This late candour confirms everything that the left said at the time, but got vilified for stating the bald truth about what was going on under the toupee. Thinking back to Labour's factional struggles in the early 1980s, it's striking that when the late John Golding penned a memoir about his time fixing and smearing, John Spellar wasn't happy about it because it brought the Labour right's factional ploys into the open. Despite Hammer of the Left being published 20 years after the events described. Yet here we are, only a handful of years after the right lied its way back into control of the party machine and already the secrets of how they did it are getting spilled. Poor old Spellar must be wondering what his comrades are playing at.
For one, Asthana has a book to sell which goes over this period. And as her article shows, she was invited to several of the key organising meetings by the right's movers and shakers - hence her easy familiarity with how the Labour right's networks operate. If you're going to let a journalist in to chronicle your legend, you're going to have to let her publish sooner rather than later. Especially when it no longer matters. And that's the clincher. As far as the Labour right are concerned this doesn't matter any more. Saying that they are less popular than Jeremy Corbyn at his lowest ebb riles up a few loyalists, but they have their majority and can now get on with the important stuff. Like taking money off pensioners and making sure children in poverty stay in poverty.
The truth is they think they've won, and they have. There is no way for the Labour left to come back in the immediate to medium term, and so they feel safe letting their secrets all hang out. No newspaper is going to revisit their crimes and call out their dishonesty. When Keir Starmer isn't now being held to account for his brittle authoritarianism, it's not likely lies from several years ago will ever count against him. But, as we know, pride comes before a fall. As internal jockeying is more now more obviously defined by careerists competing for careers a la the "disputes" between Blairites and Brownites of old, there are plenty of others who've watched the behaviour of the Labour right in recent years and drawn the necessary conclusions. For those on the left groping towards a new party, the utter cynicism being advertised can only stiffen their resolve. Pleas to vote Labour at this election didn't work as well as they should have, and the antipathy the right's factionalism has engendered conjoined to an awful record in office isn't going to see any emergent project off. The Greens, poised to do well out of Labour's woes (as long forecast) can prosper for the same reasons. And when Labour has to engage with trade unions over pay settlements and disputes, they know full well that "their government" is dirtier in practice than even the Tories. They are telegraphing to each and every progressive social movement that they cannot be trusted.
There are several reasons why Corbynism failed, but the major factor was the scorched earth war the Labour right launched against their own party the moment the left looked like it was going to win. They'd rather see the Labour Party die than play second fiddle within it, and as they set about digging the Labour left's grave they furnished it with a lead-lined coffin, and stood ready to pour a concrete cap. Now they feel confident enough to say this openly, they are not only warning future left wingers what behaviour to expect from them within the party, they are telling everyone else exactly what they are. And that their opponents should take this as their truth, and treat with them accordingly.
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Very bitter considerations, these.
Unfortunately, I suspect that they are all true.
I am left with one question, which I ask myself first of all: why has it become, little by little, impossible to even think of a world different from this one in the last forty years? Why does Capitalism, with all its merits and defects, seem to be the only viable world-idea, especially (and surprisingly) among left-wing moderates?
While it's useful to have it confirmed that the Labour right are indeed awful people, the more important lesson here is that the "cranks" were mostly right and the socialists who went along with all this so they looked sensible and worthy were absolutely taken for a ride.
The desire of some on the left, especially those with a platform, to punch down and feel smarter than the rank and file did tremendous damage.
The most important insight, "pride comes before a fall". There is no mission for this Labour government but to be in power. First, how long will that 'right' will tolerate the now unpopular Starmer? Then, will all those newly elected Labour lobby-fodder MPs remain on side? In any case the global power balance is shifting and will be very different in two or three years, with the absurdity of the unnecessary war in Ukraine exposed, and the plain for all to see ethnic cleansing in Gaza destroying US influence in the region. Our near allies, Germany is no longer “Vorsprung durch Technik”, and France has lost its power of diplomacy. Starmer’s Labour will finish off any UK sovereignty.
And they seem inept at policy - two child benefit, winter fuel, allowing Ukraine to fire rockets far into Russia, abandoning the green belt, etc. It seems they have been taken by surprise by their pals in the right wing press turning on them and accusing them of wanting to kill OAPs. One thing to attack a Soviet agent who loves Hamas and is anti Semitic, another to deprive granny of heat while getting your clothes bought for you by an altruistic millionaire.
While you alienate the Left and Greens with their other policies.
«why has it become, little by little, impossible to even think of a world different from this one in the last forty years?»
Mostly or a simple reason: property, or rather property profits. Thatcherite "capitalism" has delivered for decades booming incomes and wealth to the middle and upper classes of many countries thanks to ballooning property prices and rents (and in the USA also share prices). The 20-40% is what matters not the 1%. In particular the middle class have realized that thatcherism can make them much more money with property than thatcherism loses them in shrinking wages, pensions, state services.
«especially (and surprisingly) among left-wing moderates?»
They are not “left-wing moderates”, they are "right-wing [social] progressives" also known as "centrists".
A lot of no-longer-left-wing voters, members, officials and MPs got theirs and keep getting theirs thanks to redistribution from the lower classes via property profits, and are the mass base of thatcherism.
A commenter (in this blog) in 2020: ««I raised the problematic policy on my CLP Facebook group. I was stunned by the support for the policy from the countless landlords who were Party members! "I can't afford to give my tenants a rent holiday" "This is my pension, I'll go bust" etc etc. Absolutely stunning. I had no idea how many private landlords there were in the Party. Kinda explains a lot...»
A 79-year-old retired carpenter (in an article on "The Guardian") in 2022: «who 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,” he said.»
http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2014/03/how-thatcher-sold-council-houses-and-created-a-new-generation-of-propertyowners.html
«There were even prophetic council house sales by local Tories in the drive to create voters with a Conservative political mentality. As a Tory councillor in Leeds defiantly told Labour opponents in 1926, ‘it is a good thing for people to buy their own houses. They turn Tory directly. We shall go on making Tories and you will be wiped out.’ There is much of the Party history of the twentieth century in that remark.»
«Starmer’s Labour will finish off any UK sovereignty»
Too late for that, compare these two quotes:
William Rees-Mogg, "The Times": “When Jack Straw was replaced by Margaret Beckett as Foreign Secretary, it seemed an almost inexplicable event. Mr Straw had been very competent — experienced, serious, moderate and always well briefed. Margaret Beckett is embarrassingly inexperienced.
I made inquiries in Washington and was told that Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, had taken exception to Mr Straw’s statement that it would be “nuts” to bomb Iran.
The United States, it was said, had put pressure on Tony Blair to change his Foreign Secretary. Mr Straw had been fired at the request of the Bush Administration, particularly at the Pentagon. [...] The alternative explanation was more recently given by Irwin Stelzer in The Spectator; he has remarkably good Washington contacts and is probably right. His account is that Mr Straw was indeed dismissed because of American anxieties, but that Dr Rice herself had become worried, on her visit to Blackburn, by Mr Straw’s dependence on Muslim votes. About 20 per cent of the voters in Blackburn are Islamic; Mr Straw was dismissed only four weeks after Dr Rice’s visit to his constituency.
It may be that both explanations are correct. The first complaint may have been made by Mr Rumsfeld because of Iran; Dr Rice may have withdrawn her support after seeing the Islamic pressures in Blackburn. At any rate, Irwin Stelzer’s account confirms that Mr Straw was fired because of American pressure.”
Andrew Marr "A history of modern Britain": “In 1942, as Rommel’s tanks drew nearer, and Churchill was fulminating about Cairo being a nest of ‘Hun spies’, the British ambassador told Egypt’s King Farouk that his prime minister was not considered sufficiently anti-German and would have to be replaced. The King summoned his limited reserves of pride and refused. It was, he insisted, a step too far, a breach of the 1937 treaty.
Britain’s ambassador simply called up armoured cars, a couple of tanks and some soldiers and surrounded King Farouk in his palace. The ambassador walked in and ordered the monarch to sign a grovelling letter of abdication, renouncing and abandoning ‘for ourselves and the heirs of our body the throne of Egypt’. At this royal determination crumbled. The king asked pathetically if, perhaps, he could have one last chance? He was graciously granted it and sacked his prime minister.”
«For those on the left groping towards a new party, the utter cynicism being advertised can only stiffen their resolve.»
Given that will likely have effects similar to the split of the right-wing vote between Conservatives and Reform UK then neither the parties of the left or the right will be able to have a stable majority, and the LibDems will be the determinant party of elections either via tactical voting or coalitions, ensuring that "progressive thatcherism" will be in control for a long while.
Mission accomplished! :-)
Judging by Rees-Mogg's quote (not exactly a name to conjure visions of grounded honesty and impartiality by, these days)...
It sounds like Dr Rice needed to have the concept of parachute candidates explained to her. Perhaps that was considered a more difficult task than simply enduring incompetence at the helm of the Foreign Office.
Nowadays they could point to the career of Esther McVey, among others.
Here's a different answer.
It's because capitalism, as a world-idea, is the most recent secular form of philosophical death. It's the admission of defeat. The (perceptive) resignation that we're not capable of consciously taking charge of our own destiny - and must give up that dream to an inhuman, capricious "invisible hand". Or as Aimit put it elsewhere, a giant phantom jellyfish that wears politicians like gloves in order to suck our life juices for its own nourishment.
Not that most capitalists and their toadies understand this to any great extent, nor are required to! Being a squalid, short-sighted, squabbling bunch is precisely what this relatively new form of religion demands of them.
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