It's fair to say of all the Tories the whip's office have on defection watch, she would not have been among them. Elphicke has, in the recent past, attacked Labour for wanting open borders. She accused asylum seekers of "breaking in to Britain". She is on the record of favouring the right of the state to strip British citizenship from those it takes umbrage at, and has voted with the government on Rishi Sunak's efforts to cut the green crap and curtail the rights of trade unions. Most damning of all, she said her former husband (and former MP for Dover, Charlie Elphicke), who got sent down for sexual assault, was guilty of nothing apart from being attractive to women. The Times also reported that tried influencing the judge on the trial. Her punishment? A one day suspension from the Commons.
Knowing her record, the statement snuck out by Labour whips just before PMQs reads like a bad joke. "When I was elected in 2019, the Conservative Party occupied the centre ground of British politics." Err, no. "Since 2019, it [Labour] has moved on from Jeremy Corbyn and now, under Keir Starmer, occupies the centre ground of British politics." Elphicke cites housing and "the borders" as her top concerns. On homelessness in particular, she pledges to work with the Labour leader to sort that out. As she won't be standing at the next election, like Poulter one can only assume this "support" for Labour's efforts will come from a sinecure in the House of Lords. A body, not that long ago, Starmer promised to abolish.
That in mind, it's obvious what Elphicke gets from the deal. But what about Labour? Yes, another defection discombobulates and demoralises the Tory benches further. And for those who look at politics askance, the news compounds the government's woes and adds to the sense of crisis and doom. But really, did Labour have to accept this most awful of MPs, a woman who Jonathan Gullis described on Channel Four News as being very close to him politically? Her admission simply reinforces the truth that the party operates with a hierarchy of racism. Right wing MPs say and do as they please, and racism only exists as a factional tool. Just as the astroturf Jewish Labour Movement, right on cue, illustrated today.
Why Starmer accepted Poulter also applies in Elphicke's case. It's not about chasing Tory voters or leaving nothing to chance where the election is concerned. Despite what the Prime Minister says and, for appearance's sake, Starmer affects to believe, the general election result isn't in any question. The only imponderable is how large Labour's majority is going to be. Contrary to long-winded articles trying to discern what Starmer's real beliefs are, his project is simple. The renovation of the British state, the restoration of the authority of its institutions, and by tackling the intentional (and reckless) neglect of the state's capacity to do things, its legitimacy will be restored. It's an elite endeavour, and Starmer wants to build an equally elite consensus around his mission. With the Tories on a rightward trajectory and extremely unlikely to come back any time soon, this isn't going to be hard to accomplish.
The problem for Labour is this strategy and orientation is destroying its base. This has been obvious for some time, and explains why the the Greens are on the up, how there is a revival in Liberal Democrat fortunes, and there are potentially serious challenges from the likes of George Galloway and a smattering of left independents. Welcoming Elphicke has done its bit to accelerate this decomposition by fuelling a few more resignations. At this rate, campaigning is going to be an affair of paid regional officials "taking holiday", and that minority of councillors who do door-to-door canvassing. As far as Starmer and his shadow cabinet of briefcases are concerned, it doesn't matter because they'll get their ministerial offices and their status as very important people. But all it takes is a huffing and a puffing of the political winds, and absent the firm foundations the Labour leadership have excavated, the whole Starmerist edifice will get blown over.
If nothing else it is just so contemptuous to his supporters, who've justified their support for him, as he abandons ever more of his pledges, because "we have to get the Tories out". There's no way to square that with him embracing a truly awful Tory.
ReplyDeleteThe most shameless will try but it will shake most people who actually expect him to do anything good.
Sorry, Phil, but your oft repeated claim on this blog that The 'Starmer Project' in capturing the Labour Party is to " renovate the British state, restore its authority, and capacities...etc, etc" , is fundamentally, tragically, incorrect. This can indeed sometimes be the role of a capitalist administration - ie, to save its own domestic capitalist class from the consequences its own base, short termist, instincts . The highly interventionist US 1933 to 1938 New Deal programme and related legislation under Franklin D Roosevelt being an example.
ReplyDeleteStarmer and his deeply personally corrupt, deeply unimpressive, New Labour cronies are not in any form similar to the likes of Franklin Roosevelt. They are merely personal reward-seeking opportunists , who, once in office will do whatever their Big Business backers, the capitalist mass media, and the US State Department, requires of them - to the continued impoverishment of the majority of us. The Labour Party has now reached , and passed its 'PASOK moment' - and it will be under Prime Minister Starmer that the mass riots break out across our land - and a pseudo radical Far Right reaps the benefits.
Not wanting to suggest that the right wing of Labour has this level of theoretical reflection, but I have just read the interview with Sahra Wagenknecht in the current NLR. She states that hers is not a left party but aims to take on the conservative - not neoliberal - and paternalist traditions of the CDU/CSU. There is anti immigration rhetoric as well as the actual intention to reduce immigration, and a declaration that her social base is the mittelstand, not the working class. A somewhat similar rejection of multiculturalism as a neoliberal project from the SPNL in the Netherlands a few years ago - perhaps still although haven't kept up with this.
ReplyDeleteThe Labour Party is unlikely to be able to emulate Wagenknecht's personal project without destroying its base, and Germany and the UK very different, but is the aim to fundamentally reconfigure the political landscape in order to incorporate conservative elements into the Labour project? A very dangerous and undesirable strategy, and might not be feasible, but comparable to other developments within the international conjuncture rather than simply Starmer's short-sighted opportunism and ineptness?
I do think it is opportunism and the pursuit of the legendary Red Wall voter that has driven this. Which reflects badly on Starmer and his team's strategic thinking. The local election ought to have shown that those votes are now mostly in the bag (other than the ones who'll move to Reform), but he still fears that the Tories will somehow find an offering that will entice. What he doesn't seem to allow for is the widespread disillusion with politics and the "plague on all their houses" angle which the Tories are likely to push. This feeds into that perfectly. If you want to encourage the "Why bother - they are all the same" attitude, it's hard to think of a better way. Surely even he can grasp that restoring the authority of the institutions of state has to start with respect for Parliament and politicians. This undermines it and reinforces the message that they have no principles and are just looking out for number one. It is monumentally short sighted and counter-productive. As well as being beneath contempt, unprincipled and showing a complete lack of integrity. I didn't think he could sink lower in my estimation, but he has managed it with this latest stupidity.
ReplyDelete«"When I was elected in 2019, the Conservative Party occupied the centre ground of British politics." Err, no. "Since 2019, it [Labour] has moved on from Jeremy Corbyn and now, under Keir Starmer, occupies the centre ground of British politics."»
ReplyDeleteActually she is correct from a statistical point of view: "the centre ground of British politics" is by statistical definition that occupied by the plurality of voters, and in 2019 ultra brexitist hard thatcherism got the largest number of votes; she is also correct that ultra brexiter hard thatcherite Starmer now "occupies the centre ground of British politics" as he is getting according to polls the biggest share of votes.
«his project is simple. The renovation of the British state, the restoration of the authority of its institutions, and by tackling the intentional (and reckless) neglect of the state's capacity to do things, its legitimacy will be restored.»
As usual I think this claim is highly misleading: our blogger has taught us that politics is about conflicts of interests but that “state's capacity to do things, its legitimacy will be restored” could be used to carry out policies for worker or rentier interests, it is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
In the case of Starmer that “state capacity” and “legitimacy” will clearly be used for policies in the interests of finance and property rentiers; his project is to improve the effectiveness of thatcherite policies, and to ensure continuity of thatcherism.
When Corbyn was leader of Labour the "Financial Times" screamed:
https://www.ft.com/content/5584b204-079a-11ea-a984-fbbacad9e7dd
“The Thatcher revolution is coming under threat November 15 2019”
Such panic is notably absent in their coverage of Starmer as he is not threatening the “the Thatcher revolution”.
«Surely even he can grasp that restoring the authority of the institutions of state has to start with respect for Parliament and politicians. This undermines it and reinforces the message that they have no principles and are just looking out for number one.»
ReplyDeleteBut that is how democracy works: there is a large number, at least 20-40% of voters, who “have no principles and are just looking out for number one” and they are happy to have their interests represented by people like them. Usual quotes:
A commenter on "The Guardian" sometime ago wrote candidly: «I will put it bluntly I don't want to see my home lose £100 000 in value just so someone else can afford to have a home and neither will most other people if they are honest with themselves»
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/29/how-right-to-buy-ruined-british-housing
«bought his council house in Devon in the early 80s for £17,000. When it was valued at £80,000 in 1989, he sold up and used the equity to put towards a £135,000 fisherman’s cottage in St Mawes. Now it’s valued at £1.1m. “I was very grateful to Margaret Thatcher”»
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2010/dec/11/simon-hoggarts-week
«An old mining MP called Bill Stone, who used to sit in the corner of the Strangers' Bar drinking pints of Federation ale to dull the pain of his pneumoconiosis. He was eavesdropping on a conversation at the bar, where someone said exasperatedly about the Commons: "The trouble with this place is, it's full of c*nts!" Bill put down his pint, wiped the foam from his lip and said: "They's plenty of c*nts in the country, and they deserve some representation."»
@ Blissex. You are making the same fundamental error as Elphicke in confusing the statistical midpoint in distribution of votes with centre of the spectrum of political views. The distribution is found by plotting number of votes on Y against position on the left-right spectrum X. The spectrum is a standardised axis from far right to far left where the 'centre' is the middle of the axis.
ReplyDeleteWhen people talk about the Overton window moving, they mean that the statistical midpoint has moved (i.e. the distribution is skewed) to one side or the other. They don't imagine that somehow the views of someone who is still in the middle of the x axis (but now appears on the left of the distribution midpoint) have changed.
If you confuse the spectrum of views with the distribution of votes the labels left - right - centre lose all their meaning.
As for the other part of your 'argument', you claim 20-40% of voters are entirely driven by self interest, in particular around property ownership. Leaving aside where you get this from, that is a huge range. The only real data we have is the number of votes per party. We find that in 2019 43.6% voted Tory, but 56.4% did not. The % voting against the winning party since 1945 has never been lower than 50.3%, and as high as 64.8%. The reason that the Tories keep winning is largely down to the FPTP system rather than the voting preferences of the population as any statistical analysis quickly shows. Our country is always governed by a party which received a minority of votes. A party has never got 50% or over since 1945, and the average for the governing party has been 43% - i.e. on average 57% of the votes were cast against the 'winning' party.
If seats matched % of vote, then the Tories would have 283 seats, not 365. That is, 43 short of an absolute majority. The views of the electorate are rather different from the results our system delivers. Obviously if we had a proportional system, how people vote would change, but it seems highly unlikely it would deliver a majority for any party, least of all the Conservatives.
«You are making the same fundamental error as Elphicke in confusing the statistical midpoint in distribution of votes with centre of the spectrum of political views.»
ReplyDeleteSuppose that there is a restaurant review site and one can rate them from 1 to 5:
* The arithmetic ("algebraic") average of the possible ratings is 3.
* The statistical ("stochastic") average of recorded ratings is 4.2.
Since I wrote “from a statistical point of view: "the centre ground of British politics" is by statistical definition” you should have not been confused.
As to why to look at the statistical (from sampling) average instead of the arithmetic (of possible values) averages that is what people like Starmer and Elphicke themselves claim to care about: in political jargon that is targeting the "median" voter. In effect Starmer and likely also Elphicke seems to regard ultra brexiter hard thatcherites as the "median" voter.
Note: there is a wider point here, about the difference been "spatial" and "vote moving issue" theories of voter choice.
«The spectrum is a standardised axis from far right to far left where the 'centre' is the middle of the axis.»
The arithmetic average is also a useful concept, but it is not used by politicians except to claim that they are "centrists" and others are extremists, as each puts the arithmetic centre in a different place. Anyhow in previous years I have referred to these graphs:
https://www.politicalcompass.org/uk2017
https://www.politicalcompass.org/ukparties2010
I happen to roughly share the estimates of the axises by the site, so I think that New Labour in 2010 was a right-wing party, and Labour in 2017 a centre-left one, at least by post-WW2 standards, but in the context of this article I was explaining why Starmer and Elphicke are both claiming to be "centrists", which is correct from a statistical point of view.
«the labels left - right - centre lose all their meaning.»
Mostly they diud: Corbyn for example is simultaneously described as an extreme leftist ("trot", "wannabe kulak exterminator", "wokester") and an extreme rightist ("f*cking racist and antisemite", "anti-democracy", "aspiring tyrant"). In particular there is a common loss of the old distinction between the "tory" centre-right and the "whig" hard-right, with the "whig" hard-right often called "the left" (especially in the USA).
«When people talk about the Overton window moving, they mean that the statistical midpoint has moved»
Indeed that means that today's "centrist" has the same opinion of Keith Joseph 50 years ago...
«They don't imagine that somehow the views of someone who is still in the middle of the x axis (but now appears on the left of the distribution midpoint) have changed.»
As to this I strongly disagree because I agree with our blogger's argument that many voters have been "conservativized" by acquiring property and leaving work to become pensioners. Millions of voters who fought for cheaper housing and higher wages and better social security when they were younger now are for bigger rents and property prices, for more affordable wages and lower taxes, at any cost to someone else. As in a recent-ish post by our blogger, "petty bourgeoisie", of the most self-interested, hypocritical, mean type. Not a new phenomenon, but one that has been involving large numbers in recent decades,
“The working class can kiss my ass,
I’ve got the foreman’s job at last.
You can tell old Joe I’m off the dole
He can stick his Red Flag up his hole.”
«20-40% of voters are entirely driven by self interest, in particular around property ownership. Leaving aside where you get this from, that is a huge range. The only real data we have is the number of votes per party.»
ReplyDeleteSo we have 14 million voters in 2017 and 2019 that after 7 years and then 9 years of Cameron-Clegg-Osborne policies, loudly proclaimed as their reecord, to make wages more "competitive", punish "losers" and "scroungers", make social insurance more "affordable", pump up housing costs, they vote for the 3rd and 4th time for Cameron and Osborne. Perhaps there are three positions:
#1 Most of these 14 million voters and their families have bigger incomes if housing costs are higher and lower cost of living if wages and social insurance are meaner, and screw-everybody-else.
#2 Most of these 14 million voters amazingly do not believe or know the loud claims of Cameron-Clegg-Osborne and their record and voted for them because they believed that their governments were taking care of workers and the poor, because they are selfless altruists.
#3 Most of those 14 million voters know very well about the goals and record of Cameronp-Osborne but they are social-justice-warriors who reckon that business owners and property owners are being exploited by workers and tenants/upgraders, and vote for less mean standards of living for them at the cost of reducing their own because they are selfless altruists.
Are you really arguing for the "I have no idea tory politicians are selfish bastards" or the "social justice means I vote for redistributing my income to struggling business and property owners" theories of why 14 million people voted for Cameron, Osborne, May, Johnson?
«The reason that the Tories keep winning is largely down to the FPTP system [...] Our country is always governed by a party which received a minority of votes.»
That to me seems like re-litigating the 2011 anti-FPTP referendum. If that is what voters chose in 2011, it is by construction "democratic" (even if it may not be so much substantially).
As to a “a minority of votes” I have repeatedly pointed out in comments on thius blog that percentages can be highly misleading especially as to low-turnout or "protest" voting, for example:
https://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2024/03/politics-after-george-galloways-victory.html
“As usual and especially for by-election looking at percentages is misleading and it is much more informative to look at absolute numbers (and candidate percentages should be of electors rather than voters):”
But percentage are reported wrt to voters instead of electors because indeed the winners of most elections get a rather small percentage of electors, like 25%. But it is a convention that "everybody who is anybody" respects.
There are some studies though that show that *often* voters are a representative sample of the whole electorate, but I doubt that, especially when abstentions rise significantly.
Regardless as the Starmer/Sunak case shows luminously the power to nominate candidates is far more important than that to elect them. "Vote as you please as long as we can nominate as we please".
@Bliss The art of communication is to explain yourself as briefly and simply as possible. You need to work on that.
ReplyDeleteIn a nutshell, the 'centre' can either be a fixed point (centre of the earth) of a moving one (centre of a crowd). Any analysis of votes is based on the party, and like a crowd, parties policies move around. But the left-right spectrum is like the earth. The centre is fixed by being the point between the two extremes. It can't move, unless you think that it is possible to go more extreme right or left than the extreme. WHich is obviously nonsense. So parties can move between left and right and their view of what is centre moves with them. But, we need a reference point to make sense of it. So you are confusing the reference point of the spectrum withe the motion of the parties.