"Inadvertent Errors"

Poor Rachel Reeves, she cannot catch a break. In today's news, the chancellor is having to defend herself against dodging payments due to Southwark council for renting out her home. According to local rules, landlords have to purchase a £945 licence. When Reeves put her family home up for rent following the general election, she failed to cough up and - apparently - only found out she was liable after the Daily Mail did some digging. She said it was an inadvertent mistake, the government's ethics advisor concurs, and Keir Starmer said he has full confidence in her. In the facts presented, it does indeed appear that Reeves is free of blame. As the rental was handled by a lettings agent, they should be responsible for knowing the requirements and sorting out the levy. This has since been corroborated by their admission of error.

I have no sympathy for landlords, and especially landlords who happen to be a dishonest and incompetent chancellor. Finding out her family home was 200 miles from her Leeds constituency came as no surprise either. Even if there is no wrong doing and it is the agency who are at fault, it's not a good look. Especially when Angela Rayner was forced out for another "innocent mistake". It builds up the impression that this government are in it for themselves, that they break the rules everyone else is expected to abide by and only apologise when they get found out.

The problem Labour has is this is starting to look like a pattern. There is a marked contrast between this government and the flouting of conventions and rules that marked Boris Johnson's time in office. Yet the context of Reeves's error is not only a cabinet who help themselves to freebies, whether they're personal clothing allowances from Waheed Alli, or tickets for prestigious sporting events and pop concerts, they defended their right to accept these gifts. What is the point of the spoils of office if you can't spoil yourself in office? Reeves looks crooked because she and her peers have decided that being seen to be on the take isn't a problem. This blindness to how they're perceived is partly cluelessness, but is also symptomatic of the collapse of mainstream politics. And that means even if Reeves is completely exonerated, it adds to the troughing vibes surrounding this government and politicians generally. Something that the far right can capitalise on, but so can an insurgent green left populism.

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Racism and the Right

Racist party in racism shocker. Reform MP Sarah Pochin has been forced to apologise after saying "it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people, full of anything other than white." Her non-apology partially withdrew her remarks, saying she wanted to say something about how unrepresentative adverts are. As far as the rest of mainstream politics was concerned, this was a straightforward racist outburst. Wes Streeting didn't mince his words, seeing as Labour have belatedly discovered that opposing racist arguments is a good thing. The Liberal Democrats have moved a Commons motion of censure against Pochin too. But more interesting were the remarks from Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary. Asked to respond, he said "It’s not language I would have used ... but we should acknowledge the public do have legitimate concerns about large-scale immigration and discussing that is certainly not racist." That Pochin was not talking about immigration suggests, at best, that Philp has a blind spot on racism.

It's hard not to conclude that the right are embracing racism in ways we haven't seen for years. The last Tory government certainly pursued racist policies. From Theresa May's hostile environment and victimisation of Windrush citizens, Rishi Sunak's Rwanda scheme, and the rubbish peddled by Suella Braverman, they sailed close to the wind of mainstream conventions but purposely had an element of plausible deniability. We aren't targeting black and brown people, our beef is with legal and illegal immigrants and asylum seekers. We have to control our borders, Britain is only a small island, and this have nothing to do with race. These pretences have evaporated. The repugnant Robert Jenrick can complain about not seeing any white faces during a trip to Handsworth. Nigel Farage can unveil plans for deporting everyone with indefinite leave to remain, while having a convicted racist hatemonger address his conference. The Tories have tried outbidding Reform, with the "rising star" Katie Lam calling for more deportations to make the country more "culturally coherent", which Kemi Badenoch has said is broadly in line with party policy. And then the Pochin/Philp nonsense.

There are a couple of popular theories circulating around online political chatter. The first is about Twitter, or what it has become. Under Elon Musk, it is an open sewer, a welcome home for neo-Nazis, Holocaust denial and antisemitism, anti-Muslim and anti-black racism. Musk has created a safe space where the far right are not just tolerated, they're coddled. The algorithm boosts their posts, and several times Musk has publicly intervened to promise that Grok, the AI chatbot he's forcing down users' throats, backs up and supports racist views of the world. Meanwhile, links to external sites have been downgraded, and the reach of left wing and even centrist views are algorithmically dampened. The theory goes that the right, and much of the political establishment for that matter, have remained on the site and treat it as they always have: as a window on the world. Because the far right have been normalised on the platform, political and media elites assume this is reflective of real life. With Reform topping the polls and immigration surging as a priority issue, these serve as secondary confirmations of this belief. Hence the overboard coverage and discourse here about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and the importation of many a trope and trick from Trumpland. Twitter brain makes them think overt racism is popular, that it has cut through.

The second is a consequence of the aforementioned immigration policies pushed by the Tories. The relentless scapegoating and dog whistling around refugees only has one place to go, and that's outright racism. Cut the crap and go for plain speaking. The racist rioters last year knew what they were about, and follow up remarks from the Tories showed they understood too. With Reform stealing the Conservative base from under the party's feet, going ever more extreme is the only way of holding the central components of their coalition together. This was aided and abetted by Labour too. Keir Starmer's critique of the Rwanda scheme was about cost and practicality. Nowhere did he or his front bench challenge the politics. Over this year, they've tried to look credible and failed utterly on small boat crossings while ratcheting up immigration controls. And we had the utterly shameful spectacle of Labour ministers refusing to criticise this summer's far right-organised protests against asylum seekers, saying they were sympathetic to their "genuine concerns". And they wonder why the Greens are surging. The consequence of this? Laying the ground work for open racism to flourish.

Both points have something to recommend them, and neither excludes the other. But I think they speak to something fundamental - a deep crisis in ruling class politics that goes beyond the decline of the Tories and the evaporation of Labour in office. Gramsci's celebrated discussions of hegemony were more than a question of securing popular consent for class rule. It was inseparable from providing leadership, of a tiny class and its allies generalising their particular interest as the universal interest, their class-bound outlook as the proper, commonsensical outlook. Their rule as the natural state of things. Generally this sits in the background, and only comes to the fore at moments of crisis. The post-war consensus, the compact between labour and capital to ensure the latter's continuation was refracted through Labourism and one nation Conservatism and helped pacify the radical mood following the war. The class battles of the 1970s and the ruling class "solution" of Thatcherism was another. Though not at the same level, New Labour emitted sub-intellectual hogwash about the third way that gestured toward political leadership, as did the Tories of the coalition years with their Big Society hand waving, and after them May with her talk about the burning injustices, and Boris Johnson with the mashing together of Brexit and "levelling up". When Liz Truss induced a crisis in public finances, it was simply introduced as a measure that would straightforwardly favour the wealthiest. Sunak abandoned this, but retreated from offering leadership as he tried keeping his government on an even keel. And Labour? As Starmer has retreated from his leadership pledges, he's also drawn back from those aspects of his platform that might have laid the foundations of a new hegemony. The devolution agenda, green energy, expansive workers' rights, all have been toned down. And what do we have instead? Breakfast clubs, AI boosterism, arms for a genocide, and blandly technocratic statements about economic growth.

This is a problem, because their system is beset by trouble. The old way of governing is in crisis, it is not delivering the goods, and their traditional political agents find their legitimacy collapsing. Labour is an ideas-free zone, and their effort to rest their appeal on "delivery", as if voting is a simple question of customer satisfaction, is doomed. There is no sign from within that they're capable of providing the leadership this moment if crisis requires, either for their own electoral wellbeing, for sustaining class relations, nor providing initiatives for gaining popular consent for the persistence of this state of affairs. They're relying on social inertia to keep things going.

The same applies to the right. Strip Reform of its racist programme and what does it offer? Is there any sense of giving Britons their sense of self-respect? Of rebuilding a country of community and belonging? Of a policy agenda that might restore the country to the land of nostalgic fancy? No. Theirs would be a straightforward rule of oligarchical interests just like Trump's America. A hellhole of roving deportation gangs, crude and racist public discourse, shuttered cultural institutions, and a hobbled politics. The Tory programme, at this stage, is identical. It too is stripped back, the bones of the class relations they uphold visible through paper thin skin. Because the starting point of right wing politics is dishonesty, of presenting the elite interest as the general interest, central to these politics across time and space has been division, of preying on existing divisions or generating them where they haven't previously existed. The latter does require some political nous to identify and articulate new out-groups, which is what the press is for in this country. But the right are now so bereft of talent, so clapped out and lazy, that they turn to the basest forms of divide and rule transmitted and received from the past. Again, Trump is the model and the possible future. A racist administration largely unconcerned with popular concerns as they trough on state coffers, lock up Americans, and erode democratic norms and mechanisms of accountability, such as they exist. And for what? there's no sense of historic mission, just a grab-what-you-can while they can before multiple crises get so bad that they either cannot get away with this any longer, or what they're doing becomes impossible. This is where the recrudescence of racism on the right comes from, a class project butting up against its limits without any obvious way forward. Faced with the end, this has encouraged the opposite of thinking, the opposite of leadership. All that's left is an opportunity for one more round of looting, and collective stupefaction. The right's re-embrace of racism is a morbid symptom, and one that cannot abate.

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Science Fiction Book Haul #4

Book hauls have never stopped being popular on YouTube. But written versions? Somewhat less so. As you can tell from this place's paint job, being fashionable has never been a concern for this blog. And, sadly, these days science fiction is far from the flavour of the month either. Therefore posting about recent SF acquisitions on here is something of an apposite match, and perhaps a waste of time. Not that this bothers me.

Up first is Nevil Schute's On the Beach. I'm sure most readers, even if they're not sf or literary buffs will have heard of this thanks to the Gregory Peck film. A rare exercise in the hopeless everyone-dies-in-the-end scenario, nuclear war in the northern hemisphere has created a radioactive cloud that is slowly enveloping the Earth. Australia has escaped the fall out, but weather patterns mean it's closing in and with it, certain death. How do you cope when the end is nigh, and what happens when a submarine captain receives a radio signal from the irradiated shores of the United States?

Next is John Scalzi's Old Man's War from 2005, the first in a seven book series - the latest of which came out this year. The conceit here is that old people are being enlisted for space war. Their wizened frames are traded in for biochemically and nanotech enhanced soldier bodies that can take the fight to the aliens. It is well thought of and was nominated for the Hugo. Bringing things back to Earth, The Parable of the Talents is the second book in what would have been Octavia E Butler's near future series about the collapse of civilisation and the Mad Max-style fun that entails. Noted because the narrative jumps off in the 2020s as the US crumples beneath the weight of a right wing authoritarian president, this was to be a story of struggle, of overcoming, and building a space faring future away from the ruined Earth.

Arthur C Clarke gets a bit of a bad rap these days for having churned out, by our standards, dull and Whiggish science fiction (though I found his A Fall of Moondust entertaining enough). Does this judgement include Imperial Earth? 150 years from now, citizens from across the solar system are converging on Earth to celebrate 500 years of American independence. The futuristically named Duncan MacKenzie is making the diplomatic pilgrimage from the tunnels of Titan, but is he visiting to just make nice with the locals or are their ulterior motives afoot?

Jumping from the nearish future to the far past, Caspar Geon (AKA Tom Toner) sets The Immeasurable Heaven a long time ago in a galaxy far away. Billions of years back, to be precise, during a time when the universe was smaller and empty space was alive with a rich soup of elementary particles. There are no humans in this story, but we do have a settled galaxy - Yokkun's Depth - and a plot arising from the consequences of puncturing holes in the fabric of reality to reach the younger universes beneath. Immeasurable was published in the summer and comes highly recommended to me via several sf booktubers, so looking forward to digging in before long.

Last is the compilation Nebula Award Stories 5 edited by James Blish. In his intro, Blish takes issue with vote massaging accusations around the 1970 contest. But that's by the by. Included here are two authors' signature shorts. Samuel R Delany's Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones and Harlan Ellison's famous A Boy and His Dog. The "also-rans" are Robert Silverberg's 1969 award winner Passengers, Ursula K Le Guin's Nine Lives, Larry Niven's Not Long Before the End, and The Man Who Learned Loving by Theodore Sturgeon. There are bonus essays about the state of science fiction in 1969 from Darko Suvin and Alexei Panshin. Apart from a touch of sun fade on the spine, this is in very good nick for such an old book/

Have you picked up anything interesting lately, SF or non-sf related?

Another Lost Election

It's getting to be a habit. Keir Starmer lost another election on Saturday. Even the dogs in the street knew Lucy Powell was going to win Labour's deputy leadership contest, and did so with by a convincing margin. With 54.3% of the vote versus "popular with the unions" Bridget Phillipson and her 45.7%, this exercise in democracy had to contend less with each other and more with generalised indifference. The turn out, a shade over 16%, is demonstrative of how the "debate" between the two stirred up nothing but apathy among the ranks. Though one should note this went out to affiliated members, which flatters the party by burying the real membership figures. Which, for now, remain under wraps.

This is another reminder that when put to the electoral test, there is no appetite for open Starmerism. Even among an electorate one might expect to be favourably disposed, thanks to his steering Labour back into office. And so the less-than-optimal scenario has come to pass, an eventuality that wouldn't have happened had Starmer not turfed Powell out. Instead, we might have got a pointless show contest between Phillipson and someone similarly ineffectual, like Alison McGovern. But Powell is savvy enough not to cause much in the way of bother. She knows when to let the leadership dig their own grave, and is only likely to stick her oar in if the government does something stupid. Seeing as Rachel Reeves's next budget is due in a month, the probability of Number 10 and Number 11 standing on another rake is not low.

Flanked by more flags than a far right march, Powell's victory speech was full of the usual platitudes. Labour through-and-through, championing our values, "boldness". She has to say these things because Starmer's claims to them are tenuous at best. She said that "Unity and loyalty comes from collective purpose – not from command and control". A devastating broadside against the last five years, I'm sure you'll agree. If that's her most pointed criticism even this rigidly brittle Labour leadership can cope with that.

It's not Powell hitting the headlines that Starmer and Morgan McSweeney have to worry about. It's what goes on beneath the surface. McSweeney had a lot of fun over the years frustrating Angela Rayner, particularly where it came to blocking her allies in the North West region from getting safe seats. But as Powell has made a point of not wanting to return to cabinet, she more or less has the free run of the party machine. Her "Lucy Listens" initiative "designed" to reconnect the membership to the leaders might, coincidentally, prove to be a handy information gathering exercise for a leadership campaign. As the Westminster chatter about replacing Starmer is getting louder, I'm naively wondering which would-be leader closely associated with Powell could profit from the building of a network of contacts, and having a ringside seat listening to members' complaints? It's a mystery.

Politics After Caerphilly

Let the opening line in yesterday's post be a warning: never make glib forecasts without gripping the fundamentals. But on this occasion, I'm happy to be wrong. As Adam Bienkov gloats, the media circus camped out in Caerphilly were sure the momentum they had built around Reform's Llyr Powell would gift the party its first Senedd victory. Ho hum. Congratulations are due then to Plaid Cymru for defying their expectations and keeping Nigel Farage's fan club out. Laura Anne Jones, the Tory AM who defected to Reform in the summer will have to sit by her lonesome a while longer.

Plaid won for several reasons. By all accounts, Lindsay Whittle was an excellent candidate. A local man who has stood for the party 14 times, his long record of campaigning as an activist and a councillor stands in sharp contrast to the far right carnival that came to town, and won't likely be seen again until next year's Senedd campaign begins. And also against the faceless suits that Labour typically favours as candidates. Also in Plaid's favour is their never having been tested with office, which is married to a centre left platform few would find objectionable. As the party's leader Rhun ap Iorwerth has ruled out pushing for independence, their offering is not that dissimilar to Labour's of the recent past. Which is handy, given Wales is the most Labour of the UK's constituent nations.

Or rather, was. For the other story of the night was the complete collapse of Labour's position. Since Keir Starmer won the general election, Welsh Labour's has nose dived. The dominance of the party, which endured during the Blair, Brown, Miliband, and Corbyn years is perched on a precipice. Recent polling indicates their precarity, and Caerphilly's loss - an unwavering stronghold for a century - underlines it. The 2026 elections are set on being a repeat of Labour's 2015 Scotland wipe out. Yes, Welsh politics has its own dynamic not entirely beholden to Westminster. The scandal around Vaughan Gething's resignation as First Minister, which involved a £200k donation from a businessman convicted of environmental offences, "coincidental" awarding of government loans to his companies, and fibbing to the Covid inquiry about the deletion of messages have all eroded the party's standing. But this crisis was compounded by the hapless, hopeless farce of Labour in Westminster. Polling suggests that Plaid's vote was overwhelmingly composed of former Labour voters, and there's no reason to believe this decomposition won't carry on eating their support. It couldn't happen to a nicer Labour leadership.

Returning to Reform, despite putting a brave face on it Farage and friends will be disappointed. Their chair, David Bull, boasted about how they went from nothing to 36% in the blink of an eye. Yes, but with the media pack doing their campaigning for them and their agenda dominating politics, they should have lived up to the hype. Which has led to speculation about the role of tactical voting to keep Reform out. In such a close fought contest, it's reasonable to assume this was a factor. But is this something we're going to see more of? By and large, council by-elections are seen not to matter, and here there is seemingly no evidence of this happening so far. This hasn't stopped the FT from speculating that this might save Labour's bacon. Or at least mitigate future losses.

I think this misunderstands the dynamics of protest voting right now. Because Labour are in government and have prioritised making the rich richer, scapegoating refugees and trans people, starving public services of funds, reinforcing the curbs on protest introduced by the Tories, attacking the most vulnerable, and parading their arrogance while doing so, they have unified a vast ball of opposition. If you don't want Farage or Farage-lite policies, why vote for the Labour candidate now there are viable alternatives? Be it Plaid, or the SNP, or the Liberal Democrats, or the Greens, or Your Party when it finally arrives properly. As Labour support has collapsed almost everywhere, banking on tactical voting to keep them in  and Reform out applies to so few areas that, as strategies go, it's worthless. And that's before even attempting to persuade the voters the party has abandoned that they should come back. Tactical voting isn't going to work during the next round of second order elections, which means Starmer will be toast after May. But if by some horrendous miracle he weathers the fall out, for as long as he, right wing Labour, and their politics rule the party, the fate sure to befall them next Spring will keep repeating year after year, devolved government election after council election after parliamentary by-election. By the time 2029 comes Labour's support will have withered on the vine.

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Why Reform Local Govt Splits Don't Matter

It's likely that Reform are going to win the Caerphilly by-election for the Senedd. Victory will continue demonstrating that Nigel Farage's party is on the up, but to all intents and purposes they've had a rough couple of weeks. Questions over NF's finances. Nathan Gill admitting that he shilled for Russia while an MEP. A backlash against their plans to deport people with indefinite leave to remain. And adding to the drama are issues in local government.

The Graun splashed with leaked footage from Kent County Council's cabinet meeting, which advertised a behind-the-scenes culture of fractiousness, bad language, and non-collegiate behaviour. In the fall out, four suspects/awkwards were turfed out the council group. The problem being that Reform in Kent, as in many other places, were voted in on the back of false promises that they would identify and cut waste without impacting on service delivery. A rather bold if not stupid claim, given the 14-year long butchery of local government. Kent have now gone a step further and has begged their opposition for help in finding savings to avoid putting Council Tax up. I'm sure other parties in the chamber will be falling over themselves to assist.

Kent is but one of several local government difficulties. Northumberland has seen three councillors expelled after notifying the national party about competency concerns. Nottinghamshire council group famously blacklisted the local paper, the Evening Post, and councillors refused to engage with them. They climbed down following legal threats. Reform in Derbyshire are pushing an unpopular care home fire sale, while their SEND cabinet member - an issue Reform professes to care about - has resigned. All over the country there are similar stories. Locals falling out. Councillors ditching their seats. New councils having nary a clue. It's a refraction of the chaos at the top of the party, which is two MPs down on where they should be since the election. And as if to underscore it, Zia Yusuf has resigned again. This time from Reform's pathetic council efficiency unit.

Division and infighting is the lot for Reform. As it was for UKIP before it. And that is why, from his point of view, Farage was wise to keep a firm control over his new personality vehicle. The private ownership model, which has now been superseded by a "democratic" model where Farage's writ runs unchallenged means the anointed one doesn't have to even pay lip service to democratic proprietary. If someone annoys the boss for any reason at all, they're gone. No matter how much sound and fury those on the receiving end kick up.

But does this matter? Chaos is not specific to Reform. It's a feature of all parties of the Farageist type. Yet fallings outs and expulsions have not derailed continental far right parties. And, sadly, it's unlikely council tax rises and other debacles in local government are going to reduce their support because that's not why people vote for them. Reform's standing begins and ends with Farage. And for anyone wanting to successfully overcome the challenge his party presents, political criticisms and attacks have to focus on him.

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The Second Green Surge

Congratulations to the Greens. Doubling the size of the party in two months to 140,000+ members and leaving the Tories in the dust is no mean feat. Especially with politics being as it is, with right wing talking points crowding other views out of the mainstream and Nigel Farage parading around as the establishment-sanctioned anti-establishment alternative. Yes, the Green Party in on an upward trajectory as long forecasted around these parts, but what's driving it?

Since the election of Zack Polanski, no one can fault the Green Party for making the most of him. Polanski is doing a good job of making the most of his fresh face status. His "eco-populism", which emphasises the us vs them populism characteristic of Corbynism at its most successful has leant itself to spiky social media posts and a refusal to play the usual media game. Polanski promised he would be a Farage-like figure, albeit from the left, and he's making a good fist of it. His social media shorts have gone viral, he's earned praise from Alastair Campbell(!) for his easy style and the slogan "make hope normal again", and following a short campaign he was granted a slot on Laura Kuenssberg after he was "overlooked" during party conference season. Less noted but also important is Polanski's new podcast, Bold Politics. Featuring interviews with well known left and radical figures, such as Grace Blakeley, Owen Jones, and Gary Stevenson, this has drawn in a layer who spend less time on your Twitters and Blueskys and more cycling around the politics podcast circuit.

We make our own history, but not under circumstances of our choosing. Polanski and the Greens are fortunate that there are two more things in their favour. Which, interestingly enough, almost repeat what happened a decade ago. Though this time as triumph, rather than tragedy or farce. Obviously, enthusiasm for the Greens is a blowback against the reactionary cul de sac Labour has parked mainstream politics in. In their cynical and reckless fashion, Keir Starmer and galaxy-brained Morgan McSweeney have charged to the right in an effort to dampen any progressive expectations their support might have following 14 wasted years of Tory government. Being racist and posturing hard on immigration is ideal: the lure for Labour is the same as it was for the Tories. Create scapegoats, stir up panics against them, and reap the benefits from clamping down hard. The overall balance of forces in the country remain unchanged, but the government gets to look effective. For Labour, to McSweeney's mind this tees up the support for Reform, but in the absence of any positive sell in 2029 the choice is between Starmer and Farage. That's right, this Labour government would rather risk opening the door to a government of the extreme right than abandoning its present course and tipping toward the centre left.

The Green surge of 2025 is then a larger echo of the Green surge of 2015. Millions of people are sick of this politics. No one voted Labour last year to chip away at social security, starve public services, give NHS data to private corporations, rip up the green belt, arm a genocide, outbid the racists on immigration, demonise trans people, or slavishly kowtow to billionaires at home and abroad. The Greens are well placed to intersect with this discontent, because Polanski is just about the only politician talking about these issues. Had history pivoted the other way and Adrian Ramsey and Ellie Chowns won the leadership, would they have made the most of this? It's doubtful.

I said just about the only politician, because the others who might have capitalised on this are Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. Arguably, as Your Party is going through its founding process and there not being much to join might have counted against their appeal. But undoubtedly, last month's fireworks have put plenty of would-be recruits off. Just the idea that the new party could fudge it on landlords, and could fudge it on trans people, the opaque moves and secrecy, and now the lack of faith in its leading figures because of all this rubbish, why not head to a party that has name recognition, a support base, a ready-made structure that is very democratic, and a seeming absence of the back biting and media leaking some are intent on importing into Your Party from Labour and the trade union movement? The Greens are taking off, in part, because the main player in the new party has dithered and delayed, and then the project was almost tossed into the skip. Politics waits for no one. If there's an opportunity, someone will move on it. Zack Polanski has, and this is why the Greens are surging and Your Party will have to play second fiddle to them. For good or for ill.

Covid, Round Three

A his 'n' hers. Hers, a blunt, rude indicator of a Covid bout in full force. Fatigue, muted senses of taste and smell, feeling off. A most unwelcome intruder in our happy house.

Mine, a barely-there mark befitting a fading illness that, on the third time of asking, has been milder than previous memberships of the Covid club. Enough to keep me away from work, going out, and doing most normal things. Tragically, no lawn mowing last weekend for me. I also had to put down the threads I would have weaved into tapestries of political comment this last week, so apologies for the brief interlude of silence. Having munched through my weight in decongestants, paracetemol, and downed a vat's worth of Nightnurse (other respiratory remedies are available), the blighter is almost finished. No word marathons ahoy in the immediate recovery period then, but a few canters around the block should start reappearing hereabouts.

Labour's Dreary Deputy Leadership Contest

Even by the dull standards of the form, Labour's deputy leadership contest has been a doze fest. The pair of interviews Bridget Phillipson and Lucy Powell did for LabourList are recommended reading for insomniacs everywhere. But this suits the Labour leadership just fine. Having suffered a very bumpy September, the last thing Keir Starmer needed was one current and one very recent cabinet member firing up the Big Berthas and pounding each other's positions. Seeing as it's a proxy skirmish between the beleaguered Starmerist camp and the approaching columns of Andy Burnham.

As with most things that have gone wrong with this Labour government, the leadership only has itself to blame. Starmer and/or his genius henchman have created the dynamic where Burnham is unsubtly presenting himself as Labour's saviour, and Powell's campaign is the vehicle for his rise. In the aftermath of the Angela Rayner debacle, the Prime Minister didn't have to purge the cabinet of everyone else with links to Burnham's manse, but he did anyway leaving the top of government unusually politically narrow. Sect-like, some might say. And because the new "radical realist" soft left faction Mainstream was launching a couple of days later, Powell's campaign could not have asked for a better start. Not that it needed this boost. As polling has demonstrated, Powell's lead over Phillipson has widened since the starting gun fired. Though Phillipson's people point to her trade union nominations, pretending this indicates some sort of grass roots enthusiasm rather than a few officials here and there engineering a helpful favour.

Substantively, there isn't much between the two campaigns. Phillipson's talks up her coming from a "tough" street, because nice places never exist on council estates. There's her bringing in the breakfast clubs, which as we have seen is now Labour's signature policy achievement since coming to office. Other parts of her record, such as overseeing the loss of 15,000 jobs in higher education without any expression of regret, let alone a plan for fixing the sector don't get a mention. In her LabourList interview, she talks about the "truth telling" and "members' voice" she would bring to cabinet. How she's independent-minded, and has copped hostile briefings because of it. Phillipson goes on to say you can't out-Reform Reform, and that causing division in our communities is anti-British, and that the flag is "our flag too". A few prompts on ChatGPT could have written a more attractive pitch, it's a miracle that 26% of members polled are planning to vote for her.

Not that Powell's pitch is tonally different. But what she does say, as per her LabourList interview, is that Labour has lost its way, it's flat-footed when it comes to politics, and its managerialism is alienating. Reorienting the party, for her, means being outside of cabinet. Rather than insisting on Rayner's old position, she appears to be doing Starmer a favour by not undoing her sacking. She would deliver "difficult messages" from the members publicly, and seek to galvanise the party. She promises "Lucy listens" fora up and down the country to connect the bottom of the party with the top. On her relationship to factional argy-bargy and this being a Starmer/Burnham proxy, "I always think it is pretty sexist. We’re two strong women standing in an open contest. I am completely motivated by my own agenda here." Any alignments with wider party struggles are therefore entirely accidental. As would be the case if Powell uses her mandate to push for party changes in ways uncongenial to the right wing blob of McSweeney and co.

And this is why Powell will win. Despite the rubbish Labour MPs tell themselves, the members are much closer to the public sociologically and politically speaking than they are. Members not only face the same every day pressures, they are also on the sharp end of Labour's policies. Any candidate reflecting their disquiet and dissatisfaction, that causes Starmer some discomfort from the left (albeit the softest left), who might get the leadership to think about the crisis in Labour's support, and perhaps try a strategy that doesn't imitate Reform was bound to attract most votes. It's also a shot across Starmer's boughs. Powell is the most Milquetoast of messengers of discontent this Labour Party could muster, but if the government carries on as it does and next May's results are as catastrophic as the current run of council by-elections, the MPs and trade union leaders that come for Starmer and his cabinet of nodding donkeys won't be so polite.

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Uncovering Starmer's Fraudulent Politics

I was privileged enough to score an invite to Tuesday morning's presser for Paul Holden's The Fraud, a forensic examination of the shenanigans, rules flouting, and, in some cases, potential law breaking by Morgan McSweeney and the people around him. The story of Labour Together and what role it played in capturing the Labour leadership for Keir Starmer is well enough known, but what Holden has done is hunt down the receipts and the emails that lubricated this dishonest enterprise. But this has not happened without personal risk. A malicious complaint against him was made to the National Cyber Security Centre, alleging that he'd accessed hacked emails from Labour Together. He was also called by someone pretending to be a journalist for openDemocracy who tried pumping him for information, and that "reputation management firms" had tried digging up dirt on him and his family.

Holden began at the beginning. Labour Together was founded by Jon Cruddas and was billed as a non-factional organisation looking to bridge the divides inside Labour. He hired McSweeney, and very quickly Steve Reed, now the minister for housing and local government, and Imran Ahmed, now of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, came on board, From that point on it became a front for their factionalising, which was hidden from Cruddas. As we now know, LT was central to Keir Starmer's leadership campaign in early 2020, but McSweeney and friends denied it was any such thing. We also know that LT took over £700k in undeclared donations, and while this was later explained as an admin oversight Holden has email correspondence between McSweeney and the Electoral Commission. McSweeney argued that it didn't need declaring because LT was not a campaigning organisation, whereas the EC said that didn't matter and should be reported as a matter of course. The Morganiser subsequently "forgot" this conversation. Meanwhile, LT figures, such as the new home secretary Shabana Mahmood, was writing articles that said all funding was properly declared.

On Labour's antisemitism crisis, Reed, McSweeney, and Ahmed drove some aspects of the crisis, with the first compiling and submitting lists of his own. Where this painful episode needed to be dealt with with seriousness and care, it was instead factional and toxic. Accusations of racism were, yes, weaponised as part of the right's was against the left. One such example was David Gordstein, who made hundreds of complaints against party members. This identity was an invention of the (non-Jewish) Euan Phillips of Labour Against Antisemitism and targeted the left, including Jewish members.

LT also funded some secret projects, which included the astroturf campaign 'Stop Funding Fake News'. Launched in March 2019, it portrayed itself as a volunteer organisation but worked under the direction of McSweeney and Ahmed. It campaigned to demonetise websites. and the primary target was The Canary, which was seen as an important node in Corbyn-supportive media. They also targetted Westmonster, the right wing Arron Banks vehicle, and Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party. In May 2019, SFFN posted a thread telling people not to vote BXP and made ad hom attacks on Trump. The political problem is this used Russia-style disinfo tactics, and laid open the Prime Minister's right hand man to charges that undeclared money was used to cancel opponents. Farage is far from averse to playing the poor little right winger card, and could make something of this. Also, Starmer is in hot water of the notoriously prickly White House takes notice.

Part two of the book is called the long con, and details the dishonest contrivances around marketing Starmer. He was recreated as an inhabitant of the human rights universe, and employed "shadowing" as a tactic. I.e. Politically, Starmer's campaign tracked closely to the positions of Rebecca Long-Bailey so no meaningful gap could open between the two. Entirely by coincidence, Stop Funding Fake News was resurrected on 8th January and again went after The Canary. Their crime this time? Drawing attention to Starmer's time as Director of Public Prosecutions, a record that sits somewhat uneasily with his human rights glossing.

Part three looks at killing Corbynism. Once the leadership was won, the machinery was quickly recolonised by right wingers, which was epitomised by their response to the leaked dossier of Labour staffers' WhatsApp messages. Despite the racist banter, attacks on other party members, and evidence of a shadow campaign that diverted funds to safe seats held by right wingers in 2017, those at fault were barely admonished while heaven and earth was moved to find the leaker. Eventually the party took five former officials to court on the flimsiest of evidence. But what did they have in common? They were part of the left. This shadow campaign, which Holden calls the Ergon House scandal, saw funds diverted away from swing seats to safe seats, circumventing normal governance procedures. This was a secret office and Holden has documentary proof that six right wingers, Gloria De Piero, Mary Creagh, Margaret Beckett, Angela Eagle, Caroline Flint, and Judith Cummins, benefited from their support. Unite wrote to Starmer about this and suggested it might shade into criminality, but this breaking of Labour rules and electoral law came to nothing.

On the EHRC report on Labour's antisemitism, within half an hour of Starmer saying he would implement its recommendations he had violated them. One of the EHRC's findings was that the party was guilty of "indirect" discrimination because the leader's office under Corbyn was occasionally consulted about the pace and outcomes of complaints. It's worth noting here, which Holden did not, that this "discrimination" was focused on expediting complaints, not delaying them as falsely claimed by right wingers at the time. However, despite pledging to end interference, between May-June 2020 the leader's office and Angela Rayner were copied into all complaints and were regularly briefed on cases. Complaint handlers were also directed as to their findings. Perhaps the most egregious example of this was the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn from the party, with emails and tweets being sent announcing this immediately after Corbyn, rightly, acknowledged that antisemitism was played as a political football. Other interferences involved "VIP lanes" for MPs who wanted to complain against inconvenient activists

Overall, Holden's presser portrayed Labour as a vicious and, at times, lawless party. Their dismissal of the Forde report into factionalism and the issuing of legal threats around non-disclosure against him, the deselection of Anna Rothery as Labour's candidate for Liverpool's mayoralty, the racist profiling of Newham Labour Party, which involved significant data breaches, and - it might ba added- their repeated victimisation of Diane Abbott demonstrates a systematic problem with racism. But one that gets a free pass because it's the right wing that are doing it.

In all, what Holden has accomplished is a detailed, meticulous exposure of right wing perfidy. It sounds like a dossier of damnation, and one whose evidence could form the basis of civil and legal cases against the Labour Party in general, and McSweeney and his boys in particular. Matters not helped by the fact these right wingers have boasted about their genius dark arts moves to any journalist willing to be their stenographer. As Holden concluded, their fraudulent approach to politics marked the 2024 election campaign and helps explain the alienation and antipathy Starmer has engendered in government. Who can disagree?