Brexit's political future

Brexit is not the prime cause of Britain's current political crisis. The roots of Britain's political crisis are to be found in some of the results of the annual British Social Attitudes Report (30 June 2016.) To the surprise of the researchers, their carefully demographically balanced, 4328 person survey, found that 60% described themselves as working class. Less surprising perhaps, 82% of those working class people said that the gap between Britain's social classes was 'very wide', which was the highest level choice offered in the survey.

The surprise of the researches is shown in their report that 47% of those describing themselves as working class were not in what the surveyors described as traditional working class occupations. They also reported that there had been 'a big rise in support for higher public spending' and that this support 'had risen to levels not seen since before the 2008 crash.' 93% of those surveyed thought that the NHS had spending problems and 32% (a rise from 19% in 2014) thought that the NHS funding problems were severe.

Why are these findings significant in Britain's political crisis? Because they give the lie to the much trumpeted, beloved by the media, 'common sense' of the new political era, described on one side as 'One Nation Conservatism' and all its various sub plots like 'property owning democracy' and Gove's current aim of a 'fair country' etc., And the other, they also sink without trace Blair's Labour 'Classless Society' and all of the associated tripe like 'a middle way' and 'the end of the working class.'

The point here is not that the survey wins an argument, or that yesterday's political leaders will now not yammer on with the same scripts. The argument is rooted in how types of social systems are created and defended, and will not go away as a result of a piece of research. The politicians have nothing else in their armoury than failed ideas, and that has been true for decades. No. The significance of the survey is that it gives people who wish to see it a glimpse of what is, and what has been for decades, a failing and failed society.

It is important to register the rise an opposition to immigration since 2012, as well as a reduction (by 14%) year on year in the now 50% in favour of more spending on the elderly. Equally, support for the unemployed is also reducing. And some of these trends of opinion were obvious in the recent Brexit referendum. But what is now sure is that there was a split in the working class vote over Brexit, rather than an essentially a largely majority working class vote for leaving the EU. The vote in most big cities, in Scotland and in inner London had already given a similar indication. However, the significant effect of the survey on Britain's political crisis, from its origins up to its latest manifestation, is that British capitalism has no set of economics, or mainstream politics, that can stop the enlarging of a working class, in all of its new forms, with a greater and greater experience and understanding that they are living in a society that is not organised in any way in their interests.

This is a tremendous achievement by the people who have to sell their labour.

Consider the economic and political line of march in Britain since the defeat of the Miner's strike in 1985 from the point of view of the working class as a whole. Destruction of half of trade unionism through wreckage of traditional industry and the most severe anti-union laws in Europe; council house sales to end social housing; the shredding of the Labour Party base as the Party is turned into Tories mark 2 and its leaders embark on a series of suicidal wars; the transformation of the contract between labour and capital breaking collective bargaining, from zero hours contracts to 'self' employment. These and other attacks were all resisted. But the tide seemed to go only in one direction. And the working class  could only recognise itself though the small trade union movement, through bitter and often local defensive battles, through community action, latterly through the great movements first against war and then against austerity. And there was the relentless insistence of public 'common sense' that the class system was over. On the right this meant the watchword of 'opportunity for all', on the left, the debate was centered the 'politics of identity.'

But the reality of the modern politics and economics of capitalism went on producing its own pressure in the lives and in the minds of millions. Soon the fig leaf of Brexit as a means to open up progress for the majority of Britain's citizens will also fail. It was never a real alternative to those who hold wealth and power now. And although the British political class have jerked to the right, and although that current also finds an initial social base in a section of the working class via the route of immigration and racism, that social base can be challenged as it stands in contradiction to a new working class, A working class that has already moved beyond different types of jobs, or racial distinctions, to self-define both its own class in society and which has understood the fact that their own class is faring badly under capitalism.

While it would be ridiculous to minimise the struggles that have taken place in the past, it would be more absurd to underestimate those that will now take place between the classes in British society (which will include essential battles within the working class itself.) What is new is the change of direction. Britain's rulers have just thrown a desperate card in the pot. They hope to open a more vicious offensive against all other classes in society. They are a part of a global political movement that is going in the same direction. But the fact of the fight over Corbyn, inside mainstream politics, is an indication that working class politics is also rising up in society. Britain's political crisis has been simmering for decades. It has now broken open to the working class. What is new are the mass movements, from the Iraq anti-war march onward, that gave a new face and shape to Britain's new working class. What is new is that there is clearly a working class goal available to fight for - in this melee. Maintaining Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party is the main objective for the working class interest in the daily political storms to come. And that is a dramatic sign that the new working class is becoming a class for itself - for it has broken into what was, since the 1980s, almost entirely the province of the ruling class.