Labour Party

When outsiders and their money drive policy and choose staff…

January 18, 2021 By graham stewart

…. you don’t have a political party; you have a company department

I may have left the Labour Party but it continues to fascinate — a bit like watching a driverless train heading quickly towards the buffers at a deserted station.

What has become clear over the last few days is that the party’s funds seem to be in parlous shape. This has forced Sir Keith Strimmer to abandon any struggle to manage the optics around bowing to the wishes of prospective donors.

To be fair to the man, he can afford the gamble at the moment because the media are occupied with other matters and they already know that Labour under the garden gnome is not going to be a party that threatens the status quo. No attacks on inequality, poverty, and militarism are on the cards.

But with the exodus of many thousands of left-wing members of Labour both at the election of Starmer as leader and then after, when his purge of socialists began, money is now increasingly tight at Labour H.Q. Luckily, a Labour Party now shorn of left-wing policies can go cap in hand to some of the old centrist donors. These are the rich with consciences, the equivalent of the Victorian philanthropists who saved fallen women or set up foundations for foundlings and orphans.

The trouble with being dependent on donors to pay for a party’s infrastructure is that sometimes the donors want reassurances. Centrists don’t want to slip Labour a few million now and suddenly find they’ve sponsored a party that wants to make real change. To actually improve the lives of the majority.

And so we get outcomes that stink, no matter how they’re perfumed with press releases and briefings. One such outcome is the sudden resignation of the leader of Scottish Labour — or, more accurately, after Starmer’s intervention Labour’s Scottish branch. Richard Leonard has long been on the receiving end of attacks from right-wing party colleagues, no doubt briefed from down south about the best ways to undermine a leader.

But a call with prospective donors followed by an indication — at the very least — from Starmer that Leonard should go in order to secure funding in not a good look. But, as I said at the top, Starmer is gambling that looks are not important, especially now. And especially when money is needed to counter the loss in party subscriptions.

There are elections to the Scottish Assembly in May. It’s not the best time to switch leadership, especially when the likely winner of any race is probably on the right of the party and someone leaning more stridently towards unionism. Two of the political positions that more or less led to the destruction of Labour in Scotland in 2015. But still, if the wealthy are prepared to back those positions and keep the party running despite election results, the voters can go hang.

Britain’s Labour party responds to the looming financial crisis

January 15, 2021 By graham stewart

…..by proposing the same old tired neoliberal sh*t

So there you have it. The Labour Party under Sir Keir (the Strimmer) Starmer has finally found its financial policy. It’s going to threaten the Tories with a plan to become economically competent. This radical policy — of basically following the traditional neoliberal playbook of balanced budgets and austerity — was announced by Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds in the annual Mais Lecture on January 13th.

Now follows a rant.

This is a return to playing by right-wing economic rules. It’s a commitment to drain useful money from the economy and ensure it filters upwards. Balanced budgets — or treating the national economy like a household budget where spending should match income — is simply a guarantee of stunted growth, low wages, poor services, inadequate housing, and ever-increasing inequality.

Labour, by returning to this failed notion — this economic illiteracy — is simply showing that they are no longer the party of the working majority of this country. Fiscal responsibility is code for asset stripping. True economic competence would be about ensuring that money is spent where it is needed most. Housing, health, jobs. We have a fiat currency, which means we cannot go broke. There is no direct relationship between tax and spending. Tax is a tool to combat inflation and to manage levels of employment. To pretend otherwise is to commit to increasing the wealth of the plunderers of the national treasury and to lead us further down the road to a right-wing authoritarian nightmare.

It is both depressing and furthering that our main party of opposition has no expert in economics who can guide our shadow chancellor away from making the usual errors of judgment and bowing to the Daily Mail’s view of how an economy works. Couldn’t Labour perhaps think outside the box for once and try to hire someone like Stephanie Kelton?

That it fails to do so sentences the majority of us to a future of greater need, little protection against the climate crisis, and the threat of fascism as the anger of the deprived is used by those benefiting from the growth in inequality. Instead of blaming ignorance of economics, of course, the wealthy will have us blame someone or something ‘other’. Immigrants, the ‘undeserving’ poor, benefit ‘scroungers’, the disabled, ethnic minorities, the plain old unemployed. These all become categories to be despised and targeted. Instead of treating the nation as a community, the right want us to see only competitors for scant resources.

And the irony, of course, is that there is no practical limit on the money to spend on public services. On housing. On transport. On health. It is always an ideological choice how money is spent and how it always seems to be spent upwards.

Can I get a mass party of the left, please?

January 6, 2021 By graham stewart

…and I think we know now that Labour is not it

Sir Keith Strimmer revealed his true colours (blue?) quite quickly after assuming the leadership of the Labour Party. This has led to much discussion both inside and outside the party about whether socialists should leave and form a new party of the left. A socialist party, in fact.

I’m pleased to say that I left Labour the day after The Strimmer was announced as leader. I didn’t have any foreknowledge that he would be quite so disastrous a leader but my reasons for leaving were straightforward. As a socialist, I had never seen a reason to join Labour, but I joined to vote for and support Jeremy Corbyn, and I left when he was no longer leader. Although I believed that Sir Strimmer was one of the main reasons behind the disastrous 2019 election result, with Corbyn gone, it was clear that Labour’s once in a generation flirtation with the left was once again over.

There are left wing parties out there. Is there room for a new one? Possibly. However, remaining within Labour and thinking that there is any possibility of advancing socialism from there smacks to me of a combination of wishful thinking and laziness. The laziness that comes with the comfort of a party with large membership. So I think the only chance of success for a new party of the left depends on a majority of those who joined or re-joined Labour under Corbyn to switch en masse. This is not a guarantee of electoral success, of course. It will only generate funds. There have been desertions from Labour since the purge of the left began but, to be frank, not enough — and not quickly.

Would I vote for a credible socialist party at an election? Yes, in short. Then again, it’s an easy choice for me because I live in a constituency that is a Tory safe seat. Then again, with the proposed boundary changes and with Scotland lost to Labour for ever, an increasing number of English seats appear to be safe for the Tories. A party offering mild rebukes to the corporate class and pandering to business and repeating the old canards about spending and cuts and taxation is not going to instil a new generation of voters with passion — or even hope. After all, it was the centrist bromides of Clinton and Obama that led us to Trump. And the long decline of hope under Blair that brought us Johnson ultimately. A party of the centre always finds itself drifting ever to the right.

And speaking of Scotland, I remember when the SNP was considered a joke, both inside and outside Scotland. When they won a Westminster seat, it was thought a flash in the pan. A new party with a purpose, a strong message, and a grassroots network that links movements and communities may not win many seats at a first election. But this is about the long term, despite the fact that ‘long term’ is becoming increasingly relative with the planet burning.

I suspect, too, that in the not-too-distant future The Strimmer will want to pursue his own Clause IV moment and suggest the time has come to rename the Labour Party. After all, the name has overtones of, well working and the working class. Surely that connection is now redundant, they will say. The new party should describe where the true interests of its members lie. A focus group will be set up. Brand managers will be hired. And after many hundreds of thousands of man-hours and many hundreds of thousands of membership fees, the new name will be presented. Something bland like The Centrist Party, perhaps. More on the nail, do you think? How about the Neo Liberals?