The Tories face a dilemma. As the FT notes today, no one from business is interested in going to their conference because the Tories are considered irrelevant and without influence. An official opposition with just 121 seats in Parliament is hardly going to land many blows on a government. Nor would it in more usual political times, be considered likely to have a chance of returning to office for at least a decade. So, busy people are asking, why spend the time, effort and money engaging with them?
The question in isolation is relevant. But there is more to it than the risk of time-wasting by attending. There is something much worse about the Tory party now than irrelevance. That is their toxicity.
The Tories, from the time Theresa May was at the Home Office creating ‘hostile environments', have been dedicated to vilifying those seeking a legal right to live in the UK. In the process they have spread animosity towards people when that has been unjustified. They have stoked racial hatred. They have done so for their own political advantage. The consequences are all too clear now, with their toxicity now distorting debate on migration.
Worse, they appear incapable of reform. Their leadership campaigners are all associated with this brand of hate-filled politics, and they seemingly now know no other.
I am not denying that the Tories always knew they were playing to a base, and did so successfully. But, what is now apparent is that even that base wants to differentiate their supposed concern about migration from the hate-filled violence it has inspired, although relatively few seem to know how to do it. The rhetoric of ‘we have legitimate concerns about migration that mean we want no asylum seekers in our area' now being heard on airwaves seems but a smidgeon apart from the disinformed anger of those who rioted. What I am sure of is that business, most donors and those with influence will want to steer well clear from anything to do with this agenda.
In that case, the Tories are outsiders not just because they failed dismally. They are also outsiders because the division that they have so deliberately created is now seen as profoundly harmful by those who see stability, order and inclusion as vital to their well being, which is not just most people but the vast majority of the business community.
The so-called party of business, as the Tories once were, have driven the absolute opposite of what business desires as a result of their pursuit of their toxic, hate-filled agenda. No wonder business is wooing Labour in that case, albeit at cost to ordinary people, whose agenda and needs still remain far-removed from the priorities of those business people now influencing the Labour agenda for their own ends.
Can the Tories recover from this? If the problem was just worn out incompetence at the close of fourteen years in office the answer would very clearly be that of course they could recover. This is part of a recognised political cycle. They might face at least ten years in Opposition, but thereafter the assumption would be that they would be back.
But couple incompetence with toxicity that both leading leadership campaigners - Jenrick and Badenoch- are deeply associated with to the point that it is what their brand is - and the question of survival becomes a much more difficult one. When there is no real alternative on offer untainted by this issue, the question as to whether the Tories can survive as anything more than a rump around which Farage could walk at will in due course is most definitely on the table.
Sunak might have been the last Tory prime minister in that case. It would be ironic that the first person of colour to occupy Downing Street from any party, let alone the Tories, might also be the last Tory PM because their own toxic racism has made any return impossible, but that possibility exists, nit least due to Sunak's own contribution to their demise for this reason.
This matters. We already have Labour in office assuming the mantle of the Single Transferable Party that the Establishment requires to run the neoliberal order on its behalf for as long as is required. But even that role requires that there be an Opposition eventually capable of taking on that task, and right now we have nothing remotely like that available. And if we were looking for an actual Opposition there is almost no possibility of that at present.
My suspicion is that this position is untenable in the sense that the vacuum within politics that now exists will have to be filled. I live in hope that the far-right will not succeed in taking this space. But the alternative has, in that case, to come from the left, which space Labour has so clearly rejected.
There is no sign at present as to how that might happen. But that need not be problematic: events will have to shape what happens next and they have yet to occur. What are, however, required are the ideas to help shape that possibility. That's where this blog and those who comment on it do have a role and something to offer.
Amongst the toxicity of this moment, the possibility of there being something different as the guiding principle of government has to exist. Amongst others, this space can help provide those ideas.
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It seems that Labour will become the new right-of-centre party. “Starmer won by shifting to the right.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/06/starmer-won-shifting-right-labour-left-wilderness-hope
And Jeremy “Corbyn in talks to form new independent MPs group” may fill the void of the left.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd73x77r22do
Back in January I got upset by the paucity of choice in the election and saw a possible way forward by encouraging local independent people to stand for election.
I envisaged getting a substantial number of pro-MMT, locally supported, individualistic MPs who would force whichever party which was nominally the government to deliver non-neoliberal policies.
I wanted to uncover one prospective candidate in every constituency, to support them with the electioneering tools and the policy creation help they needed, and to push for the massive local coverage which we actually saw in a few constituencies this year.
Mike Parr shared this mad idea, contributed massively to setting up a public-facing website and, on his own, starting to bring together relevant thought pieces on a blog, open to anyone who shared our vision.
In common with other groups on a similar path (and there are many, we’ve found!) we thought we had a few months to do this. And of course we didn’t. (We actually made the website public on the morning of the day Sunak announced the election date….)
It’s been a month of reflection, a lot of reading and pivoting since then.
This is what I think now:
Richard is correct when he says the way forward is education and discussion. What he is writing right now is incredibly valuable and needs wider dissemination – which he doing admirably in all the social media channels he is using
I think we do not need another political party. What we do need is a network/alliance of like-minded people representing their local areas.
The job of an MP is to represent his community in Parliament and to work there to get stuff done for the benefit of their community, the country and the planet.
The 2029 Election campaign has started.
Candidates need to start work now showing their community why they are the right person to go to Westminster to represent them. And this is where Mike and I think we have a part to play.
Mike has been creating and connecting with others to set up alternative ways to deliver electricity, broadband and food to local communities. I still want to identify people in each constituency to bring these plans to fruition locally with a view to being part of the national government in 2029.
And of course we will connect them with Richard’s work so they become fluent in MMT thinking.
There are other people around with similar thoughts about community-based action eg Assembly, and maybe we come together.
But showing people that there are alternative ways of doing things by actually doing them in their own localities is, I think, a really good way of starting to achieve the change we want to see.
Thanks Shelagh
Good luck
I’m always in awe of the level of discourse on Richard’s blog. If you, Mike Parr etc have the experience and ability that you present here (and it appears you do) then I’m very excited about what you could achieve.
Someone once said “There can be no effective government without there being an able and articulate opposition.” I can’t find attribution for that quote but in my view it was and remains true to this day. Perhaps, when the Corbynites properly assemble, we might see some semblance of effective govt. Till then, though, we’re rudderless, adrift.
@Bill Kruse
“No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.”
— Benjamin Disraeli
Useful, thanks!
The only end to this toxic farce is to end FPTP. That is the end of the Single Transferable Party (provided the PR system replacing FPTP is NOT a Party List system). The current monopoly of the Labour Party in Parliament requires to be strangled in the entrails of the old monopoly of the Conservative Party.
I agree with this 100% John. The ambitions expressed by Shelagh Jones, shared by Mike Parr, will be hard to realise without reform of our voting system. The same is true for the Green Party.
I stood for the Greens in the election, in the South Devon constituency of Newton Abbot. There was also a candidate from the South Devon Alliance, a local group set up initially to oppose a housing development that has had significant success in local elections and, with nine district councillors, is now the main opposition to the Lib Dems who currently have the majority.
The SDA has outperformed the Greens in local elections, but in the GE, I gained more votes than the the SDA candidate (although we both lost our deposits – there was a lot of tactical voting for the Lib Dems). This underlines the difficulty independent candidates have of translating local success into national success, albeit it is just one example.
The Green Party has effectively adopted the tactics Shelagh Jones describes as being the way forward for independents. Strong community presence and non-stop campaigning, well supported by small regional teams. It’s takes quite a while to bear fruit nationally in a FPTP system! And when you start competing on that stage, there is opposition from those who believe Greens should step aside for other “progressive” candidates with a better chance of winning. There has been division within the Green Party on that front in Jeremy Hunt’s constituency, as you may have seen. Neal Lawson wrote a (disappointing) piece about it https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/29/greens-expelling-activists-uniting-oust-jeremy-hunt-progressive-politics
My view on this is, it is up to voters to vote tactically, and not for parties to seek to influence that decision by standing down candidates, although a five year expulsion for those concerned does seem harsh.
The more diversity in politics the better, so I certainly support the initiative to champion independent candidates. But we all need to campaign above all, perhaps, for an end to FPTP.
“But we all need to campaign above all, perhaps, for an end to FPTP”.
It needs to be at the top of the agenda. It doesn’t energise, it is too technical (and frankly boring) for the public; and it never is at the top of the agenda. Eliminate FPTP, Party lists etc., and Parties then really have to compromise with people with whom they disagree. Which simply represents the world everyone else actually lives in, and simply means politicians would have to live in it, and function in the real world; instead of pretending they live somewhere else, and wreck everything they touch in consequence, and drive people out of politics. The truth of that is that in 2024 40% of the electorate didn’t even vote. The figure was around 17% didn’t vote, in 1945. People have given up because politicians have completely failed the public, and are failing the public now. Labour and Conservative are a disgrace.
Our democracy has been ruined, and turnout is the proof. Conservative and Labour are both in complete denial – they are the culprits, and the guilt for the mess we are in is largely theirs; and the wretched Press that serves them (which is guilty of feeding the outrage for many years – line up the headlines used over the last fifteen years, and take a look at the dismal output; it is appalling).
Thanks for your comments Pauline.
I do understand when you say “we all need to campaign above all, perhaps, for an end to FPTP.”.
What I don’t understand is how Independents would fare in any alternative system.
I can see that even small parties would have a chance of having one or two MPs.
But would all Independent candidates be lumped together to make a quasi-party to give them representation?
Pauline, There are two ways in which independents could enter parliament under at least some forms of PR. The first is for a charismatic figure such as Corbyn, Galloway or even Johnson, to attract enough votes from multiple constituencies to get elected. Such a figure need not already be a politician, there might be campaigners or athletes who could do it. (Richard Murphy, perhaps?) The second is for groups of independents in different constituencies to form new parties.
I wuld not try. I am really not temprementally suited to parliamentary life. It would drive me mad.
Labour “won” on 33.7% of the vote. The UK’s parliamentary system doesn’t serve the majority at all.
PR will not be on the cards given Labour has benefitted so spectacularly by the UK’s current unrepresentative system.
In 5 or 10 years, the toxic Tories will have had a turnover of personnel and there will be fresh faces. If they’re smart, the new batch will have learned from the mistakes of the past 14 years, also no doubt from Labour’s mistakes, and the Westminster circus will carry on its archaic ways.
Anyone who has ever witnessed the establishment’s pomp and ceremony must surely be certain that won’t change any time soon.
I have to believe change possible, or why bother?
33.7% is not democracy; it’s disgracefully unrepresentative. What percentage will the next government come to power on – 30%, 25%?
I can’t really see England getting rid of the unelected second house, the dozens of bishops, dumping the voting lobbies, installing an electronic voting system so that MPs can vote where they sit, introducing PR and joining the rest of us in the 21st century. They probably think it’s all a bit too, you know, modern.
Westminster is so fusty, ancient and backward but there is no real push to change it, just occasional rumblings. Those that can effect change seem to revel in the primitiveness of it all. They don’t give a damn whether the people are properly represented or not.They just make believe change is coming to get the votes but now Labour’s got power the people have served their purpose and are forgotten. Till the next time.
God forbid that they should actually consider improving people’s lives, that would be way too radical.
I remember feeling something similar to this when John Major lost the 1997 election. His government had ended in acrimony and sleaze as well as incompetence (Black Wednesday) as mortgage repossessions got so bad, banks started opening up real estate agents (remember that?) to sell all these houses they had repossessed.
And then, 2008 happened (because Labour stupidly just left the banks to make money without asking how) and all that was forgotten and what the so called sophisticated British electorate did was vote in the mob that has just left us with what we now which can be said to be ‘not right good’ and and even worse.
Survive?
Of course the Tories will survive.
The money will just float back to them as the political wind blows the other way and the opportunist funders change tack. It’s all about money right? Politics?
Of course the Tories will survive because the electorate will ignore Milam Kundera’s observation:
‘The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.’
Prior to this we’ll see this a mass exercise in that forgetting:
‘The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was…’
And the MSM and Neo-lib think tanks will help this to happen. Kundera lived under communism, so don’t forget Abbey Innes and her reference to (late) soviet Britain.
And there is always stupidity for the Tories to capitalise on – usually someone else’s – like Gordon Brown refusing to work with Nick Clegg in ’97 and of course the British voter. And maybe the benefit cap will stupidly remain where it is along with some other profoundly stupid ideas – like not fighting Clacton – from Stymied and the Reeves-cividist?
Frank Zappa said that it was stupidity that was the most common element on the universe – not hydrogen. I think he was right.
And as long as that is the case the Tories are in with a shout.
Because of other people’s stupidity; other people’s propensity to f**k it up.
And the Tories will be there waiting for their chance, the ever present wolf at the door.
‘The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was…’
Sarah Kendzior writes about this. The context is the US, but it’s the same thing…
“The website for MTV, which housed over two decades of music journalism and clips, was erased, even from the internet archive. The archives of Comedy Central followed, including the shows that had informed my generation about the Iraq War and Bush administration corruption: The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. They were gone, and their real-time documentation of war crimes was gone too.
The deletions followed a spate of erasures that had been gaining pace since 2022, ranging from old websites to unreleased movies to songs and shows that can be removed from a streamer whenever the CEO feels like it. The deletion of pop culture has been accompanied by rapid closures of news outlets recording recent history and ongoing crises, as well as the hijacking of social media networks by oligarchs who can delete accounts without recourse. This is all happening at once.”
https://sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/the-great-unconformity
I wholeheartedly agree. I would add that, as long as we let 650 people govern 60 million, this is where we’ll keep returning to, again and again and again. Only a different system will deliver the needed change. MPs are cheap, and we’ve seen exactly how cheap they are, especially if your pockets are billions deep. The only way out of this mess is an end to hierarchy and the farce of voting for representatives. We either trust each other or we end up somewhere no one would want to live.
Explain, please….
Thank you to Richard and readers.
I got a cab home on Thursday night. The young cabbie of Pakistani origin reported attacks on South Asian families in two Buckinghamshire Oxfordshire border villages. This morning, the young cashier at the supermarket reported an attack on the house and car of his manager, both of Pakistani origin. Both youngsters said to look after ourselves.
Muslims have been told to pray at home if they do not feel safe going to the mosque. As a small majority of fellow Catholic parishioners and some priests are from the ethnic minorities, one wonders what the clergy will say. When I walk to the station when working on site, most people on foot are ethnic minority workers, sometimes alone and sometimes in small groups.
All of this is profoundly worrying
And very largely unreported, but real
Thank you, Richard.
I thought it interesting that they are eager to share the information and urge minorities to be careful.
If we retain the current electoral system (and with their large majority, electoral change will not be a priority for most Labour MPs) then there is a strong electoral motivation for a second party to emerge. The Conservatives are in a good position to be that second party, but as the Liberals know that position is not guaranteed and another second party may emerge. A reconstituted socialist party, the Lib Dems, the Greens, even Reform (god help us) could be that second party.
That said, historically the Conservatives have been adaptable in opposition. Eventually at least. Think Major, then Hague, Duncan-Smith, Howard, and then Cameron. Having achieved Brexit (and all the buyer’s remorse that entails) they are looking for another psychodrama that can last them for a few decades and they have alighted in on that perennial issue of immigration that we have been worrying about periodically for at least 70 years. It may keep the party activists engaged but I doubt it is going to win them an election in five years or even ten. But Labour will make mistakes and something will emerge.
If there is electoral reform then the Conservatives will continue as a rump of one sort of another and voters will be able to choose what they actually want and not one of a handful of broad coalitions.
Either way I think the Conservatives will survive. I also think Labour will survive as a party too although frankly as presently lead I don’t recognise much semblance of its origin as a party of the left or centre left.
Much as I despise them one thing you’re not allowing for is their incredible ability to shift and change their colour like the proverbial chamelon. If they have lost that knack then as you say they are doomed but never write off the nasty brigade. They have ruled since time immemorial.
The good news is that they have run out of road. The road they embarked on under Thatcher has hit a dead end.
And why would they attend Richard?
According to “The Dark Arts” the financial investigation team of Open Democracy the big businesses that once funded the Tories are now funding the Labour Party and started to do so around 2021.
As those that wished to influence Westminster saw the writing on the wall they started to court the Labour Party. So Labour has become the voice of big business and Starmer’s policies are dictated to those that have filled Labour’s coffers.
In the governance of Tweedledumb & Tweedledumber voters become almost an irritating irrelevance, only useful around every 5 years or so.
Here is a very relevant article from The Dark Arts that looked at who attended Starmer’s Business Reception shortly after he took up residency at No.10
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/parliament-events-mps-lobbyists-westminster-dark-arts/
No doubt if Corbyn’s new political assembly ever looks like gaining in influence it too will be invaded by stooges for the big corporations just as Corbyn’s Labour was. Politics doesn’t work for the majority. I doubt it ever did really. Awareness and so discontent seems to be growing these days. Trouble is, we’re all very strongly conditioned to think of what we live in as normal when in reality it’s anything but, our natural environment being small groups of 100/150 people. Our conditioning makes it near-impossible for us to be able to consider any alternative way of life yet since societal collapse will soon be upon us the way of life we know will soon be ended. What to do? Again, I say we need to be investigating the psychedelics, turning on, tuning in and preparing to drop out.
Your conclusion is disappointingly defeatist. I am not.
@Shelagh Jones
One of the advantages of the Single Transferable Vote is that independent candidates generally win their fair share of seats, as can be seen in results from (e.g.) Scottish Council elections and Irish parliamentary elections.
In contrast the alternative list-based PR systems give Independents little chance.
I have for a long time read your observations and the responses every day. I have learnt much which I have not picked up from my daily reading of the Guardian – I no longer bother to listen to the BBC – and I share these new thoughts with people who care to listen to me. But I am very aware that much of what is written is challenging my ageing brain which is very frustrating though I will persevere. I hope what follows is not too simplistic.
What I want to summarise here regarding the recent riots, is self evidently true for me, but seems too often to be getting entangled in discussions about anti -racism, or ‘boats’, or ‘ far right’ activity and / or the need to punish ‘thugs’. Whilst all of these facts may have a role to play, I fear that our politicians will dedicate their energies into trying to address these at the cost of boring down into the serious underlying problems impacting on the well being of our country which , I believe, are the bedrock of these uprisings.
I refer, of course, to unfairness, to the rich getting richer whilst the poor are now too often homeless, foodless and unable to access employment, medical or practical support. On top of this I refer to the fact that even some of our labour party MPs are able, for example, to accept substantial funding from Israel, presumably in return for their continuing support of them at the cost of Palestine. Have they no shame? Have they no conscience? Do they not think for themselves? From this I might state that this explains why so many decisions taken by MPs have seemed to curry favours from the rich and powerful who will presumably in return look after them at the cost of the rest of us ? ( Taxing the rich, anyone?)
However, I expect that even they, or their advisers , from time to time worry that the population who are missing out will not remain supine for ever. From this, perhaps, has arisen the vitriolic racist statements spouted in various forms by politicians of any party and by the mainstream media. It was ever thus, but we are still inundated by them – and surprise, surprise, or maybe this was the intention – far too many of our population now believe that immigrants of whatever kind must be blamed for the breakdown of the functioning of our country.
It is emerging that whilst some drunk hooligans were undoubtedly attracted to the rumpus last week and were egged on through social media, they could not take over long term control . But the cause of the grave discontent remains : the fairness of living in this country under the powerful influence of the rich (also often the employers) and even the power of elected MPs who are marching on in their own ‘looking after self’ pathway whilst trying to blame others for the sorry state this country is in.
Unless Starmer begins to act on some or even all of the ten pledges he made to be voted as Leader of the party, the disturbances are, in my view, likely to continue. Or does he think he can discipline everyone into compliance? He likes discipline
Thanks
I think David Olusoga’s article on this today very useful https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/10/there-can-be-no-excuses-the-uk-riots-were-violent-racism-fomented-by-populism