There were articles in The Guardian over the weekend that explained a great deal about Labour.
First, there were these comments by Andy Beckett:
The party's current crisis, while most directly caused by Keir Starmer's political shortcomings and the chillingly selective morality of Peter Mandelson, is really the result of one Labour tradition demonstrably failing in government to meet the needs of today's world. Often dominant in the party, especially over the past 40 years, you could call that tradition Labour minimalism.
Labour minimalists believe that England is a fundamentally conservative, right-leaning country, in which the party can only succeed electorally and in government by appearing as moderate and unthreatening to powerful interests as possible.
As he then noted:
In 1985, in his first act as a senior party figure, Mandelson commissioned a report by a fellow Labour minimalist, the political analyst Philip Gould.
“Positive perceptions of the Labour party tend to be outweighed by negative concerns,” wrote Gould, “particularly [about] unacceptable ‘beyond the pale' figures.”
Provocative leftwing MPs, bold-sounding leftwing policies, fierce leftwing rhetoric: all should be pared back, marginalised or dropped altogether, the two men agreed, so that Labour could reposition itself advantageously on the centre ground.
And as he added:
First under Neil Kinnock, then Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and finally Starmer, minimalism became the party's operating principle.
The aim? A politics rooted in anything but the interests of ordinary people, who were treated as being both as expendable and irrelevant by Labour as they were by the financial elites to which the Party's leadership fawned. Is it any surprise there is a crisis?
John Harris echoed similar themes when writing about Labour's planned reform of special educational needs and disabilities support, saying:
All told, the government's underlying vision seems to be of a great rebalancing, away from personalised support towards the kind of top-down system in which families basically get what they're given. A report last week from Sky News held out exactly this prospect: ministers, it said, “ultimately want to restrict the number of children with specific per-pupil funding packages, and to curb the number of parents who end up taking their case to tribunal”.
The message is, once more, of contempt, and as John Harris then noted:
What that might say about the Starmer government's basic instincts is both fascinating and depressing. In the midst of all its chaos, this sometimes looks like an old Labour administration, in the worst possible way. It has no modern versions of that tradition's good stuff: massed council-house building, or the creation of the NHS. But what remains is a familiar and very old-fashioned mistrust of redress, choice and accountability, a tendency to side with officials and penpushers, and an apparent belief we should all be grateful for whatever favours the state can give us. At a moment when Labour is being regularly warned of the dangers of retreating into an ideological comfort zone, that would be quite some safe space in which to take refuge. It would also test a lot of people's faith in a party they hitherto believed was on their side: in all likelihood, to breaking point.
Then note this, in a report on aid spending, this time from the FT:
Cuts to overseas aid by the UK are set to go further and faster than those made by the Trump administration in the US, as Sir Keir Starmer's government wrestles with funding pressures. The UK will cut overseas aid spending by about 27 per cent in 2026-27 compared with 2024-25, while the US reductions are expected to be 23 per cent lower in 2026 than in 2024, as Congress has this month blunted parts of the steep cuts proposed by the President.
What's the message? It is threefold.
First, the decay within Labour has been happening for four decades, with Peter Mandelson being the perpetual link that explains the process. Its decline from being a party of principle to one of grubby managerialism has not happened by chance. It reflects deliberate policy choices. That it might be suffering its death throes as a result is not something we should be overly concerned about. In the form it has had throughout much of my lifetime, Labour has now outlived its usefulness.
Second, the consequences of this decay are evident all around us. By pursuing a politics of destruction, the Labour Party has, with the Tories, been the primary architect of the economics of failure that the far right now seeks to exploit to form the basis of their bid for power by seeking to undermine the state even further.
Third, Andy Beckett says this at the end of his article:
Labour appears to have belatedly realised that the era of small politics is over. But to prevent what may be an epic political disaster – Britain's first government of the populist hard right – it will almost certainly need to make alliances and compromises with other parties. In politics as in life, sometimes the more control you seek, the less you ultimately get.
I do not agree. I do not think that Labour has realised that the era of small politics is over. Nor do I think it shows any signs at all of being willing to make alliances or compromises. Instead, the old tribalism that has so undermined its credibility for so long remains all too apparent. It has only been a week since its deputy leader, Lucy Powell, demanded that the Green stand down in the Gordon by-election, even though they are polling much higher than Labour. That arrogance is what has brought Labour to its knees and is why people no longer trust it. It's time to say good riddance and move on.
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Labour lives on the principle of Labourism, that is that Labour is the only solution to our problems. They will never stand down and the only alliances they will consider are ones where they are clearly dominant and the alliance partner subordinate. I have frequently seen the same attitude that you quote from Lucy Powell as a Green voter, the only difference is now Labour are so unpopular and so right wing, it’s clear how ridiculous it is. Labour haven’t been left wing for a long time, and the level of control is now being exposed.
We need PR and now. There is no need for just one left wing party, the Greens will work effectively with other reasonable parties as will the SNP and Plaid Cymru. Interestingly the far right vote is now being split multiply as all the factions falling out of Reform set up their own parties!
Fourth: LINO is continuing the centralisation policies of Thatcher et al – using a government/admi structure totally unsuited for it. In this context: “Failed State” by Sam Freedman is worth reading. He provides an inside view of what is wrong with the UK state/the polticial set-up/the civil service. The cabinet office is covered in some detail.
Chapter 2, page 60 is particularly good: “Over the past few years the DfE has almost entirely lost the ability to think strategically because its own role has become so confused. Ministers time has been consumed on issues that would be nowhere near the desks of their counterparts in other countries”… “We could see, correctly, that many local council controlled schools were underperforming and were not being given the right support. Conclusion: schools should be directly responsible to the centre. Instead, we should have asked WHY council support as so varibale and would could be done to make it better”.
Expressed another way: they could see the problem: poorly performing councils wrt education. They were functionally incapable of asking the right questions to address the problem. Instead, they made things worse.
The above is being repeated – as outlined by Harriss (SEND). All UK govs centralise and then fail – because the UK gov admin apparatus (& by extension the cab office) is functionally incapable of addressing detail – the sad thing is, they don’t even realise this.
Much to agree with
The Green Party in Germany has been damaged by coalitions with Social Democrats and Liberals.
The Green Party in Germany has been damaged by coalitions with Social Democrats and Liberals who are hopelessly neoliberal.
We have a different Green Party.
What are you saying?
The arguments being used by the likes of Yvette Cooper against the Greens, are ample evidence of Labour’s political, intellectual and moral bankruptcy (and/or fear).
She likes to bracket her opponents together, then fire a blunderbuss at the lot of them.
When unlawfully proscribing Palestine Action, she bracketed them with two genuinely extreme organisations, in the one vote.
When challenging the Greens in Gorton and Denton, as violent extremists, she brackets them with Reform’s destructive fascism.
Trevor Phillips did the same yesterday on his TV show, (lying) when he claimed 2,700 people werent being arrested for writing their support for Palestine Action on bits of cardboard (in fact they WERE), but for writing “from the river to the sea…”. As the person he was trying this rubbish out on, was Zack Polanski, Mr Phillips (who had Peter Mandelson as his best man a few years ago) was taken to the cleaners, live on air.
Yvette Cooper can TRY convincing the public that opposing genocide is destroying the UK economy, if that’s what her masters have told her to say. But she is either too stubborn or too stupid to realise that the game is up.
The cries of the collapsing neoliberal class are getting louder and more desperate. They are spouting more BS than ever. But there is a change. They are no longer going unchallenged. They look and sound more ridiculous by the day, and people KNOW it.
Now we simply have to deal with the one remaining fragment of Thatcher’s awful legacy. We finally have to evict TINA from the publlic square, because There Is An Alternative.
KUTGW!
Thanks
Thank you for putting it so well. As a long term Green who has personally experienced Labour toxicity, I’m now of the view that whilst there are some decent people in Labour, the party’s organisation is rotten and seems to suck people in. I thought Yvette Cooper had done some good work with Sure Start etc. She’s been awful under Starmer.
I’m so glad Zack is willing to face media and defend himself against the lies put out. We need more gutsy articulate politicians. I’m so hoping Hannah Spencer wins!
No steer and LINO are sleepwalking to a massive electoral defeat which will allow the far right to gain power.
Take SEND no steer has been warned that there will be a massive reaction from parents, grandparents with the electoral consequences.
Don’t expect any change of direction even with no steer gone. Why? The usual garbage of ” we can’t afford it and we must not upset the financial markets”.
As for the media spouting any successor will turn LINO leftwards it’s the usual scaremongering crap.
I met my breaking point with Labour in 2003 – the Iraq war and the end of final salary pensions in the public sector for no good reason just after joining local government . Prior to this, Labour decided to keep to the Tory PSBR; they did not rescind cuts to my university grant in 1997; they did not make any proposed changes to the 1996 Housing Act as my housing law lecturer made clear months after the 1997 win, which contributed to the continuing residualisation of council housing seen under the Tories. The evidence was always stacking up.
In local government, I found Labour councillors just took their vote for granted and preferred to fall out among themselves. The Westminster driven initiative’s on performance and cost to enable local people to ‘take control’ were just ruses to make the public sector easier to sell off or retard to allow markets to take over.
All the time – things were getting worse. I used to look at things like Surestart and think what was the point of such interventions when the users of that service would be just catapulted into the mess New Labour were not addressing or making worse.
None of it made any sense then, but it does now.
I live in Sheffield. This makes it very hard to agree with moves towards localism. Sheffield’s Labour councillors can often feel, like Trump, that they will be re-elected whatever they do. The local bureaucracy is invisible, unaccountable, and powerful. Read about the street trees saga, the Amey contract which councillors didn’t bother to read before signing and was hidden from the public for nearly 7 years. Maybe Sheffield is an outlier, but I suspect other councils are much the same.
Yes Richard – “arrogance is what has brought Labour to its knees and is why people no longer trust it. It’s time to say good riddance and move on.”
A very understandable conclusion – but Labour have been taken over by a Zionist-funded faction, and the corrupt nature of our constitution enables it, and indeed incentivises it. It could – and has – happened in other parties. I am still a member and have no particular expectation about Labour’s future, and could easily vote Green as things are.
But it’s is worth remembering that only a few years ago Labour did have a social democratic offer – and almost won an election , and was funded largely by hundreds of thousands of members subscriptions. That was probably seen as a such horrifying near miss by the powers that be, that the CIA/Mossad/MI5 media sponsored the Labour Together conspiracy and weaponization of antisemitism was the result.
But until we make private donations to politicians and parties, 2nd ‘jobs’, bribes for honours, revolving doors, insider contracts, under-cover lobbying by peers etc etc all illegal – then we don’t have a hope in hell of reclaiming democracy. The media is beginning to reveal the true corruption of the Labour Together conspiracy but there is a long way to go.
Clive Lewis says ‘wealth and power are deep-wired into the British state ‘- it has got to be unwired.