The Bourgeois Politics of the People's Vote March

Can anything more be said about the so-called People's Vote march in London that hasn't already been noted elsewhere? According to the organisers, there was anywhere between half a million and 750,000 on the streets. Not content with nicking A to B marches off the left, they've half-inched the revolutionary inflation as well. And what's more, some of Britain's wealthiest reached into their pockets and laid on coaches down to the Big Smoke. For instance, Peter Coates of Bet 365 fame here in The Potteries was one such benefactor. By their friends shall ye know them is a useful compass for navigating around politics, for where certain initiatives, policies and positions attract and cohere certain interests this says something about the character of that politics.

In Richard Seymour's take down of the people's vote campaign, he notes continuity remain went "from being a campaign of the establishment, by the establishment and for the establishment, [and] they’re now styling themselves as a populist insurgency. Or what a PR agency might think a populist insurgency looks like...". While true, especially when their propaganda oozes smuggery, he is wrong to suggest the movement can be reduced to astro-turfing - if it was the case money could buy turn outs for demonstrations, Arron Banks and the Kremlin would have mass mobilisations of Brexiteers macrhing up and down Whitehall every weekend.

It's worth recapping what centrism and, given the degree of overlap, liberalism is. Cast off the identification with liberal ideas, in the main it is a social movement. In Western societies, it always was first and foremost a bourgeois movement, an alliance between the well-heeled in business, in the professions, and in emergent state bureaucracies. In its train liberalism has always dragged some degree of mass support, but with one or two exceptions it was eclipsed by the maturation of the workers' movement. An elite movement liberalism remained, but one increasingly subordinate to (and cannibalised by) conservative forces and the rising elites of the centre left. It's what Bourdieu called a dominated dominant location - here understood as a subordinate position within the scheme of bourgeois politics (think the LibDems in coalition with the Tories), but dominant vis a vis the rest of society. Also like all bourgeois politics, it is in crisis. Though the character of this crisis is different from that afflicting the Tories. Theirs is a slow burn death of a dying electoral base, ruling class fragmentation, petty ambition, and Brexit paralysis. Liberalism's is a case of mounting irrelevance.

Liberalism is effectively locked out of Parliament. The LibDems have collapsed and their vote share at the last election went backwards, despite posting record membership figures. Liberal Toryism has been dead in the water since Theresa May moved to carve out the Cameroons, and they are overrepresented in Parliament but defeated in the Labour Party - virtually by their own hand. And Brexit, of course, cuts them off from the liberal utopia over the water, and is all set to damage the the economic interests they are closest to. For if the Tories under Dave were the repository of political choice for the most backward sections of capital, the shiny doyens of liberal politics are aligned to interests tied up with the single market, with manufacturing, the creative sector and the tech bros of Silicon Roundabout - it's no accident Nick Clegg landed his gig with Facebook. What continuity remain and its network of slick fronts are is a condensation of this movement of elites outside of Parliament. It's a symptom of their weakness that they have to come together this way.

Nevertheless, our liberals are mining something of a rich seam. Had the left pulled off a demonstration of yesterday's size, breathless SWP internal emails would be emphasising the opportunities it opens up and all the usual leftist suspects would be hailing it as an earthquake. Clearly, the closer we inch to the EU departure date the more angsty remain voters were going to feel. And given the practical collapse of talks this week they're right to feel anxious. As we have explained before, the pro-EU marches are different reactions by different sets of people to the same problems bedevilling Western societies: generalised insecurity. Always the lot of the poor and the downtrodden, the consequences of austerity effectively destroyed prevailing politics by polarising them and, of course, delivering the Brexit vote. It brought home to millions of relatively privileged people, and not a few elites, the incertitude only other people - not them - are supposed to feel. This helps explain some of the movement's key features: its crass elitism, the over preponderance of white middle class people, the zero understanding of how we got into this predicament, and the strictly limited character of its politics.

This latter point is particularly important. It's telling that the most active forms it assumes on social media is virulently anti-Labour, and anti-Corbyn. The denunciation of Tory incompetence is secondary. Why? Because this liberal project is fundamentally conservative. It is, on the surface, seeking to prevent the dislocation and hit to living standards an exit from the EU is bound to entail regardless of the flavour of Brexit on offer. But in real terms, this translates into the preservation of an austerity that is far from over, despite what Theresa May is saying. Secondly, but most importantly for those leading the movement - Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell, and, yes, Tony Blair - they know their People's Vote posturing is a load of old nonsense. For them and the Anna Soubrys and Chuka Umunnas in tow, it's about restoring their position. They know at the next election the bulk of their movement is going to vote Labour, but by using Brexit they're trying to drive a wedge between as many of them as possible and Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. This makes winning an election harder and in the event of another loss, easier - they think - for them to resume their prominence in and control over the Labour Party. Their antagonism isn't directed at the Tories because Brexit isn't their main concern; it's concentrated at Corbynism because the mass political participation it represents is their main obstacle to a return.

The People's Vote or whatever continuity remain are referring to themselves today are a social movement, alright. A bourgeois social movement. Its objectives are about protecting the interests of a more internationalised and forward thinking section of capital, and the political positions and places its continued health depends upon. The anxiety over Brexit provides the perfect opportunity for them to reach a mass audience but, true to their elite approach to politics, the masses of people who turn up at the demonstrations are not invited to participate further. They have a walk-on part, they are bodies to be used as leverage in the media air war with Corbynism and under no circumstances is their movement allowed to open out to address other concerns. Such as the roots of Brexit in austerity, and the role the EU plays in enforcing similar politics across the continent. The way to counter this is not give in, nor to reply to the pathetic anti-Corbyn baiting we see in kind, but continue developing our programme and appeal directly to the mass of people attracted to these marches in the language of interests - just as the 2017 manifesto began to do.