Melanie Phillips: the working class saved Britain
An interesting piece by Melanie Phillips:
The stakes in this election were enormous, not just for Britain but for the world. Labour is led by the most far-left leadership in its history, supporting terrorists abroad and incubating virulent antisemitism at home. If elected it would have wrecked Britain’s economy, attacked the State of Israel and posed a mortal threat to the security of Britain, its Jewish community and the west.
It was defeated by a seismic shift which may just have redrawn the British political landscape for ever.
What happened was something most people had believed was unthinkable. As I observed on my own blog in September, however, a tectonic shift was under way in the Labour heartlands.
The white working class, those blue-collar workers who had been tribal Labour supporters for generations, voted en masse for the Conservatives for the first time ever.
It’s not just Phillips saying this. A lot of British pundits have observed that certain areas, where voters have been Labourites for just about forever, flipped in this election. Whether this is a long-lasting change is anyone’s guess, but it’s certainly a significant one.
And the parallels to the voters in the Rust Belt who put Trump over the top are obvious. Will that change hold, as well, in 2020? And more importantly, will it last past Trump’s presidency if he is re-elected in 2020?
Here is Phillips again:
Astoundingly, economically shattered communities with very high levels of poverty and unemployment, even former mining towns whose inhabitants had voted Labour virtually from the time the party was invented, all voted on Thursday for an Eton-educated, plummy-voiced toff in preference to the leader of the Labour party.
Why? Because the British working-class is deeply, passionately patriotic and attached to democracy. They are the very best of Britain. Time and again they have saved the country in its wars against tyranny by putting their lives on the line to defend what it stands for: their historic culture, institutions and values.
That’s why in the 2016 referendum they voted en masse for Brexit. And that’s why they felt so betrayed by the Labour party, which had been instrumental in stopping Brexit in parliament and trying to reverse the referendum result without admitting what it was doing…
It’s hard to exaggerate the anger by the Brexit-voting working-class at what they saw as an anti-democratic coup by Remainer Labour MPs who were determined to stop Brexit and spit in the eye of democracy.
These working-class voters also believe in hard work, responsibility and their own human dignity. They feel patronised and demeaned by welfare dependency, and have absolutely no time for the metropolitan liberals’ social agenda.
So there was a sense of betrayal as well as an anger at how far the left had gone. Plus, the left grievously insulted its own voters. Sound familiar?
[NOTE: A great deal of Phillips’ essay goes on to discuss the voting of Britain’s Jews. Some of what she says seems confusing. For example, after mentioning how frightened Britain’ Jews were of Corbyn, she then says (without presenting any evidence) that “most British Jews voted Remain.” I have looked at exit polls and seen no evidence of that, nor does Phillips offer any. But one thing is pretty certain: Britain’s Jews did NOT vote for Labour and Corbyn, whatever other party they may have voted for. I wrote a piece prior to the election based on polls that indicated that “94% of British Jews will vote for any party but Labour.”
Britain’s Jews don’t determine anything much in terms of their voting behavior, either, because there are very few of them. Just to give you a little example of what I mean, New York City has about three times as many Jews as all of Britain put together, as far as we can tell.]
[ADDENDUM: Apparently when Ms. Phillips wrote that “most British Jews voted Remain” she was referring to the original 2016 referendum vote. Regarding this recent vote from last week, I found some statistics indicating that British Jews had deserted the Labour Party by 2017 and in the recent election as well, voting Conservative instead.
Although Jews had voted about 2 to 1 for Remain in the 2016 referendum on the subject (according to this poll), by 2017 Corbyn and Labour had already come to alarm them. They were drawn to the Conservative Party from then on:
…67% of Jews voted for the Tories in the 2017 election, and a recent Survation poll finds that 64% will vote Conservative next month. Labour garnered only 11% of the Jewish vote in 2017 and Survation says support for Labour will slump to 6% this time.]
Massive protests against the Tories (“not my PM”) have been taking place in London by brainless leftists who refuse to accept the result of a free and fair election. Should Trump manage to vanquish whichever incompetent fool is put forward by the Dems next November, this country is likely to experience even worse behavior from the losers.
Most votes (90%+) are tribal. The major influences on party affiliation are family, extended family, friends, co-workers, church, social clubs, neighbors, … , policy, media. When a tribal voter makes the break they generally switch sides rather than becoming a swing voter. Our hostess is a prime example.
This chart:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Combined–Control_of_the_U.S._House_of_Representatives_-_Control_of_the_U.S._Senate.png
shows 3 inflection points in US political dominance: 1865, 1931, and 1995; or roughly 70 years each, 3 generations.
The last 2 presidential elections brought total outsiders, Obama and Trump. I believe we are in the process of a major realignment. Odds are that we are in for a long stretch of Republican dominance.
IIRC, there was a second left-wing Remainer party. Assuming that Phillips is correct about the Jewish vote, maybe that’s who they voted for?
The Federalist (I think) had a piece up that included the writer talking about a conversation he had with a cabbie in Great Britain. The cabbie had been a Labor supporter, and had voted to remain in the EU. He still thought that remaining in the EU was a good idea. But he’d also seen the games that the politicians had been playing with Brexit. And he was so disgusted by those games that he had decided to vote for Johnson.
Astoundingly, economically shattered communities with very high levels of poverty and unemployment, even former mining towns whose inhabitants had voted Labour virtually from the time the party was invented…
While this election was a referendum on Brexit, is suspect that Brexit is just the lynchpin of something much larger or, perhaps, smaller. The clip of the article that I quoted there shows a lack of self awareness on the author’s part. These blocs have voted for the Labour party since inception and look where it’s gotten them.
One common theme between the elction of Donal Trump three years ago, the gilets jaunes protests in France last year, and the landslide election of the Tories in England, is that a core constituency are people who believe, or are afraid, that their country is leaving them behind. Remember that all politics is still local.
KRB
For example, after mentioning how frightened Britain’ Jews were of Corbyn, she then says (without presenting any evidence) that “most British Jews voted Remain.” I have looked at exit polls and seen no evidence of that, nor does Phillips offer any.
Most British Jews (like American Jews) are Liberal/Left and ‘Remain’ was the default Liberal/Left position so that wouldn’t be surprising though. ‘Leave’ has always been the position of the (relative) extremes of the political spectrum: the ‘laissez-faire’ Capitalist/Libertarian Right and traditionally Socialist Left, including Jeremy Corbyn. So we’ve had the rather ironic situation of a life-long ‘Leaver’ leading the ‘Remain’ Resistance.
You also have the aspect that the European Union is a supra-national entity that could have, at least theoretically, moderated the effects of any Corbyn government.
billm99uk:
I would never make a statement like “most Jews voted a certain way” without linking to some documentation. The polls and exit polls might be incorrect, but at least they’re something.
I have no idea what party most British Jews voted for and have not seen anything about it although I’ve looked. If you have a link to something, that would be very helpful to see, because I don’t know what it’s based on. I was surprised that it was difficult even to get good statistics on how many Jews are in Britain, much less how they voted in this election.
Could it be that the salt of the earth is rising up to oppose the elitists?
I strongly believe, tho it’s probably based on just a few anecdotal asides from the time, that in the big Referendum, “most British Jews voted Remain.” Like the vast majority of educated, city-living elite, the “liberal universalists”. (I like this phrase OK, but prefer the shorter globalist).
Melanie claims:
although the Jewish community has mostly voted Conservative since the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, it also mostly subscribes to liberal universalist principles that seek to erase national borders because it believes that affinity to the nation-state creates nationalism and antisemitism.
Tory Remainers – how did they vote this time? Probably Tory.
Especially since so many UK elite globalists are now the principal incubators of antisemitism.
I think it’s especially true of virtue signaling not-quite but wannabee elites.
There’s not enough elite slots at the top for all the educated and feeling entitled elites in waiting. (There was a good article on the intra-elite struggles I can’t find now.)
Melanie’s writing is Copyright Jewish News Syndicate, so it’s no surprise to spend extra time on Corbyn’s, and Labour’s, increasing anti-Semitism.
But the most important part of her note that’s relevant to the USA is her description of workers:
the British working-class is deeply, passionately patriotic and attached to democracy.
American workers love the USA, and want to love the USA. The Dems do NOT love the USA, tho sometimes they play at it, especially before elections.
She also describes the insults of the elite against the workers well:
haven’t stopped denigrating those who voted Brexit as half-witted, racist xenophobes.
Much like US Dem elite who haven’t stopped denigrating those who voted Trump as half-witted, racist xenophobes. AND sexist homophobes.
The unstoppable elite badmouthing of Trump & supporters is part of the intra-elite “top virtue signaler” status fight — the ones with the strongest, loudest, most repeated insults against Trump supporters get the most Dem bubble status.
I posted a comment here quite a while ago in which I linked to the following article. This article references the Jewish voting in the 2017 UK election.
https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/06/09/jewish-vote-in-london-denies-corbyn-opportunity-to-prevent-conservative-led-government-analyst-says/
I was trying to remember who the Silent Majority were and how working class:
Nixon’s silent majority referred mainly to the older generation (those World War II veterans in all parts of the U.S.) but it also described many young people in the Midwest, West and in the South, many of whom eventually served in Vietnam. The Silent Majority was mostly populated by blue collar white people who did not take an active part in politics: suburban, exurban and rural middle class voters.
My impression then was that the Silent Majority were more middle-class than working-class, but by the 70s the working-class, or at least the consistently working-class, were middle-class.
Though that equation has lost some strength since.
Rephrasing the previous question What will the British left learn from the UK election?, more specifically, what will Labour’s anti-Semites learn from the election? Inclined as they are to demonizing beliefs, anti-Semites do not usually learn beyond adjusting failed tactics. They seldom learn to the point of changing underlying beliefs. They demonize. Hence the anti-Semitism.
There may be hope for them in this loss owing to its magnitude. The message delivered was that something in their worldview is profoundly wrong. The proper question to ask themselves is why have they so stubbornly held beliefs with no purpose other than making themselves and others miserable?
What is the fundamental difference between Venezuela and Britain?
“Because the British working-class is deeply, passionately patriotic and attached to democracy. They are the very best of Britain. Time and again they have saved the country in its wars against tyranny by putting their lives on the line to defend what it stands for: their historic culture, institutions and values.”
And a history, a culture, that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years, Magna Carta and all.
Venezuela was ‘liberated’ from Spain, what, 200 years ago? Like the rest of Latin America, with its Indio DNA (NOT Hispanic!), they may get it in perhaps another thousand years.
Here’s another way of looking at all this.
The most valuable thing, compared to the rest of the world, that non-prosperous citizens of major western powers have is their citizenship. If you could, in fact, sell your citizenship on some sort of global open market, imagine how much outsiders would pay for it — at the very least enough to buy a new house and car I would think.
So, after becoming aware of proposals to increase — or decrease — the value of said citizenship, non-prosperous citizens of major western powers will vote in such a way as to maintain and increase the value of their citizenship. It makes good economic sense for these voters (everything else being equal) to vote **against** all recognized forms of globalism that make citizenship less valuable and **for** all forms of nationalism that make citizenship more valuable. Note, in particular, that open-ended immigration has to make citizenship less valuable by increasing the number of citizens without obvious limit. If globalists want to make changes, they would do well to point out exactly, chapter and verse, how their plans will make citizenship more valuable.
I have to wonder whether there isn’t some under-the-radar equating of Corbyn’s anti-Semitism with the PC handling of things like Rotherham. Tie this in to Merkel’s open borders policy, and people might be starting to ask how much control do they want to give up to the EU.
One thing that is not mentioned in any of the news reports is the prevailing discrimination in England. I have met several Russians who have told me that they have been on the receiving end of pejoratives. These remarks are directed more at Poles but who knows the difference the between the two. One woman I know was attacked because she was on the phone speaking in Russian and the guy who gave her the elbow whilst walking by thought she was speaking Polish.
That is one reason lot of Poles prefer Scotland. There is a certain affinity between the two regions and during the Highland Clearances lot of people went to Poland which is unusual given the lack of cultural overlap.
An example:
https://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/71/59/2715994_d7a2d751.jpg
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wrNo_r29yTybPpF0PMmqrOEkO2A=/0x0:3000×1783/1200×0/filters:focal(0x0:3000×1783)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6694823/57611165.jpg
I suspect that’s because in England the stereotypical “immigrant who’s taking our jobs” is the “Polish plumber”, so anybody vaguely Slavic is going to be assumed to be a Pole. Rather like our stereotypical IWTOJ is a Mexican, so we don’t tend to investigate whether the nice gentlemen in the Home Depot parking lot are Guatemalan, Salvadoran, etc.
How England settled on the Polish plumber as the stereotype I have no idea. Media groupthink, probably, stemming from some editorial using it as a stand-in for “generic European who doesn’t speak English very well”.
This isn’t that surprising to me.
Perhaps, as here in the States, the largest group that supports Socialism is the Upper Middle Class and their guilt-ridden, alienated spawn.
In point of fact the 10 wealthiest Congressional Districts, as measured by income, are ALL represented by Democrats. They can afford to do so.
Most of the rest of us, the deplorable bitter-clingers who really do love our Country and also love our Creator, not so much.
I would never make a statement like “most Jews voted a certain way” without linking to some documentation
The ‘most British Jews voted Remain’ thing is probably from the widely reported Survation telephone poll done for The Jewish Chronicle:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/brexit-poll-jews-voted-2-1-to-remain-in-eu/
The original data is here for the stats nerds:
http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Final-JC-Poll-260616SPRCCH-1c0d0h2.pdf
I’m certainly not defending MPs lack of a link though. That’s her responsibility.
The Green Party increased its vote numbers by over 60%, a bigger rise than any other party. They’re in the Remain camp, and so may have appealed to a great many Jewish voters this time around.
https://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2019/12/13/green-party-piles-on-more-votes-than-any-other-party-in-climate-election/
Most British Jews (like American Jews) are Liberal/Left and ‘Remain’ was the default Liberal/Left position so that wouldn’t be surprising though. ‘
Most British Jews are orthodox.
When she said most Jews voted REMAIN, she meant in the
Brexit referendum a few years ago, not in the parliamentary election last week.
djf:
Thanks. That makes more sense to me.
I’ll add a note to the post about that. I also found some documentation I’ll add that indicates that Jews did NOT vote Labour in the 2017 vote nor in this recent vote, nor did they vote for the Remain-supporting Liberal Democrats. They voted for the Conservatives then and now. Apparently their dislike of Labour and Corbyn overtook their previous support for Remain.
the “Polish plumber” view is a fact-based position that the UK has been over-run with Poles, Romanians, Spaniards and others who have taken jobs from working class Brits. I visit the UK a lot and I have been struck over the past decade or so at the number of foreigners from EU nations that are working there — every restaurant you go in has Polish or other wait staff, and not a British employee in sight. I saw it everywhere — Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, the Lake District. And in London, Brits are now a cultural/racial minority in their own capital. Will Brexit encourage or force some/all of them to go back to their own countries?
The very picture of reality (and responsibility):
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7793249/Defiant-Jeremy-Corbyn-says-hes-proud-Labours-disastrous-election-campaign.html
Well, at least he’s not blaming the Russians. (Of course, that would have been a bit awkward, since they’re best buds….).
(Having said that, Hillary should really have offered him a hand. Should have flown over there immediately with Stacey Abrams. Surely the both of them would have found a way to salvage something….)
D Cohen…”The most valuable thing, compared to the rest of the world, that non-prosperous citizens of major western powers have is their citizenship. If you could, in fact, sell your citizenship on some sort of global open market, imagine how much outsiders would pay for it — at the very least enough to buy a new house and car I would think.” Very insightful.
As an indicator, you can obtain a Permanent Residency status for Singapore by investing 2.5 million Singapore dollars (equivalent to about $1.8MM US) there.
Delilah: I wasn’t implying that the UK wasn’t overrun, I was speculating that the Polish Plumber stereotype (which is so widespread that I’ve heard it a hundred times here in the US) is the reason for anybody vaguely Slavic being called Polish in a pejorative sense.
It was 100% predictable, of course; open borders incentivize migrants to move to higher paying regions. The Japanese/Korean teriyaki place across the street from my work is staffed entirely by Mexicans (or maybe Central Americans, I can’t tell them apart, see what I did there?).
I am see evidence of a significant shift in sentiment by people who were not rabidly anti-Trump to start with…
My open letter to @JerryNadler @RepJerryNadler. https://t.co/k1VwGxfVsT
People can sense that the Dems and the Press duped them, and they are angry.
Will Brexit encourage or force some/all of them to go back to their own countries?
No. People who are already here have been pretty much guaranteed they can stay. In fact, many of them already have British residency. It’s already seems to be discouraging further immigration from the rest of Europe though.
It was 100% predictable, of course; open borders incentivize migrants to move to higher paying regions.
Its basic economics, isn’t it? Jobs like restaurant and hotel work are minimum wage here, made up with tips. But the minimum wage in the UK is much higher than it is in Poland, so its actually a really well paid job by their standards. So you have highly motivated & educated people from Eastern Europe competing with, effectively, the dregs of the UK labour market for these jobs. It’s not surprising who gets them. And you end up with people who could probably have been doctors and engineers in their home countries waiting tables in London.
Amazing! In my earlier post, I was trying to make just a[nother, um, typically questionable] joke.
However, unless the following is pure parody—has “The Babylon Bee” bought “The Federalist”?—it looks like I wasn’t quite joking….
https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/11/hillary-clinton-chris-steele-allege-boris-johnson-is-a-russian-stooge/
Alas, poor Hillary. She’s really giving it her best shot but she still doesn’t seem to “get it”….
Reminder to self: Never joke about Hillary. Never joke about Hillary. Never….
Remind you of anyone in North America?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7793275/DOUGLAS-MURRAY-Britains-divide-ugly-intolerant-Left-rest-us.html
Jews are civilization’s canaries. When bad things are about to happen in a society, they happen to Jews first.
I worked hard for the Conservatives in this election, but in London where I live. And I have been a Tory all my life. I respect Melanie Phillips a lot but I think the history of these seats and the analysis cited in this article is a bit wrong. Boris did an amazing job (with Dominic Cummings and Isaac Levido and James Cleverly and the whole Party organisation) but these seats have been trending Tory since Blair in 2005. We are not typically talking about inner city Manchester here with supposed deep poverty and unemployment (a debatable point even about Manchester or Leeds). We are talking about relatively prosperous, market towns and rural areas which are culturally patriotic and economically conservative but also fairly liberal in social outlook (like most of the UK). The communist Corbyn and Brexit just made it easier for people whose families have always been tribal Labour to realise that their security and economic interests are really fairly similar to other fairly prosperous people in the south.
Long ago in a poem called “The Secret People” G. K. Chesterton spoke prophetically of a working class revolt to come. It closes with these lines:
—-
They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger or honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.
We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia’s wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God’s scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.
http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/secret-people.html
Liberals will never thank the working class or appreciate them saving Britain with Brexit, no matter how great things turn out they will manipulate the press to create this illustration that the country is far worse off because of brexit. Look at President Trump, the country hasn’t been more prosperous in years, everything is great, no war, lots of jobs, economy going great, china is being tamed, every numerical index shows things are better now than 3 years ago, but not according to liberals, in their realty America has never been worse under trump, poverty everywhere, minorities being oppressed by white supremacists, pollution running rampant, everyone is homeless with no insurance, living off social security and children are being caged while Trump is starting war everywhere…
A little late to the discussion, but there is one thing I’ve noticed that I haven’t really seen anywhere. My background is rural, lower class very Democratic area, but I have worked for decades in Academia surrounded mostly by very privileged elites.
The people “back home” (and I go there as often as I can) have been hit hard by the effects of Globalism. And they put up with that as they struggled to maintain the culture they love — church, neighbors, family, farming, hunting, etc — and especially their love of their country *even when* they are not getting much in return. they mostly want left alone even as they struggle as individuals and families.
Now they see that the Left is bound and determined to destroy all they love just because they think they can. When I listen to them I tend to hear “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more!!” The Left doesn’t care to listen, so it will be a surprise I suppose when the full effects come into play. (As a P.S. I get the same vibe from Black students from Metro Detroit.)
Thanks for that observation. It would appear to correspond to the generally surprising—as reflected by most of the polls leading up to the 2016 election—shift away from Clinton (and eight years of Obama) and towards Trump.
But I’m curious about the time line. Are you describing what was already happening before that election? Or is it a more recent shift?
As for being “mad as hell”, it’s perfectly understandable, given that the Democrats believed they had the traditionally workers’ vote sewn up in spite of years of neglect (and even abuse); but I wonder how many of “the salt of the earth”, after three years of Democratic craziness, childishness, dishonesty and sheer illegality are worried (terrified?) that a Democrat candidate might actually be elected to lead the country….
(Personally, I find such a prospect terrifying. I also think that it’s a possibility, given the shenanigans of the MSM and the potential for voter fraud on a massive scale. I hope not, but there you are….)
Anyway, thanks.