Blair-Rights & Soft Left Carry Out Their Counter Coup

The Blair-Right/Soft Left counter coup against the Blue Labour/Zionist faction that took control of the Labour Party in 2019, has now begun. In 2019, the Blair-Rights were not strong enough to displace Corbyn's supporters inside a massively expanded Labour Party. The soft-left were not going to actively support the kind of actions required to bring about the kind of blood-letting to achieve it, though, as in the past, they could be relied on to simply keep their heads down, and wait until it was over, rather than resist it. The Blair-Rights, allied with the petty-bourgeois nationalists and Zionists of Blue Labour, seizing upon the equation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism as a convenient weapon to first undermine Corbyn, and then launch the witch hunt in the party. They chose Starmer as a cypher for their coup.

At the time Starmer won the Leadership, I noted that, the Blue Labour/Zionist faction would inevitably drag him further and further into the swamp of the petty-bourgeois nationalist Right, and so it has been, with the inevitable disastrous consequences for Labour, leading to the situation, today, and the equally inevitable counter coup by the Blair-Rights and soft Left, who have now chosen their own cypher, in the form of Burnham. Its ironic that the pro-EU Blair, has himself, now, become an apologist for the petty-bourgeois nationalists, and for his rich associates in the Trumpf gang, whilst the once soft Left and anti-EEC Kinnock, has taken over that vacant slot. On Saturday, Kinnock was even heading up the speakers at the Rejoin EU Rally in London, and its no coincidence that as Starmer gave another empty speech announcing his departure, this morning, in Downing Street, the strains of Ode To Joy, the EU Anthem, wafted through the air, almost drowning him out.

The media pundits have talked about the fact that in the last ten years, Britain has had 7 different Prime Ministers. But, they fail to mention that between 1990, and 2005, the Conservative Party went through 6 different Leaders. The reason is the same. Superficially, that reason is Brexit, or the relation between Britain and the EU, but that is itself simply the manifestation of the real underlying cause, which is the division between the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie and those of the bourgeoisie and working-class. Again, the media pundits, at least the better of them, like to present this division, in electoral terms as that between a Left or “progressive” bloc of Green, Liberal and Labour voters, as against a Right or “reactionary” bloc of Restore, Reform and Tory voters, without considering that these divisions are not simply arbitrary alignments of voters within an amorphous electorate, but are themselves a reflection of aggregated class interests.

The media pundits have tried to claim that Makerfield was a classic seat in which Reform should have won, but they based that simply on the fact, of it being a “Red Wall” seat, and on the fact that in the recent local elections, Reform won every council seat. But, that was a typically lazy, and superficial analysis that was inevitably going to be proven wrong, as I pointed out before the by-election.

I noted,

“Its MP, between 1987-2010 was the Blair-right, Iain McCartney. Given Blair's enthusiastic support for the EU, during all that time, when, by contrast, the Tories were torn apart by their support for Brexit, goaded along by the likes of Farage, there was no indication that the voters in the constituency were put off voting for EU supporting Labour candidates, winning around 60% of the vote in each election. In 2010 and 2015, McCartney's successor in the seat, Helen Fovargue, secured around 50% of the vote, whilst the reactionary nationalists of UKIP/BNP and Tories never got more than a combined 42%. In 2017, under Corbyn's Labour, as it won over large numbers of young voters, opposed to Brexit, Fovargue secured an increased 60% of the vote, whilst the Brexit Party stood aside for the Tories, who still could only secure 31% of the vote.”

The idea that Burnham has, somehow, won over working-class Reform or Tory voters, is as ludicrous as the idea that the Tories or Reform won elections by winning over working-class Labour voters. That is only very marginally the case. Burnham won because he managed to get working-class Labour voters to turn out to vote for him, whereas, in the local elections, many of them simply didn't vote, or else have been voting for other progressive parties such as the Greens, Liberals and so on, as they have rejected the reactionary petty-bourgeois nationalism of Keir Starmer's Blue Labour/Zionist agenda.

As I have pointed out many times over the last ten years, the vote for Brexit, even in those “Red Wall” seats, was based, not on working-class, Labour voters voting Leave, but on a the petty-bourgeoisie voting for it, a petty-bourgeoisie that had grown by 50% since the 1980's, and which was also the basis of the internal strife inside the Conservative Party, of which it comprised the vast number of its members and voters. That the media, and the bourgeois political pundits confuse this petty-bourgeois mass of poorly educated, precarious and impoverished with the working-class is simply a feature of their superficial, sociological definition of class. The fact remains that despite having grown by 50% since the 1980's, as a consequence of deindustrialisation, that petty-bourgeois mass still only constitutes around a third of the population/electorate, and it is that which places a cap on its electoral fortunes.

The reality, however, is clear. Burnham will face the same economic realities that Starmer and Blue Labour faced. Starmer has tried to claim that, in the last two years, he has defied those realities. Its nonsense. His claim about stabilising the economy is only a claim that he has stabilised it in the same way a corpse is stabilised in a graveyard. As Kinnock pointed out, the claims about trade deals are hugely exaggerated, and do not come close to the deals the UK already had as a result of being in the EU. Does anyone who has had to use the NHS really believe the claims about its improvement? Likewise, a look at the continued crumbling of the roads, and other infrastructure give the lie to Starmer's claims in that regard to. In the meantime, inflation remains high, and is likely to rise, whilst government borrowing is rising, and interest rates are following suit.

That reality, drives towards the obvious course of action, of a rapid re-joining of the EU. Burnham should be open about that reality, and get it underway. The Labour landslide in 2024 was a fraud, with Labour getting a third fewer votes than Corbyn's Labour secured in 2017. But, it would be ridiculous for Burnham to ignore the fact that he will take over a huge parliamentary majority. The venality of the Blue Labour/Zionist faction is already being shown in their snarling comments, as they are hoist by their own petard. They may seek to undermine a Burnham government, but his majority will be such that they can be dealt with. Beginning the process of negotiation to re-join the EU is the best basis on which a Burnham government can rebuild the economy, and remove the constraints it faces, and on that basis, rebuild the voter base of Labour for the next election in 2028/9. A General Election fought in 2028, with a commitment to formally re-join, would leave the option for the UK holding EU elections in 2029.

Burnham's Brexit Baloney

Its like deja vu all over again! The liberal Left and soft Left, having chosen their next potential saviour, and reduced themselves, again, to essentially passive onlookers of the historical process (class struggle), cheerleaders of whoever (or whatever) might be the current lesser-evil, had great expectations in the King of the North, Prince Across the Water – choose your appropriate aristocratic metaphor – Andy Burnham. But, 7 years ago, they had similar hopes for Starmer, who stood on an almost identical platform to that, now, put forward by Burnham. At least, Starmer had stayed in Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet, when Burnham ran off to Manchester.

Of course, even before that, the same passive, hapless role of what passes for “the Left” - an increasingly less than meaningless term – had, at least, formed up to cheer on Corbyn, into the same role. Its epitome was the less than useless, Momentum. But, as far as “the Left” is concerned, we could go back further than that. In the 1960's, Tony Benn, as a government Minister, had no great Left-wing credentials. If Burnham wants a precedent to answer the questions of those like Owen Jones who have noted Burnham's journey back and forth from Blair-right, to soft-Left, he could point to Benn, who, in the 1970's and 80's, became a champion of that “Left”.

Benn, like Foot before him, became a figurehead for “the Left”, but he could be so, much as with Corbyn, only because of the deeply inadequate nature of “the Left” itself. “The Left”, has become simply code for those that favour greater roles for the capitalist state, both in the economy, and society in general, as well as those that favour, and attach themselves to whatever the latest “progressive”, social movement is thought to be. In other words, “the Left”, is a vague, middle-class, liberal mush, the result of a long-term search for the broadest “progressive” coalition of forces.

It is a manifestation not of Marxism, but of Hegelian Idealism. By defining “the Left”, in terms of state ownership and intervention, its no wonder that it opens up the line of argument of the bourgeois centre that the Left and Right, meet up at their extreme points. How much more state interventionist could you get than Nazi Germany, for example. If that is the definition of “Left”, then, Marx and Engels, but, also, the likes of Lenin and Trotsky, would not have considered themselves to be “Left”. It completely leaves out of consideration, any question of the class character of that state.

As Marx and Engels put it.

“The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.”

(Anti-Duhring)

It is, on that basis, a “progressive” development of capitalism, in the Marxist, scientific sense of the term “progressive”, as against the middle-class, liberal, idealist and moralistic sense, of being the latest social movement crusade. It is progressive, only, as an inevitable development of capital, into larger, more concentrated blocs, as with the previous development of monopolies/oligopolies. In fact, large sections of “the Left”, driven by a sense of petty-bourgeois moralism, show their confusion, by seeing those monopolies/oligopolies, not as, also, being progressive, but, as being akin to the devil incarnate. Not surprisingly, they see the appropriate response to that being, not, as Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Lenin and Trotsky argued, the need for the workers to exercise their rightful control over them, but, instead, either to argue for the state to break them up/limit them, in favour of the smaller capitals, or else, for the capitalist state (the national capitalist) to assert its control over them! Socialists, argue that to expect this current state, the capitalist state, the national capitalist, to act in workers interests, is to mislead the workers, with bourgeois idealism. As, Marx put it,

“The German Workers' party — at least if it adopts the program — shows that its socialist ideas are not even skin-deep; in that, instead of treating existing society (and this holds good for any future one) as the basis of the existing state (or of the future state in the case of future society), it treats the state rather as an independent entity that possesses its own intellectual, ethical, and libertarian bases ...

the whole program, for all its democratic clang, is tainted through and through by the Lassallean sect's servile belief in the state, or, what is no better, by a democratic belief in miracles; or rather it is a compromise between these two kinds of belief in miracles, both equally remote from socialism.”

(Critique of The Gotha Programme)

In the modern parlance, such demands might be described as “Left”, but they are certainly not socialist. But, that confusion that misrepresentation is what has characterised “the Left”, including those that call themselves “Marxists”, for around 80 years. So, in the 1970's, “the Left” made itself into cheerleaders for the likes of Benn, and his statist ideas. But if that “servile belief in the state”, and “democratic belief in miracles” is to be pursued, then, it is clear that this state, can only be the current capitalist, nation state, and the democratic miracle can only be performed by the existing, bourgeois-democratic national parliament. Its no wonder, therefore, that, in the 1970's, when the question of the EEC/EU again dominated the political debate, the opposition to the EEC/EU saw “the Left”, and the Far-Right, indeed, meet up to defend the fiction of this nation state. Ironically, I watched, yesterday, a 2025 TV programme on how, in 1940, Churchill made a “bid to abolish Britain”, and merge France and Britain.

This servile belief in the state, and democratic belief in miracles that characterises “the Left”, is simply an extension of its petty-bourgeois, nationalist mindset that has also dominated it in the post-war period, which has seen it prioritise struggles for national self-determination, which means the national self-determination of bourgeois states, over the self-determination of the working-class across those states, and for whom, those bourgeois states are their main enemy. So, the opposition to the EEC/EU, becomes a utopian, idealist, and so reactionary quest, to insist on national self-determination for the “British” capitalist state, so that a “British”, reformist, Labour government can implement “Left” policies.

As in the 1970's, foreigners, i.e. the EEC/EU are used as the scapegoat, the excuse for why the British capitalist state, even when it was far more powerful, and with far greater room for manoeuvre, despite several Labour governments over the last century, most of them markedly to the “Left” of the current Labour government, failed to bring about any radical, meaningful change in the interests of the working-class, at the expense of capital. Over and over, the logical, reactionary dynamic of that is witnessed. If its Europe that limits a Westminster government from acting in workers' interests, then, in Scotland and Wales, it must be an English parliament in Westminster that is stopping the possibility of the Scottish and Welsh nations from acting in the interests of Scottish and Welsh workers. But, similarly, the problem in the Regions, in Manchester, Birmingham and so on, must be the need to “take back control” into local hands. The very logic of nationalism, every time it necessarily fails to deliver, leads to the argument to take back control to a smaller, less rational unit, which, also, inevitably fails. Nationalism destroys the basis of the nation state.

What is more, who is to say that having freed itself from the supposed constraints of some larger, more rational political entity, the nation state would act in the interests of workers, or be more “progressive”? That is not why the likes of the National Front, Enoch Powell, or the likes of Farage, Truss, the BNP and so on argue for national self-determination for Britain. On the contrary, they see such national independence as the necessary condition to pursue the interests of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, whose political representatives they are. They want to opt out of all those rules and regulations that go along with the EU. They want to be able to give all of those small traders and employers every opportunity to go back to the days of cheating and swindling that characterised the early days of capitalism, to be able to utilise sweated labour, unlimited rights to hire and fire at will, to ignore any consumer or environmental standards, because its only in that way that their dwarf capitals can make a profit. And, the concomitant of that was seen under Thatcher in the 1980's and 90's, with the introduction of Enterprise Zones, and so on, and the pitting of one region, local authority area against another, competing tooth and nail for resources for its area, at the expense of others.

The other logical conclusion of that is not greater democracy, but the handing over of political control to local Bonapartes, to act to attract those resources to that area, at the expense of others. That is the role that the Metropolitan Mayors played. At least in the 1960's, when development was pushed ahead, in places like Tyneside by powerful local figures, such as T. Dan Smith, and all the corruption that went with it, it was at a time when British capital was far less decayed than it is today.

So, it is no wonder that, today, we have Burnham continuing to argue that, although Brexit has been extremely damaging – and not even the hard line Brexiters, now, try to deny that – he will not do the obvious thing, and reverse it. Instead, just as with Starmer, he wants to continue to peddle the same old snake oil that somehow, Brexit can be made to work, that Britain can have a “closer relationship” to Europe, and that “Britain's” problems can be resolved, outside the EU. That is the same cakeist agenda that was put forward by Corbyn in 2019, and led to the dissolution of the coalition of support that had made him Leader, and came close to winning the election in 2017. It led to the disaster of 2019.

Starmer, of course, became Leader only by playing on his role in Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet, and by adopting, as part of the strategy put forward by Labour Together, his ten point pledge to pursue the Corbynite, social-democratic agenda. That is the same Labour Together that used Starmer as their cypher, and ditched that agenda as soon as he became Leader. It is the same Labour Together of which Josh Simons was a Director. That is the same Josh Simons who has just stood down in Makerfield for Burnham, and who Burnham has said, he would find a place for.

But, the reality is that Brexit cannot be made to work, and the longer it continues, the greater the damage it will do. Its like saying I realise drinking this poison is really bad for me, but I decided to open the bottle, and so have to keep drinking. The difference with Brexit is that its a bottle that never runs dry. As I wrote in 2019, and after, the idea that you can pursue any kind of even radical social-democratic agenda, without reversing Brexit, and re-joining the EU, is utopian and reactionary. Its a form of Stalinoid, theory of Socialism In One Country. For one thing, Britain is losing around £40 billion a year in tax revenues, as a result of the reduction in GDP growth that has resulted from Brexit. As I pointed out, in relation to the fantasy agenda of Blue Labour in 2024, if the key to your programme is growth, how on Earth are you going to get that growth without a) having the fiscal space to spend on infrastructure, and b) without renewing the free movement that comes from being a part of the EU?

As I've noted before, its not that joining, or now re-joining the EU is the answer to workers problems, but it is that re-joining is the basis of being able to create the conditions for doing so. Blair-rights such as Streeting, for all of their conservative, social-democratic agenda, at least have the advantage over the likes of Burnham that they recognise that the future for Britain, and in the immediate future at that, must reside in the EU. Without that perspective, the decay will continue, a Burnham government, even were he to be serious about carrying out some kind of progressive social-democratic agenda, would quickly have to face the reality that, outside the EU, the prospects for growth are dire, and without that growth, there is no prospect of carrying out even the agenda of Starmer, let alone anything more progressive. It is a recipe for further political chaos, opening the door even wider for the likes of Farage.

Burnham says he does not want to campaign for re-joining the EU, because to do so is divisive, but its equally divisive, and even more destructive not to do so. What is more, God forbid that even bourgeois-democracy should involve the electorate in a heated debate! Far better to keep the voters quiet for 5 years, and only ask them to passively place a cross every so often. So speaks the voice of the entitled, bureaucratic politician who just wants to be left alone to do their job. If that is the case, moreover, then there is a simple answer to that objection. As I noted prior to 2019, rather than a second referendum, Labour could simply put it in their next Manifesto that they intend to re-join the EU. In the meantime, a Burnham Labour government could be getting on with the job of negotiating with Brussels for such re-entry after the next British general Election. That is the best way they can “form closer ties to the EU”.

Burnham's supporters, of course, argue that Streeting, by raising the issue of re-joining the EU is seeking to sabotage Burnham's by-election chances. That assumes that arguing for re-joining the EU is damaging to Labour, and to Burnham. All the evidence shows that not to be true. The vast majority of the electorate, as a whole, know that Brexit has been a disaster, and the even vaster majority of Labour, Green and Liberal voters know that to be the case. In 2017 it was that coalition that gave Corbyn's Labour a 40% share of the vote, and saw the Labour vote, in every constituency, including those that voted “Leave”, rise dramatically, as against 2015. It took away the Tories parliamentary majority.

In 2024, when Starmer had committed to sticking with Brexit, he was able to get only 34% of the vote, and the lowest number of votes ever for any party winning a general election. In local and regional elections, Blue Labour has been haemorrhaging votes not to the reactionaries of Reform, but to the Greens, Liberals, Plaid and SNP. Continuing the Brexit lie that to win in the “Red Wall” seats requires pandering to the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie and its attendant layers of backward workers will be disastrous. In the main those Reform/Brexit voters were never part of the core Labour vote, and so they could never be “won back”. The describing of the reactionary poor as working-class, is a bourgeois sociological terminology that confuses income and social status with class, and relation to the means of production. The petty-bourgeois traders and self-employed are frequently poorer and more precarious than the majority of wage workers, but that does not make them working-class. It is the basis of their desperate individualism, and often hatred of the organised working-class and its progressivism. They are reactionaries.

Its true that one result of Thatcherism and de-indstrialisation since the 1980's, has been a 50% growth of that reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, and Burnham has pointed to some of the symptoms and consequences of that in the decayed urban centres, and the growth of asset inequality, based on the serial asset price bubbles in property, and financial assets. But, it is a crude opportunism and electoral politics that simply responds to that by chasing after the votes of that petty-bourgeoisie. If its true that, in Makerfield, the composition of the electorate is such that this reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, and its associated layers of urban poor is so large that it outweighs the votes of the working-class and progressive middle-class, then, rather than blaming Streeting, Burnham should blame himself and his advisors for choosing such a seat in which to make their stand.  But, there is no evidence that is the case.  Makerfield, has lower levels of deprivation than the surrounding towns, and higher levels of home ownership with a mostly skilled working-class population.

Its MP, between 1987-2010 was the Blair-right, Iain McCartney.  Given Blair's enthusiastic support for the EU, during all that time, when, by contrast, the Tories were torn apart by their support for Brexit, goaded along by the likes of Farage, there was no indication that the voters in the constituency were put off voting for EU supporting Labour candidates, winning around 60% of the vote in each election.  In 2010 and 2015, McCartneys successor in the seat Helen Fovargue, secured around 50% of the vote, whilst the reactionary nationalists of UKIP/BNP and Tories never got more than a combined 42%.  In 2017, under Corbyn's Labour, as it won over large numbers of young voters, opposed to Brexit, Fovargue secured an increased 60% of the vote, whilst the Brexit Party stood aside for the Tories, who still could only secure 31% of the vote.

Only in 2019, when Corbyn retraced his steps towards backing Brexit did Labour's vote in the seat decline, from that 60% to just 45%.  Another factor, here, was that the Corbyn wave, saw turnout in 2017 rise by 3.6%, whereas, Corbyn's return to Brexitism, in 2019, saw turnout drop by 4.1%, as Labour voters sat on their hands.  In 2024, Simons won the same share of the vote as Fovargue in 2019, but the turnout was down a further, 6.2%, as Labour voters reacted to Starmer's support for Brexit, and his abandonment of even social-democratic positions.  So, despite the same vote share, Simons got 2,000 fewer votes than Fovargue.  The reason was not Labour voters going to the Brexit Party/Reform, but Labour voters staying home, or moving to other progressive parties such as the Greens or Liberals.

The Greens saw their vote rise by 50%, in Makerfield, in 2024 compared to 2019.  The Liberals saw their vote rise by a third.  Reform more than doubled the vote for the Brexit Party, but the reason for that, as elsewhere, was simply that Reform has replaced the Tories.  In 2024, the Tory vote collapsed by 75%, in the constituency, compared to 2019.  Taking that into consideration, the combined reactionary nationalist vote going to Reform/Brexit Party/Tories fell from 21,000 in 2019, to just 17,000 in 2024, which is hardly a ringing endorsement of the argument that the Labour voters of the constituency are abandoning Labour in favour of Reform.

It is far more likely that, this latest weak-kneed, cowardly approach from Burnham, typical of his vacillations over the years, will simply lead to even more Labour voters staying home, or continuing to move to the Greens.

Two Party Politics Is Not Dead, Its In Transition

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.

A Vote For Blue Labour Is A Vote For Reform & Reaction

In the elections, tomorrow, across Britain, a vote for Blue Labour candidates is a vote for petty-bourgeois reactionary politics, but, given that support for Blue Labour has itself collapsed, a vote for Blue Labour candidates is essentially a wasted vote, which will benefit the reactionaries of Farage's Reform company. If we used the same argument that Blue Labour and others have used, in the past, to justify voters supporting them, despite their appalling politics, simply to keep out even worse candidates, then, it would mean actively calling on voters to support Green or Liberal candidates, as well as, in Scotland and Wales, voting for SNP and Plaid candidate, depending on which had the best chance of winning in the given seat.

Socialists should not do so. We should argue for the need for support for socialist politics, socialist candidates, and socialist parties. There is no principled basis for socialists to argue, actively, for a purely passive political gesture of voting for parties or candidates standing on a bourgeois programme, and over whom we have no control, and whose actions, once they are elected, we would only have linked ourselves to. Of course, that is quite different to understanding the revulsion that workers will have towards a petty-bourgeois, reactionary nationalist, Blue Labour party, and wanting to punish it by voting for what appear to be more progressive alternatives, such as Greens, Liberals, Plaid or SNP. Indeed, as Blue Labour has abandoned the working-class and social-democracy, in favour of chasing the support of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, it is not just that these other parties appear, a more progressive alternative. In purely electoral terms, they are more progressive, they are the ones that, today, are the standard bearers of the kind of “Buttskellite” social-democratic consensus, of the post-war period that Labour represented in the past.

A vote for Blue Labour, because of its petty-bourgeois, reactionary politics, is, a vote for that reactionary agenda, just as much as a vote for Reform, or its rump within the Tory Party. But, a vote for Blue Labour in conditions where its support, resulting from reactionary, anti-working-class politics, has collapsed, is, also, given the nature of Britain's corrupt, first-past the post system, designed to benefit just two main parties, effectively a vote for Reform. It splits the anti-Reform vote. That is no reason for socialists to argue for a vote for a “lesser-evil” party/candidate, but it is why we can understand why the working-class, and progressive middle-class will do so.

Blue Labour's establishment clearly understand that that is precisely what they face in the elections tomorrow. Rather than drawing the conclusion that they need to abandon their petty-bourgeois, reactionary politics, and return to, at least, the social-democratic politics they previously championed, or forming the kind of anti-Reform/Tory Popular Front, they argued for when it was a question of others supporting them, they have doubled down on their own reactionary politics and behaviour, essentially forming an alliance with Reform/Tories, to attack the Greens, as the most visible representative of that progressive alternative.

Blue Labour has no self-respect, and so can gain no respect from voters. It has no shame, as it showed in its covert operation “Labour Together”, financed by millionaires, simply to get rid of Corbyn and the social-democratic wing of the party, just as they got rid of the socialist wing of the party in previous decades. Its use of the equation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, to whip up scare stories, and launch a witch hunt inside the party has done serious damage to the actual fight against anti-Semitism, because, it necessarily also, associates the reactionary, nationalism of Zionism with being Jewish. The consequence of that has been shown, when the Zionist state, has engaged in a genocide against the Palestinians, not just in Gaza, but, also, on the West Bank. Blue Labour was forced to become a party of genocide deniers, to continue their support for the Zionist state in Israel, and so to maintain its, “anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism” trope.

So, the total lack of any self-respect by Blue Labour, its willingness to pick up any ready to hand weapon to attack its political opponents, has meant that, as reality bites, and it faces electoral destruction, it has simply picked up that same “anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism” weapon it used to attack the life-long anti-racist Corbyn – and many other life-long anti-racists on a similar basis – now to attack the only Jewish Leader of a political party in Britain, Zack Polanski!!! Not only have they attacked Polanski in the most ludicrous manner, for having retweeted a criticism of the actions of Metropolitan Police in their actions in arresting a mentally-ill man, who had stabbed 3 people – the first of which was a Muslim – 2 of whom were Jews, they have actually accused him of being anti-Semitic! The appalling Trevor Phillips, who was previously suspended from the Labour Party on the basis of claims of Islamophobia, and whose best man at his wedding was Peter Mandelson, the disgraced friend of the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, sank to even lower levels in his interview with Polanski, on his Sunday show on Sky News.

Numerous people have detailed the appalling nature of Phillips' interview with Polanski, but the same kind of attacks have been made on him by Blue Labour, as well as by the Tory media, and other Zionist apologists. One thing that stands out is the way that central to these attacks on Polanski, is that they do not even seem to see the way they take it as read that criticism of the Zionist state amounts to “anti-Semitism”. That was clear in Lewis Goodall's LBC interview with Blue Labour Minister, Heidi Alexander as well as his interview with Tory MP, Helen Whately. In the latter case, Whately, would not even use the same yardstick in relation to calling for a ban on Tommy Robinson's demonstrations as she used in relation to the anti-genocide marches! She seemed incapable of even comprehending the question put to her, basically replying, “Tommy Robinson is not calling for an end to Israel”, and even claiming not to be aware of the speeches made from the stage at the “Unite The Kingdom” rally, which incited violence against British Muslims!

The fact that the cabal that were at the heart of Blue Labour, such as Steve Reed, routinely write in the journals of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, such as The Daily Mail, is symptomatic of the appalling politics of Blue Labour. It was in this noxious, racist rag, which, in the 1930's, supported Hitler, that Reed chose to write his latest hatchet job on Polanski. But, the Mail and Reed are not alone. The vile Zionist apologist, Melanie Phillips has been a blatant genocide denier, even in the face of all the evidence provided by the UN, and by Jewish genocide scholars, as Owen Jones has described. She contributes regularly to The Times, but The Times, in joining in the attacks on Polanski, published a vile “anti-Semitic” cartoon, depicting a clearly hooked nose, Jewish Polanski, kicking the back the two policemen, who were busy, in actuality, tasering and kicking the mentally ill man, they were arresting!

Yet, there has been no condemnation of that clearly “anti-Semitic” Times cartoon, by the likes of Phillips, or by Blue Labour representatives. That failure to criticise a clearly “anti-Semitic” cartoon, in a newspaper, stands in contrast to their attacks on Corbyn for having retweeted a cartoon, he saw on a small phone screen, but which, of course, in later attacks on him, was always flashed up on large TV studio screens! The fact that the Metropolitan Police have got involved in this attack on Polanski, as well as on the anti-genocide marches, shows that its not just Blue Labour that is worried, but that worry is spread across the political establishment as a whole. They are worried that the narrative they have had for the last few years that the challenge to Blue Labour comes from the Right, from Reform, is collapsing. The real challenge is coming from the Left, albeit a very confused and inadequate Left.

In the Denton & Gorton by-election, all of this same witch-hunting and scare mongering of the Greens did not stop Labour losing a seat it has held for decades, and it going to the Greens. The same looks set to happen tomorrow, in English elections, and the establishment is in full panic mode, even at the prospect that mildly progressive, social-democratic parties are on the rise. Why? Social-democracy, after all, is the ideology that arises as the reflection of the social relations created by the rise and dominance of large-scale, socialised industrial capital (imperialism) since the end of the 19th century. It is what formed the basis of the social-democratic consensus of the twentieth century. The reason they are so worried is that, from the 1980's on, the concomitant of that, the separation of the ruling-class into being just a class of parasitic money-lenders, owners of fictitious-capital, has had perverse, and decadent consequences.

There is an inherent contradiction between the interests of interest-bearing capital (fictitious capital) and industrial capital, as Marx set out 150 years ago, and described in Capital III. The former seek to maximise the amount of interest they obtain, and that means less is, then, available as profit of enterprise (essentially retained profits), available for investment (real capital accumulation). In the post-war period, in which there was sustained accumulation of capital, there was also, growing profits, and growing amounts paid as interest/dividends. The ruling-class saw these revenues based on interest/dividends as central. In the period between 1965-1982, however, as I have set out, elsewhere, as capital faced a rising wage share, and falling profit share, resulting in a crisis of overproduction of capital relative to labour, in the 1970's, it could only sustain the expansion by increased borrowing – a falling profit share, in conditions where competition demands continued real investment, inevitably means more borrowing to compensate – and so higher interest rates.

Higher interest rates mean lower asset prices, but, in the same period asset prices, as with commodity prices and nominal profits, were increasingly raised, as a result of central banks inflating the currency supply, ultimately resulting in the high levels of inflation, across the globe of the 1970's and early 1980's. Industrial capital resolved the overproduction of capital relative to labour, in part, by moving industrial production to newly industrialising countries, particularly in Asia. The other solution, as in the past, was a new technological revolution, based on the microchip, which revolutionised production and productivity. The rate of profit rose sharply, and interest rates dropped sharply, causing asset prices to rocket. The ruling-class, increasingly saw these rocketing asset prices as the real basis of their wealth and power, particularly in the old imperialist countries.

But, social-democracy, as the ideology that reflects the interests of large-scale, industrial capital is inimical to that. It requires, that profits be used to finance real capital accumulation, not to be used to simply pay ever higher dividends to shareholders, or to be used to buy up shares so as to inflate share prices and so on. Still less does real industrial capital desire the costs of land or property to be inflated, which means that capital that could have been used productively is consumed unproductively by landowners, and the costs of labour-power are inflated by rising costs of shelter. So, the consequence of the ruling-class of money-lenders now becoming dependent on speculative capital gains, in conditions where the long-wave cycle is causing capital accumulation to rise, and so where the rate of interest is on an upward path, means they must become opponents of social-democracy, not because social-democracy is a threat to capitalism, but because it is a threat to the asset prices, which are the basis of the wealth of the ruling-class, but which are, in themselves, destructive to capitalism!!

The fact that first there was de-industrialisation in western economies from the 1980's onwards, which led to a 50% rise in the size of the petty-bourgeoisie, which is the basis of the electoral support for reactionary ideas such as Brexit, and consequently for Reform, and subsequently, a slower rate of economic growth, as governments sought to hold back wage growth, and rising interest rates, which would cause further asset price crashes, is just a symptom of that. At a time when interest rates were at the lowest levels in 5000 years, in the early 2000's, and yet governments claimed they could not borrow to finance a much needed refurbishment of infrastructure, is illustrative of it. Indeed, in 2008, when despite all of their efforts, wages began to rise, and interest rates rose, the consequence was, indeed, the global financial crash of those asset prices.

It should have been a boon to real capital, as Marx described. A fall in land prices means capital can be used productively rather than to pay inflated prices for land, before it can be used. A fall in share and bond prices does not affect the use-value of all those elements of capital bought with the money borrowed by the issue of those shares and bonds. Lower land and property prices means lower prices for shelter and other wage goods, and so a lower value of labour-power, higher rate of surplus value, and profit, and more profits to invest in real capital accumulation. Lower share and bond prices, means a lower cost of pension provision, likewise. Instead, governments acted not in the interests of real industrial capital, but in the interests of fictitious-capital, of a decadent, parasitic, money-lending ruling class. They inflated asset prices via QE, and they slowed economic expansion by imposing fiscal austerity.

I have also set out, elsewhere, that the interests of the ruling class of money-lenders are served by the removal of the nation state, and its outdated borders. That reduces costs and frictions, thereby increasing profits without requiring additional capital accumulation. It is why the ruling-class oppose Brexit. But, that puts them on the same side as social-democracy, on the same side as the Greens, Liberals, Plaid, SNP and so on, not of the likes of Reform, the Tories or Blue Labour. There is a clear problem for the ruling-class, in that, because they have negligible votes, whilst the petty-bourgeoisie represents around 30% of the population, or about 15 million votes. In the main, that petty-bourgeoisie votes for Reform/Tories, not the johnny-come-lately of Blue Labour. As Blue Labour collapses, the choice becomes one between Reform and Greens/SNP/Plaid. The Liberals have undermined themselves, by failing to campaign vigorously to oppose Brexit, and by being more concerned with losing votes to the Greens.

The establishment is, thereby, seeking to undermine the Greens, because they know that neither the SNP nor Plaid can form a Westminster government. Hence the return to the “anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism” argument to attack Polsanski. A look at the argument used by Blue Labour and the Tory media in that instance is informative. In the past, it has rightly been argued that those who claimed that Jews in Britain who did not actively denounce the genocidal actions of the Zionist regime in Israel, were in some way complicit in its actions, were making an anti-Semitic argument. We do not demand, for example, that all Russian people, living in Britain, actively go out and protest the actions of Putin.

But, in trying to claim that the anti-genocide marches are in some way “hate” marches, Blue Labour, and other Zionist apologists have done the same thing. Every assessment of these demonstrations has shown them to be overwhelmingly peaceful, and anything but “hate” marches. Yet, Blue Labour, and other Zionist apologists have argued that, because a few individuals, or groups, on these marches have been guilty of making anti-Semitic remarks, the whole of the demonstration is to be held accountable for those few individuals! Unless, you go out and actively denounce them, its claimed, you are complicit!! Socialists, of course, would confront anyone on such a march who was making anti-Semitic remarks, but to demand that everyone on the march does so is clearly as ridiculous as claiming that all Jews living in Britain must denounce the actions of Israel, or be complicit in its actions!

The amount of shit being thrown at Polanski and the Greens may have an effect on turning away some of its voters, just as it did against Corbyn in 2019, but the “anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism” argument is losing its efficacy each time it is wheeled out, as seen in Denton and Gorton. Even if it works this time, it will not save Blue Labour. Blue Labour is set to be wiped out in Wales and Scotland, and if it succeeds in reducing the vote for the Greens in England, it will not be to its benefit, but mostly the benefit of Reform.

Greens Rampant, Labour Repugnant

The attempts of the establishment an its media to foster the illusion that Labour was still in with a chance of winning the Gorton & Denton by-election inevitably failed. It was always a two-horse race between Greens and Reform, and increasingly, as I have set out before, that will be the case in coming elections, too. In Scotland and Wales, that will take the form of a two-horse race between SNP and Reform, and Plaid and Reform, respectively. The only question in this by-election was whether Greens or Reform would win, and by how much? In turn, as Reform has, now, peaked that turned on just by how much Labour's vote collapsed.

In the end, it wasn't even close. The Green's secured 40% of the vote, the kind of figure that, in a two-party system, is required to win elections. They won by 4,000 votes, thereby, also cutting off any rational basis for the inevitable attempts to claim that they only won, because of some ballot rigging and shenanigans, or that it was all due to the Greens mobilising some sectarian Muslim vote. Reform, of course, has still tried to do that, digging up some “independent” group that no one had heard of called “Democracy Volunteers”, who, after the vote had ended, claimed they had witnessed instances of “family voting”.

As the professional election officials in Manchester noted, if the “Democracy Volunteers” had witnessed such activity, which is a criminal offence, why did they not draw it to the attention of the responsible officials as it was occurring, including, thereby, the police? Anyone who has worked on polling duty, or who has been a candidate in an election, knows that its highly unlikely, because the officials have to hand ballot papers individually to voters, and are able from their seats to monitor the voting booths, to be able to see if anyone else other than the voter enters them. There will, no doubt, be some further investigation of the claims, but it also invites an investigation into just who the “volunteers” were, who made these belated claims.

The size of the Greens win, however, means that not even Reform have been able to claim that, were they valid, they would change the result. That Reform has still pressed them simply shows them up as bad losers, and more concerned to simply whip up Islamophobic hysteria. They have not been alone, however. Labour, also, as it must have known it was going to lose, looked for excuses and scapegoats. They attacked the Greens for putting out literature in Urdu! In the past, not only has Labour put out its literature in the language of the communities whose votes it was seeking, but so do local councils, and other organisations. If you are serious about wanting to be inclusive, then, why would you not seek to communicate with those communities in their own language, in order to include and integrate them? But, of course, the media, also, fell in with the meme of suggesting that there was something unusual and sinister in such actions.

Labour also showed that its desperation has reached new levels, leading to its politics and methods sinking even further into the sewers. As it saw its strategy and its vote collapse to the Greens, it put out a leaflet from a made up organisation, to claim that the latest polls suggested that only a vote for Labour could beat Reform. Together with sending a van around the streets with a picture of Polanski and Spencer, claiming that they wanted to turn over families daughters to prostitution, they also, put out leaflets claiming that they wanted to lead them into drug addiction by legalising all drugs. That's the same argument used by the old reactionaries to claim that arguing for legalising abortion amounts to encouraging it, or encouraging girls to have sex, and, before that, it was used to argue against sex education, and contraception.

Labour also attacked the Greens for putting out leaflets of Starmer with Modi and Netanyahu. But, if Starmer and his government are proud of their relationships with these vile reactionary nationalist regimes, why would they object to anyone publicising them. Those behind Blue Labour, of course, seemed to have no problem with using similar images of Jeremy Corbyn, standing alongside representatives of Hamas, Hezbollah and so on. Labour, also, seems to have forgotten that it put out election leaflets showing Boris Johnson standing alongside Modi, with an explicit message attached to it.

Labour has sunk to new depths, and to try to cling on, it simply lies each time it opens its mouth. 

As I wrote recently, all this shows is that class remains the basis of political interests and ideas. The petty-bourgeoisie, formerly, provided the core support for the Conservatives, but the Conservative Party, in government, never represented their interests, other than in the sense that the petty-bourgeois, always looked up towards the bourgeoisie, and hoped to join them in due course. The organised working-class always formed the core support for Labour, but it never represented their interests in government, other than in mollifying the worst aspects of their exploitation and oppression, and a continual promise of “jam tomorrow”, based on the idea that the interests of workers was, also, for a successful expansion of capital.

That relationship has not changed, it has simply changed the labels on the parties. The petty-bourgeoisie, hugely increased in numbers, but also driven, since the 1980's, into increased levels of poverty and precarity, lost hope in its interests being pursued by the Conservatives, and so it split away to be transformed into Reform. Blue Labour sought to chase after a mirage. It confused poverty with class seeing the least affluent, most precarious sections of society, the petty-bourgeois, with working-class, which they never were or will be, any more than, in the past, the peasantry were part of the working-class. Their ideas, their interests are and always will be, self-centred, individualistic, and determined by their relation to the means of production, the fact that they own them, but that, given their dwarfish nature, they are always led to the most crude means of being competitive. They are, inimical to the interests of the working-class.

Yet, Blue Labour made the quest for the votes of these reactionary, petty-bourgeois, and their associated layers within the ranks of the lumpen, and backward sections of unorganised workers, the centre of its strategy, if it even merits such a designation. The idea that the vote for Brexit could be equated, in the so called “Red Wall” seats, with the vote of working-class, Labour voters, was always a fallacy. In those seats, the working-class, Labour voters, much as elsewhere, voted overwhelmingly to Remain – around 60-70%. Those areas voted Leave, not because of support from a majority of working-class, Labour voters, but because of a solid vote from that petty-bourgeoisie, including many who usually do not bother to even vote.

By chasing an illusion, and, so, when Farage says “jump”, Starmer has simply asked “how high?”, Labour failed, inevitably, to win the votes of that reactionary petty-bourgeois mass that has never been the base of the Labour vote, and which simply transferred from Tory to Reform, but, also, turned away in their droves, the actual working-class base of Labour support. By even abandoning the mild social-democratic agenda of Labour of the previous 80 years, Starmer's Labour cut off any chance of securing that actual working-class base, seen in the fact that, whilst Corbyn brought much of that support back, in 2017, Blue Labour has dissipated it all.

The only thing that saved Starmer in 2024 was the fact that the rebranding of Toryism into Reform was not complete, so that the petty-bourgeois, Tory/Reform vote was split, allowing Labour to win, with an historically low number of votes, and low share of the votes. That process is now playing out with Labour too. Gorton and Denton shows that the old inertia, together with the efforts of the media to portray Labour as still having hope of winning, enabled it to retain support. But, that illusion has been shattered. It went from winning the seat with more than 50% of the vote (in the past it had 60% of the vote) in 2024, to third place, and its vote share being halved. The fate of the Tories simply shows it the future. The Tories lost their deposit.

In election after election, now, the argument that only Labour can defeat Reform cannot credibly be made. On the contrary, the argument, now, becomes, only the Greens (also read, SNP, Plaid) can defeat Reform, and a vote for Labour is a wasted vote. Reform, much as with Trump in the US, has peaked, as the support for such petty-bourgeois parties always does. But, that does not benefit Labour which has simply attempted to present itself as its pale shadow. It means that, in the period ahead, in elections at least, it will be the Greens that play the role that, in the past, was played by Labour.

Could Labour Drop To Fourth in Gorton & Denton By-Election?

The establishment seem to be apoplectic at the thought that the Greens look set to win the by-election in Gorton and Denton, tomorrow.  On the one hand, we have the far-right wing of the establishment such as The Daily Mail, which has followed Trump down the rabbit hole of absurdity, and is now claiming ridiculously, on its front page that the Greens are going to offer illegal migrants a free house.  The claims of the Mail, are an hysterical extension of its long-standing racist lies about preferential treatment for immigrants, going back decades, as it now fears that, not only are the Greens going to beat Labour,, but are set to, also, beat Reform

On the other hand, we have the centrist elements of the establishment, similarly concerned that the Greens might beat Labour from its Left, and might, also beat Reform.  The centrists have no desire for a Reform victory, but they certainly would prefer it over a win for the Greens.  For the last 6 years, Starmer has tagged along behind first the Tories, and, then, their reincarnation as Reform, in a continual ratchet to the reactionary, nationalist Right.  The narrative was created that Reform could only be defeated by Labour, despite the fact that voters were presented with just different shades of reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalism and the prospect of increasing attacks on workers' living standards and rights, following Brexit, and attempts to distract them by the usual appeals to rally around the flag on the basis of ridiculous claims about imminent invasion.

A win for the Greens shatters that narrative, and what scares the establishment is that its quite clear that with the Conservatives now destroyed, Labour is headed to the same fate.  The race in Gorton and Denton, formerly a rock solid Labour seat, is solely between Reform and The Greens.  The question is only which of these two parties come out on top, and how badly Labour does, further down the ballot.  Labour further destroyed its chances by blocking Burnhan from standing, in the interests, purely of Starmer's Blue Labour faction, which has wrecked the party, and, is now, reaping the consequences, as it loses its grip.  The same factionalism and cronyism has led to the current scandals around Epstein and Mandelson, which look set to gradually draw in all of those that were a part of that Mandelson cabal.

What the establishment and pundits have failed to recognise is that class based politics, continues to dominate, and to determine voting.  The reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, which, as a class was the bedrock of the Tories/Conservatives has simply shifted to Reform, which is nothing more than a rebranding of the Tories.  The aspiring, professional middle-class fraction of Conservative support, which was the support base of the social-democratic wing of the party, typified by the likes of Heath, Heseltine and Clarke (the Wets) and, consequently, of the interests of large-scale capital, and the EU, has moved to its rational home in the Liberals.  As Blue Labour has abandoned even that kind of conservative, social-democracy, it is unable to attract either those sections of the middle-class, in the way Blair did, or to attract the working-class, on the back of a pursuit of progressive social-democracy, as it did under Attlee, Wilson/Callaghan, or Corbyn.  That working-class/middle-class vote has now gone to the Greens.

According to numerous reports, local Labour activists in Gorton and Denton have already acknowledge that reality, and given up.  Why on Earth, would any rational Labour activist waste their time trudging the streets to advocate a vote for someone and something that the vast majority of them, also, do not support.  Its not like in the past, when activists might do that to support a given candidate, using the contact with voters to, set out their own disagreements with the leadership, and encourage the to join the party, and assist in a struggle to transform it, as for example, we did with the Socialist Campaign for A Labour Victory, in 1979.  Today, Starmer's Bonapartist Blue Labour regime has prevented any such struggle within the party, as seen with the mass expulsions, the imposition from above of candidates, and the blocking of Burnham.  No amount of high profile flying visits to the seat will change that reality, as they try to shore up an illusion.

The progressive working-class vote in the constituency has already moved to the Greens, and all those former Labour voters, can, now, see that to beat Reform the Greens offer the only hope.  They look set to fulfil that hope, which is why the establishment in both its far-right and centrist factions have united to try to stop the Greens.  Labour, has tried to attack the Greens from the opposite direction, with its own sets of lies.  Rather than joining in with the racist lies of the Daily Mail, about Greens giving free houses to illegal migrants and so on, Labour instead have focussed on The Greens opposition to the genocide being committed by the Zionist regime against Palestinians.  Its not that Blue Labour has not mimicked the racist policies of Reform, the Tories and the Mail, but that they know that, in this seat, echoing those particular lies would be likely to lose it even more votes.

And, despite the fact that Polansky is himself Jewish, Blue Labour think that with their ridiculous attacks on his opposition to the genocide, a genocide that Starmer and Blue Labour has denied exists, and which they have armed and supported, they will turn some of those voters against the Greens in that constituency.  No doubt they have blindly looked back to the former Labour MP for Manchester, Gerald Kaufman, but, had they looked more closely, they would have seen that Kaufman was, also, a critic of the kind of politics that the Zionist regime has been undertaking.

Blue Labour has destroyed the Labour Party, much as the same petty-bourgeois nationalists have destroyed the Conservative Party.  In the latter case they have emerged like the monster on Alien, out of the stomach of the Conservatives, now, as Reform, that reality shown by the number of Tory MP's like Jenrick, Jenkyns and so on that now, litter its ranks.  At some point, the same is likely to be true with Blue Labour, as, having destroyed Labour, those elements also, join Reform.  A look at the journey travelled by many of those associated with the likes of Glassman, in the ranks of Spiked Online, shows how easily that is done.

So, the banner of social-democracy has now fallen, by default, into the hands of the Greens, or, in Scotland and Wales, the SNP and Plaid.  To beat Reform, the working-class, and progressive, professional middle-class, now, rationally, have only those parties as a means of doing, so in elections.  In places, the Liberals may, also, offer a similar alternative.  The tragedy, once again, is that socialists have not risen to the task of filling that void.  The labour vote in Gorton has collapsed, and the beneficiaries are the Greens.  To defeat Reform, it will need to collapse completely.  Given the reactionary, anti-working-class nature of Blue Labour, that should not be hard to envisage, and the question now is, will Labour even be able to muster enough votes to beat the Liberals into third place.