Keir Starmer delivers his speech to the Labour Party conference today. It might be an absolute barnstormer. Even if it is it would be hard to imagine it would change the perception of the Labour conference as a whole. That perception is of a party still heavily divided and not yet ready for power.
In fairness, Labour is opposing a party that managed its divisions by sacking around twenty MPs in 2019 and by effectively alienating anyone who was either a Conservative or Unionist within it. But it did manage to package its own failings better than Labour and that won it the right to deliver mayhem to the country.
In the absence of proportional representation - which might bring the accountability neither of these parties desires - they represent the choice of next government, three things apart.
The first is that by some chance a great many Tories are ejected by their constituents in those seats where the LibDems are second and the rule of ABC - anything but Conservative - is followed even though there is no agreement by politicians to work in alliance. I am not wildly excited by a LibDem in the seat where I live, but that would be better than a Tory by far, so long as we never again get a Conservative / LibDem government, which is a risk to be accepted.
Second, I am assuming we get free elections. Given the Tory attempts to rig the electoral system by removing large numbers from the electoral role there are real doubts about that. Like the Republicans in the USA, the Tories appear to be dedicated to taking the choice out of democracy. The possibility of an alternative to their rule is something they no longer appear willing to countenance, and the chance that every abuse under the sun, including litigious challenges to election results that they do not like, now seems a very real possibility here, just as we have already seen in the US.
Third? We actually do get a progressive alliance. In other words, we see the non-Tory parties align for the purpose of saving democracy itself. The price may be independence referenda. It could be the UK itself as a result. It might also be the end for House of Lords and first past the post. But the aim would be that people actually get a say, and have a chance of being represented by those they might want in office in governments that represent the place where they live. Democracy remains a possibility in other words.
Will that happen? Keir Starmer has shown he has no desire for it this week, although his membership is overwhelmingly in favour. It would seem that those currently in parliament might be the greatest obstacles to parliamentary democracy. And that is a toxic situation that feels profoundly unstable in the long term.
We have a choice. Keir Starmer probably won't mention it today. But the choice is about the threats to democracy within our society. That it may not be his priority is what is really worrying.
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It isn’t just Starmer and Labour. The pattern is matched by Sturgeon and the SNP. It is just how things are in the UK; the unacceptable is accommodated, the threat is not addressed, the desirable is postponed. You might look at their determined effort to deflate hopes and think Change is their bigger threat. I do not understand this response to Johnson’s government.
Please don’t lump our Government, S.N.P/Green, in with your assessment of the current Labour Party Rob. They are in no way comparable, as the rest of the present U.K are about to find out, if they haven’t realised already.
I would gladly be wrong, I do hope you are right. Certainly, when it comes to internal party coherence, I think you are right, and at formal questions, Nicola Sturgeon is infinitely superior to Keir Starmer. That said, while Labour has found internal strife to hobble its progress, The SNP has completely outplayed its internal awkward squad and found strife with the wider independence movement. The shushing and othering have been difficult to bear. Perhaps it’s the constant negative message from the MSM getting to me, but it feels like I’ve been waiting for them to show their mettle since the Brexit referendum.
Judging by the events at Brighton over the last few days, I don’t think Kier is that interested in representative democracy.
“Starmer will promise a Labour government will make mental health treatment available to everyone who needs it within a month”
So let me get this straight.
In the midst of multiple crises over a decade and more that our government has been mismanaging, the Great Knight Dope is shilling to us that what WE are the problem and all in need of urgent mental medical attention.
Isn’t that a classic definition of gas lighting?
Apparently he wants to form a government, not to actually do the things that would stop the causes of depression. Just add to them. Can someone please mount a challenge to him?
They’d be kicked out of the Party the moment they opened their mouth. Unless they were even more right wing than he is.
As, I think it was Truman said to the effect, if you give voters a choice between real Republicans and Democrats pushing Republican policies, people are going to vote for the real thing. I am solid Labour but would never vote for Starmer, you might as well have real Tories as Labour in Tory clothes, a horrendous prospect either way.
I’ve tweeted this essay to journalists, politicians, Archbishop, academics asking “Why should we not believe our elective dictatorship of a government aims to empower oligarchy over democracy?” None have replied to say I’m plain daft, nor to give a reasoned answer. Many, many people have retweeted & liked my contribution.
The Con Party is hell bent on this grim, misanthropic Buchanan/Koch/Mt Pelerin Society ideology – that is at the root of Earth’s ecosystems existential crises
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america
Labour is hanging on for dear life to the current electoral system. Some in Labour still seem to think that it is a 2-party system. Those days are long gone. I fear that it will probably take a couple more election defeats with each time the Tories basking in the glory of large FPTP seat majorities on the back of about 30%, mostly middle England support. Democracy is effectively dead in the UK, especially England. It will get worse if Scotland eventually does the right thing for them and choose independence. The Scots must surely know by now that the Tories don’t care about them. All they care about is the illusion of what’s left of an empire.
The elected Tory dictatorship is so entrenched that despite everything that is going on right now, the official opposition are afraid to come up with anything radical because they know they will struggle to win middle England FPTP seats with that agenda, especially once the largely controlled Tory press gets hold of it. Eventually I think Labour will smell the coffee, but for now they still want to believe that it is a 2 party system. I just wonder who the next Labour leader will be who will be brave enough to admit that if democracy is to survive in rump UK, FPTP has to end.
Both Lab & Con profess to be “broad churches” yet both have expelled or sidelined members & MPs who express broad mindedness.
If they truly believed in ‘broad church’ politics they’d have no difficulty with PR and it’s consequent coalitions.
It is evident UK’s dominant Parties haven’t the wit, intelligence or desire to educate & guide people toward crafting a democratic governance. Germany integrates PR & FPTP and patiently negotiates its governance. Switzerland incorporates Referendum in its highly decentralised governance.
UK persists under the weight of centuries of overlordship, as Guy Shrubsole describes in ‘Who Owns England?’ – & England holds the seat of power.
As you say, Tories have no qualms about pretending they are a new party even if it involves sacking their own MP’s. Media quite happy to ignore that, while with Labour, they will always paint it as an unbridgeable right/left split party at war with itself.
At Labour conference both factions seem happy to play along with this picture – especially if it gives them media coverage.
In fact a fairly radical programme including a Green New deal-type package, a non – privatised NHS , progressive common ownerhip of utilities, explicitly stated ‘Quest’- funded investment in public services etc etc could unite 90% of the party and have public appeal.
But – as you say Richard, Labour seems unwilling or afraid to acknowledge that Johnson is playing a different game. He is using the populist Trump/Orban playbook to try to lay the basis for a one party state. Reducing who can vote, criminalising investigative journalism, ( especially those focussing on Russian political money ), taking control of the BBC and other NGO’s , selling Channel 4, etc etc.
Yes Richard – Starmer really should be talking about democracy, but Labour seems too scared to do that.
As Rob above says -‘ just how things are in the UK; the unacceptable is accommodated, the threat is not addressed, the desirable is postponed’.
Well… I think this conference saw the beginning of the end of the Labour Party as any kind of alternative. From now on its going to be a pale copy of the Tories all the way. The Blair Project MK.II.
A lot of strange things have been going on : the BFAWU union – one of the founders of the party and an affiliate for 119 years – has voted to disaffiliate from Labour. Other unions are apparently considering following them.
Jewish Voice for Labour co-chair Leah Levane has been expelled – to be precise, ‘auto-excluded’ – by the Labour party for attending Labour in Exile and Labour Against the Witchhunt meetings when it was perfectly acceptable under the party’s rules to do so, long before both groups were ‘proscribed’. Imagine if Corbyn had done that ! But of course the JVL were pro-Corbyn and therefore the ‘wrong kind of Jews’, so no need for any anti-semitism claims here, move along…
An estimated 120,000 members have resigned since Sir K took over…. and judging by comments on blogs and forums quite a few more have joined them this week…. a trade union has disaffiliated…. moves being made to take away OMOV in leadership elections….
So we have a large number of people who joined (or voted) Labour under Corbyn because they wanted change, who are now effectively disenfranchised (the Greens could have capitalised on this, but haven’t ).
You’d think that sooner or later there’d have to be a tipping point : either a new, socialist or socialist/green party emerging… or widespread disorder, resulting in even more authoritarian policies from the Tories, supported by Sir K and his New New Labour.
Or, of course, being Britain, we might just bend over and take it… as usual…
Anyone wishing to keep up with Labours attempts to distance itself from its members this week should check out The Skwawkbox https://skwawkbox.org/
I’ll be wasting my vote on the Green Party in the future in my safe Tory seat that becomes ever-more safe as the district Council enables more and more executive homes to be built.
They did this in Westminster in London, and the Tories still do it even now. Gerrymandering through the planning system, that’s what it is!
You could only see a ‘progressive alliance’ taking place if the polling showed that a massive Tory majority was all but certain at the next election. I suspect that the polling will indicate things are tighter than they actually are and nothing will be done until it is much too late. The deeply unimpressive Starmer will then be ousted as Labour leader and replaced by another deeply unimpressive centrist of some sort who will again ineffectively watch on as the Tories continue to dismantle and sell off what is left of the country.
The fact that even an unimpressive centrist Labour candidate would be pretty much certain of being PM most of the time as the largest party in a coalition if we had a progressive alliance or PR seems to completely pass them by.
There is rarely much support for Labour on this site and even less for Starmer but as a Party member who was instrumental in pushing PR at my own CLP, so that we became one of the 323 that actually passed PR motions, I have to say that I find much of the present commentary unduly pessimistic.
On the Conference floor, 80% of the CLP vote went for PR and but for the union block vote, which went 95% against, the motion would have carried easily.
Furthermore, and somewhat ironically, if the votes actually cast by union members had been consolidated under PR, rather than distorted under FPTP in the current block voting system, the recorded union vote would have been nudged up from the distorted 5% level to well above the 20% which was all that was required to cross the line on aggregate.
My point is that the Party is alert to the situation and the cross factional group, Labour for a New Democracy, will be continuing to work on the Unions and the Leadership to ensure that PR becomes Labour policy in its next manifesto.
So I would make a plea. Please give Starmer a break; he faces massive challengers (and that is from an ex Momentum member). I am even prepared to stick my neck out and make a prediction that he will be on board with PR by the time of the next election.
Yes, he may be “on board” once the decision has been made, but it would be nice to see some leadership from the Leader of the Opposition.
We have enough followership from the Prime Minster – in the quote from Lord Heseltine, Johnson “waits to see the way the crowd is running and then dashes in front”. That goes to explains why almost everything this government does is so reactive, unplanned and ineffective.
Great performance by Kier Starmer, hopefully stage 2 complete in rebuilding the public’s confidence in the Party
To be fair, Conference is primarily an opportunity for the membership to sound off about what they think is important. It is not traditionally where manifestos are written. On PR, the CLPs thinking is probably well ahead of the Unions and MPs, many of which have still not given it too much thought, as far as I can see. This is primarily due to the hard work and proficiency of the action group L4ND.
Personally, as leader, I am not sure that this would have been the best time for him to declare sides. There are still too many who will say that he was abandoning the chance to ever have a proper Socialist government and others who would say he was accepting that he can’t win an election without external help from other parties. So I am quite happy if this is a transition which grows, from bottom up, rather than top down. However, I can understand the converse argument and its associated frustrations.
Like Jack, I think he did a great job yesterday, and committed as I am to PR, I am content for this to be deferred to phase 3.
Why. Not do something really radical
A society that promotes good mental health rather than treatment after it has made you ill