Blue Labour is a party based on reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalism. It is no longer a bourgeois, workers' party. Its ideology is no longer the relatively progressive ideology of the bourgeoisie, of large-scale industrial capital, but a throwback to the ideas of the petty-bourgeoisie, a reactionary attempt to hold back the onward march of history. That is why, although it has claimed that the key to all its programs is economic growth, it stubbornly refuses to accept that the one single thing that would facilitate that growth is to abandon the disastrous commitment to Brexit, and to take Britain back into the EU as soon as they possibly could.
Last night, I watched the BBC Four documentary, “The Improbable Mr. Attlee”, and was struck by the similarities of the egregious unforced errors made by that government, and those being repeated, by Blue Labour, today. As with Starmer, the errors made by Attlee, meant that going from a large majority, in 1945, his attacks on workers, continued implementation of rationing, huge wasteful spending on arms, undermined the economy, and led to the return of the Tories in 1951. But, at least, Attlee had won huge numbers of votes, unlike Blue Labour, which only secured a parliamentary majority as a result of the corrupt nature of the electoral system, and a division in the votes for Tories and Reform.
One of the aspects of those errors was the attempt to cling to the former colonial delusions. In the end, reality imposed itself there too, as Britain scuttled from its former colonies, in turn, leading to conditions that fuelled many of the present conflicts across the globe, including that in Israel/Palestine. The attempt to cling to Empire was one reason that Attlee's government wastefully spent money on weapons, and maintaining an army so big that it constituted 10% of the total workforce, at a time when the economy was desperate for workers to rebuild its infrastructure, and provide all of the goods and services for which workers were in desperate need. To put it another way 90% of the workforce was working to produce the goods and services that the 10% in the army consumed, let alone all of the production that went into the military equipment.
The reflection of that was that whilst, in Europe, economies began to recover and grow, this wasteful arms spending, in Britain, undermined economic growth and capital accumulation – expanded negative reproduction – as it sucked in resources and surplus value that should have gone to real capital accumulation. The other manifestation of that, was that as the economy failed to grow, and as surplus value was drained into this destructive military spending, Attlee's government had to try to boost surplus value, which it did by imposing wage controls on workers, and sending in the troops to break strikes for higher wages. It imposed a continuation of rationing, which even meant that an already meagre calorie consumption by workers, fell further still, even compared to the last year of the war.
But, where Attlee's government, like that of Wilson/Callaghan of the 1960's and 70's, was still miles ahead of that of Starmer, is that those earlier governments were still bourgeois workers' parties. They relied upon the votes of the working-class, and their ideology was that of large-scale industrial capital, whose advance they sought to achieve. That is why that government nationalised the core industries vital for the development of capital, although, as the programme documents, the way it did so, was inefficient and bureaucratic. Of course, they could never consider the idea of placng those industries under democratic workers control, and if they had, the ruling class would quickly have removed them. But, nor did they place them under direct government control, instead following the model in the rest of big business of having Boards of Directors appointed, and those Boards, were inevitably comprised of the same personnel as those that littered the boards of the other large corporations.
But, it was still way in advance of the current Blue Labour government, whose world view is that which extends no further than where it thinks it can obtain the next vote, and always sees it by appealing to the worst sections of society, to the basest elements, to all of the racism and bigotry that festers in the swamp of the large petit-bourgeois mass. So, its no wonder that Starmer has found his soulmates in likeminded reactionary petit-bourgeois regimes across the globe, with his early visit to Meloni in Italy, his fawning at the feet of Trump, as he licked his arse, in hope of some favour or possibly just more personal freebies of the kind that have characterised the corrupt nature of the Blue Labour regime, and, of course, in that same camp is the detestable Netanyahu, to whose Zionist regime, Blue Labour owes the favour, of all of the efforts, of people like David Mencer, former Chair of Labour Friends of Zionism, in removing Corbyn.
Blue Labour has been repaying that debt over the last 20 months, as the Zionist regime has engaged in genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, as well as expanding its war of annexation and colonisation in Lebanon and Syria. Not only has Blue Labour continued to supply weapons to its Zionist friends to carry out that genocide, but it has been more than zealous in even denying the right of anyone, particularly Labour members, to point out that what the Zionist regime was engaged in was genocide. In other words, Blue Labour has carried out the biggest act of genocide denial ever seen. Those right-wing crackpots that over the years denied the Holocaust against Jews, were always a small minority, and always ostracised. But, the genocide being committed against Palestinians is happening in real-time for all to see.
As Owen Jones says, in this video, no one has any excuse for not recognising that what has been happening and continues to happen in Palestine is a genocide. The Zionists themselves were open about what they were doing, even though, when it has come to individual atrocities, they have always tried to dress it up as being some kind of error, having first denied it ever happened. Its spokespeople like Mencer, who has been, even when he was Chair of Labour Friends of Zionism, either a blatant liar, or a delusional fantasist, continue to lie about the actions of the Zionist state, having grown used to being able to say any bullshit they like and have it repeated as holy script by western politicians and media. But, even they are now seeing the completion of the Zionists' Final Solution, against the Palestinians in its closing stages, and are turning to a balance of concern over their own futures, as against the need to ensure that the Zionists can continue to do their dirty work for them.
So, its no surprise that 28 countries wrung their hands, and cried crocodile tears for the Palestinians, as they meekly implored the Zionists to stop, knowing, of course, that they will not. Their concerns, of course, have not been sufficient to end arms sales to the Zionist state, let alone to suggest a “liberal intervention” to prevent the genocide, as they did in relation to Libya and Syria. Quite the contrary, not only do the arms sales continue, but Britain and other countries have acted militarily against the Houthis, as they tried to stop shipments to the Zionists, and, of course, as the Zionist state extended its war of annexation to Syria and Lebanon, and launched attacks on Iran, NATO has put its own protective shield around Israel, to enable it to continue such attacks, free from the chance of effective retaliation. And, of course, Blue Labour has ridiculously branded Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation for itself taking direct action to protest at UK arms sales used to carry out genocide.
The lying speeches of Blue Labour Ministers are gut wrenchingly awful, and the performance of the media are no better, which continues to repeat the lies of the Zionist state about October 7th and UNWRA being comprised of card carrying members of HAMAS and so on. But, Owen Jones is wrong in thinking that these creatures will be held to account, and face the dock. Short of a widespread international socialist revolution, that is not going to happen. The Zionist regime, as Merz admitted a few weeks ago, has been doing western imperialism's work for it. Those that commissioned that work, in western governments are not going to put themselves in the dock.
Nor should we simply wait for such an event to happen. If we do, we make it all the less likely. The backbench Tory MP, Kit Malthouse, at least, appealed to Labour MP's to call the government to account. There is not much chance of that either, but socialists, via the trades unions, and even still via, their individual membership of the party, as we approach the annual conference, do have the opportunity to call these reactionary scumbags to account. Starmer must go, and all those Blue Labour MP's that stand behind him must be sent packing too. We need to rebuild the labour movement from the ground up, to rejuvenate and democratise the unions, and to use that as the driving force back into the Labour Party itself, to get rid of the ideology of Blue Labour, and to get rid of all those MP's elected to represent it. It needs to be ripped out root and branch.
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