The left, with few exceptions (such as the veteran socialist reporter, John Pilger, who celebrated Brexit as an explosion of ‘raw democracy’), joined the elitist, anti-Brexit united front. Thus did a socialist political movement that had been founded to express the will of the people against the established, anti-democratic political order betray its historical mission.
The post-referendum behaviour by the transformed modern left displays its new-found contempt for the democratic process (when it fails to deliver the desired outcome) and exposes its disdain for the largely working class voters who gave Brexit its radical, democratic flavour. The class-bind but ‘identity’-aware left joined the Remainer establishment in portraying the Leave vote as somehow illegitimate. Perhaps it was borne of mind-altering social-media ads or other nefarious digital intervention organised by Russian internet troll farms. Perhaps it was the underhanded result of big money ‘buying’ the vote (the British billionaire, Aaron Banks, put millions into the vibrant but ‘unofficial’ Leave campaign). A constant theme is that the vote was made by an uninformed electorate, high on emotion, short on reason and hoodwinked by demagogues.
Remainers constantly complain that Leave voters were the poorly-educated and that they therefore made an ill-informed, irrational decision. The degree-holding, supposedly ‘educated’ Remainer elitists seemingly hanker after the olden days in the UK when university academics and students were deemed more worthy of voting and received two votes (one for the constituency of their residence and one for their university) in elections and referenda (an anachronism that was not abolished until 1948).
A mixture of contempt and condescension pervade the left’s reaction to Brexit and its working class supporters. Nowhere is this negative view of its former constituency more evident than in the Left’s resort to the moral high ground of ‘anti-racism’ in its resistance to Brexit.