Pundits have been claiming that two-party politics in Britain is dead, as the vote for the two main parties, Conservative and Labour has collapsed. It isn't, and cannot be so long as Britain retains the first past the post-system, and remains a bourgeois state. All that is happening, as I have set out before, is that the labels on the two parties are changing, as, indeed, they have before, when, for example, the Liberal Party was replaced/relabelled as the Labour Party, at the start of the 20th century.
Reform is just the Tory/reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalist, wing of the Conservative Party relabelled. It is pretty much a reversal of the transformation, in the second half of the 19th century, of the old Tory Party of landowners, into the modern Conservative Party, created by the Peelites, after the Repeal of the Corn Laws. The emblem of that reversal, is the rise and domination of the Conservative Party by its petty-bourgeois, nationalist base, and its carrying through of Brexit. Ideologically, Reform is identical to that reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalist, Tory wing of the Conservative Party that grew during the 1980's, and asserted itself in the 1990's, as a reflection of the growth of the petty-bourgeoisie, in Britain, during that time, by around 50%, at the same time that British large-scale industrial capital saw a continuation of its relative decline, compared to its growth elsewhere, and the working-class, also, was weakened along with it.
That core petty-bourgeois membership and voter base, of the Tories has simply burst out of the Conservative Party, as the means of resolving the underlying contradiction within that party, as a party of the petty-bourgeoisie, which finds itself having to implement bourgeois policies, when in government, because the petty-bourgeois nationalist agenda is utopian and impossible, as the consequences of Brexit showed. Its not just that the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, and its associated layers amongst the urban poor have simply switched from voting Tory – or often not voting at all – to just voting Reform, a look at Reform shows that the same failed, ex Tory politicians have simply relabelled themselves too. Jenrick, Widdicombe, Jenkyns, Dorries and so on are some of the most obvious.
There are now more ex-members of Liz Truss' Cabinet in Reform than there are on the Tory front bench! At a local level that is simply repeated, as Tories just label themselves Reform. Some pundits, like James O'Brien, have frequently posed the question of whether the reason for this is that these ex-Tories take the voters for idiots, and so offer up new policies for old, simply repackaged, as though the voters having voted for those reactionary policies, and see them fail, need to be conned into voting for them again. No, that is not the case. The reactionary nationalist, petty-bourgeoisie, and their attendant layers in the urban poor/lumpen elements, do not see the failure of Brexit and all of the other garbage as being a failure for them. It is the problem of not understanding that the electorate is divided into different classes, with different class interests.
There are some petty-bourgeois, like for example, the Youtuber, Michael Lambert, whose businesses were orientated towards the EU, who see Brexit, and everything that goes with it as disastrous. But, most of the petty-bourgeoisie is not like that. It is thoroughly parochial and nationalist. The petty-bourgeoisie is and always has been characterised by its lack of income and precarity, its inability to compete with large-scale capital, or even to achieve the kind of living standards of organised wage-labour. If you have to work all hours of the day, but get little income, you are not going to be too bothered about whether Brexit has reduced growth, made trade more difficult or expensive, or travel for holidaymakers more inconvenient, and so on. Even more is that the case if you are part of those associated layers of the urban poor.
So, although the large majority of the electorate, now, see that Brexit has been the disaster it was always going to be, leading nearly 70% of them to want to reverse it, and re-join the EU, that other 30% of the electorate, the hard-core of the petty-bourgeoisie that pushed it through, in the first place, – mostly the same layers that opposed the EEC in the 1975 Referendum, but then unsuccessfully – have not changed their view, because that view aligns with that petty-bourgeois nationalist outlook, itself conditioned by their own class position. The same applies to the identical social layers in the US that back Trump. It is why, even O'Brien has had to change his opinion that we should have contempt for the con-men, and compassion for the conned. They were not conned, they got what they wanted, and mostly still want.
The ideology of the petty-bourgeoisie is reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalism, as represented, now, by Reform. It is utopian and so must lead to disaster. Precisely because the petty-bourgeoisie is itself a disorganised, atomised and heterogeneous mass, with its own internal contradictions arising from its diversity and interests, it is unstable and liable to blow itself apart at any point, once it is forced to go beyond what it thinks its against, and begin to focus on what it is for. Even what it is for starts off as simply a negation of what it is against, e.g. against foreigners, and so for Brexit, for immigration controls, repatriation and so on. When that inevitably fails to bring what it expected, it simply moves to the next level. To impose any kind of order on it, the petty-bourgeoisie always requires a strong, charismatic leader, and so tends towards Bonapartism and authoritarian rule as Marx describes in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
The ideology of the owners of large-scale capital is, and since the end of the 19th century has been, social-democracy. The owners of large-scale industrial capital, since that time, has been “the associated producers”, i.e. the workers within each large-scale enterprise. As Marx describes, in Capital III, and he and Engels describe in “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” and “Anti-Duhring”, except in the worker cooperatives, the workers, in the main, do not yet understand that this is their collective property, and so, do not exercise conscious control over it. That control is exercised by the old bourgeois ruling-class, which has become a parasitic, class of rentiers/coupon clippers, living off the interest/dividends and rents it obtains from its ownership of the other form of large-scale capital – fictitious-capital – and which provides it with its continued huge wealth and power, and control of the state.
Precisely because the “associated producers”/working-class, do not, yet, understand that they are the collective owners of this large-scale, socialised, industrial capital, they continue to be dominated by the ideology of social-democracy, rather than socialism/communism. They continue to be dominated by the bourgeois/reformist idea that, in some way, the interests of labour and capital are, not antagonistic but reconcilable via negotiation. In other words, they remain trapped in a bourgeois, trades-unionist consciousness of simply bargaining within the system, just for a better price for the commodity they sell, labour-power, an outlook, which always leaves them on the losing side of those negotiations. Its epitome is corporatism and co-determination.
Objectively, the very nature of this large-scale, socialised industrial capital (imperialist capital) means, as Marx and Engels set out in the above works, that it demands planning, regulation, and so becomes tied to the state, which must organise that planning and regulation of capital, i.e. the economy, on an increasing scale. As they put it,
“In the trusts, free competition changes into monopoly and the planless production of capitalist society capitulates before the planned production of the invading socialist society. Of course, this is initially still to the benefit of the Capitalists.”
(Anti-Duhring, p 358)
Why is that, still to their benefit? Because, this very process, which enables this large-scale socialised capital to continue to operate on an expanding scale, and so produce more profits – but also to employ more labour, and so benefits workers to that extent – provides the capitalists, the owners, now, not of industrial capital, but of fictitious-capital, with the source of their own increased revenues, and wealth and power. Even if the capitalists – the owners of fictitious-capital – only drew their revenues from that ownership of fictitious-capital, i.e. interest/dividends, they would, thereby, be the main beneficiaries, initially, of this planned production. Even if all of the industrial capital became statised, as part of that process, they would be the main beneficiaries, because, as the owners of fictitious-capital, loanable money-capital, they would be the ones loaning money to that state, i.e. buying its government bonds, and so deriving huge amounts of interest/coupon from them.
It is why the ruling-class of owners of fictitious-capital, support the EU, and oppose Brexit, just as it is in the interests of the working-class, as the collective owners of that large-scale, socialised capital. Who it is not in the interests of is the petty-bourgeoisie, whose parochialism and nationalism, is accompanied by their own commitment to red in tooth and claw competition, and all the petty perks that it relies upon to survive, which, also, make life hell for wage-labour.
But, the ruling class owners of fictitious-capital, precisely because they have been enabled to continue to exercise control over capital they do not own, by the state they control, and by a socialist movement that, itself, does not understand, as Marx and Engels did, that the owners of this large-scale industrial capital, are, already, the workers, do not just draw the revenues they are entitled to as owners of loanable money-capital. They also, use that control to appropriate to themselves additional revenues. They appropriate to themselves not just interest, but a part of what is, economically, profit of enterprise, and so, economically the revenue that should be appropriated by the collective owners of the industrial capital, i.e. the workers.
As Marx points out, in Capital III, economically, the revenues of this socialised capital, amount to the wages of labour, whether the wages of the actual workers, or the salaries of the professional managers; the rent paid to landowners; the interest paid to the lenders of money-capital; and the profit of enterprise, which is objectively the property of the associated producers/workers, and at their disposal for capital accumulation; and taxes to the capitalist state. But, because that state has created company law that gives shareholders a right to exercise control over property they do not own, and denies the actual owners of that property – the workers – that right, the shareholders use that control to appropriate to themselves a portion of the profit of enterprise. It is why, as Haldane reported, the share of profits going to dividends has risen from 10% in the 1970's, to 70%, today.
The reason this is significant is that it underpins the nature of the crisis of social-democracy. Social-democracy is the dominant ideology of the owners of large-scale capital, both the collective owners of socialised industrial capital (the workers), and the private owners of fictitious-capital (the bourgeois ruling-class). But, the very fact of these two types of large-scale capital, and their different owners, with antagonistic interests, means that social-democracy, itself, has always been divided into a conservative social-democracy (representing the owners of fictitious-capital), and progressive social-democracy, which represents the owners of the socialised industrial capital. As I have set out before, in the period after 1980, in particular, the ruling-class became addicted to speculative capital gains, as falling interest rates, resulting from a huge rise in productivity, caused asset prices to soar. It is now in a trap, in which, if it accepts the need for greater economic growth and capital accumulation, to expand the mass of profit, it will, simultaneously cause interest rates to rise, and so asset prices to crash.
Conservative social-democracy, therefore, has reached a dead-end, in which it can only protect the long-term interests of the ruling-class, by damaging the short-term interests of that ruling-class, by forcing it to go cold turkey, and accept a collapse of its paper wealth, as asset prices crash, perhaps by as much as 90%. Given the fact that social-democrats have also sold the delusion to society at large that it can create wealth out of thin air, by such asset price inflation, it is obvious why they have not been able to face that reality. In fact, although a 90% crash in house prices, and other asset prices, would benefit the vast majority of society, it is not easy to explain to them why that is the case, in conditions where they have been, for decades, gulled into the delusion that they have somehow become wealthier as a result of the price of their house rising, even though a moment's thought should show that, so has the price of any other house they want to buy!
Britain has suffered more, because the one thing that mitigated that objective reality was the EU. The objective reality, drives towards the conditions that stand behind the ideology of progressive social-democracy, an increase in planning and regulation, an increase in capital accumulation, and so of an increase in the size of the single-market/state. That is why, as conservative social-democracy hit a dead-end, after the 2008 global financial crash, across the globe, there was a rise in the forces of progressive social-democracy, albeit in a very confused manner. The forces of conservative social-democracy have tried to defy the reality, by trying to again inflate asset prices, via QE, and have also sought to quash, by authoritarian and bureaucratic means that resurgence of the kind of progressive social democracy that formed the consensus of the post-war period of capital accumulation.
What was the social-democratic consensus of the period 1945-80, is now portrayed as some kind of dangerous, left-wing extremism. Consequently, as the centre has collapsed, the petty-bourgeoisie has asserted itself. Reactionary petty-bourgeois nationalism now stands in opposition to social-democracy, the reactionary, private owners of small scale capital, versus the owners of large-scale capital. It is not the end of two-party politics, but simply its transition, and simplification. A number of analysts have indicated that in terms of blocs of “right” and “left” there has been no change, just a shift within each bloc. The transition in the “Right” bloc, i.e. the bloc of the reactionary petty-bourgeois has been completed, but it is not yet complete on the “Left”, i.e. the bloc of the working-class.
In 2019, as I pointed out at the time, Corbyn's Labour lost, because the anti-Tory vote was split between Labour, Liberals, Greens and so on, as well as Plaid and SNP. It was facilitated by Corbyn's own reversion to the Stalinoid notions of economic nationalism of the 1970's, as well, of course, as the deliberate sabotage of Labour by the forces of Blue Labour in alliance with the Blair-Rights, using the weaponization of anti-Semitism. Johnson won the election, because he was able to hoover up the votes of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, with the aid of Farage. But, Johnson could not carry through the deluded notions of Brexit and, as it became apparent that it was a disaster, he was forced out, followed by the idiocy of Truss's attempt, and, finally, Sunak became nightwatchman, prior to the Tories being thrown out.
In 2024, with the Tories discredited, Farage began the process of rebranding Toryism as The Brexit Party, now, Reform. The only reason Starmer's Labour won in 2024, was the reversal of the conditions of 2019, i.e. the Right bloc was split down the middle, and the Left bloc, sort of, lined up, reluctantly behind Blue Labour. It was a mirage, a pyrrhic victory that was bound to collapse in short order, not least because Blue Labour attempted to adopt the clothes of Brexit, to turn itself into a pale version of Reform, with all of its flag-waving jingoism, whilst promising the same kinds of illusory growth that would only be possible by re-joining the EU. The baton of social-democracy passed from its hands into those of the Greens, Liberals, Plaid and SNP. The inertia has retained a vote for Blue Labour, but it is inevitably going the same way as, on the Right, has already been traversed by the Tories.
A look at Thursday's elections shows that to be the case. In numerous cases, the collapse of Labour seats has been simply mirrored in the rise of Green seats on particular Councils. Elsewhere, as in 2019, a residual Labour vote has split the anti-Reform vote, enabling Reform candidates to take the seat. It is no longer credible to ask Green, Liberal, Plaid or SNP voters to vote for a reactionary Blue Labour Party, in conditions where that really means asking them to vote for a slightly modified version of the reactionary ideas of Reform, just wearing a red rosette. So, even where Labour candidates came second, or would have won with the addition of Green votes, the reality is that it is the reactionary politics of Starmer's Blue Labour that made that impossible.
A look at the data for England shows that Reform have more or less simply rebranded Tory seats as Reform seats. Reform are up by 1,442, and the Tories down by 557. The additional 900 seats, are not, by and large, the result of Labour voters switching to Reform, but are, as set out above, the result of the anti-Reform vote being split between Labour, Greens and Liberals. A look at Wales and Scotland, shows that even more starkly, as two party politics remains, but now, as I predicted before the elections, it is Reform and Plaid, or Reform and SNP that constitute the two contenders. That is despite those assemblies utilising forms of PR. Had they used first past the post, Labour and Tories would have been totally wiped out.
The argument put by Blue Labour, for example expressed by Deborah Mattison, that the results show Reform picking up traditional Labour voters in “Red Wall” seats, is clearly disproved in Scotland and Wales, the latter in particular. You could not get much more of a symbol of “Red Wall”, i.e., old industrial working-class than Wales. Yet, the Labour vote collapse in Wales, clearly did not go, in its vast majority to Reform, but to Plaid, and in some places the Greens.
In England, the Greens, as well as simply replacing Labour in various mayoral elections, such as Hackney, and taking over every Labour seat on Councils in some contests, have quadrupled the number of seats held. They have gone from 141 seats to 587. By contrast the Liberals, who started with 683 seats, have risen to only 844, a rise of only 155, or about 25%. In large part that is because the Liberals have attempted, themselves, to stay on the ground of conservative social-democracy, and even there, their one main selling point, their opposition to Brexit, and support for the EU, they have voluntarily gagged themselves on, for the last 7 years. In addition, they have been almost as bad as Blue Labour in seeking to gain sectarian advantage over the Greens, by joining in the weaponization of anti-Semitism. In addition, in some seats, there was more than one vacancy, but where the Greens only stood one candidate, meaning that some voters would vote Green, but use their second vote for a Labour candidate.
Blair-rights, like Liz Kendall have claimed, still, despite all the evidence, that the majority of voters do not support the “extremes”, but are in the “centre”. What is clear is that that centre was simply an abstraction, a mathematical construct amounting to a small minority in the middle that was able for a time to exercise a disproportional influence, by holding the balance of power between the two “extremes”. Kendall seems blind to the fact that they have branded Reform as the “extreme” on the Right – whilst themselves being a pale, unconvincing version of it – and the Greens as “extreme” on the Left – even though their programme amounts to nothing more than the kind of social-democratic consensus of the post-war period – and yet, it is precisely these two “extremes” that have been the big winners!
What is shown is that the class division of society has reasserted itself, as the centre has collapsed. It is, in the era of imperialist capital, no longer a division between the bourgeoisie and proletariat, when it comes to elections, because the bourgeoisie is numerically a de minimus factor. It is a division between the reactionary, nationalist petty-bourgeoisie, and the working-class. The political representation of the kind of social-democratic, bourgeois nationalism that Labour used to promote is now the preserve of the Greens, Plaid and SNP. In the case of the last two, their bourgeois nationalism, is in the context, as most European bourgeois nationalism now is, of the recognition of the need to be within the framework of the EU, which makes it progressive compared to the kind of jingoistic, English nationalism/Brexitism now promoted by Blue Labour.
Starmer has now made a show of inviting back Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman, but even for a return to that kind of Blair-right, conservative social democracy, will require a purge of Blue Labour, of the likes of Glassman, Reed and Co., as well as Starmer as their stooge. Or it requires, as I suggested some time ago, it will mean that the Blair-Rights will split to join with the Liberals, and the social-democratic wing of the Conservatives, to form a new European style centre party. It may now be too late to save Labour ahead of the next election. It would have been a perfect time for a socialist alternative, or at least a progressive social-democratic alternative party to emerge, but again Corbyn and those Stalinoid elements behind him have destroyed, for now, that possibility. The fact that the PLP is stuffed to the gills with Blue Labour placeholders, and Zionist cronies, means that no new Leader can overcome that reality, prior to the party itself, in the country being renewed and democratised, with widespread mandatory reselections, which will require the trades unions to impose themselves.
For now, it looks like the Labour Party is in its death throes.
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