Despite Labour being projected a similar vote share to Jeremy Corbyn in 2017, the collapse of the Tory party and Britain’s absurdly disproportional electoral system looks set to reward Keir Starmer with one of the biggest majorities in British electoral history in a few week’s time.
Anyone who has been paying attention to Labour Party politics over the last four years will be familiar with Keir Starmer’s abandoned pledges; factional purges; broken promises; vicious intolerance of dissent; Stalinist diktats; vindictive score-settling; genocide complicity; and deliberate fostering of economic illiteracy.
You’d have to be absurdly naive to believe that any of this would just magically stop once Starmer and his cabal of Labour right ghouls are handed control of the state with an unassailable parliamentary majority. So in the event of this seemingly inevitable Labour Party landslide, who is going to be brave enough to resist Starmer’s petty factionalism, hard-right economic agenda, and dictatorial urges?
The Labour left
Some people seem to be holding out hope that the Labour left will somehow drag Starmer away from ruinous austerity economics and his illiberal urges, but they’ve been astonishingly weak over the last four years, and they’re going to be further weakened by Starmer’s factional purges and the parachuting in of loads of hand-picked Starmer acolytes in constituencies across the country.
With a potential parliamentary majority of a hundred or more, it’s not inconceivable that Starmer would simply expel the entire Socialist Campaign Group of MPs (about 30 MPs) were they to dare to stand up to him on any given issue.
Everyone standing as a Labour candidate is well aware of Starmer’s fierce intolerance of debate and dissenting opinion, and how his cronies have used their control over the party’s disciplinary processes to punish and expel their factional rivals.
Even if there are some decent people in the new cohort of Labour MPs, they know that they're forbidden from proposing investment instead of austerity; opposing privatisation profiteering; criticising Israeli genocide; or promoting tax increases on corporations, slumlords, and the mega-rich.
These people simply wouldn’t be where they were if they’d ever shown signs of rocking the establishment boat, so it’s highly unlikely they’d start showing principles once Starmer’s enforcers have a massive majority and the power of the state at their disposal too.
The Greens
The Green Party have set out a really good policy platform. They propose investment instead of continuing austerity ruination, renationalisation of core infrastructure and services, green infrastructure, and redistribution to make Britain’s shockingly unbalanced economy slightly less unfair.
The problem is that they’ve got no chance of winning anything beyond a tiny handful of MPs, largely because the majority of voters know that they live in parliamentary safe seats, or swing seats where a vote for anyone except Labour or the Tories is just a protest vote.
It would be a success story if the Greens manage to increase their parliamentary representation above one solitary MP, but even if they exceed expectations to bag three or four, it’s still unreasonable to expect them to be able to oppose Starmer’s austerity fixation, or limit his dictatorial urges.
SNP and Plaid Cymru
The SNP have suffered a chaotic year, meaning they’re on their third different leader in the runup to the election. They’re likely to lose a lot of seats and see their influence in Westminster even further diminished.
Starmer and his minions detest the SNP and bitterly resent the Scottish public for having voted for them so much over the last decade, because these dreadful people seem to believe that Scotland belongs to them.
Even if Plaid Cymru hold their own or make gains, the nationalist influence in Westminster politics is set to decline dramatically, and Starmer’s ghouls will be even more hostile to the SNP than the Tories were.
The Media
It’s laughably naive to think that the media would suddenly start trying to hold Starmer to account given the way they’ve allowed him to play politics on easy mode for the last four years.
The liberal-capitalist press are delighted with the way that their Labour right mates conned their way back into control of the Labour Party, and they’re obviously not going to do anything to jeopardise their access to the people they helped to install into power.
The right-wing press have already seen how easily Starmer caves in to pressure from the right; abandons pledges; waters down investment policies; and leans into radical-right culture war bollocks, so they’ll obviously exert as much pressure as possible to drag him even further to the illiberal hard right.
Trade Unions
The Labour Party was founded by the trade unions to promote socialism and represent ordinary working people in the corridors of power, but Starmerism is the end game in the gradual takeover of the party by wealthy socialism-hating liberals.
Trade Unions keep pumping £millions into Labour Party coffers in the hope that they’ll be less hostile to working people than the Tories, but Starmer’s made it absolutely clear that his agenda is to serve capitalist interests.
The trade union response to this overt abandonment of Labour’s founding principles has been beneath pathetic.
Look at Starmer’s health minister Wes Streeting bragging about his plan to further privatise the NHS, for the benefit of the private health interests who have lavished hundreds of thousands in donations on him, Starmer, and selected other Labour-right MPs.
Look at Starmer’s hostility to fair pay for British workers, and the idea that idle profits (Capital Gains) should no longer be allowed to benefit from lower tax rates than work (Income Tax + National Insurance).
What have the trade unions done in response to this diabolical shift to the hard-right other than wring their hands and continue pumping trade union cash into a party that’s intent on working against the welfare and economic interests of their members?
Economists
It’s naive to think that the economics profession that has done so little to oppose 14 years of ruinous Tory austerity are suddenly going to wake up and oppose austerity stagnation when the rosettes on the austerity enforcers change from blue to red.
Aside from a handful of decent economists (Richard Murphy, David Blanchflower, Ha-Joon Chang, Steve Keen, David Stuckler , Simon Wren-Lewis …) it seems highly unlikely that the broader economics profession is going to suddenly stand up and insist that mindless austerity penny-pinching is behind stagnant wages, failing public services, crumbling infrastructure, and Britain’s seemingly irreversible economic decline.
The liberal commentariat
Keir Starmer lied his way into the Labour leadership with a load of left-leaning pledges and policies that he never had any intention of delivering, and rather than criticise this dishonesty, the majority of the liberal commentariat actually seemed delighted that the lies worked, and they’re now enthusiastic about throwing their support behind a man who is every bit as much of a political liar as Boris Johnson ever was.
Starmer’s Brexit stance is the perfect illustration of their unwillingness to hold him to account over anything.
Starmer switched from wooing the liberal commentariat with the promise of a "sore loser" referendum to further prolong the Brexit process, to whipping Labour MPs into backing Boris Johnson’s shambolic and economically ruinous Brexit bodge, and promising never to substantially reform it!
He’s absolutely kicked them in the faces over Brexit, yet they’re still lining up to champion him as if his "more of the same" agenda of austerity, privatisation profiteering, soaring inequality, and needless Tory Brexit chaos is wonderful stuff.
Liberal-capitalist "centrists" make such a show of hating political liars like Trump and Johnson, but when the political liar is one of theirs, suddenly these raging hypocrites are beyond delighted to support him.
Independent media
Like other independent media sources I have absolutely no intention of standing down and remaining quiet once Starmer wins, however it’s increasingly difficult because of the changes to social media algorithms that have strangled the reach of pages like Another Angry Voice, Evolve Politics, Vox Political, Double Down News, etc.
Given Starmer’s fanatical intolerance of dissent towards the establishment politics of austerity, privatisation profiteering, imperialist warmongering, and ever increasing inequality, it’s hard to imagine the incoming government not applying even more pressure on social media platforms to disempower dissident independent media sources, or even rushing through illiberal new legislation to hinder independent reportage as much as possible.
Civic society and the voluntary sector
The continuation of austerity economics means that the desperate need for food banks, charities, and other voluntary organisations is not going to suddenly disappear.
It seems somewhat odd to portray merely feeding hungry families; providing the needy with support and advice; helping disabled people survive Britain’s humiliating and draconian welfare system; providing shelter to the homeless: and preventing the total collapse of local services through voluntary work as "resistance". However that’s exactly what it is when the incoming government is just as committed to austerity ruination; welfare vandalism; privatisation profiteering; local government cutbacks; infrastructure under-investment; and sickening poverty-spreading policies like the Two Child cap as the outgoing Tories were.
If the government agenda is to manage the rundown of the state and the spread of inequality while the mega-rich continue to loot the country, doing anything to mitigate the damage is actually an act of resistance.
Conclusions
Unfortunately there’s very little to be optimistic about.
You’d have to be a fool to imagine that Britain’s depraved media class or the liberal commentariat would do anything to resist Starmer’s lurches to the right or his illiberal dictatorial tendencies.
There may be some resistance from non-affiliated trade unions like the rail workers and firefighters, but it’s impossible to imagine the big Labour affiliated unions even cutting off the funding to Starmer and his capitalist-serving cabal, let alone actively resisting, especially when they did so little to effectively stand up for ordinary workers’ rights, welfare, and economic interests during the Tory austerity years.
Even if smaller political parties like the Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru, and George Galloway’s Workers GB do put up some resistance, it’s impossible to imagine them being given a fraction of the coverage that our depraved media class insist on showering upon Farage and the extreme-right.
If there’s any sign of resistance from within the Labour ranks it’s beyond obvious it will be viciously squashed by Starmer and his goons.
If economists wouldn’t call out 14 years of Tory austerity ruination and their deliberate fostering of economic illiteracy, why would they suddenly start calling out this diabolical rubbish when Labour continues the pushing the exact same policies and using the exact same economic lies to justify it?
Independent media and Britain’s unsung heroes in the voluntary sector will continue calling out the madness and seeking to mitigate the worst of the damage, but that’s small solace when the red half of the Westminster establishment class continue pushing policies to make things even worse, knowing that the worst that will ever happen to them personally is another stint on the political side lines where they can seek all the kickbacks they’re expecting for having served the interests of corporations, slumlords, privatisation profiteers, and the mega-rich, at the expense of everyone else.The last working-class hero in England.
Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016 Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018 Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021
They could replace Tories with 'Reform' the new exrreme right counterpoint. And on Israel
on June 18, 2024, 8:20 pm