IT SHOULD not have taken the Brexit vote to show that one of the biggest challenges that the 21st-century organised left faces is its tenuous connection to working-class interests.

The story of why this happened is well known. Attacks on trade unions by Conservative and New Labour governments, and New Labour’s obsession with middle-class swing voters, alienated working classes from socialist movements. New Labour took its traditional base for granted and failed to take seriously the decline of industry and the rise of precarious work.

Labour’s surprising showing in the 2017 election showed signs of a recovery — and this was because Labour began to address economic issues that matter in post-industrial Britain. But achieving power will not be easy. Getting Labour’s message and manifesto past an almost universally hostile media continues to be a difficult task. And socialism can only become rooted if it takes seriously the interests of working-class communities.