The great domestic demands of this moment are fourfold.
We need to rebuild from the wreckage of austerity and liberate this country to do all those things that are possible.
We need to rebuild our international relationships, which are in tatters after Brexit.
We need a green transition because our future depends on it.
And we need to rebuild faith in politics so that these things might happen.
You can argue there are more: I would suggest most will fit under one of the above headings, including almost anything to do with public services as well as matters to do with inequality and discrimination, all of which have been deliberately exacerbated by thirteen years of Tory rule and decades of neoliberalism.
We know the Tories will not do these things. There is no point speculating on that issue: they are not only dogmatically determined not to deliver what is in the best interests of people, but they would not be capable of doing so now even if they had the necessary change of heart required for them to do so.
So, we have to look to Labour. They, as the Guardian notes this morning, just days after the greatest conference they will have for years to come have already decided that it is time to row back from previous commitments made, vague as they already were.
So, the commitment to social care reform they once made has been abandoned.
Their already desperately weak commitment to constitutional reform has also been weakened by backtracking on House of Lords reform. They are no longer committed to delivering an elected second chamber. We also already know proportional representation has been abandoned, even if the commitment to it is already Labour Party policy, and as for the people of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, they are to be governed by England for as long as England likes whatever the people of those countries might think.
And, when it comes to green investment, not only is the investment downscaled now, as we have known for a while, so too is the word green to be dropped, because Labour claims people do not like it. The commitment now is to jobs. But when you have already agreed to keep decisions on new coal mines and oilfields I suppose that any old carbon-intensive job will do now for Labour, whatever the cost.
As for Brexit, there remains no comment. The commitment to Israel is, however, apparently unconditional whatever it might do in Gaza, which appears to me to be an impossible position to take, however appalling the actions of Hamas have been (and they have been, so please do not disagree).
There is only one obvious conclusion. It is that having seen that winning power is possible over the last week or so, Labour has now decided to do everything it can to deny itself the chance of actually achieving anything whilst in office.
With its refusal to increase taxes on wealth, its commitment to not borrow except for feeble investment programmes, and its failure to tackle the issues resulting from both Brexit and a failed electoral system, Labour has boxed itself into the position where it might win power in a year's time but then have no capacity, or even willingness, to do anything with it.
If so, Labour would be the ultimate neoliberal government. Not only would it be cowardly - deeming that if market interests cannot solve any problem, then nor can it - but it will have given prior warning of its intention to do nothing about any of the big issues that face us, and then succeed to the very limited extent that it will live up to its promise to not do so.
In 1992 Labour's conference presaged electoral failure. I doubt its 2023 conference will do that, simply because the Tories are now so bad. But it could presage something else, which is Labour's own total failure to deliver in office, which may be worse.
The Mid-Beds by-election might just deliver the shock Labour needs to appreciate the mess it has already got itself into. But I doubt that even defeat there, which I now think likely, will work to achieve that goal.
We really are in trouble.
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Very well researched and well written piece and succinct in its summarising.
Puts into words the feelings many voters are concerned about,I am surprised by the conservatives they are not making more of the fact the conservatives are the only government ever to pay the nation by furlough in its hour of need
“[W]e need to rebuild faith in politics”.
I am not sure we do. It was faith in politics and politicians; the guff they peddle and the system they manipulate and plunder that landed us in this mess. I prefer if we build (not rebuild) citizenship (including in our education system). This would mean building a belief in citizenship, which includes a sense of responsibility to bring politicians to account and a political system that guarantees it. That requires awareness, knowledge, and a desire and determination to participate, at least in brining politicians to account. From the Greeks through Machiavelli to the present day university departments in Politics the concern has been to teach about the governing system, for the purposes of politicians; rather than politics as citizenship, for the purposes of the citizen. These led in radically different directions; the first to manipulation, the second to responsibility to the polity. Citizenship requires watchfulness and scepticism.
We now have a big doze of anger; but that is more likely to feed indifference to politics, than anything constructiveness. And in spite of politicians pretending otherwise, they love indifference. They depend on it.
It would certainly help if UK citizens were taught about Monetarism which still prevails as the mainstream ideology in the UK even though it should be obvious it prioritises the interests of the rich few and not the well-being of the many. Of course if you also have a mainstream media dominated by the rich few then you aren’t going to be told about this ideological domination are you? Catch-22! This only leaves the Labour Party as a potential de-bunker of the Monetarism ideology and look how that’s been nobbled and historically it’s been nobbled repeatedly since it’s foundation:-
https://spartacus-educational.com/Gold_Standard.htm
https://stephaniekelton.substack.com/p/can-it-1976-happen-again
History of Monetarism in the Labour Party:-
https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=33334
Here’s a 1975 Hansard quote from Dennis Healey I’m sure the same kind of quote nearly fifty years on from Rachel Reeves can be found with a bit of digging!
“I have set those out in detail in various statements … I must, however, remind the hon. Gentleman of one fact, which, since his right hon. and learned Friend referred yesterday to my speech at the Mansion House, may be worth stating again. I think that there is now general agreement on both sides of the House that the major cause of the inflation now racking Britain is the excessive increase in the money supply which took place in the last year of the previous Conservative Government … I am sure that the Leader of the Opposition will now concur, although she was a member of the Government who were responsible for that large increase in the money supply.”
Robert Skidelsky says the real problem in the UK is the entrenched Monetarists in the Treasury need turfing out!
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/boris-johnson-global-shift-from-monetary-to-fiscal-policy-by-robert-skidelsky-2020-02
Note in the Skidelsky post the support of a Job Guarantee for fiscal tuning. Contrast with Starmer’s Labour u-turning yet again this time on Social Care spending not to mention scaling back House of Lords reform.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/15/labour-to-omit-social-care-reform-from-manifesto-and-scale-back-lords-plans
The UK now has Russian Roulette elections as a direct consequence of a mindless widespread support of Monetarist ideology! Here is the true enemy for progressives!
Mr Schofiled, thanks for the link to the Skidelsky article – very very good. I did like the observation (extract)
“The theoretical case against relying on monetary policy for stabilization goes back to Keynes. “If, however, we are tempted to assert that money is the drink which stimulates the system to activity,” he wrote, “we must remind ourselves that there may be several slips between the cup and the lip.” More prosaically, the monetary pump is too leaky. Too much money ends up in the financial system, and not enough in the real economy.”
too much ends up in the financial system – stoking asset price inflation.
In reference to Mike Parr’s comment:-
“ ‘The theoretical case against relying on monetary policy for stabilisation goes back to Keynes. “If, however, we are tempted to assert that money is the drink which stimulates the system to activity,” he wrote, “we must remind ourselves that there may be several slips between the cup and the lip.’
More prosaically, the monetary pump is too leaky. Too much money ends up in the financial system, and not enough in the real economy. Too much ends up in the financial system – stoking asset price inflation.”
Keynes was saying this in 1936 in his book “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” nearly 87 years ago. For over five decades now in the UK there’s been a house price inflationary bubble (financial asset) which no political party in office has seriously addressed. Certainly banning MP’s from engaging in Buy2Let might focus their minds better on how the UK economy can best be helped. Keynes died far too young!
‘first-past-the-post has been abandoned’?
Corrected
Weird how you can’t see your own mistakes….
I’m with John Warren on this.
But last night whilst waiting to watch the rugby, I was channel hopping and…………oh dear………..when people talk more about a dancing competition on the tele than the things that really affect their lives we are in big trouble. If its not stuff like that it’s all about the property market and getting rich quick in a TV quiz show. More dreams.
Our democracy needs to be re-engineered from the bottom up.
But we must also not forget how authoritarian we are beginning to get in politics everywhere. All they want us to do is consume what we are given without question or dissent. We are well on the way to living in a capitalist system that mirrors everything we were told was wrong in the soviet system in the name of TINA.
We are being suppressed and contained but the truth is I don’t know for how long they can do that for.
Richard,
Labour have not abandoned “first past the post” unfortunately. I think that you mean proportional representation, which appears to have been abandoned.
Edited now
I quite like the idea of power being used sparingly, but then again I have been out of academia walking about for the last 8 years and have seen the damage that has been done by well-intended but misdirected power and moreover abuse of power.
Fred Wood
The only government ? Really?
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/explainer/coronavirus-how-countries-supported-wages-during-pandemic
I don’t think Labour will do nothing – how can they if they’re to be wealthy when they retire? I imagine they’ll carry on the looting using, from what Reeves says, some variant of PPP which greatly favours the private sector, Then they can retire to share the spoils.
The only vague light I’ve seen today about at least for one part of U.K. was Stephen Flynn opening speech at SNP conference this morning. Comparing what Ireland is currently orchestrating to make life better for the Irish and what a Scotland free of Westminster constraint could also do for its people. Compare those concepts of what could actually be done to what Sunak Inc. is actively crippling U.K. with and how Starmer Inc. is promising to do naught about and it just leaves one in a stupor of apathetic despair about life in U.K. That state of despair is exactly what both Conservatives and Labour as the only realistic U.K. government available are enshrining to make for a very very compliant population too frightened to change as even that might make life worse.
A headline from the October 14 print edition of the New York Times says it all!
“Inching Closer to Power, Labour Party Has a Love-In With Corporate Britain”
The entire article is unusually frank for the Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/13/world/europe/uk-labour-party-business.html