The Brexit wake-up call and the people left behind by change

To beat Donald Trump, progressives must listen to the people left behind by globalization.

Last week, British voters chose to leave the European Union in a decision which will have huge consequences for my country, for Europe, the world and perhaps, as some pundits suggest, your presidential election in November. Ignored by their political leaders for 37 years, for a single day the British people were given the opportunity to punch the government in the eye, and by 52 percent to 48 percent, they took the decision to do so.

For decades, Britain was regarded as the perfect place to do business, because we were the English-speaking gateway to the European Union’s member states. Our status upheld the best-of-both-worlds, close to the United States, close to the European mainland. Europe brought us prosperity, rights and a seat of power at one of the most influential bodies in the world. So why, you might ask, did so many millions of British citizens rebel against it last week?

When considering Brexit, the most important thing to understand is the role played by de-industrialization. Across large parts of Great Britain the consequences of factory, dock and mine closures have traumatized locals for decades. Take a walk though the north of England and the shattered settlements scattered throughout the former industrial heartlands of my country are as depressing any of your post-industrial American towns. For a little while in the 1980s and ‘90s, the British media reported the distress of these people, and then gradually the sight of abandoned high streets and shuttered shops slid from sight and outsiders just became de-sensitized to it all.

In 1997, after eighteen years in the wilderness, Labour returned to power in a triumph. Having re-modeled ourselves in part on Bill Clinton’s Democrats, we enacted policies designed to please our center-ground supporters in prosperous London and the south of England and respond to a changing, increasingly connected world, but we failed to find a meaningful way to spread the benefits of progress to our traditional supporters living “upstate.” Decent, unionized, blue collar jobs continued to leave the country and were replaced by insecure low-paid work. The housing crisis and the economic exclusion of the young and the poor intensified. After thirty years of heartache, for the people in the middle and the north of England it looked as if the Labour establishment had simply given up on them – the very people on whom the country’s prosperity had once depended. 

By the time the 2008 financial crisis erupted, a growing constituency of working-class voters felt that not only had the economy left them behind, but their political institutions too. The sources of local people’s dignity – their jobs – had been eroded and, it seemed, mocked by globalization, and a remote and bureaucratic political establishment. The European Union, in turn, had become a symbol for the remorseless liberalization of trade at the expense of local jobs and communities. It seemed risible to imagine that any great contribution to the nation could ever emerge from these broken and bruised people again. Then, in one vote last Thursday, the working class people of Britain spectacularly changed the course of our history.

By the time of the referendum campaign, thousands of down-trodden public housing tenants and low paid workers found themselves a part of a political movement that had the establishment on the defensive. If Great Britain had not seen a revolution for 250 years, it was certainly seeing one now. If its participants couldn't settle every old score, they felt that they could at least send a fist flying towards our elected officials in Westminster. Dispossession and betrayal go to the heart of the matter of why two-thirds of working class people voted to leave the EU. We may have left the European Union, but for many Brexiters, the European Union was never the target. 

Herein lies a cautionary tale for Americans. The social and economic pressures within my country, which seem to have contributed to our referendum result, are not unique to Britain. They are ubiquitous in the West. Over the past forty years, tens of millions of Westerners have found themselves left behind by a changing world, subject to wildly oscillating livings standards, and regular periodic economic shocks. Hungarian historian and political philosopher Karl Polanyi has written that it is inevitable that people will mobilize to protect themselves from these kinds of catastrophic events. And we know from history where that can take us. 

The most important lesson liberals can learn from Brexit is that the British left was too slow to respond to the sense of grievance felt by people left behind by change. Just as life-long Labour voters chose to fall in behind Nigel Farage and the xenophobic rhetoric of the UKIP (the very antithesis of leftism), it is not inconceivable that American people living in former industrial communities who have enthusiastically supported Bernie Sanders may yet switch their allegiance – to someone who speaks to their anger, but who is not genuinely concerned with the plight of the poor. In light of our very British revolt, it does not seem too crazy to say that Hillary Clinton faces a similar political insurgency in the United States, which could yet block her path to the White House.

Progressive parties can respond to this problem in only one way: with a drastic recalibration of policy. The neoliberal consensus of old has to be broken and replaced by a new politics of the common good. This means progressives rediscovering the ethical and organizing traditions of the civil rights movement, rediscovering the capacity to hear the hurt of by people left behind, and forging new policies that channel populist anger into progressive social transformation. From here on in, we must ensure that progress benefits the few who are left behind, as well as the many who succeed.

Otherwise, liberals, who have a tendency to roll up their sleeves and carry on with business as usual in the midst of a crisis, may yet wake up to a terrible shock. Your country could slide the same way as mine – as the people left behind by globalization re-organize their grievances into concerted political action.

Bryn Phillips is an adviser to a Labour Party member of the United Kingdom’s House of Lords and a writer for the Guardian and the New Statesman.