The Tories (and now Labour) have long been taking money away from ordinary people and giving it to the super-rich. Their supposed opponents, Reform, want to do exactly the same. The situation is like a billionaire’s wet dream. But the Express wants its readers to think socialists are somehow in control, claiming “Britain’s Establishment” is “dramatically Left-wing”.

This is crude propaganda. And we need to call it out.

The people with actual power and wealth want us to think ‘left-wing’ is about whether you accept diversity or not. They want to make it about culture rather than economics, and to avoid scrutiny of their own actions. That’s why the ‘establishment’ the Express is talking about isn’t mainstream politicians and media outlets or the super-rich class directing them. It’s actually people like teachers and academics, medical professionals, cultural and legal workers, and civil servants – the people with generally higher levels of education who you would usually trust to make good decisions.

The Express: please stop calling Labour left-wing!

The Daily Telegraph had asked Electoral Calculus and Find Out Now to do a survey to make it look like the people running our country are somehow left-wing. The survey’s summary said “75% of Britain’s establishment voted for left-of-centre parties in 2024”. But that was highly misleading.

The Political Compass has long shown that, on economics, most mainstream political parties in Britain today are right-wing. Labour was briefly on the left again under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership in the 2017 and 2019 elections. But after Keir Starmer’s shady takeover of the party, he “ruthlessly shifted the party well to the right“. This made it “at-least-not-quite-the-tory-party”, with some of Starmer’s positions on key issues “barely distinguishable from the Conservatives”.

While the Liberal Democrats are less authoritarian than their Labour, Conservative, and Reform counterparts, they are still economically right-wing.

The only organisations that the Political Compass actually placed on the left in 2024 were the Greens and other smaller parties.

So with that in mind, were the Express‘s ‘establishment’ workers really ‘left-wing’ in 2024? Well, only 13% of “teachers, academics and culture workers” voted Green, SNP, or Other. And only 10% of “civil servants, legal workers, medical professionals” did the same. In these groups, 27% and 34% respectively preferred not to vote at all, while 10% and 13% chose the far-right Tories or Reform.

In short, while they did vote in a slightly more left-wing way than the average voter, it’s wrong to say these professionals are ‘left-wing’ overall.

Imperial past and capitalist present

Lots of the questions the survey asked were about diversity, such as racism being a major problem, how much support minoritised ethnic groups and transgender people should receive, immigrants learning English, and using free speech badly. So the key focus was clearly on culture and not economics.

However, three questions revealed a bit more about where survey participants lie on the political spectrum.

One question, for example, asked if “Britain and other western countries should be ashamed of their imperial past”. On this question, 37% of teachers, academics and culture workers said yes (25% said no), while 34% of civil servants, legal workers, and medical professionals said yes (35% said no).

Another question was on whether “British society and institutions need to be completely overturned to create a fairer society”. Teachers, academics and culture workers said yes with 39% and civil servants, legal workers, and medical professionals said yes with 32%.

Finally, the survey asked if “Capitalism is the best way of creating a functioning society”, and 37% of teachers, academics and culture workers said no while 37% of civil servants, legal workers, and medical professionals said the same.

It’s clear, then, that there is a strong feeling among these professionals that something was wrong with Britain’s imperial past and is wrong with its capitalist present. But at the same time, there wasn’t an overall majority. So while they may have slightly more left-wing views that the general population on these questions, it would again be wrong to generalise that they are ‘left-wing’ overall.

Britain’s real establishment is dramatically right-wing. And it thinks we’re idiots.

Ordinary people don’t need to worry about teachers or doctors. They’re not the ones siphoning money from our pockets into the offshore bank accounts of the super-rich.

We need to worry about the distractions of the rich and powerful actually working. Because if they – through their propaganda outlets like the Express – manage to convince enough people to focus on our neighbours’ skin colour, religion, sexual characteristics, or background rather than on the greed of the super-rich destroying our country, we have no chance of a better future. So every time they try to fool us, we need to strike back. We need to show them we can see through their divide and conquer tactics. And we need to show them we won’t take it!

Featured image via the Canary

By Ed Sykes

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