there was a very good article on this recently by Dani Rodrik, the economist
it's a bit long, but well worth reading in full (this is just an excerpt)
The divided public heart
https://aeon.co/essays/how-do-elites-manage-to-hijack-voters-ideas-of-themselves
"Ideas and interests both matter for political change, and the two feed into one another. On the one hand, economic interests drive the kind of ideas that politicians put forward. As Kenneth Shepsle, professor of government at Harvard University, put it in 1985, ideas can be regarded as ‘hooks on which politicians hang their objectives and further their interests’. However, ideas also shape interests. This happens because they alter voter preferences and/or shift their worldviews ex-post, in both cases shifting rankings over policy.
Ideas not only constrain interests, they can also hurt the very interests that helped to shape them. For example, financial interests’ propagation of the virtues of austerity and budget balance might have had the unintended consequence of helping to trigger Brexit – the institutional change with possibly the biggest blow against London’s financial interests in more than half a century – and the rise of populists in the rest of Europe. The promotion of trade agreements as highly beneficial to the entire US contributed to the election of the anti-trade Trump. In both cases, misleading cleavages or memes generated by previous power-holders lent themselves to a backlash.
Despite the 2008 financial crisis and the recession, financial interests in London continued to back fiscal austerity. Indeed, these interests played a key role in the dissemination of the ‘budget balance’ meme and the gospel of fiscal austerity. The ‘budget balance’ meme acquired such influence, establishing itself as a kind of orthodoxy, that even Labour-leaning policymakers found it difficult to resist. However, the actual implementation of fiscal austerity by the government (especially in the post-financial crisis world) arguably set the stage for Brexit, which is likely to seriously damage London’s financial sector. Recent
work by the economist Sascha Becker at the University of Warwick in the UK and co-authors suggests that those voters who suffered most from fiscal austerity likely tipped the balance in favour of Brexit. The fiscal-austerity meme had limited the government’s ability to manipulate (on the policy front) in the face of a recession, which combined with the fact that a populace suffering from the financial crisis was vulnerable to memes about national identity and ‘taking back control’ with the Brexit vote.
Similarly in the US, the Republican Party (and the wealthy business interests that back it) have found it politically useful to disseminate memes and narratives that made identity central (eg, the ‘Willie Horton/weekend passes for felons’ anti-Democrat ad campaign of 1988, or the ‘welfare queen’ meme used by Ronald Reagan since the 1970s). The stoking of racism was one way to maintain support of the white middle and lower-middle classes who would have likely been economically better off under Democratic administrations. But the salience of racial identity made the Party eventually vulnerable to a takeover by Trump, with very different ideas on trade and immigration than the Republican establishment. If carried out, Trump’s nativist policies would harm the business interests that have traditionally backed the Party.
In more than one way, ideational politics carries a risk of unintended consequences. Money and organisational resources help, but they do not mean that vested interests can craft policy narratives and appeal to identity in ways that produce guaranteed outcomes. As we are consistently reminded, political outsiders sometimes introduce memes that draw on and mobilise popular attitudes and upset moneyed interests. Though the term is used more often in reference to minorities, identity politics also shapes perceptions of self-interest and desired policy outcomes of the economic and political elite.
Reagan’s tax reform provides an illustration. Business elites originally opposed the personal income cuts that he advocated. They worried about the adverse fiscal implications. Over time, theories of supply-side economics moved them to place greater weight on the incentive and supply effects, and many turned into enthusiastic advocates of across-the-board tax cuts. In South Korea and Taiwan through the late 1950s, political leaders viewed their objectives largely in military and geopolitical terms. This dictated inward-looking economic policies. Once they redefined their strategy as building strength through exports, economic goals began to loom much larger and their policies changed dramatically. Any explanation that relies on the importance of vested interests raises the question of where powerful groups get their ideas about their interests, and if they have soundly assessed what those interests are in fact.
* * *
For those who view politics in terms of a narrow and static notion of interests, the electoral support for Trump, Brexit and other populist movements seems to pose a puzzle. It seems as if many poor people are voting against their self-interest. But the puzzle is more apparent than real. It is rooted in a habit of thinking of interests only in economic terms, and also as fixed. Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon understood well that interests are malleable. With the right message and framing, Bannon noted in 2013, you could change the political calculus by shaping popular perception of self-interest: ‘Trade is No 100 on the [Republican] Party’s list. You can make it No 1. Immigration is No 10. We can make it No 2.’
What appears to be culture might be economics – the consequence of identity or worldview memes marketed by economic elites for their own self-interest. For example, Reagan used the imagery of a ‘welfare queen’ to attack unemployment benefits and the welfare state. So identity politics was being deployed by him to ensure that voters supported the Republican low-tax economic agenda. Similarly, what might look like economics might be shaped by cultural predispositions that provide voters with their interpretive frameworks – such as Merkel’s celebration of the ‘Swabian housewife’ when making the case for austerity.
Defeating autocratic and nativist political movements will likely require strategies based on both ideas and interests. As we have seen in recent elections, proposing policies that are better suited to the economic needs of middle- and lower-income voters will likely not be enough. Successful challengers will also need to come up with narratives that help to reshape peoples’ worldviews and identities."
Don't listen to Pete mate. He bangs out this mantra like leave voters are buccaneering Walter Raleigh types when it's based upon nothing but his own self-image and his mates down the pub. We're in the midst of tremendous technological, economic and social change at the moment, and pretty much every bit of evidence from attempts to understand the vote says that (broadly speaking) those who have managed to ride those changes okay voted to remain, and those who haven't voted to leave. Despite Pete's vision of a post-Brexit landscape of massively reduced regulations, it's incredibly unlikely that the majority of leave voters want more migration, less regulation and a more laissez faire society.
