Let us consider what brought a previously progressive internationalist party like Labour to end up supporting such a mean-spirited, intellectually vacuous Little Englander point-of-view as Brexit. The party opposed Brexit at the referendum, and since then we have seen our worst fears about Brexit recognised. So what, in all that, caused Labour’s volte face? What nugget of intellectual gold did Keir Starmer et al find in Brexit during the past eight years, and why is it nobody else has spotted it? (Not even fervent Brexit supporters, who all seem to have left the building.)
Where is the real Labour party?
Labour remains, at its roots, the same progressive and internationalist party. It’s just that the members daren’t say so. A clue to Labour’s position may possibly be found in the close alliance Keir Starmer has had with Rachel Reeves and Lisa Nandy, both of whom represent what would be thought of as traditional working class areas. Both have been outspoken in embracing Brexit, not as a necessity thrust on us but as a welcome new direction. Leeds West and Wigan voted strongly in favour of Brexit, and though the analysis is dubious, it is assumed the northern working classes – ‘our people’ as no doubt Labour thinks of them – were responsible.
So Starmer has discovered nothing in Brexit that others have missed. He has, however, looked into the black pit of Brexit horrors and seen what was assumed at the time to be Labour losing its core vote, never to come home while it still opposes Brexit. The Labour Party was so scarred by Brexit – as were we all – that their response was to agree never to visit the subject again. So terror of the voters alone is what has inspired their policy – which is not a great look for an incoming government.
Polls point to change
The polls have shifted markedly over the past two or three years in ways the terrified mandarins of Labour never envisaged. But it’s not the change in the polls which leave the party in such an uncomfortable position. The clear analytical evidence is that those the party considers ‘our people’ no longer share the same values. There has always historically been an unspoken potential rift between those who backed the party for intellectual reasons and those in the working class who saw it as their own means of self betterment, though both are reasonable positions.
Voters’ values
We can see clearly what has happened to these voters if we look more closely at the kind of values analysis which the Leave campaign used so successfully at the referendum. The determining factor in what people think is their intrinsic values, as research over the past 25 years has shown. Values are our inner beliefs, often sub-conscious, which underpin our attitudes, opinions, then political persuasions. The point is that, unless what you propose fits into a person’s values, it won’t be acceptable to political persuasion. Steve Bannon declared that “Values are way upstream of politics”, and on this occasion he was right.
Researchers divide people into ‘values modes’, based on a theory many will know already: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It explains that we all need to breathe, to eat, drink and sleep before we can turn our attention to belonging, then to esteem and achievement and beyond, to altruism, exploration and then self-actualisation.
Settlers
We can see three different overarching psychographic groups. For Labour’s Brexit supporters, traditional working class values identify them as ‘settlers’, placing security and keeping the wolf from the door as their understandable priorities. This group tends to share a group morality, and values the strength of belonging to a community. They dislike change and they are distrustful of who or what they don’t know. Hardly the stuff of an internationalist political party, but spot on if you’re looking for Brexit voters.
Prospectors
But Labour themselves are glacially slow to accept change. Their MPs all want to be heroes of the working class, not of young middle class graduates, even though they are much more likely to vote Labour these days. And of course, much more likely to want Britain back in the EU. They often belong among the second values group, ‘prospectors’. Many of them have grown through a working class upbringing and are now ambitious, valuing esteem, networking and new opportunities.
Pioneers
The third values group are ‘pioneers’, who like to see the big picture and enjoy asking questions and finding the answers. They are concerned about world poverty, the environment, fairness, justice. Perhaps the most rational group, so open to rational argument and so perhaps likely to feel most aggrieved at Brexit.
Will the real Labour voters please stand up?
Three groups: one is inward looking, suspicious not only of Labour’s stance on the EU, but also of so many of what used to be and perhaps still may be its principled objectives. The second group is outward-looking and ambitious, the third wants a fairer, cleaner and more civilised world.
So, three groups with differing values. And to which of these three is Labour looking for its votes…?
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