Tory Leadership Torture

Adjusting to new political realities is sometimes difficult. Where this blog is concerned, one of those is being part of a dwindling bunch who are interested in and will be keeping tabs on the Tories. For while the politics agenda is chock full of the crises of state Labour has inherited (including some unnecessary difficulties of its own), the fact the Tories are hosting a leadership contest has probably passed most people by.

How are the Tories coping since crashing to their worst ever defeat? Apart from the Badenoch/Braverman barney, the first inner party dispute of note was about the length of the leadership contest to replace Rishi Sunak (California beckons, after all). Those who argued for a short campaign envisaged a new leader in place before party conference season so they could introduce themselves to the nation, and then start attacking Labour. Those who thought a longer contest was more appropriate argue the party needs time to think about its defeat, why it was defeated so heavily, and where the party goes next. It will also allow the leadership hopefuls to be put through their paces, which apparently wasn't the case in the short contests that returned Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

From the standpoint of their self-preservation, the Tories have probably made the right decision going long in the abstract. But some will be disappointed. For instance, Oliver Middleton writing on ConHome notes that Labour's long leadership contest in 2010 allowed the Conservatives to set the tone for their programme of cuts. There is a danger history might repeat itself as Labour sets about its legislative programme with the opposition distracted. But this is a rewrite of history. It was not that Labour was absorbed by its own issues, it's that the politics pushed by the frontrunners - the Miliband brothers - capitulated to the Tories' agenda. Ed Miliband won on a softer left platform, but as soon as he became leader the messaging was all about accepting the need for cuts. "Too fast and too far" was the mantra, and the political initiative was duly ceded.

The Tories aren't about to make the same mistake. Okay, not exactly the same one. Labour have scrapped their on-shore wind ban and their attacks on HE institutions via the war-on-woke "free speech" act, and the Tories will oppose this. As Rachel Reeves comes forward with her statement next week to fix the £20bn deficit in state finances, Sunak's caretaker leadership aren't about to accept Labour framing and Labour arguments about the need for wealth taxes, cracking down on tax avoidance, and making sure private schools pay their way. But what they are doing is re-emphasising the issues that played their part in the Tories' catastrophic defeat.

Take Tom Tugendhat, for example. Apparently the "least unpopular candidate that members of the public have heard of, the centrepiece of his leadership campaign is his pledge to withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights. Supposedly on the sensible briefcase wing of the party, there might be method to this particular madness. After all, immigration has become the performative Tory issue par excellence and the ECHR are viewed as an illegitimate obstacle to being beastly to refugees. This will go down well with what's left of the Tory membership, but sets the tone for the rest of the contest. If Tugendhat is taking up this position, how are those to his right - Priti Patel, Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, and Suella Braverman - going to differentiate themselves? The gutter leads to the drain, and the drain leads to the sewer. The problem is that as the Tory hopefuls scrap over who can be the most right wing, the message is reinforced that the party remains out of touch, has nothing to say about the problems facing this country, and aren't contrite over the damage they've done.

In this regard, a long contest only reinforces these points. The Tories are set on spending the next four months reminding everyone how appalling they are.

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After the Child Benefit Rebellion

The occasion was Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge on Tuesday night, and the ex-MP for Leicester South Jonathan Ashworth said Keir Starmer "won't be losing sleep over the Labour lefties voting against him". Maybe not, but the prospect of a backbench rebellion over retaining the two-child cap was enough for him to threaten Labour MPs with the removal of the whip. Seven brushed off the warnings - Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussain, Rebecca Long-Bailey, John McDonnell, and Zarah Sultana - and the same they now find themselves suspended. At a stroke, a clutch of MPs the Labour right and Starmer wanted rid of, but escaped the axe thanks to the timing of the election and the partial defeat of the efforts to rig selections, are indeed gone. And unless things get tight, it's unlikely any will be allowed to stand as Labour candidates ever again.

We know authoritarianism is a flex for Starmer's politics, and Labour's choice to unnecessarily keep children in poverty has nothing to do with not being able to "afford" lifting the two-child cap. Politically, Starmer supporters can comfort themselves that this "hard choice" is actually the easy choice where public opinion is concerned. The Labour leadership are aware that despite the opposition coming from the left and the labour movement on this, there is no wider political pressure and certainly none from the media that will cost them in the immediate term. Haters are going to hate is the loyalist view, which helps focus minds away from what MPs were voting for: the maintenance of a cruelty millions of children and working class women are forced to bear.

It's true the suspensions break from Labour's traditional way of dealing with dissent. Neither Tony Blair nor Gordon Brown were as heavy-handed with backbench rebels. A younger Tom Watson might have growled traitor at Labour MPs walking through the opposition lobby, but in a position of strength with an effective majority of 180 Starmer's seems quite the overreaction. Then again, unlike Blair who, in his first term, had a large number of votes to back his claims for a popular mandate Starmer has no such luxury. Getting fewer votes than what was supposed to be Labour's worst performance since 1935, they'll never admit it but as everyone from Reform, the Tories, the Greens, the pol profs, and even those who note political realities without obsessing over the details knows, Labour's huge majority is made of sand. Starmer might be an authoritarian, but choosing to game First Past the Post in cahoots with the Liberal Democrats makes his authoritarianism very brittle indeed. And, in practice, such a politics has the historic tendency of covering for weakness by affecting strength.

Except conditions have now changed. Were this 20 years ago, unless one was George Galloway with his unerring ability to find his way back into the Commons, this would have meant the end for excluded Labour MPs. But this is now. Because of the results the Greens, Jeremy Corbyn, and the Gaza Independents were achieved, exile from the PLP does not mean the end. There is a constituency for an anti-imperialist, anti-austerity, green, pro-working class politics that is capable of returning MPs. But now with a cadre of eight former Labour MPs sat on the backbenches, it's decision time. In his reflections on his victory, Corbyn argued that his community rootedness enabled him to bat away the kitchen sinks bowled at his seat by Labour. A party cannot simply be declared, it has to be built from the ground up. But now, with seven MPs getting thrown out, tens of thousands of activists ready to go, and a Labour Party whose policy orientation is obvious has left a huge space to its left. That base for a new party Corbyn speaks of in hypotheticals already exists, and is likely to get larger as Starmer dismantles his party's coalition. If the parliamentary leadership ot the socialist/independent left/reborn ILP in embryo doesn't seize the moment, the insurgent Greens and the much, much worse Workers' Party are in with a stab of hegemonising it. What's it to be?

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Inside and Outside the Big Tent

Hands up everybody who was blind sided by the news that Keir Starmer cut a deal with the Murdoch papers? Anyone? My, what a cynical bunch. But it is true. In exchange for an easy ride and The Sun's general election endorsement, Labour have promised not to launch the second part of the Leveson inquiry. This, which was abandoned by the Tories in 2018, was meant to investigate the cosy and corrupt relationship between tabloid "journalism" and the police. Some comrades are mistaken for thinking this is another example of Starmerite cowardice, however. There is a mutual benefit to both parties. Murdoch is spared a raking over of his company's accounts, with senior hacks and executives hauled in front of an inquiry and having to answer very awkward questions under oath. And for Labour, with its efforts at trying to restore state legitimacy, having yet another plod scandal is far from ideal. Nor, to be honest, is Starmer fussed about changing the media. It's served him well so far, and launching another inquiry will only cause newsrooms to start noticing things. Like the lying, and the outrageous embarrassments.

However, not all elite interests get a free pass in Starmer's Britain. Rachel Reeves has vowed to get tough with the Covid fraudsters and tackle the £7.6bn worth of fraudulently claimed payments and procurement contracts that Rishi Sunak showed an interesting reluctance to deal with. Not least because friends of the Tories, including quite a few actual Tories, did well out of the government's largesse. A nice bit of populism that sees the state smite those who diddled the hard working, rule-abiding taxpayer.

Why should Labour be gunning for these people? Because they're an open goal, politically speaking. There are easy plaudits to be won from those parts of Labour's coalition that want progressive gestures, and might start getting a touch rebellious if none are forthcoming. Wider than that, who but the idiots from Spiked would defend such a bunch? It's a crusade that allows Labour to style itself the political arm of the British people, as Tony Blair once cringingly put it. But also, it's a tell for which bits of capital are outside the the big tent of Starmer's bourgeois politics. I.e. The most uncompetitive, labour intensive, and domestically oriented sections of capital that did well under the last 14 years of Tory government. The crony capital that benefited from their personal relations with the Tories, and struck it lucky when the government was throwing money at anything that resembled personal protection equipment. Labour are offering the spectacle not just of vengeance, but a clean break between their "grown up" politics and the sleaze and corruption of the Tories. Not that Labour isn't cultivating its own clientele capital, but like the Blair years this will be done "properly" through regulated investment vehicles, "crowding in" initiatives like the National Wealth Fund and Great British Energy, and whatever wheeze Wes Streeting comes up with for the NHS. Singling out corrupt practices of the recent past eases the passage for the in-plain-sight corrupt practices to come.

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Bye Bye Biden

Having made many, many "I'm a fighter, not a quitter" speeches, Joe Biden bowed to the inevitable and announced he's turning down the Democratic nomination for President. He followed up an hour later with his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement. Having seen Biden's ratings slide before the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the panic-gripped party establishment are going to be sleeping easier tonight. Biden's frailty, his memory lapses and embarrassing gaffes were taking their toll and making Trump, no spring chicken himself, look like Dorian Gray to the president's picture. He had to go.

The problem, however, was not just Biden;s inability to project "presidential" any more. It was a question of politics. Since taking over from Trump, economic growth quickly recovered from the Covid shock with employment rates nearing the all-time records set in 2018-19. Inflation is almost back to pre-pandemic levels. The economy is looking great, so why, according to the Clintonite wisdom, aren't the Democrats ready to run away with the election? For one, despite all the successes associated with the Inflation Reduction Act, real wages still lag behind (consumer price) inflation. And when that happens, it's a recovery that only looks good on paper. It allows James "JD" Vance to argue it's the "green crap" (where have we heard that before?) and therefore the Democrats who are to blame for thinning wallets.

But it's not just economics. Thinking about the flashpoints of recent years; Covid injustice, the hostile policing of African-American communities, the appalling support of Israel's massacre of the Palestinians, the crackdowns on protests critical of US foreign policy, the demonisation of immigrants at the southern border and the continuance of Trump's authoritarian policies, Biden's presidency has gone out of its way to alienate progressive opinion - which proved to be a crucial component of the voter coalition that saw Trump off in 2020.

Unlike the British election, whose result owed as much to luck as it did to triangulation, November's presidential contest is going to be a battle of polarised voting blocs. Which side can mobilise its support across the swing states will be the one that wins. Biden's attacks launched against those who put him in the White House, is just about the most stupid - or, if you prefer, centrist-brained thing he could have done. What Democrat strategists are now hoping that with him gone, the coalition that won four years ago might be pieced together again. It's the only way they can win.

If Kamala Harris gets the nomination, which is exceedingly likely, there is a possibility she could win back support Biden lost. Not that she's going to fundamentally alter the campaign's platform to solidify working class Democrat support or make a substantial offer that might win over soft Trump supporters. There's the hope she'll turn out black voters who've turned their back on the Democrats over the crack downs on BLM protests, and that women will notice a commitment from her on reversing the partial abortion ban. That and talking up Trump's fealty to the grotesque Project 2025, which will green light further state violence on racialised minorities and migrants. We won't have to wait too long to see if it works.

While the plaudits pour in for Biden congratulating him for "his service" and "patriotism", his presidency will be remembered for two things. The active support of a genocide against an unarmed civilian population, and exposing the republic to the danger of a hard right, authoritarian take over when different choices, different policies could have inflicted a devastating, strategic defeat on them. If the worst comes to the worst, the last four years will come to be regarded as a prelude to disaster. And if somehow Trump is seen off again, Biden's time will be remembered as a criminally wasted opportunity.

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Citizen Truss

Spare a thought for poor Liz Truss. A prime ministerial stint so disastrous that the search function on Conservative Home has been set to show results for her name only before August 2022. What does one do when your time at the top is synonymous with calamity, you're a national laughing stock, and you were unceremoniously dumped from your formerly super safe true blue seat? Lesser mortals would retire to private life and reflect before re-emerging when popular memory has faded somewhat. But this is Truss we're talking about.

Between the 60s and the 90s, breaking America was considered the ultimate badge of success for waves of British bands. Since Thatcher, it's been a goal of many a politician too. Now Truss is a private citizen on a massive ex-PM's pension, she can make a bid for more fame and fortune over the water. And so she's been haunting the Republican convention in Milwaukee and grabbing a photo opp with Donald Trump's vice presidential nominee, James "JD" Vance. But, unfortunately for her, she's had to compete with Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage for the limelight. So no audience with the Donald, but she did get to talk about shower heads. Her other substantive intervention was to criticise Joe Biden, and copying Farage's arguments, said his language was to blame for the assassination attempt on Trump. At least she hasn't gone around wearing a bandage on her ear.

What is Truss trying to accomplish? She published her ridiculous scaremongering book about the decline of the West. Gone all out on absurdist defences of her record. Notoriously hobnobbed with Steve Bannon, where she prattled about being a victim of the "deep state". We live in an attention economy, and for her to remain a player - seeing as any path back through the Conservative Party is closed (for now) - she has to hang out with other prominent right wingers and say (relatively) controversial things. Such as arguing her policies would have worked if it wasn't for those pesky Bank of England kids, or disavowing all responsibility for the general election catastrophe. But now she's out of politics, whatever attenuated constraints were on her have now evaporated. What we can expect are more efforts at hanging around with Trump, perhaps even taking on a job if he wins in November. The Tory leadership contest can expect unhelpful interventions and endorsements. More palling around with Farage is inevitable. Whatever she does, it's going to be excruciating and annoying because Truss enjoys enough profile to ensure the media will carry on following her adventures in attention seeking.

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Talk Talk - It's My Life

Looking back at the scores of music videos shared on this blog, I don't believe this has ever been offered for your aural entertainment. Consider that deficit rectified.

Local Council By-Elections July 2024

This month saw 240,088 votes cast in 64 local authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. 13 council seats changed hands. For comparison with June's results, see here.

Party	Number of Candidates	Total Vote	%	+/- Jun	+/- Jul 23	Avge/ Contest	+/- Seats
Conservative	58	46,779	19.5%	-5.5	-9.1	807	-1
Labour	59	98,006	40.8%	+6.8	+9.9	1,661	+1
Lib Dem	56	35,475	14.8%	+0.4	+1.4	633	-3
Green	42	32,715	13.6%	+7.4	-0.1	779	+2
SNP*	1	728	0.3%	-6.4	-1.7	728	+1
PC**	0						0
Ind***	39	19,344	8.1%	-1.4	-0.6	496	-1
Other****	18	7,041	2.9%	-0.3	+0.9	391	+1

* There were two by-elections in Scotland
** There were no by-elections in Wales
*** There were five Independent clashes
**** Others this month consisted of Freedom Alliance (178, 25), Heritage (115), Liberal (125, 58), Reform (2,027, 892, 575, 366), Scottish Family Party (53), TUSC (550, 178, 83), UKIP (148), Workers' Party (460, 300, 274), Yorkshire Party (634)

I think July 2024 is the worst by-election month ever experienced by the Conservative Party. At least in the 11 years since this site has covered these contests. Dipping below the magical 20% and getting under half of the vote received by Labour, on this occasion Reform -  standing in all of four seats - cannot be blamed for offering spoiler candidates. A terrible result that matches their baleful general election performance. They should be thankful the collapse in support didn't see a domino of seats fall to their opposition. Though superlatives should be hedged with the caveat that a lot of the seats up on the 4th were Labour councillors vacating theirs to spend time as parliamentary candidates, so the Tory vote was likely to be depressed anyway. But still.

Elsewhere, the respective performances of the Liberal Democrats and Greens are interesting. The former received its customary vote share, but unexpectedly dropped three seats. While the Greens almost managed to match their all time best performance that was set in July last year. But the real story, and one that might worry the Lib Dems, are the parties popular votes. At 35,000 off 56 candidates versus 33,000 off 42, there is a possibility that the Greens could start outperforming the Lib Dems in council by-elections in vote shares and seats won. And then from there, how long before it's challenging for third place in local government and then the big house itself?

As we enter the new parliament, it will be interesting to see how long before incumbency negatively pressures the Labour vote. Also, seeing as Reform rustled up a load of deposits for the general election whether it will start taking local party building, and therefore local elections and by-elections seriously. It's worth remembering UKIP managed to do well here between 2010 and 2016, so there is a market for these sorts of politics.

4 July
Barnet, Barnet Vale, Lab hold
Bassetlaw, Rampton, Con hold
Bedford, Wyboston, Con hold
Birmingham, Kings Norton North, Lab hold
Birmingham, Northfield, Lab hold
Brent, Queens Park, Lab hold
Brighton and Hove, Brunswick and Adelaide, Grn gain from Lab
Bristol, Horfield, Lab hold
Cheshire West & Chester, Northwich Leftwich, Lab hold
Chesterfield, Spire, Lab hold
Chesterfield, Staveley North, Lab gain from LDem
City of London, Cripplegate, Ind hold
City of London, Farringdon Within, Ind hold
Crawley, Maidenbower, Con hold
Doncaster, Town, Lab hold
Durham, Coxhoe, Lab hold
East Riding of Yorkshire, East Wolds & Coastal, Con hold
East Riding of Yorkshire, South East Holderness, Oth gain from Con
East Suffolk, Carlton Colville, Con hold
Elmbridge, Cobham & Downside, Con gain from LDem
Essex, Pitsea, Lab gain from Con
Fenland, Whitlesey South, Con hold
Gosport, Grange & Alver Valley, Lab gain from Con
Hackney, Cazenove, Lab hold
Haringey, Hornsey, Lab hold
Hounslow, Hanworth Village, Lab hold
Kingston-upon-Thames, Hook & Chessington North, LDem hold
Lambeth, Streatham Common & Vale, Lab hold
Lancaster, University, Grn gain from Lab
Lewisham, Blackheath, Lab hold
Liverpool, Broadgreen, Lab hold
Liverpool, Clubmoor East, Lab hold
Liverpool, Fazakerley North, Lab hold
Merton, Figge's Marsh, Lab hold
Merton, St Helier, Lab hold
Middlesbrough, Acklam, Lab hold
Middlesbrough, Central, Lab hold
Na h-Eileanan Siar, Na Hearadh, Ind hold
Newcastle-under-Lyme, Madeley & Betley, Con hold x2
Newham, Forest Gate North, Lab hold
Newham, Maryland, Lab hold
North Norfolk, North Walsham East, LDem hold
Preston, Lea & Larches, LDem gain from Lab
Ribble Valley, St Marys, Lab gain from LDem
St Helens, Windle, Lab hold
Sefton, Linacre, Lab hold
South Derbyshire, Hatton, Con gain from Lab
South Gloucestershire, Kingswood, Lab hold
Southend-on-Sea, Kursaal, Lab hold
Southwark, Faraday, Lab hold
Southwark, Rye Lane, Lab hold
Spelthorne, Ashford East, Con gain from Ind
Suffolk, Pakefield, Lab gain from Con
Three Rivers, Rickmansworth Town, Con hold
Tonbridge & Malling, Judd, Grn hold
Westminster, Abbey Road, Con hold
Wigan, Leigh South, Lab hold
Wirral, Liscard, Lab hold
Winchester, St Michael, LDem hold
York, Hull Road, Lab hold

18 July
Argyll & Bute, Kintyre & The Islands, SNP gain from LDem
Newham, Beckton, Lab hold
Newham, Little Ilford, Lab hold
Oxford, Marston, Grn hold

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Needlessly Keeping Children in Poverty

Missing from Labour's first King's speech this week was a commitment to remove the two-child cap on child benefit. The measure was introduced in 2017 by the Tories to make life harder for (mainly) working class women, offer a frisson of pleasure to right wing editors, and cause problems for Labour. Eight years on it's still making the waters choppy for the new government, who've otherwise enjoyed a couple of weeks of political plain sailing and establishment praise.

For about 18 months now, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have trotted out the same argument. Because Liz Truss crashed the economy, Labour cannot afford to do the things it wants to do. It's worth noting that neither have directly said they'd like to scrap the two child limit, except for in an "ideal world". Yet, because of this policy, some 1.6m children are in poverty, and a million of them are without beds. Thanks to an amendment put down by the SNP, Commons opposition outside and inside the parliamentary party is cohering. And so Starmer has moved to try and buy opposition off with a taskforce, with the Number 10 poverty unit reporting to it. This is unlikely to be enough to prevent the first back bench rebellion of the new term. Not that Starmer stands a chance of being defeated, but to face opposition this early on - especially as the party rests on only a thin layer of popular support - is discomfiting.

The morality of the case of lifting the cap speaks for itself, but there's no economic case for keeping the cap either. Seeing as growth is the magical cure-all, you might have thought pushing pro-growth policies would attract Reeves's attention. After all, for a measly £1.7bn parents with larger families will have more money to spend. That's money flowing into local economies keeping businesses afloat. You know, those multiplier effects the chancellor would have learned about when her tutors covered Keynes. It also takes stress off hard-pressed parents, making them more productive and happier at work, and less likely having to access mental health support from local GPs. It means kids grow up in a less stressed environment, allowing them to get on better at school and along with their friends. That also means lightening the caseload of overstretched social service departments. The spend is repaid in medium and long-term savings to public services, which on paper conforms entirely to the iron hard fiscal framework the government are signed up to.

The Labour leadership know this. They've been lobbied by honourable members, charity bosses, policy wonks, and constituents who've all made the same points. If ignorance isn't what's stopping Starmer and Reeves doing the right thing in their own terms, what is?

As we saw during the 14 blighted years the Tories were in power, they would make counter-intuitive decisions from the standpoint of economic growth and, in the coalition years, fiscal consolidation. For example, in a previous life there were plenty of occasions where salvoes of letters were fired off to ministers complaining about how the withdrawal of X funding would displace greater costs on to Y services, or where investing in such-and-such a scheme was projected to provide profitable returns to the Treasury. It took time for me to realise that the Tories were not interested in managing British capitalism as if it was a company looking to maximise returns for its shareholders, or even a household wanting to balance its budget as per Margaret Thatcher's famous simile. Above all, they were interested in managing class relations. The austerity programme was a conscious effort by the Tories to disempower labour further by ripping away its safety net, carving up public services, forcing more people to work longer for less pay, and attack our collective economic security. The aim was to consolidate British capital and the class relations underpinning it after the unexpected implosion of global finance, and getting us to pay for their crisis. Corbynism and Brexit (via Boris Johnson's boosterism) raised expectations that the state can and should do things, and the Covid support packages demonstrated that indeed it could. But this threatened to undo the legacy of Osbornomics, and as soon as he was made Chancellor and then Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak has been consistent in his efforts at reducing the capacity of the state - regardless of the damage done to the social fabric of the country and the popular legitimacy of mainstream politics.

Labour are now in charge of managing British class relations, and taking their cue from the Tories have determined that "change" means as little as possible. Modernise the state and restore its authority, offer capital guaranteed markers in infrastructure and the green transition, provide jobs for Starmer's base, and if good things come of this limited prospectus it's a bonus. But Labour always has to try harder because, as far as the most class conscious sections of capital are concerned, it's fundamentally unreliable because of the foot it has in the organised workers' movement. As the party remains a site of class struggle there's always the potential - however remote - for it to succumb to the left and go from being a pacifier of labour to a political instrument of it. Labour leaderships have to prove how on side they are with capital by being seen to turn its face against policies that are in working class interests. Such as abolishing the child benefit cap. Sticking with it has become a sign of how reliable Starmer and co will be in not buckling to the pressure of its base.

There are a couple of other reasons too. Life is much easier if political feathers are left unruffled, and reversing the Tories' policy involves political leadership. Not least because it means going against the Tory press, who still frame permitted political debate in this country. And also the tide of public opinion, which which has been heavily shaped by the relentless 45-year long war on welfare, is against it (YouGov polling suggests 60% want to keep the cap, with 50% of Labour voters supporting the status quo). The chance of the always risk averse Prime Minister taking on the media and widespread attitudes on behalf of the poorest, most vulnerable people in the country is, quite frankly, fanciful.

And then there are the attitudes of the leadership themselves. Long before she was caught ripping off other people's work, Reeves was plagiarising Tory rhetoric and demonising people on social security during her stint as work and pensions shadow. Labour were to be "tougher" than the Conservatives on benefits. But it's not like any of them have to be briefed that these are good optics. It's a reflex. With many of them coming from working class or modest petit bourgeois backgrounds, they have benefited from the social mobility they preach. They have risen out of their class by adopting middle class values. They got their heads down and worked hard for their position. So if they could do it by applying themselves, why can't others? It must be barriers to success, bad choices, or pure laziness. The contempt with which Bridget Phillipson dismisses parents who take their kids out of school to save thousands on cheaper holidays, the dismissal of the NHS staff concerns Wes Streeting now oversees, or the aspersions Reeves has cast on those who get by with welfare support says a great deal about how they see themselves. And because their attitude toard social security chimes with the country's, they can convince themselves that on this and other policies they're swimming with the tide of public opinion.

Child poverty is a blight, and a completely unnecessary one. But it can be tackled, and immediate relief can be granted by getting rid of the child benefit cap. But Labour won't do this, because Labour chooses not to.

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Foucault on Prison Reform

In the heavy blizzard of announcements and meetings last week, the new government surprisingly appointed James Timpson the new prisons minister. As the ex-chair of the Prison Reform Trust, his family-owned firm, among other things, distinguishes itself for providing job opportunities to former inmates. This prefaced the early release of inmates from Britain's overflowing jails who've served 40% or more of their sentence, lest they be convicted of murder, sexual offences, or remain a risk to the public. Liberal moves from a notably illiberal Prime Minister has got centrist juices flowing.

Certainly, something needs to be done about prisons. Proven reoffending statistics are in long-term decline, but this seems less an effect of being banged up and more a consequence of the secular long-term trend downturn in crime. Nevertheless, suicide and self-inflicted injuries have seen increases in recent years, probably as a consequence of overcrowding and the disproportionate incarceration of men - and it's mostly men - with mental health difficulties. Exacerbating matters has been a collapse in staff morale and an exodus of prison workers, a crisis so bad the Commons justice committee launched an inquiry. For the reform-minded, prisons are ripe for it.

The interesting thing is that the concern with prison reform is far from new. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault argues that as the prison system was born so was its critique and calls for reform. Commentary on the book talks about panopticism, discipline, subjection, and rehabilitation as signs that the economy of power in early modern societies moved away from the arbitrary, haphazard, but often spectacularly brutal exercise of power in the sovereign's name to something much more subtle. This for Foucault was coincident with the rise of capitalism, and enabled the significant multiplication of complex organisation in industrialising societies. The discipline of the barracks, the prison, the school, the hospital, and the factory all fed off and enabled one another. They trained people through the application of rules, surveillance, and were backed by systems of punishment and reward. Prison was designed to take in convicts, discipline them, and churn out reformed characters who would become productive citizens.

Foucault pointed out that prison is not just a spectacular failure that falls short of what its designers and supporters advocate for it, it has always done so. The criticisms of Foucault's day, of our time, and back at the birth of the prison remain fundamentally unchanged. The charges of prison reformers that crime rates are indifferent to rates of imprisonment, that high rates of recidivism persist, that it encourages reoffending and, in fact, instead of producing docile subjects what comes out the other end are delinquents have all been heard before. The problems of prison regimes, from corrupt wardens to arbitrary authority to forced labour to the stigmatisation attending former prisoners are well understood and have been high on the complaints list since the modern penitentiary emerged in the late 18th century. Foucault notes the critique of the prison falls into two types: that it is insufficiently corrective (broadly the liberal position), or that it is insufficiently punishing (the right wing position). He argues,

The carceral system combines in a single figure discourses and architectures, coercive regulations and scientific propositions, real social effects and invincible utopias, programmes for correcting delinquents and mechanisms that reinforce delinquency. Is not the supposed failure part of the functioning of the prison? (Discipline and Punish 1991, p.271)

Or to put it another way, if prison is such an abject failure why has it continued to play the central role in the criminal justice system? Even though, arguably, disciplinary power has become subsumed by new logics of surveillance and are, by themselves, obsolete technologies of power. Why prison persists is not for the elimination of crime or, for that matter, keeping the public safe. The object is not to deter offending but to distinguish them. In other words, it's an apparatus of subjection. Because disciplinary power is in the business of classifying and, through the application of discipline, developing knowledge about different kinds of human being. The transgression of the law might, in the abstract, be construed as a challenge to some normative aspects of social life but apprehension and imprisonment allows for the classification of, and therefore the truth of the convicted to be established and assimilated into the technologies of social control. The consequence is, like policing, we are all positioned in relation to prison, and the economy of incarceration and punishment can be extended at any time to bring more activities under its purview. That's why for Foucault the establishment solution to the problems of prison can only and always be more prison, whether extensive in building more or becoming intensive in more sustained, "scientific" rehabilitation efforts.

For Foucault, disciplinary institutions are the problem. They violently force people to fit into prescribed moulds. The model prisoner conjured up by penology is always the aspiration, but to get there discipline, surveillance, and force are individually applied to curb resistance to its demands. Building a free society means consigning such institutions and the modes of governance they foster to the dumpster of history. Their difficulty, ultimately, isn't that they are used to incarcerate criminals. It's that carceral logics work to imprison everyone.

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Building a Left Electoral Insurgency

Rare are the occasions where parties and candidates to the left of Labour do well out of a general election. Despite having some scepticism regarding the Greens' four for '24 strategy, the concentration of their resources, a bit of tactical and split voting in the Tory seats they took, and a manifesto that was about consolidating a leftist base paid off. One of the few moments when I get things wrong but happy to admit it. As expected, though it didn't seem like it at the time, Jeremy Corbyn trounced the private health profiteer Labour imposed as his opponent. Elsewhere, five other independents were elected off the back of the political establishment's support for the endless massacre of the Palestinians, four of whom could be described as being broadly left wing. And there were other very good results for left independents and, if you must, candidates for George Galloway's Workers' Party.

Thinking back to a forecast given in an academic paper three years ago, before Party Gate, Liz Truss, and the other horrors of the last few years of Tory rule, I argued that the next election (i.e. the one just gone) might have a morphological similarity to what we saw in 2017 and 2019. I.e. Thanks to a soft electoral polarisation, victory depends on mobilising bases and turning out as many votes as possible. This was on the understanding the centre ground, as previously understood, was bifurcated by Brexit and with it the age/class cohort divisions often noted on this blog. It came with a warning. If Keir Starmer was to move Labour to the right, it wouldn't be the case of trading votes in super safe seats for support in the marginals because the people he risked alienating - the new base Labour pulled together in 2017 and largely hung on to in 2019 - existed across the country. If the election was going to be a test of who could get their vote out, putting off our people in the marginals didn't seem terribly wise.

As we know, politics didn't turn out quite like that. Boris Johnson was always going to do himself in, I suppose. And given the composition of the Tory membership, his successor was always likely to be Liz Truss and with it the calamities that were hinted at during the 2022 Tory leadership contest. This changed the shape of the 2024 election. The old triangulation strategy beloved of the Blair years could only work because the Conservatives' position disintegrated. The Tories fought their campaign as if it was a turnout-based election to prevent its base scattering to the four winds. This could not and did not stymie the momentum toward their worst ever defeat. As for Labour, despite getting fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn's Labour at its lowest the right wing positioning ensured the most benign media environment a Labour leader has ever operated in, married to mass tactical voting - thanks to a tacit understanding with the Liberal Democrats - and the very helpful intervention from Nigel Farage.

This came not without cost. No more Thangham Debbonaire. Adios Jonathan Ashworth. So long Khalid Mahmood. Three big Labour names taken out because, as forecast, pursuing policies and lines that put off one's normal backers has political consequences. The result is a thumping majority in the Commons supported by a historically thin mandate in the country. Evidently, Labour did believe it could trade safe seat votes for swing seat support, and the gamble paid off. Two shadow cabinet members, one prominent MP, a backbencher, and the safe return of Corbyn in Islington for the complete dominance of the Commons was a trade no centrist Labour leader would have passed over. But Labour was lucky. Had Farage not re-entered the fray, the effect of Reform would not have proven so potent. And with a smaller majority, questions might already have been asked about Starmer's leadership.

What the original article sketched out was a logic of vote decay, and the general election confirmed it. Labour cannot repeat the same trick again now it's in government, and holding on depends on building campaign infrastructure and embedding its scores of new MPs. But politics matters, and with the Tories unlikely to bounce back quickly, there is room for the Lib Dems and Greens to capitalise on Labour's difficulties and the general long-term decline of right wing politics (as presently constituted). But what of the extra Labour left?

It's not beyond the realms of possibility that the falling of parliamentary by-elections could see a seat taken by a rooted left wing independent. Or Galloway's outfit. Especially as Labour's continued disregard of black and Muslim communities is not likely to change, if recent behaviour is anything to go by. "Independence", of course, means many things to many people. Not attaching a party label, especially a left wing party label, can in some circumstances improve one's chances. Consider Fiona Lali's 1,791 votes (4.1%) in Stratford and Bow. Would she have done anywhere near as well if she had faced the electorate as the Revolutionary Communist Party candidate? The results for TUSC and the Communist Party of Britain suggest not. Independence typically allows for the projection of all sorts of anti-politics, anti-party, single issue, and localist peccadilloes on to a candidate. Good for saving deposits, but for party building projects? For building something long lasting?

Time for the left independents to pool their resources and call for a new party, a la the perspective long pushed by our comrades in the Socialist Party? Helpfully, Corbyn himself has weighed in on this. Drawing on the lessons of his campaign, he rightly argues it's his community rootedness that saw him safely back into the Commons. This wasn't on the basis of door knocking sessions centred on voter ID, which is the Labour way, but decades of living among his constituents, helping them, being present at community events, campaigning on their issues. Corbyn has attracted, condensed, and become the repository of collective aspirations and gratitude. This is what he tried to get Labour to adopt during his time, and which was immediately axed in Starmer's counter revolution. He's also right. When the parties of the left outside the Greens and Galloway's club have zero recognition and even less of a presence, how to build the left up as a contender? This won't be welcome news to most of the organisations that stood in the election. They are committed to top-down models of party building in which everything is instrumentalised, and whose work fits around the reproduction of their respective organisations. There is certainly mileage in a link organisation that can take on weight and link up community campaigns but, to be honest, if Corbyn simply sets up a new party I doubt he fancies adjudicating between the 57 varieties and the numerous liabilities who attach themselves to the left.

We live at a rare moment in Britain's political history. The Tories and with it, the most reactionary sections of capital have suffered a historic political defeat. Labour's right turn is opening space to the left, and out of the decomposition of the coalition Corbyn's leadership brought about under the party's auspices there are, yes, promising signs that something new could be built. It's not the best time to be a socialist, but it's certainly an interesting one.