Telegraph columnist
Dedication
For the people of Barking and Dagenham
DEI GRATIA SUMUS QUOD SUMUS
Despised
Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class
Paul Embery
polity
Copyright © Paul Embery 2021
The right of Paul Embery to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2021 by Polity Press
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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4000-6
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Embery, Paul, author.
Title: Despised : why the modern left loathes the working class / Paul Embery.
Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Why the modern left will regret sneering at community, family and the nation”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020024550 (print) | LCCN 2020024551 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509539987 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509539994 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509540006 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Labour Party (Great Britain) | Right and left (Political science)--Great Britain. | Working class--Political activity--Great Britain. | Party affiliation--Great Britain. | Great Britain--Politics and government--21st century.
Classification: LCC JN1129.L32 E63 2021 (print) | LCC JN1129.L32 (ebook) | DDC 324.24107--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024550 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024551
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Acknowledgements
I owe a debt of gratitude to many people for their help and support in making this book a reality. My editor, George Owers, was a constant source of encouragement and sound advice. Thanks must also go to Evie Deavall and Julia Davies at Polity for their generous assistance and all-round professionalism, and to Tim Clark for his first-rate copy-editing.
The ideas and opinions in these pages have been influenced by countless individuals, but I must give a special mention to my friends and allies Maurice Glasman, Jonathan Rutherford, Adrian Pabst, Jack Hutchison, Liam Stokes and Tobias Phibbs, with whom I have spent many happy hours putting the world to rights (often together as a group over a beer or three at the marvellous Red Art café in Dalston). Needless to say, however, not all of the views expressed here will reflect their own.
I thank friends and colleagues, past and present, in the Fire Brigades Union, particularly Lucy Masoud, Grant Mayos and Joe MacVeigh, whose comradeship over many years has meant much. I also owe a great deal to the fine team at UnHerd, especially Sally Chatterton and Freddie Sayers.
I am indebted to my parents for their support and encouragement throughout my life. They have influenced me in ways they will probably never know.
The greatest thanks must go to my wife, Tricia, and children, Nicholas and Rachel, for their unstinting patience, solidarity and love.
Introduction
A nation held its breath as the clocks struck ten on the evening of 12 December 2019. Many of my colleagues across the labour movement had been hopeful of a positive result in the general election. Not necessarily an outright victory for the Labour Party (only the most optimistic – or delusional – foresaw that), but certainly a hung parliament leading to a minority Labour government supported perhaps by some kind of arrangement with the Scottish and Welsh nationalists. And these days, in labour movement politics, such an outcome would have been considered a victory.
Some of the more realistic anticipated defeat. A few – such as those who stood in the ‘centrist’ tradition of New Labour and had never reconciled themselves to the Corbynite ascendancy – positively willed it. But hardly anyone expected the annihilation that came to pass and, with it, the devastating loss of so many Labour heartland seats.
And so it was that as the exit poll flashed up on TV screens, forecasting a thumping eighty-six-seat majority for Boris Johnson’s Conservatives, the hopes and dreams of a stunned British Left collapsed. For many of the Left’s foot soldiers, the next few hours would be spent grimly observing the prediction turn into a painful reality – the Tories eventually secured an eighty-seat majority – as the results rolled in and the sheer scale of the wipe-out become apparent. Constituencies that had been Labour for as long as anyone could remember – in some cases, for nearly a century – fell like dominoes: Blyth Valley, Great Grimsby, Bishop Auckland, Leigh, Wakefield, Bassetlaw, Sedgefield, Wrexham, North-West Durham, Bolsover, Don Valley – the roll call was chilling.
The sense of disorientation felt by many on the Left over the following days was palpable. How could this massacre have happened? Voters had suffered a decade of austerity; Boris Johnson was a clown who had to be hidden away from the public during the campaign; Jeremy Corbyn, by contrast, was playing to packed houses everywhere; Labour could lay claim to having more members than any other political party in western Europe; the Brexit saga had proved debilitating, but there was still an energy and optimism across the movement such as hadn’t existed in years. So why had working-class
