GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

spend more on industrial R&D. There are supply side issues that need to be

addressed, but Brexit generally, I think, could be a potentially good thing for the

economy if it provides the motivation to start doing the things that have been

disregarded or ignored for far too long

Let me just take a view of where we are politically, just to sum up. What seems

to be happening is that the Conservative Party are cherry picking some of

these ideas. They are portraying themselves as the party of the working class,

which seems to me to be somewhat fanciful, but I think they have been able to

do so for one or two reasons really, but one is that Brexit has exposed the

divisions between the two halves of the Labour Party. Every time Labour has

won a General Election, it has managed to piece together a broad coalition of

industrial workers or workers on one side and intellectuals on the other. Attlee

did that in 1945, Gaitskell, Wilson, all these people were university educated,

and that Attlee landslide was partly because the industrial working class were

solidly Labour, but also Labour won over a big section of the intellectual middle

classes and that was true of Wilson in 1964 and 1966, that he managed to

piece together that same coalition of intellectuals and workers. Blair did too in

1997. Brexit has exposed, I think, the tension between the two halves of that

coalition - the intellectual, middle class, white collar public sector worker,

people who live in university towns who have actually boosted Labour’s

membership under Jeremy Corby solidly for Remain - but quite a lot of people

in Labour’s old industrial heartlands, traditional Labour voters, were for Brexit

and I can see why that is. They felt they had been neglected, ignored, taken

for granted and they have been neglected, ignored and taken for granted, so

there is an innate tension there between those two halves of Labour’s coalition

and the Conservatives have exploited that tension. They have pieced together

a clear, unified view about Brexit and obviously there are Conservatives who

do not agree and they have kept very quiet and they have now reached out, or

tried to reach out, to those parts of Britain, Tees Valley where they won the

mayoral election, West Yorkshire where they are looking to pick up some

Labour seats. So this is quite a dangerous time for the left, I think, because we

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