Multicultural Nationalism: Saving the White Working-Class From Blue Labour?

Labour’s response to the electoral threat from Reform UK has been seen as a return to ‘Blue Labour’ thinking. Aiming to win back voters who once supported the party—or who it believes it should represent—Labour has adopted socially conservative messaging on immigration and Keir Starmer’s focus on stopping ‘small boats’. At the same time, the rise of the Red Wall voter and the resurgence of class have exposed a significant challenge for the liberal left. Long focused on diversity, it has often underestimated the enduring relevance of class. Many on the liberal left fear that serious engagement with the white working-class risks empowering the populist right. This rests on a flawed zero-sum assumption: that addressing white working-class concerns must come at the expense of a broader, more inclusive political project. Reducing white working-class support for populist parties to mere bigotry is both inaccurate and counterproductive. Their resentment is often less about diversity itself and more about feeling abandoned as their communities face decline.

Multicultural nationalism offers a way beyond zero-sum thinking, promoting a shared and inclusive nation where the white working-class also have a valued place. At its core, Multicultural nationalism seeks to build a coherent, cohesive nation by accommodating the interests and rights of diverse groups, allowing people to express their identities within an inclusive vision of Britishness and Englishness. It recognises that conflicting values and interests will arise but aims to moderate division and expand common ground. Hearing the white working-class voice does not mean embracing views that reject diversity or support racial advantage or far-right agendas. Rather, multiculturalism’s historic success lies in extending minority rights and fostering a more positive sense of belonging. By similarly including white working-class perspectives within this framework, it can help reduce alienation and promote a more understanding and cohesive national identity.

The White Working-Class

While a small extremist fringe within the white working-class was evident during the 2024 unrest, most are motivated by complex grievances rooted in decades of economic decline, deindustrialisation, and perceived social decline. For many in this group, whiteness is not a defining aspect of their character, though many sense they longer enjoy the status once accorded as part of the white majority. Instead, class is usually foregrounded in their understanding of who they are. As such, whiteness operates more subtly in shaping their lives, influencing preferences, concerns, and lived experiences without necessarily becoming an overt (self-)identity marker.

The class identity is often linked to a strong feeling of Britishness and Englishness, though the conceptions of each can vary—shaped by geographic and demographic experiences. This becomes especially relevant when we consider that those living in more homogenous, predominantly white, areas tend to hold tighter to concepts of Britishness and Englishness. These identities are deeply entwined with their sense of belonging and loss, and integrating them into a multicultural framework means navigating their specific cultural narratives and grievances responsibly.

While we can expect inclusion to present some challenges, only a small minority can be expected to exclude themselves from this diverse project—just as multiculturalism has always excluded some views and values. As recent events show, there’s a real risk of overstating or misrepresenting white working-class experiences in ways that deepen divides between communities that should find common ground within the multicultural project.

A key issue lies in how we frame their struggles. Concerns like access to free school meals aren’t unique to white working-class children. Focusing too narrowly on ‘white’ disadvantage here risks obscuring the broader realities of working-class hardship—underfunded schools, poor nutrition, and limited social mobility. However, we must also avoid over-universalising the working-class experience where ethnicity is relevant. Historically, education has offered limited upward mobility for the white working-class, leading to generational scepticism about its value. In contrast, many working-class ethnic minorities continue to view education as a viable route for betterment. These contrasting perspectives highlight the need for nuance. When advocating for mutual recognition within a multicultural framework, we must challenge assumptions and acknowledge these varied experiences and the role that ethnicity can play in shaping them.

The Multicultural Toolkit

Recognition, a concept long used by multiculturalism to incorporate minorities into the public sphere, can be utilised for the white working-class too. These frameworks— acknowledgment, recognition, and symbolic inclusion—offer meaningful ways to include the white working-class as a distinct group: part of a historically advantaged racial majority, yet often marginalised, where class is the central axis of identity. This highlights a need to acknowledge the white working-class through their socio-economic experience rather than primarily through ethnicity. Their marginalisation is expressed so often through economic decline, political neglect, and cultural invisibility. Recognition in this context means thinking about their agency, representation, and place in the national story. Fostering this sense of belonging can also deepen ties with other working-class communities—building solidarity based on shared struggle—and is particularly relevant because exclusion from these discussions has too often fuelled resentment. National narratives must symbolically reflect their histories, identities and contributions. Elevating stories of labour, place and local pride can help embed white working-class experiences into a multicultural nationalism that recognises difference while fostering a common good.

Multicultural nationalism can acknowledge these concerns without overstating or distorting them in ways that deepen division. Some of the socioeconomic challenges faced by the white working-class are shared across ethnic lines. This raises understandable concerns that framing them solely as a ‘white’ issue risks obscuring the classed-based nature of these struggles. Multicultural nationalism can create a framework within which shared class experiences are more likely to be recognised and find expression. It offers a politics of cross-boundary engagement that encourages shared struggle and mutual recognition across ethnic and class lines, fostering respect for difference within a more inclusive national story. As such it should both ease liberal Labour anxieties about recognition, while also meeting Blue Labour’s call to take seriously the particular histories and experiences that shape the white working-class experience.

This digested read of a longer journal article was created by the authors.