The Futility of Chasing the Right

In another disaster class at Prime Minister's Questions, Kemi Badenoch attacked Keir Starmer for not prioritising immigration as one of his pledges unveiled at the government's relaunch last week. Talk about stepping on a rake. The Prime Minister relished the chance to attack the Tories "open borders experiment", following the revision of 2023's immigration figures up to 906,000. As far as Labour strategists are concerned, every time Badenoch mentions the I-word it's gifting Starmer opportunities to own an issue that is traditionally the preserve of the right. The more she bangs on about it, the more Labour will remind voters of "porous borders", record number of arrivals, and promises that the Conservatives failed time and again.

This is not smart politics.

In Anushka Asthana's book about Morgan McSweeney, Labour's chief strategist, she sketches out the thinking behind the strategy. First is the assumption, ironically shared with the Leader of the Opposition, that the Tories lost because they didn't keep their promises about immigration. McSweeney also blames this for the retreat of the centre left cross Europe and why the extreme right are on the march. Where the centre left does well, with Denmark's Social Democrats as his poster child, it's where there are tough entry requirements on the borders and immigration is falling. Reducing the numbers and delivering on the rest of Starmer's modernisation effort will win the re-election, so it goes.

This is the path to disaster. While it is understandable that the Tories should shift right to consolidate their vote after a severe trauma, it makes no sense whatsoever for Labour to do so. They have Reform to thank for disproportionately stealing votes from the Tories and letting dozens of Labour and Liberal Democrat challenges come through the middle, but McSweeney's job now should be about keeping hold of the coalition the party assembled and deepening it. For instance, as this polling by Focaldata demonstrates, there is a big overlap between Conservative and Reform support. Labour and Reform support? It's marginal. To put that in numbers' terms, polling by Compass found that 48% of Labour's voters in July would consider supporting the Greens or Lib Dems next time. The figure for Reform or the Tories was just 23%. Before the election YouGov polling found immigration was the top issue for Reform and Tory voters, but was joint seventh - with education - for Labour voters. And, there are big age gradients when it comes to who finds immigration troubling. No prizes for guessing who the most concerned are.

It doesn't matter how much Labour bangs on about immigration. They can form their anti-immigration caucuses, mock the Tories for being "too liberal", boast about suspending asylum claims from Syria now that Assad has fallen, and put up billboards around the Midlands and the north about how deportations have increased and migrant flows have come down, it won't make a blind bit of difference in winning over reactionary right wing voters. For one, lots are not Labour people in the demographic, sociological sense. And second, it would do Labour well to remember it never had a political monopoly on the working class. Ever since the advent of mass suffrage, it has been entirely normal for significant layers of the working class to support the Tories. Never a majority and perhaps not even a plurality - despite the smoke and mirrors surrounding Boris Johnson's victory - but proletarian conservatism has always existed, has always been hostile to Labourism, and will never support the party that was set up to represent their collective interests. Fast forward to 2024 and these layers still exist. They tend to be older, maler and whiter than average, and they are more likely to be attracted to Reform than the Tories. But that, ultimately, is a problem for Badenoch and her hapless shadow cabinet - not Labour.

There is nothing wrong with trying to win over voters who support right wing parties, but there are ways of doing it. I would suggest banging on about immigration and scapegoating the right's latest folk devils is unwise because it demobilises and disperses Labour's existing coalition. Stopping winter fuel payments is not the only reason why Starmer's ratings have tanked and Labour have plunged to polling scores not seen since the divisions over Brexit in the summer of 2019. Again, consolidating Labour's vote now is the path to victory in 2028-29. The thin election result was a consequence of not doing this from opposition. Refusing to in government is suicidal.

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The Death of a Dictatorship

Unless you have a heart of stone or are in hock to a strongman theory of anti-imperialism, you cannot fail to be cheered by the scenes pouring out of Syria. Political prisoners, some of whom have been incarcerated for decades, reunited with their families as rebels open up the cells. The inmates of the Assad regime's torture pits, freed. Civilians flooding the streets welcoming fighters and tearing down statues of Hafez al-Assad. One of the world most disgusting dictatorships is finished.

There are those who are arguing that the fall of Assad is an outcome of US-Israeli activities, and that the rebel movement Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) - whose offensive drove the final nail into the regime's coffin - is about to consume Syria in the darkness of an Islamist caliphate, with full backing of the US and Israel. But this gives the West and its clients too much credit and reduces international politics and war to their manoeuvres only. Rather, what has happened is the unforeseen outcome of the acceleration of the Middle East's instabilities, which began with the 7th October Hamas offensive and the appalling genocide Israel has carried out in response.

While there are also domestic political reasons why the United States have generously supplied Israel the weapons necessary for the ongoing massacre of the Palestinians, as previously argued the relationship between the two is straightforward. Israel is a tool of US foreign policy, and its reason for existence in the eyes of the State Department is to enforce the US-led global order. As we'll see when Donald Trump takes over, this is likely to include recognising Israel's annexation of more occupied territories so the new administration can present itself as the presidency that brought "peace" to the Middle East. That's for the immediate future. In the present under Joe Biden, the atrocities in Gaza - despite unconvincing hand wringing - are justified because it's a "war" against Hamas, and therefore rooting out an Iranian proxy. Likewise, the Israeli army's confrontation with Hezbollah in Lebanon was far from the one-sided fight it's typically accustomed to, and poor performance on the battlefield is why Israel quickly suspended ground operations. But its programme of air strikes seriously degraded Hezbollah's capacities, and regular bombings of Assad regime targets and Iranian assets in Syria stemmed Hezbollah's supply of arms and the support Assad has enjoyed from Iran throughout the civil war.

Israel meeting the US's war aims is only part of the story. The Assad family have never benefited from popular consent, choosing instead to rely on fear and coercion. At least outside of the Alawite minority. When Hafez al-Assad seized power in 1970 he institutionalised sectarianism, ensuring that anyone who became a figure in the state had to have a power base among this community. Or, to be more exact, its elite cadres. This included non-Alawite Sunni Arabs. Assad also moved Syria away from Ba'athist commitments to (state) socialism. He championed private property and sought development along capitalist lines, which handily enriched his family and those of his cronies. It was the same old story: kickbacks and the dubious channelling of state funds into enterprises owned by the elite. None of this prevented its aligning with the USSR, though ostensibly out of "anti-imperialist" and anti-Israel commitments. The domestic state of affairs exploded toward the end of the 70s with the outbreak of armed opposition, and after 1980 the state cracked down with repression rather than conceding to demands for a non-sectarian state and anti-corruption drives. This culminated in massacres and the levelling of Homs. The repression only loosened by degree for the remainder of al-Assad's life. When his son, Bashir, secured the succession in 2000 there was a brief period of liberalisation in which some of the worst aspects of the regime were shorn, but almost immediately it clammed up again with a wave of further repression. It was almost as if conceding a measure of freedom was designed to flush out pro-democracy oppositionists. This did not stop Syria from pivoting away from anti-imperialism to cosying up with Uncle Sam during the War on Terror. Having previously dealt with one insurgency that was part Islamist, under Bashir al-Assad it, like Gadaffi's Libya, came in from the cold to strike a new deal with the global hegemon. Syria dutifully played its role during the CIA's extraordinary rendition programme - it was a centre for torturing detainees captured in Afghanistan and Iraq.

When the Arab Spring broke out in 2011, mass protests against the regime was met with the customary brutality it had become known for. With ugly scenes filling up television screens, the Assad regime was hypocritically but ruthlessly abandoned by its US patron and condemned. Syria became subject to Western sanctions. As revolution descended into civil war, Assad's regime distinguished itself by killing even more people than its gruesome opposition in Islamic State managed, which had taken advantage of the power vacuum and seized huge swathes of the country. The regime increasingly became paralysed by infighting and passive opposition among Alawites as IS rolled over government troops. This was despite the fact Iran had begun shipping "volunteers" to Damascus to defend Assad from 2012, backed by fighters from Hezbollah. But it was only the intervention of Russia that prevented the regime from falling to Islamist insurgency. This turned the war around, and though unable to reconquer the entirety of Syrian territory the application of psychotic levels of violence stabilised the situation. As a measure of how successful this appeared, it was only a fortnight ago that neighbouring states were engaged in efforts to normalise diplomatic relations. What the temporary victory Putin's forces brought Assad did not bring was a peace dividend. Sanctions and inflation have made the lot of the ordinary Syrian miserable, giving them no material stake in the regime's continuance either. As such, in retrospect, too much repression and too much recession fatally undermined Assad. All it required was a shove.

And that came from HTS. Having operated in an enclave around Idlib for the last seven years, despite its roots in al-Qaeda it has been in running battles with its local affiliates throughout the 2020s. It's this, rather than a desire to appear acceptable to the West or a cloak and dagger master plan to hide Islamist intent that explains their relative moderation, religious tolerance, and degree of pluralism. Its offensive against Aleppo, which seemingly came out of nowhere on the 27th November was like steam-rolling a collapsing barn. Having been softened up by Israeli attacks but sapped by years of internal crackdowns, massacres, and stagnation, the army melted away. Less than a fortnight later from the initial attacks we are here: to all intents and purposes the dictatorship has evaporated.

None of this was expected by the US, Israel, and the so-called international community. It introduces a range of unforeseen complications. Local powers will try and seize the moment to extend their interests. Israel has occupied its "buffer zone" with Syria, and will undoubtedly look to extend it further. Turkey likewise will be looking to guard its "perimeters" in the north of the country, while making life difficult for the Kurds in their US-backed autonomous zone. But both are consequences of actions to which they were bystanders. Undoubtedly, the latter day cold war re-enactment society will be pleased. If Russia's intervention in 2015 was a demonstration of strength and confidence, this marks an eclipse of such ambitions. Attempted air strikes against bridges in the Aleppo region marked its desultory effort at defending Assad's folding regime, and will encourage the incoming administration to play hard ball over ending the war in Ukraine.

But they are not the only ones looking on with glee. The truth is for hundreds of millions across the Arab world, the final reckoning of a hated tyrant will give heart in the same way the eruption and initial victory of the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt did over a decade ago. For Cairo, the Gulf's absolutist monarchies, for the opposition in Iran, and even here in the West, successful uprisings help encourage and embolden movements from below. As establishment figures welcome Assad's fall, and particularly so in authoritarian states, there is always that sliver of fear that they could face a similar fate. That a movement of the immense majority could come and sweep them away.

Dizzee Rascal - Holiday

I was set on spending the evening writing about Keir Starmer's speech, but instead we tore the house apart looking for a mislaid mobile phone. It did materialise, but only when it was too late for inspiration to work its way through my tired carcass. Instead then, it's tune time. Ignore the awful video and enjoy - especially the famous, gorgeous drop toward the end.

The Full Montie

Only in Britain would a right wing party that's seventh placed in parliamentary terms command as much attention as Nigel Farage's Reform does. All he has to do is affect a sneeze and the handkerchief of extensive broadcast and press coverage, plus a Question Time seat is offered by the establishment. And this week has been a particularly good one for growing the reach and naturalising its political presence. On Monday Farage showed off Andrea Jenkyns, the former minister and MP best known for giving protestors the finger outside of Westminster in 2019. She is slated to be the Reform candidate for the Greater Lincolnshire Combined Authority next year and, to be honest, she is within a decent shout of winning. Unfortunately for the party, this surprise announcement quickly got mired in questions about bribes.

Then on Tuesday there were two more good news stories. The press were awash with reports that Elon Musk was set on donating $100m (£80m) to Reform. Which, in turn, would catapult Farage into the leagues of the very wealthy considering the "party" is his personal property. Cue frantic rebuttals and backstairs briefings about Labour's intention to impose donation caps, or only allowing donors to be UK residents. It's probable nothing will come of it, and is yet another episode in Musk's negative fixation with Keir Starmer.

A bit more significant than either is the passage of Tim Montgomerie from the thinning ranks of the Tories onto the rolls of Farage's customers. Announcing his decision during his regular slot as most-favoured right wing commentator on Times Radio, he said it was Tory failures over immigration that did for him. In a refrain anyone familiar with the Tory leadership election would have heard time and again, because the Conservatives promised to cut immigration while overseeing almost a million new arrivals in the last year, they had lost his support.

Why is the recruitment of a politics commentator a big deal for Reform? Firstly, "Montie" is as establishment as they come. A former bag carrier/speech writer for William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith, the co-founder of the misnamed Centre for Social Justice and a year later Conservative Home, he was able to leverage this as a vehicle to build a profile and from there a career as a ubiquitous talking head. He's even been on a Radio 4 discussion panel with me. Because of his connections, for Reform he offers the promise of a conduit for more Tories - especially sitting MPs - who might take the plunge. With someone as urbane and "respectable" as Montgomerie on board it knocks off some of Reform's rougher edges, at least where elite opinion is concerned. And with such an influential Reform-supporting voice in the bourgeois media - for Montgomerie's defection will harm his career not a jot - Farage and his backers hope to steer the Tory party and with it mainstream politics further rightwards. They have a a desire to fulfil, after all.

That said, no one who knows Montgomerie's politics would be the least bit surprised. He was one of the first Tories to try and introduce the fringe ideas of the far right into the party, attested by his championing of the "cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory long before it was a twinkle in Suella Braverman's cynical eye. As connected as he is, every Tory on his contact list knows about his straying off the piste of what passes for mainstream conservatism. And while some, including the Kemi Badenoch can divine a path to election victory by heading right, being too close to Reform, absorbing them, or effectively half-inching their programme makes it much harder to win back the swathes of seats lost at the general election. Especially with the process of long-term decline continuing unchecked and so there's no guarantee the voters who'll be impressed by displays of right wing extremism today will be around tomorrow.

As far as our Tim is concerned, he can now shrug off the heavy overcoat of Toryism and give us the full montie of where his politics are really at. And who can say, it might help with defections now and in the future - Richard Tice has teased another "big announcement" next week. But in the medium to longer term does it change the fundamental facts of British political life? It does not.

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The Farcical South Korean Coup

The attempt by South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol to abolish democracy and install military rule was not on many people's bingo car for December. Coming out of the blue, Yoon declared martial law on Tuesday 11pm Seoul time to see off "anti-state forces" and imaginary helpers of North Korea. The articles of the decree suspends all political activity and the subjection of the mass media to army control. This is, you couldn't make it up, to "protect liberal democracy". It's just as well that the National Assembly completely ignored the president's command, with several members clambering over the railings to vote down the coup - which it did so with 190 out of 300 legislators present. With the constitution on their side and protestors out on the streets in the early hours, Yoon had little choice but to climb down and rescind the order. Perhaps the most farcical coup attempt of modern times, but thankfully without the tragedy that usually attends them.

Why did Yoon have a stab at overthrowing Korean constitutionalism and turning the clock back 40 years? This BBC report lays out proximate causes. Yoon has been hampered by losing his assembly majority. He and his entourage have been on the receiving end of corruption allegations, some of which smacked of our very own freebiegate. And he was forced to make a humiliating public apology over botched investigations into Kim Keon-hee, his wife. Stymied at every turn, it appears a cocktail of frustration and desperation are what guided his hand to press the coup button.

Looking at his politics, Yoon is fairly typical of conservative figures who flirt with extreme right rhetoric and tactics. Following the play book of the right the world over, his election in 2022 was off the back of scaremongering against the North, the permissive society, and "liberal elites". In office, alongside corruption we've seen the usual diet of deregulation, kickbacks to the well heeled, and a found fondness for neoclassical economics. Which just so happen to enrich his class further. Likewise the kind of accountability dodging that would have made even Boris Johnson wince was the Yoon hallmark. Small wonder that his approval ratings had collapsed.

His emboldening by domestic democratic backsliding is only some of the story. The international scene has to be taken into account. Trump's election is a signal to many on the right that there's still plenty of gas in the reactionary tank, and that support for authoritarianism is real enough. But more important is the showing up of the American-led "rules based" international order as a sham without any consequences. The fact the International Criminal Court has issued warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu which several Western governments have said they will ignore, and that there has been zero accountability for leaders who've allowed Israeli forces to commit atrocities in broad day light must have been a consideration on Yoon's part. As a strategically vital US ally, he was perhaps hoping that the plot armour the US have conferred on Israel as part of its schemes for the Middle East would extend to him. Especially given how Yoon has spent years talking up the apocalyptic threat from the North and that the South is riddled with Kimist agents and their useful idiots. It was a desperate gambit and one that, thankfully, appears to have failed.

What now? The military have returned to barracks and the police have largely dispersed, but that is not the end of it. The botched coup has led the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions to call a general strike to force his resignation. Parliamentarians are going to have to move fast to prevent what was to be a retrenchment of reaction from turning into its opposite: a mass radicalisation and demands for broader democratic and social concessions. Don't be too surprised if Yoon is put out of office in short order, and will be pondering retirement from the hospitality offered by the nearest custody suite before long.

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Five Most Popular Posts in November

Yes, it's been a quieter month on the blog than I hoped. But what can you do when the mechanism is gummed up with other things, some of which deplete enthusiasm, energy, and thinking time that goes into this place? That's life. Nevertheless, there were some posts and here are the ones that did the business.

1. The Failure of the Democrats
2. Amsterdamned
3. Why the Migration to Bluesky Matters
4. The Insanity of American Politics
5. Trump's Tory Fifth Column

The shocker of the US presidential election makes it to the top of the list. But was it a shocker, really? The most arrogant and managerialist campaign since 2016, the refusal to listen to what people had been telling them for four years about life in Biden's America, and actively demobilising sections of its voter coalition - Labour's handbook for winning here far from worked out over there. Coming in second was the riot of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans. Or, to be more precise, the outright propaganda pumped out by governments and media outfits to cover for the violence and present it as something not unlike Kristallnicht. It's as if there's no bottom to mainstream politics. In third was the huge migration to Bluesky, the non-Musk alternative to Twitter. I am a fan because it's meant time spent on rolling news and comment is worthwhile again. In at four was more cogitating on the nonsense of US politics, and coming in last are the efforts Tories are now engaging to use the incoming administration to frustrate Keir Starmer's government. This is what right wing internationalism looks like.

A couple more worth your time. There's the brief piece on the resignation of Louise Haigh from yesterday. I can always rely on shenanigans taking place somewhere to unclog writer's block. And sticking with politics, a quick piece on Kemi Badenoch's victory.

Next month? With Santa due and the end of the year imminent, there will be some reflective pieces. There's going to be something on science fiction, something else on Bluesky, a couple of book reviews, the usual best dance music of 2024 (the real reason why everyone comes here), and other things. As ever, if you haven't already don't forget to follow the (very) occasional newsletter, and if you like what I do (and you're not skint), you can help support the blog. Following me on Bluesky, Facebook, and for what it's worth Twitter, are cost-free ways of showing your backing for this corner of the internet.

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