On 30 June 2021, the GB News show 'Uncancelled,' featured editor of Spiked magazine, Brendan O'Neil, in conversation with Dan Wooton.
The topic under discussion was the establishment left, particularly the Labour Party and the Guardian newspaper, and its abandonment of, and hostility to, the white working-classes.
Here are some of the things Brendan had to say:
"There is a culture war against working-class people and they are constantly being demeaned. They are being told that they are stupid, they were racist for voting for Brexit, that everything they do is racist, that is what they are constantly being told. And you can see the effect of this in schools… Poor white kids on free school meals are doing worse educationally than every other social group that is on free school meals and that tells us something about the impact of this culture war against the white working-classes, this demeaning of them as regressive idiots is having a detrimental impact on that community, especially its young people...Articulately said, Brendan.
As soon as someone says ‘white working-class’ they are kind of clutching their pearls. How dare you talk about these people, that’s racist to talk about white people. It’s ridiculous to talk about the white working class. They will really rage about anyone who talks about that section of society and I think it raises a really important point about identity politics that it is obsessed with race and gender and transgender and those kinds of issues, but it really has nothing important to say about class, and class is still the main determinant of how people do in life...
Diversity is always about race and gender and sexuality, it's never about class... You know the BBC and other institutions that wax lyrical about the importance of diversity, it's never about diversity of thought... Everyone in those institutions tends to think in the same way. And it's also not about diversity of class, it's not about ensuring that working class kids and working class people can move up the ladder in the way that they were doing a few decades ago before...
When we hear the term diversity it really means just getting a few more non-white people in positions of influence, who think the same as the establishment itself. It doesn't mean thinking about the deprivation and the difficulties that most working people face... It's just about tinkering with how things look. And the fact that the left is going along with this, this notion that class is less important than other ethnic or gender disparities, I think that is a real indictment of the left and the way in which it has abandoned working-class communities...
In the recent past, the Labour Party has become incredibly hostile to working class people. That is why working class people are turning against the party that was founded to represent them. It now looks upon them as this horrible blob. The uneducated, unfit, mentally regressive, xenophobic, stupid, low information, all these terms of abuse are wielded against ordinary working people by the Labour Party and by many people on the left. That is why working class people are turning against the party that was founded to represent them. Because it's now a party that is incredibly hostile to them.
I think the issue that summed up best was the vote for Brexit... Lots and lots of working-class people voted for it, including working-class Labour voters and what did Labour do? It said the vote for Brexit is the biggest disaster this country has ever faced. It’s horrible, we have to prevent it from happening and have a second referendum. That is why the red wall collapsed. Working-class people felt that Labour had stabbed them in the back and I think it will take a very long time for Labour to recover those voters, if it ever will."
Nice one.
Shame the working-classes didn't cotton on to the betrayal earlier. It would have been easier to win back their world if they hadn't spent so long trusting a contemptuous and antagonistic political and intellectual leadership.
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