boris Johnson can win a majority if he carries the North of England— victories that would have seemed impossible for conservatives just 10 years ago. Just as Eddie Rispone could win Huey Long’s hometown of Winnfield.
This article originally published in the September 9, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
