Will abandoning left-wing voters backfire for Keir Starmer?

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Original article by Paul Rogers republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence

Labour leader’s reluctance to differ from Tories on policy or Gaza sets stage for progressive independent candidates

Keir Starmer has moved Labour to the right – leaving left-wing voters without a political home  | Belinda Jiao/Getty Images

Almost all of Britain’s pollsters agree: the Labour Party is heading for a massive victory in this year’s general election, while Rishi Sunak’s Tories are set for a historic defeat. But there is another, far less talked about shift underway, which could see a wave of independent left-wing MPs elected.

Most polling firms expect Labour to win a majority of more than a hundred seats. A ‘poll of polls’ by political forecasting website Electoral Calculus suggests the party is on course for a 200+ majority.

These polls could all be wrong, but little seems to shake them. There is some evidence, though, of another trend that is yet to be reflected in the polls: Keir Starmer’s unwillingness to set out any clear policy differences from the Conservatives may be backfiring.

One area likely to cause the Labour leader trouble is his position – or lack thereof – on Israel’s war on Gaza.

Several polls in recent months have indicated that around 70% of people in the UK want an immediate ceasefire, and there are weekly demonstrations in towns and cities across the country in support of Palestinians. Organisers of a march in London last week estimated that up to 400,000 people had gathered to demand an end to the violence.

These protests receive minimal coverage in the mainstream media, bar senior Conservatives labelling the peaceful crowds as ‘hate mobs’. The government maintains strong support for Israel, continuing to sell arms and share intelligence with the country, as well as allowing it to use RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus as a support base – a position Labour has largely agreed with.

This leaves a huge gap in political representation, at least from the biggest two parties, for swathes of people nationwide.

It was in this opening that former Labour MP George Galloway – who was kicked out of the party in the 2000s after objecting to the UK entering the Iraq war – was elected as an independent MP for Rochdale last month, following a campaign that centred the need for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Another gap in political representation has been created by Starmer’s remodelling of the Labour Party, which has been sanitised to ensure it poses little or no threat to the political establishment. The majority of his policies so far appear to be a continuation of the status quo, suggesting little will change if the party wins the forthcoming election.

In contrast, so bold and progressive were the policies of his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, that the higher echelons of the Labour Party and the wider political and media establishment were determined to get rid of him from the offset.

A leadership challenge was mounted against him in the summer of 2016, little over a year after he was elected the party’s leader. Corbyn won comfortably – a fact I found unsurprising, having seen first-hand how he could pull a crowd of more than a thousand people to a hurriedly arranged event half a mile from a city centre.

Internal party opposition to Corbyn surged following his re-election, again backed by the mainstream media. When then Tory prime minister Theresa May called an election in 2017, many anticipated she would win a landslide victory that would consign ‘Corbynism’ to the outer margins.

Instead, Corbyn and his Labour manifesto struck a chord with many voters. Labour gains resulted in a hung parliament, to the horror of the political establishment, which worked to eliminate this threat from the left over the following two years.

After Labour lost the 2019 general election, Corbyn resigned and Starmer moved the party rightwards – prompting tens of thousands of its members to desert it as a result. Their votes are now up for grabs, and left-wing independents are hoping to win them.

Take a meeting in London just last weekend, scarcely reported on except by socialist paper The Morning Star. Two hundred of Labour’s former parliamentary candidates, councillors and supporters gathered to develop an alternative to its current stance on Gaza and other issues.

A sense of the mood at the event was best summed up by Tyneside’s independent socialist mayor Jamie Driscoll, who quit Labour after the party decided not to select him to run again for the north-east mayoral election in May.

In a video message played at the meeting, Driscoll said: “In the next election, both parties will have the same manifesto and the same rich donors pulling the strings.”

similar event is planned in Blackburn next month – just one part of a much wider movement that will likely see independent left-wing candidates standing against Labour candidates in many seats in the general election.

This is already being seen in England’s upcoming local council elections, where clusters of non-party, progressive candidates are working together in many parts of the country. In Blackburn, for example, every ward will have an independent left-wing candidate standing, as will all six wards in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. Early indications suggest similar trends in Merseyside and parts of London.

The accepted political wisdom in the UK is that once a general election is called, voters tend to revert to the usual pattern of voting. But if independent candidates were to pick up substantial numbers of votes in the local elections, even taking some council seats, it could indicate a political shift that means this wisdom will not apply this year.

This may seem unlikely but there is undeniably a political vacuum waiting to be filled – and a sense that something is afoot in British politics that is simply not being recognised.

Original article by Paul Rogers republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence

Status Quo, again and again and again and again
Continue ReadingWill abandoning left-wing voters backfire for Keir Starmer?

Labour’s public-private plans are just a return to the dreaded PFI era

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labours-public-private-plans-are-just-return-dreaded-pfi-era

Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves in the shadow of Tony Bliar.

SOLOMON HUGHES warns Reeves’s proposed national wealth fund hands City financiers control over billions in public money for big business — and we get… to pay!

HOW will Keir Starmer’s Labour try to “grow the economy?” The short answer is it is going to try to use public money to persuade international investors to put cash into “growth” industries.

It’s the return of the public-private partnership. The big danger is that, like Labour’s last public-private partnership, the private corporations will get all the growth, while the public sector gets ripped off.

The main economy-grower Starmer is promoting is Rachel Reeves’s proposed national wealth fund. It will invest in key industries like “green energy” and other modern manufacturing sectors.

There is a strong Labour case to run a national bank investing in key industries: the 1945 Labour government set up two such banks, the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation and the Finance Corporation for Industry, which lent growth capital to small- and medium-sized industries or larger manufacturing firms respectively.

Labour argued that the City avoided investing in these crucial sectors, exacerbating the 1930s Depression. Both government-founded investment funds were very successful. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour proposed similar publicly owned national investment banks.

But Reeves’s plan makes public money subordinate to private investment. She told the last Labour conference: “For every pound of investment we put in, we will leverage in three times as much private investment.”

Labour plans to invest £7.3 billion in the fund, and so attract around £22bn private “co-investment.” Reeves says private money will be attracted because the government cash will be “encouraging and derisking investment” from international finance: investors will assume that if the government has a stake in, say, a car battery factory, that it is a “sure thing” and won’t be allowed to go bust or lose money for shareholders.

But what happens if the publicly backed investments hit trouble? Say the car batteries come out too expensive, reducing profits, or need extra investment to fix production problems — will the private investors insist that the public investor take the losses? And if the profits are bigger than expected, will both parties benefit equally?

There are some major signs Reeves’s deals will favour the big private investors. First, because it is putting in more of the money, they can call more of the shots. This is not really a national wealth fund because most of the money will not be national.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labours-public-private-plans-are-just-return-dreaded-pfi-era

Continue ReadingLabour’s public-private plans are just a return to the dreaded PFI era

Morning Star: Politicians can’t be trusted on racism: we must build from the bottom up

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-politicians-cant-be-trusted-racism-we-must-build-bottom

People take part in the Resist Racism Scotland rally in George Square, Glasgow, organised by Stand Up To Racism and the STUC, March 18, 2023

You will not find Gove, or Sunak, or for that matter Keir Starmer, on this weekend’s anti-racist marches. For them racism is an accusation to be deployed cynically for factional advantage, not an evil to be confronted through standing in solidarity with its victims.

So Starmer can condemn the Tories for permitting racist abuse of Diane Abbott, while ignoring a leaked report into Labour officials’ racism including multiple instances directed at her, and blandly brief that “disciplinary processes take time” when challenged over her ongoing suspension as a Labour MP — though 10 months in, we know the party hasn’t even spoken to her. Some investigation.

So Sunak can retort with another attack on the left — repeating the lie that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership tolerated anti-semitism — a jibe eagerly accepted by Starmer.

These people cannot be trusted to oppose racism. Even their performative anti-racism is often racist (as in the insinuation that Muslims are a threat to Jews, or Labour’s disproportionate crackdown on Jewish anti-zionists).

They are the “forces at home trying to tear us apart.” They do so because nothing scares them more than people power: than a mass movement for peace that challenges British imperialism, today, as for centuries, one of the main drivers of racism.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-politicians-cant-be-trusted-racism-we-must-build-bottom

Continue ReadingMorning Star: Politicians can’t be trusted on racism: we must build from the bottom up

Hey Michael Gove, I’ve got 2 extremist groups for you

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You want groups that fit this definition: “Extremism is the promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance, that aims to: 1 negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others; or 2 undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights; or 3 intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve the results in (1) or (2).” source: UK ministers and officials to be banned from contact with groups labelled extremist.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claims “There is a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule. And we’ve got to collectively, all of us, change that urgently." Sunak is recognised as a war criminal due to his complicity in genocide.
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claims “There is a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule. And we’ve got to collectively, all of us, change that urgently.” Sunak is recognised as a war criminal due to his complicity in genocide.

The UK Conservative Party and the UK Labour party certainly meet this definition. Promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance.

Where shall I start? Both the Conservative and Labour party promote and advance Zionism, an ideology based on violence, hatred and intolerance that also meets the secondary condition 1. (aims to) negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others. Many rights are denied: the right to life and the right to be free from degrading or inhuman treatment. The Conservative and Labour parties are complicit in genocide, I’m not sure that you can get more extremist than that.

Then there’s the persecution of Julian Assange. That’s the advancement of an ideology based on intolerance aiming to deny Assanges fundamental rights and freedoms. That’s both the Conservative party and UK’s Labour party again. There are strong indicators that the Labour party’s Keir Starmer was directly involved in Assange’s early persecution.

Response to Rishi Sunak's extremism speech at Downing Street 1 March 2024.
Response to Rishi Sunak’s extremism speech at Downing Street 1 March 2024.

Here’s the leader of the Conservative party, Rishi Sunak. He’s pictured giving an extremist speech trying to undermine democracy and democratic rights e.g. the democratic right to protest, on 1 March 2024. He also involved in mob rule – he rules for a small group of very wealthy, nasty people – some of them tax avoiders and newspaper owners. Anyway Michael, I expect that you’ll be hearing more from me about these extremist groups, there’s plenty more to their extremism.

Continue ReadingHey Michael Gove, I’ve got 2 extremist groups for you

The system won’t change, we have to change the system.

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dizzy: I’m speaking for myself only.

Politics has failed to address the climate crisis in any meaningful way. Our contemporary politics which I regard as a plutocracy as opposed to a democracy – meaning that it serves a small elite of incredibly rich and powerful people – cannot address the climate crisis because it is serving the climate-destroying plutocrats. Since the system won’t change, we have to change the system. There’s no ifs or buts about this – climate records are getting broken month by month and in the summer it will be back to breaking climate records day by day. Our politics have absolutely failed to address this so we have to change our politics. It’s not a big deal – politicians need to start serving the electorate instead of the rich and powerful.

Continue ReadingThe system won’t change, we have to change the system.

Morning Star: Rishi Sunak must answer for the abuse endured by Diane Abbott — but so must Keir Starmer

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/e/sunak-and-starmer-must-answer-abuse-abbott

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer (left) and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak walk through the Peer’s Lobby at the Palace of Westminster ahead of the State Opening of Parliament in the House of Lords, London, November 6, 2023

THE sickening racist abuse directed at Diane Abbott by top Tory donor Frank Hester represents a challenge to the leaders of both the major political parties.

Hester, who has given the Conservative Party £10 million over the last year, told a meeting in 2019 that looking at the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington made him “want to hate all black women” and added for good measure that Abbott “should be shot.”

Such remarks should be enough to immediately terminate anybody’s involvement in public life, and they may indeed constitute a criminal offence.

Hester was speaking, remember, just three years after a Labour MP, Jo Cox, was indeed shot to death by a far-right fanatic.

Everyone should first of all send their unqualified solidarity to Abbott, long the victim of more racist and misogynistic abuse than any other MP.

Racism is a bipartisan problem. And it is reinforced by Starmer’s own treatment of Abbott.

She has been suspended from the Labour whip in Parliament for nearly a year now. Her offence was to write a newspaper letter suggesting Jewish people, among others, had not suffered from racism.

Her letter was clearly wrong and she immediately and fulsomely apologised for it. Since then her case has been “under investigation.”

Yet it is unclear what there is to investigate. There can be no possible reason for leaving her in political suspense for such a protracted period over what is a fairly straightforward issue.

The reason for this procrastination is obvious: because Abbott has spent her life on the left of the Labour Party, and served in senior roles under Jeremy Corbyn, he wants rid of her.

If she remains whipless when the next general election is called then she will be unable to stand as a Labour candidate, allowing some gormless Starmerite or other to be imposed on Hackney North.

Abbott is Britain’s first black woman MP, and its longest-serving black MP too. For her to be treated like this ought to be a source of national shame.

It is past time that the phoney “investigation” into her was terminated and the whip restored.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/e/sunak-and-starmer-must-answer-abuse-abbott

Continue ReadingMorning Star: Rishi Sunak must answer for the abuse endured by Diane Abbott — but so must Keir Starmer

Keir Starmer will continue austerity. That means keeping vulnerable people in ‘brutalising poverty’

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https://www.bigissue.com/opinion/keir-starmer-austerity-u-turn-labour-poverty-suffering/

Keir Starmer sucking up to the rich and powerful at World Economic Forum, Davos.
Keir Starmer sucking up to the rich and powerful at World Economic Forum, Davos.

Beyond each Labour U-turn is a well of suffering and poverty that has no justifiable reason to exist, says trade union case worker Kasmira Kincaid

Our politicians invariably speak of “fiscal responsibility”; of “balancing the budget” and “living within our means”. The Keir Starmer of today – as opposed to the Keir Starmer who was elected to lead the Labour Party in 2020 – is no different. But these words just serve to obscure the obscenity of what is actually being said: that we can’t afford to feed the poor, to house the homeless, and to allow people to live in dignity and comfort.

But the thing is we can. We know we can. We know it when we see government funds used to drop bombs on foreign countries. We know it when we see sweeping tax cuts to the wealthy, and tax evaders let off the hook. And we know it when we walk past empty tower blocks, full of investment properties, while homeless people die on the streets.

It’s a supreme form of gaslighting to suggest otherwise, asking us to deny the evidence of our senses and experiences. Making sure everyone gets what they need is a logistical challenge, for sure. But there is enough to make sure everyone gets what they need.

As a new Labour government comes to feel inevitable, many of us are taking stock of what such a government would mean. Over the last four years, Keir Starmer has U-turned on practically every anti-austerity policy in his 2020 leadership bid: from abolishing universal credit and what he once called “the Tories’ cruel sanctions regime”; to scrapping work capability assessments and the two-child limit on benefits; to re-nationalising key public services.

Today I live a life where few of these policies would directly affect me. Yet I haven’t forgotten what it felt like to be in the firing line for government decisions. The material conditions of people’s lives should be the beginning and end of politics. As we voice our opposition to continued austerity we’d do well to remember that. To remember that beyond each of these U-turns is a well of human suffering that has no justifiable reason to exist.

Kasmira Kincaid is a trade union case worker and former benefits claimant.

https://www.bigissue.com/opinion/keir-starmer-austerity-u-turn-labour-poverty-suffering/

Image of cash and pre-payment meter key
Image of cash and pre-payment meter key
Continue ReadingKeir Starmer will continue austerity. That means keeping vulnerable people in ‘brutalising poverty’

Hunt gambles on tax as services crumble

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/hunt-gambles-tax-services-crumble

Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt leaves 11 Downing Street, London, with his ministerial box before delivering his Budget in the Houses of Parliament, March 6, 2024.

PUBLIC services are at still greater risk as Chancellor Jeremy Hunt gambled the Tories’ election hopes on a last-ditch tax-cutting Budget.

Mr Hunt announced a 2 per cent cut in National Insurance in a bid to put more money in workers’ pockets before Britain goes to the polls later this year.

But the price will be a major squeeze in public spending in the next parliament, with many department budgets likely to fall in real terms.

The Chancellor also abolished the non-dom tax rule which lets the wealthiest avoid paying taxes on overseas earnings, a key Labour pledge, and brought more families within the scope of child benefit payments.

The Budget therefore leaves Labour more politically denuded than ever — it will either have to find other ways to raise the money it had planned for public services from scrapping the non-dom loophole, or more likely drop residual spending commitments altogether.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer told MPs that Labour supported the National Insurance cut too, leaving the parties exchanging rhetorical sound and fury on economic policy but with no significant differences.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/hunt-gambles-tax-services-crumble

Continue ReadingHunt gambles on tax as services crumble