The left and Brexit.

There have been many political themes that have emerged since the UK voted to leave the European Union (EU) in June 2016, social media is peppered with one liners and hashtags that give supporters of both camps pithy methods of engaging with the debate, often spilling out into the more general discourse around the issue. One of the arguments often put forward is that ‘Brexit is a right-wing project’ or ‘no one from the left could support Brexit’. I’ve always discounted these as it’s obvious to me that there are clear left leaning arguments in favour of leaving of the EU and many on the left from Tony Benn at the time of the first referendum to Maurice Glasman now have proposed such arguments.

I was reminded of this recently when I was thinking about the thought and theories of Roberto Unger prompted by a recent interview with Matthew Taylor from the RSA. In 2005 Unger released a book called The Left Alternative which attempted to lay out the current state of left-wing politics focusing on what he called the ‘two lefts’ that dominate political activism and discourse.

Roberto Unger

The first left that Unger describes is the ‘recalcitrant left’ that is rightly, in my view, suspicious and fearful of ever-increasing globalisation and the ubiquity of free markets that damage organised labour and the social infrastructure that once sat at the heart of many once industrial communities. It’s not difficult to see why the EU and its trading arrangements would seem to represent a lot of what the recalcitrant left sees as destructive. This view aligns with movements such as Blue Labour for example and has its base in a lot of strong left-wing traditions and beliefs.

The second left refers to what Unger describes as the ‘humanizing left’ which is accepts that globalisation is an unavoidable force and that policies should be developed to offset the more destructive elements of international markets. In his 2005 speech to the Labour Party conference Tony Blair declared “The temptation is to use government to try to protect ourselves against the onslaught of globalisation by shutting it out…(but) It doesn’t work today." New Labour were of course very successful at delivering the humanizing affects- increased public spending on health and education etc.- that characterises this approach, but it still shows a passivity towards the damaging effects described by the recalcitrant left. It should also be noted that the EU itself promotes much public policy itself that seeks to humanize the market.

Unger doesn’t satisfy himself with just describing the two lefts, he proposes a future left that could go beyond the inward-looking elements of the recalcitrants and the passivity of the humanisers. For him this left would look to strengthen democracy, democratise markets and put public education to the fore. There are fragments of this kind of thinking that already exists among the ‘two lefts’, but it has yet been brought together in a programme that could take the left forward.

None of this will surface in time to inform the Brexit debate and the UK’s likely crash out from the EU, but it perhaps offers a way forward for the left after Brexit. One thing is clear though; denying a left-wing agency to those who want to leave the EU is wrong in fact and involves a high degree of bad faith in practice.