When nations are strong and confident, they rarely need a charismatic leader to offer them re-assurance about how great they are. It is only when they feel their dominance begin to ebb away that insecurities set in and fears about the future become easy to exploit.
The changing job market in the US
Industries and factories across the United States learned the hard way that there are other countries that can produce things much cheaper than can be done locally. Over five million jobs went in just 25 years. Now they are encountering more and more competition from products which have been produced to a higher standard and utilise more advanced technology.
This isn’t, of course, a universal phenomenon. There are business and cities in the US where high technology products are still being created and there is little shortage of employment for well-trained designers, engineers and highly skilled manufacturers. There are also towns and great cities where the secure factory jobs went and were replaced by the reek of neglect.
It is no good telling someone who used to have steady work and a reliable pay cheque that economic statistics indicate things are getting better. If they are struggling to afford sky-high prices in the local supermarket they are going to be very angry and to be looking for someone to blame.
A deepening social divide
Over recent decades the standard of living of ordinary working people in many western countries has scarcely improved. The people who are doing well are the investment bankers, the oligarchs and the drug dealers. As the factory jobs leached away, so did the sense of pride and the identity that came with work that was often hard, difficult and boring, but that enabled people to take home a reasonable pay cheque, live in a decent home and feel some pride in the strength of their local community.
Political anger against the establishment is the direct outcome of the sense of loss that this has produced. It is made worse by the distance people in neglected communities see between their own lifestyles and those of the politicians who seek to represent them.
It shocks us to our core when we see billionaires like Donald Trump and Elon Musk speaking to this neglected community and claiming to be on their side. Especially when those communities believe them and put those people into office.
It should be obvious that a drippingly rich person is unlikely to share many common interests with someone who can’t afford to pay for their own health care. The reason it wasn’t obvious to enough people was that mainstream politicians were perceived to have an even greater gulf between themselves and the communities that trooped out to vote for a message of hope that America would become great again.
Good politicians stay in touch with communities
There are those who believe that the problem lies with the media and with the power of billionaires to outspend people of good will. The truth is that the Democrats spent more than twice the amount of Donald Trump. The Democrats had the biggest celebrity endorsements. What they didn’t have was the ability to make an emotional connection with people who thought they were on their side.
Tackling the rise of the far right can’t be done by keeping a safe distance from resentful people in neglected communities. It can’t be achieved by technicians running the state quite well from on high. It can only be done by people who are prepared to pitch in and actually work in those inner-city areas and deliver useful improvements to people’s lives.
The early Labour Party made its name by working flat out, day in day out, in local communities where it was prominent and delivered better housing, better health, and decent schools whilst also being strong in the fight whenever working conditions needed improving. The current Labour Party fairly or unfairly is not perceived in the same light. It doesn’t matter how many times Keir Starmer tells us all he was the son of a toolmaker, he comes across to the public as the ultimate bureaucrat whose height of ambition is to restore a bit of efficiency.
Transformational change will deliver transformational politics
Communities need to know that the people who fight for them belong amongst them and are not just swanning in to build a career. There is little evidence from recent elections that any of the mainstream parties are succeeding in building from below and creating a secure link between electors and those who seek to represent them.
Here in the UK, Labour only got 34% of the votes cast at the last election even after 14 years of increasingly corrupt and incompetent leadership by their prime opponents. Their vote actually went down, not up. That ought to ring enormous alarm bells, not produce a smug complacency that things have returned to normal and that the party of the working class will be in office with a huge majority for ever more.
Ultra-right fanatics can’t be beaten by business as normal politicians. They can be fought off by genuinely transforming experiences of life in inner cities. They can be beaten by modernising the economy and creating a sense of hope because there is visible evidence of new jobs arriving and old properties being improved. Above all, they can be beaten by people who are prepared to fight for the best interests of communities they care about.
So if you are depressed by Trump’s victory, scared by signs of the collapse of the centre in France and Germany, and worried about the risk of Reform UK Ltd, don’t just send out a message on your social media account. Get out there and start or join activities that deliver real change for your local area and campaign or stand for office. The only way to defeat the far right is to prove you deliver real improvements for the people you care about.
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