Five Most Popular Posts in January

Where has January gone? Seems five minutes since we bid adieu to 2020 and we're already a month in. Well, slave to the calendar as always here are the five biggest hitters since the beginning of the year.

1. The Tory Food Parcel Scam
2. Ten Points on Trump's Attempted Coup
3. Covid is Killing Britons Faster than WWII
4. Why is Labour Ignoring the Teaching Unions?
5. A Sociology of Tory Covid Short-Termism

Not a bad month on the posting front, and the charts aren't dominated by critical Keir studies. Praise be! The latest Tory outsourcing outrage commanded proceedings by a country mile, but doing very respectably in the click through scores was my quick meditation on Trump's inept and chaotic coup, followed by my even briefer effort looking at some simple maths about Covid. Labour did have to make the list. It is the law, after all, and on this occasion it was how Keir Starmer decided to spurn the teaching unions. A practice much in common with Blair and Brown if you want some historical context. Bring up the rear we have a gander at the latest short-termist rubbish coming from the government. To be sure, few world leaders have proven greater friends to Coronavirus than Boris Johnson.

Pleasingly, the numbers coming through the doors this month are at their highest since December 2019. If it wasn't for le book and I knocked out a few more posts it would have got even higher. Is this good fortune because I've written on stuff people want to read about, or the algorithmic gods are in a less capricious mood, or a combination of both, or something else? Whatevs, here's to hoping this continues (through we're still off the 200,000/month peaks of mid-2017).

Doling out second chances this month? Hmmm. Let's have this note on Starmerism and Fabianism. A theme I can see myself belabouring a lot between now and the end of the year.

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Book Update

It's rare for the blog to go a couple of days without passing comment. And so I feel duty bound to explain myself.

As readers may or may not know I've been writing a book about your friends and mine, the Conservative Party. This time last year it existed as a series of fragmentary notes, a plan, and a badly written and unstructured couple of chapters reviewing literature on the Tories and setting out the thesis. I.e. The Tories are in long-term decline and the recent uptick in the party's electoral fortunes, counterintuitively, are symptomatic of this process.

A year on the book has been and visited the editors and the second edit is now almost complete. What remains to be done are the following,

1. Redoing the conclusion (the first draft was a series of bullet points and notes).

2. Put together a post script on the Tory handling of the Coronavirus pandemic.

3. Go back and renovate the introduction for the third time. Got to make sure everything lines up properly.

4. Return to bits and pieces of the book. Have been umming and ahhing about a couple of tables. I know political scientists like them but this is a work of militant political science!

Deadline is Wednesday evening and still have busy day job to deal with, but it is entirely doable and the date will be met. It does mean some blogging might be sacrificed, as it has for the last fortnight. So I guess this is a roundabout way of asking for further forebearance as the beastie undergoes a few more days of assembly.

As for writing the book itself, it's been an interesting process. I plan doing a writing on writing piece later in the year. Creativity is bound up with ideologies and illusios of talent and singular specialism, and socialist writers should do their best to prick its bubble and demystify the lot.

And at the risk of starting a cheeky/tedious trend of my always banging on about the book, provided we're not smited down nor the EU demands the diversion of pulp supplies to the continent publication is this September in time for party conference season. It's working name is Falling Down, but this might change. A word of warning, having got this almost out the way I might have acquired a taste for book writing ...

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Why Isn't Keir Starmer 20 Points Ahead?

I'm about to extend Keir Starmer a courtesy the liberals, the Blairist, and the right wingers never afforded Jeremy Corbyn. What are the forces in play sustaining the logjam in the polls? In the last four days DeltaPoll put the Tories on 41% and Labour on 39%. Redfield split the difference less favourably, with the Tories enjoying 42% versus Labour's 37%. And then, on Thursday, a glint of light. YouGov reported Labour on 41% and the Tories down to 37%. The performance of the two parties have bobbed up and down like this since mid-Autumn, despite the odd Tory calamity and the 100,000 Covid dead. Labour has not landed a knock out blow, and the Tories have kept their jealously guarded authority together.

How then, how can it be we're still in this position. What are the drivers keeping the bulk of Tory voters onside? First, we have to consider the pandemic itself. Recalling polling last March, the Tories were powering ahead on 56%(!) just as the lockdown came in to force. Labour languished on just 26%. Some was undoubtedly down to the Corbyn factor. I.e. He was a lameduck leader as the contest for his successor played out, but more of it was thanks to the special political circumstances of the moment. Covid-19 was new and largely unknown, and to ward it off many millions did not venture out of their homes for weeks. In this novel emergency, millions turned to the only institution capable of organising the public health strategies and providing the material for dealing with it. The state, in other words. Or more precisely, the government. In a national emergency, many people rallied round and backed the Tories as the expression of the collective effort against the disease. Keir Starmer for his part was very mindful of this and, to his mind, justified his cautious approach at the beginning of this and ever since.

Ridiculous poll leads can't last forever, and as the novelty of the crisis faded into the new normal those Tory numbers came sliding down to where they are now. But not for everyone. There are voters, many of whom might have "lent" their ballots to get Brexit done, who are sticking with the Tories precisely because they are the government during this moment of existential angst. These are also the people the strategic geniuses in the leader's office want to win over by alienating leftwing voters in safe Labour seats in the big cities.

Then there is the inescapable fact of politics these last six years: how economic polarisation has led to political polarisation. On the one hand, the young disproportionately suffer low pay, precarious jobs, few opportunities for career advancement, a lifetime of renting, poor social security entitlements, and growing anger at a government putting them at the sharp end of the Covid crisis. Against them are the majority of the old and retired. They enjoy secure pensions, are more likely to own property (and a significant number own more than one), and know they benefit from housing supply shortages and the private rental market. Thanks to their social location, life is riddled with ontological anxieties. From their point of view, the Tories have looked after them since the triple lock on pensions was introduced, they've delivered Brexit at their behest, they keep the young in their (disadvantaged) place and aren't averse to giving their favourite scapegoats a good hiding, and are prioritising them for Covid vaccinations. Because the government has ensured these demographics are sheltered from the economic consequences of the pandemic and Brexit, the more likely they'll swallow the Tory line that people are primarily to blame for the catastrophe than Boris Johnson. Because Tory framing has become their framing, the clear age profile to Covid fatalities isn't a failure of government. It's a matter of rotten luck.

These are the two key reasons - loyalty in a crisis, and the fact the Tories put the interests of their core constituents before public health goes some way to explain why we are where we are. But this is where we hit an interesting anomaly. Love or loathe Jeremy Corbyn, everyone can agree he was a polarising figure. The horrendous demonology purposely and cynically concocted by right wing Labour, the Tories and their press helpers wound up and terrified their supporters, swing voters, and soft Labour voters of leave and remain persuasions. The consequences were a firming up of the Tory voter coalition and exacerbating divisions among their opponents. A casebook example of divide and rule in a liberal democracy.

Yet, with Keir Starmer matters are very different. He faces a government much worse than the fag end of Dave and Osborne, the Theresa May interlude, and even the pre-Covid Boris Johnson period. He has, so far, managed to play the media game in a conventional way and they've proven quite supportive. He doesn't face the daily character assassinations hurled at his predecessor. And, according to polling done on his leadership - further confirmed by phone banking Labour across the seats lost in 2019 - is that Keir is liked, or at the very least is tolerated more than most politicians. His esteem is certainly higher than Johnson's, for one. Jeremy Corbyn was significantly weighed down by an accumulation of disadvantages. Keir Starmer, on the other hand, travels light. The worst he's had to deal with yet are a few grumbles.

Still, the Tory position remains, and Labour's poll leads are episodic and fleeting. Granting these benign circumstances for an opposition, the conclusion is inescapable. While a 20 point lead is impossible, the lack of leadership shown by Keir Starmer, his refusal to contest the rules of the game and, at every step, either tailing the government when he wants to look statesmanlike, or tailing SAGE or Marcus Rashford when he wants to be critical, is helping perpetuate the polling deadlock. To the public who don't follow politics, he's merely an empty suit, someone avoiding self-definition in the hope that hopes can be projected onto his vacant profile. Which is exactly where the Tories want him. If he won't define himself, Johnson will do it for him.

Here is your anomaly. Wider polarisation is keeping the Tory coalition together. And it's aided and abetted by a milquetoast opposition unwilling or unable to say boo to a goose.

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ContraPoints on JK Rowling

She's back with a 90 minute (90 minute!) video essay on JK Rowling. Enjoy!

Timidity as Clever-Clever Politics

There's a hiss in the background. It's a wee one, but when amplified a discerning listener might catch a few snatched whispers. Hurried, furtive conversations. Maybe even a grumble and a growl. It's all very behind the scenes, and no one wants to be identified as a troublemaker, but if something isn't done a quiet complaint unaddressed can only grow louder, more assertive, more cacophonous. The quiet chat doing the rounds among centrist Labour and the soft left concerns the beloved leader, and it condenses into one troubling question. When is Keir Starmer going to start showing some leadership? This is a theme well trod around the left, not least in these parts, but they're intruding into the mainstream. Over in Graun land, Gaby Hinsliff broke the taboo and scribbled down some gentle criticisms. And from the weekend, professional working class whisperer John Harris ventured into print on a similar theme.

John's proposition is a simple one. Why is Labour so quiet when the problems of our age are loudly demanding solutions? He spends his article kicking the ball around the houses, noting the stark inequalities the pandemic has exposed, the miserable state of, well, the state after decades of hollowing out and privatisations. He notes the most significant defeats inflicted on the government are thanks to "wider culture" (i.e. the savvy hand played by Marcus Rashford). Meanwhile Labour's campaign, if it can be called that, of stopping the government cutting Universal Credit is suggestive of tailing the public mood against bashing the poor than making political weather in its own right. As John rightly argues, calling the Tories incompetent won't fly once tens of millions are vaccinated in the next four or five months, and "if a moment of crisis, institutional failure and rising despair is not a time to think big, when will be?" Quite.

As we know from the Starmerist operation so far, Keir is only decisive when he thinks the situation is fully under control: in the Labour Party. It just doesn't exist outside. Criticisms of Boris Johnson bang on about incompetence, with the minor issue of a hundred thousand Covid dead and corrupt tenders for Coronavirus government contracts skipping over the surface of a pond with barely a ripple. There is no sharpness, no bite to his criticisms. Just a plod through Johnson's distortion/ignorance of the facts that hardly inspires interest when PMQ snippets are shown on the evening news. Yes, polls have recovered a bit and people might like him more than Jeremy Corbyn, but then again the press and politics programming aren't inviting their audiences to vent themselves at concocted and confected outrages every other day.

Okay, so Keir is insipid. This we know. And by "we", this means the soft left, and the bulk of the centre and the right of the party too. But why? His timidity has a recent political pedigree in the custom and practice of the Labour establishment. Long-time party watchers know Ed Miliband's leadership was sclerotic and ultra-cautious, determined not to commit itself to policy positions in the first two years of his election. Not getting weighed down by position-takings would, theoretically, allow Labour to offer nimble opposition and allow Ed to establish himself in the popular imagination as a smiter of Tory failure. Unfortunately, this evacuation of policy was accompanied by an estrangement from politics. The tedious "too far and too fast" soundbite used to criticise Tory cuts wasn't oppositional because it didn't contest the fundamentals. And by accepting their parameters of the debate, that cuts were "necessary", Dave could carry on presenting the Tories as the only party capable of making tough choices. It didn't matter that Ed Miliband frequently posted handsome poll leade, including double-digit advantages, because he didn't establish himself in political terms from the off the Tories did it for him.

Ed's approach didn't fall from the sky. It was the template that got The Master himself into office. Tony Blair wasn't sparing of John Major at the dispatch box, but Labour in 1994 was in a much better position than Labour in 2021. Blair not only inherited a huge lead over the Tories from John Smith, but the Tories themselves had to all intents and purposes disintegrated. Government authority was destroyed by the triple shocker of Black Wednesday, the 1992 pits closure programme, and VAT on fuel, and a poisonous cocktail of incompetence, cruelty and sleaze kept reminding the public how decrepit and dysfunctional they had become. Labour, if it wished, could have cruised into office. Yet what is not well remembered was how petrified Blair was of the party's shadow. Having drawn the conclusion Labour kept losing because any programme resembling, well, Labourism was well to the left of the electorate, the whole lot got ditched. Stick to Tory spending plans, sound tough on crime and determined on education and, for goodness sake, don't say socialism. Here was the Blairist passport to office. His was less a programme and more a capitulation, a surrender so abject not only did Labour accept the Thatcherite settlement, but actively deepened it. But dumping Labourist politics and stealing Tory clothes won elections, so it was worth it, right?

We've seen Starmerism, as much as it does have some substance, gravitate back to consensus positions on the security services and, most ruinously, on Coronavirus itself. Its miserable failure to even back the teaching unions over a national lockdown, despite having majority public support is cowardice, but entirely what one would expect if the "SLT" were following the politics dot-to-dot handed down from Ed Miliband and Tony Blair.

Tell has been heard that Keir himself is starting to get concerned about these grumbles and wants to be seen standing for something, as if he's not the master of his own destiny. But this is dangerous territory for him. It requires appearing on one side of an issue, which makes appearing all things to all people - Keir's default - impossible. There are plenty of wedge issues Labour has to come down on if it wants to keep its core support, but so far there is little to no inkling Keir or his lieutenants have a clue about the character of Labour's base nor the sort of alliance it must build to win elections. With whispers growing to the level of background noise and establishment liberals fretting openly, this is pressure Keir cannot ignore. Sooner rather than later he's going to have start doing the politics, or the politics are going to do him.

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Alien Interlude

Now for something a little off the beaten track.



Science geeks, astronomy types, and UFO enthusiasts allowed a frisson of excitement to shudder through the collective consiousness as news leaked about a possible artificial signal coming our way from the direction of Proxima Centauri. The closest star to our solar system, for those who don't follow such things. The podcast above talks about the science of the signal (which, in all truth, will probably turn out to be your dad's microwave) and other matters of interest. If you're wondering how humans might react to confirmation of an alien civilisation, then this item from the archives might assuage your curiosity.

A Note on Ruthlessness

Critique Keir Starmer. Mock his pleading patriotism. Laugh at him and call him Keith (Kieth), but comrades should pay attention and learn from his leadership in one crucial aspect: his handling of Labour's internal politics. As NEC member Mish Rahman reported earlier, Keir means to and, well, effectively has stitched up parliamentary selections. The executive voted through a paper that will grant David Evans, the general secretary (and unelected party employee) the right to refuse a candidate selected by a constituency party if he determines they're unsuitable because they don't meet the right standards. A vote for any of these decisions to be referred to the NEC also fell.

You can imagine the press furore and the whingeing of the parliamentary party if Jeremy Corbyn had bounced the NEC into conferring this power on Jennie Formby. In fact, that doesn't sound too much of a bad idea ... But we don't have to imagine. In March 2018 the ridiculous Owen Smith got the heave ho from the front bench for peddling his own line and generally being disagreeable. The response? Outrage and the cry of "this is a terrible Stalinist purge!". Your reminder, as if it needs repeating, that there is no such thing as a point of principle where the Labour right are concerned. Everything is a factional football for them. Everything.

The lesson? Well, Keir might be as far from Trotskyism as you can get (though not as far as some ex-Trot fellow travellers of the Trilateral Commission), but he certainly remembered something from the branch lead offs on permanent revolution. Not a doctrine for constantly fermenting revolution and storming heaven, as pretended by Trotsky's Stalinist nemesis, it is the simple insight that if workers seize power they'd better organise to keep it by moving to expropriate the property of the capitalist class, disarm the soldiery of the bourgeois state, clear out the old bureaucrats, etc. In other words, making the revolution permanent. This is exactly what Corbyn didn't do and, arguably, refused to do. There were opportunities to break the hold of the parliamentary party on Labour and enshrine the sovereignty of the membership, most crucially in 2018 when the leadership manoeuvred at conference to defeat a mandatory reselection motion and go for the compromise mess of a reformed trigger ballot. There was the opportunity to decisively tilt the balance of forces in the party, but it was not taken up. And here we are.

Keir is not making the same mistake. He's got his majority on the NEC. The press aren't causing him grief. The left are large, but contained. And nothing (yet) has come of his suspension of Corbyn from the PLP. And what's the cost of anti-democratic shenanigans. A few thousand resignations by leftists and some moaning on Twitter? Big deal. So why not go for a power grab at a moment of oppositional weakness and where, seemingly, the stars are aligning. From Keir's point of view of recasting Labour in his bland, managerial image, he'd be stupid not to. His writ rules the roost, and for all his talk of "unity" the apparatus is in place to screen out leftwingers selected to run in any upcoming by-elections and, of course, the general election itself. Perhaps not a few sitting MPs might also find themselves out on their ear for lacking the required "probity".

Despair? Absolutely not. This can be turned over and reversed by party conference. The "SLT" can ignore the party on matters of policy, as it always has done, but not when it comes to conference rulings on how the party should organise itself. Momentum has launched its policy primary with a view to pushing for positions at 2021 conference. Organising against the Evans veto alongside measures aimed at reversing the deadening creep of Starmerist authoritarianism seems like an entirely appropriate thing Momentum and the rest of the left should be pushing for. If the lesson from Keir is he's serious about power, at least where machinations in the Labour Party are concerned, then the obvious, the only worthwhile response from the left is we should be too and struggle with as much determination. And, yes, ruthlessness.

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Starmerism and Fabianism

I know any other leader would be 20 points head of the Tories by now, but what do traditional elements of the centre left establishment think of Keir Starmer's performance? As if answering this rarely-asked question, the Fabian Society's Andrew Harrop has been kind to offer this hottake. Writing following the first Fabian conference in years where the centre and the right are back in charge of the party, it seems an aposite time for them to reflect on the "achievements" thus far and where Keir Starmer looks like he's going.

First, we hear Andrew's praise for the shadow cabinet as it demonstrated a "striking unity of purpose and tone", and this came through in contributions that were "values-driven but with a practical bent". This showed a middle way (not a third way) between "the rudderless managerialism of new Labour, when at its most centrist, and the utopian excesses of the party’s recent pipedreams." Anyone playing centrist bingo as they read the piece can cross off the unironic deployment of "team of grown-ups", and thankfully we learn they're determined about winning power. Because, in case you didn't know, Labour has to win elections. Apparently, policy and pronouncements are judged by rebuilding relationships with voters (funny way of showing it), and now Labour understands the coalition of voters it has to assemble. "There was much talk of reconnecting with lost working-class seats, but not at the expense of the party’s values or urban voters", he breathlessly writes. It's going to take more than speeches with Union Jack bunting and the assumption the left have nowhere to go, I'm afraid. Summing up, Andrew says "with a frontbench team focused on unity, competence, ambition and electability the building blocks for a return to power are there."

To be honest, I'd have been surprised had Andrew written anything other than superlatives. Not only are more than half of the shadcab members Fabians and regular contributors to the magazine and quarterly pamphlets, there are congruences and alignments between the Society and "Starmerism", which is likely to mean the "world's oldest think tank" are the last people about to put the boot in. There are two close affinities they share which, to all intents and purposes, annexes Starmerism to the Fabian tradition rather than having an identity of its own, apart from media shorthand. For one, both are entirely patrician. They are the elites, they have the seats in the Commons, and once in government they're the ones who are going to enact change. No one doubts the importance of state power, least of all the right, but the Fabians actively foreswear anything but the constitutionalist road. Even though (some forms of) extra parliamentary activity is right and proper in the most stuffy political theory, there is no room for this in the Fabian tradition. The Labour Party exists to elect the enlightened reformers who are going to make nice policies, and the labour movement exists to support the Labour Party - an aristocratic inversion of socialist politics if there ever was one. Set in its context, Keir's preference for management consultants to advise on party organisation, the internal authoritarianism of banning debates and suspending constituency officers, and his inability to challenge what is and isn't permitted in discussing Coronavirus is all of a piece stamped with Fabian Society branding.

The second issue is inseparable from the first: the absence of hegemony. Because there's no room in Fabianism for struggle other than over the ballot box, Gramsci is a revelation and an abomination to such politics. There might be lip service paid to aligning Labour with the culture of voters, which is what we're hamfistedly seeing with all the Blue Labour crap, but there is no conception of a class politics (beyond their own doxa of unthought, middle class and managerialist assumptions), let alone trying to build an alliance on the basis of our interests necessitating a full spectrum struggle in the workplaces, in the communities, and in wider culture. The job is to present policies, look good in the media, and get people to vote for the party. Granted the absolute privilege this has in the Fabian imagination, it's hardly revelatory they lay the blame for Labour's 2019 defeat on the policy menu in the manifesto than the substantive other factors. Hence Keir's preference for process criticisms at Prime Minister's Questions, the relentless focus on critiquing "incompetence" over arguing the politics, and the shameless tailing of Marcus Rashford on school meals are all sympomatic of a non-Gramscian approach to politics. Indeed it's an interesting paradox of the Fabian tradition that for all its stress on elite decision-making and getting the enlightened few into the cockpit of government how it fights shy of the business of political leadership.

It is, of course, possible Labour could win an election on this basis. It's also possible the muscular centrism promised by the Biden administration might find an echo in the barely noticeable twitching of the shadow cabinet. But the problem with Fabianism, and by the practice of Starmerism seen these last nine months, is it privileges a very narrow range of activity. Where Keir Starmer is proving pro-active is in internal party struggles, but the end result is a party retreating from what nourishes it culminating in an empty vessel destined for a buffeting by the winds and random squalls of politics. Sticking to Fabianism is, obviously, what Keir finds comfortable, but for all the talk of seriousness and wanting to win power he is, unknowingly, plodding along the road least likely to get the party there.

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Donald Trump's Last Speech

Begins at 39:15.



TR;DW: More lies and bullshit, no sympathy for the 400,000 dead, "vets are beautiful", and a pledge to return in "some form".

A Party for Management Consultants

Chatting to a stats guy at a meeting down Stoke Council's Civic Centre many years ago, we got round to the subject of consultants. This was always a hot button topic for the local authority. There seemed an unerring coincidence between the appointment of new executive-level officers and the consultantation firms who were subsequently contracted in to do some work. And this was in the thick of the government's swingeing cuts to local government where hiring consultants was always politically problematic. To cut the story short, said stats guys said all one group did for a £15k job were tap him up for some figures in the Council's database and re-present them in a PowerPoint to the chief officers. Nice work if you can get it.

Interesting then when news filtered out about Labour's decision to hire management consultants to oversee 'Organise to Win 2024', a review of party structures and what organisation steps it will take to, well, win the 2024 general election. A bit strange for the self-styled election winning specialists to put one of their core competencies out to tender, but perhaps not when politics is just managerialism to these people. As for the consultants themselves, Q5 bill themselves as a "nimble" business who offer bespoke solutions for the challenges facing business. Or, as they put it, they are "award-winning experts in organisation change" and try hooking in potential customers with "deep in the Q5 DNA, was the assurance that each project would bring change that really sticks." As an example of their wares, this report on the "connective organisation" - what business has to look like in the 2020s to survive and thrive - is freely available. Call me a miserable old grumble, but there doesn't appear anything in here that post-Fordist and Italian autonomist writers weren't scribbling about in the 1980s and early 90s. I suppose yesterday's insights can look profound with a few zippy slides and the heavy deployment of management speak, particularly among Labour Party tops ignorant of the most elementary social theory.

Let's strip away the bullshit and call Q5 what they are: restructure specialists. And, readers might be interested to learn, their resume lists them as previously working with the Home Office at some unspecified point in time. Were they called in to ease the passage of cuts to that department? It certainly wasn't for helping Priti Patel develop a sensitive ear to the needs of the "stakeholders". And so what are they for? What possibly can their review of the Labour Party tell the leadership that neither the critical No Holding Back nor the soft soapy Labour Together reports were able to?

It's difficult to say, because the remit of the Organise to Win review is not public. We can only piece it together from clues, such as Labour's job advert for Executive Director - Elections and Field Delivery. This is interesting because not only does this job require "Leadership of Field and elections centric function" (what language is this?) but also responsibility for "delivering the transformation programme needed to win the 2024 General Election (Organise to Win 2024)." Additional to the usual gubbins about "strategic direction" and "building an organising culture", we learn the focus of O2W (as it is officially christened) is the implementation of the review, "focusing on how data is used and communicated across the organisation to deliver the operational objectives." Is that it? Seriously? Party full-timers, MPs bag carriers, and constituency officials were getting this sort of stuff fed to them 10 years ago. Why reinvent the wheel when most of these people are still in the party, still tilt more to the right (and so from Keir Starmer's perspective, are "safe"), and have actual campaigning experience? Or even the Labour leader could take a chance and speak to current and ex-Momentum cadre, who know a thing or two about using data to aid campaigning. Doesn't the party already possess the wit, knowledge, and resource to do this itself?

Which begs the question. Why? It might be tempting to search for some sort of family link or cronyism to provide an explanation for why the Labour leadership, or the "Senior Leadership Team" as they now style themselves, are wasting yet more members' money, but this is not it. The "SLT" are approaching the institutional disadvantages Labour suffers vis a vis the Tories' considerable advantages as a managerial as opposed to a political problem. Knowing David Evans's circulation in the strategy and comms universe, and Keir Starmer's previous life as the boss of the Crown Prosecution Service, the preference for organisational solutions would appear natural to them. Labour is a severely dysfunctional outfit in which senior employees have a habit of going off-piste if they don't like the leader. It is also a largely voluntary organisation peopled by, well, people who happen to have minds of their own. And as we saw in 2019 and 2017, the actual party organisation of the election was a complete mess with little strategic allocation of resources, if not actual sabotage. Why a gunslinging firm of hip consultants are attractive to Keir and chums is how they can propose recommendations independently of political pressure and without factional interference. Save the factional interference and preconceptions of the SLT, of course. There won't be any challenges to heirarchical thinking here.

The second is the messaging Q5's hire sends out to the consultation community. One of the ways New Labour were able to, for a time, bind some sections of capital to their fate was by building on John Major's marketisation of public service provision and use the Treasury's largesse to buy loyalty through juicy procurement and public-private partnership contracts. A practice the Tories have happily carried on, gifting us, among other things, the disasters of test and trace and the meagre food parcels. Getting the consultants in to effectively determine the vote-catching function of the Labour Party signals to the market that under a Keir Starmer government, there will still be plenty of opportunities for them. Perhaps it might encourage some to play nice and sign a few round robin letters when the time comes. As with Keir's courting of the media, it's about sending a business as usual message.

The obvious problem is you can't solve political problems by organisational means. Improving on a data-driven infrastructure is a must for any modern party, but if "campaigning" is defined in narrow, voter ID terms designed for data collection, it woefully falls short. If the eventual O2W recommendations are imposed, which they will be, in a top down fashion, it will surely alienate members, turn activists off, and canvassing teams will be stretched. Just like the old times. And even worse if this comes bound up with a managerial as opposed to a political vision, and one in which the left are considered a matter of no consequence, this is going to cause serious problems and put torpedoes in the water pointing at Labour's electoral hopes.

Relying on management consultants shows yet again the way Labour under Keir Starmer is heading. And that direction is away from the interests of our movement, of working people and their families, and most problematic for him, in a direction prgressively further from victory.

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