Delegitimating Labour

Not only are the right wing press in this country poisonous, they're petty-minded. Their latest victim is Rachel Reeves. The story, in case you missed it, has morphed from who-knew-what-and-when regarding the level of tax receipts prior to last week's budget into the realms of the absurd. Reeves pretended the situation was dire, when in fact tax revenues were better than she led the press to believe. Her early morning news conference several weeks ago was superfluous as were, some have contended, Reeves's freezing of income tax thresholds, sundry other measures that have raised more funds from the wealthy, and that have left the poorer better off. As Reeves has a track record flush with dishonesty and lies, the criticisms of her probity have weight.

From there, however, the Tory papers have gone off the deep end. Combing through Reeves's life for any old rope, they have disputed her claim that she was a teenaged chess champion. As Adam Bienkov puts it, "... while Rachel Reeves claimed to have been the "British girls under-14 [chess] champion" she was in reality merely the "Under 14s British Women’s Chess Association (BWCA) Girls" Champion."" Because the Chancellor's claim to chess fame wasn't, as far as they were concerned, the correct championship this is further shocking proof of her duplicity. It makes you wonder where these formidable powers of forensic investigation were when Boris Johnson was in office.

Yes, this is a stupid non-story. But it's tied to an effort that is deadly serious. Despite Reeves and the dogmatic commitment to her fiscal rules, her efforts at stressing British capitalism's present state of play as non-negotiable, the repeated genuflections to Treasury orthodoxy, and her enthusiasm - since rescinded - for making the most vulnerable pay for the crumbling state, this is not enough for the hyper-class conscious editorial offices of the right wing media. Last year it was the land tax Reeves's budget saddled the wealthy with. This year, it's levies on owners of super valuable properties, and increased taxation on dividends and rental income. In all, very small beer. Chump change for the vast majority of those affected, but it's not about rich people not being able to afford it. For right wingers, a key principle is at stake: Reeves has committed the cardinal sin of taxing unearned wealth. This, in case anyone needs reminding, is the lynchpin of class the world over. Here, for a ruling class accustomed to having things their own way for 50 years, even a tiny encroachment on land, rents, dividends, is unconscionable. Where might it end? What might be a couple of pennies now could be pounds later, and then something much worse. Pushing back hard now is about showing Labour who are in charge, and what is and isn't permissible.

Ditto for the other sections of Reeves's budget. Take the lifting of the child benefit cap, the signature (if belated) policy achievement of this government. The right have gnashed their teeth and ran headlines along the lines of a 'budget for benefits street'. But what motivates them is less the ending of performative cruelty, or even the wedginess of this issue. It has and will continue to provide fuel for their beggar-thy-neighbour posturing and "investigative" reports on young women becoming baby factories on taxpayers' cash. More dangerous for them is the clear demonstration that state action, with the stroke of a pen, instantly improved the lot of hundreds of thousands of families. If governments can do this, why can't they do other things like provide enough social housing, ensure the NHS is properly funded, fix dilapidated schools, and so on. After the Tories worked very hard to reduce political horizons in the aftermath of Corbynism, Johnson's rash levelling up promises, and the huge state intervention the Covid crisis called forth, Labour threatens to undo this with its "largesse".

Lastly, for a section of British business, this is symptomatic of Labour's unreliability. That is unlike the Tories, Reform, and the Liberal Democrats, via the trade unions Labour remains - despite its own best efforts - a party rooted in organised labour and its associated interests. Because it has one foot outside the constitution of permissible politics, it has a base and a set of aspirations it must satisfy that aren't always aligned with the politics of class rule. Keir Starmer and Reeves have spent years selling their project as one in which business runs through their leadership like Blackpool through a stick of rock, but the exigencies of government plus the mess the Tories bequeathed them means that Labour would, as far as class conscious sections of capital are concerned, always deviate from the bourgeois straight and narrow. This is a fear the ruling class has had since Labour became a force in British politics, and that hasn't changed even now the party is dropping to bits. For some of them, attacking the party in the most hysterical terms, pedantically scrutinising what Reeves did when she was 14, all the sheer absurdity and oil tankers of bile shows they're not content to box Labour in politically, but would rather this party, this interloper in their politics, be squeezed out for good.