Covid, Round Three

A his 'n' hers. Hers, a blunt, rude indicator of a Covid bout in full force. Fatigue, muted senses of taste and smell, feeling off. A most unwelcome intruder in our happy house.

Mine, a barely-there mark befitting a fading illness that, on the third time of asking, has been milder than previous memberships of the Covid club. Enough to keep me away from work, going out, and doing most normal things. Tragically, no lawn mowing last weekend for me. I also had to put down the threads I would have weaved into tapestries of political comment this last week, so apologies for the brief interlude of silence. Having munched through my weight in decongestants, paracetemol, and downed a vat's worth of Nightnurse (other respiratory remedies are available), the blighter is almost finished. No word marathons ahoy in the immediate recovery period then, but a few canters around the block should start reappearing hereabouts.

Labour's Dreary Deputy Leadership Contest

Even by the dull standards of the form, Labour's deputy leadership contest has been a doze fest. The pair of interviews Bridget Phillipson and Lucy Powell did for LabourList are recommended reading for insomniacs everywhere. But this suits the Labour leadership just fine. Having suffered a very bumpy September, the last thing Keir Starmer needed was one current and one very recent cabinet member firing up the Big Berthas and pounding each other's positions. Seeing as it's a proxy skirmish between the beleaguered Starmerist camp and the approaching columns of Andy Burnham.

As with most things that have gone wrong with this Labour government, the leadership only has itself to blame. Starmer and/or his genius henchman have created the dynamic where Burnham is unsubtly presenting himself as Labour's saviour, and Powell's campaign is the vehicle for his rise. In the aftermath of the Angela Rayner debacle, the Prime Minister didn't have to purge the cabinet of everyone else with links to Burnham's manse, but he did anyway leaving the top of government unusually politically narrow. Sect-like, some might say. And because the new "radical realist" soft left faction Mainstream was launching a couple of days later, Powell's campaign could not have asked for a better start. Not that it needed this boost. As polling has demonstrated, Powell's lead over Phillipson has widened since the starting gun fired. Though Phillipson's people point to her trade union nominations, pretending this indicates some sort of grass roots enthusiasm rather than a few officials here and there engineering a helpful favour.

Substantively, there isn't much between the two campaigns. Phillipson's talks up her coming from a "tough" street, because nice places never exist on council estates. There's her bringing in the breakfast clubs, which as we have seen is now Labour's signature policy achievement since coming to office. Other parts of her record, such as overseeing the loss of 15,000 jobs in higher education without any expression of regret, let alone a plan for fixing the sector don't get a mention. In her LabourList interview, she talks about the "truth telling" and "members' voice" she would bring to cabinet. How she's independent-minded, and has copped hostile briefings because of it. Phillipson goes on to say you can't out-Reform Reform, and that causing division in our communities is anti-British, and that the flag is "our flag too". A few prompts on ChatGPT could have written a more attractive pitch, it's a miracle that 26% of members polled are planning to vote for her.

Not that Powell's pitch is tonally different. But what she does say, as per her LabourList interview, is that Labour has lost its way, it's flat-footed when it comes to politics, and its managerialism is alienating. Reorienting the party, for her, means being outside of cabinet. Rather than insisting on Rayner's old position, she appears to be doing Starmer a favour by not undoing her sacking. She would deliver "difficult messages" from the members publicly, and seek to galvanise the party. She promises "Lucy listens" fora up and down the country to connect the bottom of the party with the top. On her relationship to factional argy-bargy and this being a Starmer/Burnham proxy, "I always think it is pretty sexist. We’re two strong women standing in an open contest. I am completely motivated by my own agenda here." Any alignments with wider party struggles are therefore entirely accidental. As would be the case if Powell uses her mandate to push for party changes in ways uncongenial to the right wing blob of McSweeney and co.

And this is why Powell will win. Despite the rubbish Labour MPs tell themselves, the members are much closer to the public sociologically and politically speaking than they are. Members not only face the same every day pressures, they are also on the sharp end of Labour's policies. Any candidate reflecting their disquiet and dissatisfaction, that causes Starmer some discomfort from the left (albeit the softest left), who might get the leadership to think about the crisis in Labour's support, and perhaps try a strategy that doesn't imitate Reform was bound to attract most votes. It's also a shot across Starmer's boughs. Powell is the most Milquetoast of messengers of discontent this Labour Party could muster, but if the government carries on as it does and next May's results are as catastrophic as the current run of council by-elections, the MPs and trade union leaders that come for Starmer and his cabinet of nodding donkeys won't be so polite.

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Uncovering Starmer's Fraudulent Politics

I was privileged enough to score an invite to Tuesday morning's presser for Paul Holden's The Fraud, a forensic examination of the shenanigans, rules flouting, and, in some cases, potential law breaking by Morgan McSweeney and the people around him. The story of Labour Together and what role it played in capturing the Labour leadership for Keir Starmer is well enough known, but what Holden has done is hunt down the receipts and the emails that lubricated this dishonest enterprise. But this has not happened without personal risk. A malicious complaint against him was made to the National Cyber Security Centre, alleging that he'd accessed hacked emails from Labour Together. He was also called by someone pretending to be a journalist for openDemocracy who tried pumping him for information, and that "reputation management firms" had tried digging up dirt on him and his family.

Holden began at the beginning. Labour Together was founded by Jon Cruddas and was billed as a non-factional organisation looking to bridge the divides inside Labour. He hired McSweeney, and very quickly Steve Reed, now the minister for housing and local government, and Imran Ahmed, now of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, came on board, From that point on it became a front for their factionalising, which was hidden from Cruddas. As we now know, LT was central to Keir Starmer's leadership campaign in early 2020, but McSweeney and friends denied it was any such thing. We also know that LT took over £700k in undeclared donations, and while this was later explained as an admin oversight Holden has email correspondence between McSweeney and the Electoral Commission. McSweeney argued that it didn't need declaring because LT was not a campaigning organisation, whereas the EC said that didn't matter and should be reported as a matter of course. The Morganiser subsequently "forgot" this conversation. Meanwhile, LT figures, such as the new home secretary Shabana Mahmood, was writing articles that said all funding was properly declared.

On Labour's antisemitism crisis, Reed, McSweeney, and Ahmed drove some aspects of the crisis, with the first compiling and submitting lists of his own. Where this painful episode needed to be dealt with with seriousness and care, it was instead factional and toxic. Accusations of racism were, yes, weaponised as part of the right's was against the left. One such example was David Gordstein, who made hundreds of complaints against party members. This identity was an invention of the (non-Jewish) Euan Phillips of Labour Against Antisemitism and targeted the left, including Jewish members.

LT also funded some secret projects, which included the astroturf campaign 'Stop Funding Fake News'. Launched in March 2019, it portrayed itself as a volunteer organisation but worked under the direction of McSweeney and Ahmed. It campaigned to demonetise websites. and the primary target was The Canary, which was seen as an important node in Corbyn-supportive media. They also targetted Westmonster, the right wing Arron Banks vehicle, and Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party. In May 2019, SFFN posted a thread telling people not to vote BXP and made ad hom attacks on Trump. The political problem is this used Russia-style disinfo tactics, and laid open the Prime Minister's right hand man to charges that undeclared money was used to cancel opponents. Farage is far from averse to playing the poor little right winger card, and could make something of this. Also, Starmer is in hot water of the notoriously prickly White House takes notice.

Part two of the book is called the long con, and details the dishonest contrivances around marketing Starmer. He was recreated as an inhabitant of the human rights universe, and employed "shadowing" as a tactic. I.e. Politically, Starmer's campaign tracked closely to the positions of Rebecca Long-Bailey so no meaningful gap could open between the two. Entirely by coincidence, Stop Funding Fake News was resurrected on 8th January and again went after The Canary. Their crime this time? Drawing attention to Starmer's time as Director of Public Prosecutions, a record that sits somewhat uneasily with his human rights glossing.

Part three looks at killing Corbynism. Once the leadership was won, the machinery was quickly recolonised by right wingers, which was epitomised by their response to the leaked dossier of Labour staffers' WhatsApp messages. Despite the racist banter, attacks on other party members, and evidence of a shadow campaign that diverted funds to safe seats held by right wingers in 2017, those at fault were barely admonished while heaven and earth was moved to find the leaker. Eventually the party took five former officials to court on the flimsiest of evidence. But what did they have in common? They were part of the left. This shadow campaign, which Holden calls the Ergon House scandal, saw funds diverted away from swing seats to safe seats, circumventing normal governance procedures. This was a secret office and Holden has documentary proof that six right wingers, Gloria De Piero, Mary Creagh, Margaret Beckett, Angela Eagle, Caroline Flint, and Judith Cummins, benefited from their support. Unite wrote to Starmer about this and suggested it might shade into criminality, but this breaking of Labour rules and electoral law came to nothing.

On the EHRC report on Labour's antisemitism, within half an hour of Starmer saying he would implement its recommendations he had violated them. One of the EHRC's findings was that the party was guilty of "indirect" discrimination because the leader's office under Corbyn was occasionally consulted about the pace and outcomes of complaints. It's worth noting here, which Holden did not, that this "discrimination" was focused on expediting complaints, not delaying them as falsely claimed by right wingers at the time. However, despite pledging to end interference, between May-June 2020 the leader's office and Angela Rayner were copied into all complaints and were regularly briefed on cases. Complaint handlers were also directed as to their findings. Perhaps the most egregious example of this was the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn from the party, with emails and tweets being sent announcing this immediately after Corbyn, rightly, acknowledged that antisemitism was played as a political football. Other interferences involved "VIP lanes" for MPs who wanted to complain against inconvenient activists

Overall, Holden's presser portrayed Labour as a vicious and, at times, lawless party. Their dismissal of the Forde report into factionalism and the issuing of legal threats around non-disclosure against him, the deselection of Anna Rothery as Labour's candidate for Liverpool's mayoralty, the racist profiling of Newham Labour Party, which involved significant data breaches, and - it might ba added- their repeated victimisation of Diane Abbott demonstrates a systematic problem with racism. But one that gets a free pass because it's the right wing that are doing it.

In all, what Holden has accomplished is a detailed, meticulous exposure of right wing perfidy. It sounds like a dossier of damnation, and one whose evidence could form the basis of civil and legal cases against the Labour Party in general, and McSweeney and his boys in particular. Matters not helped by the fact these right wingers have boasted about their genius dark arts moves to any journalist willing to be their stenographer. As Holden concluded, their fraudulent approach to politics marked the 2024 election campaign and helps explain the alienation and antipathy Starmer has engendered in government. Who can disagree?

What about the Little Lenins?

Last Thursday, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition urged its supporters to take out Your Party membership. This is despite the bar on the signing up page that says "you cannot be a member of another national political party". TUSC, for electoral purposes being another party - though it definitely isn't in reality - should not be allowed in on these grounds. Nor, for that matter, should other left outfits that have boarded the YP express train. Yet the Socialist Workers Party have set up and run YP meetings. The Socialist Party, TUSC's mother ship, has urged its members to join, and as for the Revolutionary Communist Party it's a case of support them but join us!. Thanks, but no thanks.

Barring other organisations at the outset is wrong, but understandable. This country's revolutionary left, which fancies itself as the most clear-eyed and class conscious of us haven't covered themselves in glory in the 21st century. Theirs is a history of splits, sometimes over points of principle, but more often than not because self-styled leaderships would rather see their organisations damaged or destroyed than submit themselves to accountability, or suffer the indignity of being democratically replaced by junior cadre. And theirs is a history of sabotage as well. The SWP are notorious for wrecking or derailing campaigns they don't control, or dropping them like a hot potato when paper sales and new recruits have been peeled off. The record of far left parties working with other far left parties is similarly poor. Watching the SP walk out of the Socialist Alliance because they could not bear to be a minority. The SWP trying to eviscerate and wreck Respect when they fell out with George Galloway. Both organisations' disgusting binning off their opponents in the Scottish Socialist Party when they backed (subsequently) convicted perjurer Tommy Sheridan and his ill-fated efforts at swindling money out of the Murdoch press. And should we even mention the episodes of sex assault cover ups all three organisations are guilty of, especially the Comrade Delta case. Who'd want such a bunch in a new left party?

I don't, but bouncers on the door is not the way to do it. I recall the farcical scenes, though thankfully was not party to them, of Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party. A promising left regroupment project that squandered its potential and energy in witch hunt after purge, chasing out small left groups like Workers' Power, the Communist Party of Great Britain (Weekly Worker), and the International Bolshevik Tendency, before cliques of witch-finder generals turned on one another. In short order, even more obscure sectlets - the Fourth International Supporters' Caucus, the Economic and Philosophic Science Review, and Harpal Brar/Lalkar, who went on to form the comedically ultra-Stalinist Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), got expelled. If the no-parties-allowed rule is allowed to stand now, are we going to let history repeat itself as tragedy as the most promising breakthrough for working class politics since the Poll Tax toppled Thatcher is skipped in a sectarian pique?

The solution is obvious. Let the left's little Lenins join. Give each party the right to form its own platform with the freedom of its own press. Let them run their own slates for election, let them make the case for their politics in front of the mass membership, let them become subsumed by the rhythms and life of a broader living, breathing political movement. The far left have turned other campaigns and projects into ashes because these were small efforts of no consequence where social weight was concerned. Despite the recent crisis in Your Party and the huge surge in Green Party membership and support, YP has the potential to reach more and organise more, and as such swamp them. The chances of their winning over swathes of members is unlikely because they have proven incapable of undertaking mass recruitment from active and politicised social movements, like Palestine solidarity. And also, to a tee, all of them are brittle organisations. They work because they create small, semi-autonomous worlds that insulate their members from the pressures that bear down on "ordinary" trade unionists and activists, and thrive on cultures of hyper-activity usually focused on petty party promotion. Being fully exposed to a proper political process of organising our class as a mass party is likely to have the opposite effect. Their contact with masses of our people is likely to erode them, a point underlined by the crudity, unreadability and faux naivete of much of their output. It's probably fair to say that, regardless of their politics, the Weekly Worker remains the only weekly publication on the British left that treats its readers as grown ups. But even then, it uses an idiom and saddles hobby horses far removed from the realities of mobilising our class for itself.

And if I'm wrong? If YP is able to politicise class relations and mobilises hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and they collectively, democratically decide that some sort of revolutionary politics is the necessary solution to decaying capitalism, that's democracy.

Therefore, no to bans on organisations, or so-called parties-within-a-party, or their presses, and yes to a carnival of ideas, political education, and a mature tradition of debate. Not because discussions are jolly good fun, but because without such basic democracy our class cannot hope to organise itself, let alone set about winning a world.

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What Happened to One Nation Conservatism?

The jamboree of delusion and extremism that was Conservative Party conference birthed a small, fleeting genre of political centrist-to-soft-left commentary about them. Columns by Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee, and "The Bear" more or less make the same point. The Tories utterly deserve their miserable fate, but at the same time this is bad news. Keir Starmer needs to be held to account at the dispatch box to ensure good governance. Lack of scrutiny leads to bad decision-making. Second, a weak Tory party cannot be a bulwark against the racist right. If it was a viable party, the low instincts of reactionary voters would be sublimated and moderated. Instead, what we have is their free expression, all the consequences that entails, and the Tories acting as permissive peddlers of this rubbish.

There is some truth to these arguments. During the mid-late 1970s, the toxic brew of a popular, authoritarian moralism, anti-immigration politics, and racist moral panics around inner city violence and mugging - against the backdrop of rising class consciousness, a powerful labour movement, and a flailing Labour government - powered the rise of the National Front. But come the 1979 general election, by leaning into these issues the Tories snuffed out the NF's support. The price was, however, the breaking of the labour movement, the defeat of collectivist politics, and a long period of more-or-less untrammelled dominance of labour by capital. A period, some might say, we've yet to emerge from. Another more localist example comes from my old stomping ground of Stoke-on-Trent. During the 00s, the British National Party came within a whisker of winning the elected mayoralty and had nine council seats. Fuhrer Nick Griffin referred to Stoke as the jewel in the BNP's crown, among other things. While the BNP were ultimately defeated by the joint efforts of the local anti-fascist movement and the Labour Party, they were able to get an opening because the Tory organisation in the city was but a rumour. In many wards the Tories didn't bother standing, so part of the BNP coalition were right wing voters for whom the fascists were the only option.

But also, there is a dollop of nostalgia. One nation conservatism appears attractive because it offers something for everyone. In contrast to the zero-sum class conflict Benjamin Disraeli plays out in his famous Sybil, or The Two Nations, what we all share is the nation. We are either born into or become members of a national community, and this forms an essential (if not essentialised) commonality between us. Racial difference, class location, gender identity, sexual preferences, we might not be equal but we are all Britons. We are equal before the law, are free to acquire property, but most importantly we all have a place and make a valuable contribution. One nation conservatism also believes that the institutions cohering and constituting us as a national community have evolved slowly out of the accumulation of historical experience, and as such are embodiments of generations of wisdom. This is exemplified by the state, in which the crown, the church, and the commons exist in partnership - one where, rightly, the people via their parliamentary representatives are sovereign but are at times guided and tempered by the wealth of experience and moral rectitude upheld by the monarchy and the clergy. And in practice, what does one nation conservatism mean? A party that self-consciously governs for everyone, that protects the social fabric and therefore the ties that bind our country as a community. Social problems are occasions for moral improvement and judicious intervention. Inequality, though inevitable, cannot be allowed to get out of hand. The obligation to work by the many is matched by paternalism, respect, reciprocity, and charity on the part of the wealthy few. One nation conservatism is therefore frightful of rapid social change, which can ride roughshod over delicate equilibria painstakingly forged over centuries. It is deeply suspicious of any politics, particularly left wing politics, that seeks to remould society according to radical blueprints. That way tyranny lies.

Harold Macmillan is the Tory leader and Prime Minister most associated with one nationism. At the height of the post-war boom, following his immediate predecessors the Conservatives were committed to the class compact struck by the 1945 Labour government. Council homes were built, the capacity of the welfare state expanded, public services adequately funded, and full employment maintained. Macmillan emerged from a youthful attraction to moderate conservatism, liberalism, and Fabianism, and was further imbued with a social conscience during the depression. Unlike most of his Tory colleagues, he was exercised by and campaigned against mass unemployment - reinforced by his Stockton constituency being badly blighted. He went on to serve in the war time government, and in Churchill's post war administration was the minister for housing. Macmillan understood that for his class to maintain itself in the long-term, the lower orders needed a stake and therefore a place within it. As such, well into his retirement he criticised Margaret Thatcher and her characterisation of the miners as the enemy within, but other aspects of her programme, such as privatising state industry, was something he supported. But ultimately, one nationism didn't prevail - for a time - because of Macmillan. Between the late 1940s and late 1960s, there were over two million members of the party. Association bars were common sights across the country, and the Tories had strong roots among sections of the working class. As late as the 1970s, the Tories organised tens of thousands of trade unionists. As Jeremy Corbyn today embodies a radical movement against capitalism, so Macmillan personified a mass defence of a system that then shared the goods. He was at the head of a conservative social movement with real mass appeal.

That age is long gone, and from the two-nation Toryism of the Thatcher and Major years through to the war of all-against-all hellscape proffered by the Conservatives today, there's no sign of it ever coming back. At least through the offices of that party. As if to underline the one nationism's flatline, in her piece Polly Toynbee musters a single 20-year-old student with a website as the only sign something resembling a return to Macmillanism is in the offing. One nation has gone because the Tories buried its political economy and inflicted a strategic defeat on the labour movement. It was they that decided the "solution" to the crisis of the 1970s was to do away with the postwar compromise and rebalance class relations with capital firmly in the saddle. The only problem was that this also undermined first the mass presence the Conservatives had in the country, and then, after a long, drawn out process, their passive support at the ballot box. A moderate, sensible Tory party, however much such a creature is preferable to the gateway to the far right that exists today, is not going to happen. What we see with the gruesome Badenoch-Jenrick double act, and the Putin-friendly chums of the oil lobby in Nigel Farage and Reform is where right wing politics is right now: as a naked and open defence of class relations and oligarchical interests. For the first time the right are open and honest about what they're about, and it's best for us to face them as they are. Willing back a time when they stated their interests with more circumspection is not helpful. There are no good Tories. Only class conscious defenders of a decaying system.

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Tory Watching at the End of the Conservatives

What do you mean you didn't watch Kemi Badenoch's keynote speech at Conservative Party conference? Why, what a treat you missed out on. There were innovative and original policies like abolishing "mickey mouse" degrees, throwing bungs at rich landowners by reversing Labour's land tax, promising to spend half of her welfare cuts on paying off the public debt, abolishing stamp duty, clamping down on workers' rights, and subsidising private schools. An exciting policy agenda I'm sure you'll agree, and one that would very definitely reverse the long Tory slide.

Luckily, if you're one of the few people that have wondered about whatever happened to the Tory party, I sat down with Alex of Politics Theory Other fame to discuss all things Conservative. I guarantee it's more informative and entertaining than any amount of conference and fringe events that have streamed this week.

Politics Theory Other · When the party's over w/ Phil Burton-Cartledge

Olivia Newton John/ELO - Xanadu

The few press attending Conservative conference have noted the party's Margaret Thatcher exhibition. On show are some of her most famous outfits, life sized cut outs, and a gift shop kitted out with the sort of merch you'd only find in a Tory council group's shared office. Don't let anyone tell you they are a party living in the past.

Here, we have no time for the politics of nostalgia. But tunes are another matter. If the Tories want to relive their greatest hits from 40 or so years ago, than so can I. Except my choice hasn't led to a polarised society where a far right party is a contender for government.

The Unreality of Tory Economics

How was your lunch time? I spent mine catching snippets of Mel Stride's speech at Tory conference. He's the shadow chancellor in case you've stopped listening/watching the doings of the Conservative Party. But I couldn't resist. Some people collect stamps. Others tour the country visiting every Wetherspoon's on the map. Me? Seeing if there's any sign the Tories have become conscious of their worst ever crisis and if they've cobbled together a ladder that can get them out of their hole. If Stride's address is anything to go by, my advice to the Tories would be to start furnishing said pit. They are going to be there for a long time.

If Kemi Badenoch is supposed to be doing the showy stuff, then Stride is the unglamorous details man. Suspend your disbelief and buy in to the science fictional conceit that the Tories can win an election. Their next government would make £47bn worth of cuts. £23bn would come from cutting sickness-related social security support. Stride has decided that people with mental health conditions like depression, ADHD, and anxiety merit deserve no support at all. Presumably, work is the silver bullet that would vanquish these illnesses. Our old friend civil service cuts are back for another tour of duty, sacking 132,000 people and returning the state bureaucracy to the size it was in 2016. You know, when it was so stretched it famously did less planning for Brexit than the Japanese government. This represents an "evolution" of Badenoch's deep thoughts, who last year was merely interested in more efficient admin. This would yield £8bn in "savings", with the rest coming from reducing overseas aid further, tying benefit eligibility to citizenship, cutting environmental commitments, and scrapping hotel accommodation for refugees.

And this hodgepodge pays for what carrots? The reversal of Rachel Reeves's increase in employers' National Insurance contributions is front and centre. Allied to this is a promise to scrap business rates up to a limit of £110k/year for retail, hospitality, and leisure. Taken together I'm sure small independent traders would welcome this so don't be surprised if Labour half-inches some of this, especially nearer to the next general election. And what about young people? The Tories have spent years scratching their heads and wondering how to attract layers of younger people to whom they are repulsive. And their answer is ... a £5,000 cash hand out. This would be a tax rebate for new workers in their first job. What would have been NI payments can be cashed in after five years and spent as they see fit. Don't ask what this could mean for state pension eligibility later on.

At the end of his speech, Stride got a bit overexcited, castigating the doom-mongering of the other parties and claiming the mantle of hope for the Tories. Which was as audacious as it was a waste of time, seeing as no one was watching. While Badenoch and co. have gone off the war on woke deep end, the shadow chancellor has stayed firmly on the ground of traditional Tory economics. A little something here for small business, an eye-catching bribe for a wider constituency - in this case, young people. And all paid for by robbing the futures of the beneficiaries of this policy, stripping out state capacity, and promising to govern like Rishi Sunak. If you remember him. Unfortunately for the Tories, conservatism here means being out of step with political realities. British capital needs a stronger, more reliable state that can do things. And despite the best efforts of Labour to dampen expectations, this is what its diminishing support and expanding former voters want to see. As does the bulk of Reform's support when the racist circus orchestrated by ringmaster Farage isn't at the forefront of their minds. The Conservatives are nowhere near where the punters are.

You could make the case that Stride's speech was as much about consolidating the Tory base as whatever rubbish Badenoch has stored away for her main conference address. But all the same, while the Tories are party to the racist and anti-democratic consensus uniting Labour and Reform on immigration and "social conservatism", they are outsiders on the economic questions of the day. So no, Stride didn't offer any credible salve for his severely wounded party. Compounded by an inability to see how and why the Tories are broken.

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Kemi Badenoch's Attention Seeking

Do you remember the Conservative Party? For much of this year, they hung around like a half-remembered memory. It's difficult to recall when they were the centre of political life, and I write that as someone who wrote a book and has expended hundreds of thousands of words about them. Are we living in a Britain after the Tories? It certainly feels like it. The current crop of polls has them hovering around the 16-17% mark, and they are entirely marginal to a discourse geared around the Labour/Reform face off. It seems even the Liberal Democrats and Greens are attracting more coverage and comment these days. More than any other party, this is the world the Tories have shaped. And they're absent from it.

When the Tories were dumped out of office last year, there were two strategic directions available to them. The first, which was an outside shot, was learning from their experience of trying to be a right wing "populist" party, how this positioning alienated the broader constituency they depended on, and that this committed them to promises they could not deliver. Such as the Rwanda scheme and their war against the boats. The solution? Reinvent themselves as a moderate centre right outfit that eschews the politics of division and begin constructing an appealing project that might get a hearing outside its shrinking heartland of reactionary pensioners. What with the composition of the parliamentary party and the membership being as it is, such a transformation would be as difficult as it is painful, but the party's long-term viability depended on it.

And so the Tories chose the easier path. To those for whom politics is a tussle between ideologies and vibes, this appeared as an illogical retreat into their "comfort zone" where the party can feel safe. As per its 1997 drubbing. In fact, from the standpoint of the party's two leaders this did make sense. Having suffered an earth shattering defeat, consolidating one's base by turning further to the right is a reasonable, if mistaken, response. Once the base is firmed up they could then sally forth and contest Labour for votes. This was reflected in Kemi Badenoch's oft-stated timetable for her leadership: spend a couple of years getting the philosophy right before making policy. But there is a problem. A Nigel Farage-sized problem.

Before Farage decided to re-enter British politics, Reform were barely of any consequence. But since he has become a lightning rod of disaffection, being able to prey on right wing voters for whom the uselessness of the Conservatives was amply demonstrated over five years, and the layer of Reform-curious Labour support repelled by the cruelty and incompetence of Keir Starmer's "grown-ups" and are game for giving someone else a go. Wall-to-wall media coverage hasn't hurt Farage either, with his political pronouncements burying the Russia links, not declaring earnings, and questions over who purchased his home. As such, Reform's rise has severely disrupted Conservative regroupment and making consolidation difficult, if not impossible. Matters are not helped by the fact that neither Badenoch, nor Robert Jenrick, the man who would be king, are up to the task. As they have been eclipsed in the polls, media attention, including coverage provided by what Tim Bale helpfully calls 'the party in the media', has moved on. Unaccustomed to playing second fiddle in British politics, to be relegated to third party status in the attention economy is a reduced circumstance the Tories have never endured before. How can they make waves again?

They have decided that a mixture of stunts and policy extremism can catch the media's eye. Though obviously a self-serving effort to try and secure the leadership for himself, Jenrick's ridiculous rail ticket vigilantism earned the Tories at least one item on Newsnight, but dismissal from everyone else. It demonstrated an unpopulist touch, as most rail passengers despise the money grubbing of train operators, and coming across as a plummy accented tube station Blakey could only invite ridicule. And then as small bands of fascists, egged on by the press and Reform, tried desperately to stir up a repeat of last summer's riots, Jenrick joined the protest in Epping outside the Bell Hotel, which was hosting refugees. I doubt many of the racists there knew, or for that matter cared, that this arch opportunist was rallying against a policy that he developed and implemented. Still, the media were there and it reminded the Tory press that their traditional party still existed and was trying to dance to their tunes.

Jenrick has his own approach to attention-seeking, and Badenoch has hers. With attendance well down on last year's party conference and adrift in the polls, how can she capture the headlines and turn heads? The first part of her gambit was pledging to abolish the climate change act, thereby aligning her party with fossil fuel profit margins. This will do nothing to appeal outside of the Tory core, meaning dozens of Lib Dem MPs across southern England's new yellow wall can sleep a touch more soundly. It is something Tory and Reform supporters have an opinion about, but climate change denial is not the reason why Reform supporters support Reform.

Not fussed with those opinions? Badenoch has others. The Sunday press splashed with her promise to deport 150,000 people every year. Challenged by Laura Kuenssberg, the Tory leader disassembled into stamping her foot and exclaiming "they should not be here", "send them back to where they came from", and making clumsy elisions between refugees and criminality. This pitch to the Reform faithful would include an ICE-style "removals force", which Badenoch describes as a "successful approach". As Donald Trump's goon squad, lest we forget that ICE goes out of its way to terrorise mixed ethnicity working class communities, and will scoop up anyone it doesn't like the look of. Badenoch is too stupid and too reckless to realise that their racial profiling means that members of her own family are theoretically at risk of the state-sponsored thuggery she would unleash on others.

This means getting rid of legal blockages that may hamper such work. On Saturday, Badenoch also confirmed she would withdraw the country from the European Convention on Human Rights. This would also mean leaving the convention on human trafficking, something the Tories might at least want to pay lip service too. The plan is a system where making asylum claims is virtually impossible, and legal oversight and accountability pared back. Effectively a design for one, two, many Windrush scandals. And something the Tories would welcome as a metric for how tough they are. How this would impact on the Good Friday Agreement and the post-Brexit settlement with the EU doesn't impinge on their thinking. As per the Boris Johnson way of doing things, these are problems for another time.

What else might Badenoch have up her sleeves this week? Flat taxes? The abolition of inheritance tax? Banning trade unions? Her problem is that for that tiny minority of the electorate that get switched on by the cruelty of mass deportations, the Tories can be - and already are - outbid by Reform. In addition to platforming someone jailed for saying refugees should burn, Farage has said he would abolish Indefinite Leave to Remain and promise to deport 750,000 people. Do Tory strategists, such as they are, think diet versions of Reform's full fat offerings will satisfy their appetites? This can only lead to one of two conclusions. That they are as clueless as they appear, are resigned to never winning back the 249 seats lost to parties to their left, and that they cannot orientate themselves in a political landscape where their privileged position has gone. Or, that to survive, they're making themselves into a party not a million miles away from Reform so they look like a viable coalition partner. You decide.

Unfortunately, the decomposition of the Tories continues to toxify politics. Along with Labour, Badenoch is using the small media opening she has to reinforce racist and anti-immigration politics. Their rhetoric is the background to increased racist attacks, the justification of more state violence, and an authoritarian charge to the gutter that only Reform can win. While some in the party think it would be nice for the Tories to continue all of them would be okay with Farage in Number 10 because, ultimately, the class interests both of them serve are largely identical. A Reform government would buttress corporate power with the brutality and attacks on democracy we've seen wherever their ilk get into office. The Tories, even as a spent ginger group on the margins of politics would be fine with this. The rest of us cannot afford to be as sanguine.

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What I've Been Reading Recently

Proper blogging resumes tomorrow. In the mean time, I'm looking back over recent reads. As it's been a while since the the last round up, I'm not listing everything I've read since early July as it's quite a lot. So I'm sticking to September's tally, which is plenty big enough!

Get In by Patrick Maguire and Gabrield Pogrund
Declaration by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
Grass by Sheri S Tepper
The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
The Wild Shore by Kim Stanley Robinson
Agonistics by Chantal Mouffe
Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Birthright: The Book of Man by Mike Resnick
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
For a Left Populism by Chantal Mouffe
New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos edited by Ramsey Campbell
Toward a Green Democratic Revolution by Chantal Mouffe
Intrusion by Ken MacLeod
Light by M John Harrison

Some of my reading is groping toward issues around hegemony and anti-hegemony, hence the Hardt and Negri and the Mouffe. Re: her work on hegemony, like many socialists of a certain vintage Mouffe's famous/infamous Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, authored with Ernesto Laclau, never sat well with me. As a good Althusserian I enjoy a textual expunging of essentialisms as much as anyone else, in their case against treating politics as simple expressions of class. They argue there isn't a necessary correspondence, let alone a guarantee that ensures our class takes up socialist politics. Instead politics has to be articulated by organisations and parties through the formation of hegemonies and hegemonic blocs. While this latter point is true, there is obviously a relation between class and politics, which we see when classes and strata always tend toward certain parties. This is empirical fact, and is a pattern we see repeated across all liberal democracies. The explanation lies not in essential relations and simple correspondences, but the inertia of history and life experience. I.e. Broadly similar experiences of living in capitalist societies spontaneously produces broadly similar and shared outlooks, which inculcates certain dispositions and tendencies towards certain kinds of politics. Don't get me wrong, there is much that is valuable in Mouffe's work and I find it persuasive, but the autonomy of the political is not something I can get on board with.

More of that another time. Novels-wise, there were plenty of highlights. Tepper's Grass was a slow burn, unlike the fires that rip through the book. The world building was spot on, the characterisation well done, and the story compelling. Tchaikovsky's sequel to Children of Time was a worthy successor. As inventive as that celebrated book, it doubles down on the multiplicity vs oneness dynamic, the speculative sociology and psychology, and also is a white knuckle ride of a novel. Excellent stuff. Our Ken's meditation on New Labour-y nanny state authoritarianism was a timely read now that a worn out tribute act is in office. Intrusion is a paranoid classic, and the Kafkaesque climax is as gripping as it is technically brilliant. Lastly, Harrison's Light, the first of his I've read, was remarkable. Some of the best writing and character work you'll find anywhere, not just several thousand light years from Earth. A serial killing protagonist, shades of eldritch horror, mind games, and hard physics are seamlessly blended together. One of the best sf novels of this century.

Alas, there were downers too. I know The Wild Shore was well reviewed on release, but is very YA without realising it and, even worse, is quite boring. Not one of KSR's best. Also disappointing was the Cthulhu collection. The key note story, Stephen King's Crouch End was too heavy handed in my view. Attanasio's The Star Pools was a short of two halves, with the latter half being excellent while the first didn't work. And the others were a mixed bag, a hybrid of entertaining and try hard. Apologies if I've trodden on the toe/flippers of Old Ones fans. But truly terrible was Resnick's Birthright, a series of linked vignettes taken from his future history sequence about the rise and fall of our species. Nothing more need be said - I'm saving my venom for the end-of-year worst books list.

What have you been reading recently?

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