The most striking aspect of socialist responses to the EU referendum is the political left’s separation from the working class. Most socialist reactions can largely be characterized in terms of either disdain for the result or else the attempt to recast voters’ motives in terms more suiting the Left’s own sensibilities.

In this sense the referendum also highlighted a broader decline in the ideas of social progress central to the labor movement since its emergence two hundred years ago. There is malaise and discontent, but rather less a sense of empowerment or even rebellion.

The decline of the idea of organizing labor for progressive social change is connected to shifts in the working class’s place in developed Western societies. Globalization, financialization, and the opening up of a vast workforce in ex-socialist countries have combined radically to reduce the strategic power of the working class in states like the United Kingdom.