The Failure of the Democrats

Up until the votes were counted, things were looking positive for the Democrats. According to early voting, demographics that were predisposed toward Kamala Harris were turning out in record numbers. And those straws in the wind, the positive polling and encouraging rumours, that all ended with the counting. With over 10% of ballots to be counted at the time of writing, Trump easily got over the electoral college votes despite his popular vote standing still. The Democrats, however, are on track for losing well over 10 million votes. So many congratulations to them for failing against the worst presidential candidate who ran, technically speaking, the worst campaign in American political history.

Unsurprisingly, social media is awash with recrimination. Most of which attacks American voters as thick, evil, misogynistic, racist, and so on. Voting for Trump and Republican candidates is a character flaw up there with KKK hoods and membership of the NRA. It's irredeemable, the world isn't what it should be, and everything is doomed to get worse. What is absent is a willingness on the part of the Democrats and their cheerleaders either side of the Atlantic to deal seriously with the causes of defeat.

Three things are obvious when it comes to explaining this result. The first is an apparent reassertion of the old adage that oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them. For all Trump's awfulness, he wasn't the one on trial here. Joe Biden, Harris, and the Democrats were, and a majority of voters found them wanting. For one, the Democrats are the party of forever wars. The appeal of MAGA isolationism is an extrication from foreign entanglements and using billions expended in arming US clients for priorities closer to home. Trump is likely to withdraw support from Ukraine, as promised, while continuing to give Israel a free hand - or attempting to impose a peace that recognises the annexation of the occupied territories as reward for continuing to be the State Department's loyal gendarme. Either way it's the deal-making/war-ending/peace-through-strength vibes that matter. Relatedly, the disgusting assistance Biden's government has rendered Israel's genocide did, as forecast, demobilise Arab-heritage and left-progressive voters when the US could have decided otherwise. Just as one cannot blame anyone who voted for the Harris ticket because it was the lesser of two evils, likewise no one can be criticised for not having the stomach for supporting hand wringing participants in a terrible and ongoing crime.

And there is our old friend the economy. On the surface, Biden has a good story to tell what with stimulus cheques and the job growth following the Inflation Reduction Act. But the problem, as the Tories found here, is how people feel now about their prospects. This is where the Democrats are on shaky ground. Americans faced an inflationary tide as well, and it's only in the last few months that real wages have risen above the rate. In other words, too short a time to feel the difference and certainly not enough to offset the price increases of the last couple of years. Yet the Democrats were content to waffle on about numbers and GDP without appreciating the cost-of-living concerns that persuaded millions of punters to give the tangerine crook another shot. Why? Again, Trump is no friend of the workers, but at least he pantomimed a concern for the lot of ordinary people and recognised incomes were stretched for millions. Had the Democrats allowed Tim Waltz a longer leash as someone who did have the charisma and common touch to connect with those concerns, it could have had an effect. But no, briefcase sensiblism and flattery toward American's middle class was what the smart politics demanded.

Thirdly, there is The Men. A lot has been made of Trump's misogyny and how that won over not insignificant numbers of Latino and African-American men. But this wasn't simply a matter of hurling insults at Harris, denigrating women, and going hard on abortion. It demonstrated the successful exploitation of the class dimension of gender politics. The crisis in masculinity is less a consequence of women claiming theirs and making men pay, but more a matter of the changed political economy. In contemporary capitalism, the shift in the ideal-typical or "hegemonic" worker from the (masculine) industrial worker to the networked socialised worker whose immaterial labour produces knowledge, data, care, and services is not without consequences for gender. It was and is the case that normative femininity and masculinity has been foisted on children long after the political economy of the advanced states, including the USA, decisively shifted away from industrial to post-industrial economies. This has meant generations of men coming into a world where the privileged wages of masculinity are not as readily available in the labour market. The dominance of immaterial labour has proceeded alongside a certain "feminisation" of work, which has meant younger men have to compete with women on increasingly equal terms for jobs, and that women are better equipped for the emotional labour and sociability that is part and parcel of work today.

As such, the promises of masculine privilege many men expect have gone unmet. Most men growing into this accept the changed reality, but significant minorities do not. Hence the explosion of misogynistic communities online, along with mass audiences for influencers that demand the return of masculine entitlements. The Trump campaign has leaned into this, but there's a more subtle appeal at work here. In places like Pennsylvania and other rust belt states, the rhetoric about repatriating manufacturing and creating "real jobs" is a call back to the industrial, masculine mass worker of the assembly line and steel mill. It's about a promise of restoring the old gendered political economy where the men went to work in manly jobs, and brought home enough money to provide for a family. It's where socialism meets social conservatism, where good jobs meant fixed gender roles and a strong purpose for men. Again, it doesn't matter that Trump will bring none of this back. What's gone is gone, and most re shored manufacturing is highly automated and relatively jobless. But this is the interplay of vibes the right are adept at playing with, and Trump's team are no different. They won't deliver, but it was a promise that helped see off the Democrats and returned The Donald to the White House.

Taken in sum, none of this is groundbreaking stuff. Political science is not rocket science. A government going out of its way to demobilise its base never ends well. Angering natural supporters and dumping on liberal and humanitarian values while pretending to be the custodian of constitutionalism and the rules-based international order is mind-searingly stupid. Presiding over galloping inflation and flatlining wages, and carrying on as if they don't matter is more insane than anything Trump has said on the campaign trail. If the Democrats were serious about winning, they should have looked into the recent past and remembered how it was done in 2020. Instead of going for the repeat, they told left wing and progressive voters to vote for them or else, and gave every impression they didn't care for how tough millions of Americans have found life since Covid and the cost of living crisis. The Democrats lost the election on their own terms, and they're guaranteed not to draw a single lesson from the experience.

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The Insanity of American Politics

Kamala Harris and the Democrats should be sailing their way to a second term in the White House. Especially when faced with the unhinged Donald Trump campaign, easily the most racist and misogynistic effort mounted by the Republicans in recent times. Here in Britain, when a party last presented itself as the representative of capital in its naked glory it was sent packing. In the United States, the same is within spitting distance of winning. The polls, naturally, are no help. Early voting projections, MRPs, and polls by reputable local surveys suggest anything from a narrow to a handy lead for Harris with boosted turn outs from constituencies one would expect to lean the Democrats' way. And there are others suggesting Trump will just about edge it. In 48 hours we'll have a good idea which way the electorate jumped.

There shouldn't be any doubt, but there is. It is often said the Democrats do a bad job of talking up their achievements, and you would think that under Joe Biden, before his forced retirement they would have a good story to tell. The US economy is expanding faster than any other major advanced industrial nation. Biden has got inflation back under control and real wages are growing again. Unemployment has decreased since the summer and vacancies are on the rise. Yet, clearly, "it's the economy, stupid" isn't working as it should.

The Democrats got themselves into two difficulties. Just like the so-called centre left across Europe, they've tried leaning into immigration. The Trump-era walls, detention areas, cages, and border militias have got through the last four years untouched, and none of it has stopped people from coming. Their adoption of a Fortress America approach is on a hiding to nothing. They could have moved to neutralise the issue by, again, challenging the assumptions that right wing anti-immigration politics rests on. It wouldn't be a panacea, but the job is to diffuse it as an issue and limit its mobilising appeal for the right. Treating it as a technocratic, managerial issue only invites accusations of failure or, at worst, feed racist great replacement narratives. A lesson Labour here would do well to heed, but it won't.

And then on the left has been the utter disgrace and hypocrisy over Gaza and Israel's massacre of the Palestinians. Or, to be more accurate, the US State Department's attacks on civilians in the occupied territories and Lebanon. That you have celebrities, such as Michael Moore, running around the rust belt states pleading with left wingers and Arab-Americans not to vote for third party candidates demonstrates the unerring ability of the Democrats to put the US state's interest before those of their political careers. You would never catch anyone on team Trump being so foolish. Luckily for Harris, as forecast the Democrats haven't put a woman's right to an abortion on a legislative footing because, in the absence of positive messaging, they needed it in the tack to power progressive voters to the ballot box. And the early forecasts seem to indicate this cynical delay has worked out as intended. Early voting reports suggest bigger than usual turnouts from women.

Looking over at Trump, no candidate anywhere has ever run such a disastrous campaign and still remained within a shout of winning. Never underestimate the power of blowjob mimes and rambling delivery, I guess. Racism and misogyny is the glue that keeps his effort together, though one would think his anti-politics edge was blunted by the disastrous years spent in the White House. Not least his negligence during the initial wave of the Covid pandemic, which disproportionately impacted the conspiracy-tinged base of the Republican party and killed them off in their tens of thousands. But what is also interesting is his pull among fellow oligarchs. If fascism is the terroristic and open dictatorship of capital over labour, Trump's programme - often revealed on the hoof - is the closest to it we've seen so far in American politics. He might be incompetent and incapable, but those around him and the billionaires supporting him are looking at using the state to shake down the body politic for billions, if not trillions of dollars. Regulations are to be ripped up, the power of the law circumscribed. The most unhinged American conservatism preaching authoritarian moralism while it ignores the subordination of everything to the cold, hard cash nexus is the dystopic vision of the United States Trump is offering.

Weighing the two up, it's not difficult to see why millions will, again, be fastening on the nose pegs and trudging along to vote for the lesser evil. And given such insanity and without viable alternatives, who can blame them?

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Kemi Badenoch's Precarious Victory

As forecast, Kemi Badenoch won the leadership contest. It's fitting that a politician noted for peddling poisonous politics should grasp the poisoned chalice that is the Conservative Party. If there was any consolation for outside observers to this most abysmal (some might say abyssal) of contests and who care about transparency and honesty in politics, it's that Tory party members saw through Jackanory Jenrick's cynical posturing. He ran the most dishonest and right wing campaign ever run by a Tory leadership candidate, and it got rejected. Albeit in favour of the contender that genuinely believes this drivel.

During the campaign Badenoch repeatedly disgraced herself and her party by thinking aloud ridiculous positions guaranteed to keep the Tories in the slow lane. A reminder that she described maternity pay as a burden, questioned the minimum wage and made disparaging remarks about carers, suggested conservative students were victimised by our red base universities, and that she became working class after a brief stint working at McDonald's. She's almost a case of Nigel Farage meets Walter Mitty. Contrast this with her tone when she took to the podium to accept her victory, she served up the usual waffle about unity, holding Labour to account, winning back voters lost, being honest about "mistakes", and becoming the next government. On the surface a more reasonable, conciliatory approach. Though one doesn't have to spend much time guessing what Badenoch meant by "defending our principles". She rounded off her address by saying the party and the country needed a "new start". And how did this come over in her first interview on Sunday's Laura Kuenssberg? Very much like the old start. Her first policy commitment: reversing the levying of VAT on private school fees.

We know the Conservatives have troubles, but immediately Badenoch has some unique difficulties. Winning 56% to 44% among the membership meant her win was the narrowest since the Tories moved to their present method of electing leaders in 2001 - not the most overwhelming of mandates. More pressing is the parliamentary party arithmetic. In the final round of voting, 42 MPs of the 121 survivors of July's wipe out chose her. 41 went for Jenrick, and 39 for James Cleverly. Going back to the first round she came second with just 22 supporters - about a sixth of the selectorate. This latter figure suggests a very small base of genuine supporters, and that if things go wrong this might not be enough to avoid an Iain Duncan Smith-style fate.

The second problem is that third of the parliamentary party that went for Cleverly. The briefcase wing had their noses put out of joint when their man unexpectedly failed to make it to the final two. I'm not saying they've thrown a fit of pique, but Cleverly and Jeremy Hunt have ruled themselves out from taking a front bench position, and Rishi Sunak and Oliver Dowden are contemplating life outside of politics with resignations expected to land in time for next year's local elections. Having fought and won a campaign to prosecute the culture wars, the centre right-leaning minority in the Commons will be weary of getting too closely involved. Sure, in her Kuenssberg interview Badenoch said she would look at reaching across the party when she appoints her shadow cabinet on Tuesday, and some will be tempted by jobs and the opportunity to try and shape her leadership in a direction they find more congenial. Likewise, because of her position in the party - and the fact just having 121 MPs makes filling all the shadow roles a difficult task. She's going to have to tone down the bullshit to try and keep the party together as a going oppositional concern. But there will be tensions seeing as, throughout the period of the campaign, Badenoch found it irresistible to keep shifting further to the right. With a lengthy period of opposition likely, the prospect of a rapid return to government just isn't there to discipline disgruntled shadow ministers.

And there is the medium term problem of scraping together a coalition that could defeat Labour in four or five years. There is an outside chance that this is possible, but the politics of 2028/9 will have moved on. If this week's budget works and Labour are able to modernise the state further and public sector institutions are properly funded and functioning, then Badenoch's going to have a hard time presenting a coherent alternative that can win over enough of the party's support while also facing down the threat Reform poses the Tories on the right. Doing so requires a certain amount of deft politicking and flexible thinking. Qualities that Badenoch's leadership campaign has shown that the new Tory leader has cavernous deficits in.

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Local Council By-Elections October 2024

This month saw 110,656 votes cast in 61 local authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. 27 council seats changed hands. For comparison with October's results, see here.

Party	Number of Candidates	Total Vote	%	+/- Sep	+/- Oct 23	Avge/ Contest	+/- Seats
Conservative	58	30,275	27.4%	+4.4	+4.4	522	+10
Labour	53	24,767	22.4%	-6.3	-6.2	467	-15
Lib Dem	56	23,484	21.2%	+5.6	+1.1	419	+2
Reform*	21	5,933	5.4%	+0.3	+4.9	283	+2
Green	47	12,148	11.0%	-0.9	-5.9	258	+3
SNP**	5	4,467	4.0%	-0.4	+4.0	893	+1
PC***	5	1,618	1.5%	+1.3	+1.5	324	0
Ind****	26	5,473	4.9%	-5.2	+1.8	211	-3
Other*****	22	2,491	2.3%	+1.3	-6.0	113	0

* Reform's comparison results are based on recomputing their tallies from Others over the last month/year
** There were five by-elections in Scotland
*** There were seven by-elections in Wales
**** There were two Independent clashes
***** Others this month consisted of Alba (178), British Unionist (241), Coventry Citizens Party (94), Progressive Change (529), SDP (26, 12), Skegness Urba District Society (79), TUSC (327, 116, 76, 44, 35, 18), UKIP (23, 11), Workers' Party (212, 143, 133, 80, 47, 35, 32)

What a terrible month for Labour. October 2024 is the worst month the party has experienced since May 2021, when all the by-elections postponed during the Covid lockdowns were held. That was at the height of Boris Johnson's powers. This month Labour dropped 15 seats, its worst result outside of that crushing occasion. It's not difficult to see why when the two policies that have had that all-important "cut through" was the winter fuel farce and raising the bus fare cap. Both punitive and mean-spirited, and so local by-election voters have responded as they might. Especially when the elderly disproportionately vote in them. To see the leaderless Tories bounce back in seats gained and winning the popular vote is unconscionable. Naturally, Labour's leadership doesn't care but it should. With its Westminster dominance perched on precarious majaorities, the signs are already there that its precarious foundations are getting eaten away thanks to its arrogance and stupidity. A small gift for Kemi Badenoch then.

Elsewhere, sundry press outlets have got excited by Reform picking up two seats from Labour. This we're supposed to believe heralds a new dawn for British politics. While it is standing in more seats since the general election, its spread so far is less than that enjoyed by UKIP when it was a contender. Despite being better funded, better publicised, and polling slightly better than its predecessor party. And yet again, the fact the Greens performed better and won three seats is ignored by the same.

Next month will probably be a repeat of this month. There are a similar number of by-elections being contested, but with the added effect of 15 of them being in Scotland. That might lead to some interesting distortion effects when it comes to vote share.

3 October
Blackpool, Marton, Ref gain from Lab
Dundee, Lochee, SNP gain from Lab
Dundee, Strathmartine, SNP hold
Lancaster, Scotforth East, Grn gain from Lab

9 October
Powys, Machynlleth, PC gain from Ind

10 October
Coventry, St Michael's, Lab hold
Ealing, Hanger Hill, LDem gain from Con
Ealing, Northolt Mandeville, Lab hold
Ealing, South Acton, Lab hold
Elmbridge, Hersham Village, Con gain from LDem
Elmbridge, Weybridge St George's Hill, Con hold
Fylde, Warton, Con gain from Ind
Harlow, Little Parndon & Town Centre, Lab hold
Leeds, Farnley & Wortley, Grn gain from Lab
Lewes, Wivelsfield, Grn hold
North East Derbyshire, Clay Cross North, Con gain from Lab
North Lanarkshire, Fortissat, Lab hold
North Lanarkshire, Mossend & Holytown, Lab hold
North Northamptonshire, Burton & Broughton, Con hold
Pembrokeshire, The Havens, Con gain from Ind
Runnymede, Addlestone South, Con hold
South Ribble, Bamber Bridge West, Lab hold
Southampton, Shirley, LDem gain from Lab
Suffolk, Hoxne & Eye, Con hold
Worthing, Heene, Con gain from Lab

17 October
Ashford, Aylesford & East Stour, Grn gain from Lab
Bexley, Belvedere, Lab hold
Ceredigion, Tirymynach, LDem hold
Cumberland, Keswick, Lab hold
Cumberland, Wetheral, Con hold
Falkirk, Falkirk South, Lab hold
Greenwich, Eltham Town & Avery Hill, Con gain from Lab
Gwynedd, Llanberis, PC hold
Kirklees, Holme Valley South, Con gain from Lab
North Hertfordshire, Royston Palace, Lab hold
St Albans, Harpenden North & Rural, Con gain from LDem
Stockport, Bredbury Green & Romiley , LDem hold
Stockport, Cheadle West & Gatley, LDem hold
Swindon, Rodbourne Cheney, Con gain from Lab
Westmorland & Furness, Grange & Cartmel, LDem hold
Windsor & Maidenhead, Ascot and Sunninghill, Con hold

24 October
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, Muscliff and Strouden Park, Con gain from Ind
Calderdale, Calder, Lab hold
Crawley, Northgate & West Green, Lab hold
Denbighshire, Prestatyn North, Con gain from Lab
East Lindsey, Croft, Con hold
Gateshead, Whickham North, LDem hold
Isle of Anglesey, Talybolion, Ind gain from PC
Middlesbrough, Hemlington, Lab hold
Monmouthshire, Town, Con gain from Lab
New Forest, Barton & Becton, Con hold
South Cambridgeshire, Histon & Impington, LDem hold
South Ribble, Middleforth, Con gain from Lab
Surrey Heath, Old Dean, LDem gain from Con

31 October
Charnwood, Sileby & Seagrave, Grn hold
Hampshire, Bishops Waltham, LDem gain from Con
Rochdale, North Middleton, Ind hold
Salford, Eccles, Lab hold
Stockport, Bramhall South & Woodhall, Con gain from LDem
Westmorland & Furness, Kirkby Stephen & Tebay, LDem gain from Con
Wolverhampton, Bilston North, Ref gain from Lab

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Five Most Popular Posts in October

Things happened in October, and some of them were reflected in the posts that appeared on this blog. So what made the top of the pile as far as the audience were concerned?

1. What a Gray Day
2. One Hundred Days of Sod 'Em
3. Drawing the Battlelines
4. A Proxy and a Meat Shield
5. The Tories Have Lost the Next Election

Labour Party silliness dominated the summit of the charts this month. We begin with the factional ousting of Sue Gray from her Downing Street position and exile to the office of the regions and the nations, and the incoming of our friend Morgan McSweeney. She copped the blame for a lot of the disasters of the first hundred days of the new government, and unfairly so in my view. If your bosses are up to their necks in freebies what are you supposed to do? But now the Morganiser is in charge it's guaranteed to be plain sailing from here on out. Coming in second was a brief overview of Labour's record during that interval and it wasn't great. Third place is the sequel to Gray's defenestration. McSweeney is now in pole position to try and stop Angela Rayner's further ascent, and is likely to try and use his offices to do so. The explanation of the why lies therein. Coming in fourth was a reflection on Israel's genocidal war as it took missile strikes from an opponent with the means to fight back on an equal footing. It's been interesting seeing in recent days how the media have amplified the damage Tel Aviv's bombs have done by way of reply, but absolutely nothing in the same about how Iran's missiles got through the iron dome and also inflicted significant but targeted damage. Ending the round-up, a piece on the Tories limps into last place. Neither Kemi Badenoch nor Robert Jenrick are fit and proper people to run a bath, let alone a major political party. And by ensuring this most gruesome of twosomes have gone to the membership, the party has sealed its fate for quite a while.

Or has it? For the first of the second chances there is this meditation on how, despite everything, the Tories might claw their way back into office. The second wanting a second chance is my take on Keith Roberts's beautiful science fiction novel, Pavane. It's well known in SF circles but seldom read, so do give it a go when the opportunity arises.

As we head into November, the first thing we have to cope with is the most frightful Hallowe'en hangover: the outcome of the Conservative Party's leadership contest. Following hot on its heels is the small matter of the US presidential election. Who will come out the winner when both sides have run terrible campaigns? There will also be the usual politics hustle and bustle demanding comment, and maybe I'll slip a couple more SF pieces into the mix. As ever, if you haven't already don't forget to follow the (very) occasional newsletter, and if you like what I do (and you're not skint), you can help support the blog. Following me on Twitter, Facebook, and now the new fangled Musk-killer Bluesky are cost-free ways of showing your backing for this corner of the internet.

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Mortiis - Parasite God

It's Hallowe'en! Time for a banging, blasphemous sermon from a Nietzschean troll.

A Typical Labour Budget

"This is not a budget we want to repeat", said Rachel Reeves of her Autumn statement this Wednesday afternoon, but if past behaviour is any indicator of future behaviour then she'll make similar choices again and again and again.

I won't wear anyone's patience by raking over the minutiae line by line. Yes, on balance this is a budget in which the most privileged will be coughing up a fraction of the huge gains they banked under the Tories. Hence the absurdity of the 'Comrade Reeves delights the workers and peasants with class war' headline on Conservative Home. This was nothing of the sort, but tallies with what was argued the other day about their hypersensitivity to any measures that strike at unearned income - the lynchpin of class relations. And so, the pips are squeaking as VAT goes on private school fees and business rate relief ends, huge duties are slapped on private jet passengers, capital gains tax goes up (but is still not equalised with income tax), non-dom status is scrapped, the minimum wage increases, and more will be scooped from inheritance and stamp duty.

And where will the money be spent? Commitments have been confirmed on sending HS2 to Euston, reversing the Tories politically motivated cuts. NHS and education spending will increase by 4.7%, a £1.3bn increase in council funding - but that would not meet the demand on adult social care and children's services alone. £12bn was also set aside for infected blood compensation, and £2bn for victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal. There's also a boost to the miners' pension scheme as the government has stopped taking its punitive share of the fund's surplus. And because there's always money for war, while some departments have to cut their cloth the MoD can look forward to an extra £3bn.

There has been some concern across the political spectrum about the increase in employers' National Insurance contributions, which will raise a projected £25bn. These worries echo the Office for Budgetary Responsibility's comment that this will mostly be passed on through lower wages and higher prices. Far be it for me to defend Reeves, but we know that Keir Starmer's programme is premised on a decade-long series of missions. Therefore, a lot of Reeves's decisions have to be considered in the longer view. Where the OBR's assessment of NICs is concerned, also relevant here is Reeves's minimum wage announcement. Following the Tories, she too has agreed to an above-inflation increase, amounting to approx £1,400/year boost from next April. In the context of the rest of the labour market and pay award structures among larger employers, this could ricochet up the pay structure, particularly for those on modest wages and salaries. More money goes into better paid workers' pockets, meaning more consumer spending, and the consequent multiplier effects eventually cover the NICs increase. This appears to be what the chancellor is banking on.

This was also a punitive budget for many on the sharpest end of the income scale. The bus fare increase stays. Even worse, Reeves confirmed she is keeping the last vindictive Tory attack on disabled people with her carrying through their plan (now her plan) to change the Work Capability Assessment so up to 450,000 stand to lose hundreds of pounds per month. There was more money released for supporting disabled people into work, but no recognition that not everyone can, and nothing about winding back the sanctions regime. As Disability Rights UK put it, "At the end of the day, the biggest announcement was one our community had been expecting: more Disabled and working-class people seeing their benefits cut whilst there will be no real difference in our local services."

This budget was high handed, overly technocratic (supported by a cynical framing), and gives with one hand while takes with another. It was Reeves, after all, who said over s decade ago that Labour didn't want to be the party of benefits, and so the preoccupation with authoritarian welfarism continues. There are elements of longer-term thinking here but not match with funding commitments adequate to the challenge. Her settlements do little to nothing to fix persistent social problems and a crumbling public infrastructure. In other words, because of its inadequacies and petty punishments Reeves's effort lies entirely within the envelope of her predecessors in Number 11. This was a Labour budget through and through.

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The Futility of Conservatism in Pavane

Pavane is one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written. Often billed as the best exercise in alternate history, it exemplifies everything about and delivers on the promise of the British new wave: an SF setting suffused with literary finesse. That it is unlikely to be touched by mainstream readers because of its inclusion in the Gollancz Master Works collection and the attendant livery is a real shame.

Keith Roberts produced six interlinked stories set in a stunted 20th century Britain under the heel of the church. An assassin's bullet struck down Elizabeth I on the eve of the Spanish Armada, with the consequence that the invasion was successful and Protestantism was crushed. The country becomes an unhappy satellite of Rome, Britannia never rules the waves, and the industrial revolution unfolds at a snail's pace. The heavy hand of the papacy weighs on technological development, so in Roberts's 1968 there is no television or radio. The internal combustion engine is in development hell, waiting for its sanction by papal bull. There are no railways, with commerce between cities centring on chugging steam wagons. A dependency on horseback remains. Bandits and dangerous wild animals roam the countryside as smugglers plough the waters. Communication across distances is only possible via chains of mechanical towers under control of the secretive and fiercely independent signallers' guild. As our 20th century compressed time and space and sped everything up, history in the world of Pavane is an unhurried crawl.

Unlike most adventures in other timelines, the book is not a dramatic imagining of hero characters triumphing over the adversities and absurdities of an unfamiliar setting. Instead it deals with the small and how, over a couple of generations, these feed into great events. We get stories of the everyday, the mundane, and the seemingly inconsequential. The one constant is the Dorset environs. Crashing seas and cliff edges, howling winds and bleak heathlands, the clouds roil and billow as the landscape husbands the sluggish and harsh lives of those who survive there. This is a world of superstition and faeries where place is inseparable from the old gods and spirits. Dream and illusion is their favoured manner of manifestation, while the omnipresent Church enforces its divine teaching by the materiality of cannon, soldiery, and the torture chamber. There is a plot of sorts, but it rests lightly on Roberts's canvas. This Britain comes alive in brush strokes, of showing rather than telling.

In later years, Roberts described himself as an anti-communist and a conservative, which was somewhat at odds with the new wave milieu he was a central contributor to. But unlike other writers, the conservatism in Pavane is barely perceptible. It whispers its presence in the privileging of the quiet wisdom of everyone who resides in his Dorset, of a semi-mystical spirit that unites (rural) worker, haulier, signaller, and aristocrat. One nation in one county, you might say. More broadly, Pavane does not read like anti-Catholic polemic in the unionist "no popery!" tradition. Rather, the Church here is a synonym for totalitarianism. It is (theologically) internationalist, indifferent to the peculiarities of its English subjects as long as they don't cause any trouble, pay lip service to doctrine, and fulfils the pope's quotas for foodstuffs and manufactories. This is justified by dogma founded on abstract principles.

Pavane is also Roberts's meditation on the ultimate futility of his politics. Conservatism is congenitally dishonest because it presents the particular, monied interest as the universal interest. But it's also fundamentally pessimistic. Conservatism knows its efforts to preserve what it values are doomed, that the better yesterdays it imagines (or, to be more accurate, invents) are doomed never to recur. While for Roberts the Church Militant is his bogey and Soviet surrogate, it also works as the location for working through conservative anxieties. Based on traditional authority in Max Weber's sense, its ecclesiastical grip cannot halt the flow of history indefinitely. Corfe Gate, Roberts's final story follows the eruption of open defiance and insurgency, enabled by forbidden technologies that work around the sanction of excommunication, and the concluding Coda chronicles the break out of modernity as the papacy crumbles before the hammer blows of revolution. For all its vast apparatus of repression and the chilling effect of its theology, this authoritarian conservative institution could not stymie the flows of history forever. A realisation that might make a commitment to a quieter, more modest everyday conservatism a fruitless exercise, but also the only conservatism that is palatable given the excesses of Pavane's imagined Catholicism.

Because of its pacing, light plotting, and eschewing of the thrills and spills of contemporary SF, Pavane is not for everyone. Those expecting something of that stripe, or even in the ballpark of A Canticle for Leibowitz might wonder what the fuss is about. But readers who appreciate literary fiction and enjoy the flow and beauty of evocative prose will encounter an exceptional work. Not just one of the best SF novels, but a novel of the first rank that deserves canonisation among the English greats.

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The Political Cost of a Peppercorn Saving

Here's a quiz. Name one policy brought in by the Conservatives that tangibly improved the lives of the poorest people. It's difficult considering how their list of achievements was a bucket of deplorables, but there is one. And that would be the £2 cap on bus fares. When 16% of Britons don't have access to a car and most of whom among the poorest people in the country, a bus is a lifeline. The Tories' introduction of a cap meant ticket price certainty across most routes in England. It made budgeting easier, allowed for the car-less to venture further afield for work, and afford trips into town or round and about to see friends and family. But that government is gone and now we have "changed Labour", and they want to show how much they've changed by increasing the cap by 50%, unnecessarily saddling bus users with extra expense for a peppercorn saving of £50m.

Announced by Keir Starmer at his pre-budget media address, raising the cap is one of those choices the government can use to emphasise their well 'ard credentials. The cheeky Number 10 press release is written up to suggest that passengers should be grateful for the government's largesse. We're told £1bn is being invested to make "better bus services". This will guarantee that fares "remain affordable" while being "fair to the taxpayer". As if bus users and "taxpayers" are two discrete entities.

As ever with this government, scaling back support for bus services is not a technocratic exercise. The 'why?' lies in the politics. Having spent a lot of last week defending their long planned measures to levy taxes on unearned income, they think the consequent outrage and the media trouble could be offset by attacking things that poorer people depend on. Such as bus fares and winter fuel allowances. I.e. They think an 'all in it together' budget that apportions the "necessary" sacrifices evenly means there will be less of a political price to pay when those with the "broadest shoulders" are asked to cough up.

This might work with the Starmerist base in the professional and managerial sectors. To them it looks equal parts fair and fair-minded, and will fire off much-needed serious vibes after their grown up image took a knock following freebiegate. But if they're hoping to mollify the Tory press, until they retreat on unearned income and wind back the workers' right plans to nothing they will be dogged and dogged and dogged, no matter how much they axe supportive measures for the poor and most vulnerable. And so here we are. For the sake of a tiny amount of money and a barely visible perceivable political advantage, Labour is set on demobilising the support of the people they need for it to remain in office. Again.

Labour's Problems with "Working People"

For several years now Keir Starmer has defined his project in terms of serving "working people". It's as well used as "tough choices", and is just as irritating. And so, amid speculation that Rachel Reeves is about to u-turn on the manifesto pledge not to levy new taxes on working people, the thorny question of who counts as working people was an inevitable obsession for the press pack. Take Laura Kuenssberg for example. Well known for concentrating on political fripperies, she wasted half of her interview with Bridget Phillipson this Sunday asking asking questions about what a working person was.

Let's clear this up for the performatively stupid. What Labour is really talking about is unearned income, which was already clear back in June. That is income from dividends, capital gains/share transactions, high value property sales, and rents. As sundry members of the government have tried arguing, working people are, shockingly, people who have to go out to work. Albeit mixed in with ad hoc digressions that includes people who can't simply write a cheque to get them out of trouble. Cue the tedious merry go round of offended landlords, business owners, and so on all claiming the mantle of horny-handed sons of toil.

For Marxists, class is simple and complex. Simple, because it's about one's relation to the means of production. The majority of working age people have to sell their labour power in return for a wage or salary, and the vanishingly tiny minority live off the proceeds of capital. Complex, because there are huge disparities within the proletarian class in terms of income, autonomy at work, and powers invested in their roles at work. And this is before you get to the myriad of contradictory locations, and the not negligible numbers of self-employed and small business people that comprise the work force. Class is never as neat as the categories used to describe and explain it. Class is a process, it's always in movement, but we can identify and consider occupational strata, age cohorts, and those so-called edge cases where income from work is supplemented by the profits extracted from the labour of others. We have to do this if we're in the business of building a politics that can challenge the supremacy of capital, and supplant it. It enables us to get a handle on who might be supportive of this struggle, and who are likely to resist and cling to the bosses to the last.

But for mainstream politicians, their attempts at defining class has a different purpose. Politics has to create a subject. I.e. Who is it that politics is addressing? It can be an amorphously rendered nation (as per conservatism) or "the people", as favoured by populist politics. While Labour has its roots in the workers' movement, it has long been the contention of Labourism as a whole that it must appeal to the electorate at large and avoid the "sectionalism" of being seen as a working class concern. On the left, this has manifested itself as ethical socialism and moralism. On the right, it's been a faddy procession of different categories. In both instances the consequence is the liquidation of class as a meaningful political category.

The trick Labour and other mainstream politicians have to pull off is to create a subject without mobilising one. It has to be broad to the point of being almost meaningless, but definable so the electorate - as consumers of political product - can identify themselves with them. Hence a formulation like working people. Anyone and everyone is a 'working person', and those who are not are either retired and have done their bit (not that this protects you from Labour's attacks), or are the undeserving poor who need to feel the the lash of hard discipline. In her article for The Sun this Sunday, Reeves aligns 'working people' with "families" and "strivers", call backs to fuzzy categories like 'hard-working families' and George Osborne's 'the strivers vs the skivers'. And while we're here, Nick Clegg's old favourite: "alarm clock Britain" fits as well. They are woolly and wide open, but again have that edge that can be turned against the imagined idle other to support punitive policies and authoritarian welfarism.

The reason why Labour have got into choppy waters over this is because the media have called them on their bullshit. And the media has done this because it's hyper class conscious. The headlines roar about Labour's war on Middle England and billionaires fleeing the country are hysterical considering how Labour's taxes on unearned income are incredibly modest. The point, for the satraps of the ruling class is these measures visiblise the lynchpin of bourgeois power. British capital is notoriously short-termist, but large sections definitely are not when it comes to the stability of class relations. Having already faced political shocks from the brief interlude where the left took over Labour, to the fact a mass street movement emerged unexpectedly to oppose Britain's involvement in the massacre of Palestinians and had an impact on the general election results, and how a lot of bosses are still nervy about the challenge to workplace discipline thanks to Covid, they are worried where this very slight challenge to unearned income might end up. And, as a result, the press attacks on Labour are ramping up. It's therefore reasonable to suppose that getting into muddles about definitions of working people and all the other recent difficulties might be mere warm ups for the roastings to come.

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