Over the past year, between June 2016 and June 2017, there have been two major disturbances in Britain. The first, the Brexit revolt, was politically disturbing. It disturbed the establishment. It rattled the political class as much as it thrilled those of us who oppose the EU because we favour democracy over technocracy. The second, the Grenfell Tower inferno, was horrifically disturbing. It disturbed the peace of the nation. It disturbed our civilisation. It will leave an indelible mark in British history. As will Brexit, of course. Both these June disturbances, coming a year apart, will define Britain for a long time to come.
But what is extraordinary is this: many on the left and in so-called liberal circles see the second disturbance, the horrific one, the one no one designed, as more political than the first. Indeed, where they devoted a huge amount of intellectual energy to depoliticising the Brexit disturbance, branding it a ‘howl of rage’ motored less by political conviction than by ‘the lowest human impulses’, they have dedicated similar zeal to politicising Grenfell. This inferno represents a ‘sea change’ in our political life, ‘symbolising the end of an era in British politics’, say the same observers who raged against the idea that Brexit was a political shift we should respect. The fire speaks to them more clearly than Brexit does. And this reveals more about modern liberals than they would like us to know.
One of the words most commonly used in relation to the Grenfell inferno is ‘voiceless’. This calamity proves, observers say, that the poor of Britain are voiceless. No one takes their concerns seriously. It shows that ‘the weak’ – the Dickensian phrase used by one magazine – are too often ‘silenced, ignored or discounted’. It shows that too many people in this nation are ‘vulnerable and voiceless’, says Labour MP David Lammy. The poor are ‘trapped and voiceless’, says a writer for the Financial Times. But of course, the poor, for all their troubles and lack of everyday clout, do have a voice. And it’s a voice equal in strength to the voice of the richest people in the nation. It’s called the vote. And last June, during the first of the June disturbances, when vast numbers of the poor used that voice to say ‘We want to leave the EU’, they were demonised, ridiculed, referred to as ‘low-information’. By the same people now crying over their voicelessness.
This is most clear in the increasingly ridiculous figure of David Lammy. Lammy has pushed himself to the forefront of politicising Grenfell. He wants to be a voice for the voiceless. We must be a society where ‘we care for the poorest and the vulnerable’, he says. This is the same David Lammy who following the first June disturbance, following Brexit, devoted himself to overthrowing the voice of the voiceless. He put himself at the cutting edge of the elitist revolt against the demos. ‘We can stop this madness’, he said. He called on his fellow MPs to ‘bring this nightmare to an end’. We cannot ‘usher in rule by plebiscite which unleashes the “wisdom” of resentment and prejudice’, he said, with Victorian-level snobbery.
And now he expects us to believe him when he says he wants to hear from the voiceless? Clearly he really does think we’re stupid. Behind that ‘nightmare’ of Brexit that he wanted to destroy there were millions of poor and working-class voices. Indeed, as a major study at the end of last year found, the largest pro-EU vote was among the richest in Britain, in social class AB, whereas in the lower social classes, including D and E, the lowest of all, there were clear majorities favouring Brexit. The report concluded that, ‘At every level of earning there is a direct correlation between household income and your likelihood to vote for leaving the EU’. Shorter version: in very significant numbers, the poor voted Leave. And yet Lammy mocked them and their ‘wisdom’ (his quote marks), claiming they were driven by ‘resentment and prejudice’.
