Conservatism and the Decline of the West

For the last couple of days, London has hosted Jordan Peterson's ARC jamboree. Standing for the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, it was touted as and proved to be a conservative wingefest. From moaners peddling the thinly disguised cultural Marxism conspiracy theory to decriers of the imagined progressive authoritarianism, not a single scintilla of original thought was on show. Instead, we got a catwalk show of ignorance, stupidity, and bigotry. Not that this prevents them from getting recycled and amplified by the billionaire owned and aligned media, or responded to by "sensible" governments bent on adapting to them.

It says everything about the wretched state of the Conservative Party that Kemi Badenoch not only spoke, but a long conversation with Peterson himself. To save you the bother of listening, it was the usual gubbins. The evils of multiculturalism, the destruction wrought by immigration, the perils of net zero. Yawn, yawn, yawn. Her actual speech was little different, but tried striking an urgent tone. Western culture is "under threat". She goes on, "This is not a crisis of values. It’s a crisis of confidence that has set in at exactly the same time that we face existential threats on the left." Assuming Badenoch hasn't crossed the floor, I guess she meant "from". She also said everything good comes from the right. But what's destroying the West now is a lack of "self-belief", when the moment requires assertiveness and confidence. Just like our friend Donald Trump who, for the Tory leader, is setting about "fixing" America's problems. We need to "get off our knees" and fight for our values, which inevitably means "tough decisions and bravery".

I think that's quite enough of Badenoch's drivel.

Lurching further right and puckering up to Trump are not the politics that are going to get the Conservatives back into the game. But this is more than just another rhetorical move to win back Reform voters. The declinist sentiment is common among (right wing) bourgeois circles because it speaks of something that is true. The West is declining.

In population terms, Western Europe, North America, and Australasia are in long-term decline. The story is the same in economics, with China, India, and sub-Saharan Africa increasingly becoming the engines of global growth with each passing year. This is well known and remarked upon. Attracting less attention, until recently, is the long-term decline of conservatism and therefore the political pull of an important section of the Western ruling class. The process of value change has long been tracked by political science, which tends to attribute the growth of social liberalism to growing affluence, mass education, and demographic turnover. There comes a point when the disproportionate advantage among older people turns into its reverse. The right can change to adapt to the rising and broadly liberal-left generations, or decline. We're at that moment now, so goes the argument, and the diminishing mass base of the right has unleashed a backlash against the values of the increasing majority of Western populations. This "postmaterialist" argument is partly true - it doesn't tell the whole story. The rise of social liberalism is inseparable from the recomposition of the working class and the restructuring of how strategic sectors of capital exploit our labour power. The problem is that as the "new" primary force of production are our brains, personalities, and sociability, the hold that workplace discipline has over us is also in long-term decline. Hence the panics about working from home and the constant refrain of returning to the office, and the ridiculous amount of boosterism around artificial intelligence.

The right do not openly say what they're about, so like Badenoch they go after stand-ins and substitutes - tropes they've come to recognise as symptoms of their declinist predicament. The Tory leader's railing against how "universities ... poison minds" is a recognition that cultural trends are against her party, and that she'd rather adopt Canute-like obstinance instead of adapting to new circumstances, which previous Tory leaders have managed to do. We see the same with the Trumpist approach to global power politics, with the bearing of American teeth the chosen strategy - among several - to mitigate the effects of decline. But if the extreme right get their way, at best all they succeed in doing is consolidating the power of their class for a little longer before something new has to be tried to arrest the demographic and cultural erosion eating away at them.

And at worst? It's obvious that if Western capitalism is to thrive in the new world of immaterial labour and growing Eastern dominance, it is by investing in its work force, throwing money at renewable energy, advanced biotech, computing, and space technologies, building up the capacity of regional and national governments as industrial activists, and ensuring the proceeds of growth are better distributed across classes and between regions. A renewed social democratic road map, in other words. But it is utopian precisely because none of the capitalist parties in Western polities, including actually-existing labour and social democratic parties are interested. They're happy to manage the decline, whereas the bleed of the extreme right into the mainstream right means their "solutions" can only accelerate the West's decline. What the Tories did to Britain during their 14 years in office made the country poorer, less productive, and weakened in the face of international competition. But the primacy of commercial and financial capital, and of capital over labour was asserted in the face of a new left and new demands placed on the state following a global pandemic - and that's what matters most. Across the sea, we see Trump dismantling the federal state. It might strengthen the American oligarchy domestically for a few years but it's only going to accelerate their decline as the world's economic and military leader over the long-term.

Badenoch talks piffle like the rest of them, but her politics are anchored in a class strategy and a class on a declinist trajectory. It's up to us - the left - to get our collective acts together and help the Tories and their ilk along the happy road to irrelevance.

Image Credit

Explaining Insanity

That Donald Trump, coming over here and tearing up the post-war international order, putting a question mark over the United States' support for Europe and chumming up to Vladimir Putin. His second coming has continued as it started: unsettling friends and upsetting certainties while turning everything the new administration touches into chaos. Who can disagree with Keir Starmer that, from the standpoint of great power politics, that this is a "once in a generation moment"?

The calling of an emergency European summit sans the US in response to the Trump "peace plan", that freezes Europe and Ukraine out while he and Putin draw new lines on the map is the biggest breach in the Western alliance since the Suez crisis. Then, in no uncertain terms, the Americans said the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt was a no and that overseas military adventures without Uncle Sam's blessing were over. With talks between the US and Russia to start as early as Tuesday in Saudi Arabia, it appears now that Trump wants to break with seven decades of foreign policy common sense and let Europe do its own thing. Suddenly, the talk is about Europe ramping up military spending and huge numbers of soldiers being shipped to Ukraine to act as peace keepers to police the eventual peace. Starmer was quick to volunteer British troops for any such force, with estimates for the combined mission topping out at 100,000 soldiers. But also Starmer as the "bridge" between an aggressive US and an appalled EU/rest of NATO has carried on talking up the need for US security guarantees to back an armistice and a permanent end to the war. Which will probably come to pass, seeing as Trump has made no bones about his desire for Ukrainian mineral stocks. Though it is worth noting the bulk of these materials are in the eastern Russian-occupied zone of the country.

For liberal internationalists, the supporters of the fictional "rules-based order" it's enough to drive them into despair. The rights of a small nation trampled on and disregarded as the big players sit down to haggle over its fate is a grotesque spectacle. But what Trump is demonstrating is the naked truth of global politics. The US is the (declining) hegemon, but is dispensing with the usual protocols and politesse about "allies" and "partners". But what is the game plan here? Not normally known for his political insights, on Sunday's Laura Kuenssberg Reform's Richard Tice said this was the hardball way of ensuring Europeans meet a long-held Trumpist aim: a collective increase military spending so the continent's security is no longer bankrolled from the Oval Office. This take is fine as far as it goes. It would allow for more tax cuts at home, which Trump can then crow about. But it only goes part of the way.

As forecast before the election, Trumpism wanted to shake down the state for the benefit of the billionaires. Not just so capital can pocket more tax cuts and enjoy a freshly enfeebled regulatory environment, but to ensure the balance in class relations is tilted further in their favour. Cutting the state reduces the checks and encumbrances placed on capital by generations of workplace, court room, and legislative struggles. The prize here is the sovereignty of unfettered class rule - a project identical in intent, but much larger in scale than the obsessions of the Conservative Party in this country.

Trump's rude antics overseas are an extension of the domestic project. Never mind the international order he's seemingly intent on smashing up was constructed by the US for America's benefit, Trumpism here is the extrication of the US from obligations to allies (if they're not deemed in the White House's immediate interests), and a decisive move away from soft power operations so the US can bestride the world as a military colossus. The peace-through-strength impulse of Trumpism is really strength-through-fear, of the presidency openly and clearly declaring that it alone is sovereign and nothing can stop US capital from getting its way. This is not a new isolationism, as the talking heads on respectable podcasts keep saying, but a shift in the US's imperial orientation to the world. An overly aggressive posture rather than diplomacy, a readiness to rely on threats and cajoling if not force to get its way. The limits of such an approach are not infinite, but they are distressing for anyone unused to seeing international power politics for what they really are.

In other words, Trumpism - despite its chaotic outbursts, upending of custom, and seemingly self-defeating decisions - is not an expression of insanity. Its actions over Ukraine and the rapprochement with Russia are the open politics of the American oligarchy. Once again, it comes back to interests. Class interests.

Image Credit

Crescendo - Are You Out There?

No time for posting tonight, so here's a tune that's almost totally forgotten today but was quite big at the time.

Rachel Reeves and Dishonesty

The Chancellor might have delivered a budget that won wide support among the wealthy and, crucially, has done nothing to upset the class settlement bequeathed Labour. But you can't please all of the people-who-matter all of the time, and the knives are out for Rachel Reeves. Not so much in her own party, but a section of the media would like her scalp. And today, it's the BBC's turn to have a pop.

In November, Guido ran several stories picked up by the media about how Reeves had "massaged" her CV prior to entering the Commons. The right had fun exposing her claim that she worked as an economist for HBOS as bogus and delighted in reporting that Reeves was actually a manager of a retail banking complaints team. Thursday's BBC report looks into her career further, finding that Reeves also exaggerated the amount of time she worked at the Bank of England. Having previously said on several occasions that she'd worked there for a decade or the "best part of a decade", her BoE period was actually five-and-a-half years. Shorter than the six Reeves had put on her LinkedIn profile. Potentially more serious are allegations that while at HBOS she and her colleagues were accused of fiddling expenses by signing off on each other's claims. This was no idle tittle-tattle - it resulted in an investigation in which dozens of pages of evidence was submitted. This was, apparently, to "fund a lifestyle". The submission was compelling enough for the Internal Audit department to conclude there was enough evidence of "wrongdoing" and was referred to the next stage of the process. But there the investigation stalled and Reeves was not interviewed, which was at odds with procedure. Reeves left afterwards but there's no evidence this was because of the allegations. Indeed, the BBC report indicates she was not aware that a suspicious eye had been cast in her direction, and far from leaving under a cloud HBOS allowed her use of a company car for a further six months beyond the end of her contract. Also, in the interests of accuracy, it does appear that spending the bank's money on gifts for subordinates and superiors was part of the works culture. Her infractions were not that she'd done wrong per se, but that the cash was splashed a little too readily.

Considering Covid procurement and how Boris Johnson normalised institutional corruption during his tenure, Reeves palming a few gifts here and there before she was an MP is the smallest of beers. But that isn't to say this doesn't matter, because with the Chancellor it fits a pattern of behaviour. She's lied about her career, lied about political opponents, and has lied about her latest book - which is full of other people's work. Her political approach to matters economic is an exercise in deceit, and her elevation to Number 11 is off the back of the most dishonest Labour leader since ... forever. Reeves, Keir Starmer, and the rest of the lying bunch are well suited to one another. And will undoubtedly come undone together too.

Let's not kid ourselves that those having a pop at Reeves are motivated by ethics in political life. It's interesting that the BBC decided to publish their expose on the day the revised growth figures for the last quarter were published. News that was expected to be bad but were, in fact, just about positive. An attempted hit job you might say. But why when Starmer and friends have done everything to bend over backwards for capital? It's still worth noting that while most of the British ruling class are on board the Starmerist project, such as it is, there are those who are not - a nexus of the disgruntled rich that parasite off labour intensive, landed and financialised interests. For this hyper class conscious section of British capital, whose views are usually amplified by the right wing press, Reeves has committed the deadly sin of taxing unearned income. Closing inheritance loop holes and increasing employers' NI contributions have shattered the taboo of looking in this direction for revenue raisers. And conceding improvements to workers' rights, as watered down these commitments have become, opens the door to a slight tilt against capital's collective class interests. For them, at a minimum Labour need curbing to ensure they don't go any further down this road. What they perceive today as a slightly edging out of their interests is extrapolated forward to further grabs at the expense of their wealth and class power. If preventing this means destabilising a fundamentally weak government by blowing up low level misdemeanours into full on felonies, this is among the least of what they'll do.

Image Credit

The Politics of Noticing

Comrades on the left call it the Great Noticing. This is where observations and arguments made in public fora by absolutely awful beyond-the-pale left wingers and are customarily ignored (if not denounced as tinfoil hattery) by the great and the good of sensible, grown up politics. Yet there comes a point when something cannot be blanked any longer. The crisis of the Conservatives and the confessions of right wing Labour factionalists are a couple of recent examples. One where the reality became too obvious to deny and now a cottage industry has sprung up about the long-term problems of the Tories, and another when the players themselves candidly admitted to all the things they were denying with straight faces a few years ago. Naturally, the left gets no credit for being right on these things.

Another noticing is happening right now. Unsurprisingly, the over-hyping of Nigel Farage from all quarters of pundit opinion has helped put Reform in the lead in several polls. And now commentators from The Sun to mainstream political science are writing about how Keir Starmer's strategy is undermining the Labour Party.

Take Rob Ford for example. Discussing the rise of Reform, he notes that for Labour "wooing back Reform voters with red meat on Farage’s favourite issues is a strategy with low prospects of success and high risks." And what is the nature of this risk? "A populist Labour campaign for Reform votes may be the last straw for many in this socially liberal, viscerally anti-Farage group, putting at risk hundreds of marginal seats where Reform is out of the running, but where Labour needs a united progressive front to prevail next time." At the risk of tooting the old horn, the problem Rob identifies was something I identified in a 2021 special issue of Political Quarterly. A more respectable organ where polite opinion is concerned than this corner of the internet. But I'm not pretending originality. Plenty of other left wingers were making similar arguments at the time.

The question then is why now? Why are sections of establishment opinion not only waking up to Labour's counter-productive positions, but are fretting about it? On the one hand there is the government's refusal to do much to forestall the crises in state institutions. The utter indifference Labour has shown universities has become emblematic of their high-handed neglect, as they hide a lack of leadership behind vague and indefinite reviews. As the professional base of Starmerism was divided going into the election and largely stayed on board to see the Tories defeated, this is an exasperation in frustration. But more than that, Donald Trump is giving a chaotic lesson in what could be visited on the British state if a Reform/Tory coalition won office in 2028/29. Not just a flagrant disregard of the law, but the tearing up of state institutions, NGOs, the charitable sector, environmental protections and sustainable energy projects, and an evisceration of whole swathes of the economy present themselves as a real possibility. It appears significant sections of establishment opinion have learned the lessons of the Democrats' complacently dismal campaign, understand how Joe Biden's administration paved the way for Trump, what that could mean for their future and are - rightly - worried that Starmer's government is on an identical path.

This isn't to say this layer ae champing at the bit for radical solutions to deep seated problems. But they want to see the government prioritising the fixing of institutions, putting money in people's pockets, and going for a sensible economic strategy instead of prioritising the same old interests. More reforming zeal, less scapegoating of people desperate enough to brave the Channel in a dinghy in the winter. Starmerism, if it means anything, was for this layer a take over of the state by the state. In other words, professionals, experts, and technocrats motivated by public service were in charge at last. Tackling problems and presenting solutions was their jam - in marked contrast to the cynical, reckless mess that preceded them. This Labour government therefore comes as a shocking disappointment, best typified by Starmer's defence of the institutionalised acceptance of bungs.

If Labour carries on as they are doing, it won't just be the bulk of the working class that will be deserting the party, the Prime Minister's core constituency will do too. Which makes the nightmare outcome they fear the most more likely. And the blame for this would lie entirely at the feet of Starmer and his lieutenants.

Image Credit

The Sacking of Andrew Gwynne

News that Andrew Gwynne's been done for sending sexist and racist WhatsApp messages came as a surprise for those who didn't know him. It wasn't long ago that he was affecting a Mr Nice persona on social media, and that the strongest expletive he'd ever use would be "crumbs". Unfortunately for him, he was caught making red-handed making fruitier comments by the Mail on Sunday. These included looking forward to the death of a constituent complaining about her bins, dropping the F bomb, messaging antisemitic banter, and bad mouthing a local Tory council leader. And because this is the Labour Party, racist comments about Diane Abbott and sexist comments about Angela Rayner were in there too. Rightly, Gwynne has been given the heave-ho pending an investigation that will ... slap him on the wrist and readmit him because his politics are the right politics. The obsequious apology won't harm Gwynne's chances either.

Once again, the culture uncovered by the Forde report is open for all to see. And the reaction is a performative recoil of disgust by the party's establishment. Performative because they well know this is the culture they encourage, preside over, and participate in. Racism, sexism, callous attitudes, cynical language, this is the meat and gristle of informal Labour Party communication. And it has always been thus, though what was once said behind people's backs is now written down and shared among hundreds of informal groups of chummy insiders. Unhappily for Keir Starmer and the Labour right, all it takes is for some local notable or a disgruntled MP to share these contents with the likes of the Mail for more WhatsApp scandals to erupt. The more senior the messenger, the more juicier. Savvy MPs know not to do this, but when the parliamentary party is stuffed with nodding donkeys whose inflated self-opinion is in inverse proportion to their lack of nous there are plenty of liabilities for the right wing press to swoop on.

And this is a headache for party management. The forced resignation of Louise Haigh, ostensibly over a conviction from years ago that the leadership already knew about lowered the bar for accountability and ministerial resignations and sackings. IF, for instance, another round of freebie gate visited British politics and a minister was caught improperly troughing on corporate "hospitality", Starmer would be under real pressure to sack them. Or a trusted lieutenant was caught in a spotlight on other improper conduct, because the Prime Minister lacks a stock of political capital very little can be expended to defend them. Especially with polling in the doldrums and a range of backbenchers jostling to make their mark as ministers sooner rather than later. Perhaps more worryingly for Starmer, the press now know they can bring pressure to bear and cause him to act, meaning they're likely to sit on further revelations until they become strategically useful.

The government must be hoping more Gwynne-style incidents aren't going to surface. Unfortunately for them, considering how the party's culture is riddled with a hierarchy of racism and a preponderance of mouthy blow hards, chances it won't happen again are slight to non-existent.

Image Credit

The Limits of Trumpism

The symbol of chaos, originating in Michael Moorcock's Elric series, is an eight pointed star. A radial pattern with eight spokes, or arrows charging out from the centre. A symbol, almost kinetic in appearance, of advancing into everywhere at once. This is a useful heuristic for getting a handle on the seemingly mad works of Donald J Trump and his new administration. In three weeks he's shut down all public funding for medical research, stopped and then restored federal funding for welfare programmes, announced tariffs on Mexican and Canadian products before pausing them for a month, tried doing the same with Colombia before retreating, reiterated his desire to acquire Greenland, contributed to two fatal air crashes by firing air traffic control staff, destroyed American soft power by pulling the US AID programme, threatened the EU, put thousands of federal employees who were hired under diversity, equality, and inclusivity efforts on leave, and let a bunch of Elon Musk interns run riot with the federal payments system. And that doesn't cover the half of it.

Then on Tuesday, he announced the most Trump-brained scheme imaginable. Welcoming indicted war criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu to the Oval Office the president announced his scheme for lasting peace in the Middle East: expel all Palestinians from Gaza. Under this "initiative", Israeli troops would withdraw and US troops would come in to facilitate the relocation of the remaining population to neighbouring Arab states. Not having consulted the governments of these countries, and Amman making it clear that such an expulsion would mean Jordan going to war with Israel, it's fair to say the proposal hasn't landed well. White House pressers and Trump's State Department stooge, the ultra-Zionist Marco Rubio, found this too much to stomach. Any transfer would be "temporary", he said and wouldn't involve any American troops. Unfortunately for little Marco, the boss has other ideas.

On his Truth Social vanity site, Trump restated his support for removing Palestinians. Gaza should be turned over to the US after they've been resettled. And how is this going to happen? Presumably, by Israel. Which would can the pause in the massacre and the exchange of hostages and spark off another round of bloodletting. But all Trump can see are the beach front real estate opportunities, of turning the site of this century's live-streamed genocide into a tourist trap. What a moral blank of a man. And one unlikely to get his way.

It was far from intentional, but Israel's indiscriminate "revenge" for the 7th October Hamas offensive sparked off a series of events that consolidated the State Department's Middle Eastern objectives. Hamas and Hezbollah, severely weakened. Iran's military capacities diminished. Supply routes from Tehran to Beirut curtailed. Al-Assad gone. Russian bases removed. And client Arab regimes safe from the backlash against their craven acceptance of the massacre, for the moment. Trump's comment alone threaten to reverse the strong US position by uniting Arab publics and governments against America. And the only way such an operation could be achieved is by a US occupation, which would lead to hundreds if not thousands of US soldiers heading home in body bags, an even more febrile Middle East, and undoubtedly a turn away from America to China. And, for that matter, a global distancing from the US. It would be an unparalleled and grimly ludicrous failure of statecraft.

And there's the home front too. No one among the MAGA base are keen to see American lives expended in Palestine. No Republican member of Congress wants to bleed votes. And that's before we get to the humongous anti-war movement Trump's stupidity would touch off. The new White House might want to bury politics-as-usual under a blizzard of unhinged and vindictive executive orders, but not even the Donald's tangerine dream world can ignore political realities.

Following the Steve Bannan play book of "flooding the zone with shit", the into-everywhere-at-once chaos of Trump's presidency has discombobulated and demoralised swathes of bourgeois opposition that fashionably associated with "the resistance" between 2016-2020. Which itself takes advantage of the zero preparation the Democrats have undertaken for life in opposition to Trump since their miserable failure in November. But doing so much at once threatens opposition on all fronts too. Despite this, the administration cannot help itself. That having re-won the presidency by something of a sliver, different sections of the Trump coalition are going fast and hard on meeting their own individual objectives. It's every oligarch for themselves with little sense of a common project or for things like maintaining popular consent for their rule. In Musk's case, it's dismantling regulators and shaking down the state, and smashing up other agencies as red meat for the base. Presently, this behaviour has stunned domestic politics and has left America's allies/satraps aghast and consequences there will be for the US in general and Trump's presidency in particular. The retreats on tariffs and welfare cheques, and the speed at which decisions are made are demonstrative of a fundamental weakness in the Trump project. It is not time for opponents to give up or, worse, bend the knee. Amid the razzmatazz of reaction lies a regime vulnerable to elite and mass opposition. Trump and his acolytes are testing their limits, which makes now the best and potentially most decisive moment for fighting back.

Image Credit

Blue Labour and the Working Class

With another group of (unnamed) Labour MPs urging Keir Starmer to "get tough" with immigration, it seems the party is on a doomist trajectory. Doomist because moving right, as any honest observer of political history will tell you, only legitimates right wing talking points and benefit extreme right wing parties at the expense of the centre left. In our case, Reform, which is now enjoying its first polling lead since its Brexit Party incarnation topped the surveys five summers ago. But this talk has been around for a while, and so it was only a matter of time before Blue Labour made its reappearance.

Writing at the weekend, Sienna Rodgers and Tom Scotson have profiled its second coming. We learn that among its neophyte adherents are Dan Carden, formerly of the Socialist Campaign Group, and now a "left wing" supporter of the project. He's attracted to Blue Labour because of the importance it attaches to community and the place of working class institutions within it, such as trade unions. Jonathan Hinder, the Westminster group's room booking monitor says he wants to see "bold, left-wing economic policies", lower immigration, and an end to "divisive identity politics". His counterpart Jonathan Brash from Hartlepool more or less says the same thing, saying on crime and punishment and immigration he's "right-of-centre". But again, he wants "big government" and more intervention to help working class people.

How have these chaps stood up for our class during this parliament so far? They refrained from rebelling over the child benefit cap, nor could they even bring themselves to sign an Early Day Motion on the subject. No doubt they've sagely nodded along to older people on their doorsteps moaning about immigration. But they were less inclined to hear their views on scrapping the Winter Fuel Allowance. Precisely none of our champions of the working class so much as abstained.

Two of them are not reticent about stirring up division. Hinder, for example, has made his name known as a transphobe. And David Smith, the fourth in the new Blue Labour quartet, got himself in the papers for playing beggar-thy-neighbour politics with Scotland. This is not down to individual foibles, but is a characteristic of Blue Labour behaviour. When its leading light Jon Cruddas was in the Commons, for all his "economic radicalism" he was hardly known as a doughty defender of trade unions or sticking up for working class people. Though apprenticed to him at one point was Morgan McSweeney who, along with Keir Starmer, have done more to gut the Labour Party of working class representation and working class politics than Tony Blair ever managed. The same can be said of Maurice Glasman, the "founder", who had absolutely nothing to say about the economic radicalism of the Corbyn years (or much else for that matter), only to resurface with a 2022 book on Blue Labour that was almost as thin as the ideas it contained.

It doesn't matter how many words Blue Labour has crafted, their record says a great deal more. Glasman was at Trump's inauguration a couple of weeks ago hobbing and nobbing with GOP luminaries. The well-known Twitter troll Paul Embery always had more time for attacking anti-racist, anti-sexist, and environmental initiatives instead of promoting the solidarity you'd have thought would come naturally to a trade union official. The examples are legion. At best, Blue Labour could be described as a manifestation of negative working class politics, but it's worse than that. It's telling that Blue Labour's origin as a semi-coherent body of thought emerged ... from a series of seminars involving academics, politicians, and policy wonks. As relayed in Rowenna Davis's semi-official history, Tangled Up in Blue. Far from being an expression of working class politics, Blue Labour is based on a simulacrum of what it means to be working class. A middle class idea of the lower orders as blunt and bigoted. Something that reflects their own prejudices.

Blue Labour is an effort at trying to construct an identity politics of our class as a subaltern class. It gains ground in elite circles because it has enough truthiness to them, even though the realities of class today are far different from their narrow imaginings. But there's more to it than prejudice. There is the political utility. As a party of the establishment, Labour has to mobilise a loyal constituency for elections. But the danger of being a party whose roots are in the workers' movement is this might go too far and politicise workers as independent political actors conscious and capable of acting in their own interests. Hence one reason why Corbynism had to be shut down - it pushed at the limits of Labourism and its traditional role as the political cap on and manager of the labour movement. Starmerism response to this problem is interpellating its support as "working people", a political fiction they want voters to fit into. A signal they would respond to with a "yes, that's me" but not mobilising them beyond that because any other political content is evacuated. Blue Labour's SW1 caricature of the working class is an effort at the same. It pretends salt-of-the-earth authenticity and radicalism, while appropriating a conservative politics of division to arrest solidarity and hamper the consciousness of collective class interests. It's not for nothing that women, ethnic and sexual minorities are absent from their cynically drawn picture of class. However, the reason why Blue Labour hasn't taken off - yet - is because its crudity if off-putting to other sections of the party, and it's surplus to requirements right now.

That might not always be the case, but there's one thing we can be sure of. The greater Labour invests in a Blue Labour strategy, the less successful they will be and the faster they bury their chances of winning the next election.

Image Credit

Revisiting Brexit and Corbynism

While we're on the subject of marking Brexit's five year anniversary, an interesting story appeared in The Times on Friday night. We learn that the self-proclaimed genius of Brexit, Dominic Cummings, had a line into Jeremy Corbyn's inner circle during the first half of 2019 - when the UK's exit from the European Union was in the balance. Contacting former Corbyn spox Matt Zarb-Cousin, Cummings went out for dinner with him and James Schneider, then in the leader's office, and laid out Labour's path to victory. I.e. Rescue Theresa May's Brexit deal by whipping the PLP in favour of it, and sit back and watch the fireworks as the hardcore remainers in Labour - who were mostly opposed to Corbyn's leadership - deflated and the Tories irredeemably split for years to come. As we know, this was not to be. May was forced to resign, Boris Johnson became Prime Minister under the slogan "Get Brexit Done", and he won a crushing victory on that basis.

The piece argues that Cummings had seen the focus group data for the Midlands and what trouble Labour were storing up for themselves if they refused to go along with Brexit. But, by the same token, Get Brexit Done voters would look afresh at Corbyn and support Labour on that basis. Was this is a missed opportunity? I don't think so.

The problem was that by this point - early 2019 - Labour was split on Brexit and had become entrenched. The big mistake took place two years earlier when Corbyn was basking in the glow of Labour's unexpected surge in the polls and the torpedoing of May's Commons majority. That was the moment for not just getting through mandatory reselection for all Labour MPs and making the left's revolution permanent in the party's structures, but to also consolidate the position around leaving the European Union. Making it clear this was the line to be held, was part of why Labour performed so well in the election, and that the party would be developing its own negotiating position on the basis of the kind of Brexit deal that was least damaging. And, crucially, our class wouldn't pick up the bill for Dave's folly. After 2017's conference season, and particularly following the Skripal poisonings in early 2018, sections of the Labour right latched on to the second referendum position as a means of undermining Corbyn's leadership and winning back control of the party.

This isn't to say everyone who took this position were so motivated. At the time, it was obvious to some that the second referendum campaigns were not primarily motivated by campaigning for a second referendum. The vast majority of those turning up to the huge pro-EU marches were entirely genuine in their desires, which in the main was a mix of liberal internationalism and well-founded fears for the economic and political consequences of leaving. The problem was that not only was the majority of Labour's membership aligned with these views, so was the bulk of the party's base. There was a tension then between about two-thirds of Labour's constituency, and the position of the leadership which remained signed up to seeing Brexit done. It would have been remiss in light of the Labour right's eternal quest against the left not to have employed this to drive a wedge between the leadership on the one hand, and the membership and its support in the country on the other.

This is something few if any Labour's mid-late 2019 opponents of the second referendum appreciate, unfortunately. The EU elections that the UK had to take part in that summer annihilated the Tories, but dealt Labour a comprehensive drubbing too. Its constituency was prised apart by the Liberal Democrats and Greens on the one hand, and to the Brexit Party on the other. The last hurt the Tories the most, and so when Johnson came to office his strategy was clear. Champion the ending of the political paralysis by sorting Brexit once and for all, and he set about demonstrating his single-mindedness of purpose. Labour needed to bring its coalition together too, but theirs was a more difficult task. The hard remain positioning of the Lib Dems and Greens and firmed up enough support that were never going to vote for any party that kept Brexit on the table. But more numerous than this relative sliver were Labour leavers and who, as we saw, punished their party in significant numbers by either voting Tory or the Brexit Party - letting some Tories sneak through the middle.

The Labour leadership's difficulty was that if by this stage they had taken Cummings's advice, a much greater catastrophe would likely have been in the offing. Yes, sure, the Labour leavers by and large might have stayed on board. But with Brexit through, why would the Tories have split? We saw Johnson easily dispose of his remain-supporting back benchers prior to the election, and there's little suggesting they would have been in a stronger position had Labour whipped the PLP to support May's deal. No, it was much more likely that Labour would have split. More MPs would have walked out of the parliamentary party, finding succour with Change UK (remember them?) or the Lib Dems. But even more damaging would have been a likely mass desertion of Labour's support. The battlelines were drawn by 2019. Labour could only choose a second referendum or Brexit and all the consequences that flowed from that. Despite Corbyn's best efforts, there was no third way.

Returning to that dinner, what Cummings was pointing to on the menu was not salvation and victory, but the sort of ruin Labour experienced in Scotland in 2015. A terrible gutting defeat that might have put the party's existence as the Tories' primary competitor in jeopardy, and rejuvenated the Lib Dems far beyond the renaissance they enjoyed last year. In the end, because of the way politics played out between the summer of 2017 and the winter of 2019, the terrible result inflicted on Labour was, in all likelihood, the least worst outcome.

Image Credit

New Left Media February 2025

February is here! And would you Adam and Eve it, enough new left media projects have made themselves known to me to warrant another update. Keep them coming! As ever, their featuring here doesn't necessarily mean an endorsement of content. Just in case you were wondering.

1. In Solidarity (Podcast) (Bluesky)

2. The Left Lane (Blog)

3. The Good Fight (Blog) (Bluesky)

4. What Can We Do? (Blog) (Bluesky)

If you know of any new(ish) blogs, podcasts, channels, Facebook pages, resources, spin offs from existing projects, campaign websites or whatever that haven't featured before then drop me a line via the comments, email, Bluesky, Facebook, or Twitter. Please note I'm looking for new media that has started within the last 12 months, give or take. The round up appears hereabouts when there are enough new entrants to justify a post!

Image Credit