One of the most powerful lines in the film ‘Munich' is:
‘Hope' is waiting for someone else to do it. We'd all be much better off without it.
That line came up in a conversation I was engaged in last night.
It was suggested that there is no hope of Labour doing anything of consequence right now that might improve any known situation, whether they get into office or not.
The question asked, in that case, was whether we would be better off without them?
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i hope they get in
I hope Rachel Reeves reads your blogs
I hope she’s converted
Some hope….
more than others
I hope that Gove’s appalling plan to exclude ‘extremists’ is adopted and the Tory party is immediately excluded from all participation in political life. They meet every one of the proposed criteria. Labour having supported much of what they have done would be on a final warning. Well I can hope.
A slight problem there. A socialist is counted as an extremist in Gove’s plan.
Doesn’t leave many out of police cells there, does it?
First they came for the socialists…
More fantasy politics from Gove; where are they going to find the necessary police, police stations, prisons, prison staff etc etc etc? It’s hysterical nonsense – a fine example of shit, as predicted, being lost on an epic level.
Currently it is nothing to do with police cells:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/09/revealed-legal-fears-over-michael-gove-definition-extremism
Organisations and individuals that breach a new official definition of extremism will be excluded from meetings or any engagement with ministers, senior civil servants, government advisory boards and funding.
Councils will be expected to follow the government’s lead, cutting any financial ties or support to individuals or groups that have been categorised as extremist.
The current definition from 2011:
the “active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and the mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.
That’s the end of the Tory party!
As far as I can tell I am barred from all those things , and I used to be a regular in Whitehall….
Options.
Lots more independents (as MPs). There would inevitably be lots of disagreements amongst them. UK media tend to spin this into “they don’t know what they are doing”.
Greens: clueless with respect to money/political economy (as noted on this blog).
LibDems: tories with a smile? (& same-old with respect to money).
It all comes back to money/political economy & none of them have a clue – brainwashed into tax n spend, maxed out gov credit card, we need to balance the bloody books…etc etc.
Bleak.
There appears to be nobody on the political stage at the moment able to articulate political economy realities to the populace in a way that they could understand – & that assumes a UK meeja that could/would convey the message.That said, there will be somebody out there somewhere able to do that.
Nobody had heard of Corbyn until 2015 & he was able to articulate well the idea of a fairer society in a way that was understandable by ordinary people. I have no doubt there is one person or a group that can do the same for the political economy.
Oddly, I happen to have a group in mind. As you read this – you are part of it.
Anybody up for it?
Sort of….
I’m horrified that Greens should be dismissed so glibly. Without a functioning climate everything else is a nonsense.
As I have recognised for my lifetime
I don’t think it is ‘glib’ to dismiss the Greens. They are basically dismissing themselves, with nonsense like limited money, effectively a return to a gold standard. And dismissing the Greens does not preclude making climate a top priority, which should obviously be policy of all parties.
I quite like some of these ideas ..
1. Higher proportion of Independents:
HoC and the entire system is built on the either/or approach and is two sword length adversarial in nature.
(That Tories and Labour are in lock step represents a system failure, but that’s another issue)
A large number of independents would force a rapid conversion to consensus building just to keep the show on the road, and which would change the nature of the beast, at least shifting it towards a problem solving approach.
( I do not mean the cynical status quo version of Blairite corporate liberalism)
Give every MP a copy of the “Consensus Handbook” and a fortnight to sort it out.
The usual warnings on the tyrannies of the minority and majority apply.
At their best, the independent controlled local authorities in Wales and West Country functioned well for many years, until parties insisted on politicising at the lowest common denominator of party loyalty.
2. Greens
Surely weaning the Greens off the Positive Money dogma ought to be relatively straightforward as they are part way there anyway, and many of their GND type policies being post Keynesian already means they are at least on the right track. ?
This is more an evolutionary change that Damascene conversion.
Education, education, education.
I’m not a fan of single visionaries as they tend to evolve into demagoguery, often rapidly, as they become corrupted by power, but a collective, co-operative forum approach to Green MMT and explaining the fundamental simplicityof sectoral analysis to the public ought to be achieveable.
Could you be a tad more specific about what you have in mind, Mr Parr?
Already working on it in a sense, trying to put together a very concise piece making it plain from points made on the BoE’s site (and so couldn’t be argued with) that govt can and does create its own money as necessary. I mull this over when I’m pottering around, been doing it for a while now. Getting there but it’s slow… and of course the demands of what we consider to be normal life routinely intrude on all the important stuff…
I am still feeling my way round this so some thoughts:
Many people are thinking along the lines of non-mainstream-party candidates.
The trick is to get them elected.
I increasingly think the way to do that is to run very localised, highly visible campaigns -but with the candidates loosely bound and educated about/supportive of MMT as we discuss it here (for which I think there is a real appetite). They deal with the results of neoliberalism every day.
These candidates discussing among themselves ways to govern if a substantial number of them get elected (government of all the talents)?
These candidates connected to, and hopefully supported by, the Independent Local Government councillors in their constituency. These folks know their areas amazingly well, know how to drum up support and get elected. Having had conversations with them I find few who are inclined to go into national government. But seeds have been planted to find a local candidate to support.
There is a group in the LGA for Independent councillors which I think could provide the “feet on the ground” needed to actually win seats.
Personally I think fighting highly visible local campaigns to “send Dave to Westminster to fight for Rochdale people” , but having these campaigns loosely connected to create coherent messages about national/international matters, will be more effective than trying to start a new party with a national leader.
MSM will tear such a person to pieces. They are less likely to notice/attack local candidates.
I suspect this cannot change any outcome in 2024
By 2029 it many be the only hope that we have
I have been working on book ideas today. Have you seen the weather out there? Even ducks won’t like it.
@Shelagh Jones – Some Australian examples might be pertinent.
The strategy of unseating established Liberal party MPs (essentially Tory equivalents) with independent candidates who win electorates by intensive personal campaigning (door knocking, meetings) has proved successful in Australia. Australia does have a (complex) preferential voting system which admittedly can give “third party” candidates a slightly better chance than first past the post as in the UK.
This began in a small way, but with a stunning success in 2013 when one of the most ghastly and high profile Liberal MPs lost her safe rural seat:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/18/sophie-mirabella-concedes-defeat-indi
She then failed to regain the seat in spectacular fashion: https://theconversation.com/mirabella-scores-spectacular-own-goal-as-she-attempts-indi-comeback-58304
In the 2019 election the former climate change denying Liberal Prime Minister Tony Abbott (“Dr No”) lost his safe, wealthy, North Sydney seat to an independent: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-22/warringah-tony-abbott-zali-steggal-get-up/11134502
In the 2022 election independents took many safe Liberal seats, not least Wentworth, one of the richest Eastern Suburbs harbour-side electorates in Sydney.
Independents (with demands for action on climate change the key policy demand) were this time “branded” as “Teals” – after the colour they used in their campaign materials. But a key to their success was their funding by Simon Holmes à Court (the son of Australia’s first billionaire) through a political funding organisation “Climate 200.”
https://theconversation.com/networks-and-money-the-inside-story-of-how-the-teals-won-australias-six-richest-electorates-192096
Mike, do you have of are you compiling a “manifesto” type document as part of the group you mention? There is a strong appetite for a new party and a start has to be made. Any way of contwcting you about this?
Kevin
Not sure about starting a new party – but interested in supporting a bunch of independents. Which seems to reflect the interests of several commentators.
Happy to have my details forwarded to you.
Or just google – I’m the one in Brussels.
I will pass on , Mike
Hi Mike,
I’d very much like to talk to you. Please ask Richard to connect us if you are happy for that.
Shelagh
Hi
I will send your details to Mike and leave it to him to react
Richard
The Labour Party would be a terrific idea to save us from this neoliberal disaster. If anybody knows where they are, could you wake them up please?
https://thecorbynproject.com/news/budget-2024-peace-justice-project-response/
They are awake. It’s just that nobody listens to them because the MSM has been taken over by the main stream parties.
There’s also a rump of Labour MPs identified by the Every Doctor founder as being genuinely concerned & involved with her efforts to save our healthcare.
Not sure if Mike is reprising the “Great Man” theory, but isn’t that part of the problem? Charismatic, and I use the term loosely, leaders like Trump, Johnson, Thatcher, Stalin and many more, each with a large helping of authoritarianism who ensure each of their acolytes is bound to them by patronage and “kompromat” so that their future is the Great Leader’s future.
Mike also mentions a “group” and I think that’s the way political renewal must go, coalitions from across the spectrum of social democratic thinking, consensus building, compromise built around ideas like fairness, equity, justice, caring and so on.
Don’t like “great men” sooner or later they go bonkers.
Groups on the other hand – provided participants recognise that the group is usually greater than the sum of its parts – can work well.
I work with a group on elec market reform – we call outselves the (Borg 🙂 ) collective – when you speak to one of us – its a bit like speaking to another – we hold a common view – and articulate it in a similar fashion – but arrived at our position with different ideas – that we combined together – & we are very very different as people.
So groups work – but there needs to ego-minimisation & common goals.
Rawlsian Liberalism?
I work with an Austrian economist (is there any other type? 🙂 ) – he would describe himself as such. He wrote a paper which covered this.
What are the consequences of not having a choice?
A no loss of confidence in democracy
Labour seem all but certain to win the next election, which does not fill my heart with joy. 🙁
I struggle to figure out how to vote. I dither between Green and Libdem. But, I’ve been thinking, maybe I should vote Libdem, even though I detest them, to ensure that Labour, who I also detest, get the maximum number of both seats (they could oust the Tories in my constituency) and votes.
Why? Because if the Tories are wiped out, or at least severely diminished, then there is an opportunity for the current parties to split and become something new that might be more desirable. It can happen quickly – look at France (the speed at which traditional parties diminished and a new party formed – not so much the nature of the new party).
The last time there was such an opportunity in the UK was 1983, where the Social Democrats nearly surpassed labour in the popular vote. Had they done so they would not have won the election (they won relatively few seats). But if they got a bigger slice of the vote than Labour with many fewer seats the pressure for electoral reform would, I believe, have been irresistible.
So would we be better off without Labour? Perhaps not if they lead to the destruction and reformation of the Tories and, hopefully, the emergence of a left wing party.
Andrew Feinstein is trying to stimulate such a movement. He is the son of Holocaust survivors, former South African MP and ally of Mandela, and as a non Zionist Jew who opposes Israeli apartheid, us standing against Starmer. As a Jew, he has been accused if antisemitism, of course, by Labour, along with all the other non Zionist Jews (and there are a lot).
PS he is a lecturer in Holocaust studies and has lectured at Auschwitz itself.
For anyone who doesn’t know him he is quite often on nottheandrewmarrshow on Sunday mornings. Prem Sikka just finished speaking now.
It’s ten years since Tony Benn died. Corbyn is talking about him and whether he would have resigned.
Tony Benn asked Corbyn not to resign from the Labour Party, because if he did it would make Mandelson very happy!
Until we get rid of first past the post there is little hope.
As Labour doesn’t support PR they are not the future.
Where is the Guardian in all of this?
The Guardian simply can’t go on publishing articles saying there is a need for greater public spending on a wide variety of things whilst simultaneously supporting the monetarily illiterate nonsense the government operates on a credit card and that card is maxed out!
The Guardian’s hand-wringing over such matters rings a bit hollow. They certainly did their bit for the Establishment take-down of Corbyn, which facilitating more years of Tory grief, and a post-Corbyn Labour Party that might as well be Tory.
Would be interesting if an independent stood against Starmer in his Holborn and St Pancras constituency, though he does seem to have an unassailable majority of 28,000.
I think you’ve already been told who is standing against him, Andrew Feinstein.
https://ocisa.org.uk/about-andrew-feinstein/
Probably better off without Labour given their positions on genocide, their failure to confirm support for the NHS and their abject failure to abolish that travesty of democracy, the House of Lords, which Labour said it would get rid of more than 100 years ago.
What’s the point of Labour? What are they for?
Bouncing from gawd-awful Tory to just-as-bad Labour and back again is not good for any part of the UK. More independents would be welcome depending on whether they truly are independent and not just leaving “Conservative”, “Labour” or “Liberal Democrat” off their campaign material to fool the electorate.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, a vote for Scottish independence supporting MPs is my preference since the Union is, at best, stagnant and probably – hopefully – breathing its last.
How lucky are you though up in Scotland where the party is as monetarily illiterate as all the the other parties in the Union – a union of fools more like!
How lucky England is to have had Scottish resources to rip off. So badly run was the UK it had to seek a bail-out from the IMF in the 1976. Oil and gas came to the rescue.
Does anyone really think if there were no resources to rip off – oil, gas, (cheaper electricity in England that we Scots pay ourselves tho’ we export it down south) and whisky, etc., that the Scotland/England Union would still exist?
No, *wee, poor, stupid* Scotland would have been given the heave-ho long ago.
N.B., Scotland is the ONLY constituent part of the UK that MUST balance it’s books. Scotland has a fixed budget of many billions less than it sends to the England/as the UK’s Treasury.
Sorry if this comment appears twice just consider it unintended emphasis.
Having read the Guardian article, it struck me that any movement which advocates Scottish Independence could easily find itself being banned for exhibiting “core behaviours that could constitute extremism including attempts to overturn, exploit or undermine the UK’s system of liberal democracy to confer advantages or disadvantages on specific groups”, given that Independence of necessity means ending the current structure of the UK. Who gets to decide on such matters; the Westminster Gov’t or the UK Supreme Court? Either way it wouldn’t matter since neither of them are shy about interfering with legitimate laws passed by the Scottish Parliament. So much for the supremacy of Scots Law in Scotland as guaranteed by the Acts of Union 1707.
Both the Tories and LINO show their contempt on almost a daily basis for the views of 50% or more of the Scottish people, but perhaps their invoking of Gove’s definition to outlaw Independence might actually be Scotland’s quickest “get-out option”. It would almost certainly push up that 50% far enough to make blunt dismissal untenable.
You are right Ken
Look at Catalonia
“undermine the UK’s system of liberal democracy”
It would hardly be a liberal democracy if England bans a country in a Treaty with it from ever trying to leave.
Scotland is in a different situation from Catalonia. I don’t think Catalonia has a Treaty with the rest of Spain.
In response to AC Bruce at 8:42pm on March 10: 2 points ACB:
First: You rightly state that “it would hardly be a liberal democracy if England bans a country in a Treaty with it from ever trying to leave (cf. ). However Gove’s wording – “undermine the UK’s system of liberal democracy”- perfectly reveals the extent to which Goebbelsian rhetoric has been accepted and deployed by the Tories as if it were factual. We must never forget this, regardess of which party is in power, and we must call it out whenever it is used to deceive the people.
Second: You’re wrong when you state “Scotland is in a different situation from Catalonia. I don’t think Catalonia has a Treaty with the rest of Spain”. Scotland and Catalonia are in exactly the same boat constitutionally. All regions of Spain are denied the right to secession by Article 2 of the Spanish Constitution, which refers to the “indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation, the common and indivisible homeland of all Spaniards” while it protects “the right to autonomy of the nationalities and regions of which it is composed and the solidarity among them all”.
As is infamously known, the UK has no written Constitution and erroneously presumes that its Parliament in Westminster is sovereign in all matters. Despite some powers being legally devolved to Scotland, Wales & N Ireland, Westminster can still overturn (by a simple majority) the decisions of devolved parliaments, as has been demonstrated time and again in Scotland’s case. The EU’s reluctance to become involved in the Catalonian Secession attempt on the grounds that it doesn’t interfere in Member States’ internal affairs, would probably not apply to Scotland if secession from the UK post-Brexit were denied by Westminster (have I just discovered the only benefit of Brexit?).
A sizeable factor in the secession of states derives from the international views of other states: do they support secession or disapprove of it? Who knows what would happen if Scotland elected to secede from the UK and was supported by the EU, but not by the USA or NATO (on strategic grounds)?
My comment is quite genuinely, who knows?
I wonder if they are going to try to bar people like George Galloway from the system?
I have already spoken with people who would be keen for the a Gaza/Palestine candidate in our constituency.
Galloway would sue them.
He’s already threatened legal action against someone on X who had to remove a tweet, just last week.
It`s odd that the L.P. was founded and finished by 2 men called Keir. The Roman empire was founded and finished by 2 men named Romulus. Sadly, Starmer has remade Labour in his own image, with the assistance of Evans and Mandelson. I think we all know what that means.
My (discarded) LP card tells me that Lab. is a democratic socialist party, so the Cons will be declaring H.M.`s government a terrorist organisation shortly. So, no change there.
I’m worried about the constant criticism of Labour for not having alternative, more radical policies. It’s tempting voters who would have voted for them to stick with the Tories. They should understand that the Tory establishment is absolutely rabid and supported by an even more rabid press. (How otherwise did Johnson and Truss become leaders?)
They are waiting to tear Labour to pieces if they show any sign of being anywhere left of Tony Blair. Vote them in (with tactical Liberal voting) and see what they do in power.
I am sorry, but I think that naive
Parties move right in power
They will
And they are going to deliver a very nasty form of neoliberalism as things stand
Sadly I think you’re probably right Richard. Blair certainly moved to the right. And Starmer has pledged allegiance to the Monarch at least twice so it’s unlikely he’ll risk offending the Establishment by moving to the left. The outlook’s bleak indeed.
We are all wrong at times (even Richard?). The real issue is that the Labour leadership refuses to listen. I am an ordinary Labour member, but as a side-effect of the rules used to prevent a Momentum faction taking over the party, I currently have no vote on party policy and am not allowed to put forward a policy motion. This is before the maze of procedures to stop the leadership from having to listen to those more fortunate members who do still have a vote. A friend, who is an active member of a Labour-affiliated union, tells me that the liason group where unions can try to influence policy is specifically barred from mentioning Gaza.
I wouldn’t mind Labour having the odd bad policy, if I thought they would listen to their members and to reasoned argument.
I most definitely am wrong sometimes.
That’s why thousands of us left the party. No democracy left in it now.
However, if any party is going to adopt Richard’s way of thinking it should surely be the Green Party. Small enough to be persuaded and large enough to be listened to.
Starmer and co havent even got the political and economic skills of Blair and Brown- who did a lot of good – apart from the Iraq disaster , and PFI charades . NHS waiting lists down, minimum wage ,devolution etc etc
Clearly Starmer and Co will get immediate resistance to ‘there is no money’ – from grass roots, unions, doctors, nurses, teachers, etc – and either have to ‘find’ magic money or face a social catastrophy within a year.
The Tories have become a semi Brexit/Reform party – showing that parties can change – so Labour will have to change or there will be a monumental crisis of general strike/miners strike /banking crisis proportions.
Cant see a practical alternative to getting Labour in to govt this year – and keep pushing the Richard/Prikka/ Mazzucato/Hutton/Pettifor/Rushworth etc manifesto for change
That would make an interesting discussion….
https://actionnetwork.org/user_files/user_files/000/097/139/original/5_Demands_Leaflet.pdf
Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project.
Note, the Peace and Justice Project, PJP, could easily become the Peace and Justice Party.
They are having a conference in London on 13th April, with Prem Sikka talking there.
Time to reinvent The Social Democratic Party
Only if it’s not lukewarm Tory which it was in 1983.
And there is a party of that name now, which is not something I would go near
The SDP has reinvented itself and joined Reform, the party that Lee Anderson has joined today, and is now the first Reform MP in parliament. The two parties are working together to provide candidates for the next election.
Bizarre
“Would we be better off without Labour?”
I assume you mean The (so called) Labour Party. Look about you. We have no Labour Party. Are we better off? I’d say ‘no’.
Blair and Brown killed the Party and Starmer is ensuring it stays dead.
Where we go from here I can’t say, but LINO is what we are going to have to live with unless the pollsters and pundits are well wide of the mark.
It’s not good enough, but I don’t see any developing alternative. Green Party?…. Way to go before it can be considered serious. (Though at local government level there has been some progress I admit)
It would need best part of half the constituencies to elect independent candidates to reinstate the supremacy of Parliament over the cartel at Downing St. We won’t ever see that.
We need another Tory term and either way we’ll get that at the next election whichever party wins. Will that be enough to change the weather ? Who knows? Personally I doubt it.
A fairly simple and robust test of a party’s likely direction in power is the way they control the choice of local candidates to stand in elections. Starmer has wielded an iron fist over local party processes to ensure Starmer lookalike candidates are chosen.
On MMT – we already have a well-established system of MMT for the few, the already rich (recent examples: 2008 “credit crunch”; Covid “VIP channel”) with austerity (power as repetitive humiliation) for the rest.
Hannah’s put it in a nutshell:
MMT for the already rich, with austerity for the rest.
A brilliant summary, recognising that they understand MMT perfectly well but are determined not to use it to benefit society as a whole.
Recall Thatcher’s view that there is no such thing as society – only the worthy rich and the scrounging poor.
In the South Devon constituency, next door to my Newton Abbot one, there is an initiative called the South Devon Primary, which seeks to unite local voters behind one “progressive” candidate in an effort to unseat the Tory. It has gained significant interest and has run hustings, which are pretty well attended. Only the Lib Dem and Green candidates took part though as Labour doesn’t yet have a candidate and didn’t want to take part anyway. After the hustings, people vote for their “People’s Champion”, with the hope they will help that candidate campaign. No candidate is asked to step down.
The organisers lend their help and support to Primary initiatives in other constituencies, and one has been set up in Newton Abbot.
I think these primaries would include independents who were clearly “progressive”. It will be interesting to see if they have any impact.
https://www.southdevonprimary.org/
“It has gained significant interest and has run hustings, which are pretty well attended. Only the Lib Dem and Green candidates took part though as Labour doesn’t yet have a candidate and didn’t want to take part anyway.”
The last 6 words of the above perfectly sum up one of the two main reasons the UK is so screwed. Labour’s selfish, arrogant, anti-democratic and ultimately self-defeating tribalism which has handed election after election to the right.
The other being the ever worsening behaviour exhibited by that political right. Extreme, xenophobic, vicious, paranoid, irresponsible, incompetent, dishonest and stupid.
Anybody who wanted to officially go with whichever progressive candidate was chosen would have to leave the labour party. Not that Starmer is bothered about the constitution, but it does say you are not allowed to vote for another party.
Doesn’t stop them doing so unofficially, though. Even the labour party should not be able to find out.
I keep telling my grandson that when the election comes people will be asking him who he voted for, but he doesn’t have to tell anyone, not even me.