Around the world,the left is being spurned by its traditional supporters, says a US analyst of British politicsThe Brexit debate has created an ideological crisis in the Labour party, and driven by its inability to bridge Britain’s sociological crisis. Its leadership has been undermined by angry reaction to final week’s instruction to its MPs to trigger the process of leaving the EU. However,it had already lost the confidence of many of the party’s pragmatists, wary that Labour has found no way to transcend the toxic social divisions between north and south, or city and suburbs,young and feeble that the referendum laid bare.
Faced with a rise in populist sentiment, such are the circumstances for the international left nowadays. Here in the United States, and downtrodden and perplexed Democrats are faced with a choice of seeking to win back a white,working-class constituency whose support for their party has dwindled in every presidential election cycle since 1992, or double-down on cultivating their coalition of ethnic minorities and white urban cosmopolitans.
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Source: theguardian.com