The single transferable party describes the system of government that we now have in the UK, where whoever is in power, the policies appear to always be the same. When all that is on offer is austerity, and all that changes is who delivers it, do we really have a democracy any more, or is there just a single transferable party in power?
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This is the transcript:
What is the single transferable party?
If you read my blog, and if you don't, you should - it's called Funding the Future, and we'll put a link to it on the screen right now - then you will know that there has been quite a lot of discussion on it recently about the fact that we now have a single transferable party in the UK.
I think the term was coined by a chap called John Warren, who comments regularly on the blog, but the idea is one which several people have developed, it seems.
Basically, the idea is that we do not now have a choice of political parties in the UK. Instead, there is, in effect, a neoliberal hierarchy that is in charge of our politics, our economy, our society. And when we go to vote, all we do is choose the flavour of neoliberal management that we desire, and we do not, in effect, change the economic approach that the party in power will ever have because they all have fundamentally the same policies.
And this is clearly true. As we have seen since the election, whatever Labour might have said about the Tories during the run-up to early July, when they won their supposed landslide victory, Labour is, in fact, dedicated to perpetuating the policies that the Tories put in place while they were in power for 14 years.
The most graphic demonstration of this is the fact that Rachel Reeves has effectively adopted the same economic strategy as Jeremy Hunt when he was in office and which he announced in March 2024 when delivering his budget at that time. She says that she must work to the same fiscal rule as him, although, let's be clear, there are no such things as fiscal rules, they're simply made up and every Chancellor can write their own. But she's decided to use his rather than create a Labour version.
And, more than that, she has, as a consequence, adopted the whole approach to austerity that the Tories had. In other words, shrinking the size of the state, shrinking its intervention in the lives of people, reducing the support that it makes available, and denying us the services that we desire; all because, well, she just doesn't want to do it any more than the Tories did.
So, we do have a neoliberal government from Labour.
There's no hint of social democracy in what they're doing. There's frankly no hint whatsoever of socialism in it. Because instead, it is hardcore centre-right or worse.
So, is this to our benefit? Look, of course, it is not. In a democracy, you have to have parties that put forward differing ideas. There has to be an opportunity for voters to choose between those ideas. And I can most certainly say that when I was younger, and I'm going right back now to the 70s and into the 80s, there was clear blue and red water between our major political parties.
At that time, even taking into consideration the rise of the Social Democratic Party, or the SDP, in the early 80s and their merger with the Liberals to become the Lib Dems in 1987, there were only really two dominant forces in UK politics, which were Labour and the Conservatives. And they were fundamentally different.
Now, there are not two forces in UK politics. We have over 70 Liberal Democrat MPs, for example, in the House of Commons. We have seen more than 50 SNP MPs at one point in the last decade. So, we have got other parties involved, but the deeply discouraging fact is that they are also neoliberal parties.
The liberal Democrats like to represent themselves as being to the left of the Tories and maybe at least as left-wing as Labour, which is hardly difficult these days. But the reality is that they are as committed to the ideas of neoliberalism and small state politics as either of those parties are, and they have not got over what was called their Orange book era, which was fundamentally neoliberal to its core and which rose to the fore when Nick. Clegg became leader of that party.
As for the SNP, whilst the membership is undoubtedly to the left of centre in Scotland, the actual party leadership, most particularly typified by the Nicola Sturgeon era, is most definitely right-wing and very solidly taking advice from the same sort of people who tell Labour and the Conservatives what to do.
So, amongst our leading political parties, there is a hegemony of thought. They all basically approach problems in the same way and provide us with no alternatives as to what we should choose between.
This is disastrous, but results in what I will now call the single transferable party. In other words, we don't have functioning elections in the UK anymore because whatever happens, we will end up with a neoliberal economic policy that guarantees we will not get the state that we want.
And most people do want a decent NHS, good education, decent other public services, law and order that is properly funded, defence that actually is adequate to our need, and, of course, a social care system that really does work. We aren't getting those things; they're not happening, and that's because there is this single transferable party.
They join together to say we can't afford what is possible within our society because, they say, they must leave room for the private sector to operate, as if there is a direct choice between the two, when in practice, the private sector cannot deliver for public benefit.
They are, therefore, deeply misled - all of them - by the dogma of neoliberalism. But when they are a single transferable party, with our choice simply being between which person we want to lead that party rather than between a different range of ideas, then we are left with no democratic choice in this country at present.
Is it possible we will get it back again? Look, anything might happen. We don't know. But right now, we're faced with this fact: we only have one economic idea offered to us by all our major political parties now. They are a single transferable party and that is deeply dangerous for the well-being of our society, our democracy, our economy, and our future.
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Many years ago a friend of mine argued that we lived in a one party state because all they offered was different ways of managing capitalism.
However good that was as an argument in the mid 80’s its certainly spot on now
You can’t even call it effective managing can you because in many ways it’s unbalanced concentrating on the needs of the few to the detriment of the many. The vast majority of politicians exist to put a spin on this lack of balance. They are aided and abetted in this by the mainstream media who employ journalists to the same effect.
The true issue though is a widespread failure by human beings to recognise the benefit of pursuing an outlook of always trying to balance the needs of self and others. If they bothered to look closely this outlook is a fundamental drive in the universe both inside and outside of the basic need to obtain energy for survival.
A failure to adequately balance will always result in societal breakdown and this is where the UK is heading. The best understanding of this is found in the American anthropologist Christopher Boehm’s 1999 book “Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behaviour.”
In the 70s I remember a poster saying:
“If voting changed anything, it would be illegal”
The thing is, the family budgeting analogy is so powerful and disguises the fact that the economy is being managed in the interests of the wealthy few.
Politically, we are the children of the ‘family’.
Critiques of the Democrats and the Republicans in the U.S. paint the same picture – this is how I became aware of the ideological corruption of political parties and how it leads to the continuities of bad ideas.
The source of it seems to me to be political funding. Politics becomes the custodian of stability for the very rich and sod everyone else – as Aurelien noted in a recent essay.
The late Robin Williams joked that senators should dress like racing car drivers so that voters could see their sponsors.
The lack of real change, and the prospect and realisation that we are just here to be exploited and ignored just makes more and more people angry and vulnerable to be picked off by Fascists.
I have just got Prof Tim Snyder’s latest book ‘On Freedom’ and on page x is a classic line:
‘Freedom is not just an absence of evil but a presence of good’. It sounds obvious but yet it is seldom said.
And therein lies our political problem with the STP.
One wonders what Starmer would make of that? Would he even understand it?
Unfortunately, the pesky voters keep voting for it.
We wonder at the absurdity that half the US population likes Trump or, in Russia, Putin….. perhaps we should look in the mirror?
Thank you, Clive.
One should bear in mind that many of the areas that voted for Obama, the rust belt, switched to Trump. We should ask why. We should also ask why former communist strongholds in northern France switched to the le Pen family business. I was told recently by a friend / former colleague from there that the south of Belgium is beginning to switch from socialist to the right. We have seen this film here.
I used to work in Russia and can well understand why Putin is supported. After the naive Gorbachev and drunk and corrupt Yeltsin allowed Russia to be asset stripped by domestic and foreign oligarchs, what did their western backers expect. Don’t they know their imperial history? Western friends and colleagues who are able to travel there report a Russia very different to the caricature in the western MSM.
Please pay little attention to what state and oligarch owned media say about Russia, China etc. They are projecting.
Why switch from Obama to Trump? I have written about this before. Obama’s Treasury failed old Main Street, small-town America in the post-2008 mortgage crisis, by allowing Wall Street to prey on millions in mortgage difficulty (but were crucial to stabilise), with a scandalous misuse of foreclosure for advantage; allowing Wall Street institutions to profit obscenely from the ruinous misery inflicted on small town America. This disaster has never been forgiven, nor forgotten by the affected communities. It was Bedford Falls being handed over to Potter, for traditional Middle America. The Tea Party arose directly out of that catastrophe, and Trump has been able to exploit the lagacy outrage in turn.
Read Neal Barofsky (Obama’s chosen investigator of the post-2008 crisis mortgage disaster), “Bailout”.
The “pesky voters” do not just vote for it; they are complicit. The foolish, closed inner Party cliques are too feckless and incompetent to achieve this scale of failure by themselves; it requires a far, far larger outer cult to carry out the dreadful policies, or passively tolerate the intolerable. You need a stoically sufficient corruption of the human spirit, and degraded level of biddability to carry out the soulless, morally bankrupt policies. And often, receive little in return.
The clown-elites cannot achieve, plan or execute the Grenfell-building regulation calamity; the Blood Scandal catastrophe; the Post Office obscenity; the grotesque BBC management failures; the endless provision of hand-wringing Public Inquiries that display the problem – but never, ever fix it, and all of this over decade after decade of moral bankruptcy. How does all that happen? It takes an army of support outside the clown-elite to achieve that level of failure. It takes an essentially corrupt society to turn London into a noted, publicly reported centre of money-laundering.
There is little upside. Scotland has a chance, a chance only: of escape. We have our own clown-elite, and our own self-absorbed complicit, eager to make it difficult, because this is what they want, or support. The fact that UK general election turnout has fallen from 85% to a current 60%; a democracy collapsing into an operation in which only the most biddable supporters of general corruption bother to vote is almost the only sign left that there is any resistance at all.
It’s too easy to blame voters, which includes everyone here, for the systemic problem we’re in. Governments have police, they have armies, they create laws, they build prisons, they capture people in labyrinths of bureaucracy, they divest voters of the commons. Since all voters can do is mark an X in a box, which communicates almost precisely nothing, every 5 years, and that’s the sum total of all the influence that most people can exert over a system that dominates, controls, structures and organises human social relationships and affairs, I’m not sure quite what else people are supposed to be doing other than voting amongst the STPs on offer. The problem lies with the system and those who enforce it, voters have little choice, apart from, I would argue, collectively overthrowing it. There’s a conflict that’s often played out on this blog – justified criticism of the problems caused by elected politicians, then an unwillingness to countenance any other approach to politics than electing politicians. Centralising power never works for the majority, it creates dynastic, minority rule and, as is often said on this blog, disconnected elites whose concerns don’t overlap with those who are voiceless and powerless, and an intransigent unwillingness to act on the needs and concerns of most. It’s too easy to say the people keep voting for this. I disagree. We’re told that we live in a representative democracy, that MPs represent their constituents. We cannot then blame people when this turns out not to be true. The fault lies with those who peddle the lies, and offer only a very narrow choice (hence the STP). The only other option would be for voters to believe nothing that government, political parties and politicians say, to avoid being blamed for their misplaced trust in someone’s declared integrity. I do wonder which political party we ought to be voting for if it is we, the voters, who are to blame for the decisions of those with the power. I also wonder what other action we can take that will make a material difference when the power we’re up against controls (access to) all the money that exists, which is of profound importance in a world where money is made absolutely necessary. But only if you want a home, food, clothing, an absence of direct physical harassment, and so on, of course.
I agree with your analysis. And I really don’t see how anything substantial will change without, as you say, “collectively overthrowing it”. But I don’t even know how that would be done.
The UK has always resisted change that would reduce the power of the elite – whatever form that elite took – until threatened with civil unrest and then only gave enough to ensure the plebs were quieted. The history of suffrage is the perfect example. And now we have reached “peak democracy” there is no need for any change according to the STP politicians.
I have often said we need better politicians but as soon as they join a party they are neutered and those who don’t conform are sidelined, ostracised and ejected. Even the shock of the War, which brought a socialist government didn’t fundamentally change the optics of politics. Citizens were still powerless, and Thatcher showed the miners and the unions who was in charge.
Kind of you to cite me Richard, but far more important is the term Single Transferable Party (STP) can help everyone focus on two essential issues when an election changes the Party in office.
1) What changes that transform Government policy and outcomes happen?
2) What major transformations of policy are undertaken beyond spin or tinkering with the peripheries.
Labour is clearly part of the STP. The Fiscal Rules effectively remain unchanged. This is fundamental, because that deeply affects outcomes; more than any other lever Government can pull. Outcomes are now much harder to change. Worse, there is a big effort being made by Rachel Reeves quietly to change the definition of individual Fiscal Rules, so that she can access money without admitting she has changed the Fiscal Rules themselves. That is the definition of political commitment to Neoliberal Ideology: deceive, but never change. Manipulate the facts, but always claim everything fits the supreme ideology that is never wrong. Indeed, Rachel Reeves is turning Neoliberalism into a Religion, complete with dogma and priesthood, from Treasury to BoE. And then, just to make it clear that everyone, however vulnerable must suffer for faith in the dogma; the first thing the ideology’s elected Episcopate do is withdraw WFA from pensioners. Then they buy the Head of the Government Church new raiments as a fit expression of their values and priorities in a cost of living crisis; that Labour – after all – used to win power in the election because they were very different, and very serious.
But it happened before, when Blair and Brown paid homage to a Tory defined hamstrung Public Sector Borrowing Requirement from 1997. The clues were there then.
I look back – and I was a mature student at the time – and New Labour did not stop the 10% reduction in my university support grant, did very little to change the 1996 Housing Act and committed to 80% market rents for affordable housing in order to cut central government investment.
But what really did it for me – even before Iraq – was the cessation of final salary pensions in the public sector and the manipulation of tax in the private pension market. That was very un-Labour-like for me, the penny dropped and I resolved to stop voting for them and did.
The Labour party does not take money from hard-working people. It should be traditionally the other way around. Yet it has.
And look how its last leader was rewarded so handsomely?
As Lou Reed would say ‘Labour? Stick a fork in their ass – they’re done’.
The penny didn’t drop; did it? You establish foresight, but it didn’t change anything. They now have their largest ever Parliamentary majority.
I am attempting to explore ways in which people may through a simple reference point perceive the tricks of political manipulation differently (and quickly), and see through the deceit. I am not sure what you are proposing. That they are finished? But there they are. Again. What are you proposing – that is different.
Labour in Scotland is a living fossil. Resuscitated by Scots (I suspect not necessarily for long term use but as a disposable toiletry) finally to remove the detested, incompetent and discredited Conservative Party from power (whom in Scotland are the Living Dead already). But in the UK, who knows?
John,
could I offer a reflection on your post about Obama’s failure? His administration’s response could have been a lot better as you say. McCain offered no alternative. My doubt is that Obama would have been able to get any fundamental reform even if he understood what was really happening. Like Labour here in 1931, the leaders of the Left accepted the economic narrative as a real description. (Why this blog is so important) Then he lost the mid-terms (like Clinton in the 90s) and had to work with a hostile Congress. The Tea Party wanted to slash state spending ( TEA Taxed Enough Already) which would have made the situation even worse but given more of their beloved ‘small state.’
I don’t see much evidence the American voters (let’s not forget Clinton got almost three million more of the popular vote ) who switched blamed the people really responsible, but prefer to focus on migrants and the prices in general.
IMHO the achievement of the Right was to get many working people to blame the left-or what passes as the left in the US-while advocating even fiercer noe-liberal policies.
A case of a Single Transferable Policy
Mr Stevenson,
The Tea Party was not an answer; but it was what the unorganised rage of Main Street produced as a semi-organised political response (perhaps by opportunists. I am not a sufficiently informed critic on the Tea Party to comment). Barofsky was there to produce a measured and responsible answer to avoid the foreclosures happening at scale; he saw instead the Obama Treasury allowing the financial institutions to manipulate and exploit the system in way that appalled Barofsky, but that he couldn’t prevent happening. In a bleak assessment at the end of describing a long series of bad Treasury decisions, and its indulgence of ruthless financial institutions, Barofsky writes this: “… Treasury all but paved the way for outright fraud by ignoring my recommendation that it kick off Home Affordable Modification Plan” (HAMP) with a broad nationwide and radio advertising campaign that would educate home owners about program details and warn them of the dangers of program-related fraud. Barssfky, helped by Senator Elizabeth Warren’s grilling of Geithner (Treasury) realised that HAMP was not really there to help the borrowers, but in Geithner’s purpose, to “foam the runway” to help out th Banks. Barosfky’s sub-title for his book is: “An inside account of how Washington abandoned Main Street while rescuing Wall Street”. The Tea Party grew out of this mess.
All the sentimental guff about ‘left’ politics has to stop. What the sentimentalists want to believe simply doesn’t exist. Let us do some real world political-economic thinking. Orwellian ‘decency’ would be some sort of a place to start, at least if there is absolutely nothing else.
What I am proposing in my quotation of Lou Reed – the no bullshit Mr Reed who appeared in his New York album of 1989 – one of the angriest political rock albums ever in my view – is that Labour are finished as a party representing working people.
Their job – like the U.S. Democrats – seems to be to retain and even restrain/absorb popular sentiment in some sort of holding pattern ready for the Right wing or our multi-millionaires to come back and finish the job.
I have no idea how we are all this going to end up, but it seems to me that if you don’t agree with it, don’t take part. You can’t blame fellow voters either.
It has to be faced that in the levers of power, there is a distinct lack of democratic process cloaked in a thin veneer of legitimacy. What you are voting for, is not there. At all.
We are seeing a gold rush driven by a death wish – the end of the planet is now a possibility, so those who see themselves as having the most to lose (the very rich) are out to make as much money as possible before the end – even hastening it – in the hope that it insulates them from the consequences of their actions. To do that, they have taken our democracy by force – the force of money power which they have been allowed to accrue on the basis of lies.
This in my view is where are now. That is why we will get no apologies from our politicians or their funders. They simply don’t care if we know or not and are looking after number one. Which ain’t me and you.
All I can get out of this is, is knowing that I am being ‘f****d by somebody and how.
And that might have to do.
Thank you and well said, Richard.
Further to your mention of the SNP and divergence between the leadership and membership, Aurelien has written about an inner party (party leadership, metropolitan elite, etc) and an outer party (members, supporters outside the elite etc). It’s not just the divergence of thought, but lived experience.
Having come across both types, including their latest iterations, I reckon that few, if any, understand the risks you correctly highlight. It’s not just a question that their pay and status depend on not understanding, but many come from fairly closed communities and are well connected, vide new new new Labour (sic) MPs Henry Tufnell (MP for his family’s secondary seat / estate) and Hamish Falconer (MP near his family’s estate).
A typical one abroad is the former French PM Gabriel Attal. He was born, grew up, studied and worked within a few posh square miles of Paris. His grande bourgeoisie friends from childhood facilitated his entry into higher education and politics.
I think we are well on the way towards a more presentable version of Farage winning in 2029. In the meantime, more years of immiseration and the planet burning. Changing PM won’t make a difference. Look at the Labour front and back benches.
I share your fear
Thank you, Richard.
It’s easy to feel depressed, but you keep us going.
I try
Has anyone ever done research to estimate of how many people advocating the neo liberal model actually believe it as opposed to cynically parroting it to simply suit their own greed and personal benefit?
How could you tell? Honesty is not a neoliberal virtue.
Anyone under the age of 45 in the USA or UK has not lived in anything but the age neoliberalism.
They know nothing different. They have never lived in an alternative.
This to me is what is really scary.
Would say it is 55 in reality
Arrogant Yank Opinion:
In the USA neoliberalism really got started by gaining traction with the election of Regan in 1980.
So, no one under 55 can remember much else. I remember from LBJ on, but for my age I suspect that’s unusual, and down to Vietnam. Few remember politics before they are 11.
@Richard
Point taken. Point accepted.
I was only providing a reference for my original comment.
My view is that neoliberalism is simply a set of rhetorical tools for use by the wealthy and powerful to advance their own interests. I would argue that they are bad faith actors and know what they are doing. I don’t think they believe what they say, but they do believe in the persuasive usefulness of what they say for achieving their own ends. Neoliberalism is truly repellent and probably amongst the deadliest things people have ever invented, given that it is not-so-gradually extinguishing the possibility of life on this planet.
For me, the point that you make about the SNP is the most salient point. The party memberships of the SNP and the Labour are largely ignored. The forthcoming conferences will happily endorse the policies put forward by their leaders, with barely a nod to the membership. The result; an extreme right Tory party, slightly less right Labour, Lib Dem and SNP, with total support from a right wing media, captured by billionaires.
The Scottish Government may be neoliberal in outlook but it is much more concerned with social equity than the UK Government. It has mitigated as far as it can some of the cruellest Tory policies, which Labour are continuing, and has introduced a Scottish Child Payment which Danny Dorling has praised. And there’s more. Unfortunately even many Scots are unaware of these policies, never mind anyone else.
But its Growth Commission report, it’s ignoring is members and commitment to sterlingisation all make it profoundly neoliberal
The SNP is/was marginally more socially concerned than WM governments.
Nicola’s commitment to reducing child poverty and the attainment gap are what led to the child payment. These claims were completely unrealisable with the limited fiscal powers to which Holyrood has access – and she ought to have known that.
Yes, the Child Payment has definitely helped at the margins, but was bare compensation for WM cutting benefits contemporaneously.
Apart from the Scottish Socialists and Radical Independence Campaign, the main Pro-Indy parties and organisations are most definitely neoliberal. (The Scottish Greens are more Keynesian, but still seem to be hooked on fractional reserve banking).
Alex Salmond also has an entirely neoliberal background, and the SNP has a down the line blue brigade including Fergus Ewing and Kate Forbes – Tartan Tories by any other name. This niche of the party has barely bothered with party unity during the slightly left of centre leadership, and is both economically neoliberal and mostly socially conservative.
Although Salmond now blames Sturgeon for the lack of progress with Indy since 2014, his dire performance in the 2014 TV debate on the currrency issue certainly contributed to the loss of Indyref 1.
I think it absolutely correct to label the SNP as neoliberal.
@Tony I’m not disputing that SNP are neoliberal, but I think we should give credit where it is due. I don’t think it’s fair to describe the SCP as helping only at the margins etc even as you admit the SG are hamstrung by the Block Grant. It’s so typical of comment on Scottish affairs that achievements beyond what Westminster does with very limited resources is only grudgingly admitted.
The piece Danny Dorling submitted to Holyrood is worth a read.
Please don’t confuse a policy with strategic direction. I think you are.
There were periods (1995-2010?) when despite neoliberal thinking – inequality wasn’t increasing much – after the marked increase during the Thatcher decade .
You would have though that even from their own comfort , despite their wish for a small state, the top one percent would feel themselves better off living in a society with a well functioning NHS, and pensioners and lower income groups having enough to afford basic food and shelter, no sewage in rivers, railways on time etc etc..
Capitalism with a human face.
Seems not to be the case.
Thank you to John S Warren.
Further to what John writes, readers may be interested in:
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2016/10/wikileaks-bombshell-emails-show-citigroup-had-major-role-in-shaping-and-staffing-obamas-first-term/
and https://wallstreetonparade.com/2016/10/wikileaks-citigroup-exec-gave-obama-recommendation-of-hillary-for-state-eric-holder-for-doj/
Christina Romer proposed a new deal, focused on Main, not Wall, Street, but was undermined by Geithner, Rubin and Summers. Barry O just did what he was told. It was not the first time that the Wall Street’s pale and stale males had undermined a woman seeking something better. It happened a year before, when FDIC boss Sheila Bair wanted to nationalise and break up Citi and other too big to fail banks, and a dozen plus years before when CFTC boss Brooksley Born wanted to regulate swaps and derivatives.
Obama ended a relationship with an Aussie, married a Daley precinct captain’s daughter and became involved with Chicago’s largely Democrat oligarchs.
Declaration: From July 2007 to June 2016, I worked on such matters, here and overseas, including the US.
Noted
Thank you to Richard and Bay Tampa Bay. I know what you are getting at.
Further to the exchange, I was 54 a week ago and recall the 1970s, much better than neoliberal propagands suggests, and, from about 1981 / 2, the closures of mills and mines further afield and the arrival of children at school from south Wales, the north of England, Strathclyde and Northern Ireland.
My Catholic school already had children of immigrants, Irish, Polish, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, West Indian, French, Mauritian, Seychellois, Burmese and even Chilean.
It was the same at church.
The local factories began to close from the late 1980s. That coincided with the arrival of some back offices from the City.
It is being noticed. Two articles in the Graun today (Andy Beckett and John Crace), John Harris last week. The usual suspects (Toynbee, Kettle) continue to cheerlead however the disquiet is noticeable.
The continued drift toward the Americanisation of British politics has been noted for a while, and certainly since the 1980s. As such the arrival of the Single Transferrable Party has a long antecedents.
For @Tampa Bay there is a (perhaps apocryphal) tale that when challenged by a US journalist at the UN about the Soviet one party state Kruschev responded “I see no difference between an Elephant and a Donkey”. Plus ca change
Thank you.
Me, too.
I meant to link the Beckett article.
One can add recent output from Chakrabortty and Keegan.
Thank you, again.
Please add what Julius Nyerere said about “typical American extravagance”.
And Marina Hyde, also bringing her stinging wit and critique to the show (to quote one of her gems: ‘We could be mere days away from an explanation that accepting £4,000-worth of Taylor Swift tickets off the Premier League is a basic human right.’
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/20/glasses-donor-money-keir-starmer-pm-approval-ratings-liz-truss
It did strike me, however, that perhaps what’s going on with Starmer is actually a masterful strategy running in parallel with Reeves’ attempt to get the nasty, tough, bad news, stuff out of the way early on. In Starmer’s case this therefore means making him as unpopular as possible now in the belief that his popularity will inevitably then increase as the nasty, tough, bad news stuff gets done and dusted. Result: both the government’s and Starmer’s popularity increase in tandem, leaving both ‘the leader’ and ‘the party’ in a strong position as we approach the next election.
Just a thought.
Change will not come to the UK through the current political parties.
Trying to deliver change that improves the lot everyone in the UK has to overcome the embedded ” we can’t afford it or we will be loading on to our grandchildren to to debt that can’t be repaid”.
MMT is riven with the sort of arguments that bedevilled the clergy, arguing about how many angels can you get on a pin head.
MMT from what I can see is essentially correct in its analysis of how governments create money and so on.
Richard’s blog is excellent for telling it how it is.
How to produce change apart from a revolution?
I am afraid that there needs to be an new Enlightenment vigorously challenging the current orthodoxy.
Everyone needs to spread the word about how the world of government funding actually works.
Yes people switch off. But if you can catch their interest with real life examples they are prepared to listen.
Its finding the simple narrative that gets them hocked.
Why is the main stream media not interested? Because their owners are committed to the right wing, the small state is good rubbish.
There is hope, but we have to be in for the long haul.
Perhaps some of Starmer’s freebie givers can be taught to set up serious challengers to the tufton street mob?
Keep plugging away Richard but look after yourself.
Thanks
Much to agree with
And I do my best to look after myself
I recall an interview with Mrs Thatcher after she had retired from politics and the interviewer asked her what she considered to be her greatest achievement in politics.
She promptly replied “New Labour.”
This reminds me of an unopened bottle of wine where a new red label has been placed over the old blue label – and of course the contents will still taste the same.
As Steve Keen writes:
“the Party in power runs Neoliberal policies; it loses the next election to rivals who, when they get in power, also run Neoliberal policies. They then lose, and the cycle repeats.” https://profstevekeen.substack.com/p/the-meme-that-is-destroying-western
Today’s Guardian cartoon by Ben Jennings hits it on the nail:-
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2024/sep/19/ben-jennings-keir-starmer-hospitality-tickets-arsenal
Very good
It gets worse with Starmer:-
“Overall, Starmer has accepted more than £100,000 in free tickets to football matches, concerts and gifts – more than any other MP in the last parliament, and any other major party leader.
The prime minister has been facing questions over the potential conflict of interest created by accepting so many free tickets from Premier League clubs when the industry is lobbying against his plans for a football regulator.
One person involved in the formation of the regulator said there had been a huge amount of attempted lobbying by football clubs towards politicians and officials as they sought to water down the regulation.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/sep/20/keir-starmer-labour-stop-taking-clothes-gifts-from-donors
I am struggling to remember when Nicola Sturgeon advocated scrapping measures designed to help pensioners out of poverty, or imposed the 2-child cap on households, or advocated privatising the NHS, or advocated sticking refugees in camps and deporting them, etc. I must have missed those days.
True
But she supported the profoundly neoliberal Growth Commission, supported sterlingisation and ignored the membership.
Your argument is akin to saying Blair was not a neoliberal because he did SureStart. That is not true of him. And Sturgeon was a neoliberal too, as Kate Forbes is now.
I apologise, Richard, if I misunderstood your meaning. It was this quote that set me off a bit:
“As for the SNP, whilst the membership is undoubtedly to the left of centre in Scotland, the actual party leadership, most particularly typified by the Nicola Sturgeon era, is most definitely right-wing and very solidly taking advice from the same sort of people who tell Labour and the Conservatives what to do.”
Nicola was (and still is) extremely popular within the membership. We felt she did a fantastic job—within the limitations of ‘devolution’—to protect us from right wing consequences of as many Tory policies as she had the power to do. We were heartbroken when she resigned.
Implying that Scotland has no choice when voting because all parties are the same is, I feel, not quite accurate. Kate Forbes, on a couple of occasions, actually said that Scotland will have its own currency after independence. It’s the direction things are heading …leaving behind Mr Salmond’s ‘we will keep the pound’. I know he has since admitted this stance was a mistake, and I respect him for that. But one of the scare story weapons used against us in 2014 was that we would not be ‘allowed’ to keep the pound …and this is what his stance was a reaction to.
However, in the teeth of almost 100% media opposition, we still have to convince the entrenched unionists (who are not, in the main, left wing!), who make up roughly half of Scotland’s voters, to go for independence. Scotland needs to be an independent country before we can shift to a new currency and way of using it.
Jan
We will have to disagree
I never liked Sturgeon, and always thought her a member of the Single Transferable Party. I will leave aside some of her ethical judgements.
She always had contempt for the membership.
And Kate Forbes’ economic reflect the incredibly basic neoliberalism taught to professional accountants.
And none of the current leadership seem to have a clue about how they will deliver independence.
The SNP is in trouble for a reason.
Sorry, but that’s my view.
Richard
I’m with Jan on this, while admitting as I have, that the SNP are fundamentally neoliberal in outlook and have all the problems rehearsed many times on here.
The difference is that while that is the case they do have a left of centre concern for the wellbeing of the more vulnerable members of society, something which neither the Tories or current Labour have, and they put it into action, albeit with limited mitigations, whereas the Tory/Labour identikit party actually attack the more vulnerable. That’s the difference. Actions. And I believe that in and Independent Scotland there would be more of the same.
Political Compass place the SNP well to the left of Tory/Labour who are in the Authoritarian/Right sector.
https://politicalcompass.org/uk2024
These are details and however important those issues might be the big issue is the SNP is neoliberal and clueless on independence. That is why it is an STP.
In effect, a one-party state. And the interesting thing is that most countries in the West seem to have followed suit in this strategy. The ultra-rich appear to have pulled it off successfully.
[…] that make any difference to Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer? No, not at all. The Single Transferable Party will continue on its only known path, which inevitably leads to the economic destruction of the […]