Brexit and the working class on Teesside: Moving beyond reductionism

In order to understand the structural, ideological and social processes that contributed to the political alienation associated with the Brexit vote, three key themes will be explored: first, the Brexit vote will be contextualised alongside wider debates about New Labour, nationalism, socioeconomic inequalities and the fate of the working class during the neoliberal era; second, interpretations of the Brexit vote that use a broad ‘moral panic’ thesis to frame working-class views on immigration and identity need to be scrutinised carefully; and, finally, the analytical implications of a methodological tendency towards ‘abstracted empiricism’ in some of the literature that examines working-class attitudes to Brexit must be challenged as overly reductionist for interpreting such a complex social phenomena.

Brexit is embedded within the logic of neoliberalism: deregulation of the economy; the privatisation of public services and utilities; low wages and growing socioeconomic inequalities; and the exhaustion of the neoliberal growth model (see, for example, Bailey 2018; Jessop 2018a; 2018b; Nolke 2017). These policies were pursued by the mainstream political parties, causing what Jessop (2018a) calls a ‘nationalist and populist blowback’ (p. 1730). Ford and Goodwin (2017) conclude that this indicates a return of the ‘left behind’ (p. 20) to politics. However, the ‘left behind’ narrative can lead to a devaluation of the working class, which, as McKenzie (2017a) argues, feeds into ‘stereotypes and prejudices that the poor white working class are old-fashioned, un-modern, have no mobility and long for the past’ (p. 208). Such discourses, therefore, should be treated with caution as they can cover up the systematic inequalities that have led to a huge global disparity in wealth and power.

Despite reservations about the ‘left-behind’ notion, there is little doubt that neoliberalism has deposited much of the West’s former industrial working class, predominantly white but progressively more multi-ethnic after the Second World War, into more precarious forms of employment. The neoliberal political consensus in the United Kingdom centred on the claim that there is no alternative to deregulation, privatisation and the retrenchment of the welfare state (Davidson & Saull 2017). Developments within the British Labour Party have reinforced this consensus. Historically, the party sought to contain rather than replace capitalism through social democratic reform. Throughout the post-war period, it advanced working-class interests by fighting alongside trade unions for fair pay, workers’ rights and full employment (Winlow et al. 2017). However, as Seymour (2010) has documented, Tony Blair’s election in the 1990s marked a turning point as the party’s traditional concerns with public ownership and redistribution of wealth were largely abandoned. New Labour failed to develop a coherent programme to challenge the influence of global finance capital in shaping post-industrial economies and societies (Byrne & Ruane 2017). In this respect, New Labour became married to what Fisher (2009) termed ‘capitalist realism’ (p. 2): The claim that a world beyond capitalism cannot be imagined. Without a significant redistributive challenge to this system, the Labour Party vacated its historic mission of representing the working class and their fundamental economic interests (Winlow et al. 2015), engendering a crisis of political representation (see Jessop 2018b). Byrne and Ruane (2017) summarise this period as one in which

Accordingly, millions of working-class voters abandoned the party under New Labour’s reign (Seymour 2010). This did not in itself create right-wing nationalism but a political vacuum in which it could gather increased working-class support in some of the deindustrialised zones (Winlow et al. 2017).

In their examinations of the specifics of this process, Mitchell and Fazi (2017) and Streeck (2016) focus on welfare retrenchment, austerity, falling living standards, increasing corruption and the disintegration of the traditional political domain. In particular, the inability of politics to intervene in markets and correct their outcomes has led many citizens to conclude that the British political system is no longer able to make a substantive difference to people’s lives (see Mitchell & Fazi 2017; Streeck 2016). The 2008 global financial crisis was a defining moment in this process, exposing both the internal contradictions of capitalism and the role and interests of the many politicians who worked hard to protect the system and offer ‘more of the same’ (Whitehead & Crawshaw 2014: 20). Given this glaring inability, it should not be surprising that some working-class people stopped suspending their disbelief and sought political representation elsewhere.

It is necessary to acknowledge that Scotland (with similarities to the North East of England in terms of deindustrialisation and the influence of neoliberalism over economic and social policy) voted to Remain in the EU. While it is not a focus of this study, it is interesting to note that voters there have been able to utilise other mechanisms to express their discontent. Engstrom (2018) for example, highlights the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) ousting of the Labour Party in the 2015 general election and the independence movement’s desire for sovereignty, democracy and empowerment. Other studies have documented how Brexit was forged in England due to a distinct sense of national identity and associated lack of devolved institutions (Henderson et al. 2016, 2017), which give Scottish citizens more of a voice in domestic affairs. For Scully (2018), this makes Scotland ‘a wholly different electoral space to England’ (p. 57).

However, returning to England and Teesside and despite this constitutive context, there has been a tendency in both academic and public debate to explain the vote as a failure of rationality and a subsequent resort to prejudiced ethical and emotional sentiments; in other words, a ‘moral panic’. Hayton (2016), for example, claims that what we call nationalism today is actually a Euroscepticism borne of a general dissatisfaction with the EU and its apparent inability to defend national cultures. Similarly, Bergmann (2018) argues UKIP’s ‘Breaking Point’ (p. 130) poster permeated fear and panic among the citizenry. Importantly, Fitzgerald and Smoczyński (2015) offer more nuance, claiming hostilities ought to be analysed alongside labour market insecurity, competition and the 2008 financial crisis. Relatedly, they assert that society has profoundly changed since the moral panic’s original conceptualisation.

Horsley (2017) argues that the ‘moral panic’ framework hails from the heyday of the post-war era and its far more politicised and collectivised working class, which frequently took part in political action against the injustices and inequalities of capitalism. However, neoliberalism has significantly weakened the power of trade unions and the working class’s ability to organise, while Badiou (2008) argues that parliamentary elections under neoliberalism have only offered the ‘maintenance of the established order’ (p. 34). In this climate, the social world has been enveloped by ‘capitalist realism’ that, in turn, has induced a culture of cynicism and disaffection (Fisher 2009). Voter turnouts in this period have markedly declined. The year 2001 witnessed a record low in UK general elections as only 59% turned out to vote (Seymour 2010). Similarly, 13 million registered voters declined to vote in the EU referendum (Horsley 2017). Winlow et al. (2017) argue that this withdrawal from the political field suggests that large segments of the working class are disengaged, indifferent and passive rather than politically active and susceptible to ‘moral panics’ instigated by the media.

Emphasising the economic context does not preclude important cultural issues. Immigration was a central issue in both the referendum campaign and the leave vote. Eatwell and Goodwin (2018) draw attention to leave voters’ concern with immigration and the scale of ethnic change, highlighting that many working-class people feel that they no longer possess a sense of belonging. Zupančič (2017) extends this argument. She claims that hostility towards EU immigration is symptomatic of a far deeper malaise associated with a yearning for the conditions of the post-war period: social and economic security, industrial employment, togetherness and prosperity. Put another way, nationalists’ real desire is for root and branch social and economic change and a return to an imagined and partially idealised past (Winlow et al. 2015).

However, many commentators ignore these deeper economic, political and cultural issues. Zhang’s (2017) research has attracted attention in the mainstream media (see Stone 2017). She interprets the vote to leave the EU as the product of a dearth of intellect and higher education degrees among the working class. Zhang goes on to claim that a small increase in voter turnout among adults who had accessed higher education would have reversed the result. However, this approach runs the risk of discounting over 17 million votes ‘as a case of lower-class primitivism’ (Žižek 2017: 227). Zhang’s analysis – published in a journal with close ties to the neoliberal economic development establishment – contributes to the class prejudice that has alienated so many working-class voters. Furthermore, her epistemological framework of abstracted demographic positivism, which equates simplified statistical correlations with complex causes, influences, experiences and personal decisions, searches for a general law – a definitive monocausal explanation. Such analyses misunderstand what social science actually is (Streeck 2016). According to Young (2011), this type of statistical model ‘confuses the ease of statistical manipulation with the rigors of science’ (p. 224). The challenge, then, is to move beyond narrow reductionism and abstracted empiricism to construct useful and valid empirical knowledge, however localised or scoped (Young 2011).

Poutvaara and Steinhardt’s (2018) research is a further example of an abstracted approach. Also using statistical data, they bypass the social and economic context and propose a causal link between ‘bitterness’ – defined as not achieving what one deserves – and concerns over immigration. Proposing a dichotomy, they simplify a complex social phenomenon and posit a monocausal analysis. Crucially, they do not ask why people are ‘bitter’; it is as if individuals acquire their sentiments and apply them to politics in a social and economic vacuum. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that the working-class share of the Brexit vote is partially driven by the experiential hardships of the working class’s material realities (McKenzie 2017a; Winlow et al. 2017). As Žižek (2018) has claimed, inequalities, injustice and exploitation frame the wider social landscape in which attitudes are shaped. By neglecting these contextual factors, it could be argued that Poutvaara and Steinhardt are reducing the complex socioeconomic world to sentiment rather than exploring how it is formed and shaped. This tendency to use statistical data to aggregate rather than unpack the nuanced interplay of economic, social, historical and cultural factors represents a classic case of what Young (2011), following Mills (1959), terms ‘abstracted empiricism’. In such analyses ‘structure fades out of sight, history is banished from thought’ (Young 2011: 6), as if the Brexit vote was a direct product of the values of individuals without due consideration of the experience of life in economically abandoned locales. In this example, a London-centric scholar appears to have had little or no direct contact with the researched or their socioeconomic reality. Therefore, to quote Winlow et al. (2015) ‘abstracted empiricism rips data from their context and it refuses to engage in the kinds of theory construction that can drive forward our knowledge of the world’ (p. 138).

Concerns with immigration have been central to the Brexit debate and this was reflected among eight of the participants. A small minority were hostile and racist. They expressed anger at net migration figures and wanted to stop immigrants from entering the country. Although this was difficult to listen to, the majority of concerns expressed by these eight participants were linked to their own struggles. Immigrants were viewed as an economic competitor that intensified the difficulty in obtaining remunerative work, housing and put additional pressure on underfunded public services. They also believed that immigrants were favoured by national politicians. As a result, they felt forgotten about. This was encapsulated by John. He served in the army for over two decades and told us:

This view existed among the eight individuals who were hostile to immigration, but it was not their central concern. It is important to note that other research in the North East has documented diverse opinions on immigration (Dawson 2018; Fitzgerald & Smoczyński 2015). Indeed, the majority of the participants in this study expressed much deeper concerns; rooted in history and the political economy.

Overall, the striking and cross-cutting characteristic of the interviews about Brexit was that they concentrated predominantly on issues of social and political abandonment. Barry (71 and retired) had worked for 37 years in the local steelworks until it closed. He spoke of the comforts and entitlements of industrialised society, arguing that work was central to working-class life because it anchored people in a community and with a sense of togetherness, common purpose and fate. However, in the wake of the area’s deindustrialisation Barry felt ‘like a third-class citizen’. He spoke of a sense of absence on Teesside, for which he blamed politicians:

A similar narrative was offered by Maxine (aged 51 and unemployed):

Maxine emphasised the significance of industry because it provided working-class life with a sense of purpose, pride and respectability that has now been lost. This sense of loss was pervasive throughout the sample. For example, Matty argued that,

The discontent was expressed as a culmination of years of political neglect. In the words of Sarah (aged 42 and unemployed) ‘with this area it doesn’t matter who’s in power, nothing changes’. Throughout the whole interview process politicians of all colours were regarded as complicit in the area’s demise and ‘cut from the same cloth’. They were perceived to have elevated self-serving careerism over ‘caring for the people’. Mark, a postman for over 20 years:

Rightly or wrongly, politicians were regarded as little more than disingenuous, corrupt liars. Furthermore, the political class and the interests of big business were perceived to be intermeshed, in the sense that they ‘looked after each other’ before they paid any attention to the rest of the population. The basic notion that politicians were interested solely in the preservation of their own power and wealth was ubiquitous throughout the interviews. Simon, for instance, is 55 years old and works as a roofer. He has not voted Labour since Tony Blair’s premiership, instead opting for UKIP and The Conservatives. This, however, was not a positive, enthusiastic choice but a least-worst option, because ‘all politicians just lie and lie anyway’. Indeed, Barry has ‘always been a big union man’ and his views of politicians were symptomatic of the overall sample:

A majority of the participants spoke of a profound disconnect between the everyday realities of the working class and the reality of Members of Parliament, who were perceived to be distant, unaccountable and shielded from the working class’s socioeconomic realities. This is highlighted by Trevor:

Claire, aged 51 and working at a local bar in the area, has never voted but spoke of how ‘I was so close to voting to leave the EU but I just thought fuck it in the end’. This could be interpreted as apathy but, as the following quote illustrates, it was predicated not on a lack of interest in the Brexit debate but a cynical view of politicians:

The above passage illustrates a pervasive sense of systemic political abandonment. Indeed, across the sample there was a strong collective perception of estrangement from the politics of the nation combined with a sense of fatalism about the future. For example, Tommy (aged 73 and retired from service in the army) was aware of the socioeconomic difficulties his granddaughter will endure. His ‘heart bleeds for her’, he said. Similarly, Sarah spoke of how ‘as a parent I worry about my children, I just think it’s really sad how things are’. Such anxieties and insecurities can lead to conflicting motives, as Sarah explained,

Most participants had traditionally voted for the Labour Party and were highly antagonistic towards the Conservative Party. However, they also felt as though they had been forgotten about by Labour despite having been excited by the prospects offered by Blair’s election in 1997. Such sentiments were short-lived because his New Labour government did little to challenge market fundamentalism and revive job prospects, and instead participated in regime-change wars in the Middle East. For example, Tommy argued that,

Big Ron corroborates this:

Most participants thought that Blair’s leadership had destroyed the relationship between them and ‘their party’. In particular, his deception around the Iraq war seemed to have symbolised an era in which politicians ‘can get away with anything’. Trevor voiced his dissatisfaction with the Labour Party:

A minority of the participants expressed measured excitement about the possibility that Jeremy Corbyn might represent a return to the party’s leftist roots. Steven, aged 54, said,

A sizable section, however, voiced concerns. Richard, for instance, suggested that ‘even if Labour got in nothing would change’. Meanwhile, John voted Labour in the 2017 general election but claimed,

Jack (retired) explained that it’s difficult to forget Blair’s legacy:

The logic of capitalist realism – there is no alternative – had been internalised by the participants. They had lost faith in general elections and the ability of mainstream parties to yield change. They fully expected things to get worse, all they could do was adapt to the inequalities of neoliberalism. So, the referendum on EU membership opened up a different opportunity. It was perceived as a chance to change the political economy. Matty encapsulates this:

Sarah offered a similar narrative:

This study’s most important findings about the working-class leave vote in Teesside were that a longstanding disaffection with national politicians and a sense of socioeconomic decline in the area seemed to be the principal motivations. The data demonstrate that, for the working-class people taking part in this study, politicians were seen to exist solely to preserve their own interests and the status quo while simultaneously suppressing the interests of ‘ordinary’ men and women. The interviewees believed that politicians are weak and engage in corruption to serve the interests of financial elites, and they believed that they are committed to what Badiou (2008) calls the ‘only one world’ (p. 53) view of neoliberal capitalism. The controversial invasion of Iraq in 2003 continued to fuel the perception that politicians ‘got away with everything’. Tony Blair was perceived to be above the law, an example of what Hall (2012) terms ‘special liberty’. The political elite regard themselves as a special group entitled to do whatever is necessary to ensure the continuation of the neoliberal economic system, even when it harms other sections of society, such as the post-industrial working class (Hall 2012).

A related theme emerging from the interviews was the belief that this entitled and negligent political elite of all colours had forgotten about the working class and would not intervene to protect their interests. This, in turn, can be linked to the notable absence of hope for a positive future among the participants, articulated in numerous concerns about the poor economic prospects of their children and grandchildren. It was striking that discussions about Brexit triggered more than anything else a deep and pervasive sense of loss and resignation linked to the inability or unwillingness of politicians to respond to the problems associated with living in an area characterised by long-term industrial decline. Putative rational arguments about Brexit causing further economic damage are likely to fall on deaf ears in regions such as Teesside, because people who feel they have little or nothing to lose are more likely to take a risk on any type of change on offer. In these circumstances, it is also possible to see the appeal of a relatively simple narrative about ‘taking back control’, although this is not something that was raised directly in our interviews.

It is clear, therefore, that the dissatisfaction expressed by the participants in this study had its roots in longstanding political and economic processes. The post-war settlement period provided the working class with a respectable standard of living. Readily available remunerative work was plentiful, providing fixed trajectories and a ‘job for life’. Powerful trade unions also ensured that in most occupations the working class received an adequate wage (Streeck 2016). At the same time, a functioning welfare state offered a social and economic safety net (Piketty 2014). As a result, it was the only period in capitalist development in which economic inequality narrowed (Piketty 2014). Indeed, it was widely regarded by the citizens that they were living in good times, and the future imagined was one of further prosperity and equality (Mitchell & Fazi 2017; Reay 2017).

However, neoliberalism hollowed out the welfare state, privatised parts of the public sphere and deindustrialised much of Teesside. The local steelwork’s recent closure signalled an end to over a century of industrial prowess (Warren 2018). Consequently, the post-war’s ‘cosy relationship’ (Radice 2014: 286) between the working class and capital has been eviscerated. Claire, for instance, argued that her son is unable to obtain the signifiers of either a meaningful life or a comfortable standard of living (see also Byrne & Ruane 2017; Lloyd 2018a, 2018b; Shildrick et al. 2012; Streeck 2017). Over time, what was once solid, fixed and marked by continuity has become unfixed and unstable. Accordingly, the system has lowered expectations and engendered a pervasive cynicism in regions such as Teesside. The Social Mobility Commission (2016) concluded that ‘the 20th century expectation that each generation would be better off than the preceding one is no longer being met’ (p. iii). According to Fisher (2014), the future has been cancelled; ‘life continues, but time has somehow stopped’ (p. 6), and we can no longer imagine a world beyond the present condition. In this climate, the EU referendum opened up a unique opportunity, a chance to vote for something different and hope for a significant change in how society and the economy are organised.

Perhaps most surprising was the strength of views towards the Labour Party given its historic role in defending the interests of ‘ordinary’ people. Žižek, (2017) attributed this to the political left’s desertion of its historic origins in class struggle and the ‘antagonistic logic of Us against Them’ (p. 238). Despite high levels of investment in public services, New Labour sought to systematically cleanse the party of its historic roots. Political commitments to full employment, state ownership of public utilities, redistribution of wealth and political solidarity were removed from the party’s constitution (Winlow et al. 2017), while the party’s relationship with the trade unions was significantly weakened (Levitas 2005). Blair’s premiership naturalised neoliberalism largely by entrenching the economic logic of Thatcherism (deregulation, privatisation and free-market fundamentalism) in the political left and, in so doing, making significant challenges to neoliberal orthodoxy seem like things of the past. Consequently, working-class battles against the interests of capital dissipated. Instead, the working class are now expected to take advantage of the opportunities on offer in a meritocratic social world (Winlow et al. 2015) in which social policy covers up rather than challenges the causes of inequality (Levitas 2005). The benefits of neoliberal economic policy, few of which reach the working class, were accepted without reservation. In such a climate, Thatcher claimed that Blair was her greatest achievement (Winlow et al. 2015). The findings from our albeit small-scale study corroborate the view that New Labour became disconnected from its historical position around class struggle (Levitas 2005), weakening capitalism’s historic opponent in a way that effectively enabled capital to further exploit the working class (Seymour 2017). This is also an example of what Byrne and Ruane (2017) describe as the failure of ‘Left parties’ to address the ‘absolutely recursive’ causal processes of deindustrialisation, which weakened the organised working class and, thereby, weakened their social and political base. In short, the burgeoning socioeconomic problems experienced by the working class during the neoliberal era were left to continue unchallenged by New Labour and congealed into the political cynicism and discontent expressed by the participants in this study as the crucial contributory factors to their Brexit vote.

The 2008 financial crisis provides a further example of the Labour Party’s betrayal of the working class (Winlow & Hall 2017). The party failed to offer a renewed socioeconomic project; broadly agreed with the political Right about the provision of publicly funded loans to banks alongside public sector austerity as solutions to the crash; including wage restraints and punitive policies that have served to discipline the labour force (see Umney et al. 2017). Historically, austerity has failed to deliver on its promise of economic growth and recovery (see Blyth 2013). Yet the party echoed much of the Conservative-led Coalition Government’s deficit panic, creating a broad neoliberal consensus in response to the financial crisis. As a result, there was a striking absence of political symbolism for the working class to organise around when neoliberalism was on the brink (Treadwell et al. 2013). In failing to hold capital and its elites to account for the destructive effects of neoliberalism, Jessop (2018b) argues that a mainstream political party consensus was formed and politics lost its substance. Thus, many working-class people in regions such as Teesside have lost hope and stopped believing that fundamental change is possible. Indeed, a core claim made here is that the apparent banality of, and similarities between the mainstream political parties were key reasons why the participants in this study voted to leave the EU. In this way, Brexit provided a unique opportunity for the working class to obtain at least a moment of political recognition, which a significant majority of our sample took without hesitation. Accordingly, the participants voted for something different and that represented genuine change. We might view this through the lens of a wider dissatisfaction with politics, perhaps even as an example of ‘anti-politics’ (Winlow et al. 2015).

Finally, Jeremy Corbyn has begun to remedy this drift. His election as Labour Party leader in 2015 (alongside reduced membership charges) led to a major surge in party membership (Seymour 2017; Whiteley et al. 2019). The party’s 2017 general election manifesto commitments to nationalisation and anti-austerity attracted widespread support (Pitts & Dinerstein 2017) challenging neoliberal orthodoxy (Worth 2019). Nevertheless, Crisp et al. (2019) suggest the party’s efforts to ameliorate the effects of neoliberalism will take time and require a sustained expansion of its industrial and regional economic strategy, to accelerate this process.