June 19, 2020 - 11:51am
For a brief period last year I worked for an asset management company, writing about finance. Compared to the media it was… different.
The most striking thing, apart from the, er, somewhat raised financial expectations, is that it is much more diverse — way, way more diverse. The company was probably no more than a quarter British, and every major European country was represented at some level; it was more Asian and Middle Eastern than journalistic offices and, unlike the media, there were lots of black men working at high-end, very-well paid jobs (most of whom were Igbo or Yoruba).
While almost everyone at the company had supported Remain (there were two Leavers out of a few dozen), it was curious how lacking in animosity any of them were towards Brexit voters. They were international, had friends from all over the world and flew regularly, experiencing a very polyglot existence while simultaneously exposed to a homogenising globalised culture.
But being international, the culture war aspects of the Brexit division were distant to their lives. Brexit would probably be bad for the economy, but it might not be; if it got very choppy, they would move, as they had done several times before. But the idea that Brexit hailed some dark new dawning of intolerance or racism would have just caused a bewildered smile.
It was an introduction into a world I didn’t really know, and to the difference between what a friend calls the ‘international class proper’ and the ‘parochial cosmopolitans’. I had mostly seen internationalism through the eyes of the latter, because socially I came from the same class as them. But now I got to sneak behind the curtain and into the first few rows, just for a brief period.
Our parochial cosmopolitans are a particularly English tribe, found in London and that swathe of Remainia that follows the old kingdom of Wessex along the rich land around the Thames. They are well-educated, broadly well-off and enjoy foreign travel, and especially the cultural enrichment it brings; their homes usually display various hints at global experience and ‘openness’, the most prized high-status quality of our age (and indeed of capitalist societies since 15th century Florence at least).
Parochial cosmopolitans strongly identify with global and international institutions, with cross-border bodies in education, medicine, science and politics, such as the UN and in particular the EU — the 12 golden stars in the window is the ultimate signifier of the parochial cosmopolitan.
It’s parochial because it is part of an internal battle against other, less-enlightened British people. The Remainer identity has developed very quickly since 2016, but it is a particularly British one; it is about the sort of country they want Britain to be, and if it goes wrong, they will stay and, like their opponents, grumble that they want their country back. They identify as liberals wishing to be part of a liberal Europe that is partly imaginary.
Parochial cosmopolitanism drives progressive politics in the Anglophone world, partly because status anxiety causes this class to try to out-international the international class proper, and to differentiate themselves from the rubes below. The truly diverse international class have little interest in radical political causes, which are the obsession mostly of white people in a handful of unusually liberal countries. They are too busy seeing the world, meeting people from different backgrounds, and doing business with them.
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SubscribePart of the difference, I think, is knowledge. I grew up on the Continent and have spent much of my adulthood in Asia. I don’t feel that I need freedom of movement, because, having done so several times before, I am confident I can get through any immigration process. Equally, I don’t think Europe is particularly interesting as a place to work because of its diminishing share of the global economy. My remainer friends who are most exercised are those who have never lived abroad. Having never done so, they do not know if they can without the benefit of free movement. They think they are losing something (even if it is a hypothetical something) and people react worse if something is taken away from them than when they don’t get something they have never had.
I agree. ‘Freedom of movement’ was a clever slogan, implying a privilege one could lose, and also, who can doubt that freedom’ is preferable to lack of it?
However, I have lived in or moved through many countries, and remember the only impediment seemed to be having one’s passport stamped, which we quite liked.
Not so long ago, one could visit France without a passport. Later, it did seem strange to pass through France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, expecting to have to show passport at the border, but not even having to stop. That was before the ‘single market’, and no one had heard of the ‘four freedoms’.
Throughout the Brexit debate the Liberal media (the BBC and the Guardian to the fore) have sought to justify and celebrate Freedom of Movement with the argument “They can come here and we can go there” – but with little or no honest appreciation that in the main that doesn’t happen, or why that doesn’t happen.
Average monthly salaries for unskilled work – even the pittance we are talking about – are nearly 5 times higher in the UK than in some accession states. Even veg-picking in the UK is considerably better paid than any equivalent work in their home-countries. Benefits are far – FAR – more generous and we offer free healthcare.
What would be the incentive for a low skilled British worker to relocate with his family to Romania, say?
There is no reciprocity, the movement of the labour force in the EU is almost entirely a one way phenomenon – aside from the handful of globe-trotting executives or bankers, which would constitute a TINY proportion of the whole.
It is disingenuous to pretend that just because British workers have a right to move to Estonia, Latvia, Romania, wherever, that we should welcome FOM across the EU and that it doesn’t negatively impact British workers’ wages and chances for work. Or that those workers who travel here to do back-breaking work for the most meagre wages are being exploited.
Which all seems to underline why many of us have found the Liberal Left’s defence of Freedom of Movement so incomprehensible and frankly indefensible.
It INEVITABLY leads to the exploitation of people – just to avoid sticking another 50p on your Waitrose bag of hand-picked veg.
It continues to amaze me how much support there is for such a situation, among those who consider themselves progressive.
Before the 2016 vote my sense was that the whole EU debate was relatively civilised. It only became toxic once the result came in and the quietly confident “Parochial Cosmopolitans” woke, aghast, to find themselves on the losing side.
I debated the referendum endlessly with colleagues and friends in the run-up. The majority of my colleagues voted to Remain – though I have to say most, when questioned, supported Remain almost reflexively because they associated our continued membership with nebulous concepts like Solidarity and Togetherness. If you actually quizzed them – and asked them did they honestly imagine their Leave voting neighbours were somehow against ideas like solidarity and togetherness they would happily agree that of course they did not.
It seemed – at least among my circle – a reasonably good natured debate, robustly argued, to be sure, but with each side able to understand the concerns of the other. For the most part it seemed that both sides were almost certain that Remain would carry the day. Such a result would have been a disappointment to my Leave voting friends but we were pretty much resigned to the idea.
When Leave won, against all predictions, the tenor of the debate changed in an instant. A lot of my Remain backing friends, who up until that point had been very accommodating in debate were suddenly horrified and before a week had gone by were now questioning the ‘values’ of their Leave voting friends. Social media confected a huge perfect-storm of outrage and before you could say “there’s no place like Brussels” it became a minefield you had to cross every time you were in company.
4 years down that road and I disagree profoundly with Remain supporters on any number of issues but I can’t imagine falling out with a friend over such differences.
The press has done its utmost to stoke these divisions. Polarised politics has been good for business. The “liberal” media has painted leavers as ignorant and xenophobic and on message boards you’ll see insults targeting particular groups of voters that posters deem themselves superior to – whether they be Working Class Northerners, Pensioners, non-graduates, Shire Telegraph-readers, the list goes on and on. It has been an unedifying spectacle and certain commentators frankly ought to be ashamed at some of the illiberal comments they have made about their countrymen.
Regardless, anyone who limits their social circle based on which political party they support (or what they want as a future relationship with a trading bloc) and doesn’t see that as counter-productive and insular is probably beyond help.
It has been exhausting – and rather depressing – to see how many people truly cannot accept that there were entirely sound and honourable reasons for taking either side in the EU debate. (There were also small-minded, divisive and ignorant reasons – on both sides.)
I’ve no problem with people who think differently to me on the subject of Brexit. But what I find insufferable are the bien pensants who do not merely think they are right but that they are better than their Leave voting countrymen. In the majority of articles and posts written by such Parochial Cosmopolitans, the sneering tone is all too obvious. It has been the most unedifying aspect of this whole, interminable debate.
It would be interesting to see just how many of the current grievance-peddlers in BLM, Antifa and the Labour Party are the past beneficiaries of this PHLH privilege.
Some good points made here. The middle class have largely relied on the EU as a form of democratic insulation from mass politics and have benefited disproportionately from the supply of cheap labour membership brought.
However, unlike the true international class, their middle management skills are far less transferable than actual STEM based skilled jobs. As a result they now find themselves as the class most likely to suffer from the redistributive economics of popularism. As truly skilled labour can always up an leave when threatened with higher costs.
This largely explains their sudden Woke epiphany. A divide and rule based strategy, based on only redistributing resources to a limited “deserving” minority, acts as a break on wider scale “unaffordable” redistribution to the “undeserving” majority of the lower classes.
It’s class, not race which truly divides this country today.
The last sentence is quite true, but I think you’re being over-subtle in your interpretation. The management are committed to wokeness because they are legally obliged to implement anti-discrimination legislation (which, of course, doesn’t actually go as far as woke expectations; however, managers fear falling short of the letter of the law and there’s no danger in exceeding it). Meanwhile, the appeal of left-wing politics to the people working under the managers, e.g., teachers and academics, has less to do with its woke aspects and more to do with a sense of their relative decline in wealth in recent years (e.g., a university lecturer’s salary worth 20% less in real terms than it was ten years ago).
There’s something quite persuasive about this article. I guess in your terms I have much more in common with the “parochial cosmopolitans” than the “international class”, but I am dismayed by the failure of many members of the former class actually to accumulate real global experience, i.e., to try to understand how people in other countries and cultures think and feel. As soon as one starts talking to people in the places one visits, it becomes clear how parochial many of our moral and political concerns seem even in a city as near at hand as Prague, still more in Kiev, Istanbul, Beirut, Amman, Yangon or Bangkok.
It should perhaps be acknowledged, however, that of these two groupings it’s the “true international class” that is the most obviously privileged. Anyone sufficiently mobile that the likely economic outcome of Brexit, whether good or ill, is a matter of indifference is surely speaking from a position of extreme privilege.
Indeed. How many Remainers can even speak a foreign language?
Curiously, being raised in a country whose native tongue is the world’s lingua franca is actually a disadvantage. I can’t help feeling that widespread British monolingualism was one of the key factors behind the majority for Brexit. After all, if one is a Pole who can’t find work in Poland, one was probably schooled to speak more than one foreign language; one can easily move to Britain or Ireland, Germany or Austria. What’s a monolingual Brit to do who can’t find work at home? Move to Poland?
Move to the US or Canada or Australia or New Zealand or South Africa (well maybe not South Africa)?
Well, sure – but those are also choices open to the many others who speak English fluently as a second language. My point was that monolingual English speakers have fewer choices than the bilingual.
Canada,Australia,New Zealand,USA etc.Quite a choice.
If of Indian descent you can live and work there and acquire an Indian passport back to 3 generations.
At the very start of this blame game, some ten years ago, many on the left were starting to dig at wealthy baby boomers who had ruined the country and the future for their children.
On and on went the rhetoric on most BBC commentary and political programmes without once addressing why such a privileged generation was blaming their parents for their privilege In a negative way.
I tried to address this by talking to a group of particularly vicious campaigners outside a UKIP meeting I had just attended. Yes ten years ago when UKIP was called some vile names, many of us were trying to debate this very issue.
My generation felt incredibly lucky to have a job. We were the first generation where full employment was the normal. We were the first generation where some families from working class backgrounds had the chance to attend University.
However, we were the first generation whose parents had come through two world wars, a deep economic depression and wondered if they would ever be able to cope with security in old age. This generation drummed into their children the importance of saving every penny, holding on to a job, and looking after family.
We didn’t have money to spare, we were encouraged to buy a small property and we were encouraged to prepare for our old age. Many of us saw the look of gratitude and wonder when our parents were given the opportunity to buy their council houses and that spurred us on to invest in our homes. Our generation gave our children the opportunities many of us never had.
Should we be lucky enough to attain a University place, our families received grants from the local council because higher education was such a prize, seen as benefitting everyone.
What has changed is the culture of debt encouraged by successive governments. Where the majority of my generation (I am now 73) started work at 16yrs old and that includes starting apprenticeships on a small income, stayed at home with mum and dad, saved our money for when we started married life and often were married by the age of 22yrs; teenagers now stay in education until 18yrs or 22yrs if at university.
Young folk today expect to have expensive gadgets and the contracts that go with them, they expect holidays abroad, to leave home as soon as they leave school. Students have to pay for further education which often doesn’t offer them a job at the end of their course.
The young are not encouraged to save or be frugal. They have never needed to be. Those whose parents did encourage alternative paths to university have often done extremely well as long as they attained A levels.
However, the opportunities that were given to my generation, taken up with a sense of the future, have enabled us to help our own children by providing financial support as they needed it. If my generation did not use those opportunities well and wasted money (as many did), they have not been able to help their children.
There are and always will be those who were not able, for many reasons, to capitalise on opportunities. Some just didn’t have that opportunity or chose different paths. I think the biggest disservice my generation has done to our children, is believe in the lie of a university education for everyone.
The Labour Party and the Conservative Party were extremely frugal with the truth when they knew they were creating a generation of needy citizens, whose debt levels would take away their agency.
This is the biggest crime against our children because it created the envy and subsequently division in society that socialism thrives on. Until we address this head on and take away the prejudice towards hard work, capitalism and individualism our children will not thrive and survive.
They will learn to live in a culture of anger, envy and terrorism. This does not make a healthy society.
Where has the discussion gone? Three minutes ago there was a whole page of comments to which I contributed!
The comments do that frequently on UnHerd. Frustrating.
“Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
Abraham Lincoln
There are a number of folks who have made up their minds to be unhappy and want everyone else to be as unhappy as them so we can all be happy in our shared misery.
I am eagerly awaiting the house price crash so I can help my kids buy their own homes and stop treating mine like a hotel. I will have no shame in doing so and they won’t have any when I do. Happy days!
Sounds unlikely.The media excluding the Sun and Daily express newspapers have been consistently hostile and wrong . About leaving the EU . Unilever have moved their HQ back to London.Nissan have moved production of their new model to Sunderland from
Barcelona.Our fishing industry decimated by 45 years of France Holland taking five times the quota of UK trawlers..Will recover some of its importance..Although the Plandemic has concentrated both parties in negotiations.Likelihood is UK will take full advantage of Commonwealth 2.2 billion consumers.Eu with 18 buildings to maintain and MEPs pensions will like GLA go bankrupt under the weight of its own profligate bureaucracy
As Douglas would know if he had read many of the excellent articles in this organ over the past few years, there are in fact many perfectly fair ways of correcting this and other economic “privileges” : wealth taxes to balance income taxes, a reasonable and universal system of inheritance tax, land taxes, to name a few. None of which imply an increase in the overall level of taxation, only a greater equity in the way it is collected from capital as opposed to labour.
Thank you for this thoughtful article.
I can only add, that when I left tertiary education in south-east England, I declined my generous father’s offer to continue to subsidize me, and chose at 27 to be self-employed as far from London as I could survive. By the age of 30 I had the money to buy a home, which they say is now worth four times what I paid for it. I live there still and I love it. If you want to live in London and work for someone else … ask yourself why.
Certainly good to be reminded that parochial cosmopolitanism is parochial in its definition of itself which I prefer to define as supranationalist in opposition to nationalist.
It also good to be reminded that Our Society will also be a contested field of perspectives of how the norms and values of Our Society ought to be defined.
I think there is room for a multi perspective approach whereby parochial cosmopolitans can live out their parochial cosmopolitan ideals and parochial communitarians can live out theirs which may or may not be exemplified and represented by the MPs that are elected in those Constituencies.
Since even in London which may be loosely described by the underpinning ideals of parochial cosmopolitanism is perhaps not that representive of Metropolitan London as a whole.
Perhaps what is most infuriating is that the class based privilages that represent parochial cosmopolitan ideals are represented not only by elected MPs but are represented by the ability of parochial cosmopolitans to politicise their jobs and roles in Our Society, many of which have a public facing function.
This enables a distinctly minority perspective to be over represented through media, journalistic, jurisprudence, acedemic and scientific channels which of course twitter facilitates.
I’m certainly beginning to move towards proportionalism in my thinking so that different cultural groups are proportionally better represented on public facing platforms.
‘Alongside his consiglieri, Dominic Cummings’
So are there two of him, sub-editors?
Good article, a subject on which I led off the other day at a Conservative Party online meeting. Where is the Conservative Party we voted for?
I guess I must be an Italian parochial cosmopolitan who happens to live in Britain
The international class are somewhat appalling in their selfishness and unbridled support for the most brutal versions of capitalism.
But the sneery white English parochial cosmopolitans are incredibly unbearable.
However the non white ‘international class’ who benefit from huge social and economic privledge, who dominate our economy (and world via city of London) and are more than happy to see the country denigrated as prejudiced or racist are a pernicious group of people.