Let's take a stock take of recent days.
On Monday Keir Starmer said he wanted to see the Tories' anti-protest laws "bed down" before he does something about them. Unsubtle code for "I'm keeping them lock, stock, and barrel".
On Tuesday, news emerged that an unnamed spad to a shadow minister had been found responsible for a series of sexual assaults against a junior member of staff by a party inquiry. Instead of getting shown the door, he was told not to do it again and allowed to carry on in his job.
On Wednesday, Labour had an opportunity to delay the government's flagship anti-refugee legislation. By blocking it in the Lords, its implementation could have been delayed and probably would not have come into force before the general election. Instead, Labour peers were instructed to abstain and it sailed through without the breeze of opposition.
And on Thursday morning, a second scandal. An unnamed Labour MP has gone to the Met with allegations of sexual assault against a shadow minister. This pertained to events that took place about two years ago. Complaints were made to the party, but instead it was hushed up and no action was taken.
There are words that can describe this state of affairs. But, to be honest, I'm tired of finding them. At the moment the Tories are on the ropes thanks to last week's elections, Starmer carries on pushing policy positions that are undermining the party's political standing. Sure, those chickens are unlikely to come home to roost before the next election. But high levels of distrust of Starmer among Labour's own support points to a future of a fragmenting voter coalition, which will benefit the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. And, perhaps even worse, the turning of a blind eye to actual abuse among the party's leadership points only in one direction - a government that might prove as arbitrary and as out-of-control as Boris Johnson at his hypocritical, authoritarian worst.
There are only so many times you can say this stuff, explain the cynical logics behind the latest manoeuvre, and warn about the problems getting stored up for the future. Incredibly, some people enjoy reading about Starmer's misdeeds and getting themselves into a lather over them. But ultimately, following this stuff on the daily and having to reflect on it is deflating, if not nihilistic. I find it corrosive. And so, with the exceptions of major developments or policy announcements, I'm done writing about Keir Starmer here.
12 comments:
In common with all such centre "left" larties worldwide, the Brit Labour Party is undergoing renovation to eliminate any tendency to undermine the intetrests of those who benefit from the "Rules Based International Order". This entails a sharp turn to the right such that theyd be indistinguishable from the centre right in any area that counts.
Like you I am tired of Starmer.
I keep believing my contempt for him can get no worse, but he keeps exceeding my expectations.
I spent 8 hours in Trafalgar Square on Saturday at the Republic demonstration. I was threatened with arrest twice. As well as detaining the protest organizers, the Met impounded our placards, confiscated our PA system, and prevent the majority of protestors from entering the square.
The earlier arrest of women’s safety volunteers by an organisation that has harboured rapists would be funny if it wasn’t deeply tragic.
The Met continue to justify their behaviour on grounds of “intelligence”. This “intelligence” seems to have originated from a story in the Daily Mail, whose chief crime reporter used to be the Met’s media head.
Unfortunately, you cannot ignore Starmer as he is likely to be the next PM. The fact that, despite having been a human right lawyer, he still supports what is essentially Sus for protestors shows us what he and the next Labour government will be like.
The Labour Party has ceased to be a progressive force in British politics.
Sadly the Labour party hasn't been a progressive force for a long time. The best you could say is that it offered a slightly more palatable alternative form of rentier - consumer - exploitative capitalism. But like all mainstream political groups it bases its economic ideas on consumer driven growth through exploitation of minority controlled natural resources (including people), and the dumping of the waste into the earth, sea and sky. Those controlling the resources accrue the wealth, the rest are either labour, who make the stuff or provide the services that add to their wealth, or consumers who buy their products and services. Meanwhile the earth, sea and sky are poisoned, stripped of resources, and ecologically destroyed so that what keeps us all alive - the complex web of biodiversity that recycles water, air and nutrients - is slowly eliminated. Thus sealing our own extinction.
Sorry to be so gloomy, but as the doomsday clock slips closer to midnight it gets harder to feel any spark of hope.
«This entails a sharp turn to the right such that theyd be indistinguishable from the centre right»
Such marvellous and 30 late optimism is so precious! :-)
Tony Benn remarked in 1993-05-19, as to his last NEC meeting:
“I think, candidly, what is happening is that the party is being dismantled. The trade union link is to be broken; the economic policy statement we are considering today makes no reference to the trade unions. Clause 4 is being attacked; PR is being advocated with a view to a pact with the Liberals of a kind that Peter Mandelson worked for in Newbury, where he in fact encouraged the Liberal vote. The policy work has been subcontracted. These so called modernisers are really Victorian Liberals, who believe in market forces, don't like the trade unions and are anti-socialist.”
Not much has changed since then... A few year later there was the moment when Tony Blair turned to chase the tory voters with tory policies, from a speech he gave in 1996:
http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=202
“I can vividly recall the exact moment that I knew the last election was lost. I was canvassing in the Midlands on an ordinary suburban estate. I met a man polishing his Ford Sierra, self-employed electrician, Dad always voted Labour. He used to vote Labour, he said, but he bought his own home, he had set up his own business, he was doing quite nicely, so he said I’ve become a Tory. He was not rich but he was doing better than he did, and as far as he was concerned, being better off meant being Tory too.”
Also in case that was not clear, here is a piece (by Nick Cohen himself) from 2001:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/sep/02/immigration.labour
“After the election, David Blunkett was promoted to the Home Office. He promised Blair he would 'make Jack Straw look like a liberal'. He was bragging, there's not a politician in Britain who can do that. But again it tells you something about the PM that Blunkett was obliged to make it.”
And the next year 2002 Peter Mandelson boasted:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/jun/10/labour.uk
“in the urgent need to remove rigidities and incorporate flexibility in capital, product and labour markets, we are all Thatcherites now”
New Labour has been a right-wing thatcherite party dreaming of coalition with the hard thatcherite LibDems for most of the past 30 years.
«Sadly the Labour party hasn't been a progressive force for a long time. The best you could say is that it offered a slightly more palatable alternative form of rentier - consumer - exploitative capitalism.»
Mandelson and Blair and their successors seem to have had the Democratic Party in the USA as their model:
Julius Nyerere: “The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.”
Gore-Vidal: “There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party [...] and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently [...] and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.”
George Mikes: “In England you know for instance that the Labour Party is for the nationalisation of various industries and the Conservatives are against it.
In America such ideological clashes hardly ever occur. A practical issue may be whether the U.S. should give a large loan to Britain or not. In Siloam Springs (Ark.) the loyal Democratic leader, with an eye on the Jewish inhabitants, may take up an anti-British attitude because of Palestine. In the next village, however, the bank manager’s daughter may have an English fiancé, a former R.A.F. pilot, who is personally very popular and the Democratic Party leader will be inclined to say: ‘Let the poor boy have the dough’. All this may seem very confusing but, in fact, it is quite simple.
The difference between the two main American parties is very sharp and well defined; it is more marked than the difference between Communists and right wing Democrats in any European coalition government:
(a) one party is in, the other is out;
(b) one party wants to stay in and the other tries to get it out.”
That “In England you know for instance that the Labour Party is for the nationalisation of various industries and the Conservatives are against it” was written 70 years ago, how things have changed; Thatcher's command that “There Is No Alternative” has been zealously obeyed, and "guardrails" in politics are dutifully enforced:
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/everybodys-saying-it-guardrails
Sad face: I hoped you might have commented on today’s headline- Starmer wants to go further than Blair. But only because I don’t want to read it.
If you aren't going to write about that despicable creature of the deep state, Starmer, Phil, what will be the point of your blog ?
All too true, Blissex, and the other rightly gloomy posters here. The so-called PLP 'Socialist Campaign Group' are nowadays such a busted flush that they don't really pretend anymore that their main motive for being MPs is their comfy salaries, rather than genuine socialist belief. But as Blissex says, this has certainly been the reality of Labour since Kinnock and Blair, despite the sheer fluke of the short 'Corbyn Insurgency' interregnum - seen off so very easily by the corrupt careerists of the PLP majority, their local government Labour cronies, and their mass media helpers, and the cravenness of the Labour Left as usual.
Where to for genuine socialists now ? I have no idea. The rag bag flotsam that represents most of the (tiny) extra Labour UK 'Left' appear to me to be so adrift with their sectarianism and Left Liberal identitarian belief systems as to have nothing to offer - certainly the ever more desperate poorer working class people. The stage is certainly set for Far Right populist faux radicalism to scoop up major sections of this now homeless mass voter base. Fortunately for us the UK Far Right are largely bonkers and as obsessed with infighting to match the 'radical Left'. I think the next , possibly Lab/Lib Dem government will astonish even the most cynical of us by its authoritarian and austerity enforcing, Big Business-owned reality . WE have finally reached current Italian-style politics , but without PR - ie, the entire political system has been stitched up by the agents of neoliberalism - with no genuine route forward for Left politics.
Phil, if you stop writing about his misdeeds, some people will simply stop hearing about them.
If many people like you stop writing about his misdeeds, many more people will simply stop hearing about them.
Isn't that the process which these characters rely upon?
In the build up to the local elections, I got talking to a Labour candidate, who despite being in that party is a decent person. They self-described as 'socialist' and had experience being part of the union movement. However, when it came to the question of how they can represent a party thats anti-socialist and anti-working class, it was the usual "we got to get the Tories out", which seems to be what Labour rely on, and when you bring up the parties anti worker stances, they often deploy people like Angela Rayner, whos apparently authentically working class, as evidence the party hasnt lost its roots - as a side note, its becoming more clear the party was never really socialist to begin with, and has a long history of being anti worker and pro imperialist.
To the left of Labour, all there seems to be, at least where I live, are the usual Trot sects.
«when it came to the question of how they can represent a party thats anti-socialist and anti-working class, it was the usual "we got to get the Tories out"»
My usual apposite quote from Roy Hattersley in 2001:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/24/labour2001to2005.news$
“It's no longer my party
«It has been a difficult four years for the Labour Party's unrepentant social democrats. One by one, the policies which define our philosophy have been rejected by the Prime Minister. [...] In fact, success has emboldened the Prime Minister to move further to the Right. [...] Now that the Labour Party - at least according to its leader - bases its whole programme on an alien ideology, I, and thousands of like-minded party members, have to decide if our loyalty is to a name or to an idea. [...] The certain knowledge that the Conservative Party would be a worse government than Labour is not enough to sustain what used to be a party of principles. [...] At this moment Labour stands for very little that can be identified with social democracy.»
For me it matters little whether Conservatives or New Labour are in office, if they are both thatcherite, as it is just a change of personalities (see "Westmister bubble" politics). Very important for the careers of those personalities, not so much for their subjects. A wise saying is that "In China the policies can change but not the party, in the USA/UK the party can change but not the policies" (but recently there was a seeming big change in Jake Sullivan's speech on behalf of Joe Biden, we'll see).
«its becoming more clear the party was never really socialist to begin with, and has a long history of being anti worker»
That's not quite right: it has always been a coalition of "radical" Liberals and "socialists", and the end result has been often mild social-democratic policies, "butskellism". I know some people regard them as a betrayal of true "socialism", but they were already so much better than triumphant thatcherism.
Our blogger has accused in the past New New Labour to be "labourist", but even labourism would be a big improvement on the kipper-infused thatcherism of Starmer.
«and pro imperialist»
Unfortunately that has always been a temptation of the worker movement when looking narrowly at the self-interest of domestic workers.
@Anon16:43 - you state "That's not quite right: it has always been a coalition of "radical" Liberals and "socialists", and the end result has been often mild social-democratic policies, "butskellism". I know some people regard them as a betrayal of true "socialism", but they were already so much better than triumphant thatcherism."
Labour might have some socialists in it, but it doesnt make it a socialist party. The party might of offered some 'concessions' to British workers, but this has been financed by oppressing workers in other countries, something you also seem to acknowledge when you say "unfortunately that has always been a temptation of the worker movement when looking narrowly at the self-interest of domestic workers."
A lot of left wing Labour members/ex-members seem to think the party was only bad when it became 'New Labour' but was somehow good before then, completely ignoring the pro-imperialism of Attlee. Starmer is right at home in the Labour Party - hes not a 'Red Tory' as this assumes hes out of place in the party. Starmers the continuity candidate. It was actually Corbyn, the mild social democrat that was out of place, although interestingly, for all his pro-Palestinian and anti-racist stances, hes always been loyal to Labour, despite its horrendous record abroad - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0306396818779864
I worked hard to re-elect our excellent local councillor who managed to be re-selected by the NEC despite being a left winger. I did not work to re-elect a labour party representative. And many of our activists feel the same, because we had barely anyone out canvassing and leafletting in our ward and many others in our city. How many losses does it take for people to realise if they take the piss, people won't like it?
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