If you require any further proof that the political system is broken, you need look no further than the performance of the Labour government since it won the July general election.
Keir Starmer’s government is totally lacking in imagination and, you could also say, politics in any meaningful sense. It is there simply to manage the status quo – aka capitalism – and is not much good at that either.
Even when it comes to free gifts and donations, Starmer and his ministers are simply concerned about how they look in new outfits paid for by donors or whether they can get hard-to-come-by tickets for Taylor Swift concerts for their families.
Lord Alli, the media entrepreneur ennobled by the New Labour government of Tony Blair, made sure that Starmer looked the part as CEO of UK PLC with his clothes “allowance”. Another “allowance” ‒ the winter fuel payment for older people was, meanwhile, unceremoniously axed almost as soon as Labour was elected.
This led to the astonishing claim by the leader of the Commons, Lucy Powell, that the ending of the fuel payment was necessary to prevent a run on the pound!
The irony is not lost on voters who wanted a change for the better after 14 miserable years of Tory austerity. A recent poll put Starmer’s standing below that of the outgoing Tory leader and below-the-radar PM, Rishi Sunak.
Labour’s overwhelming majority is, as we know, built on sand. Under Starmer, the party won the election with 411 seats and just 34% of the vote across the UK. Labour received a lower vote share than any party forming a post–war majority government. Turnout was 59.7%, down from 67.3% in 2019.
Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist Reform won more than 4 million votes and came second in 98 seats, of which 89 were won by Labour. Such is the fragility of Labour’s base that it wouldn’t take a huge swing to wipe out their majority.
Who makes donations to politicians no strings attached? What is the quid pro quo? Here’s one example. Quadrature Capital Limited, a hedge-fund that invests in arms and fossil fuels that is based in the Cayman Islands tax haven, recently donated £4m to Labour. The hedge fund’s climate advisory board co-chair has been appointed Labour’s new climate envoy. No comment.
Whereas Blair’s government was unashamedly neoliberal in its outlook, deregulating financial services at pace and creating markets in higher education and running the NHS like a business, Starmer believes he can use the power of the state to give the dormant economy a boost.
That’s simply not going to work due to the fact that the contemporary state is a market state. The period when state intervention could engineer an economic boom was last seen in the 1960s.
With an increasingly unrepresentative political system, and now led by a government without any kind of vision or strategy, there is an urgent need to prevent the far right from filling the vacuum.
So, if you haven’t yet registered for our Assemblies: the way forward event on Wednesday, October 2, this is your opportunity to do so.
There’s a great line-up and a chance to speak to others in a break-out session. To whet your appetite, two of the panel have written articles about assemblies. Dru Haynes, chair of the Citizens’ Assembly South Tyneside, has written about the absence of democracy in her area while Rich Wilson, CEO of the Iswe Foundation, raises the issue of power in his article.