It's my people who voted for Brexit. To call them racist is wrong and divisive

Peter Mandelson is wrong: the British people were simply tired of decades of neglect

Peter, now Lord, Mandelson and I have three things in common. Obviously, we’re both members of the House of Lords. Both of us were architects of New Labour (albeit in Peter’s case more prominently than in mine). And we are both better at giving other people advice than we are at taking it ourselves.

It is this third point that has made me think about the words used by Peter last week when he suggested that many supporters of Brexit were “nationalists” who “hate other countries” and “hate foreigners”.

We live in a time of what some people have called “edginess” that borders on something worse. The EU referendum is now the backdrop to everything, perceptible in that darkling of the divide between those who wished to stay within the European Union and those who wished to leave.

There were very many reasons for the decision of the majority of the British people – and it was a majority – that we should go it alone. It may well be that there were those whose primary concern and reason for voting to Leave was about immigration, but this, of course, does not make them racist. But other reasons were many and complex.

Following a tragic and, in my view, desperately sad failure to debate the issues properly in the months leading up to the vote, the allegation that some of those voting for Leave were “racist” is not a new one.

It has been bandied about on a number of occasions and seems to me not only an insult to the many people that I used to represent who voted Leave, but also to utterly miss the point of why the majority of British people voted the way they did. If we fail to understand their rationale then we do ourselves, but crucially also our democracy, a great disservice.

The people had, quite frankly, had enough. Following the substantial deindustrialisation of the 1980s and 1990s, America was not alone in having what I describe as a “slow burn” of resentment and bitterness about the political system. We had it too, and the global meltdown in 2008/9, as well as the austerity measures that followed, hit the same people in the same communities that deindustrialisation had affected all those years before.

So what are the lessons? Quite obviously, that people believed our democracy and political system did not reflect their concerns and their cry for help. I understand some of this because, during my eight years in government, going back to the community that I served in the city in which I was raised informed my views much more effectively than anything I heard within what is described as the Westminster bubble. At community meetings as well as at my advice surgeries, I would get a dose of reality.

To be frank, people thought that our whole political debate was about those who were doing all right, who lived in a global economy and moved about not just on holiday but for business without thinking or worrying about what would happen tomorrow. The people who really felt aggrieved, and very often in despair about what was happening to their lives, were cut off from the benefits of globalisation and felt instead that they were its victims.

To understand this, and why, if there were to be a second referendum now, I believe that the majority would still vote to leave, is critical if we are to get our democratic system back on track.

Over and over again I’ve recently heard people of very different political persuasions say that we’ve never been in a more desperate political mess. They despair about whether politicians understand or hear their cry for something better. Not only are the Brexit negotiations faltering, but the distraction from domestic politics has added to the bewilderment and resentment of those who just want to live their lives in peace, with a reasonable amount of comfort.

Why aren’t we debating what’s happening in the education service? Why have so many of the critical agenda issues that matter to people in their own lives disappeared off the political agenda?

Abusing each other or demonstrating our lack of understanding about why people have taken such a profound stance and hold a different point of view not only doesn’t take us any further but also undermines the endeavour to do things more effectively and to listen to each other more profoundly in the future.

Everyone in politics, from the governing party in chaos to the official opposition that is tearing itself apart over anti-Semitism, needs to get a grip.

Now is a moment for us to set aside those differences created during the referendum campaign and beyond,  and to understand that we need to  heal those wounds and put the glue back into our politics. It is the moment to come together, to take the spirit  of the past that was so often evoked  by those seeking to leave the EU and  to turn it into something positive, rather than continue the destructive divide that has been evident over  the past two years.