If you build an electoral strategy on the assumption that working class people are nasty, brutish, horrible people like Lee Anderson, then you are seriously misunderstanding the working class and are bound to fail.
In my last blog post I wrote that on Brexit’s third anniversary the jury was in and hardly anyone could seriously contest that so far it had been a complete failure. The strongest evidence yet to support this claim came with a scoop reported in the Observer on Sunday 12 February 2023. The Observer reported on a secret cross-party summit bringing together very senior Tory and Labour politicians –from both the Remain and the Leave camps – as well as very senior figures from the business world to discuss how to reduce the damage Brexit is doing to the country. According to the reports very senior Leave figures – including Michael Gove, Gisela Stuart, and Norman Lamont – were present alongside Remainers like Shadow foreign Secretary David Lammy. The Observer’s Toby Helm considers that the summit ‘reflects a growing acceptance among politicians in the two main parties, as well as business leaders and civil servants, that Brexit in its current form is damaging the UK economy and reducing its strategic influence in the world.’
The meeting is nothing short of extraordinary, both in terms of the cross-party and ‘cross-Brexit divide’ list of attendees, and in terms of the visible candour with which the heterogenous group seems to be discussing the need to find a better solution for UK’s relationship with the EU than the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) provides. As such, the report could be seen as a good sign about an emerging cross-party, cross-divide pragmatism to address the undeniable damage Brexit is doing.
At the same time, the report is also disturbing in several respects. Most obviously, the fact that the meeting was held in secret and only known to the public due to a leak is shocking. It illustrates the utter dishonesty with which the two major parties in the UK deal with the biggest decision the country has made in decades. Clearly there is a growing – almost universal – consensus amongst the countries political and economic elites that to make Brexit work better, we need closer ties with the EU. Yet, no leading politician seems to have the courage to say that in public. This seems even more astonishing given that the British public – according to all the polls I am aware of – very largely has reached the same conclusion. So, why can leading politicians even outside the circle of committed Brexiters not be honest about it?
The answer lies in what I have describe in several previous posts as the Brexit hostage situation we are held in. The reason why the most powerful politicians and business leaders in the country cannot be honest with the people is simply that a small group of right-wing authoritarian and nationalist populists has managed to capture key positions in public life that allows them to potentially derail either leading parties’ hope to govern the country.
For the Tories, this group – as Chris Grey extensively and convincingly discussed this week – is in the process of eating up conservatism from within. Given the influence the ‘Brexitists’ have gained over the Tory party, it comes as no surprise that PM Sunak does not even dare telling journalists whether or not he was aware of – let alone supported – the secret meeting. Instead, he waffles on about how proud he was of supporting Brexit!
For Labour, the mighty right-wing press constitutes a permanent threat that means straying too far from the right-wing mainstream that currently dominates British politics would imply a potentially lethal barrage of negative headlines that may destroy any hope of forming the next government.
Beyond the dishonesty and cowardice that the secret summit betrays, there are two other dangers that dampen any hope that this signals a return to pragmatism.
One danger is revealed by what the Observer reports to be Michael Gove’s take on the summit. Namely, that Brexit is still the right decisions, but just not being done in the right way. This, of course, has become a wide-spread coping mechanism amongst those Brexiters who are not delusional enough to think that things are going well. Rather than taking responsibility for the failure, they bemoan that what we got is not the real Brexit they voted for. There will always be a hard core of Brexiters who will cling on to that belief however badly Brexit turns out to be for the country.
Still, it is important to challenge this narrative, which may otherwise serve to justify an even more extreme form than the hard Brexit Johnson and Frost negotiated. Indeed, the risk here is that rather than thoroughly defeating Brexiters’ flawed arguments about ‘doing things our own way,’ ‘sovereignty,’ etc., ‘Remainers’ provide them with a way of rehabilitating their arguments.
To be sure, eventually, the country will have to come together and heal the deep wounds Brexit has inflicted on the British body politic. But not on any terms. The risk is that if ‘moving on’ happens without a proper analysis of why Brexit took place and why it was never going to work, the ideas that drove the Brexit fringe of the UK’s political sphere will continue to cast their long shadows over the inevitable process of softening hard Brexit.
The second danger is that discussing in secret amongst members of the elite the most consequential political decision the country has made in decades is water to the mills of those who attempt to convince the British public that a large-scale conspiracy against the ‘real people’ is taking place. Indeed, Monday’s newspapers were full of Brexit Ultras crying – once again – ‘betrayal!’; and David Frost once again made the headlines for warning against a ‘secret plot’ to unravel the deal he negotiated (which, incidentally, he otherwise says needs to be renegotiated).
The past weeks have provided ample evidence that both these phenomena – zombie ideas and conspiracy theories – constitute increasingly dangerous challenges for British democracy.
Zombie ideas and zombie politicians
The notion of zombie ideas has entered the social science vocabulary a while ago to describe bad policy prescriptions that have not worked in the past, but refuse to ‘die.’ In a similar way, a remarkable effect of Brexit is the creation of zombie politicians – i.e., politicians who have proven that they are inept, dishonest, or led by misguided policy ideas –, and yet do not seem to leave the political scene. Just like in a Romero zombie movie, every time a knew blow is dealt (partygate, mini-budget, breaking of ministerial code…), you think ‘surely this one is fatal!’ only to see the corpse get up again and return to front-line politics.
The master zombie politician is of course Boris Johnson who already attempted a comeback when the Truss government was in its final throes. That attempted comeback – so shortly after having to leave office due to a series of scandals, each one of which would have been career-ending for any politician a few years ago – was astonishing. Even more astonishing is that despite that failed comeback attempt, only a few months later there is talk of another one. Some allies even consider it ‘likely’ that Johnson will return to Number 10 this year. The vast majority of the British public do not want him back, but in the past few years the British people’s opinion has rarely mattered in determining who the Conservative party choose as the leader of our country. The comeback attempt is even more remarkable given that an investigation into Johnson potentially having misled Parliament over ‘partygate’ is still ongoing and a new scandal around his personal finances and their link to the appointment of Richard Sharp as BBC chairman have since emerged.
Just like he used to do during his time as PM, whenever his dodgy affairs caught up with him at home, ‘Boris Pilgrim’ once again flew to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to bask in the reflected glory of a real war time leader. (Incidentally, just how dishonest Johnson’s and the Tory’s attitude towards Ukraine is is illustrated by a new Chanel 4 documentary that documents the influence of Russian money on the Tory party).
The other zombie politician erring the twilight zone between the realms of political oblivion and front-line politics is Liz Truss. Her essay in the Sunday Telegraph last week is extraordinary in many respects. The Financial Times’ Louis Ashworth has provided an excellent paragraph-by-paragraph comment on the essay that reveals all its absurdity and dishonesty.
Yet, I think it is important to take the essay seriously, because absurdity and dishonesty are no longer attributes that prevent people from occupying the highest offices of the state in post-Brexit Britain. Indeed, Truss’s strategy to rehabilitate herself may not work for her personally, but it can still cause a lot of damage.
The narrative she is trying to sell can be summarised like this: Despite being an outsider with little organisational support, she managed to obtain a ‘popular’ mandate (from the Conservative party members) to urgently reform the British economy that has been flailing for decades. The economic policies adopted by her predecessor would have meant tax raises and increased public spending. Something had to be done urgently. As a result, as soon as she took office she acted ‘with maximum speed.’ Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng therefore did not wait long to implement the ‘mini-budget,’ which she describes – quite inconsistently – as simply a ‘return to Conservative economics and a ‘brave’ break with orthodoxy. The policy was right and would have succeeded had the markets not reacted so negatively and had she been given time to implement it in full. However, a coalition of “the blob of vested interests” within Whitehall, opposition by people defending the economic orthodoxy (presumably the Bank of England), as well as ‘a concerted effort by international actors to challenge our Plan for Growth,’ ultimately brought her down.
Many commentators on the essay have noted the astonishing lack of remorse and self-awareness. The most worrying bit, however, is the fact that this is a former PM making arguments that are only one step removed from the most absurd conspiracy theories out there on the internet. Indeed, it is a small step from the discourse about the ‘blob’ and ‘international actors,’ to the sort of conspiracy theories that see Sunak as a puppet of a ‘globalist world conspiracy’ led by Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum. No wonder, then, conspiracy theories seem to become increasingly acceptable and accepted in the British public sphere, as GB News illustrates.
GB (Fake) News and the banalisation of dishonesty
One of the more shocking developments in the past two years is the transformation of GB News from a right-wing irrelevance, into an outright fake news and conspiracy theory channel. Matthew Sweet – an expert on conspiracy theories – provides various examples of how GB News spreads anti-vax conspiracies on its airwaves, including in an interview with former Tory MP Andrew Bridgen and suspected rapist and human trafficker Andrew Tate. GB News could be discounted as just some oddity. However, the proximity to figures close to power – including sitting MPs – is greatly worrying in terms of what it says about the UK’s political culture.
A regular guest on GB News is newly appointed deputy chairman of the Conservative party Lee Anderson. He illustrates better than anyone else the proximity of the UK’s governing party with right-wing extremism. Anderson constitutes another step down ‘fake news lane,’ as he incorporates the banalisation of dishonesty in politics. In a remarkable radio interview, he attempted to justify a fake video in which he had a friend of his pose as Labour swing voter with the fact that we all have lied at one point in our lives. Such a banalisation of dishonesty and fake news is nauseating. Worse still, the Mirror reports on Anderson’s proximity to white supremacist groups with members of whom he has been photographed repeatedly.
Anderson’s appointment may seem astonishing given his divisive and toxic personality. Indeed, it did not take long for him to be in the middle of controversy around his support for the death penalty, forcing the government to distance itself from his statement. Yet, everything suggests that Sunak new exactly what he was doing when appointing him as deputy chairman.
The (Deliberately) Nasty Party: Campaigning on hatred
Twenty-one years ago, after their General Election defeat of 2001, the Tories were still very worried about their image as the ‘nasty party’ and no other than Theresa ‘hostile-environment’ May denounced the Party for ‘demonising minorities.’ Twenty years on, being the nasty party has all but become the Conservatives’ official election strategy; and demonising minorities and opponents is one of the few thing most Tory politicians seem to agree on.
On this blog, I have written many times how the Tories seem to reignite the so-called ‘culture war’ whenever their economic track record comes under attack. This analysis has been confirmed on Monday by the defection of Iain Anderson – a senior Conservative businessman and former Tory ‘LGBT business champion’ – to Labour. As a key reasons for his decision he mentioned the fact that ‘[i]t was made pretty clear the plan is to run a culture war to distract from fundamental economic failings.’
In this context, Lee Anderson’s appointment makes perfect sense. Who better suited to represent the anti-woke nastiness, intransigence, and machoism than the person they call the ‘red wall rottweiler’? Equally, Sunak having to distance himself from Anderson’s statement about the death penalty shortly after having appointed him may better be seen as part and parcel of that strategy and hence intended rather than an embarrassment. Indeed, the hypocrisy of officially condemning extreme views within the Party, while in fact doing everything to give those extreme views a platform, increasingly seems like part of the ‘deliberately nasty party’ strategy Sunak has opted for. It shows those nasty voters they want to woo that deep down the PM agrees with them, but the – still too strong – ‘establishment’ forces him to tune down his real convictions.
The voice of the working class?
Lee Anderson likes portraying himself as a ‘salt of the earth’ guy who despises ‘middle aged academics’ and speaks for the working class. Similarly, much of the right wing media portray him as a representative of the working class and seek to discredit any criticism as being motivated by a ‘hatred of the working class.’
For someone like myself who grew up in a working-class family and spent their summers and holidays working in factories and on construction sites to finance their studies, I can confidently say that Anderson and his nasty views do not represent in anyway working-class values. Yes, there are working class people like him: nasty, brutish, big-mouthed, crude. But they are like that not because they are working class, but because they are horrible people. The vast majority of working class people I grew up with – including my parents – were often politically to the right, but mostly very decent human beings with compassion for other people – including immigrants and refugees – and who showed respect for other people’s lifestyles, views, and convictions. If Anderson represents anyone, it is not working-class people, it is horrible people. And such horrible people you can find in any class. Ironically, the right-wing media’s claim that Lee Anderson’s views somehow reflect those of the working class who the ‘left’ despites is the greatest insult of them all!
Moreover, Anderson’s worldview of a deep divide between workers and academics is both exaggerated and dangerous, because it stirs up a nefarious anti-intellectualism and obscurantism. The university sector is one of the UK’s most successful ‘industries’ both in terms of what it contributes to society and in economic terms. The anti-intellectualism that right-wing Tories now adhere to is illustrated by the nonchalance with which the government treats our participation in the EU’s Horizon programme, which constitutes yet another act of Brexit-induced self-harm. Anderson’s railing about middle-aged academics is perfectly in line with that and should not go unchallenged.
The next Brexit and the grapes of wrath
The radicalisation of the Tory party has also reignited the discussion around the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), which Sunak says stands in the way of effectively dealing with immigration. While a considerable part of the Tory party still does defend the rule of law and threatens with a rebellion, Sunak’s target audience is the right wing of the party, especially now that the zombies Johnson and Truss have returned to walk the political earth again. The tragedy of course is that the so-called ‘small boat crisis’ – if it is indeed a crisis – has very little to do with the ECHR or ‘lefty lawyers’, but has everything to do with Brexit, as a new report unmistakably shows. It is the decision to not only exit the EU, but also end the Dublin agreement on returns of refugees to safe countries, that explains the increase in arrivals. No Brexiter would of course ever admit that. Instead, they set sight once again on the next ‘European thing’ to exit – probably in the hope of rekindling the fire of hatred that brought them to power.
That strategy clearly is working as the appalling attack on asylum seekers in Merseyside illustrates. Braverman’s (another zombie politician) half-hearted condemnation of the attack (‘well, people are angry, because immigrants misbehave. What do you expect?’ – I’m paraphrasing), is probably the most appalling thing she has said since becoming Home Secretary – and the bar was very high. In post-Brexit Britain, a bunch of angry, violent, xenophobes setting on fire a police van barely raises an eyebrow in Westminster, but of course climate activists demonstrating constitutes an unacceptable draining of police resources and justifies new laws to crack down on our civil liberties to protest.
Overall, then, it has been another appalling week in British politics and the political sky seems to get darker and darker. The run up to the next General Election promises to be toxic and hateful, due to Sunak’s strategy of positioning the Conservatives as the nasty party. But to finish this post on an ever so slightly more optimistic note, there are signs that the right-wing Tories’ fake Populism is coming back to bite them: If you insist that the Tories are the representatives of the ‘real people’ and the Brexit vote shows what the people really want, but the people actually increasingly disagree, then you are increasingly left high and dry. More generally, if you think – which Conservatives clearly do – that working class people are nasty, brutish, horrible people like Lee Anderson and you build your electoral strategy on that misconception, then I think you are seriously misunderstanding ‘the people’ and bound to fail. The Tories’ nasty party strategy may work with a relatively small minority of the electorate, many of whom may be Tory party members, but certainly do not represent British public opinion in general. Together with the increasingly deep internal divisions that Chris Grey wrote about last week, there is hope that “Brexit is slowly killing the Conservative Party,” possibly making room for a less nasty, less corrupt, more modern centre-right party. That is something the UK desperately needs.