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The narrative, shared by the Brexit Party, Paul Embery, various Stalinists, etc., that “Labour used to represent the working class, but now its policy on the EU/immigration shows that it’s dominated by middle-class liberals” is historical and political bunkum.
Firstly, Labour has always been dominated (at the very top) by middle-class liberals. It’s a classic (*the* classic) reformist social-democratic party, whose leadership layers have always been drawn from the essentially middle-class elements, or, at “best”, the TU bureaucracy.
In the (mythical) golden age these dewy-eyed nostalgists dream of, where Labour was properly “representative” of “the working class”, Labour, in government and opposition, still opposed strikes; still supported cuts; still supported anti-worker legislation; still supported wars.
So what does it mean for them to say “Labour used to represent the working class”? What does “representing the working class” actually consist of, if not supporting workers’ struggles and legislating for workers’ interests?
Stripped back, the central implicit claim of the narrative is basically that Labour was more nativist in the past, more hostile to immigration, and more supportive of a kind of “British workers first”-type approach.
So is their model of Labour at its best and most authentically working-class the Wilson government passing the 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act? Or maybe Blair setting up detention centres? Perhaps “metropolitan” New Labour wasn’t so bad after all.
(All of this is to say nothing of the fact that Labour’s *actual* policy on the EU and immigration — deliver Brexit; end free movement — is exactly what the nationalists say they want!)
The whole schema relies on understanding “working-class interests” and “explicitly nativist immigration policy” as synonymous with each other. And that kind of amalgam belongs not to any kind of socialist politics, but to a politics that wants to bind workers to nationalism.
