British Labour’s Daily Retreat
As Adam Bienkov from Byline Times has noted: “it turns out that everything that’s gone wrong in the last 13 years is the fault of a future government that doesn’t yet exist” …
In reverse proportion to the hysteria about Starmer’s supposedly incoming government is the actual reality of Starmer’s incoming government which is characterised by a daily drip drip of announcements about what they won’t do, can’t do and absolutely refuse to do.
Last week saw the announcement of the abandonment of the green jobs investment plan (we covered here Empire State of Mind), this week saw the abandonment of their commitment to childcare. The process is rapid. Only in October 2022 Bridget Phillipson ( the shadow education secretary,) said “I don’t think you can talk about growing your economy unless you’ve got a real plan about how you provide parents with the support they need around childcare,” Today: Labour ruled out universal childcare for young children in a ‘fiscal credibility drive’.
Last night Labour ordered its peers not to vote for a motion opposing the Tories latest attack on our right to protest.
An unforgivable act. Labour tonight supported the Government in its unprecedented abuse of power to restrict the publics right to protest. With Lord Coaker stating: “Labour will abstain on the fatal motion…. we will not block the bill…”
— Dr. Jennifer Cassidy (@OxfordDiplomat) June 14, 2023
Today Labour abstained from an SNP attempt to create a Cost of Living Committee at Westminster.
These aren’t just retreats shaped by the right-wing media culture, the threat of backers or the fear of being intimidated by the Murdoch press. These are hostages to fortune, deeply ideological positions and conscious decisions made at a time when the Conservatives are in complete disarray. These are often highly popular policies (like investment in green jobs and childcare) which also make perfect sense – even in the limited language of British politics about ‘strengthening the economy’. Yet they’re abandoned, daily.
There is two major phenomenon in British politics at the moment working hand in hand (see Daily Mail above, but its everywhere). One is the farce of the Tory media portraying Starmer’s Labour party agenda as some kind of radical threat, and the other is UK Labour denouncing things they themselves said months, weeks, sometimes even days ago as completely reckless and impossibly unaffordable. This self-flagellation is completely pointless. As you can see first hand there is absolutely no point in the ideological asst-stripping the Labour has gone under. There is no point in which the British establishment will be satisfied. Instead what we are seeing is the true ideological position of the right-wing on the Labour party being laid bare.
The truth about British politics is it’s a dark mirror. A two-party system distorted by internal warring factions. The parameters for acceptable government are along a very narrow ideological range, we could call The Blair-Cameron Corridor, and any historical exceptions to this are deviations. The consequences of this is that when we eventually get a ‘Labour Govt’ there will be much rejoicing having ‘got rid of the Tories at last’. History on spin tells us that this is an empty victory and a pointless exercise. Time to detach ourselves from the froth of British politics and (re) build a movement for change.
Yes indeed, as I have said before, all our (main) political parties are bought and sold for the World Economic Forum’s gold. Whoever you vote for that’s the agenda you will actually get. And the WEF simply doesn’t do democracy, or even consultation. They are so rich and so powerful they are completely above international law.
The result is that we always waste or vote by voting for the ‘least worst’. It makes no real difference at all.
British and Irish nationalist ( and Tory trade “ambassador”) Brian Wilson, is aghast that people mistake Labour as being the same as the Tories. He lashes out at those not showing North Korean levels of joyousness as Starmer changes policy depending on Daily Mail headlines, phone calls from Mandelson or just the way the wind is blowing.
Scotlands colonial media won’t change its agitprop spots—we have to live with that, but independence rises against the background of their lies and fakery. The young are properly reluctant to swallow the rhetoric of Labour, that “change” actually means what it says on the box. They suspect that Labours “change” box is as empty of content as their speeches.
Brian Wilson, an Irish nationalist!? Whatever criticisms we might have about the Irish constitutional nationalist illusions in the UK state Wilson has always been ‘Brian the Brit.’
His support for a united Ireland, is a matter of record.
Brian Wilson – the only person at Celtic Park waving the Union Flag.
As a further exercise in gloom I suggest you read the long interview in the New Statesman with Rachel Reeves. It is a dispiriting read. Anything that will lead to redistribution via the tax system (except taxing non-doms) is explicitly ruled out. This is all in the name of a vacuous concept she calls ‘securonomics’, which, I infer means not doing anything that would annoy the international financial elite.
The ‘interview’ was really more of an advertorial for her in her quest to become an ‘iron’ chancellor – Irn Bru has more credibility.
I contrast this trite do-nothing policy with the recent book by Labour candidate against Mr Ian Duncan Smith in Chingford, Ms Faiza Shaheen, called “Know Your Place”. It is a good analysis of the current neoliberal, ‘meritocratic’ hegemony. It reads as if it is written by a socialist. Indeed, I wonder how she managed to be selected as a candidate given the thuggish purging of the Labour Party. Unfortunately, there is a big gap in the book – a discussion about what the current Labour Party ought to do.
We desperately need out. So sick of being chained to the stinking corpse of FPTP UK politics.