This is a thread offering a partial defence of the Goodwin-Emberry consensus that "Labour have abandoned the working class" and an account of the growth of 'right-wing populism' generally.

In post-war Western Europe and the Anglosphere there was a common alignment in politics. Parties were sorted along economic issues and their support bases voted with their class interests and identities.

Even if parties had different positions on social issues, it was economic issues that were salient to voters, so the working class voted left and the middle class voted right.

But in the 1980s a new section of the middle class started migrating left. They worked in media and culture or in state and para-state institutions.

They were younger and more educated than the left’s traditional base. And in the UK they were concentrated in London and smaller university cities throughout England.

They shared all of the economic views of the traditional working class. But they had radically different social views - particularly on immigration and race.

Despite its contradictions this was a stable and even successful coalition so long as economic issues dominated electoral politics.

But the salience of economic issues in elections declined across the West, first in America and then in Europe. This put centre-left parties in the unfortunate position of having to cater to two opposing constituencies.

They could either remain socially liberal and retain their young and middle-class support. Or they could ditch or de-emphasise their social positions and keep their traditional base. But they couldn’t do both.

Here’s where the “betrayal” happens. The entire superstructure; the parliamentarians, the party staffers, the think tanks, the client journalists were all part of this new class. And they held their social values with a religious fervour they didn’t their economic platform.

So centre-left parties throughout the West have chosen the first strategy every single time. Even if it means electoral annihilation (like the Dutch Labour Party).

They have been able to avoid this fate if they can find new ethnic populations whose positions on cultural and racial issues align with those of their newer, younger, white middle-class base in civil society and the public sector.

This has been exploited most obviously in America where the Democrats have replaced the working-class section of their base with Hispanic/Asian immigrants and Blacks (an indigenous minority).

But the centre-left have also attempted this in Europe with the importation of Africans and Asians. So far, because of the demographics of Europe, this strategy only works in capital cities. But it will increase in potency as demography changes over the next two decades.

The strategy also requires the left-wing superstructure to hype-up racial resentment narratives. This completes a double betrayal of the left’s old base. First they’re replaced as a client constituency. Then they're replaced demographically from inner-city areas.

All of this leaves the white working class ‘politically homeless’, making ‘right-wing populism’ a viable strategy: There’s space for an anti-immigration coalition of the white-working class, Boomers generally, and a vanguard of more sophisticated Millennials/Zoomers.

This movement varies across countries depending on their political institutions. In the PR systems of continental Europe it manifests in a highly successful alt-lite party along with a less successful openly ethno-nationalist one.

In the US presidential system it manifested in a hostile takeover of a major party by an outside challenger to the presidential nomination.

With our parliamentary and FPTP systems it manifested in an insurgent party that never won any seats but which galvanised the Eurosceptic wing of the ruling party to force their leader into a referendum on EU membership.

Despite these differences there were factors common to the rise of each movement; a rising ethnic minority population, the weakening of unions, the decentralisation of media. And a migrant crisis which caused the European movements to all happen at once.

PS: So, despite mocking the Goodwin-Emberry consensus, I actually agree with a lot of it. I only ridicule it because repeating the same talking points for five years is incredibly tedious, . . .

they would be die-hard Labour supporters in a politics where cultural issues aren’t salient and they’ve trafficked left-wing ideas into the right, like the centering of the white working class as the sole/primary client of the state. /Fin

This thread is a pretty good example of the trafficking of the left-wing ideas I'm talking about. https://twitter.com/MrRBourne/status/1350874527186759691?s=20