13th December. Of those who had bothered to vote, 43.6% are celebrating the election outcome. And the rest? They mourn. Anguish ranges from that expected of standard party politics to predictions of economic disaster. The losers regret missing the opportunity to end neoliberalism’s stranglehold on a structurally deficient UK economy. They bemoan continued short-term profiteering over long-term investment. They weep as sustainability is again side-lined. There will be no new green deal as Britain slides towards climate change calamity. The inefficiency of NHS privatisation will continue unrestrained. So, post-election, I have a simple question to answer: Can Economics explain Labour’s disastrous vote?
The first consideration is whether I must inhabit a rather uncomfortable ground for the modern economist: a rejection of self-interest. Labour’s manifesto did include some eye-catching giveaways. A 33% reduction in ‘unfair’ rail fares. The end of tuition fees. Free dental checks. Broadband for all. The end of a ‘rip-off Britain’ that would save families an average of £6,700. So why didn’t this convince the electorate? Was it too good to be true? The standard response requires a fine-tuning of our understanding of rationality, and even this diverges into two different kinds of eyebrow raising, selected according to personal political pitch. First, there is bounded rationality. The voter didn’t necessarily have the full information over the impact of Labour’s manifesto. The reason? A media, overwhelmingly biased in favour of the Conservatives, committed to misinformation and an intensive hourly smear campaign against the Labour leadership. Labour lost through asymmetric information. Second, there is the application of liberal political economy where there is an electorate who are well drilled in the art of accountability. They naturally question whether Corbyn’s Santa can really deliver. They fear a ‘hard-left self-indulgence’ which will only engineer future macroeconomic crisis.
I’m not accepting either explanation. Instead, I’d like to offer an economic psychology alternative: the concept of authoritarianism. It’s an approach already used to explain right wing populism amongst our American cousins: “From pledging to ‘make America great again’ by building a wall on the border to promising to close mosques and ban Muslims from visiting the United States, Trump is playing directly to authoritarian inclinations”. Could this also be applied to our very own general election result? Let’s start by mapping out key components of the authoritarian personality. It operates on simple polemics, perceiving a binary world of right and wrong. It is resistant to change. Creativity and new ideas are easily dismissed as fantasy. There is a tendency to scapegoat. Personal misery is the fault of others. There is acceptance of authority. Strong politicians can be trusted even if they lie; and any ambiguity offered by experts can be easily rejected as babble. The authoritarian personality accepts no complexity and seeks action at any cost. Action is equivalent to progress even if the effect of the action is regressive. Authoritarianism wants impossible things sorted out to sustain the illusion of order and stability. It is happy in the linguistic territory of media meta-narratives and frames, even when they bear little relation to the truth which is in constant micro-negotiation somewhere beneath the blanket of overwhelming rhetoric.
Is it plausible that authoritarianism provides an adequate explanation for our ‘Brexit’ election outcome? There is Boris Johnson promising to ‘get Brexit done’ and break free of the dillydallying constraints of Parliament. There is Jeremy Corbyn seemingly dithering, refusing to accept either a Leave or Remain position. There is a complex Labour manifesto which, rather than feeding into the simple world of binary solution, fails to deliver a perfectly framed soundbite punch. There are high inequalities and many people who are quite prepared to blame immigration and not austerity. This all fits very snugly within an authoritarianism context. There is therefore, at the very least, a hypothesis that is worth testing.
My first concern? Consideration of data constraints. Ideally, I need detailed information of a random sample of voters. This should include the level of detail used by psychologists in their experimental testing of authoritarianism. I don’t have that. I instead must look back to data which includes details of the Brexiteer and Remainer votes. I therefore select British Social Attitudes data from 2017. Other than the Brexit vote, it includes everything required to at least test the importance of authoritarianism. A self-reported authoritarianism measure is combined with a hotbed of attitudinal variables. I construct variables which might be included in modelling authoritarianism: Climate change denial; prejudice against sexual orientation or preferences; complaints that welfare makes people lazy; and the need to significantly reduce immigration.
Next, how shall I model any link between authoritarianism and the Brexit vote, ensuring 
that it also has value in understanding Labour’s failure? I decide on a sequential modelling approach. The first stage is to model the determinants of authoritarianism. The second stage is to take that understanding of authoritarianism and investigate whether it can help explain the Brexit vote. In the results, any column in green denotes statistical significance and any in black statistical insignificance. So, what does this approach suggest? Let’s go through the results stage by stage:
- Understanding Authoritarianism
- Control Variables: While there is no obvious gender difference, authoritarianism does slowly increase with age. This might help explain why there is a positive correlation between age and the right-wing vote.
- Test Variables: The standard explanatory variables operate as expected. Climate change denial increases the probability of authoritarianism. Prejudice increases the probability of authoritarianism. Anti-welfare attitudes also increase the probability. Anti-immigration attitudes substantially increase it.
- Party Variables: Two important aspects are revealed. First, consistent with the psychologists, Conservativism and authoritarianism are positively related. Second, while those who identify as Labour voters are less likely to be authoritarian, the size of the estimated coefficient is relatively small. It is easily wiped out by anti-immigration attitudes. The analysis essentially predicts that a rise in authoritarianism will harm the Labour vote.
- Understanding the Brexit vote
- Economic Effect: This result is unexpected. Those arguing that Brexit will generate UK economic benefits are found to be less likely to vote in favour of leaving. Perhaps people are signalling that, even if there were gains to be had, it is non-economic issues that dominate their decision-making? At the very least, it suggests that economics is not a primary explanation for Brexit attitude.
- Non-Economic Effect: Concerns over identity, where being European somehow undermines Britishness, is found to be important. Non-economic factors do apparently dominate, making Labour’s focus on minimising Brexit’s economic damage less hard-hitting.
- Authoritarianism: This is the kick in the teeth. The results suggest that this is the factor that dominates. Brexit attitudes apparently go hand in hand with right-wing authoritarian attitudes.
So, what’s my conclusion in all this? Labour have fought an election where many Brexiteers, given authoritarianism, can find a natural place within a right-wing political home. In addition, they have fought the wrong campaign. They have adopted approaches which are easily ignored by authoritarians who previously voted for them. Now I could be wrong; I do hope so as I’m neither fan of nationalism or ethnocentrism. However, if I’m right and authoritarianism is on the rise, this represents particularly bad news for the next Labour leader. In contrast, right wing populism can cheer.
Photo by Vicky Yu on Unsplash
I believe your views on authoritarianism explain very well how Boris Johnson managed to keep (at least temporarily) some sort of unity within the Conservative Party. Not entirely sure about the role played within Labour. In my opinion it is about sustainable policies, especially in the light of a decade of austerity. The public might have read desperation in Labour’s message, and responded with diffidence and disbelief. In fact, there was desperation in Labour’s policy offer. There was no coherent programme, and no explanation about how this policy package would undo austerity, prior to re-instating some sort of social welfare. Policies were sold piecemeal, like little bribes. It was not good enough. This was combined with the voice of a very controversial leader, who was certainly battered by the press and media, but who was not very much liked within the party’s high ranks since the very beginning of his mandate. There is not much to quibble about taste. Preferences are much more rooted and stable than anything else in Economics. If someone or something is not liked, they are not liked, and it will take a massive and convincing incentive to move away from a preferred bundle…
I’ve never been convinced by the ‘Anyone but Corbyn’ angle. Remember that, despite the coup attempts by the PLP, this was the leader who in 2017 achieved the highest increase in Labour vote since 1945. Many of those who found Corbyn’s approach to social democracy distasteful had already jumped ship. We could argue that the additional two years of media attacks intensified these effects. However, we would then expect a slightly different vote pattern (e.g. a significant bounce in Lib Dem support). Instead, we saw Labour ‘Leave’ heartlands- often the biggest casualties of austerity- switch to a Conservative Party offering few policy insights. It seems clear that such a switch is reliant on a Brexit effect. The question is whether that effect is the consequence of authoritarianism. Some Labour politicians believe it is a blip simply solved by regaining working class trust. I think they are underestimating the severity of the problem they face.
The trick here was the same tried and trusted lie cheat and deceive. Whilst convincing the sheeple that binary choices are the only choices. Cut immigration but employ more nurses. Cut 21 thousand police then claim that recruiting 20,000 is an increase. Austerity wasn’t down to corporate greed and illegal practices it was down to Gordon Brown spending all the money on whimsical things like health and education. I’m not a Corbyn hater in fact is was nice to see someone with integrity and honesty in charge. If anything the Labour manifesto had too much detail and too many good things which people just thought were too good to be true or achievable. But for me the main reason for this defeat lies with the way the MSM just trottted out all the rubbish about labour and Corbyn whilst never once holding (man of the people) Alexander Boris de pfeffel Johnson to account.
The impact of the media can certainly provide an interesting perspective. Traditionally we would have the ironic reference to the rationality of ignorance. It simply can take too much effort to be fully informed. The opportunity costs of time ensure that we strive for information pooling device. This would inherently inflate the power of the media and its ability to influence. However, as information is so readily available, its more difficult to use that perspective today. I can check all aspects of Corbyn’s past, and the desirability of specific policy proposal, without breaking a sweat. Perhaps the interesting aspect is how Facebook changed their systems, leading to left wing independent sites reducing their reach? I’m also not sure that we fully comprehend the economic psychology around social media (and its abuse).