I have spent nearly a year criticising Labour in office.
Before its arrival in office, I spent a lot of time criticising Labour's campaign to win the 2024 general election because it was very apparent, even then, that it had nothing to say about what it might do when in office.
I have been told off by Labour friends, by commentators, and those who just think I am betraying something that they claim is a left-wing political party, for doing these things.
Retrospect is a wonderful thing, and being proved right does not guarantee that the success of your predictions will continue into the future, but in this case, I think everything that I have said has been justified.
Labour did not, after all, win the 2024 general election. In time-honoured fashion, Labour won that election because the Tories had finally proved themselves to be utterly incompetent, disorganised, and politically bankrupt. The only remaining question in 2024 was why they would pick up any votes at all, and that remains the case today.
As a consequence, Morgan McSweeney cannot be seen as an election genius. Labour only had to turn up to win that election, and that is all they did.
What we now know, after a year that has led to today's vote on personal independence payments and other disability benefits, is that Labour really did arrive in office with absolutely no ideas as to what it was going to do, except balance the budget.
The simple fact is that any political party does, when entering government, have a choice. It can manage the country, or it can manage the government, but it can't set both as its objectives. By managing the country well, it will, as an epiphenomenon of doing so, manage the government's finances more than adequately. But unless it truly understands economics, no political party can manage the country, and since Labour has almost no depth of macroeconomic knowledge, or any political nous, it has taken the accountant's approach of managing the government instead of the economy, and the price is being seen by everyone.
One hundred fifty thousand people will be forced into poverty today as a consequence of what Labour is doing. If you want a summary of what Labour's first year in office has been about, that is it.
I will not apologise for having criticised a political party that is doing this.
Nor will I apologise for continuing to do so.
And I will not pretend, as too many still do, that a party that can do this is in any way left of centre, because Labour very clearly is not. There is nothing remotely left-wing about a party that chooses, as I explained it is doing in today's video, to continue to provide benefits to the wealthy, whilst denying them to those who are in need.
There might be four more long years of this government to suffer as yet. If that is the case, I will continue to criticise them unless they improve their act. What happens is up to them, but right now, they are failing us terribly, and that means that my duty is to point this out and to show that this is not necessary, which is precisely why I have draw comparison today between their cuts, and the opportunity available to them to reduce the benefits on pension contributions, the impact which would only be felt by the very wealthiest.
Governing is about making choices. So far, Labour has only shown it is good at making very bad ones.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
The bollocks about the Tories and Farage being worse and that we must cut Labour some slack is simply that: Bollocks.
So I think you are on the right track.
Agree absolutely. Quick typo
Para starting ‘And I will pretend ‘ should be ‘not pretend’?
Thanks
As bad is Labour’s appalling authoritarian approach – if they do proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist group that really is the end of any facade of democracy. See also :https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jul/01/tech-firms-suggested-placing-trackers-under-offenders-skin-at-meeting-with-justice-secretary
for the dystopian future Labour are ushering in.
Very scary.
Instead of ‘Pet log’ it’ll be ‘Crim Log’ or something like that.
It never fails to impress me how fast we can innovate when it comes to closing down people’s rights, wouldn’t you agree?
I do
I’m afraid I saw the writing on the wall not long after Starmer was elected as leader.
I walked hundreds of thousands of steps canvassing to try and get a Labour government elected with Corbyn and McDonnell.
I was also part of a team that got 14 Labour councillors and two Labour MPs elected where I used to live, but no more.
These people are not Labour.
Labour were in opposition for 14 years. They had plenty of time to formulate a plan and communicate it. Ed Miliband had a clear idea what labour should be doing. Yet he is too traumatised by his experience of leadership to stick to his guns. Partly because deep down he knows no one around him will actually stand with him when the going gets tough.
Sadly I have to agree with your comments. And I couldn’t vote Labour last year despite a lot of pressure from friends.
However, I remain amazed at how many voted Labour expecting an old style socialist government, and secondly those no longer working in the public sector who say Rome wasn’t built in a day and we have to be patient. From what I can see they are just tinkering at the edges with very little extra money. Yes, waiting lists are starting to come down, but GP access is still appalling for many and in education most extra money is very targeted and schools are still having to make major cuts to stay afloat financially.
Typo – 3rd paragraph is confusing. “told” + off?”
Corrected
I think that Labour did know what they would do when they got into government. They would facilitate continuing satisfying the wants of the very wealthy, of big business, of Israel and of the arms manufacturers, without whose support they would not have got into government.
While I agree about what labour have done since being elected, I cannot accept that any of those you mention, or Mcsweeney, had anything to do with them being elected. Last election most people still voted either Labour or Tory. The result was unavoidable.
I’m no Kenneth Mackenzie, the Brahan Seer, a Scottish predictor of the future, but I can readily predict that matters for all in the U.K, except the very rich, are going to get steadily worse over the next four years, or possibly not so steadily, that is, if this completely uncaring, incompetent Government lasts that long.
Bunch of Reform, Tory and ‘Tory’ commentators were on an evening radio 5 discussion, two nights ago. In particular, Tim Montgomery was indignant that in relation to the welfare system, Starmer was simply continuing to do what the Tories had been implementing. This was met with a murmur of agreement. It was absurd. The subtext seemed to be, why had the Sunak government been removed so unfairly … but what did they expect from Starmer? A Socialist programme?
What has cut through? (ie: made it to MSM, and even made it past Katherine Viner’s and Jonathan Friedland’s desks into Guardian editorials)
Israel committing war crimes (but no action to stop them).
Labour reneging on election pledges (but not yet suffering consequences).
Israel’s role interfering in our politics (I’m less certain on that cutting through).
Starmer’s utter lack of ability at anything other than bullying (whatever happened to the wonderfully forensic son of a toolmaker?).
The constant and chaotic U turns of the government.
The government’s inability to detach itself from Trump’s control and find other allies.
The government finding large sums of money for defence spending while insisting it must save trivial sums on social security for the most vulnerable.
The government’s total unwillingness to tax the wealthy, while it loads the costs of austerity onto the poor. In otherwords, that Reeves’s “difficult choices” are just that, choices, and unnecessary ones.
A glimmer of awareness that fiscal rules are fiction.
I think omnibus passengers get all the above. But they don’t yet get “WHY”, so are vulnerable to Fa***e rolling up and saying that Reform UK Ltd. will “fix it”.
What I DON’T see cutting through to MSM & omnibus level, is: (and this is NOT criticism of those who work v hard to try and get the message out)
Any clarity on the perils of NHS privatisation, and on the horrors of Palantir.
Any insight on macroeconomics or the slightest hint about MMT & where government money comes from.
Any depth of understanding at just how regressive our tax system is, and how straightforward it would be to quickly change that.
Any understanding of BoE interest rate policy, and how destructive it is (except that it is set too high).
It strikes me that the 2nd list – of things that aren’t yet IMHO cutting through to MSM & to omnibus level – is very similar to the contents of the Taxing Wealth Report 2024. That makes me sad because of all the hard work that went into compiling it and promoting it and continues here and elsewhere. It’s good work, its one of the most explosively important reports issued that year.
It’s being sat on, suppressed, covered up, deliberately ignored, because it hits the nail on the head. Has a single MP ever asked about where government spending comes from? Has it ever featured in a combative Treasury Select Committe hearing that made it to the evening news bulletins and the next day’s headlines, and then into the gossip on the omnibus?
I wonder whether we need an “omnibus edition” of the TWR2024, a sort of executive summary, in omnibus language, as if Fa***e had written it. I know there is a short version,
https://taxingwealth.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Taxing-Wealth-Report-2024-Summary.pdf
but I want a “Mail/Mirror” version, with tabloid headlines, the sort that can be flashed up in videos. Maybe I should give it a go…
I hope that maybe I’m being premature, and impatient (but 45 years is a long time to wait while Thatcher’s household analogy dominates politics and public opinion even AFTER it has been shown to have utterly failed).
I don’t have answers, and this is observation, not criticism.
If Liz Kendall’s “Small Ugly Bill” gets a 2nd Reading today, then it is partly because of what HASN’T cut through to MSM and down to omnibus level and then back into the Inboxes of Labour MPs who have mislaid their moral compasses.
DGU! (Don’t Give Up!)
RobertJ. Do have a go at the “omnibus edition”. The more ways it can be explained for all levels of knowledge and understanding the better.
Agreed
And then we can talk about sharing it.
People voted Labour because they believed Starmer’s pledges.
See: “10 Broken Pledges” (2024)
https://www.bigissue.com/news/politics/keir-starmer-broken-promises-tuition-fees-nationalisation-u-turn/
Labour is within a by now well established post-democratic ‘managed content’ system. It is funded almost entirely by big dark money – private vested interests . The system encompases the billionaire tax-haven owned media and the ‘public service broadcasters’ . This means people are not being informed about what kind of system they are living in.
In this model politicans will never be asked who is funding them – or whether there is a link between their proposals to privatise parts of healthcare system and their donors being US private healthcare companies.
The system is corrupt from top to bottom – topped off by all the other exotics – cash for honours, cash for access, cash for contracts; MP’s ‘second jobs’ etc etc.
Yet there seems absolutely no prospect of this being recognised – or the need for a complete reset – a consitutional change.
Richard often says USA in on the road to fascism but we are already well on the road to authoritorianism – with supposedly independent public bodies contaminated by ‘executive’ decisions – overriding proper independed professional data and knowledge. The corruption of @UKHSA and the vaccine committee JCVI being obvious recent examples – restricting vaccines and resulting in more illness and deaths.
I think this Blog Post by Cory Doctorow is of interest when considering Labour’s inability to lead.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/26/autostabilizer/
The notion that surveillance serves as a stabiliser of inequality is chilling. Labour, and pretty much any western government, can get away with the destabilising effects of their policies favouring the rich due to the cheapness of “Guard Labour” enabled by big tech. The rich and powerful can drive our population further into poverty, to increase inequality, much further than would otherwise be possible, whilst still feeling protected.
I fear you are right