Nigel Farage and the Politics of Corruption

On the saga of the £5m Nigel Farage has trousered from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, we've been issued with no end of excuses. Reform tried denying it was any business of the Commons, seeing as the money was wired before he decided to stand in the general election. Parliamentary standards disagreed. Then Farage said it was for the security he'll need for the rest of his life, being a divisive public figure and all. Then the story switched to its being a reward for his years of dedicated campaigning. Coincidentally, Farage started voicing enthusiasm for crypto shortly after the bung dropped into his bank account. And now, Reform are claiming that news of the gift is courtesy of Russian hacking, evidence of which is not forthcoming.

This is not the first time Farage has stood accused of receiving funds for political favours. Indeed, what characterises his relationship to money is its brazen transactional character and consistent repetition. A foretaste of the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do relationship to the law we would expect during the nightmare scenario of a Reform government. But what are the political uses of such corruption, seeing as it's a common feature of the extreme right, here and abroad?

As already hinted, there is the shock and awe element, of being seen to be political teflon. I can imagine some canvassers hitting the doors in Makerfield and getting depressed that Farage's £5m kickback has not booted Reform's chances out of contention. As per Trump and what we've seen in the United States, allegations of corruption from political opponents go nowhere because, in many cases, they're rightfully perceived as being little different. Additionally, this can be threaded into narratives - spontaneously elaborated in the Facebook groups and retailed by GB News - that Farage is getting singled out and targeted for telling the "truth" about this country. The right in this country, whether in its Tory or more extreme forms, will not waste an opportunity to play the victim.

More important is the message Farage's corruption is sending to his class. Accepting money from here, there, everywhere signals that Reform is open for and to business. Farage himself, like Boris Johnson before him, covets cash and this ensures a congruence between his politics, the interests of the most reactionary elements of the ruling class in this country, and the globalised oligarchs. A bonfire of regulations, the dismantling of Labour's new, meagre protections on workers' and renters' rights, and the final destruction of the NHS as a free-at-the-point-of-use system fit nicely with those ruling class views that think we have it easy and need putting back in our box.

Yet this is not without risks. Farage is carrying on as if certain elite interests can shield him from consequences indefinitely, but this is not so. There's the obvious problem of investigations into rule-breaking. The £5m bung, for instance, puts Farage at risk of a Commons suspension and potential by-election in Clacton. One might be tempted to think he could walk it, but this is where the politics of corruption could bite back. While true not many Reform-minded people care about the provenance of his income and what he does to ensure similar gift giving continues into the future, but there are people outside the Farage fandom that do care a great deal. Brazen corruption could negatively catalyse and mobilise opposition to him and Reform which, considering their levels of support, could be hard to fend off. Imagine, for example, if the rest of the political establishment dredged up an independent anti-corruption candidate akin to Martin Bell's successful challenge to Neil Hamilton in Tatton during the 1997 general election. Could Farage see off Martin Lewis?

Risky or not. corruption is baked into extreme right wing politics. Farage can no more resist cash offers than he can the politics of scapegoating. The cash flow is the guarantee that Reform will stay in oligarchical pockets, and the closer we get to the next general election the more those taps will gush.

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The Road to Wigan Keir

Well done Andy Burnham for resolving the question of whether the Greens should stand in Makerfield. He's spent the entirety of this week providing very good reasons for not supporting his candidacy.

It began even before Labour's NEC greenlit his challenge. No sooner had Caroline Lucas counselled the Greens to stand aside because of Burnham's position on electoral reform, he came out as an opponent on proportional representation. "Fairer votes" means the disproportional wonders of AV Plus. Which, with uncharacteristic haste, the government is about to restore for mayoral contests ... just in time for a Manchester mayoral by-election, should one be needed. Then Monday came around. Having said very warm things about the EU and admitting he'd like to see Britain back in eventually, he 180'd and said we shouldn't undo Brexit. Getting two u-turns in for the price of one, Burnham committed himself to Rachel Reeves's fiscal rules. Very different from the Andy Burnham of last September, who dared utter sacriligeous words about the holy wisdom of the bond markets.

He was just getting started. A couple of months ago, Angela Rayner gave a speech that criticised Shabana Mahmood's cruel immigration policies as "un-British" - an intervention Burnham apparently endorsed. This week, he's now a supporter of this doomed attempt to out-flank Reform on the right, and went further at his by-election/leadership campaign launch by demanding net migration be driven even lower. And to round things off, in double quick time Burnham has gone from being a defender of trans rights to accepting the establishment attack on trans people. In other words, everything that was wrong about Labour a week ago are now his policy positions. The only difference that exists between him and the Prime Minister is over who should be in Number 10. From the soft left, it's been a short, sharp road to Wigan Keir.

I suppose some tendentious rationales can be concocted for these about-turns. It's a Reform-leaning seat, so it's time to deploy the Blue Labour strategy that's proven a stunning success everywhere else. There's extra press scrutiny, so time to stifle the leftish vibes given off by "Manchesterism" so one can emote fiscal orthodoxy and fealty to Treasury shibboleths. Reform's problematic plumber might go in for cheap point scoring come any hustings, so socially liberal approaches to immigration and trans people has to be ditched. Or you could see it as Burnham adapting himself to the Labour selectorate. Plenty of MPs bear a grudge from his refusal to go along with their anti-Corbyn wrecking, and further back for breaking and critiquing the Blairist orthodoxy on health. And these days, the Labour membership are much more middle class and managerial than at any other time and are, by and large, habituated to life in a rudderless political husk. Either way, Burnham's pitch is the traditional Labourist marriage of perceived expediency and political cowardice.

This does raise serious questions about what Burnham's Labour is going to look like. At first contact with re-entry into national politics, the great hope of the soft left has capitulated across the board. The criticisms that allowed him to cultivate a prince-across-the-water persona as Keir Starmer stumbled from one catastrophe to another have evaporated. He looks as clueless and as spineless as the man he would replace. If Labour don't change tack, if Burnham carries on like this assuming he wins the by-election and subsequent leadership election, the crisis afflicting the party is sure to persist. Except, without taking stock and changing direction, the new leader will guide the party into its final, terminal phase.

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Where Now for Politics?

Come and hear me speak in Birmingham this Wednesday!

Andy Burnham's Second Coming

I remember the time when the resignation of a senior government minister would corner political news and comment for days. But writing on the evening after Andy Burnham's announced his bid to return to the Commons, who's talking about Wes Streeting stepping down any more? Well, I am. His was a curious letter, starting off with a out-of-place "the results are in" joshing, and then rolling off recent NHS achievements, including the welcome news that waiting lists conitnue to fall. He went on to the substantive stuff; how he was frustrated by the government making the wrong calls and stuck in low gear deliverism before saying he had lost confidence in Keir Starmer and was off. But he did not then reach for the starting pistol, or the 81 MPs needed to launch a leadership bid. A read of his own chances, or knowing what was coming later?

Then tonight, Josh Simons, hitherto famous for overseeing dodgy doings while he was director of Labour Together, announced he was vacating his Makerfield seat in Manchester so Burnham could have a run. Burnham has confirmed he will seek the permission of Labour's NEC to be the candidate. And, interestingly, the chatter from Downing Street is that Starmer is not minded to block his candidacy. Things are about to get very interesting. And by 'very interesting', we means it's doubtful he'll remain in Number 10 by the end of summer.

Can Burnham can take Makerfield? The seat has been Labour's since it was formed in 1983, and Simons does have a decent majority of 5,400. But things were far from peachy at the local elections. Here, Reform ran away with victory, scoring almost 50% of the vote while Labour collapsed to 24% and the Greens scraped 11%. Although it was a different political time, Burnham did storm the mayoralty in 2024 with 63%. And the areas around Wigan, where Makerfield is situated, was particularly strong. As argued previously, there's a good chance the locals have flattered Reform. And Burnham has several other advantages: strong name recognition, a good local record for a Labour mayor, and a bit of an anti-Starmer cache. Punters there will know they're effectively voting for the next Prime Minister, which could boost him. Burnham is not guaranteed to win, but notwithstanding the local election numbers, there are more anti-right wing voters in the constituency to be mobilised. He's got to be the favourite to win it, assuming the NEC sides with him.

Which brings us back to Streeting. That Angela Rayner was cleared of wrongdoing by HMRC took some wind out of Streeting's sails on Thursday morning, but he is not a stupid man. He can read the same polls as the rest of us and how unlikely he would win a leadership election against virtually anyone, including Starmer himself. Perhaps he'll put in if Burnham successfully returns to remind the selectorate that he exists, but he's still young for a politician and, under a different leader, has the chance to reinvent himself as a convert to soft left Labourism. Especially if Burnham is serious about his promises to move Labour more in this direction. A case of his being down, but by no means out.

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Demanding Deliverism

Last night it was looking a bit wobbly, but this evening Keir Starmer appears to be safe - following a most excruciating day. Four ministers have taken their leave of government, and presently 92 MPs have said it's time for Starmer to shut up shop. Tellingly, no cabinet member has broken ranks or resigned. Shabana Mahmood, who apparently told Starmer last night that it was time for him to agree a timetable is still "getting in with the job" of trying to out-Reform Reform in the Home Office. And without anyone leading from the top of government, the clutch of resignations are not moving him. In fact, it's prompted a round-robin counter letter from 110 MPs (and counting) who back Starmer.

What are the complaints of our former ministers? This morning, Miatta Fahnbulleh resigned from her minister of religion post, saying that the government had not acted with "vision, pace, and ambition", nor that Labour had governed in a way that was "clear about our values and strong in our convictions." She went on to say that the public's verdict on Starmer's leadership was unmistakable: he had to go. There wasn't much of a critique in Fahnbulleh's letter, except she drew attention to the winter fuel debacle and the shameful attack on disabled people as "mistakes".

Our second resigner was safeguarding minister Jess Phillips. Her letter was pretty damning and attacked the plodding complacency of this government. She talked about how groomed children can be blocked from making naked images of themselves and that this technology could already be rolled out, were it not for Number 10's indifference. Phillips added that Labour governments are "precious" and "I'm not sure we are grasping this rare opportunity with the gusto that's needed." That's why Starmer has to give way. Fun fact, to my knowledge Phillips is the only MP who has her photo on official Commons correspondence.

She was followed approximately an hour later by Alex Davies-Jones. She said results in Wales and the rest of the UK were "catastrophic". No disagreements there. But she is impatient. "Now is the time for bold radical action", she declares. I guess Davies-Jones is not too familiar with Labourism's history. Labour needs to be seize opportunities after 14 years out of power, and "I implore you to act in the country's interest and set out a timetable for your departure."

Last was Wes Streeting ally, Zubir Ahmed. In a display of attempted gravitas rarely seen among Labour MPs, he writes "... as I raise my gaze above the daily work of ministerial life, it is clear to see that whatever the magnitude of individual achievements and progress, they are now being dwarfed and undermined by a lack of values-driven leadership at the centre." He provides flavoursome anecdotes from Scottish doorsteps, and condemns the "noise" from government that "became the midwife" of another SNP government. And to round it off, Ahmed revives the old country-before-party mantra and hurls it back in Starmer's face.

How handy, how coincidental that these "uncoordinated" letters covered all corners of Great Britain. But they are all weak sauce politically speaking. But one letter, coming from the pen of the only soft left figure here, ventured a political criticism. The others are all about distractions and not enough deliverism. For the centre and the right of the PLP fundamentally agree with Starmer that the problem is less one of political direction and more a case of not getting there fast enough. Which indicates they haven't learned any lessons at all, and their urgency stems from the imaginary KPIs they have flashing in their heads. One has to ensure the CV is suitably burnished before 2029 returns them to something like normal life.

It's now widely reported that Streeting will be meeting Starmer on Wednesday morning ahead of the King's speech. But for what purpose? He might have the required 81 MPs needed to trigger a contest, but seeing as a substantial body of PLP opinion are against having one, would Streeting run the risk of alienating swathes of people who might otherwise be favourably disposed toward his candidacy? We'll find out tomorrow afternoon following the announcement of the legislative programme. Though, Ed Miliband is reportedly now prepared to run if Streeting forces a contest, which would be amusing and a sure fire way of seeing the darling of for-profit health interests off.

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Labour's Political Paralysis

Following Labour's drubbing across Britain, we were told Keir Starmer was about to make the speech of his political life. The stakes had been raised as Catherine West of Catherine West fame did the rounds on Sunday saying she was going to challenge him if the cabinet didn't come together and pass the baton on to someone else. The Prime Minister needed to impress jittery MPs and signal a change of direction. The inside politics gossip faithfully transmitted by BBC and Sky stenographers told us that Starmer was impatient and wanted to abandon incremental change. Was he about to break with six years of plodding leadership and strike out on a new, exciting path?

No, of course he wasn't. His talk may have been a touch more spirited than other recent set pieces. He wasn't wearing a tie, after all. But there was nothing new here. Having watched more of these than most people, it was a classic of the Starmer genre. A few genuflections to his humble origins, and a re-announcement of policies already coming down the pipe. Scunthorpe steel works is going to get nationalised, subject to a "public interest test", and that will be in the King's speech on Wednesday. Nodding to John Major speeches of 30 years vintage, Starmer said his government would put "Britain at the heart of Europe". A bit of rhetorical red meat for unrepentant remainers, but in practice this is merely the return of Erasmus plus a mobility/work scheme for young people. And third there are to be more apprenticeships and guaranteed jobs so youngsters can start building their futures. He said he understood the frustrations of people who've experienced nothing but shocks and price hikes since 2008, he talked about keeping Britain out of active involvement in the war on Iran, how bad Brexit has been, and he made disparaging remarks about Nigel Farage. And that was it. Nothing to address the problems he outlined. No change in direction. And for all his fulminations against a broken status quo, this stall was retailing more of the same.

Yet, it appeared to see off the immediate danger of a challenge. West pulled back from casting herself as a stalking horse and instead would busy herself gathering names so that a new leader can be in post by September. A gambit, by itself, unlikely to succeed. Meanwhile, speaking at the CWU's conference Angela Rayner said we can't go on like this, and lamented the opportunity lost when Starmer blocked Andy Burnham from standing in Gorton and Denton. The afternoon has been a drip, drip of unimpressed Labour MPs making their views known. Joining Chris Curtis and Josh Simons, who'd already broken cover before the speech, were Blackpool's Lorraine Beavers and Newcastle's Catherine McKinnell, and then on Monday evening four junior ministers packed it in: Tom Rutland has resigned his environmental brief, Wes Streeting's bag carrier Joe Morris is gone, the Cabinet Office's Naushabah Khan said the party "needs a change on direction", and David Lammy aide Melanie Ward said the public's verdict last week "was clear". Additionally, Shabana Mahmood's coffer bringer Sally Jameson has called on Starmer to go. As of the very moment of writing, 75 MPs want a new leader.

The issue is whether this is what MPs in general want. It was notable that remnants of the Campaign Group were trying to talk West down from her challenge because they want time to get Burnham back into the Commons. A Streeting premiership is to be avoided at all costs. But also, no one in the cabinet at the moment is willing to go out on a limb. Presumably because their favoured successor is ill=prepared, or because the general mood among the PLP is against a contest, they're all being terribly loyal and sticking on-message. It's worth noting that most who've expressed their views and want Starmer gone are a mix of the usuals and MPs early in their careers.

Part of the paralysis is thanks to the limited range of possible successors. The Streeting vs Burnham/Raynor tale has narrowed minds as it has narrowed options, so there's little to no thought about skipping a generation. Al Carns is occasionally mentioned, but this has more to do with Labour's love for military machismo than whatever his other qualities might be. There are a range of capable others who are unlikely to get a look-in. Off the top of my head, Louise Haigh, Rosena Allin-Khan, and Sarah Owen possess soft left politics, have variously fallen foul of Morgan McSweeney's boys' club, are fresh faces where the public are concerned, and are considerably more dynamic than Starmer and the other "big beasts". The PLP might be short on talent, but there are some who are consistently overlooked.

Whatever the eventual leadership contest looks like, we're in the awkward position that Starmer is finished as far as the country is concerned. He spent the last six years disassembling Labour's coalition of voters and he and his allies appear genuinely shocked that they won't now pay fealty to his party. However, for reasons of convenience, cowardice, and careerism, the bulk of the PLP are reluctant to move on right now. And that could mean we're lumbered with the Prime Minister for a while longer yet.

Edit Obviously, the two minutes this post was up has tipped the scales. According to the BBC's Chris Mason, Shabana Mahmood and others have urged Starmer to lay out a timetable for his resignation. The lesson? On an active news day, never, never post commentary about it until the lead in to the 10 o'clock news is over.

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It's the Differential Turnout, Stupid

How should we judge the performance of our political parties in the aftermath of the Scottish Parliamentary, the Welsh Senedd, and English local elections? The leadership hopefuls are circling Keir Starmer, while Nigel Farage has promised something spectacular will befall Reform on Thursday. What counts as disaster? What amounts to triumph?

Starting with Labour, Keir Starmer set the bar pretty low in 2025. Labour lost 187 councillors in the context of a projected vote share of 20% - the lowest since the party emerged as an electoral force 120-odd years ago. Readers with memories might also recall Labour's 2021 election outing, where projected share stood at 29%, with 327 councillors and Labour's control of eight councils lost. It has since come out in sundry memoirs and insider accounts that Starmer seriously considered resigning because he thought this result was so bad. Unfortunately for him, Labour are now on course to do much worse than this.

In historical context, in relatively recent times Tony Blair saw Labour lose 1,150 councillors in the 1999 locals. A point when he was at the height of his powers. For even-handedness's sake, he also oversaw Labour's best ever local election performance. In 1995, the party scooped up 1,807 councillors on a projected vote of 47%. But back to the gloom. Labour's worst performance was half a century ago. In 1976, Jim Callaghan notched up a catastrophic loss of 1,309 seats. Surely Starmer will surpass that with ease and enter the record books. But the worst ever performance at a local election by a governing party is a honour that, right now, belongs to John Major. While Blair was celebrating his crushing council triumph in 1995, Major registered a collapse of 2,018 seats, a loss of almost half of all that year's Tory defences with a projected 25% vote share. If you look at the aggregate monthly votes of council by-elections since last August, Labour has only polled above 20% on one occasion - far shorter than the number that brought the Conservatives calamity.

The story in Scotland is less worse. Again, long time readers might remember Starmer ousting Richard Leonard from the branch office so the impeccably right wing Anas Sarwar could be installed in his place. In 2021, that paid dividends as support for the Scottish party slid further to 21.6% for the constituency and 17.9% in the list sections, giving Labour 22 MSPs. Recent polls from Norstat and Moreincommon suggest further slippage, but with their likely getting supplanted by Reform. Again, the previous floor presents itself as an impossibly high ceiling.

Wales is where the true disaster is brewing. October's Caerphilly catastrophe spelled out the doom that's coming: the end of Labour's domination of Welsh politics. So feeble has it become that former Labour supporters in their tens of thousands are sure to switch mainly to Plaid Cymru to keep Reform out. Bear in mind Labour's previous 'worst ever' outing in the Senedd's short history was 2007 when it could muster 32.2% and 26% of ballots cast, this year such a result is beyond Welsh Labour's wildest dreams. Moreincommon polling suggests a popular vote around half the previous nadir, and with a seat haul to match. A century of political dominance is forecast to be wiped out. Losing Wales alone should cost Starmer his job.

No matter the floor, Starmer's Labour is poised to drop through them. But what of the challenger parties? Last year, Reform triumphed, winning 10 councils, 677 councillors, and a projected vote share of 30%. Which is much better than UKIP's popular vote high point, which saw them register a projected 22% in 2013. Crunching the numbers based on current polling, a net gain of 1,401 seats seems about where most pollsters are pegging the Reform advance. Likewise, between 400-500 gains for the Greens is on the cards with a lion share of gains in the London boroughs, and winning between three to five of the capital's councils.

Triumphs in the waiting? For Reform, does a four-digit councillor gain suggest its forward march to Westminster domination has been resumed? As Peter Kellner, the former YouGov polling specialist touches on, it depends on the sort of percentage Reform are able to capture. A seat tally that simply reflects their current standing in the polls would be good news for the party, but doesn't suggest they're advancing. In my view, Kellner does not go far enough. He and most pollsters and commentators ahead of these elections aren't taking differential turnout into consideration.

All of these elections are second order elections. Political scientists have long made the distinction between first and second order elections in that for most voters, first order elections - i.e. general elections - are the ones that really matter because they lead to government formation and policies that affect their lives. For example, the 2024 general election saw a pitiful turnout of 59.7%. But in Scotland, all Holyrood elections, bar the 2021 poll, have lagged below this. The same is true for all the elections so far to the Senedd, and ditto by and large for local council elections. Rare is the parliamentary by-election that matches, let alone exceeds that constituency's previous general election turnout. Whether Scotland bucks this trend for the second election running is something we'll soon find out, but it's likely that the Welsh and English elections won't.

This matters because fewer voters turn up for second order elections. It's well known that the older one is, the more likely they are to (habitually) vote. This is true of the general election. Pensioners and older working age cohorts vote in greater numbers than younger cohorts for a variety of reasons, that we won't go into here. This differential, however, is exacerbated for second order elections. Older people are less likely to vote than they would be in a general election, but the abstention rate for younger cohorts is even greater. This matters because, as pollsters show and as this blog has talked about plenty of times, there's a strong relationship between age and voting preferences. One which, in recent years, older people disproportionately vote for the parties of the right (Conservatives, Reform) and working age people the left (Labour, Greens). Therefore, this structuring of British political opinion means the Tories and Reform have a distinct advantage in second order elections over Labour and the Greens. They can better rely on their support to vote.

This needs factoring into projections. For instance, in 2025 when Reform polled a projected 30% this more or less matched their polling average at that time. But taking differential turnout into consideration, their popular vote tally should have been higher. Similarly, Labour captured a poor 20%, but that was a figure suppressed by the age cohorts who actually turned up. If there was no age-related disproportionality, Reform would have done worse and Labour better.

Why does this matter? Because taking differential turnout into consideration offers a better read on the trajectories of parties. If Reform do win their projected 1,400 gains on 26% of the result, differential turnout suggests their real support in the general-election voting population is lower that that figure suggests. Likewise, if the Greens manage net gains of 450 seats on a projected 16%, because they have taken to the field in an election landscape where their reliance on younger voters is a disadvantage, their real levels of support are likely to be higher. Therefore, to conclude that Reform has real momentum, their vote has to be significantly above their forecasts. Ditto, to say the Greens are on the cycle path to nowhere, the party's vote has to be significantly lower. The same also applies to Labour and the Tories, the SNP and Plaid Cymru. But not the Liberal Democrats, who don't have any meaningful variations in support across the age ranges.

There is one possible objection to this view. Political science also acknowledges that because second order elections "don't matter", people who vote in them are more likely to register a protest. For instance, the 14.5% the Greens scored in the 1989 European Parliament elections didn't translate into an advance in 1992. The Brexit Party winning the same set of elections in 2019 did not convert into seats in that Winter's election. However, there are two things that suggest this skewing of voting intention has blurred. The first will be these results themselves. Labour in Wales, for instance, has withstood past protests against the direction of the Britain-wide party in and out of office. The coming wipe out speaks less of a protest and more a fundamental break in trust. And the second is the erosion of the two-party duopoly, as evidenced in the 2024 election. What we're now seeing is the further development of that trend, in seeming defiance of Duverger's Law and his view that majoritarian electoral systems cluster support around two contending parties, usually of the right and the left. What happens on Thursday is likely to continue this process.

Inevitably, the seats won and lost will command the headlines. That's what matters in electoral politics. But for those wanting to get a deeper sense of public opinion drift, of who is being overhyped or underpriced, it will all be there in the projected vote shares.

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Stuck with Starmer

Another week has rolled by and Keir Starmer is still Prime Minister. The Peter Mandelson affair grinds on, with a vote of inquiry into whether Starmer misled the Commons has been tabled by the Tories, and now ministers will spend their Monday evening ringing round the PLP to ensure they vote the right way. And the overwhelming majority of them will. After all this parliamentary party has happily voted for cuts to disability payments, so they're unlikely to find fault with the administrative procedures surrounding the affair. Tuesday also brings us Morgan McSweeney's appearance before the Foreign Affairs Committee, which may entail more squirming and discomfiture. All of which is about muddying Starmer's responsibility for appointing Mandelson in the first place.

You've got to ask how much longer can the farce of this premiership stagger on for. Over the weekend, Starmer said the next election would be between Labour and Reform and he's the man to lead that campaign. He went on to say that the "patriotic values of tolerance, decency, live and let live, diversity, are under challenge like we’ve never seen before." He should know,. His government is at the forefront of stirring the pot.

Unfortunately, Starmer's manifest unsuitability and dishonesty is something Labour are stuck with. Such are the consequences of the party's Faustian pact with the Mandelson-led, and City-funded coterie who Starmer played front man for. The election victory was brought at the price of stripping the party of the remnants of its social democratic soul, and now all the electorate can see is something abominable. A veritable picture of Dorian Gray without the witty prose. The question about who would replace Starmer is as unresolved now as it was when the NEC blocked Andy Burnham from standing in Gorton and Denton. MPs, despairing at Starmer, are now apparently warming to the King of the North's seizing the Iron Throne. Yet the path back remains as convoluted as ever. Meanwhile, Wes Streeting is still damaged goods because of his Mandelson associations and oligarch-friendly politics. And Angela Rayner is still waiting for her tax issues to go away. Matters are so bad that Ed Miliband's name continues to float around the lobby gossip columns.

I'm almost reminded of that weird moment in British politics when Theresa May's position had completely disintegrated but, at the same time, because none of her rivals wanted to inherit the tough job of negotiating a Brexit deal and selling it to a deeply divided Tory party, she was afforded a strange but time-limited autonomy independent of the warring factions. A very weak sort of Bonapartism. But I said almost reminded. In all essentials, Starmer and his possible successors are on the same page politically. Streeting offers no change at all, the same dead-eyed joyless politics that treat the interests of the rich as sacrosanct. Rayner and Burnham offer more character and less racism, but that's their lot. Most of the PLP and ever-so-wise commentators think change means dumping Starmer and getting someone else in, but this just isn't going to cut it. Nothing less than a political turn around and a complete reinvention in office will do, but with these heirs apparent and this PLP? It's would be a kindness to book them into a Swiss clinic now.

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Bureaucratic Theatre

Last weekend, I almost wrote about how Keir Starmer was looking safe despite the coming catastrophe of losing Wales and getting wiped out in the English local government. That was before the toxicity surrounding Peter Mandelson's appointment resurfaced. Presenting like the Spanish Inquisition, from nowhere we learned that Starmer wasn't told that the former US ambassador had failed his security vetting in January 2025 and that the Foreign Office cleared Mandelson anyway. Olly Robbins, the civil servant in charge, was promptly sacked when Starmer found out. There has since followed a who-knew-what-when game involving confected and performative frothing over procedural matters, and an effort to absolve the Prime Minister of all responsibility.

In the Commons on Monday, Starmer apologised for appointing Mandelson. But then spent the next half hour recounting the timeline. He was adamant that he wasn't told about the outcome of the security check which, rather stupidly, was undertaken only after the announcement of the appointment. This has now been changed. The problem being, and for which Starmer has not provided an answer, is that The Indy ran a lead story on the checking's failure last September and had contacted Downing Street about it. Starmer side-stepped the this question from Kemi Badenoch, hiding behind the "all process was followed" excuse. Even if this was true, didn't this query involve further discussion in Number 10 at the time? It's difficult to believe this did not reach the ears of certain senior people.

Whatever the ins and outs of process, no one is likely to believe Starmer apart from those who want to. Easily Boris Johnson's equal when it comes to matters of the truth, Starmer's leadership is so fully compromised by an economy with the actualite that everything he says should come with a warning and a lengthy fact check. His strategy to come out fighting is all about burying the problem in boring procedure to avoid blame. Reams and reams of articles going over the prescribed way of doing things and making it look like a dysfunction of arcane Whitehall machinery. This, however, is nothing but a shield. Starmer knew who Mandelson was, his history and record, his disgraces, and his close friendships with billionaires, above all convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Starmer wasn't to know about Mandelson's treachery, but there was plenty of other things that suggested giving him the top ambassador's job was stupid. And he was appointed anyway, following Mandelson apparently lobbying Morgan McSweeney for the post and as reward for services rendered. Despite Starmer's insincere apology, he's never proffered an explanation for employing him in the first place. Because he hasn't got an acceptable answer, hence why we're getting treated to the unique tedium of Starmer's bureaucratic theatre.

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Trump is Not Senile

Following the war on Iran and Trump's usual erratic comments, another round of "the President is senile!" has ripped through mainstream politics. Senior Democrat Jamie Raskin has called for a full cognitive assessment of the President in light of recent behaviour. I hate to break it to folks clinging to the Trump-in-decline thesis, but there is nothing about him that suggests any kind of impairment. There is no difference between Trump now, Trump during his four years out of office, Trump in his first term, and Trump before then. That he seemingly has little impulse control and brow beats others into submission is entirely explicable by his upbringing, his gilded life, and the fact he's unaccustomed to dealing with people who say no.

This allegation comes up time and again. Why? Some of it can be explained by Trump's refusal to abide by the politesse of establishment politics. Consider the idiocies of George W Bush and, before him, Ronald Reagan. They were outrageous in their own ways, but there were certain rules of the game that they either abided by or paid lip service to. Trump's greatest crime among some layers of centrist opinion in his first term was that he was rude. And we can measure this by how some of the policies he introduced were continued and, in some cases, reinforced during Joe Biden's tenure without anywhere near as many complaints from those quarters. But then, for centrists it's only appearances that matter. To deviate from political norms can only be explained by senility. That this is simply Trump being "grab-them-by-the-pussy" Trump is beyond their comprehension.

Also, talking about Trump's sanity means avoiding asking more awkward questions. Such as how it is that the American system keeps churning up dummies and granting them the highest office. Across the right, it's not just Trump and his cabinet of horrors, but look at the state of current and former GOP representatives. Lindsey Graham, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, an assortment of names that do not connect with intellect or erudition. The question isn't whether Trump is suitable or not, but why do people like Trump - the stupid, the ignorant, the aggressive - keep on getting elected and keep on succeeding? Centrists prattling on about Trump's senility never ask this question. And, in fact, they go on about his cognitive health so much that it appears to be a mix of avoidance and cope, precisely so they don't ever have to ponder why this is the case.

Ultimately, it comes down to the impasse of ruling class politics. On the one hand, there is technocratic centrism which offers technical, managerialist half-explanations for why things are as they are. They don't bother trying to justify ours as the best of all possible worlds. It's just "reality", and it should be left to the experts to make "trade offs" and get on with the complex problem of governing. And on the other, there is hard right, authoritarian politics. It too doesn't bother trying to spin excuses for their system. Instead it manufactures scapegoats and enemies in an orchestrated effort to misdirect dissatisfaction. It too, ultimately, stumps for the same interests and the same class relations as the centrists. It's just that their politics requires a big personality - a demagogue or a clown, it doesn't matter which - to front the show.

In Trump's case, there is a certain alignment between the fact that he is, seemingly, beyond accountability and the position of the United States in the global system. As its power declines in the world, as former satraps are showing independence, it has dispensed with the formalities of international law and has accrued immense damage to its soft power, particularly among its traditional allies. Increasingly, the US state is but a transparent front for the maintenance of oligarchical power and does this fully in the knowledge no one can stop them. Trump's personality and behaviour is the perfect fit for this era of American decline. A six-time bankrupt overseeing the bankruptcy of American values, a braggart and self-fancied hard man surrendering the Strait of Hormuz in a war of aggression he began, and a billionaire - through his and his family's troughing - demonstrating without a care in the world who and what the United States really stands for. This is a world of pure, naked class power. Trump has no airs or graces, every day he testifies to the real nature of the world. And it says everything about the feeble-mindedness of centrism and the interests it caters to that they take baseless allegations about Trump's senility over the truths his very person parades. Why bother speculating about the state of the President's brain when the politics provides the best explainer for his destructive behaviour.

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On Trashing MPs

Friday's Graun article from Hannah Spencer upset some people in politics. Reflecting on her first few weeks in the Commons, she suggests MPs - above all Labour MPs - are out of touch. And it struck a needle into a raw nerve. Stafford MP Leigh Ingham called it "insulting and oversimplistic" and accused Spencer of making "populist slurs" and "feeding anti-trust in politics". Economics prof Jonathan Portes thought it was "deeply depressing". His conclusion is that it was "lazy soundbites and bad economics".

Spencer is not wrong, though. If any of them read beyond the headline, I imagine these lines sat awkwardly.

I don’t think that’s something most MPs understand – not really. They might think they do, they might say they do, but they don’t properly know what it’s like; how it feels in your bones.

And

The Labour government has finally bowed to pressure and is set to bring in new measures this month that it says will help people with the cost of living. But the reality is its plan isn’t good enough.

That much is true, but if anything Spencer is too kind to the honourable members. Today, for example, changes to Universal Credit means that applicants for extra support for disabilities face lower payments than those already receiving them. The projected saving for this is £1bn over the next three years, a sum so low that one can only conclude the cut is being made for punitive reasons. Something the government themselves admit, albeit behind the usual rubbish about "increasing the incentive to work". It begs the question that if MPs are "in touch" like they claim to be, then why was this allowed through following the disability cuts rebellion last year. Have costs gone down for people living with severe impairments?

There are several things that work to estrange MPs from the electorate. Their salaries and perks put them in the top one per cent of earners. They are flattered and feted by parliamentary and party hangers on, and important people enjoy treating them. Like the £3k of hospitality our hardworking Leigh Ingham enjoyed from Google at last year's Glastonbury. The experience of dealing with constituents has a similar effect. Most come seeking some form of assistance, and so the MP has a 'power-over' position from the start. This can lead to a certain arrogance. I.e. A belief that they know what people want better than anyone else, particularly the weirdos that come to branch and constituency meetings. And, in some cases, contempt for constituents' concerns. This forms an insulating barrier against everyday life. And enables so many to get sucked into the doings and frequent dramas of Westminster - the work they want to do as opposed to the stuff they have to do.

This can be mitigated, and it's worth remembering that left wing MPs, though not immune to customary entitlements, do better than most. Not because they're superhuman or uniquely moral, but usually thanks to the strong links they have with their local party, community groups, trade unions, and social movement mobilisations. Whereas the freebies, business lunches, and VIP trips give those who avail themselves of them an altogether different grounding. And readies them to cater for the interests of those who must be kowtowed to.

Spencer then is absolutely right to call MPs out of touch, because their realities are far removed from most ordinary people's. Everyone knows MPs live a rarefied life, and it's farcical to pretend otherwise.

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Angela Rayner's Alternative

As everyone knows, last week it was Angela Rayner's turn to upset Labour's apple cart. And it was all going so well. Her speech has been extensively reported and commented on, and there's not much that needs adding. Rayner's positioning for the inevitable leadership putsch following the locals! She's venting the frustrations of the grassroots! She's angling for a cabinet return once HMRC have pronounced on her tax affairs! She's reminding us that she exists! All of these positions were argued out in sundry outlets, and all of them are true.

As for the content of her speech to Mainstream, there's not much the average Labour member, or MP for that matter, would find disagreeable. Among Rayner's remarks was a worry that the party and the movement was facing a terminal crisis, "... we cannot go through the motions in the face of decline. We are running out of time." She's right. The traditionally myopic parliamentary party has not failed to notice the surging Greens and how Labour regularly trails them in surveys by two pollsters, but this just reaffirms the hostility canvassers are getting on punters' doorsteps, the diminishing band of volunteers up for this, the rapid emptying out of constituency meetings, and the feeble performance in council by-elections. What she doesn't mention, naturally, is her own role in overseeing the process that has hollowed out the party and pruned its roots.

Still, there was something quite significant that she said. Arguing against the ever-rightward push on immigration, she said that Shabana Mahmood's policies were "un-British" because of their unfairness that amounted to moving the goalposts. They were "not just bad policy but a breach of trust". Rayner could have gone a step further on from liberal moralism and noted how they were bad politics as well, but perhaps that would have been too much of an open challenge at this stage. Nevertheless, everyone got the message.

Including other Labour MPs. One nameless interlocutor said "The public support for what Shabana is doing is enormous, it’s probably the most popular thing the government is doing." Except it's not. Labour have thoroughly imbibed the politics of cruelty while driving immigration figures down. And the thanks they get for this? None whatsoever. Nothing Labour can do, nothing in Mahmood's programme of grinding refugees into the dirt can win over the "very real concerns" brigade of Reform voters. But what it can do, and is doing, is alienating further Labour's support on the left and in the centre. You know, the latter being where elections are won - at least according to the gospel of St Tony. Rayner, thanks to coming up through the trade union movement, understands better than cabinet yuppies that this doesn't play with the class she came from. Social conservatism is actually about defending and bettering the life chances of working class people, something one of Blue Labour's paragons affects to understand, but mysteriously, somehow, always provides an excuse for a very middle class racism, delivered at a remove by the boot of the state. Something too many Labour minister relish the chance doing, as long as they can pin the blame for this on "it's what the voters want".

However, word is abroad in Westminster circles that Mahmood is far from happy with these criticisms, and has said she'll quit if her attack on refugees and immigrants is diluted by Starmer. The latter's shifting mood is, apparently, not only because of Rayner's intervention but the realisation that the party might need those left and centrist voters after all.

In truth, given the US/Israeli attack on Iran and the inevitable consequences of retaliation and escalations - oil, gas, and fertiliser shortages, galloping energy prices, this all seems like a ridiculous sideshow. It's telling that having taken place more than a week after the beginning of the war, Rayner's speech did not reflect on it nor its impact in any meaningful way. And here is Rayner's problem. Yes, she is savvier than most of her (former) cabinet colleagues. Yes, she has a better understanding of the shape and sociology of Labour's support. But, apart from less overt racism, what is she offering apart from alternative vibes? Remember, Rayner was happy to ditch the left when it was politic to do so. She sat back as the Labour right gutted the party of its actual, living links to working class people, and even kept quiet when they systematically barred her allies in Manchester and the North West from selection. Rayner is a snappy, charming speaker and a charismatic figure, but politicians whose actions have contributed to a crisis rarely prove to be the ones capable of solving it.

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Labourism and Social Conservatism

"Social conservatism has always been part of Labour!", so wrote Connor Naismith last week. Seeing that Labour suffered humiliation in Manchester, he argues that there are "voices" who are laying the blame for the defeat on Blue Labour. "Traditional values", they say, need junking if Labour is going to dust itself off and return to winning ways. As a self-identifying supporter of this trend, Naismith has gone into print to defend it.

There are two parts to his argument. Firstly, social conservatism is embedded in Labourism. The party's forward march and its reformist zeal was driven by the need to protect what he calls "the moral economy". That is taking home a wage enough for a family to live on, the sustenance of "communal discipline" (i.e. solidarity), and localism. Social conservatism is social glue, and every radical programme needs that if it's going to succeed. Speaking of the 1945 Labour government, he says "They built the NHS and the welfare state not to dismantle the British way of life, but to fortify it. They were radical in their means because they were conservative in their ends: the health, dignity, and stability of British families."

Therefore, purging social conservatism is like amputating a limb. Labour and Labourism are radical because they are conservative. Social conservatism respects people where they are, imbues places with meaning, and gives relationships substance. It is a rooted politics based in the every day, and one aimed at preserving what is good while making things better. Labour would be foolish to abandon anyone who aspires to such.

The second part of his argument is why Labour in such a state. Naismith says that Labour has abandoned its vote. The breaking of the so-called red wall " ... was because gradually, over decades, the party’s centre of gravity shifted toward a metropolitan liberalism that felt increasingly judgemental of parts of the tradition that founded it." What does this actually mean? In British politics discourse the term "metropolitan liberalism" has distinct connotations. It's right wing shorthand for "things we don't like", such as equal rights and affording racial and sexual minorities recognition and respect. I don't know how long Naismith's been in Labour for, but in my nine years of knocking on doors in Stoke-on-Trent, from the dog days of Gordon Brown to Jeremy Corbyn's Waterloo, no one told me they weren't voting Labour because it supported gay rights. Or offered help to the disabled. What I got instead was a lot of "you're all the same", you "don't listen", some anti-immigration bile, and even an occasional "you've abandoned the working class". For much of the previous 30 years, that last comment was absolutely right. Who oversaw a greater decline of manufacturing than Thatcher? Tony Blair. Who did nothing to enhance collective rights in the workplace? Tony Blair. Who continued the undermining of sate institutions by subjecting them to the market? You get the idea. This was not thanks to metropolitan arrogance, though there was plenty of that around, rather it was because New Labour was open about its contempt for the labour movement, its aspirations, and presented itself as a reliable custodian of British capitalism and manager of its class relations - for capital's benefit. And when this anti-working class agenda was challenged by Corbyn's leadership, we know what happened.

Naismith's class-blind history aside, he really gives social conservatism too much credit. When we look at the toerags and fools who present themselves as Blue Labour, it's telling that this club are a) middle class, b) white men, and c) have absolutely no standing or roots in the wider labour movement. Read Maurice Glasman - I have - and it's obvious that the "economic radicalism" that is supposedly the flip side of this very, very moral politics is merely a rhetorical nod. A never-articulated alibi for a miserable dismalism of scapegoating, and stop-the-world fogeyness. If only Blue Labour was a careful plea to understand the interests of our class, its (long-declining) culture of collectivism, and putting that at the heart of policy making and the vision for a better future. Instead, what we have had under Keir Starmer is a racist effort to out-Reform Reform, the rolling back of trans rights, and until recently a noted reticence to take on bigotry. Very middle class Labour MPs and well-heeled friendly journalists defended all this because this was their idea of what social conservatism was, and they were merely giving voice to values shared by the salt-of-the-earth. Meanwhile, polling of working age Britons has found this ventriloquism is a poor impression of what they say and think. The Labour working class base was imploding because other parties were actually speaking to their interests and their actual values. It was them talking the language of respect and reciprocity, while Labour imitated the spite, the division, and the small mindedness of their opponents on the extreme right.

Thirdly, Naismith's definition of social conservatism is empty to the point of meaninglessness. If Naismith is impressed by the class cultures of old, what policies are he and his party following to promote a new collectivism appropriate to the actually existing working class? The answer to that, of course, is very little. Instead, along with racist and transphobic divide-and-rule politics, we've seen the same commitment to labour market flexibility, of letting capital run riot in the NHS, and the handing of a veto to business over crucial aspects of their much trumpeted, and much watered-down Employment Rights Act. The danger, the existential threat to Labour lies not in the call for the party to be less racist and binning off Blue Labour, but in its refusal to act as the political fulcrum of the class that made it. And this is why that class is now turning elsewhere.

On Labour-Green Defections

One of the culprits for rendering Your Party a nullity was its importation of Labourist culture. The bureaucratic shenanigans, the behind-the-scenes bullshit, the flouting of democratic votes and "abbreviations" of its constitution have turned a promising project into a Corbyn Glee club, minus decent tunes and a promise of joy. So it's of interest that, according to The Graun, would-be defectors from Labour to the Greens want to bring something distinctly Labourist along with them: a God-given right to "their" seat.

We read that among the chats/negotiations Zack Polanski and other leading Greens have had with disaffected Labour MPs, the issue of guaranteed seats has come up. I.e. If they make the jump, that want to be sure they will be the Green candidate in the subsequent election. This is custom and practice among the other parties. Remember when Christian Wakeford waltzed over from the Tories to Labour? His automatic reselection for Bury South was part of the deal. Of course, when politics is just another career you can imagine politicians treating defection as a shuffle sideways from one position to another, with the same perks and pay intact. This attitude is baked into Labourism, seeing as the party's constitution enshrines it and successive generations of parliamentarians treat Labour as an apparatus to serve them. Hence their utter horror when the party started showing signs of a democratic life of its own during Jeremy Corbyn's tenure.

That, presumably, left wingers thinking about crossing the floor have the same attitude is disappointing, but not surprising. What's bred in the bone will out in the flesh. The problem, unlike Labour, is it's not in the gift of the party leadership to guarantee seats. Mandatory reselection sensibly rules in the Greens, as does a more decentralised structure of party affairs. An approach that has deep roots in Green parties across Europe as a collective prophylactic against bureaucracy and institutional capture by unelected party officials. The relevant part of the party's constitution lays out the procedures for candidate selection, a process that sitting MPs would, at present, be expected to go through prior to the next election. In terms of the rules, there are no privileges that attach to being a sitting member. Formally speaking, everyone is equal in candidate selection.

There are provisions for leadership intervention where no candidate has been selected, which would be appropriate to a snap election like 2017, or where a selected candidate drops out for whatever reason and a replacement needs slotting in hurriedly, but that's it. The party membership are unlikely to vote in a Labour approach simply because they like being in a party in which the membership are actually sovereign. Nor are the leadership likely to expend political capital bending over to accommodate the uncertain pledges of defectors. Right now, heading into the local elections, as the rising electoral power the Greens have the psychological whip hand. New MPs coming from Labour are a nice-to-have, but are inessential. If Labour politicians are serious about coming on over, they have to leave the belief in the supremacy of MPs, the chief tenet of Labourism, at the door.

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Slipping the Leash

"I think the war is very complete, pretty much. They have no navy, no communications, they’ve got no Air Force." So said Donald Trump, during an interview with CBS. The reason for the war has never been set out, because neither Trump, his office, nor the Israeli government have a justification. Judging by their commentary, they don't think one is even needed. This is aggression for aggression's sake, an effort to bedazzle and distract from domestic issues. But hard realities are biting. Far from being a bloodless affair, Benjamin Netanyahu condemned Tel Aviv to repeated missile strikes as stores of interceptor supplies remain depleted from last year's exchange with Iran. Meanwhile, despite suffering heavy damage and political decapitation the Iranian regime and military remain robust and have shown a capacity to fight back. Something the US and Israel are not accustomed to. And there is the small matter of Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the heart attack this has sent through oil and energy markets. The knock on consequences won't do Trump any political favours, and we'll see how much of his base are willing to stump up for this pay-per-view none of them asked for.

Unusually for a US war of aggression, the UK have proven extremely reluctant to get involved. Keir Starmer tried his best to be accommodating without actually committing British forces. After the initial raids over Tehran he was quick to call on Iran to show restraint, and was equally quick to condemn when their missiles and drones found their targets in reply. When British bases and Gulf "partners"/clients were hit, he announced that the US Air Force were welcome to use British facilities for "defensive strikes". Which is so much evasive lawyer babble to avoid admitting his government's complicity in something that, in theory, should see its instigators in the dock at The Hague. Not that this has impressed Trump, who branded Starmer "no Churchill", and downplayed belated UK efforts to move aircraft carriers in sortie distance from Iran. Trump's cheerleaders in this country couldn't help themselves either. The Tory/Reform press have been attacking Starmer ever since the bombs started falling for not joining in, with preposterous stories that the nature of Labour's voting coalition has stayed his hand. Oh yes, the same party so concerned with Muslim voters that they gave Israel a free hand in massacring Palestinians in Gaza. Kemi Badenoch has dived in, saying Starmer can find plenty of money for social security instead of bullets and bombs. Laughable. Nigel Farage said the UK should be dropping ordinance alongside the US. Both have received backing from Tony Blair. He, unsurprisingly, thinks Britain should follow whenever the White House says heel. Once a poodle, always a poodle.

Starmer's effort to keep Britain to a limited role has little to do with the niceties of international law, and even less to do with electoral embarrassment. On paper, the UK's interests in the Middle East and the Gulf are practically identical to the Americans. They want friendly, preferably autocratic regimes, and Israel's role in this set up is the quick-to-anger gendarme. Iran is the destabilising element who, through its own regional strength and networks of irregular allies and semi-state actors were checks on Israel's aggressive posture and, by extension, the challenger to Western hegemony. This suffered severe setbacks with the obliteration of Gaza, incursions into Lebanon, the bombing of the Houthis in Yemen, and missile exchanges between Israel and Iran over the last 18 months. From Britain and, by extension, Western Europe's perspective Iran had largely been put back in its box. There was now no real threat to Israel. Everything was fine.

Until Netanyahu and Trump started their war of aggression. Britain is not concerned about civilian deaths, be they Iranian, from the Gulf states, or fiercely patriotic tax exiles. It is worried about the consequences of destabilisation. As far as the government and the foreign office are concerned, the war is utterly reckless. The disruption to energy supplies, air travel, shipping, and the sloshing of Gulf money into and through the City are unwelcome costs with a range of politically undesirable consequences. Being at odds with the US is a rarity thanks to establishment slavishness - as typified by the repugnant axis of Badenoch, Farage, and Blair - but remaining separate and disengaged reduces political costs and keeps material costs to a minimum. The price shock and mess of Trump's war is not worth it when the overall outcome will largely be no different to when the bombing started, despite White House hyperbole. The special relationship has proven to be anything but since the razzmatazz of the second state visit, and it appears Starmer, David Lammy, and friends have - rightly - calculated that nothing would be gained from joining this criminal enterprise. All of which helps explain why, for once, we're not being dragged into an unwanted war by the government at America's behest.

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On Anti-Green Hysteria

Maybe I have a weird sense of humour, but I found Tuesday morning's YouGov poll putting the Greens in second and Labour a distant joint third hilarious. Reform on 23%, Greens 21%, and Labour and the Tories both on 16%. As the world can see, Labour's attempts to bounce back after the the Gorton and Denton drubbing have not proven successful. Who could have guessed that the Prime Minister's decision to equate Reform and the Greens would not go down well with the voters he's losing? Meanwhile, things aren't looking fantastic for Reform either. A weekend spent telegraphing what sore losers they are, Moreincommon finds Reform topping its negative poll tracker on 38%, with Labour on 34%. Its looking like the crisis in establishment politics has taken a turn for the worse.

The reasons why Labour are sinking are well rehearsed, and doesn't bear repeating. But the steady evaporation of the party under Keir Starmer is a problem. Labourism from its earliest manifestations was always a means of reconciling the organised working class with the social order, of aligning the industrial incrementalism of trade union struggle with the coalition-building and proceduralism of constitutional politics. It was and, in its best moments, remains less a moral crusade and more a means of integrating the working class into the politics and (sensible) management of British capitalism. For it to do this, Labour needs to keep its base among the popular layers. However, it's been evident since Starmer became party leader that he either does not understand this or doesn't care. Because his approach to politics is both managerialist and obsequiously deferential to business, above all the City. Yet hollowing out the party before it even took office is to undermine Labour and Labourism's utility to British capital. Apart from its hyper class conscious and, therefore, paranoid elements, capital likes Labour because of its historic role in dampening down aspirations and movements from below. They appreciate Rachel Reeves's orthodox approach to state finances, but that's a nice to have. Labour is supposed to manage and police the class relations of British capitalism for capital's benefit from within the organised workers' movement. Something it cannot do if the mass support has vanished and has gone, in the main, to a radical upstart.

This is where the hysteria seen across the Tory press since Thursday's result comes in. It has been occasionally noted that the collapse of the Tories hasn't occasioned much soul searching or panic on the right. The reason being that Reform are available to articulate the interests that have hitherto animated the Conservatives, and that despite occasional argy-bargy between Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch, it's clear that should the situation demand some kind of electoral arrangement or governing coalition deal could be struck. With Reform leading the polls, the right are intensely relaxed about the vestigal status of the Tories. But, having driven all before it, if they weren't expecting Reform to win in Manchester they too believed the polls about how close the contest was. Instead they were handily seen off. This shouldn't be too much of a concern considering the character of the constituency, but have inhaled their own fumes. They - like the Labour right - caricature the working class as racists moved by the same oddball concerns as they. Having had their reality impinged upon, and seeing green left populism crowding out their tired old shtick, all of a sudden they're worried. Farage's cache is anti-political establishment, of being the "change" candidate. That the Greens have successfully contested these claims on one occasion, the right are now worried that they were getting high on their supply, and that we could be back in 2017 again. A fear reinforced by Reform's stalling in most national polls.

Here then is the problem. Labour are no longer suitable as a vehicle for mass politics, and therefore cannot be a reliable pacifier. Meanwhile, the great white hope of the right is not as popular as they thought it was. Centrism is, once again, a dead letter. And the right might not be strong enough to win an election, be it a Reform government or a coalition with the Tories. At the same time, as far as both parties are concerned the insurgent Green Party has come from nowhere and threatens to drag politics as a whole into confrontation with property, work, income, living standards, and why the rich have prospered at everyone else's expense. I.e. The class concerns politics normally works hard to obfuscate, smother, and deny. It follows that the press will try everything to shove hope back in its box - character assassinations, gossip mongering, smears, scare mongering, whipping up new scapegoat campaigns. But ultimately, these efforts are doomed. Since the final defeat of Corbynism in 2019, the Tories, Reform, and especially Labour have done everything possible to keep the left out of politics. And yet here we are - the Greens are becoming the new vehicle for working class interests and is mounting a renewed challenge to the establishment's class compact. No wonder so many of them are panicked.

Where Now for Your Party?

It's been one of the most bad tempered elections seen in many a year. Opponents accused opponents of all manner of things as the contest itself descended into mudslinging and skulduggery. No, this is not the Gorton and Denton by-election but the vote for Your Party's Central Executive Committee, the results of which were announced on Thursday morning. The Jeremy Corbyn faction, For the Many, won 14 seats. The Zarah Sultana-backed Grassroots Left took seven seats, and the remainder went to independent candidacies. Corbyn and Sultana are also two of the four elected public office holders under the collective leadership arrangements, with Corbyn set to be YP's parliamentary leader.

Following the results, Corbyn released a mom and apple pie statement that said he wanted to build a "positive and inclusive party" and congratulated members on voting for a "mass socialist party that takes the fight to Starmer and Farage." Sultana likewise put out an emollient piece that emphasised the need to work together, but that calls for accountability and transparency "need to be respected". After the heat, may there be light?

Unfortunately for YP, it's likely this leadership election is going to leave lingering bad feeling. As late as yesterday Laura Alvarez, Corbyn's famously combative significant other, was absurdly musing about infiltration from Labour Together into YP. Which invited supportive comments that, in terms of tone, one might expect of a frothing conspiracy theory Facebook group. And this was typical of the standard of debate that raged across social media. There was precious little discussion about strategic direction, and a great deal of questioning the motives of those unwilling to extend Corbyn saintly status. Those supportive of the Grassroots Left were little better, as false character assassination and boilerplate Trot denunciations were flung in the opposite direction.

It might be possible to overcome the entrenching of divisions in YP this election has thrown up, but there remains significant obstacles to internal harmony. The first is the propensity of the nascent bureaucracy to trample over membership decisions. For instance, the instruction from conference was to allow dual membership with other parties (i.e. keeping YP open to other far left organisations), but it was down to the CEC to sort that out. This was ignored as "known" and "suspected" members of said outfits were barred from standing in these elections. A case of starting as they mean to go on? And then there was the edict that suggested people who served as officers in active unofficial YP branches would be ineligible to run for lay positions when they're finally inaugurated. A right recipe for the "inclusion" Corbyn waxed about in his statement.

And this is before we get to the main problem: how YP has spectacularly wasted its opportunity, and in so doing allowed the Greens to almost triple in size, become a true mass party and is now the vehicle for the political recomposition of the working class. A prize that was in front of YP's leadership cadre, but decided to pass it up for criminally petty reasons. That said, politics buzzes with volatility. If YP is able to stabilise, set aside its internal nonsenses, and start facing outwards it could build up a presence through consistent community, workplace, and street campaigning. And if it does, this would be a good thing for British politics. A small but viable presence could, in the spirit of socialist competition, act as a means of keeping the Greens honest. It could threaten swathes of inner city Labour-held seats where the Green presence is hitherto patchy, and a second strong radical force could work to tilt British politics as a whole further left. Cue a return to 2015-2020 levels of mainstream media hysteria and howls of outrage from politicians who treat their Commons sinecures as private property.

This is where YP can go. But it's now up to them - is this where they want to go, or is further recrimination and needless bloodletting more its style?

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Why Labour Can't Argue with the Left

Desperation. The word that, seen from afar, sums up Labour's campaign in Gorton and Denton. And the source of their fear is not the prospect of losing yet another seat to Reform, but conceding ground to the resurgent Greens. Having nixed Andy Burnham, the candidacies say everything about the two parties' respective trajectories. The Greens' Hannah Spencer, a plumber drawn to the party out of disgust with the political establishment. And Labour's Angeliki Stogia, a corporate lobbyist trudging a path into the parliamentary party beaten by so many others. Please tell me which is the pro-capitalist, petit bourgeois party and who is the organisation standing up for the working class in this by-election?

There have been two phases to Labour's campaign. It started with a studied failure to acknowledge the Green Party's existence. This is a fight between Labour and Reform, goes the party line, and progressive voters must get behind Angeliki to keep Reform out. The party even provided a Liberal Democrat-style bar chart putting the Greens in third place, which was hung from the property neighbouring Green campaign HQ. The problem, however, is that constituency polling - such as it is - have the Greens out in front and Labour in third. The betting markets, not that they have any special insight, also favour this outcome. Having decided pretending the Greens don't exist isn't working, they've moved on to gutter politics.

You might have thought that Reform's Matthew Goodwin, former pol prof and full-time far right grifter would have attracted Labour's ire. He's provided enough targets. He, after all, has called for a system of punitive taxation against women who do not have children. In Labour land, if it is between them and Reform then surely, surely their fiercest attacks should be turned toward the right. Instead, we get Keir Starmer calling the Green Party's public health-led approach to drugs "disgusting", and Sarah Jones, his policing minister, saying Zak Polanski wants to turn Britain's playgrounds "into crack dens". Brave considering the fondness several highly placed Labour figures have now or formerly had for the old nose powder. Labour's attitude is best summed up by Mike Tapp, the part-time home office minister and full-time clown from Dover and Deal. His vitriolic attack on the Greens stands out on his Twitter feed in sharp relief against a series of mild admonitions, at best, of Reform.

Writing in the New Statesman, John Elledge argues that Labour's hostility to the Greens, and bracketing them alongside Reform is only going to hurt Labour. What's left of their support knows there's no equivalence between the two parties. One party wants to welcome refugees, the other wants to deport Britons who don't meet their arbitrary criteria of national purity. One wants to help renters, the other wants to give landlords carte blanche to rinse tenants. You get the picture. And so do most Labour MPs, even those who performatively affect otherwise. They also know that the party's coalition has cracked and supporters are streaming to the Greens. It's not Reform that is Labour's biggest headache.

Which begs an interesting question. Labour's pandering to Reform and its attempt to outflank them from the right was and is justified by needing to win over Nigel Farage's fans. But this never applies in the opposite direction. Why doesn't Labour go harder on renters' rights, wages, workplaces, etc. to keep existing support on board? To my mind, there are two answers, both of which are baked into the party's politics. Firstly, according to the wisdom passed down from the disgraced Peter Mandelson, the electorate respond favourably to ... the spectacle of Labour attacking the interests of working class people. In this way, the stupid mistakes Starmer and Rachel Reeves made shortly after entering Downing Street - taking away winter fuel payments from "better off" pensioners, then threatening to cut support to disabled people - makes sense. They, or at least the dearly departed Morgan McSweeney, thought this would win plaudits with the press and therefore admiration among the punters. Imagine their confusion when this article of Blairist faith turned out not to be.

And the other? An inability to combat left wing critiques politically. Or, to be more accurate, offering convincing counter-arguments. The right won back control of Labour by lying its head off, and then using the bureaucracy to chase out the left. During the Corbyn years, it was the smears, the cry-bullying, and using remainerism as a proxy. None of them came up with an alternative programme that could persuade and convince. And the same is true today. Compromised by the government's support for a genocide, its scapegoating of the powerless, and a programme of weak and meek changes, Labour's biting back at Green Party criticisms would be a vain effort at gumming them to death. This is a consequence of the managerialist cadres Labour selects for its parliamentarians, typified by the man at the helm. These people are unaccustomed to hearing the word "no". But this comes on top of the Labourist tradition that, for over a century, had a political monopoly on the most organised and conscious sections of the working class. When its opponents to its left were the official Communist Party or the extra-Labour Trotskyist left, they could be ignored. When it was internal, as per Militant, they could be excluded. And on occasions when a left wing challenge pushed through, such as George Galloway's trio of election victories, or when Jeremy Corbyn and the so-called Gaza Independents won their seats, it could be put down to local circumstances. Labour has serious difficulties facing a mass left wing challenger party because it's never had to.

The result of all this is what we see today, peddling smears against the Greens that wouldn't be out of place in a Sun editorial or, for that matter, a Reform leaflet. If by some fluke Labour hold on to Gorton and Denton on Thursday, or if they somehow come ahead of the Greens, these points remain. Labour is unsuited and unprepared for a challenge from its left flank, and there's no sign, at least under this leadership and its heirs apparent, that it ever will be.

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On Andrew's Arrest

The former Prince Andrew arrested on his birthday? It's certainly one he won't forget in a hurry. His being taken into police custody and questioned all day over misconduct in public office allegations at least offers a suggestion that powerful people can be held to account for their activities. In this case, it regards correspondence in the Esptein files that purport to show Mountbatten-Windsor passing on documents to the world's most notorious paedophile. Allegations very similar to those levelled at the disgraced Peter Mandelson.

Obviously, as there's now an investigation with the possibility of charges, this corner of the internet won't be making further comment about the substance of this case. But the politics? That's a different matter. The establishment have spent the last couple of years disentangling itself from Mountbatten-Windsor. On several occasions, Keir Starmer has gone on the record to say he should submit himself to questioning. The press, naturally, have taken a prurient interest in the sex abuse allegations against him, diminishing his already poor standing further in the public's eyes. And the King has moved with some haste to put clear distance between the playboy prince and the family firm.

Where our most gracious sovereign is concerned, dealing with Andrew efficiently and ruthlessly was the only option available to him. For too long, Andrew enjoyed the late Queen's favour, and that preferment undoubtedly shielded him from proper accountability. The police didn't want to go there, knowing that the upset caused might have discomfited the increasingly frail Elizabeth II to expire. And with obvious ramifications for any senior officer in charge of such a probe. Instead, it was the audience with Liz Truss that saw her off. But for the King, this is a headache. Despite his strong statement on the matter. If the investigation strays into who in the Palace knew what and when, there is a possibility of major embarrassment. And if the Queen is directly implicated, which even the dogs in the street know she would be, this has ramifications for the legitimacy of the monarchy itself. Which has taken a few knocks of late.

With politics dropping to bits before our eyes, Starmer's ratings in the toilet, and a widespread impression given by the government itself that it can't affect basic levels of competence, the corrosion of the British state's major legitimating institution is very bad news for the establishment. And this is only the beginning of what will be an excruciating spectacle.

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