Blue Labour's Stench of Sleaze

As I noted, in an earlier post, the nature of Blue Labour, in government, was manifest in its words and actions in the first few hours. It had been characterised by systematic lying, from the day Starmer launched his leadership bid, and that continued when they became the government, both in relation to the reality of that electoral victory, their support for the genocide being undertaken by the Zionist state in Israel, and then their narrative in relation to the economy and austerity. But, Blue Labour has, also, like New Labour before it, been characterised from the start by sleaze, by its connections to the rich and famous, quite in contrast to the claims of the Tories about its relations to the trades unions.

As I wrote in that earlier post, just a few days after the election,

“We know that many of the Blue Labour MP's and, now, Ministers are connected to private healthcare companies, as it prepares to privatise the NHS. Now we also have former Blair-Right Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, who was involved in the expenses, scandal in 2009, on multiple counts, relating to claiming for the cost of downloading porn, and to the use of a second home, has been ennobled by Starmer, so as to "serve" in his new government! We can expect to see far more of this kind of sleaze, as the careerists of Blue Labour take the opportunity to get their snouts in the trough, as the NHS and other "services" are privatised.”

And, in the days and weeks since then, few days have gone by without further evidence of that sleaze, as well, of course, as of the lying, which seems to be a genetic trait of Blue Labour. Rather like the Zionist regime in Israel, which Blue Labour stands shoulder to shoulder with, and whose connections via various Zionist organisations has long had close relations with the hard-right within the Labour Party, they seem to have grown used to be able to simply lie, in the most barefaced manner, in relation to their behaviour, without anyone noticing. That is not just in relation to the politics of Blue Labour, but also in relation to the sleaze, and personal behaviour of its MP's.

Blue Labour is, of course, prone to this, precisely because of the nature of those MP's. They are careerists one and all. To the extent any of them have any principles, there is not one principle they are not prepared to abandon in order to further their own personal careers. No wonder Starmer could ditch all of the policies he stood on, when standing for Leader, within a very short order, after having lied his way into the position. But, no wonder that Blue Labour were also so focused on removing Corbyn, and Corbynism, which for all its other deficiencies, represented a break from that tradition.

We can understand why the multi-millionaire, Margaret Hodge, for example, was so intent on preventing the democratically elected Leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, from ever becoming Prime Minister, even if the Labour Party he led, did win an election. Even, Corbyn's old Labourite politics seems radical to a ruling class that has become bloated on low taxes and capital gains inflated by QE. Hodge who was at one point on the Sunday Times Rich List, as having a net worth of £18 million, arising from her shareholding in the family steel business, also set the tone for Blue Labour's current stock responses in relation to sleaze. Having spoken out about the use of tax havens, it was subsequently found that the family trust kept 75% of its shares in a tax haven in Panama. Wikipedia, cites Hodges response to being found out, which strikes a now familiar refrain.

“Hodge issued a statement that she had always fully declared the shareholding, never had a management role in the company, and had received assurances that the company always paid the appropriate tax.”

The connections of various Blue Labour MP's and Ministers to private healthcare companies, was also mentioned in the earlier post. Again, we saw, under New Labour, the way former Ministers lined up jobs with various large companies. These are not socialists, nor even principled social-democrats, but just career politicians, in it for what they can get, and what they can line up for themselves, and their family and friends.

So, when voters say “they are all the same”, that is true, in 99.9% of cases, and the system of bourgeois-democracy, makes it near impossible for any, even, principled, social-democrat, to get into parliament, let alone enough of them to make a difference. That is why they were so intent that Corbyn had to go, not because Corbyn, and his brand of old style, Labourite, social-democracy posed any serious threat to the interests of capitalism. In fact, on the contrary, a return to that kind of social-democracy, seen in the 25 years after WWII, would be itself beneficial to real capital, in Britain, if not, in the short-term, to the fictitious wealth of the ruling-class of speculators and coupon-clippers.

I have pointed out before that its precisely the flaky coalition of voters that Blue Labour has sought to base itself upon that makes its implosion inevitable, but also is the objective basis of its systemic lying, as it tries to reconcile the irreconcilable of those conflicting interests. Even on that basis, whatever the right-wing social-democrats, like Eric Lee, and the Zionists like Jim Denham, try to claim, the parliamentary majority obtained by Blue Labour, is itself a fraud and an illusion, which also, immediately undermines it. Blue Labour obtained the support of just 25% of the electorate, and barely a third of the votes cast. It performed worse, in terms of votes, than Corbyn's Labour in 2017 and 2019, and worse in vote share than in 2017, and, virtually no better than in 2019, despite the fact that the Labour Right, and its allies in the media, pulled out all the stops to undermine Corbyn in those elections.

Yet, even from that abysmally low level of support, the position of Blue Labour, and of Starmer, in particular, has fallen even further. Within weeks, as Blue Labour has continued to support the genocide committed by its Zionist friends against Palestinians; it has lied about the British economy to justify its policy of austerity, attacking children and pensioners, whilst sending another £3 billion in arms to Zelensky; and it refuses to impose any meaningful wealth taxes on its rich backers, whose personal wealth, in total, is as much as that of half of Britain's households, whilst claiming that it had no choice about making such “difficult decisions”, all the while taking tens of thousands of pounds in gifts for themselves, in the form of expensive clothes, and various junkets.

We find that Starmer has taken more in such gifts, since becoming Leader, than every other Labour Leader since 1997, combined! And, we see that this is only the start. On this weekend's politics programmes, we find that Blue Labour Education Secretary, accepted several pounds from a rich donor to fund a birthday party! We find, in response, not only the same lame explanations as those given by Hodge, but the same lame excuses given by Bojo, when Blue Labour attacked him for attending parties in Downing Street. The birthday party was apparently, okay, because it had been recorded, and within the rules, and had been “in a work context.” The rules, of course, are made by the MP's themselves, and they are quite different rules to those they make, or that employers impose upon ordinary workers.  And, Deputy Prime Minister Rayner, admits accepting the use of a New York flat from another donor for a holiday.

The reality is that Starmer and Blue Labour think that they can get away with anything, and what they don't get away with, they just brazen out.