In the UK its rare we get any good news these days. But with a worsening cost of brexit living crisis, it looks all but certain the Tories will lose the next election, as there’s no real way for them to fix the mess. But equally, there are some worrying signs from within labour, which suggest a labour government isn’t really going to make much of a difference, in fact it will probably be a short lived administration.
The main driver of this crisis is inflation, which is mostly driven by windfall profits for banks, energy & retail corporations (and not wages as the government claims). Indeed its getting so bad they are starting to call it greedflation. Hence raising interest rates or restricting wages isn’t going to do anything, other than hurt those who aren’t rich. On the other hand, a windfall tax or an increase in the top rate of tax (or perhaps a capital gains tax or a one off wealth tax) all probably would do the trick. But these are the things the Tories won’t do. They serve the wealthy & nobody else. If it means driving the economy into the ground, just so that the billionaire class can buy a new lambo, then so be it.
The end result is the Tories are tanking in the polls. The situation is so bad, there’s even talk of an early election. Yes the Tories would lose such an election, But if they wait until the impact of these interest rate hikes hit (meaning many will not be able to afford to refinance their mortgages once the fixed rate term ends, likely causing house prices to crash), they could be looking at a total wipe out.
Under Starmer, labour has been moving increasingly further and further to the right, to the point where its now questionable whether they still count as a centre left party anymore. He’s abandoned numerous promises he made to get elected as leader, such as abolishing tuition fees, scraping the de-humanising system of universal credit or increasing income tax on high earners. Labour have also made clear they have no plans of reversing Tory policies, even controversial policies such as their anti-strike laws, anti-demonstration laws), anti-migration rules (which likely breach human right legislation and aren’t actually reducing net migration in any way) nor will they reverse brexit (they’ve effectively ruled out even a customs union). They’ve even suggested there will be no substantial rise in public spending under a labour government (then how are they going to solve the cost of living crisis, organise a whip round?).
And they’ve also had many opportunities to thwart the Tories more unlawful and fascist policies. For example, the Greens in the house of lords, submitted a fatal motion against the Tories anti-protest legislation (a story that the BBC effectively censored). This would have likely succeeded had labour not blocked it (yes they helped the Tories get a fascist bill passed!), arguing that the lord’s shouldn’t be blocking common’s legislation. Actually this particular bill hadn’t been through the common’s (that was the point of trying to block it!). And if you think the Tories won’t use every dirty trick they can to block labour legislation, I’ve got some magic beans I can sell you.
They also failed to intervene as regards Johnson’s honours list. Promising to get rid of the house of lords if Johnson’s honours went through, would have forced Sunak to throw out the list (the Tories have been using the honours list to reward their cronies for years, its abolishment would mean hundreds of angry Tory donors, so Sunak won’t have much of a choice).
In short, what’s the point of a labour government if they aren’t going to actually change anything? Ultimate victory for the Tories is not to get their policies passed, but to get labour to adopt them. Not least because it allows the Tories and their client media to assign blame to labour for those policies. This was after all the fatal mistake of the Tony Blair government. He gets a lot stick these days (as does Clinton or Obama in the US), but often for policies that weren’t his idea in the first place. It was the Tories who deregulated the markets, turning once thriving working class communities into welfare colonies. And (ironically enough) it was the Tories who signed up to greater freedom of movement within the EU. Even the Iraq war wasn’t his idea (that was G. W. Bush).
The problem was Blair, despite having a massive majority in the commons, did very little to reverse these policies (he did something, just not enough), largely because he was terrified of being labelled “old labour” by the Tory press. Hence he adopted Tory policies, thus allowing the Tory media to blame his government for Tory mistakes, while also pouring poison into people’s ears regarding the EU and migrants. Hence many in the effected communities blamed labour (and the EU) for them being left behind. Which, alongside the austerity of the Tory coalition government (again nothing to do with labour), led to the strong leave vote in certain parts of the country (along side the actual Tories & the bigot brigade).
Starmer seems to be setting himself up to repeat Blair’s mistake (case in point, Starmer recently attended a party hosted by the Murdoch’s). He’s going to adopt a number of Tory policies even thought he knows they are deeply damaging and unsustainable long term, because he’s afraid of the media saying mean things about him. Well I hate to break it too you, the media are always going to be on the side of the Tories. While the briefly pretended to be on labours side in the run up to the 1997 election, this was merely a survival tactic (they knew labour were going to win anyways, so they wanted to reduce the chances of labour taking revenge on them for all the lies they’d spent the last few decades spreading).
The same is true today, the media will pretend to support labour once its clear Sunak’s goose is cooked, but only to placate Starmer. After that, they will quickly resume normal service, aiming that by the time the subsequent election rolls around everyone will be blaming Starmer for brexit, the costing of living crisis, the collapse of the NHS, the undermining of democracy, etc. And given that his plan seems to be to get elected and then put his trotter’s up, they’ll have a point.
Now there’s some in labour who will say, no this is all part of a big clever plan. We are playing drafts while Starmer is playing 3D chess. Well I doubt that. For example, if he is secretly planning on joining a customs union (as I’ve heard several suggest) he’d need to put that in the labour manifesto. Why? Because if he doesn’t the Tories can use their control of the lords, the courts, the civil service, the police, security services, banks and ultimately the Royals to block such legislation. And besides, the EU won’t give him the time of day without it being a campaign promise, as it will have no democratic mandate. The only way such a policy can become law (or anything else labour supporters want for that matter) is if he goes to the country and wins an electoral mandate for it.
There are three basically 3 ways to grow an economy and thus increase tax revenue – grow the workforce, grow your exports or encourage inward investment. With near full employment (many forced into the gig economy by the Tories, meaning they earn poverty wages and thus don’t pay alot in taxes), the only way to grow the workforce is through mass inward migration. In fact ironically, its probably the unchecked growth in this under the Tories which is keeping the UK economy out of recession (and can somebody explain to me how a few thousand desperate refugees coming across in small boats is a swarm, but hundreds of thousands of migrants, many from India like the PM, doesn’t count?).
Similarly, growing exports or inward investment would require better trade links with the UK’s primary trading partner….the EU. So adopting the Tories failed brexit policy just means inward investment and exports will continue to lag behind, meaning no growth in tax revenue. Starmer is setting labour up to fail.
Another common claim is that labour are trying to reconnect with working class voters. Many in labour have this vision of blue collar workers coming home from the mine, or the factory, to the tune of the music from the Hovis advert. Well between the Tories and Blair the UK working class ceased to exist. Those who used to belong to that class are now in their 60’s-70’s and retired (so they ain’t working and the main predictor for voting Tory is age).
I’m reminded of how the Bolshevik’s (or Maoists), who’d often never met a rural peasant in their life, had a sort of idealised vision of the peasant’s. They were unaware that most peasants were religious conservatives who were deeply suspicious of townies, especially Bolshevik’s. Hence they resisted Communist policies often leading to conflict, civil strife and ultimately genocide. Starmers master plan is much the same, go looking for votes in all the wrong places and impose policies that nobody wants.
By contrast there is a substantial number of millennial and generation Z’ voters who DO support labour and have been severely effected by Tory policies. They now have little chance of ever owning their own home and saving for retirement isn’t possible when you are living pay check to pay check. Yet these are the very people who Starmer is going to shaft once he gets into power. How do you think that’s going to work out? Likely by them feeling betrayed and they’ll go fishing for another party, likely the lib dems, greens or some hard left socialists….or perhaps fall into the same trap their parents did and back the far right.
And speaking of which, some division of votes on the left is always to be expected. Not least because that’s how the Tory media work. In the election they’ll try to sow discord, knowing that while they ain’t going to convince many to vote Tory, they might convince them to vote for another third party instead This is why it is essential labour does an election deal with the greens and lib dems.
And once the election is over, switch to proportional representation. Because while PR does make it harder for labour to win an out right majority, it does mean the Tories can’t get back into power without a majority of votes (they’ve never polled more than 45% since the 1920’s). Yes labour would have to share power with some of the smaller parties, but so what if they can get their policies passed and stay in power one election after another. But again Starmer has ruled this out.
Now to be clear, I’m not some salty Corbyn supporter, I was critical of him too. Indeed I predicted the likely outcome of Corbyn’s reign of error was a labour party that would lurch even further to the right (I’m only surprised it happened so quickly). That said, there’s been a purge of the left wing of the labour party using tactics which Stalin would approve of. For example, not only did Starmer expel Ken Loach (who directed the critically acclaimed film “I Daniel Blake“), but even kicked out a labour mayor for just showing up on a platform with Ken (worth noting Ken Loach was recently invited to the Sistine chapel by the Pope and praised for his fight against disinformation…so presumably the Pope is now going to be “cancelled” by Starmer too). This is allegedly due to his criticism of Israel, but on the other hand it is a proven fact that both sides within labour have been using anti-antisemitism as a factional weapon.
All in all, labour seem to be morphing into a centre right party. The UK equivalent of the democrats, who can’t find their ar$e with both hands. And are sitting by passively while the republicans turn the US into an autocratic neo-fascist Oligarchy. Or we have the equally ineffective Australian Labor party….aka the $hit lite party. And should you think the present Tory party is a bit too right wing for your liking, wait awhile. The one that comes to power in 5 years time will be many times worse (they are already talking about a referendum on withdrawing from the human rights convention). So its likely Starmer is putting at risk the very survival of British democracy, just so he can satisfy his ego.
Hence until I see some serious changes in labour policy, I won’t be voting labour. Granted I’m not in a marginal seat (mine is usually a toss up between the SNP and the Tories) and I’d understand why someone in such a seat would still vote labour. But I’d urge everyone else to vote against them and support a third party candidate. Its only when confronted with a threat to their potential majority will we see a panicked change of policy from Starmer.
daryanblog 
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