Rethinking Englishness: deep historical analysis of working-class forms emphasises the importance of redistribution for the left

Recent English political phenomena are generally presented in post-colonial contexts: that Brexit and attendant electoral outcomes are the result of an unrepentant, exclusionary and regressive Englishness that refuses to countenance contemporary cultural diversity . Significant levels of support among working-class English communities for Brexit, The Conservative Party in 2019, the 2021 Hartlepool by-election and the rise of Reform UK has been commonly explained by a supposed commitment to the vestigial cultural privileges associated with the colonial era. However, for many of those voters, this has fostered a sense of confusion: not only do these people feel alienated and excluded from modern political discourse, they also inhabit communities that have long been subject to significant material deprivation and cultural domination. In this article, we engage in deep historical analysis of England since the Migrations to argue that there are forms of elite, colonial and working class, colonised Englishness that have divergent and contradictory characteristics that post-colonial analyses cannot easily explain. However, older critical traditions remain capable of shedding a good deal of light on these issues. We argue that failure to understand working class communities’ understandings of their Englishness as dominated and subjugated leads progressive politicians to dismiss precisely the interventionist, redistributive socio-economic policy required to advance collective interests nationally, promote equality and demonstrate the relevance of progressive politics to the communities for which parties like the Labour Party were formed to serve.