Burying Corbynism

Keir Starmer's economy speech then. It's fair to say it wasn't overwhelming, and few but the usual loyalists gave it a buoyant reception. The left, as you might have guessed, weren't full of praise. But neither were the centrist hacks. On this James Ball offered an infrequent insight, noting Dear Keir was acting as if he was in government not opposition, and this is fatal. A rare confluence of opinion between him and the left he affects to despise.

I'm not going to go through all the criticisms as they're ten-a-penny on Twitter. There are three aspects worth noting. The first was the eye-catching original policy (albeit half-inched from Thatcherite think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies). I.e. The Covid recovery bonds. The plan proposes to raise billions from voluntary subscriptions to go into community investment. In practice, one would assume rebuilding local infrastructure and public services gutted by Tory cuts is where this money is destined. The bonds themselves would be long maturing, and are designed to soak up the savings large numbers of (mainly middle class) people have built up over the course of the pandemic.

This might be too vague to capture the public imagination, but in principle it is a sound policy. For middle class people, there's the promise for a better return on their savings than the negligible fractional interest bank deposits currently attract, and with a preponderance of profitible opportunities for investment unlikely in the immediate future, the bond scheme might appeal to those uninterested in tying their savings up in strings-attached investment vehicles and ISAs. Second, it ties these investments into the health of the public realm and community building. In other words, it offers a secure and stable alternative to the usual form of petty middle class investment. I.e. Property. Given the political toxins our ageing cohorts of property owners have showered on us this last decade, this is designed to move the locus of material interest away from individuated petit bourgeois landlordism to building up what the centrist wonks call the foundational economy. In other words, by socialising the investment behaviour of millions the hope is they see their economic interests tied up with the general interest. Hey presto, the selfishness and scapegoating that have powered the Tories in recent decades is gradually engineered out of the voting population. Including among those who might otherwise be predisposed toward them.

I've said my positive piece, what about the rest? Offering support to business is nothing new, and comrades will recall John McDonnell often spoke of policies appealing to its better nature. As a centrist, of course Keir Starmer is going to say positive things about business. And this about sums up the tone of the pitch. This wasn't aimed at winning back leftists or, for that matter, those drifting to other parties. This was, just like the patriotism stuff, calibrated at wooing sections of small business, soft Labour/soft Tory swing voters of means, and the odd home-owning former Labour voter who went Tory in 2019. It sounded plodding and boring because the "SLT" believe this is what these people want. By avoiding public spending commitments and offering a prospectus that, at first glance, is little different to the new Tory statism, let's just say the horses are in their stables and all is calm. If the aim was to offer a vision of a better Britain to a narrow demographic, then this is exactly what Keir achieved. No one's frightened. No one's gnashing their teeth.

At the same time this is a step back from Corbynism. Indeed, it constitutes a break with it. Starmerism as a political current is virtually indistinguishable from Fabianism. This is a politics in which popular participation is entirely a matter of voting for a Labour government, and then the Keirists are left to their difficult business of introducing the right policies for everyone's betterment. As such it tends toward centralisation and authoritarianism, a point celebrated by useful idiots and dim bulbs craving preferment. On paper, when the full Starmerist programme emerges blinking into the light it's going to involve industrial activism on state's part, more investment in public services, the integration of health and social care, the abolition of tuition fees, and quite a few things you might find in Labour's last two manifestos. What, however, will be conspicuous by its absence is democratisation.

Central to the Corbynist programme was what our much-missed comrade Ed Rooksby referred to as structural reforms. Whereas Keir's policies are about making British capitalism fairer and more functional, Corbynism wanted to use the levers of the state to introduce democratic decision-making where it is anathema to capitalist relations of production: in the workplace. The discussions around and positions taken on alternative models of ownership, democratic nationalisation of the utilities and rail, and the break up and socialisation of the media were about empowering workers, of creating a toehold from which the democratisation of economics could flow and with it a fundamental challenge to capital. This radical content of Corbynism is not just absent from Starmerism, it is entirely alien to the Fabian tradition itself.

We now know a little bit more about Starmerism today than we did yesterday. It is capable of taking on new, interesting, and innovative policy ideas. But strategically, this was no departure from what we've seen up until now and was, explicitly, a divorce from the Corbynism it happily gestured to a year ago. Yes, this is better than the Tories. But so, as a general rule, are the programmes put out by the Liberal Democrats. Try as he might, he cannot avoid the issue. Keir Starmer either locates Labour in the interests of the rising generation and sticks up for its core vote, as Corbynism partially managed, or he loses. The political calculus is that simple.