Starmer's Blue Labour Party is a vile, reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalist party, based on the working-class. It is a UKIP Mark II, or a watered down version of the BNP, or of Moseley's New Party on its own transition to becoming the British Union of Fascists, after Moseley left the Labour Government. Other similar transitions of politicians that began life under the cloak of socialist rhetoric, can be found in relation to Mussolini, or Pilsudski.
Blue Labour, is not just characterised by its reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalism, and jingoism, manifest in the need to wrap themselves in the flag of British colonialism, but also by its ingrained and systemic racism and Islamophobia. That was also on show at Blue Labour's heavily stage-managed version of the Nuremberg Rallies. These rallies, as with those held by the other parties, here, and elsewhere, have nothing to do with democracy, or democratic decision making, but only to emphasise the greater glory of the party leaders (bedecked in all their expensive clothes and finery, provided by the rich puppet masters), as against the subordinate role of the party members, as foot soldiers. That is emphasised, not only by the physically elevated position of the party leaders, on the stage, but, now, by the fact that it is only that stage that is lit, leaving the vast majority, literally, in the dark, as some anonymous, but irrelevant mass.
I have noted before that Starmer's Blue Labour as it becomes ever more authoritarian and Bonapartist, has resorted to the use of former MI6 agents, now operating via private security agencies, to vet party members, and attendance at party functions. Yet, despite that stage management, despite all of the vetting, and use of former MI6 agents, Blue Labour was still unable to prevent dissident voices being heard in its conference, crying out from amidst the darkness to protest at Blue Labour's hypocrisy, as first Reeves, and then Starmer, tried to ignore the genocide and slaughter of Palestinian children being committed with their compliance, as it continues to arm and support that genocidal Zionist regime.
Yet, even those tiny voices of dissent, were too much for Blue Labour, and its attempt to impose a totalitarian monolithic image, and required that dissent to be violently suppressed, much as it began to do a few years ago, including via the physical removal of elderly Jewish, anti-Zionist members such as Walter Wolfgang. Indeed, although Starmer and Blue Labour made a great deal of their opposition to “anti-Semitism”, they have been one of the greatest culprits, as is Zionism itself, in promoting anti-Semitism. Under Blue Labour's support for Zionism, it has expelled more Jewish members that oppose Zionism, and the genocidal actions of the Zionist regime, than at any previous time.
The fact that the Bonapartist regime of Starmer's Blue Labour cannot allow any, even the slightest, dissent is an indication of its underlying weakness, a weakness made all the more apparent by the fact that, although they, and the media, continually talk about their election win as though a majority of voters had supported them, in fact, only 25% of the electorate voted for them, less than voted for Corbyn in 2019, and a third less than voted for Corbyn in 2017, and, already, that low level of support is dropping fast, with Starmer, now, more disliked than Sunak!
But, the same sham, and fraudulent system of bourgeois-democracy that gave them such a parliamentary majority is their strength, because with such a large majority of parliamentary seats, it's no wonder that they can sit on the stage, with smug, rictus grins on their face, for all the world looking and sounding like clones of Liz Truss, and her speech about selling pork to the Chinese. Even with Greens in second place to Blue Labour in 40 seats, and Reform coming second to them in 89, without some sudden torrent of by-elections in those seats, Labour's majority will survive up to the next election, unless, of course, a significant chunk of those MP's, also defect to a new centre-right, party formed by a merger of the Conservatives and Liberals, similar to the formation of the 2010 Coalition.
That is not out of the question, and Starmer's current policies (or lack of them), and trajectory, seem, if they have one result, to be to cause a split in Labour itself, as it comes inevitably into conflict with its membership base, and the trades unions, producing the effect that Blair and others sought in the past, to free the conservative party leadership, in parliament, from the rest of the labour movement, and, particularly, the unions.
So, its no wonder that Starmer made one of his first foreign trips to be to see Meloni, leader of the Italian fascists, and at the same time, made a point of antagonising the party base, and the trades unions in relation to the removal of the Winter Fuel Allowance for more than a million poor pensioners, as well as continuing with the Two Child Benefit Cap, followed by the announcement of an attack on other welfare benefits, all the time, refusing any further taxation of its friends and donors amongst the county's wealthy elite, or any change in its policy of sending billions in arms to Zelensky and Netanyahu.
In fact, as I have I have set out, before, and as former Labour Leader in the EU Parliament, Richard Corbett, noted, at the Politics Social event in Liverpool, if they really wanted to bridge the financial deficit, the easiest way of doing that would be to end Brexit, and re-join the EU, which would bring in an additional £40 billion a year, in tax revenues! Starmer and Blue Labour's policies, which seem irrational, are designed to rapidly engineer such a split, as he makes a point of saying that he is set on confronting the unions and party members.
The doublespeak is apparent. They say there will be no austerity, at the same time, pronouncing cuts to Winter Fuel Allowance, and other welfare benefits, and so on; they say – like Biden and others – they want a ceasefire, and peace in the Middle East, whilst continuing to send billions in weapons to the Zionist regime, as it commits genocide against Palestinians, and now expands the war into Lebanon, as it seeks to instigate a regional war, as I predicted a year ago. In the face of that, the response of the party members, and of the unions of simply bemoaning the injustice of it all, is wholly inadequate. Interviewed by one of the many, middle-class, right-wing, former advisors to New Labour, on Times Radio, Mick Lynch calmly accepted their dismissal by Starmer and Blue Labour, by describing it as a process of democratic debate!
But, there is nothing democratic about any of this. Blue Labour did not have removing Winter Fuel Payments in its Manifesto. It did not get prior approval of the party for doing so, after being elected, and even suspended some MP's for not voting for it, just as it did in relation to the Two Child Limit. Blue Labour tried to even prevent the issue of Winter Fuel payments being discussed at conference, using bureaucratic means to try to block it, unsuccessfully. And when the conference voted overwhelming to call for that cut to be reversed, what was the response of Starmer and Blue Labour? Starmer showed his total disregard and disrespect for party members and the unions, by already being on a plane for another expenses paid junket in the US. Will Reeves and Starmer respect that democratic vote of the party at conference? Of course not, so what does any of that have to do with the democracy that Lynch talks about?
The union bureaucrats – and Lynch is one of the better ones, so that does not say much – cannot be counted on to put up any kind of real fight against Starmer and Blue Labour, because, in the end, they are more concerned to have a Blue Labour government that gives them the illusory prospect of their feet under the table, and of obtaining crumbs off that table. It will be up to ordinary rank and file union members to organise themselves to resist Starmer and Blue Labour and their increasingly authoritarian and totalitarian, Bonapartist regime. It will mean renewing and rebuilding the labour movement from the ground up, democratising the unions, cooperatives and Labour Party, turning them outwards to real immediate struggles in the workplaces and communities, and providing our own political solutions and leadership to those struggles.
It will not be easy, so the sooner the task is started the better.
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