The Center Blows Itself Up: Care and Spite in the ‘Brexit Election’
JVL Introduction
In a long and fascinating essay David Graeber locates the underlying causes of Labour’s electoral defeat in the shifting structure of class relations in Britain.
He goes beyond the simplistic analysis of this as a shift from manufacturing to service work, arguing that the “real story” is the phenomenal growth of professional-managerial administrator types, , on the one hand, and, of “care workers” on the other.
Labour has been the party representing both their interests (the former having provided the core support for Blairism).
But their interests have increasingly diverged and the coalition frayed, setting the scene for the battles of recent years, all mediated through the Brexit lens.
One thing is clear: the centre in British political life has imploded: “The country is now being governed by a hard-right government placed in power by its oldest citizens, in the face of the active hatred of its increasingly socialist-inclined youth.”
This article was originally published by the New York Review of Books on Mon 13 Jan 2020. Read the original here.
The Center Blows Itself Up: Care and Spite in the ‘Brexit Election’
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It’s a fine piece but a missing piece of this jigsaw is that Labour still got more than 10 million votes and many are still from working class backgrounds in the metropolitan areas. This may reflect the preponderance of the ‘carers’ in these areas but it’s too simplistic to say:
“…formerly leftist parties from the US to Japan made a strategic decision to effectively abandon what remained of their older, working-class base and rebrand themselves primarily as parties representing the interests and sensibilities of the professional-managerial classes.”
The truth is that there are divides among working people according to location and demographics, and it’s worth more analysis on how this was exploited in the ‘heartlands’ of the north etc and not the other Labour heartlands of Liverpool and Hackney, where many of the country’s poorest people live.
Interesting and correct on many aspects of the debacle, but facile on the Brexit stuff, where the mistakes were made way back, not in trying to shape a rational opposition policy.
Postal vote fraud, and IDOX.
https://bylinetimes.com/2020/01/07/why-did-cabinet-office-rush-through-procurement-of-controversial-electoral-services-company-idox-just-before-the-general-election/
The Conspiracy of Our Time.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gBiRVoAXHPh5lXsAHYrb9xn0AanfBApV1oJZYQEBV4M/edit
Excellent article!
This will feed well into 3 minute recommendations for leadership candidates in CLPs across the country.
The best discussion of the reasons for Labour’s defeat that I’ve seen so far, though I’m not entirely convinced by Graeber’s binary division between ‘administrators ‘ and ‘carers’.
As with previous pieces on the JVL site, this needs to be seen and discussed by the widest possible audience. Is there any way that it could be reproduced as a pamphlet, for wide circulation within the Labour Movement?
I’m aware of the logistical problems involved in doing that, so in the meantime, I urge that we all copy and paste for distribution within our various organisations. I’ll be sending it to a range of friends and colleagues, and I’ll try to get it circulated to all members of my CLP.