Since the United Kingdom's Brexit referendum of 2016 and particularly after its General Election of 2019, journalists, political scientists and sociologists have been examining the seismic political shifts that led to a number of once-solid Labour seats returning Conservative Members of Parliament to the House of Commons. Many have viewed this change as part of a wider crisis across the European continent for social democracy in general and the socialist left in particular. Others have made comparisons with the rise of populism in the United States, and how the Donald Trump presidency gained the support of working-class voters in deindustrialized communities.
Brian Elliott's book on populism and working-class lives is written by a philosopher with a keen sense of the history and the postwar political culture that led to electoral victories for the Labour Party in 1945, 1950, 1964, 1966, 1974, and 1997. The author's parents grew up in Liverpool...
