Living in class-divided Brussels has made me sympathise with Brexiteers
Belgium Brussels European Parliament
Like many others, I have shed a few contacts over Brexit – although these were not leave voters, but fellow remainers. My impolite dismay expressed on social media in the wake of the referendum result was met with accusations of class demonisation (despite not mentioning class myself). In fact, my own background is not only working-class, but poor. I state this so plainly as I have previously been disbelieved by peers. I can only assume this is either due to prejudiced ideas on how working class people act/speak/think, or else suspicion that I’m partaking in the competitive exaggeration of hardship common with some middle-class leftist, to appear more authentic. In being working-class, the status of my opinion threatens to be boosted according to the woke, hierarchical system of oppression. In the topsy-turvy world of identity politics, being poor scores points, giving any arguments I may make an advantage (which is surely intolerable if not also upholding whatever the leftist narrative of the day is).
Meanwhile, those of us who are actually from humble beginnings know that it bestows no special status and is more likely to equate to being spoken for rather than listened to. Although I always blamed politicians rather than voters for Brexit, I am guilty of occasionally expressing less than charitable sentiments towards Brexiteers.
Since living in the European capital, however, I’ve grown to feel more solidarity for working-class leave voters than I do for the particular kind of middle-class remainers described.
Belgium is in many ways a place of haves and have-nots, a strange enigma of a country that is one of political compromise and quiet, cultural resentments. A stalemate exists between the right-wing North and the socialist South. Northerners bemoan that the once industrial powerhouse of Wallonia is now propped up by Flanders money, a complaint that has seen the growth in support for Flemish nationalist parties in recent years.
It is in many ways apt, then, that the European Institutions should have been established here, a country of stagnant paperwork and political concessions forming the backdrop for the Brexit drama. As fond as I am of Brussels (and as grateful as I am for the EU citizenship which permits my presence), living and working within the shadow of the European Institutions has thrown up some stark contrasts, raising awareness of my outsider status.
It’s not that I didn’t already realise that, to some degree, the working-class are unrepresented at every level of politics, but it’s another thing to walk down the red carpet of the EU Council’s Europa Building as a zero hours contracted worker and experience that inequality first hand. While teaching English around the European Institutions to a wide range of employees, the majority of people I met from my socio-economic background were security guards or other manual workers. Apart from these roles, the staff were also overwhelmingly white, all the more noticeable when compared to the ethnically diverse city outside.
I often felt that I was being assessed by a living, breathing Cambridge Analytica algorithm when speaking to politicians. Rather than seen as an individual, I was analysed as a voter type, with thinly veiled smugness apparent after some (premature) conclusions were drawn. One politician was so competitive that he’d visibly anger when I fulfilled my teaching duties and corrected him on his English. When I brought in my medal after running the 20km de Bruxelles, it appeared to be more than he could stand. A few weeks later, he informed me that he had run a half-marathon the night before himself – not officially, but on his own. It was clearly unbearable to him that a mere peasant could achieve anything that he couldn’t. I wasn’t surprised that politics to this narcissistic elite was a game of one-upmanship. I was alarmed that it was so pettily engaged in even with someone who has no power, such as myself.
In light of this, I can’t help but admire the leave voters in achieving their win, (yet still, not those who orchestrated it). I hail from Nottingham, a city of fiercely loyal inhabitants who I am at risk of offending by mentioning its deprivation. All except two of Nottinghamshire’s boroughs voted to leave the EU. Local writer Alan Sillitoe wrote The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, the story of a borstal lad who purposefully loses the privileges granted to him as a star athlete, by placing higher value on his personal autonomy. When I read Sillitoe as a teenager, I fully recognised the feelings of powerlessness in his working-class characters and the jubilation they felt in taking back control, by any – or rather, the only — means available.
There are a great many people working within the EU institutions who are dedicated to improving the lives of those from disadvantaged backgrounds. What is troubling is how few there are working in the European Institutions from those backgrounds themselves. I’m not blaming the middle-class stagiaires who have been groomed since their early years for a life of leadership, they have no doubt earned their right to be present. However, the lack of representation of working-class interests – not just those interests cherry-picked by data analysis to manipulate the masses via political campaigns – is why politics has become so broken, in the UK and across Europe. I am not convinced that the Labour party is currently doing anything to improve this.
Back on UK soil, for all the passionate remainers, how many can name their local MEP’s and the committees they sit on? How many followed developments in the European Parliament before Brexit? Of course, I hold my hands up and admit my own guilt. The majority of us who saw the EU as an opportunity rather than a liability took it for granted, that much is clear. Whilst many now recognise that our apathy has led us here, what working-class people still need is representation, not hand-wringing sympathy that comes as too little, too late.
