Thanks Anthony, excellent piece.

I think the key point you raise is the difficulty we (ie., liberals) have talking to the particulars and reaching people where they are. I was saying before Brexit that whilst I didn’t agree with those who were clearly going to vote leave, I was sympathetic to the optics of immigration as it squares with their lived experience day to day. I could see how easily it could jar, even as the macro-economics and the need to satisfy demands for cheap labour (as well as service the NHS) made perfect sense.

Where I live in east London we have a far, far more diverse community than some of those communities that voted leave, but I feel like the volume normalises that experience in ways that it perhaps doesn’t for those where it feels (rightly or wrongly) like there has been a sudden shift in demographics or the profile of those sitting in the doctor’s waiting room or standing at the school gate. I don’t feel overtly threatened by it, because I am used to the daily buffet of millions of people trying to get around this city and just about rubbing along. That’s generally what we do, otherwise it just doesn’t work.

Combine the economic dimension with a clear (albeit mendacious) argument and a very effective Right wing media operation that really talks to the gut, to the knotted anxiety and festering anger at the pit of the stomach, and you end up with Brexit. Some people are just racist and nasty, but others are clearly coming at this with an accumulation of particulars, layer upon layer of slights, small but no less vivid injustices and they were given a chance to correct that all in one fell swoop.

There has been some interesting work done that considers a wider body of evidence than mere economic injustice, something that draws a line from Brexit to Trump to the situation in Hungary, Austria and elsewhere. This looks at psychoanalysis and a need for something that transcends the economics into protection, authoritarianism and the emollient effect of ‘the strong man’. See the recent VICE article for the reference points. https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/what-it-is-about-authoritarianism-that-has-drawn-so-many-people-in

Here’s to 2017. Much to be done!