Many left liberals in academia, politics and the mass media are certain that the populist revival among the working class in the post-crash era has been driven by a regressive nostalgia for a time when they were wealthier, more secure, more valued and more firmly established in the social hierarchy. Some of these commentators have even gone as far as to claim that members of the white working class who have lent their support to populist movements are nostalgic for a time in which they were accorded higher status than individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds. In such analyses, the continued march of progressive multiculturalism has stripped white working-class voters of their unearned racial privileges, so these voters have abandoned the left and voted for a nationalist right that promises to restore them.

The 2016 Brexit vote is a useful case in point. While for most contemporary leftists the result of the referendum came as a shock, those sections of the left that remain in regular contact with working-class voters beyond the larger cities understood that it was entirely predictable. Some academics immediately denied the existence of clear evidence indicating that the majority of the working-class voters preferred to leave the EU. Others were happy to simply decry Leave voters as hateful xenophobes. Without further thought, many on the liberal left cut the Gordian knot, split the working class along ethnic lines and portrayed anyone amongst the white working class reluctant to immediately offer unequivocal support for all progressive cultural causes as the embodiment of absolute evil. These responses were simplistic, hurtful and divisive. However, they should have come as no surprise.

White working-class Leave voters were, apparently, nostalgic for Empire. This narrative continues to be the most popular academic explanation for the British people’s majority decision to leave the EU. It tends to be promulgated by academics who believe themselves to be socialists, and who look favourably upon the neoliberal EU as if it were a bastion of progressive politics, the source of all positive social protections, and our sole defence against a slide into destitution and right-wing authoritarianism.