Labour's Money Woes

A small item in a week full of big stories. LabourList reported that the party's finances have plunged into the red. Actual figures weren't given, but £4m is needed to fight next year's local elections - the ones Keir Starmer's political future increasingly hinges on. How has the party got into this predicament? There was the small matter of last year's general election, but apart from that nothing else is said. It's as if fluctuations in the bank account are simply natural, with the party going through endless cycles of heavy spending and retrenchment. The great unsaid is this model of financial precarity is quite deliberate.

There's only one 21st century Labour leader who did not face a party funding crisis, and it was old unmentionable himself, Jeremy Corbyn. In fact, despite splashing the cash at the 2019 general election the party was still in the black when it was handed over to Keir Starmer. And this, some readers might recall, was because of the huge membership. The subscription base alone secured Labour's finances, and the enthusiasm they generated fundraised millions more. Add in the trade union fees and donations and, for four years, the party was awash with cash. It disproved the "common sense" that parties needed rich donors. Clearly, if enough people get on board, they do not.

When Starmer took over, he immediately went to war with the membership and, unsurprisingly, hundreds of thousands of them voted with their feet. Including, eventually, your scribe. Contributing to Labour's current woes are further falls in party membership, with the rumour mill suggesting 10% of those on board during the last election have upped sticks. But this is how Starmer and the bulk of the parliamentary party like it. Crowd-funded monies for workers' parties is good, because it provides the economics underpinning their political independence. But for the careerists who make it to the top, this is a barrier to their integration into the establishment. Starmer's jettisoning of members wasn't just a case of reversing the democratic gains made in the party under Corbyn, but a concerted effort at making Labour amenable to bourgeois interests - and what better way than making it financially dependent on the largesse of the rich?

As noted here many times, Labour play the game of having to constantly reassure capital that it's on their side. And this is because Labourism itself, from capital's point of view, always carries the trace of danger - no matter how supine and pro-business a Labour government. Corbynism reminded the powers that be that, from seemingly nowhere, the B team of British politics can occasionally be the site of class aspirations from below and threaten to upset the prevailing class settlement. The leadership's choice to skirt insolvency is a political one as it keeps them close to the interests Labour was set up to contest. Therefore the elite-courting cash raising plans they implement to keep the lights on, even if it risks accusations of sleaze and cronyism are, as far as Starmer, the PLP, the media, and the business class always preferable, because it keeps a lid on British politics and preserve class relations as they are.

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