Workers abandon left | G.P.

If so The overall political trend in Western democracies is the slow transition of constituencies to both the traditional right and left.

Although the details on the ground vary from country to country, the big brushes always point in the same direction: traditional Labor parties are losing workers’ voters quickly or slowly, in exchange for the rich and highly educated voters in the big city centers.

Instead, workers are moving to the right-wing parties, which are increasingly forced to abandon the old economic and political tradition for the sake of a more populous economic program under the pressure of circumstances.

The United Kingdom has been a leader in this development in many ways, and now comes another big news from the country, this time as a result of the municipal election. The city of Hartlbull, formerly a solid part of the “red wall” of Labor, gave the Tories a resounding victory, in a constituency that the Tories had never voted for before in its history.

The result was a loss to Labor in many ways more than a real victory for the Tories. The latter managed to get several thousand more votes than in the last election, but Labor lost half of its votes.

Many commentators Labor only sought to blame the loss of this controversy on the fact that it was moving “right” under the new party leader, Khair Stormer. Others wanted to create it, it’s still Corbyn’s ghost, haunting the results, the former party leader was so incompetent, if things went bad for the party or it was still his fault.

But these two stories seem to have missed the point: in fact, the difference between Stormer and Corbyn is not some kind of political valley; Rather, it is a ditch that separates them. Jeremy Corbyn is not a people’s arbiter or working class leader, he is often portrayed as friends and foes. The force that brought him to the post of party leader was intense, mostly young, mostly well-educated urbanites, and Labor is still one of these (highly) educated groups that is still growing strong today.

Tony Blair initiated the migration of Labor from the working class to the middle class in many ways. Corbyn’s failed attempt to merge the two into a single party made it impossible with Brexit. At this point Starper is no different from Corbyn – trying to unite two opposing forces under one flag is even more strategic. The only problem is, no matter who takes the lead, it doesn’t seem to work.

Here in Sweden Social Democrat reformers are recharging their batteries ahead of the Social Democrats’ next convention, but it is difficult to avoid concluding that their time has already passed. Momentum, like the reformers in Labor, said he wanted to invite the working class back to the party, but their real effort was to mediate the divorce. Elsewhere in Europe, we see the same thing, from Die Linge in Germany to Podemos in Spain: all these “left-populist” political efforts have already failed.

This does not mean that the left side is dead, it is shedding its skin. By all accounts, the days when the left actively represented the majority of workers’ voters will never return. Momentum, Podemos and the Reformers did not signify a return to an old political era. In fact, they are the last farewell of this era.

Malcolm Kyun is a freelance writer and guest writer on the editorial page of Getforks Boston.