As readers know, this is exactly what Starmer has done. In a widely trailed interview for the FT, he hopes some of Tony Blair's 1990s star power can, via a process of spooky entanglement at a distance, rub off on him. Or perhaps not. Blair isn't about to win popularity contests (except, perhaps among the shrinking Labour membership), and if the average punter is asked about his legacy the response won't be the tractor production figures of PFI hospitals, PFI fire stations, PFI schools, and PFI community centres, it will be Iraq. Which some of us with memories might recall wasn't favoured by the public, and - as forecast in advance - would result in a tragedy that still hasn't played itself out to this day. That's what Blair is associated with outside the rarefied world of the peculiar fan club among parliamentarians, centrist hacks, and strange Labour Party people.
Why celebrate Blair then? It's doubtful Starmer would have taken this tack in a Mirror interview, and that's because of the audience he has in mind. Since elected the Labour leader has enjoyed the most benign press. Arguably, the right wing tabloids were rougher on Blair during his rise. And this is because he's accepted their rules of the game. Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn pushed back against and defied the papers, and were duly taken apart by them. Starmer's reward for accepting their gatekeeping is uncritical commentary and soft interviews. This one for the FT is a direct address to Britain's bosses (it is their house journal, after all), and he's told them under his watch Labour will be a safe pair of hands. Yes, there will be more Keynes-lite economics to fix the country's glaring problems, and a bone might have to be thrown to the unions to partially redress the imbalance of power in workplaces. But that's as far as it will go. Not as overtly pro-market as New Labour, the frequent attempts to outflank the Tories from the right and Starmer's well-trodden authoritarianism are all there to reassure Britain's hyper conscious ruling class that their interests can be entrusted to him.
Which brings us to one of the more irritating features of the grown ups in the room: their ceaseless talking down of Labour, telling everyone who listens how shit it is. Starmer did the same in his interview, attacking the party's own membership for focusing on internal issues (unlike him to be so rude about Labour First, and after all they've done for him too) and its supporters have to "get real". They're not the ones thinking headlines praising Blair are a good idea, Keir. Angela Rayner went through the same motions last week as well. Going through the authenticity motions, she had to throw in the line about how Labour needs to win elections and not be an opposition. It's congenital with these people, but it also serves a purpose. The party is seen to be fundamentally unreliable by the powers that be because of its relationship to the labour movement and history as the traditional workers' party. It is always under a certain amount of pressure from below to act in the interests it was ostensibly set up to represent. And this dangerous potential surfaced after 2015 and the rise of Corbynism. To appeal to the boss class, Starmer and his allies have to belittle, demoralise, and drive out the problem people. The rhetoric about turning the party inside out, of expelling thousands of people (another Raynerism), it doesn't matter that it makes winning an election more difficult, it's the bourgeois-friendly optics that matter the most. The self-flagellation is the party's leaders ostentatiously prostrating themselves before the people they think matter.
It's not going to work. If Labour somehow win the next general election, it won't be because Starmer has made the party safe for property portfolios and stock options, it will be thanks to Boris Johnson and the Tories proving themselves so bad, even worse than now that the electorate are determined to get rid and vote tactically to achieve this aim. This is not a grown up strategy, it's a case of crossing one's fingers and hoping the ruling class will give Labour a chance. It's the purest fatalism. The Labour leader might hope for a repeat of victorious Blairist history, but he's setting himself up for an almighty farce.
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3 comments:
"This is not a grown up strategy", but it just might work as usually governments loose elections rather than oppositions winning them.
The real issue is what would Labour winning in its current form mean ?
Another round of privatisation in health, housing, education etc. followed by a foreign adventure to prove our closeness to the USA ?
Unfortunately we have all been there and have the T-shirts.
«the Tories proving themselves so bad, even worse than now that the electorate are determined to get rid»
Polly Toynbee in "The Guardian" sort of officially confirmed that this is the strategy:
“Labour’s chance will come when Johnson’s bogus promises start to crumble”
But there is a lot of difference between a social movement to make the non-thatcherite majority of potential voters more aware that thatcherite policies are bad for them, and proposing alternative policies, versus waiting passively proposing the same thatcherite policies but more competently run.
«it just might work as usually governments loose elections rather than oppositions winning them. The real issue is what would Labour winning in its current form mean ?»
Indeed that is why the leadership issue and eliminating the Labour wing of New Labour is so important for the Mandelson Tendency: it is not because that helps win elections (the impact of leader or the press on voting is small), but because if/when the Conservatives do their best to lose the election, as in 1997, 2001, 2005, what matters is who sets the agenda of the new ruling party, to make sure that “in the urgent need to remove rigidities and incorporate flexibility in capital, product and labour markets, we are all Thatcherites now”.
«Another round of privatisation in health, housing, education etc.»
It will be more important though to continue cheap credit for property and finance.
As to privatisation there is so little left to privatise that even the Conservatives are finding it difficult to find state property that rentier interests are willing to buy. ““The problem with [thatcherism] is that you eventually run out of [state assets to sell cheaply to buy votes and donations]”.
Now that the Royal Mail and the better state landownings have been sold off, my impression is that the plan with the NHS is not so much to privatise it, but to shrink and "crapify" it, so those who have the property profits to afford it will go private on "gold", "silver", "bronze" plans, and "losers" will have to take their chances with the "lead" plan from the NHS.
«followed by a foreign adventure to prove our closeness to the USA ?»
How can you do better than to send a fleet to southern China to remind them of their humiliating defeat in a war started to uphold the principle of free import of addictive and deadly drugs? That question will keep New Labour thinking hard.
“and - as forecast in advance - would result in a tragedy that still hasn't played itself out to this day.”
I need to correct this. Some people were predicting the disaster to follow in Iraq, for example George Galloway got it correct. Absolutely spot on.
On the other hand, Christopher Hitchens was championing the risible and disgusting humanitarian liberation angle, George Monbiot was hedging his bets and saying even if the invasion was successful, i.e. brought about Basra-on-the-Wold, we should still oppose the invasion. And people like Jim Denham were simply churning out pro invasion propaganda as fast as their little imperialist hands could manage. For example the notorious Iraqi girl getting piano lessons poster, reminiscent of Goebbels at his most base.
"the problem with [thatcherism] is that you eventually run out of [state assets to sell cheaply to buy votes and donations]"
That is where war and imperialism comes in handy! But it also signals another constraint that spells doom for exchange. Well, we will have to wait for China etc to see no benefit in shipping useless shit we don't need across the globe. At the point that makes no sense, if the Earth hasn't boiled by then, is the point when Brits will suddenly see the evils of consumerism! Maybe that is the point we finally tell them to fuck off and all hail the Chinese middle classes!
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