The past few weeks were all about Football. After a fine performance and progress to the final, the only thing that stopped the English men’s national team from winning the first major trophy since 1966, was a penalty shoot-out lost 3-2 against Italy. However, in a sign of how toxic the atmosphere in Britain has become since the 2016 Brexit referendum, instead of celebrations for second place in a major tournament, what followed was vile racial slurs on social media against the three black players who missed their penalties and a fallout in the traditional media that reached the hights of British politics including the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary.
The Euro 2020 final seems to have been the match that set ablaze the powder keg we have been sitting on at least since the hateful Brexit referendum campaign. While hateful campaigns and politicians capitalising on hatred and divisive rhetoric is of course nothing new. Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech springs to mind. More generally hatred and divisiveness was the fuel that propelled UKIP onto the British political scene in the 1990s. However, the Brexit referendum campaign saw this style of divisive politics – previously mostly contained to the fringe of the political spectrum – gain a foothold in mainstream Toryism. Indeed, Brexit made it possible for an extreme right-wing faction of the Conservative party – around the so-called European Research Group (ERG) – to hijack the whole organisation and take control of the government when Boris Johnson was elected as party leader in July 2019.
Since then, Boris Johnson has used his governmental power to perfection the use of his ‘us versus them’ political strategy and to further stoke hatred against ‘the others’ by unleashing what has come to be called a ‘culture war,’ where English nationalist and British imperialist sentiments are stoked and directed against foreign, ‘woke,’ ‘liberal,’ ‘Marxist,’ and other progressive members of British society. This rhetoric was most often directed against the weakest in society – ethnic minorities, immigrants, Muslim women, ‘benefit thieves’ (rather than tax evaders) etc. This week the PM’s hate- and spiteful strategy turned against an altogether less defenceless target: The Three Lions – in particular Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford, and Jadon Sancho who all missed their penalties in the shootout. The backlash sparked by this unwise attack may very well turn out to be a decisive battle in the government’s ‘culture war’ where Johnson’s populist conservatism will be defeated on its favourite battle ground.
Euro 2020 and the first defeat of the government in its ‘culture war’
The post-Euro 2020 fall out has been in the making for several weeks. On June 15, 2021 Home Secretary Priti Patel was interviewed by GB News and – now famously – condemned taking the knee before football games as ‘gesture politics’ that she did not support, while also saying fans booing the gesture ‘was a choice for them to make.’ Similarly, Boris Johnson repeatedly refused to condemn fans booing their own team for taking a stance against racism. Arguably, this has encouraged other Tory politicians to try and jump on the anti-anti-racist bandwagon with Lee Anderson – Tory MP for Ashfield – publicly announcing that ‘[f]or the first time in my life I will not be watching my beloved England team whilst they are supporting a political movement whose core principles aim to undermine our very way of life.’
While such statements and actions may have quickly been forgotten after the end of Euro 2020, the vile parage of racist abuse against the three black players who missed their penalties on Sunday cast these statements into a different light altogether. With the benefit of hindsight, it now becomes clear that rather than supporting freedom of speech, what such statements by leading politicians does is not just tolerating but condoning and even encouraging racism. Even Johnson and Patel seemed to realise that and issued statements now condemning the online abuse of the players.
Yet, several of the players targeted by the racist attacks were quick to point out the hypocrisy in these statements, with Tyron Mings probably putting in most succinctly in a tweet replying to the Home Secretary: ‘You don’t get to stoke the fire at the beginning of the tournament by labelling our anti-racism message as ‘Gesture Politics’ and then pretend to be disgusted when the very thing we’re campaigning against, happens.’
Johnson of course will not change his approach after this defeat. He is a master of mixed messaging – not just regarding racism, but also regarding the Covid19 pandemic. He is unlikely to change his approach, especially since his focus will remain on conquering red-wall constituencies, which are currently – as Henry Mance puts it – the ‘golden snitch in the UK’s current game of electoral quidditch’ – and where his rhetoric has worked electoral wonders recently.
The English men’s football team v. its fans
What is particular striking with the Euro 2020 fallout, is the strong contrast between the English national team and its supporters. The two seemed like polar ends on a spectrum of class and decency. On the one side Gareth Southgate – an emblematic embodiment of the proper English gentleman, representing the ‘fine English way’ (as we say in German) of reserve, respect, and politeness. Always thoughtful and decent as expressed in his ‘Dear England’ letter. Dignified and generous in victory and defeat. And the players, graceful like Raheem Sterling, fast like Kyle Walker, brave like Bukayo Saka – to mention just a few of the young and diverse English team’s talents – make for a great advertisement for the nation.
On the other hand, the fans. Captured on mobile phones – and ridiculed online for – putting fireworks up their bottoms, playing with their genitals in public, punching each other and children in the face, booing other countries’ anthems and their own players when taking the knee, and smashing shop windows with beer bottles.
Sadly it is the latter images of the disgraceful England – rather than that of Southgate and his players – that went viral on social media, were picked up by foreign newspapers and magazines (e.g. here and here), and left a lasting impression of what England is about.
Euro 2020 and Brexit - Games of two halves?
It is tempting to draw a straight line between the Brexit vote and this Janus-faced nature of England as portrayed by its national team and its fans, as some twitter users have done (e.g. here). Gareth Southgate as an outspoken representative of the new, diverse, and open England, and the fans representing a bunch of angry ‘left-behinds’ who struggle to find their place in modern Britain and turn their frustration into anger and violence. Indeed, Southgate himself denounced the ‘racial undertones’ of the Brexit vote. More generally, the Brexit dividing line between ‘Leavers’ and ‘Remainers’ has become a feature of British public life. Even pollsters now distinguish the two camps in seemingly completely unrelated questions, such as one’s attitude towards Covid19 restrictions.
There may be some truth in this idea, as excessive nationalism in football is likely to correlate with support for leaving the EU. Yet, there is a risk inherent in this bi-polar view of England as well. There were of course many reasons for people to vote leave – by far not all of which were linked to ‘Empire nostalgia’ and racism. Indeed, there are good reasons to be critical of some aspects of the EU too, and those reasons may have motivated a considerable part of leave voters. As such, the view that Brexit was about the division of the country into two halves – as suggested by the result – is wrong and purely an artefact of the referendum itself. A question that only gives you two options would naturally split the country into two parts. As it happens, the two parts were nearly of equal size (52% v. 48%). Yet, these two ‘halves’ do not represent two cohesive blocks. Forgetting that and pitching ‘Leavers v. Remainers,’ implies amplifying the most vocal representatives of those who voted leave and remain. In the case of leave, it implies amplifying precisely the voices of that vocal nationalist – and arguably often racist – minority among the leaver voters, while silencing all others.
Neither silent, nor a majority – The politics of a vocal minority
Much of Johnson and Co’s rhetoric attempts to suggest that the government is saying out loud what a ‘silent majority’ of the British public secretly thinks, but do not dare expressing in public (due to a supposed ‘woke’ dominance of cultural and educational institutions that makes right-of-centre opinions socially unacceptable). Seemingly, that claim has gained considerable legitimacy by the Brexit referendum outcome that saw 52% of the people who voted in the referendum voting to leave the EU. Since the referendum, the 52% have been presented as a homogenous block constitute of the ‘real people’ whose preferences prevail over everyone else’s.
Yet, this whole discourse is most certainly false. Johnson is not giving voice to a ‘silent majority’ of real Brits, but rather is amplifying the extreme views of a small nationalist and often racist minority that is not silent at all, but gets a lot of airtime and coverage in the right-wing press. A recent poll found that only 14% of English people conceive of Englishness as a racial construct, as indicated by agreement with the statement ‘Only people who are white count as truly English.’ (It should be noted, though, that this view is not supported only by whites, but actually ethnic minority people in England consider that statement to be true more than white English (19%) - presumably not in agreement, but because that is how they experience Englishness). It is these 14% that Johnson, Patel and others in the Conservative party are enabling and encouraging for electoral reasons.
One might argue that these 14% are concentrated in the Northern English ‘red wall’ constituencies, which is why Johnson’s new populist Toryism relies so much on this strategy. However, even that idea of a particularly nationalist and conservative – let alone anti-woke – North of England, is probably false as Henry Mance has recently argued. The reason why the ‘culture war’ strategy seems to work in these areas is not primarily due to social conservatism prevailing there, but rather due to the deeply flawed electoral system in the UK, which implies that appealing to the nationalist 14% is enough to win elections. The 2019 General Election illustrates this perfectly. Johnson’s Conservatives won persuasively by gaining 365 out of 650 seats in the House of Commons. That sounds like massive popular support for the government. But looking at the official figures more closely, we come to realise that the government was elected by a small minority of the UK’s population: There were 66.65m people living in the UK in 2019. 47.6m of them had the right to vote. 67.30% of them turned out to vote on December 12, 2019. 43.60% of them voted conservative. That is roughly 9m people out of 67m, or 14% (purely coincidentally the same percentage as white English people conceiving of Englishness as a racial construct).
In the UK electoral system, it does not matter what the other 86% of people think of Johnson’s ideology. As long as a small, but motivated and vocal minority can be mobilised in the right constituencies, an extreme political platform can be successful in gaining governmental power.
Is Johnson losing the middle-ground?
However, this week we seem to witness some realisation amongst more centrist Tories that catering to a small, extreme minority of the electorate may not be costless after all. While stoking hatred against ‘our European friends,’ immigrants, or Muslim women, may unite part of the country behind the Brexit government for some time, moving further towards the right by not only silently tolerating racism, but actually openly condoning and encouraging it, may be a step too far for more moderate Tory politicians.
Indeed the hypocrisy of senior members of the Johnson government led to massive media coverage and to a series of Tory politicians – including MPs Johnny Mercer and Baroness Sayeed Warsi – to distance themselves from the PM’s and Home Secretary’s stance on this matter. This may suggest that backing of Johnson’s ‘culture war’ electoral strategy may be crumbling at the centre of the conservative party. More middle-ground, one-nation conservatives may slowly move away from Johnson’s ‘two-nations (the salt-of-the-earth white British v. the ‘woke’ urban rest) conservatism’.
Ultimately, this may mark the beginning of the end of Johnson’s culture war politics (see this excellent article for a more in-depth discussion). The solidarity with the England team and the outrage over the racisms the players had to endure clearly shows that there is no majority in this country for Johnson’s divisive politics, even though the electoral system can make it an electorally successful strategy in certain circumstances. This may slowly force the political agenda in the country back onto more substantive policy issues than the cultural war games that the Johnson Government likes to play. Other parties would do well to anticipate this change and focus on solving actual social and economic problems, rather than seeking to outcompete the Tories on the culture war terrain where they simply cannot win without betraying what they stand for (see my earlier blog on this).
Implications for electoral strategies
One of the astonishing facts of Brexit Britain is the struggles the Labour party has had in finding any coherent and electorally appealing strategy to counter the Brexit governments strategy. That is partly because many labour voters and politicians are themselves pro-Brexit, or at least anti-EU. Partly, however, it does seem to be related to the above-mentioned pitfall of Labour buying into the Brexiteer idea that Johnson’s current strategy is representing the preferences of a majority of the British population. Moreover, that majority seems to be overrepresented in the traditionally Labour heartlands in the North of England.
Understandably, seeing these ‘red wall’ constituencies turn ‘blue’ over the past few elections caused quite a bit of panic in labour ranks. However, that panic is largely unwarranted. For one, even if these constituencies were key to winning the next general election, it is by no means clear that the only way of winning them back is engaging in Johnson’s ‘culture war.’ For the other, it is a simple fact that labour is no longer largely or exclusively the party of the industrial working classes. Rather it is increasingly the party of the young, urban, professional voters – of which there are more and more. Therefore, there may very well be a permanent ‘Northern realignment’ happening (although, if Johnson’s ‘levelling up’ agenda remains a ‘skeleton’ there may quickly be an end to that realignment). In this context, Labour’s obsessive attempt to maintain or regain support in red wall areas, while throwing the rest of the non-Tory electorate under the bus seems absurd.
Trying to cling on to these red wall constituencies by defending policy positions that are contrary to its social-democratic values notably on immigration is a risky gamble. The current Danish government let by the social-democratic PM Mette Frederiksen provides a striking example of that strategy. By competing with right-wing parties over immigration, Frederiksen campaigned on a strong anti-immigration stance during the 2019 elections. She won considerable support and managed to form a minority government. However, in the medium- to long-term this strategy almost certainly will alienate import parts of the traditionally social-democratic electorate.
Therefore, instead of trying to outcompete the Conservatives on immigration and other ‘culture war’ issues, the Labour leadership should ask: Who represents the 48% who voted remain in the 2016 referendum?
This could be a particularly important question, given that that while Brexit voters were to be found amongst the older, male, less educated – as well as parts of a wealthy middle class who worry about the decline of the country rather than their own personal economic situation -, remain voters were younger, better educated, and also more female.
So, what does an alternative winning electoral strategy look like? Three recent byelections may provide some real world clues.
English pluralism: Three byelections – three Englands
So far, there were three very different byelections in England in the 2019 Parliament, all of which took place in 2021, i.e. after Brexit: the Hartlepool one, the Batley & Spen one, and the Chesham & Amersham one.
It seems customary amongst scholars of British politics to preface any analysis of byelections by saying that they are a weak indicator of GEs. Yet, byelections are useful to zoom in and understand the complexity of the British electoral landscape.
Hartlepool, in a massive blow to Labour, was another former ‘red wall’ seat turning blue when Conservative Jill Mortimer won nearly double the number of votes than Labour’s Paul Williams (15,529 for Mortimer to 8,589 for Williams). Batley and Spen on the other hand, was – rightly or wrongly – celebrated as a victory for Labour, with Kim Leadbeater – sister of murdered former Batley & Spen MP Jo Cox – narrowly holding the seat by beating conservative Ryan Stephenson (with 35.3% of the vote against 34.4% for the conservatives). Finally, Chesham & Amersham was a massive blow to the Tories with the Liberal Democrats candidate Sarah Green surprisingly defeating conservative Peter Fleet by a convincing 7,000 votes (21,517 against 13,489).
What do the three results tell us? A first interesting point to note is the (indirect) link to Brexit: Hartlepool voted 69.60% leave, Batley & Spen voted 59.63% leave, and Chesham & Amersham was firmly remain (44.89% leave vote share). While analysists underscore the importance of local factors in explaining the results (e.g. opposition to HS2 and planning policies in Chesham & Amersham), given that Johnson’s government is the Brexit government, the results do provide clues on how Brexit is going for different constituencies. Secondly, the three elections provide clues as to how successful the ‘culture war’ electoral strategy can be for both Conservatives and Labour.
Voters in Hartlepool are still hopeful that Brexit will deliver on its promises for them. Indeed, for now, Brexit is a promise not yet broken. In this situation, Johnson benefits from being the PM who ‘delivered Brexit’ after years of frustrating negotiations. Here, the same electoral strategy that was victorious in the EU referendum also works at the local level.
At first glance, Batley & Spen may seem like a puzzling counter example here. This was also a pro-Brexit constituency, although not has strongly as Hartlepool, but did not turn blue. The key explanation may be that Labour managed to successfully imitate a Johnson-style divisive electoral strategy. Indeed, one key difference between Batley & Spen and Hartlepool is ethnic diversity. Batley & Spen has 10% Indian and 10% Pakistani ethnic minority populations (in comparison to Hartlepool where ten times fewer (2.4%) of the people identified as non-white). Labour opted – and was criticised by one of its on MPs – for using divisive and even racist electoral tactics to attract the Muslim minority vote: One leaflet distributed to Muslim voters showed Boris Johnson with India’s PM Narendra Modi and the headline ‘Don’t risk a Tory MP who is not on your side.’
Batley and Spen therefore seems like a case where labour managed to beat the conservatives at their own game of division. However, this strategy implies that Labour accepts the terms of engagement chosen by the Tory party – who in turn were pushed there by UKIP since the 1990s – and therefore risks shifting the political landscape permanently on the ‘culture wars’ territory. Yet, just how successful this strategy was is another question. Indeed, despite the defeat, the conservatives actually saw their vote share increase by 3.9%. The Labour victory may hence purely be down to luck and specific local circumstances. It is questionable whether Labour can hold on to other red wall constituencies in the North of England using a similar divisive strategy.
So, the two byelections of Hartlepool and Bately & Spen could be interpreted as further evidence that Labour will face a up-hill struggle keeping its ‘red wall’ seats going forward even when it attempts to imitate the conservative ‘culture war’ strategy.
So far, Johnson seems to think that his confrontational approach to the EU and the related domestic ‘culture war’ approach are politically costless. However, the Chesham & Amersham byelection, the first post-Brexit byelections in an English pro-Remain constituency, may indicate that this belief is mistaken. The result may indicate that a one-sided strategy to attract new conservative voters in red wall areas by catering to ‘the 14%,’ may see the crumbling of ‘blue wall’ further to the south. The conservative defeat in Chesham and Amersham was a genuine surprise especially its extent (Lib Dems overturning a 18,000-conservative majority in a quintessential ‘blue wall’ seat). The result shows that what works in the North of England may not work in the home counties and possibly other areas of the country.
What this suggests is that there may be a window of opportunity opening up as the Johnson government starts running out of steam. Recent YouGov polls show that the honeymoon period for Johnson may be over with both Brexit dividends remaining elusive and the mishandling of the Covid19 pandemic once again becoming more evident as we are facing a fourth wave of infections despite the successful vaccination roll out.
There is an opportunity opening up outside the red wall constituencies for a new political discourse to gain hold while the Johnson government is still focussing on fighting a ‘culture war’ that it now looks like losing. Labour may miss out on filling this gap if it persists with its single-minded focus on maintain or winning back the red wall constituencies.
Of course, that is not to say that addressing the very real and justified grievances of people in the North of England should be dropped. The ‘levelling up’ agenda is probably the single most important and meaningful policy of the current government. However, that agenda is not furthered by focusing on the symbolic politics of the ‘culture war.’ Rather, Labour – or any other opposition party – needs to understand that Brexit was about ‘feelings of political marginalisation’ rather than about social conservatism, as Will Jennings put it. This suggests that another – more substantive – strategy is required to hold or regain Northern English post-industrial constituencies. Manchester mayor Andy Burnahm’s recent call for English devolution to be part of the Labour strategy would seem like a sensible strategy in the North.
Regardless, what Britain needs more than anything else is the insight that the country is not divided into two halves. Rather, just like the England men’s national football team, the British political landscape is diverse and complex. Any electoral strategy should reflect that diversity in order to avoid further political marginalisation and feelings of disenfranchisement. Unfortunately, the first-past-the-post electoral system makes it all but impossible to see a party system emerge that reflects that diversity. England may well remain stuck in its bi-polar political disorder for some time to come.