A universal theory of the contemporary state of Western democracies
Politics used to be about rich versus poor, with the middle class the key swing group that the parties of the rich and the parties of the poor had to fight over. Having the middle class as their prime target heavily influenced all aspects of politics, from policy concerns through to the style of electioneering.
Now, however, the political battleground is no longer the middle class but the traditional working class – traditional both in the sense of where industry used to be, and traditional in the sense of the culture of the past. Hence the Conservative versus Labour battles amongst less affluent Leave voters or Trump’s success at eating into traditional Democrat Presidential voters in the Mid West.
Hence too the massive change in the way politics is carried out and what it is about. The basic target that politicians are competing for has changed.
Traditionally the working class, however you define it has always been by far the largest demographic. If the working class voted as one for parties of the poor then we would have had a Labour government since the 1920’s.
Britain will not be a happy place in a Brexit Britain. The rest of the world, especially EU, will consider Brexit Britain to be foolish & untrustworthy. Britain will be a poor & disadvantaged state. The Eurolovers, of which there are many, will hate the Brexiteers. Britain will be dependent on the EU regulations and other large countries &multi national companies.
Al in all Britain will have to re-apply to EU.
All parties that seek power need to have a wide an appeal as possible. I would suggest that in the past campaigning was largely based on methods that largely made use of the additional knowledge and skills of the middle classes (newspapers, leaflets, etc). Now with the increasing sophistication of “social media” parties have a wider scope for their messages. This is further compounded by the uncritical nature in which the contents of “social media” are regarded by those who do not have the breath of knowledge to identify flaws in the arguments being made.
Universal?
Mark -where does this theory leave your Core Vote proposals?
You argue that we should concentrate on policies and campaigning that will appeal to/build an ‘urban, educated, professional, middle class’ core vote.
Mmm…not sure. The rich are a small group, not powerful in purely electoral terms, though obviously massively so in influence and presence, including control over the paradigms of social media. The electoral battle has always been between the once-growing middle class and the working class, now softened by shifting boundaries between the aspirational, skilled working class and the less employed, less skilled, excluded rest on one hand, and between the professional, urban middle class and the small-town old-school entitled on their other hand. It might be good that traditional barriers are falling, but the Lib Dems have yet to seize and capitalize on that. But maybe we’re too middle class ourselves?
Fairly true. In the US, the key chasm in party politics is no longer economic, but cultural: thus, poor, socially conservative states like Missouri, West Virginia and Tennessee have shifted strongly to the Republicans along with the more traditional and poorer parts of the South, while relatively prosperous and socially liberal states like Virginia, Nevada, Colorado and the Upper New England states have gone the other way. Michigan went from Republican-leaning when the car industry was prospering, to Democrat-leaning to Republican-leaning. But not only the white working class is an electoral target – so are Latinos, who were not as solidly anti-Trump as one might expect; and the socially liberal/ socially conservative divide does not equate neatly to class divides. In the UK, some marginal constituencies have relatively few working-class people but still battleground voters such as Conservative-inclined Remain voters or those typical swing voters who are impressed by a strong leader and a united party (and currently don’t know where to go). Constituencies that are heavily working-class still look safe for Labour.