A new, global pandemic is spreading at a rapid rate. Rest assured it’s nothing to do with the flu, Covid or respiratory bugs but it’s just as deadly, probably more so. This particular deadly virus is about political system failure, with all that can lead to.
The UK has just joined the pandemic which this week alone saw the collapse of the French government and an attempted coup by South Korea’s president. In the United States, Donald Trump is weeks away from a second presidency. He will attempt to destroy the constitution, arrest his enemies and use the military to deport millions of undocumented migrants.
Meanwhile, the German government, which recently fell apart, lives in fear of the neo-fascists AfD breaking through at the coming elections. Georgia’s pro-Moscow regime, which stole the recent elections, is waging war on its own people on the streets while Romania’s political system faces down Putin’s covert destabilisation. In Syria, dictator Assad’s forces are being routed.
Also this week, Keir Starmer staged a relaunch of his government’s priorities and targets just five months after winning a general election… and then immediately setting out his government’s priorities and targets. Why? Because after winning a “loveless landslide” with the support of just one in four of the electorate, his government is adrift.
Yet this is much more than a bout of unpopularity, which Labour is definitely enduring. One poll even puts them behind the Tories and Reform. Ending the winter fuel allowance while taking freebies galore, standing by the far-right Israeli government, allowing rail and energy prices to rise, while reversing their own green policies, makes it a conservative government with a small C.
However, this is only the surface of the new pandemic of political instability and crisis. What is common is the inability of the state to address the most pressing of issues – gross inequality, falling living standards, housing need, climate breakdown, corruption and international peace, to name just a few.
The state, the institutions of power, which the government of the day directs, has its origins in an earlier period of capitalism in the 19th century. It eventually took on functions like education, housing and social welfare to ensure a continuing supply of labour.
That was then. After surviving two world wars, the capitalist type of state managed the international economy in a kind of class compromise until the post-1945 arrangements collapsed in the early 1970s. The last 50 years have seen the emergence of a global, digitally-driven financial system and economic power under the control of a handful of giant corporations.
Today, the capitalist state facilitates the workings of the neoliberal economy as its priority, introducing the market into social provision where it can. So Starmer’s “plan for change” launched with much fanfare at Pinewood film studios, acknowledges that the mantra of economic growth – not much in evidence since the financial meltdown of 2008 – will depend upon a working partnership between the state and the corporate sector.
However, the corporations are not much bothered about providing the wherewithal for a Starmer government. Their priority is shareholder value and dividends, paying as little tax as possible along the way. Rather than address the fundamental nature of capitalism – why would Starmer do that? – he turned on the state itself as the problem.
He berated the civil service for standing in the way of “successful delivery”, adding: “Too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline… across Whitehall and Westminster that’s been internalised as ‘don’t say anything’, ‘don’t try anything too ambitious’, ‘set targets that will happen anyway’.”
Yet even his own councillors have rejected the ‘target’ of 1.5 million new homes in the next five years as unrealistic. That would require an impossibly large investment programme by housebuilders, the ripping up of planning regulations and development on greenbelt.
Yvonne Gagen, the Labour leader of West Lancashire borough council, said the current target for her council was 166 new homes per year, and the new target was 605. That was “unrealistic”. She added: “I feel that we are going to be on a collision course with Labour. And it’s not just Labour councils. It’s Liberal Democrats, it’s Conservatives, they’ve all said the same thing.”
Of course, the resources are available to solve the housing crisis and other challenges like adult social care provision. It just happens that they are in private hands, deployed for profit. This is the untouchable. So, while train passenger companies will go back into state ownership, fares will continue to rise. The three companies that own and lease the rail rolling stock are excluded. Porterbrook, Eversholt and Angel have seen their profits treble, with more than £400m paid in dividends in 2022-23. Profit margins rose to 41.6%.
As people switch off voting, representative democracy is threatened by ultra-populists like Nigel Farage. There are reports that a $100 million donation to Reform from Elon Musk is on its way. That would enable Reform to challenge the mainstream parties for power when Labour under Starmer fails, as it surely will do.
That’s what we need to prepare for now rather than later. A wholesale transformation of state power is essential for social progress. That would be the first step towards liberating resources from the grip of corporations, landowners, banks and assorted capitalist concerns.
Popular Assemblies can facilitate this much-needed transition beyond the neoliberal state, drafting, for example, a new, democratic constitution that prohibits the exploitation of people and resources for profit. To sit back and wait for a non-existent pendulum to swing our way is too dangerous for words.
Its better to start from the bottom maybe. A government of national unity would be dominated by the current parties. Popular assemblies,on the other hand, initially in local areas, tend to arise semi-spontaneously in moments of great upheaval (eg Hungary 1956, and numerous other occasions through history). They do represent the people. Why wait for that moment? It is coming, for sure. Why not begin to set up these kind of assemblies now? With the collapse of public services, and increasing poverty, low wages, threat of war etc. there are plenty of reasons for sustaining them now, and for setting the scene for a new national debate for the transformation of society….in preparation.
There’s little hope when the media owning money men are intent on state capture and the ordinary person feels disempowered and disengages completely.
We can’t just petition, protest and vent our frustration in our social media bubbles. We have to develop a narrative in a political movement that has national and international peace, justice and co-operation at its heart to transform our democracies into something much more robust, inclusive, accountable and not subject to being undermined by those with autocratic tendencies.
How? Dunno.
Starting a new party is massively ambitious and idealistic, but I feel the forces at work that are polarising us and driving us into factions are winning and that an appeal must be made to form a government of national unity at all times, where co-operation and compromise is expected rather than a duty to oppose.
Well articulated Paul. We may disagree (agreeably) on what a new democracy might look like but however good the ideas and there are many floating around on the Democracy Network, a major problem is how to transition to a real democracy? Virtually zero progress so far!
Thanks Evan. Yes, the transition is the biggest challenge of all. There’s no road map that we can follow, so exploring how a transfer of power happens is vital. A real democracy will imo require a dismantling of the present state system. A network of Assemblies would amount to dual power and the opportunity to make the transition we agree is the goal.
Yes, system failure all round. Farage and co will also fail if they get into power–on the economic front that is–since the last thing they want is any transfer of power away from the corporations and billionaires. As part of the established order, they are the last line of defence of the system. They also stand for transformation, away from democracy towards dictatorship….