Like Trump, Blue Labour View Democracy As An Inconvenience
At the weekend, as the Bonapartists of Blue Labour met to block Andy Burnham from standing in the Denton & Gorton By-Election, one of their spokespeople, and original conspirators to put Starmer in the driving seat, using the backing of various shady millionaires, and their money in off-shore tax havens, set out how they see democracy. Steve Reed appeared on TV to tell us that they thought Burnham could not be allowed to stand, because it would mean an election, also, for Manchester Mayor, and they did not want to cause the voters of Manchester to be “inconvenienced” by having to vote!
That about sums up Blue Labour's Bonapartist mentality. Democracy, even the feeble version of democracy that is bourgeois-democracy, and involves the mass of the population only in passively and ineffectually placing a cross on a ballot every few years, is an “inconvenience”. For the likes of Blue Labour, the ideal voter is like the woman interviewed several years ago, who, when told the Tories were to hold another election, proclaimed “Not another one”. Not a right, not something to be cherished or valued, or fought for, but an “inconvenience”, a nuisance that interrupts the intended torpor of the voters, very periodically, and so unnecessarily involves them in the political life of the country, that the bourgeois politicians would prefer they keep out of, so as to let the politicians just continue on their own merry way, unencumbered by such things as accountability.
It is a far cry from the fight to be able to vote that many across the world still face, not to mention from the ideas and struggles of those that created the modern form of bourgeois-democracy – social-democracy - in Britain, in the 19th century, starting with the combined struggle of industrial workers and bourgeois for the right to vote, and to do away with the “rotten boroughs”. It is a far cry from those that created the labour movement out of which the Labour Party itself developed – the Chartists – who demanded annual parliamentary elections.
Blue Labour have, of course, used the same corruption of ideas and even of bourgeois-democracy to justify their refusal to countenance any new vote on Brexit, despite the fact that every poll, every actual election shows that the large majority of the electorate recognises that Brexit was a a huge mistake, and that, if they had a vote, today, they would vote to reverse it, and to re-join the EU. Blue Labour say, instead, the voters voted once, and that is it for ever more, or at least until we deem it advantageous to us, to allow them to vote again! That is not even bourgeois-democracy, let alone social-democracy, but simply the Hobbesian justification for absolutism.
Blue Labour supplement their appalling, anti-democratic justification for blocking Burnham by other similar arguments, such as the cost of holding the election, which is the argument used by every authoritarian in history. On that basis, you would postpone all elections for much longer, so as to further reduce the “inconvenience” and cost to voters of living in a supposed democracy! Why not go the whole hog, and, like Trump, proclaim that because you are doing such a grand job, there is no need for elections at all.
Blue Labour, also, argue that if Burnham stood in Denton and Garton, he might lose, but also, they might lose the Manchester Mayoral election. Again, if fear of losing elections is justification for not holding them, it tells us a lot about the authoritarian, undemocratic ideology of Blue Labour. More significantly, its necessary to ask, why, they might lose those elections. Its only 2 years since they were telling us what strategic geniuses they were, and were crowing about the huge parliamentary majority they had, despite winning much fewer votes than Corbyn's Labour in 2019. The reason they expect to lose is that, in that two years, not only has the fraudulent nature of that election win been exposed, but the policies of Blue Labour, ever since, in attacking workers, pensioners, the sick and disabled and poor families has seen their support crater even further.
Compared to Starmer and Blue Labour, compared to the likes of Streeting, or Mahmoud, or Rayner, Burnham is popular. If anyone could win the by-election, it is him. If even he could not win it, the blame for that would clearly lie, not with Burnham and his brand of mildly progressive, social-democratic politics, but with the fact that Blue Labour is such a toxic brand, across the country, that any individual Labour candidate, no matter how popular, or distanced from it, will be tarred with the same brush and suffer the consequences. No Labour MP is now safe, as a result of the toxic nature of Starmer's Blue Labour. They will all see their voters either sit on their hands, or as with Caerphilly, will move en masse to more progressive sounding parties, be it Plaid, SNP, Greens, or even Liberals.
As I pointed out months ago, if Labour did not replace Starmer and kick out his Blue Labour cabal, before the Spring elections, it would likely be too late to save Labour. They will be eviscerated in the local and regional elections, and, as Burnham himself says, will probably, now, lose the by-election. If voters in Denton and Garton want to keep out Reform, they will have to vote for the Greens, and that reality will impose itself across the country in coming months. It is not, of course, that either Burnham, or the Greens, or Plaid or SNP, really represent a progressive alternative. They do not. But, it is an indication of the reactionary nature of the petty-bourgeois, nationalist politics of Blue Labour that they appear so.
In the past, the argument of Marxists was that, even though Labour's politics moved periodically from Left to Right, and then, back again, the justification for working within it was that it was based upon the working-class, and its organisations such as the trades unions etc. But, Blue Labour has based itself not on the working-class, but the reactionary, nationalist petty-bourgeoisie. Starmer has neutered democracy within the party, by expelling huge numbers, and alienating thousands more. In electoral terms, the large majority of workers no longer look, now, to Labour, as their natural party, but look instead to these other parties such as Plaid, SNP, Greens, who present themselves in the same colours that Labour, as a social-democratic party used to promote. The trades unions have failed to check that abandonment of the working-class, and of social-democracy by Blue Labour.
When Labour get smashed in the forthcoming elections, and as the Greens and other parties appear as realistic, progressive alternatives, there will be a great temptation – as happened under Blair and Brown – to focus on these other parties. It can be seen already, in the support being given to the populist Polanski of the Greens, by sections of the Left. It is to again invite disappointment and disaster. The Greens, Plaid, SNP, and certainly the Liberals, are not the solution. They are not based on the working-class. Their ideas are not those of the working-class, and its class interests.
The fact that all these parties, basically, themselves middle-class parties, based on the progressive, professional middle-class – as social-democracy has always done – appear progressive, simply shows the degeneration of the Labour Party as a consequence of Blue Labour. The SNP used to be called “Tartan Tories”, and it was the SNP that opened the door to Thatcher in 1979, by bringing down Callaghan's government. The Liberals, of course, joined Cameron's Coalition in 2010, rather than support Brown. Within days, they swivelled from their opposition to austerity to fully backing it, in government. They opened the door to the Brexit vote.
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