There are good reasons why Starmer might not want to win the next election, thereby, explaining his recent actions and statements that seem designed to deter Labour voters turning out, and Labour members bothering to canvas. Whoever wins the next election is picking up a poisoned chalice, and unlikely to win the election that follows it. As I set out recently, the Tories current behaviour seems to be based upon that presumption, as they prepare traps for Labour, attempt to secure their old Blue Wall core constituencies, and hunker down for the election after next. The history of the 20th., and early 21st century was one in which Tory governments wrecked the economy, leaving Labour governments to repair it, by means that undermined its relation to its own core working-class base, ensuring that it could achieve little of its own social-democratic goals, and prepared the way for its defeat and return of the Tories, so that the process could go round again.
The Tories ethos is that of the bad landlord, or small cheapskate employer. When they talk about “mending the roof when the sun is shining”, they do not mean that in the way most people do. Most people mean by that, what it suggests, which is either, literally, if the roof needs fixing, you do it when the sun is shining, before it rains, and so prevent the rain coming in, or metaphorically that if you have the money available you do repairs, rather than leaving things to deteriorate, and then don't have the money to fix them. That is not what the Tories mean at all.
They mean the opposite. What they mean is that, if you can get away without spending money for actual repairs and so on, it allows you to put that money in the bank. The roof they speak of is a metaphorical financial roof, over their heads, not an actual roof. That is clear from all of their use of that phrase in attacking “Labour profligacy”, in the 2010 election, despite the fact that, in actual fact, the average deficit under New Labour, was half what it had been under Thatcher/Major, and that New Labour had managed four years of budget surplus, compared to just two in the entire 18 years of Tory rule, before then.
The Tory mentality is like that of the landlord who avoids spending any money on repairs, whilst seeking to maximise the amount of rent they collect. Only when they have to spend money on repairs to be able to attract tenants do they reluctantly take money out of their bank account for that purpose. If possible, they prefer to use any such money, to buy additional properties to rent out, rather than to maintain their existing properties. If they can, they try to get tenants to spend their own money in carrying out repairs, or they look to the state to provide them with subsidies to undertake the work they should have done. Having milked that as much as possible, they hope to simply sell the asset.
In short, they are asset strippers. In the 20th century, Britain's core industries were treated that way by their private owners, and shareholders. The coal mines, steel industry and so on, were starved of investment, whilst profits and dividends were withdrawn. When Labour won the 1945 election, it needed to spend huge amounts to rebuild those industries, as core to the economy. It did so, even whilst continuing to impose food and other rationing on workers, well into the 1950's. It also generously compensated the former private owners, and shareholders of those industries who had driven them into the ground. Not surprisingly, workers became disenchanted with Labour, and, in a two-party system, that could only result in a return of the Tories.
That same pattern has continued ever since, with Tory governments failing to spend on necessary infrastructure to raise social productivity, so as to build up cash hoards, and hold down interest rates, which then leads to rises in financial asset prices, which is the fundamental basis of wealth inequality, in modern economies. In 1960, Tory Chancellor, Reggie Maudling, created one of the first house price booms, and that was repeated by Tony Barber in 1970, and Tory Chancellors helped blow up house price bubbles throughout the 1980's, and 90's, and with ordinary people being encouraged to buy shares and mutual funds, private pensions and so on, also blew up those asset prices too.
The Tories have done it again. Since 2010, they implemented austerity, allowing the fabric of the country's infrastructure to literally rot, and fall apart. The case of RAC concrete is symbolic of it, but, everywhere you look, the same decay and collapse can be seen, from the road system, sewage system, water supply, energy supply, the NHS, and so on, all are in a state of collapse requiring vast amounts of money simply to make them functional. Yet, during that same period, asset price have soared, following the crash of 2008.
Whoever wins the next election is going to be faced with that reality. Economies where the basic infrastructure is in a state of decay cannot be competitive. Ultimately, the physical roof does have to be repaired to prevent the house itself becoming uninhabitable. And that requires money. When New Labour took office in 1997, the global economy was just about to enter a new long wave upswing. It benefited from that, so that, when it came to spend money on the NHS and other public services that the Tories had near destroyed, they could do so, out of the rising tax revenues that resulted from that growth. Not so, today.
For the last 13 years, conservative governments, across the globe, have implemented austerity measures designed to deliberately slow economies, so as to hold down wages and interest rates, and so inflate asset prices. They have also increased liquidity (QE) to further inflate those asset prices, and suck money from the real economy into that speculation. But, the implementation of lockdowns for two years after 2020, requiring incomes to be paid by the state, blew all of that apart, as I said it would at the time. On the one hand, governments across the globe saw their budget deficits explode, requiring either deep cuts in future spending, or significant rises in taxes to balance the books. On the other hand, they covered the immediate cost by borrowing, causing interest rates to rise, and central banks monetised some of that debt, by printing even more money, causing inflation to rise, and so nominal interest rates to rise further still, as well as pumping into the pipeline, higher nominal costs for governments to have to finance, not least in the form of higher wages.
That is the context in which the Tories set their traps for Labour, in the last budget. So, its understandable why Starmer might see the easiest way of avoiding that trap being to try not to win the next election, and that we can best understand what is going on, currently, as a game of pass the parcel, where the Tories and Labour try to alienate enough voters so as to ensure the other wins, whilst seeking to shore up enough of their own core vote, ready to fight a future election when the other has destroyed itself. But, that is not what is going on. The Tories gyrations are a function of internal divisions, as Sunak tries to shore up the Blue Wall seats, whilst contending with the rump petty-bourgeois nationalist wing in the party, by throwing them tit-bits on migration that everyone knows will never actually be introduced.
But, how to understand Starmer's positions such as:
- Advocating a hard-line nationalism and Brexitism, when 80% of Labour voters, and around 60% of all voters, oppose Brexit and seek to re-join the EU
- Proclaiming that Labour will not spend money to rebuild shattered infrastructure and public services, when a clear majority of Labour voters see that as vital
- Proclaiming his admiration for Thatcher, not just for her tenacity, but for the policy “unleashing entrepreneurialism”, knowing that any such statement would enrage both party members and traditional labour voters who have lived with the tragic consequences of Thatcher's polices and unleashing of that entrepreneurialism over the last 40 years!
- His militant support for the genocide being undertaken by Zionism against Palestinians, despite the large majority of voters deploring that genocide, and demanding a ceasefire.
All of that could be due to Starmer being a bad politician, which he is, and can also be explained by the fact that he is not just a bad politician, but a fundamentally right-wing politician for whom all of these policies come naturally. But, that is not enough to explain what is happening.
A fundamental task of Starmer was to ensure that Corbyn and Corbynism was limited and defeated. Limiting Corbyn was achieved by his role in the Shadow Cabinet, and his oppositional stance over the second referendum. Corbyn himself, played the biggest role in his own defeat, by following the advice of his Stalinist advisors, in abandoning all of those that supported him, by returning to his old anti-EU positions, which was compounded by his appeasement of the Right, and complicity in the witch-hunt of the Left under the spurious guise of charges of anti-Semitism, which subsequent analysis showed to have been blown out of all proportion, as was clear at the time. Certainly, nothing the Left was even charged with, let alone guilty of, comes anywhere close to the support for the current genocide being undertaken by Zionists in Palestine that is being given by Starmer and the Zionist Right of the party, with its attendant Islamophobia, in a party already reeking of such racism.
The danger was that after the 2019 election, Corbyn would simply be replaced by Long-Bailey. Again, Long-Bailey suffered from the same deficiencies as Corbyn, and more. Yet, had Starmer openly stood on his own right-wing platform, its clear that the party would not have supported him. Had McDonnell stood, or as I preferred, at the time, Clive Lewis, and defeated Starmer, then, again, as I wrote at the time, the likelihood is that the Right would have split, trying to cause as much damage in the process as they could, attempting to take the name, party assets and so on, based on their majority in the PLP. But, Starmer, who had appealed to all of those new young members that backed Corbyn's social agenda, but opposed his Brexitism, simply lied to get the votes, by claiming that he would continue to champion all of those same positions, and why would he not, given that all of the polling evidence showed that they had support not just amongst Labour voters, but amongst a majority of voters in general.
Yet, no sooner had Starmer become Leader all hope that he might champion his former anti-Brexit position was abandoned, as he became a bigger Brexiteer than either Corbyn or Boris Johnson, and even more, wrapped himself in the flag to an extent that became a ridiculous caricature, turning himself into a modern day John Bull. And, soon after, he ditched all of those other Corbynite policies too, despite the fact that they continued to enjoy widespread support amongst voters, and particularly Labour voters. Why?
This could not be simply because Starmer wanted to prove to the ruling class that he was a safe pair of hands compared to Corbyn. The reality is that Corbyn's programme was not that radical as to scare off the ruling class. It was no more radical than the programme of Attlee in 1945, or Wilson in 1964, both of which were founded upon the need to reinvigorate British capital, much as German social-democracy had done. The ruling class, which owns its wealth in the form of fictitious capital (shares and bonds), can just as easily enjoy revenues/interest from bonds issued by governments to fund such investment, as it can from shares, with the benefit that the government is not likely to default on its bonds, whereas company shares can collapse, as seen in 2008. And, there is no shortage of other shares, in Britain and across the globe, they can buy. What is more, the ruling class has enough experience, now, to know that it can limit and control, via the state and financial markets, such governments as those that Corbyn might have led.
The nationalisation of core industries, after 1945, actually worked considerably to the benefit of British capital, in general. Not only did the state investment raise productivity and supply of those industries, required by other industries, and so reduced their inputs costs, but the state actually, also, subsidised the prices of, for example, energy to business, reducing those costs even further. That reduction in costs (constant capital), thereby, acted to raise the general rate of profit. Many of these industries are already state owned in the EU. With Britain facing a similar problem of collapsing infrastructure, today, a similar programme is required. So, Starmer's rapid dropping of those policies cannot be explained either by a mistaken belief that they were electorally damaging, or that they would provoke bitter opposition from the ruling class.
Indeed, for a long time, Starmer's Labour Party was unable to improve on the standing in the polls achieved by Corbyn. The recent surge in support for Labour has come not form any great conversion of voters to Starmerism, but from hostility to the Tories, which, in a two-party system, can only be manifest in an increase in support for the main opposition party. In that, Starmer has been aided by the timidity and tailism of the Liberals, whose USP is their continued support for the EU. Of course, the recent trouncing of Blue Labour, in a council by-election, in Starmer's constituency, by a Green candidate, has created a considerable stir. But, by-elections are not elections, and council elections are not General Elections.
Similarly, the defection of significant numbers of Labour councillors, across the country, particularly Muslim councillors, has also given hope to those who look to some alternative coming forward, particularly given that Labour's support amongst Muslim voters has crashed to below 5% given its backing for the Zionist genocide in Palestine. That was a factor in Camden. But, overall these amount to nothing more than protest votes.
Starmer has a 20% lead, and he believes that Labour voters will continue to vote Labour, because they have nowhere else to go, just as Blair adopted that approach. He's mostly right. The 20% lead is a result of Tory unpopularity, but that unpopularity is a consequence of the failure of Brexit now becoming apparent, which Starmer the Brexiter will take the blame for too, when he is Prime Minister.
Starmer has tried to attack the Tories on the grounds of them not taking advantage of the opportunities that Brexit offers, but neither he, nor his shadow ministers can say what those opportunities are! That is because there are none, and Brexit is already seen to be a disaster by the majority of voters.
The unpopularity is a consequence of the collapse of the NHS and public services, and of the decay of infrastructure, but he will inherit that unpopularity, as Prime Minister, because he has no means of dealing with those issues either.
Starmer's agenda seems designed to shift the party to a different position. He seems willing to lose some of the seats where Labour's core working-class support resides in the metropolitan areas, and where MP's representing those areas would come under pressure from more progressive party members and voters, although he has been attempting to deal with that by also ensuring the deselection of some of those MP's, and parachuting in his own right-wing candidates. He seems to be focussing on what might be called the Alf Garnett vote. That is an attempt to win over working-class Tories, hence the shift to the flag-waving bigotry and Thatcher adoration.
I was watching an old episode of Till Death Do Us Part, the other day, in which Alf was ranting about how his house price had risen from £600 under Labour to £20,000 under the Tories, at the same time as railing against the unions on the docks, where he worked, as well as, of course, all of the racist bigotry. That seems to be the demographic that Starmer's Blue Labour is aimed at. Of course, when the character of Alf was created, the idea was that he was to be a figure of ridicule!
We have seen this before in history, and Starmer is a natural Bonapartist. The working-class needs to prepare for that fight, now.
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