Is Jo Swinson, the newly elected leader of the Liberal Democrats, a hero or a villain? Critics are quick to point out that as a Minister in the Coalition Government, she shares responsibility for the savage public spending cuts that devastated entire communities. Others argue that, with the prospect of no-deal Brexit looming, her consistent and vocal opposition to Brexit is now far more important.
But preventing a hard Brexit takes more than just a “bollocks to Brexit” slogan. Most of all, it needs an understanding of how we got here. And the reality is that the choices made by the Coalition are a part of that story; yet so far there is no understanding or humility about the role this played in paving the road to Brexit.
For many people in towns like mine, the disaffection with a political settlement that for three decades had allowed good jobs, investment and young people to disappear, was turbo-charged by the harsh and savage cuts made by the Coalition government. My council in Wigan was one of the worst hit in the country. More than £160 million was cut from its budget between 2010 and 2018 – that’s a 43% cut, nearly twice as much as the average. In towns like mine, with an older population and greater reliance on benefits than elsewhere, the £37bn cuts to social security have been catastrophic. People have been stripped of their independence, their dignity, and their means to survive.
“There is no moral high ground in trying to stop Brexit when this situation was, in part, your own creation.”
With good jobs disappearing for decades, many leave-voting towns are now heavily reliant on insecure work, with zero hours contracts and agency work far too familiar. In recent months I’ve helped people who have been demoted without reason, moved onto lower rates of pay or seen their jobs change beyond recognition. People have been denied payslips or forced to work when they are seriously ill, and too often they are powerless to stop it.
The decisions taken by the new Liberal Democrat leader in the business department were particularly devastating, hiking up employment tribunal fees to £1,200 which led to a fall in challenges by 79%. This, coupled with the cuts to legal aid, have meant my surgery is now full of people who are being treated without respect or dignity at work, but have no means to challenge.
Taken together, all of this has fueled an enormous disaffection with the political system that too often seems remote and unaccountable and leaves people powerless to alter the circumstances of their own lives. After 6 years of austerity, the Leave campaign’s slogan ‘Take Back Control’ had an extraordinary resonance; the EU became a very vivid symbol of the remote, unaccountable power that so many felt as a tyranny.
“The argument about whether opposition to Brexit cancels out the harm done by austerity is a false one.”
The political impact in the hardest hit of communities was inevitably vast, whilst achingly inevitable. The academic Will Jennings of the University of Southampton has documented the higher levels of dissatisfaction with the political system outside the big urban centres, in the towns where the leave vote was particularly high. In a 2018 study for the University of Warwick, the academic Thiemo Fetzer suggested that “the tight 2016 EU referendum could have well resulted in a victory for Remain had it not been for austerity.” The same report found an increase in UKIP support particularly among those hardest-hit by cuts prior to the referendum. For many of those who voted leave in Wigan and towns like it, austerity wasn’t the only reason that fueled a huge victory for Leave, but it was a big part of the picture.
It is a sad irony that the political party that is now most vocal in its opposition to Brexit cannot see that it was one of its architects.
The argument about whether opposition to Brexit cancels out the harm done by austerity is a false one. There is no moral high ground in trying to stop Brexit when this situation was, in part, your own creation. Without honest reflection and humility, there is no prospect of this getting better anytime soon. Without some soul-searching and self-reflection, a Jo Swinson-led party will deepen the wounds in Britain rather than heal them.
Lisa Nandy is the Labour MP for Wigan