Labour is going to publish a constitutional review tomorrow, written by Gordon Brown.
We can be sure that:
a) PR will not get a look on;
b) House of Lords reform will;
c) Scotland will be denied a referendum;
d) There will be some nonsense on devolution.
I write this tweet in anticipation:
I increasingly wonder what the point of Labour is. I note Jo Maugham in a similar mood today, saying:
The article Jo refers to is by Neil Lawson from Compass, another friend. If we all think like this, I think Labour should be worried. I suspect its leadership too insular to do so.
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I completely concur.
Labour no longer represents working people – instead it wants to look after armchair capitalism – investors, pension holders and the already rich with a watered-down version of Neo-liberalism without acknowledging just how put off the rest of us are by this direction. They’ll then turn around and tell us that this is what ‘we’ want.
Everyone who tells me that what matters is that Labour get into power, (not how they get into power) is already better off than me on big pensions and asset ownership to enable them to ride out the current issues we have.
I’d love to know who their advisors are and do some research on their backgrounds, but I’ve already got a day job. It is that shadowy bunch of idiots that we need to expose in my view. Perhaps Byline Times might do a bit of work on this?
In addition, we also have good old fashioned political tribalism at work.
I hope by the way that I am proven wrong in all of this and that Labour are more gutsy if they get in.
Richard – I hope that you are recovering well.
Many moons ago I did some research on one advisor to Keir Starmer, Claire Ainsley. I read her book: The New Working Class. It gave some hefty clues as to the prevailing mindset. Its conclusions were really confirmations of guesswork, conveniently derived from the British Attitudes Survey. It succeeded in shoehorning vast swathes of people into attitude groups. The working class as a Venn diagram. Missing from this work was any notion of the political project a left of centre party might undertake. It was very much a “we listened” affair. The implication being that to appease the new working class – whatever that is – Labour will pay lip service to anything it hears, however racist, counterproductive or ill-conceived it might be. Long live the status quo.
Very interesting Martin and thank you. I will check it out – well done you BTW.
While Labour is entitled to oppose a further referendum, it doesnt take a PhD in the bleeding obvious to see that there is a growing majority in favour of independence in both Wales and Scotland, and a United Ireland.
If Labour, or any other party wishes the UK to remain in its current form then it needs to deal with the way Westminster treats the devolved nations and the growing divergence between Neo Liberal England and the more ‘Social Democratic’ Wales and Scotland.
To say nothing of course of feelings ‘Up North’
I’m in the process of reading an interesting book, written by Pete Buttigieg, a young Democratic politician in the USA, who has been the mayor of South Bend, Indiana for two terms, and who was one of the many candidates who put themselves up for selection (along with Joe Biden) for the 2020 US Presidential Election.
His book is entitled “Trust” and was written just after he dropped out of the race—after winning Iowa and coming close in several more contests—and focused on getting Biden elected instead. Buttigieg’s time will come, I reckon.
One of the quotes from his book: “…one of the ways that trust comes about: By perceiving a pattern in how someone behaves, and learning what to expect from them in the future. If we think of trust as the belief that someone will do what is hoped or promised, the most basic way to decide whether to trust that person is to notice what they have done before. To the extent that trust is about expectations, expectations are shaped by experience.”
Do we trust Starmer? Or Labour? I certainly don’t. It’s been a long time since Labour has been trustworthy. As soon as they have the opportunity to vigorously push through with their promised policies …they back off, OR completely U-turn on them. Right now, they are more or less indistinguishable from the Tories.
The issue facing Labour is do we trust them to deliver anything that’s actually going to change our lives for the better? Or even ATTEMPT to deliver anything like that, if they were actually in power? Erm …nope. Sorry. All I trust this present group to do is sit on their hands, frown, shake their heads …and abstain when a vote might actually have made a difference. As per usual.
Well put
What about the socialist campaign group? Just as not all tories are the same, neither are all labour.
The ideal opportunity to move towards PR, but as you say it probably won’t get a mention. The Labour leadership are no better than the Tories. Self interested, FPTP, undemocratic junkies. Tory and New new Labour, two peas from the same pod.
Can only concur with Richard and the other commentators. The real danger is the State apparatus already in place to ‘contain’ any mass movement of people for real change. Don’t forget that the British armed forces like all the rest in Europe are no longer conscripts but mercenaries. Don ‘t forget who the officer class are with a handful of exceptions. CCTV and mobile phones are an effective means of detection and control. TV is carefully sanitized so it would be a tremendous shock to see the ‘reality’ of State control in action. I was living in Spain when the Iraq invasion happened and Spanish TV showed everything that took place – be prepared.
More than a few commentators are now finding out that the ‘lefties’ criticism of NuNuLabor are actually justified, and not some fantasy result of Corbyn-worship, Marxism or Trotskyites.
Starmer, Reeves, Nandy etc are simply the neoliberal B team.
Also,as Michael Crick pointed out, if this is how Starmer behaves out of office, what is he going to be like in power?
The continuing ritual abuse of Corbyn and so-called “Corbynism”, and equally ritual misuse of such terms as “Marxist”, and “Trotskyites” ( who as a group number in the derisory low 1000s) is indicative of the infantile level of political discourse in this country that the MSM spawn and encourage.
I enjoy sporting with those who use such terms in my presence, as part of their ongoing, much needed political education.
But this pales into insignificance when I am confronted by those who are “frightened” by the “Hard Left.”…… Because they have to explain what they mean, and why they should not be considered “Hard Right”!
It is all a nonsense.
One is either progressive or not.
Before WW11 the Daily Mail was essentially a mouthpiece for Fascism. The Rightwing press learned the mantra espoused by Goebbels and has used it continually since the 70s’ – tell a lie often enough and it becomes accepted as the truth – Corbynism = Marxism.
The problem is – how is anyone or any organisation that wants to be able to create a socially positive society to deprogramme the overwhelming majority of people in the UK who have been indoctrinated via the media, TV and newspapers since the 60s’ with consumerism and fear by the Nasty party at every election.
Thatcher and her advisers were very clever. By selling off council housing cheaply they turned so many into property junkies, the same with selling off essential services and the blatant lies that these services would be cheaper and more efficient. The Labour party has been so lacking in the basic ability to expose these lies and cons for decades. If only they could have had Mick Lynch and others like him back then. The rightwing press and politicians cannot handle him.
If a way cannot be found to deprogramme the majority of people in the UK then the relentless campaign to create 1984 will continue.
How will Starmer respond to the tsunami overwhelming the economy from the austerity policy , raised mortgage and renting costs from the BoE interest rate hikes, on top of energy and food cost hikes and keeping real wages down.
Then there is the serious threat to democracy from the wall of authoritarian legislation of the last two years- public order act criminalising protests , criminalising investigative journalism, limiting the judiciary , controlling the Electoral Commision and the BBC suppressing voting rights.
Starmer shows no sign of understanding the scale or nature of the struggle we are in.
Toiday he says trying to rejoin the Single Market wouldn’t improve the economy (against all econonomic analysis) and would create years of uncertainy – yet says he will renegotiate the post Brexit deal – to ‘make Brexit work’. Years of uncertainty? Don’t think he’s clever enough to negotiate to align with the SM but still call it Brexit?
Starmer is proving himself an exceptionally bad leader of Labour
Yes, and a quite unintelligent one, or so it seems to me.
https://davidallengreen.com/2022/12/centralisation-is-inevitable-in-the-united-kingdom-unless-there-are-radical-reforms-which-no-government-will-make/
A lawyers explanation, its interesting to say the least
Mr Boxall,
I think the following excerpt on Centralisation in Westminster beautifully summarises the essence of the problem (that Gordon Brown evades every time he addresses it, with answers that simply beg the question). The irony is, it is written by a lawyer, and what he describes here is the law bending the knee low to the Diceyean absolute supremacy of pure politics: the iron fist that is only revealed discreetly beneath the (antiquated, opaque velvet glove) terminology of ‘Crown-in-Parliament’;
“In legal terms, the gravitational pull comes from the doctrines of the supremacy of parliament and the royal prerogative.
All public bodies, other than parliament and the crown, are subject to the ultimate control of law made by the crown-in-parliament.
Even the Scottish Parliament, as the Supreme Court recently decided, is effectively no more than a statutory corporation subject to a strict rule of ultra vires.”
These three sentences trenchantly cover all the necessary ground ….. in condensed, usable form.
https://davidallengreen.com/2022/12/centralisation-is-inevitable-in-the-united-kingdom-unless-there-are-radical-reforms-which-no-government-will-make/
Well worth a read
Like you I am frustrated by Labour’s failure to present a clear vision – on anything.
And what we know about the constitutional proposals looks like a job half done. But fair enough, the House of Lords is indefensible in its current form and it is about time someone took reform seriously. I confess I am a little nervous about another purely elected House – if the US is any guide it would just become an extension of the party politics of the Commons, whereas at least currently there are contributions from those who are Lords because of their expert contributions to the fields under discussion. But that is for debate.
And the importance of the regions, I particularly miss the strategic overviews of regional public health, and of economic development, in England. Needing a democratic constitutional basis. (For those who are not secessionists, the only way to a sustainable relationship between the currently itchy regions of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and Westminster is for all parts of the UK – including English regions – to have autonomy where appropriate so Westminster can be limited only to those powers best managed on a larger scale).
A proper constitutional review would have to include FPTP (and much else). However an upper House and regional authorities elected by a suitable form of PR (I would favour multi-member constituencies for that, but recognise opinions vary) would at least keep the question open for the House of Commons. And a properly representative mandate for the upper House and regional assemblies ought to mean a progressive removal of unjustified power from the Commons.
No reason why a second house could not be chosen for its expertise. I would hope that Prem Sikka would put himself forward, having just watched him talking about the disgrace of the social care system.
Could people state whether they mean the Labour Party or the Parliamentary Labour Party?
There is a big difference between the two. A lot of members are staying in the party despite Starmer, not because of. Other ex-members are feeling politically homeless. Then, of course, there is the Socialist Campaign Group, who are not supporters of Starmer, and the ones he is trying to exclude from the next election, although he daren’t do it to too many at the moment just in case they get too strong within the party.
All I see at the moment is Labour’s corporate approval of working-class ignorance as a means to get their vote. This is why we have talk about nationalism and handwringing about identity politics and other managerialism instead of policy. Looking at Richard’s Twitter link to the Starmer story about BREXIT, it seems to me that Starmer is stuck in the past – we have gone from uncertainty to certainty now – certainty about the damage that BREXIT has done to the economy.
Starmer is obviously going for the Farage voter.
Looking back, I think that the Tories could have pulled off BREXIT had they not also been doing austerity. Had they put money into the country at the same time we might be calling it a success just as North Sea oil cushioned/hid the effects of Thatcher’s dalliance with hard-line monetarism in the early 1980s. As we know though, as the oil reduced, the real cost began to emerge.
The problem is of course is that it is austerity that acted as a booster rocket for BREXIT in the first place with people ascribing the worsening of public services to EU immigration and other membership aspects. What sticks with me is just what a stupid concoction the Tory party since 2010 has been and how much of a disaster they have been for the country. A mixture of incompetence, single issue politics and vengeful meanness the likes I have never seen before, nor wish to see again.
On this salient issue, Starmer seems all too quiet, which makes me suspicious that in actual fact his ideology is that it is all too complicated and all he can do is tinker – he’s redolent of Tim Snyder’s ‘politics of inevitability’ – the idea being that there are no new ideas.
The House of Lords? I have mixed feelings but given that it as an institution has not really stopped this Government from doing any of the destructive stuff it has done then it is a target that looks bigger than it is. He’d be bringing down nothing more than a hot air balloon.
What worries me are his proposals to replace it. I worry when I hear of devolution because this is England, and we have centralising tendencies. But more importantly we have a problem in our governing structure with the concept of money. When I hear of devolution my heart sinks because it will just be used a means for central government to put more onus on localities to self-fund etc., because as I say again, there is no viable or credible concept of money creation in Parliament.
It’s that that continues to worry me. All the possible new ideas that could help us are all inter-linked – it has to be empowerment with adequate funding or it will fail. If we were heading for a German like system Lander or something like that I might feel more hopeful. But I just can’t.
Agreed re funding and the importance of it
More to come on this…
The House of Lords prevented 14 amendments to the police bill from going through which would have made the bill even more draconian than it is now.
The House of Lords prevented 14 amendments to the police bill from going through which would have made the bill even more draconian than it is now.
Excellent article here by Natalie Bennett.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/natalie-bennett-house-of-lords-abolition-reform/
Which is why I have mixed feelings about its destruction Jenw. Ultimately though the HoL has been next to useless about dealing with what the Johnson and May Governments have brought to British politics.
We can sit and justifiably bemoan Starmer’s unwillingness to meet expectation on this however, those opposing FPTP really do need to try a bit harder (and I include myself in that). Which version of PR do we want as there are more than one type. What are the benefits of one over the other? How will the disinformation the anti’s, and there will be many, very influential anti’s be countered and reference the Brexit vote if you want to know how that will end up if it is unsuccessful.
If I remember correctly, the Lib Dems were given the opportunity to promote it as a sop for their support in 2010 and it went spectacularly badly. The Best Democracy website is one useful source of information. It contains details of another such failure in British Columbia.
There are reasons why the Conservative Party have been in power for 30 of the last 43 years despite the damage they’ve done to this country. Books such as The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff in which she describes the mining and use of personal data to manipulate target audiences, Democracy For Sale in which Peter Geoghegan describes the extent to which “democracy” has been undermined in full, grim technicolour, etc, etc, it’s a lengthy canon, suggest plenty of reasons why. I can understand why Starmer causes such anger. One of the reasons I left the Labour Party was its apparent inability to find anyone between him and Corbyn but frankly, I’d suggest that anyone who wishes to make a start on reversing the undermining of democracy should be welcomed because this battle isn’t going to be won during the term of one Government.
Mr Main,
“Which version of PR do we want as there are more than one type”?
Not the de Hondt system Westminster applied to Holyrood; deliberately, and cynically. Party will always serve Party first: it isn’t complicated.
Westminster operates a Party system, and the de Hondt system in Holyrood delivers a form of PR that allows ‘Party’ to select who appears on the ‘list’ from which electors are required to choose. The list is, of course a hierarchical Party list that selects in the order the Party in receipt of the additional members are chosen. The system is designed to serve Party over the choice that would be made by electors if they had the control over selection in their own hands. The standard PR system that delivers power directly into the hands of electors at the expense of Party is STV (single transferable vote); but whatever system chosen it must give the decision to electors over Party. Party is factional, and tends to corruption of the body politic. Our crude, shoddy, confrontational barrack-room Waetminster Parliament makes the point for itself.
Any system devised by Gordon Brown will deliver power into the hands of factional Party. He cannot help it.
Factionalism – yes, we don’t see this word enough when describing our politics – we sugar coat our politics with a thin coating of democracy to make it palatable.