The world changed in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Like all Liberal Democrats, I was extremely hopeful the Kamala Harris would be elected as America’s next President. That did not happen. Donald Trump triumphed. Authoritarian nationalism triumphed. The far-right triumphed.
Central to Harris’ defeat was the loss of Latino and even white women voters. But most crucially, it was the loss of working class voters, especially in those vital “rust belt” swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Biden carried these states in 2020 and Obama carried them easily in 2008 and 2012. But the Harris campaign made a fatal error, they failed to realise that it was a cost of living election, they failed to realise the impact of inflation and they failed to realise the disconnect between the Democrats and their traditional working class base.
In 2020, Biden made a virtue out of being “Scranton Joe”. He worked tirelessly to connect with the traditional working class voters in the industrial swing states. And Biden never shied away from championing his support for trade unions. For all the strengths of the Harris campaign, they lost sight of an important political fact. It’s the economy that is always the defining issue of elections and it’s living standards that matter most.
What does all this mean for Liberal Democrats here in the UK? Firstly, we will have to contend with a destructive protectionist and fascistic US President. Secondly, we will need to be on our guard for Trump apologists in our own country that may seek to take Britain down a similar destructive far-right path. But most importantly of all, we need to understand that if progressive liberalism cannot offer an alternative to the injustices faced by working class people, then far-right nationalism will. This is regardless of the consequences that such nationalism poses to liberal democracy. Liberals in Britain and around the world need to reconnect with working class voters.
If liberalism is not strong at ending the injustices that fuel fascism, then fascism will be strong at ending liberalism. Recall the words of the great liberal US President Franklin D Roosevelt, speaking in 1944:
“We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”
Liberals need to be strong about confronting social hardships. We need to show working class voters and those people left behind by the economy of recent decades, that we are capable of improving their lives, and that we seek to build a democracy that represents them and works for them. We must offer a progressive anti-elitist politics, which is rooted in the liberal tradition, and that will work to offer an effective alternative to both far-right nationalism and far-left authoritarianism.
Before the rise of the Labour Party, it was the Liberal Party who were the champions of the working class. The first working class MPs were Liberals. British Liberal governments legalised trade unions in 1870, legitimised collective bargaining in 1906, gave the vote to more working class men in 1884 and to both men and women in 1918. And this is before we discuss the raft of social welfare reforms introduced by the Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith governments. Both Gladstone and Lloyd George were unafraid to champion a populist pro-worker, anti-elitist politics (against the British establishment and landed aristocratic classes) in order to advance the cause of liberalism.
The Liberal Democrats’ main problem electorally is our inability to connect with urban working class voters. Beyond the relatively affluent boroughs of South London, we do not represent a single constituency in any of the big English cities. This was not always the case. Within the last 20 years, we have had MPs in Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and Birmingham. We had MPs in less affluent parts of London, such as in Bermondsey and Brent. And we even had MPs in the “Red Wall” representing constituencies such as Burnley and Redcar. In the same period, Liberal Democrats ran several English big cities locally, such as Liverpool, Sheffield, Newcastle, Bristol and Hull. Today, the party only runs Hull.
Labour will be in government throughout Trump’s second term. It is inevitable at some point that Labour will become politically unpopular. They will also lack the ability to criticise Trump’s disastrous policies, a natural constraint of being in office. Are we to abandon alienated working class voters to be putty in the hands of a reactionary Tory Party or the Trump apologists of Reform UK? Such a thought would have been unthinkable to Gladstone, Asquith, Lloyd George, Grimond, Ashdown and Kennedy.
Our pro-NHS, pro-welfare, pro-local services and pro-taxing big business policies, coupled with a rediscovery of our anti-establishment zeal to reform politics, would prove to be a very attractive platform for working class voters across Britain. If only we had the courage to take it to them, to engage with them, to broaden our horizons and to seek to represent all communities regardless of social class demographics. We need to build a broad cross-class movement that embraces both middle class and working class voters, both in rural and urban areas.
We Liberal Democrats need to rediscover working class politics. The fate of Britain’s liberal democracy may depend upon it.
* Paul Hindley is a PhD politics student at Lancaster University and a member of the Liberal Democrats in Blackpool.
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35 Comments
It is revealing that CNN reported exit polling as showing that Trump won majority support from those with incomes between $30,000 and $100,000 whereas Harris won among those with incomes less than $30,000 and those with incomes over $100,000. There is something seriously wrong when the Democrats are only stronger among wealthier households and those who may be on state benefits, while Trump is winning the bulk of the working class vote.
Thanks for your post: it is inspired and spot on.
We must, however, remember that. unlike both Labour and the Tories, we are neither a class based nor a “position in the economy” based party: we attempt to represent everybody. Our literature should appeal to those who wish to preserve and improve our liberal democratic system AND share the proceeds of our economy equitably. it is important to achieve a balance.
My fear is that we tend to put more emphasis on effective campaigning on local issues and not enough on either of the above. Hence we are seen as “nicer than the Tories ” and “not as dangerous as Labour.” Fine when both are in the doldrums but .. . As Paul Hindley make clear, we need to show that our policies will help those as the bottom of the pile as well as satisfy the theorists in their academic towers..
As serious issues are still without answers, I wonder what next?
I don’t see many thoughts on knife crime or children’s issue’s. As a woman in a wheelchair I find life scary.
When it comes to growing our support amongst the working classes, I recommend we first look at our current working-class support, see what makes us appealing to them, and build off that.
In 2024 we won:
– 9% of people living in social housing
-11% of people in households with an income less than £30k.
– 10% of people in working-class jobs (including in social grades: D and E).
Party HQ should commission some social research on the matter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_general_election#Results
“For all the strengths of the Harris campaign………
All? What were they?
Can anyone remember her saying anything other than “we are never going back”?
She needed some substance in her campaign to avoid being wrong with her camapaign slogan. There was no shortage of potential policies Kamala Harris could have promoted such as on health care, workers rights, and minimum wages.
Next January the USA will be going back.
All good tum thumping stuff, but
(i) mostly the genuine working class are not liberals, and the middle class are;
(ii) as people get richer, they move out of the working class and become middle class (yes there are a lot of middle class folk who call themselves working class); and
(iii) the number of genuine working class people out there are getting fewer and fewer.
@Peter Martin. You’re absolutely right. KH could have campaigned on health care, workers rights and minimum wage. Thirty years ago they would have done, but that isn’t who the Democrats are now. They have disappeared down an ideological rabbit hole that the majority of the American people refuse to join them down. But they won’t accept that view. Instead they will shout that everyone else is a racist misogynist, in the same way that when Labour lose the activists tell each other they weren’t left wing enough.
@ John Ralph Tristan W,
Keir Starmer couldn’t support and sensible argument of definition of working class due to his mis-understanding of class and I doubt you’d do any better. The only sensible definition of working class has to be on the basis of those who obtain their income from the sale of their work. Whether or not they choose to self-identify as working class is a separate matter.
Chris Cory,
So you’re saying that KH lost because she wasn’t radical enough but labour activists are wrong to make the same argument when they lose?
Peter Martin: Yes I remember a lot about the suggestions you give. I live in North West England, but have YouTube favourites which showed a lot of her speeches.
I think this article sets out where the Democrats went wrong. Ultimately you have to take the public with you.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/11/11/take-it-from-a-metropolitan-liberal-we-are-why-trump-won/amp/
How is it neglecting health policy and disappearing down an ideological rabbit hole to passionately defend women from the gin, the coathanger and the knitting needle of the DIY abortion?
I couldn’t agree more with the author of this My one comment would be we should take out the ‘working class’ and talk to provision of basic needs of our population being met.
When i look at the world in this light we can see that whether you identify or are identified as working class or middle class, precarious provision of housing,education, healthcare, transport.. the scaffolding to a good life is increasingly widespread and unfortunately there is no magic button on this.
The US election shows us these are the issues across a very wide demographic and social economic group. Targeting one idea of that population
may lead us into a tight corner
@Peter Martin. No Peter, read my comments again. I am saying the Democrats lost because rather than focusing on economic issues, they played a divisive identity politics game which was a big turn off in the rust belt, however, Democrats will very likely reject this analysis, just as Labour activists have often refused to accept that their ideas are just too far out for Joe public.
@Ruth Clarke. Early analysis of the voting numbers that I have seen suggest that the abortion issue, which I assume you are referring to, just wasn’t the vote winner amongst women that K.H. and her team thought it would be. That would be an interesting issue to explore in it’s own right.
The “ideological rabbit hole” I refer to is a far broader set of cultural rather than economic issues that the Democratic Party has focussed on in recent years, issues that seem to resonate on the west coast and North East states, but are rejected by so called “middle America”.
@Peter Martin
“ Keir Starmer couldn’t support and sensible argument of definition of working class due to his mis-understanding of class and I doubt you’d do any better.”
Last Friday’s Moral Maze (BBC Sounds), Ella Whelan effectively defined “working class” as any one who sent their children to state schools…
I think working class is a label that either needs to be carefully redefined or simply dropped due to the baggage arising from the mass of interpretations.
There are articles saying that Trump ran posters saying that “Harris is for they/them Trump is for you” were successful for Trump. Whilst most people are happy for people to live as they want to live, issues such as biological males completing in female sport does not appear to be popular with the electorate.
In the UK, I imagine that telling the white working class to “check their privilege” or to apologise and pay reparations for slavery is likely to prove to be pure white working class voter repellent. Especially when the people being told that they have privilege or owe money for slavery don’t see this privilege or money in their own lives and bank accounts.
The electorate does not consist of 60,000,000 progressives, sadly.
>” There are articles saying that Trump ran posters saying that “Harris is for they/them Trump is for you” were successful for Trump.”
It is very easy, perhaps that is why the slogan was used, to read that as simply referring to trans rights, when it is a play on the “us and them”; ‘us’ is personal, “they/them” is hand waving at some ill-defined but small special interest groups, which the reader obviously isn’t a member of. So the implication is that Harris is distracted and not got her eye on the ball.
@ Chris Cory
” just as Labour activists have often refused to accept that their ideas are just too far out for Joe public”
I still don’t follow. Any criticism of Labour usually centres on economic issues. Yet, Joe Public is generally aligned with what is being suggested. Such as on wealth taxes and the renationalisation of utilities.
Which policy, say from the 2017 manifesto, do you most object to?
On the other hand many people on here are suggesting that Joe Public does have issues with many aspects of Lib Dem policy in the UK and also with what the Democrats were offering in the US.
Not only did Harris campaign on health care, workers rights and the minimum wage, Biden/ Harris implemented the most staunchly pro-working class policy agenda the US has seen in decades. They oversaw large increases to the minimum wage, extended funding for healthcare, supported unions and worker’s rights, and reversed the decline in manufacturing jobs that occurred under Trump. Under Biden/ Harris the working class saw a higher increase in their pay than any other group of Americans, recovering a third of the growth in wage inequality since 1980.
You could argue that they didn’t go far enough (though you would have to also acknowledge that they were opposed every step of the way by Trumpians in congress). You could argue that post-covid inflation simply overwhelmed their record of delivery for the working class. But is just a Trumpian lie to claim the Democrats ‘abandoned the working class’.
@ Andrew,
It wasn’t Biden/Harris. It was Biden. The VP has little political power in the USA. Of course this all changed for KH when she was thrust into the spotlight. She was clearly under prepared.
It’s not just me saying that Harris was running a campaign which was light on policy. It looks like also she made the mistake of putting too much faith in the accuracy of opinion polls. She was more concerned to not lose votes by saying too much rather than win new ones by saying more which could have enthused her supporters.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/harris-strategy-playing-safe-risks/
@Andrew M . What they abandoned Andrew was common sense . Failing to act quickly enough on the border crossings hurt them badly . Ignoring concerns on things like identity politics , campus protests etc , alienated socially conservative working class voters.
In the legacy media bubble, political commentators were questioning why the contest was so close.
They were right , it wasn’t.
@Craig Levene: the commentators were wrong. There was a 2% difference in the popular vote.
Themes that appeal to some university educated “progressives” – reparations, self-defining gender – are a compete turn off to most politically unengaged voters.
I don’t regard either issue as “progressive”.
@ Andrew,
“But is just a Trumpian lie to claim the Democrats ‘abandoned the working class’.”
It wasn’t just Trump saying that. If it were then it wouldn’t be worth commenting on. Several leading Democrats were saying the same thing too.
It’s the same story in both Britain and the US. The right wings of the Labour Party and the Democrats argue that pro-working class policies “are just too far out for Joe public” and the left needs to be constrained to win elections. Except the Democrats didn’t win with their 48%. Labour won a huge “sandcastle majority” despite having the lowest share of the vote, at 34%, by a winning party.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/11/06/bernie-sanders-accuses-democrats-abandoning-working-class/
@ Peter Martin
“The only sensible definition of working class has to be on the basis of those who obtain their income from the sale of their work. Whether or not they choose to self-identify as working class is a separate matter.”
Can this really be right?
Consider the child of an academic and a farmer who went to public school. She left school and went to university, including a second degree. All middle class so far,. She became an employed solicitor. Now working class. She marries and the couple buy a house and a buy to let. Still working class – she is employed) Our solicitor then becomes partner in her firm, taking home a respectable £200k a year. Middle class now. Aged 55 she becomes a consultant (paid by her firm on a zero hours contract). Working class again, but with a decent pension while the buy to let has been sold to fund her children’s school fees.
Sorry. In a world where people move in and out of paid employment to and from a self employed status. I think your definition of working class does not reflect reality.
All this can apply to (say) electricians as well as lawyers. Consider an apprentice who was employed for a few years and then starts his own business and an independent contractor.
Tristan,
Your solicitor probably didn’t derive all her income or accumulated wealth though working as an employee. Kemi Badenoch claimed to be working class because she once had a job at MacDonalds while she was a student. I agree it can be difficult to always neatly categorise everyone. How do we handle the case of someone who is brought up on a council estate, attended state schools, has a mother who is a cleaner, a father who is a factory worker but then marries someone who owns a fair chunk of the county they they live in? Does their class background change immediately afterwards or are they stuck with being working class for life?
However, it has to be valid to come up with some sort of definition of who is working class on the basis of how important their immediate job is to both their income at the time and their life prospects.
Peter and Tristan, social scientists have been having the same discussion about what working class may or may not mean for at least 50 years. Marxists will argue it’s about selling your labour to the owners of the means of production, but even they concede (usually) that many today have a contradictory class location, ie a foot in both camps.
Most people agree it’s not just about employment, it’s about status, culture (if you own original art you’re middle class, I’ve heard it said), values, level of education, level of autonomy and so on. In short, it’s a pretty plastic notion that means what ever you want it to mean and, respectfully, your discussion is of limited utility.
@ Chris Cory,
I agree with your comments except for your last half sentence. The thread is about “working class politics” so it’s reasonable to have a discussion about what it means, or even what we think it might mean, to actually be working class.
Being working class isn’t necessarily about working down the pit, the shipyards or even in a factory any longer. I would expect that a broader definition would be widely accepted, though and as you’ve suggested, it’s never going to be possible ‘classify’ each and everyone of us.
I’m now in my eighties and, in the far distant days of my youth, things like working class were more easily defined..
It was not about ‘what you earned’ but ‘what you did’… Being a teacher or librarian were deemed middle class ‘professions’ where-as a miner or train driver, who earned far more, were working class ‘jobs’…
Attitudes have also changed; back then being from a ‘working class’ background was looked down on; now a background from that class is seen as a positive..
I appreciate that this is rather a personal generalisation; however, as defining ‘working class’ is, in itself, a personal generalisation, who cares..
@ Chris Cory
“Peter and Tristan, social scientists have been having the same discussion about what working class may or may not mean for at least 50 years….. etc”
You’re right of course (about the academic discussion) and to an extent we are worrying about angels on pins. I suggest that if we can’t even define what working class is in a useful way, there’s not much point in “rediscovering working class politics”.
My original point (at 10:51 on 11th November) was that however you define it there are far fewer working class people than there used to be, and most Liberal Democrat members and voters in 2024 probably are not “working class” anyway (even if they define themselves that way).
If this is right, “rediscovering working class politics” may be a red herring.
@John Ralph Tristan W: “most Liberal Democrat members and voters are not working class anyway…”
Which is precise why Paul’s article is spot on!
There’s a been a load of irrelevant sociologising about precisely what “working-class” is, when the article is a CAMPAIGNING call.
You don’t need to know what precisely “working-class means” to engage with less well off voters; find fertile territory in housing estates and old council housing areas.
There was a similar article a few weeks ago; both were right.
“most Liberal Democrat members and voters are not working class anyway…”
They probably are.
The new working class (although maybe not that new) includes such workers as teachers, nurses, doctors, uni-lecturers, librarians, engineers, civil servants, and health admin workers.
You’d get a fair bit of support from these groups.
Add in the more traditional working class such as factory workers, bus and train drivers etc and the numbers make them a worthwhile group to target.
Chris Cory – when splaining to me about how abortion isn’t a salient issue for women in determining their vote could you perhaps spell my name right?
@Peter Martin
To jump in on the continuation of the discussion of class, almost nobody measures class merely in terms of selling labour to an employer. On purely an occupational basis, non-manual work, a degree of workplace autonomy, an above-average income, and a measure of managerial power/responsibilities have been middle-class markers since the industrial-revolution. Indeed, this is precisely why shop-keepers and clerical workers were described as “lower middle class” in the early 20th century.
Marxian discourse on class is itself far more nuanced than you portray it to be, with many describing proletarianisation as not merely the act of selling labour but as a process why which autonomy, status, skill, and pay are curbed.
The bourgeoisie -proletarian dialectic was meant to be a prediction, not a description of reality.
The Democrats didn’t just “abandon the working class”. They abandoned the principle that the customer is king. Trump offered answers to people’s real problems – yes, mostly bogus answers, but at least Trump was listening. Harris wittered about joy, lectured voters on how imperative it was for them to vote for her, and didn’t listen.
Here in the UK we have the extra problem of the artificial separation between two tribalist parties. Labour historically claimed to own the working class vote, but have now thrown much of it away by not listening. The Lib Dems claim to be classless, but actually tend to attract middle class voters who want to be progressive but shy away from their class “inferiors”. Once, Labour and the Lib Dems could justify their separation in terms of clear differences in policy and philosophy. But now Labour has veered from Blair through Corbyn to Starmer, while the Lib Dems have veered from Kennedy through Clegg to Davey, how can either claim a consistent character?
Very big fan of your work, Paul, and it is no different with this piece. May I ask, in your opinion, if the reforms you refer to under Gladstone and Lloyd George could be regarded as a more liberalised form of social democracy? Perhaps “liberal-social democracy”, to coin a phrase. Please let me know what you think, and thanks again for sharing this piece.