'Stirring up apathy' ; or, why so many people still 'love' the Tories (4)

Commentators such as the political journalist and broadcaster Steve Richards (in his 'The Prime Ministers (2020)' , the former Labour politician Denis MacShane in his 'Brexiternity' (2019) and the historian David Reynolds in his 'Island Stories' (2019) ) have emphasised that there was no popular clamour for Brexit, and have pointed to internal party management reasons, such as the perceived threat from UKIP to the cohesion of the Conservative Party. All this is true. However, Brexit was an enormous gift to the Tories in electoral terms. It confirmed that divisions among the electorate were increasingly delineated less along socio-economic lines than among (making it easier for theTories to wage 'culture wars.') I have to say here that I wish that I had got round to reading the political scientist Robert Ford's 'Brexitland', which would have made this section of the blogpost more informative. However, that is one of the perils of trying (not always successfully) to write political commentary in my spare time.

For those whose political agency had been diminished by the experience of austerity, the slogan 'Take back control' was very seductive. Of course, many affluent areas voted Leave (and continued to vote Tory), but an explanation of their behaviour is not the object of this blogpost.

'Take back control': but what from ? It was clear to many people that things were seriously awry: secure employment was no longer easily available ; the familiar landmarks of a stable retail sector and accessible and open public buildings and spaces could no longer be taken for granted. The values of money seemed to dominate everything (as noted by the political scientist David Marquand in his book, 'Mammon's Kingdom' (2015)), even those parts of life which had hitherto not been thought of as businesses (e.g. schools, universities). But the causes of this pervasive malaise were diffuse and uncertain. What was tangible and clear was the demographic shift in several parts of the country which had hitherto not experienced much immigration. As one inhabitant of Louth (in Lincolnshire) pithily put it, when interviewed on BBC Radio 4's 'The World Tonight' in 2019: 'I'm voting for the Brexit Party, and this town is not what it was.'

As the immigrants in question were from Europe, this reaction was undoubtedly xenophobic, but it did not carry the odious taboo of overt racism. By this, I am claiming that, since Enoch Powell's infamous speech of 1968 and the notorious Smethwick byelection of 1964 with its unrepeatable slogan a taboo had arisen affecting the overt and direct expression of racism in mainstream politics. (Of course, this racism surfaced in other ways, such as Islamophobia, or demands to increase 'assimilation' or to steer away from 'multiculturalism', or hostilty to refugees, but this rhetoric could be plausibly, if often disingenuously, presented as an expression of liberalism, not prejudice). As kong as this expression was xenophobic (and not racist), it was deemed to fall within the category of 'acceptable' political discourse. (For those who were the objects of this xenophobia the consequences were anything but 'acceptable', and this xenophobia could often spill over into overt racism, as it did when the issue of the completely imaginary Turkish entry into the EU enabled the Leave campaign to raise fears of a 'flood' of refugees).

As Denis MacShane and David Reynolds have both pointed out, the decision to encourage immigration from East and Central Europe arose solely from the decisions of the Blair government in 2004, and not at the behest of the EU. The government chose not to take advantage of the transition period which the EU offered (and of which other member states, such as Germany decided to use), but, for its own good reasons, decided that it would not gradually increase immigrartion over a period of time but significantly increase it over a shorter period. The reasons were both economic and political. There were identifiable skill shortages which needed to be tackled. The goal of expanding the EU and welcoming new members (which had always been a preoccupation of British policy) would be fulfilled, in large part, by encouraging migration from these areas, especially as many of these places had experienced problems of economic development even before the period of Communust rule. Migration would serve to bind these new members, in multiple ways, to the EU. The important fact is that at no time did the EU coerce the United Kingdom into accepting more immigration ; it was entirely a domestic political decision. The criticism could justifiably be made that not enough public investment was made (in schools, housing) to cushion the impact of demographic change. That, however, is another issue, although it did undoubtedly contribute to the social tensions which UKIP exploited.

However, UKIP and the Tory Brexiters could ignore these inconvenient facts, and the tangible contributions which immigrants made to British society (however grudgingly and ungraciously acknowledged) could be overlooked. The EU may not have been at the top of many voters' lists of priorities, but other problems, to which it could be connected, were. In that sense, Brexit was a 'lightning rod' for other issues. The remain camp were fatefully unaware of the extent to which the referendum only acquired potency and purchase in many people's minds to the extent that it touched on other, extremely emotive issues, to which the pros and cons of EU membership were undoubtedly connected, but were also tangential.

Political developments in the EU, particualrly the long debate over the Greek debt crisis, possibly helped to engender Brexit sentiment in the United Kingdom (although this factor has been overlooked by many commentators), in two ways. It helped to give the impression of the EU as an overmighty and unreasonable superstate, not as the intergovernmental agent of those governments holding the pursestrings. Talk of Greece's expulsion from the single currency may have helped Brexit (an entirely different proposition) seem more plausible ; and, in any case, it fostered the impression of the EU as not only an unreasonable but an unstable entity, which was likely to collapse anyway.

As the commentator Rafael Behr has recently noted, the Tories were able to effect a political revolution in people's allegiances and orientations and a transformation in the Conservative Party's political stance (from neoliberal/global capitalist to populist/nationalist) without in anyway disturbing the position of economic and political elites. It was the ultimate 'revolution from above.' Of course, the Conservative Party has shape-shifted before, when repealing the Corn Laws in the 1840s , when embracing franchise extension in 1867, 1918 and 1928, when opting for tariffs and the Sterling Area in the 1930s, when opting for Keynesianism and collectivism in the 1940s, and when embracing Thatcherism in the 1970s. so this is nothing new. What is surprising is that anybody should have been surprised when the Conservatives demonstrated the same capacity to adapt from 2016 onwards.

Brexit was the exception to the rule of the Conservatives, 'stirring up apathy', to adapt William Whitelaw's description of Harold Wilson in the 1970 election. Voters had been aroused to revolt, gave the Conservatives a new lease of life, and discovered too late that Brexit was a poisonous cul-de-sac. Never mind : the Conservatives were on hand, in 2019, to relieve people of the problem which the Conservatives had themselves caused, by 'getting Brexit done', and circumventing those irksome and meddlesome politicians with their pedantic plans for circumventing the Brexit referendum. By doing this, the Conservatives could present hemselves as being above politics, and , in a populist twist, as somehow incarnating, in a Rousseauesque way, the 'General Will' of the people. In this, they were immeasurably helped by Johnson's presentation of himself as an entertainer, not a politician ; but Theresa May has the dubious honour of pioneering this particular populist trope, and injecting its poison into the mainstream of British politics.