Nigel Farage & Trump. Evan Vucci AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.As the reality of Trump’s victory starts to sink in, many Britons feel sympathetic to the confusion and soul searching going on across the Atlantic. How did this happen? Why were we so unprepared? How did the ‘elites’ fail to understand the ‘masses’ so badly?
Asking such questions is critical if we are to move on from the rifts they have exposed. Those who did not see the Brexit or Trump vote coming certainly need to reflect on how they see the society in which they live, and their own role within it. But how helpful is the ‘elite’/‘masses’ dichotomy to that process?
Who are the ‘elites’ here? At the most basic level they are the ‘haves’, or maybe even more clearly, not the have-nots. These are the people who have not been left destitute by the collapse of social welfare, or industrial production and the rise of free market economics. This is a large and diverse group, including of course the 1% but also middle class professionals, bringing in what to many are large salaries but who find themselves priced out of the housing markets around the areas in which they work; public sector workers who are working longer and longer hours, for less and less pay; young people working in the charity sector, often providing critical social services that were once funded by the state, now forced to live at home well into their 30s in order to do what they see as a worthwhile job that doesn’t pay them enough to rent a place of their own; artists and musicians (both aspiring and more successful) who juggle a host of unskilled, low paid jobs in order to secure a livelihood that allows them to pursue their dream careers.
