For those who read the comments on this blog, and it would seem that a surprisingly large number do, then references to an article by an author using the pen name Aurelien, entitled ‘No Left Turn' will be familiar of late.
Aurelien, I am assured, is a former foreign office civil servant in the UK, now working training staff at NATO. The use of a pen name is, in that situation, very clearly appropriate.
The article in question is available here, but if I might grossly précis it, the argument is one that is, fairly familiar on this blog of late.
Firstly, it is suggested that the mainstream political parties of most states, the UK included, are largely homogenous in terms of the opinions that they present, the backgrounds of those who serve in them, and the objectives that they seek to fulfil. There is, and I stress that these words are mine, a neoliberal consensus at play, whoever it might be that supposedly holds power.
Secondly, whilst this has not quite, as yet, rendered the democratic process meaningless, it is severely undermining it. It can be argued that neither the French left nor right got the results that they desired in their recent general election, having both been denied by the centre ground.
Elsewhere, and I offer this example which is not in the article, the leading right-of-centre parties in Ireland, after a century of supposedly intense opposition to each other, now serve in coalition together with the combined intention of denying Sinn Fein the opportunity of power in that country.
And, here in the UK, the freakiness of our electoral system has returned a massive Labour majority to Parliament on the basis of a share of the vote little different from that they enjoyed in 2019, which was a supposedly disastrous year for them. It just so happens, however, that in 2024, Labour could guarantee to deliver continuity, harmonious government in the way that in June 2019 it would not have done, so the cards played out in its favour.
What we are not getting as a result in any of these countries is anything approaching a left-of-centre government. As a consequence, in a very wide range of states, with apparently different situations, electorates feel deeply alienated from the political process because, as Aurelien puts it, they realise that “Workers and peasants, your elites don't need you. Just shove off and don't make any fuss about it.”
I hope that the above is a fair summary of the article, although I know that there will be those who can refine this summary in the comments, and probably with more nuance, and I would still seriously suggest that it is worth anyone's time to read the original, which is well written. My summary simply provides opportunity for discussion, so let me offer some comments.
Firstly, I agree with the conclusion of this piece, which suggests that we have ended up with what might be best described as a ‘single transferable party' (STP) within our political systems. In other words, far from us having electoral choice, the reality is a pretence of choice is being presented to us by a range of parties who claim to be in opposition to each other but who actually promote policy ideas and mechanisms for their delivery that are extraordinarily similar in style. The consequence is that we end up with an STP, meaning that whoever we vote for, all we actually change is the limited number of people responsible for delivering consistent neoliberal hegemonic policies that are designed to benefit those with wealth and big business and which have little or no impact on the well-being of the majority population.
Second, this fact is now being understood by the electorate. The rise in the number of parties represented in the UK parliament, which might arguably be counted as representing 15 or 16 separate groupings at present from at least 14 different parties, reflects the fact that some people have consciously noted this ploy perpetrated by the single transferable party and opted out of their game. However, since the system is incredibly biased against the interests of those doing so their representation in Parliament remains small.
This means that the rest of the population is effectively unrepresented as a consequence of the parties that they voted for taking on interest in them, whether as electors or, if they are so unwise as to have joined such a party, in their capacity as members of that organisation. In consequence, voter alienation is, inevitably, increasing because people are in growing numbers realising that a conspiracy is taking place against them.
It is my expectation that this understanding will grow rapidly as this Parliament progresses and disenchantment with Labour's track record in office increases.
The question, as far as I am concerned in that case is, presuming that this fairly summarises this situation of which readers of this blog are increasingly aware, what happens next?
Do people hang on in quiet desperation, as Pink Floyd once suggested was the English way? I would happen to agree with them that this might be a peculiarly English response, but will it last?
Alternatively, will the people of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland react, as they have the potential to do, and demand their independence from this hegemony to which many in those countries do not subscribe?
Might we also see an increasingly angry reaction to this attempt by those political forces funded by wealth and prevailing economic power to deny us the choice that those who seek to control us via the Single Transferable Party claim is what identifies us as human beings, which is our capacity to choose?
The possibility does, of course, exist that all these things might happen with decidedly unpredictable outcomes.
Of course, the current incumbent Single Transferable Party will seek to deny the possibility of any of these things happening. This is apparent from its attitude towards electoral reform.
It is also clear from their approach to independence movements.
And it is also apparent from their attitude towards the Greens, who have dared to challenge their hegemonic views.
Their attitude towards those inside their own parties who will not acquiesce to the control that they wish to exercise over them is especially vicious, which is why Labour suspended seven of its newly elected MPs so soon after this new parliament assembled.
The difficulty for the STP is that with the emergence of far-right alternatives, it is not clear that the STP now has the level of media support that it once assumed. If Reform continues to promote a far-right agenda, and the Tories break from the STP and join them on that fringe, which Robert Jenrick would do, it might just upset the STP as much as the far-right has upset Macron and his allies in France.
The consequences are threefold.
The first is that all of us who thought Labour would change nothing were right. That was the aim. It is now the STP.
Second, the far right is a threat, but the STP hopes to contain it, hoping it can suck the left in to support it.
Third, the STP is as determined as the far right to ensure that there is no real left-wing opposition in the UK.
So, what next?
As yet, I will be honest that this is not clear, but it does make me determined to make a space like this blog available to discuss this issue.
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I once hoped that the LDs held the key to unlocking this cage, but as Clegg turned out to be more Old Nick than Saint Nick my hopes faded. Apparently, as soon as any party shows signs of gaining power, it is colonised by STP apparatchiks and morphs into ‘more of the same’.
Agreed
And look where he is now
Thank you.
If one knows Clegg’s background, his trajectory from being a Tory (as late as at Oxford), European Commission staffer under Leon Brittan (a friend of Clegg’s father), marriage to the daughter of a leading Franco Falangist, whom he met at the College of Europe in Bruges (the match making and breeding ground for the EU’s PMC) to the Orange Order coup against Charles Kennedy, one expected the coalition to unfold as it did. After colleagues and I met Clegg in late 2009 / early 2010, so well before the election, a Tory activist colleague called him a pound shop Cameron.
My parents immediately joined the SDP when the Gang of Four created it and they campaigned for it for decades. Before that they had been independents. For them at that time I suppose it made sense and that was the environment I grew up in.
It’s funny how the passage of time can be so clarifying: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39216693
Thank you, Richard.
I have let Aurelien know of today’s most welcome post / reference.
Thanks
I just wanted to say that I loved the essay by Aurelien “No Left Turn” and thought it succinctly articulated concerns that have been discussed on this blog for some time – that the two main parties were equally committed to neo-liberalism, equally accessible to the lobbying and influence of big business and equally determined to limit the influence and electability of parties who weren’t inside this cabal.
If I misunderstood the final paragraphs of Aurelien’s earlier essay, “What’s Left …. And What’s Left”, I am sorry. I am here to learn. I realise that Aurelien is trying to unpack the meanings of Left and Right and to explore how relevant these terms are to political parties and establishment figures who are tied to the interests of capital. Capital which by nature, is bound to inexorable and impersonal seeking after profit and has no need or interest in engaging in Right wing conspiracies to dominate. So the two main parties are only notionally Left or Right, to attract voters who have genuine Left or Right viewpoints. I can’t remember where I read or heard it but someone was arguing that there are two groupings of neo-liberals – those who favour massive conglomerates and huge asset management companies and those who feel they represent old family money and slightly smaller concerns and they put Trump and Farage in the latter bracket.
Good summary. Agree. What is clear is that the combo of the elite & the media will conspire to delay/dilute/kill any and all parties that hope to change things. Couple this to using laws to ensure that any opposition to elite policies e.g.:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/aug/06/uk-police-arrest-two-pro-palestine-activists-under-organised-laws
will be met with rigour “pour decourager les autres” (ref also the gantry people & 5 years sentences). One senses an elite that is worried as well as distant from voters.
& also an elite that is incestouous – the ghastly Balls interviewing his wife (the home sec) on telly. – they can’t even see how ridiculous this looks.
Musk has predicted that the Uk will become more resitve – I agree. Next flash point: possibly pylons (with the cretinous greens supporting lots more of them – a guaranteed vote loser).
Thank you and well said, Mike.
That incestuous elite crosses party boundaries (vide cousins Harriet Harman and Kitty Usher in Labour and Virginia Bottomley and Jeremy Hunt on the Tory side) and is also to be found overseas, especially in the US and France.
It looks like Balls and Cooper are taking over from Gove and Sara Vine and, a generation ago, Tory minister John Maples and his BBC wife Jane Corbin.
This is what makes the elite hang together, but also keep the great unwashed out. It’s not just ideology and wealth, but, increasingly, ties of blood or bed. The agenda they promote is not just confined to the news. Look at how the Hon. Kirstie Allsopp promotes the interests oof capital on her shows. She’s the cousin of Mrs Cameron, whose younger sister, Emily Sheffield, does the same.
Readers who speak French may want to research Attal and his associates.
“cretinous Greens” – is there any need for gratuitous insults that are in any case completely false? You’ll find most Greens arguing for a combination of a) underground cables and b) supplying energy close to where it is used. But carry on being ignorant-/ supporting the status quo politically and thus part of the problem that is resulting in the current riots.
I have tried to engage with the Greens ref pylons, to no avail. For the avoidance of doubt: I am an expert on power systems.
In the case of most AC power systems, there is a phenomena called “skin effect” – which concentrates current on the skin and to a small depth into the conductor. Most of the conductor carries no current at all. In the case of 400kV power lines – apparently we need loads more – shifting some to DC operation would enable a given line to carry around 8x more power. Yes, there would be a need for AC-DC converter stations. However, the Uk has in the shape of the old GEC company (owned by GE of the USA) one of the world’s leaders in high voltage DC . I guarantee you: re-purposing an existing 400kV line for DC would be much quicker (& less societal hassle) than building a new one – or indeed undergrounding (which is a nightmare @ that voltage – just don’t go there).
In summary, the Greens don’t want to even engage with me – an expert.
Just doing a project – ground mount PV couple of MW – can strip out maybe half a million pounds in capex – by not using string inverters and running the 1km connection to the load as …. DC. I live this stuff day by day, I know what I’m talking about. & I speak to some of the world’s top power equipment companies who are very interested in some of my ideas – but you know what – most politicos…. barely know enough to tie their shoelaces, as this blog shows, time after time.
It would be tragic if the understandable disagreement here between ill informed Greens (we are all of us ignorant until proven guilty) and energy experts, became the battlefield any social collective action died upon. The only people it finally politically serves are our neo liberal STP overlords who can forge ahead in their societal and planetary destruction for personal profits whilst we are encouraged by their mass media nudging units to argue over the number of angels on the head of a pin. Perfection is the enemy of the good.
Very glad you raised it. I do not think ‘left’ and ‘right’ catch the essence; the essence is government by the people, and FOR the people; not for cartels of minorities solely protecting vested interests, typically the vested interests of left or right (although the left has been stripped of much of the politically usable parts of their vested interests over the last fifty years).
Neoliberalism has been able to capture Parliament in Britain, by capturing the Parties; because it is easier, and cheaper to capture every Party that matters (only two in the UK) than waste resources trying to persuade all the people literally to surrender all their rights and interests, to serve vested interests who intend only to serve their own ends; often at the expense of everyone else. The Parties are weak, porous vessels, easily captured (especially in the digital age), and easily manipulated by powerful commercial interets; and Parties consist of a small membership, typically of injudicious zealots, or superficial theorisers of no intellectual substance, or possessing any executive competence or experience, and easily prey to the ambitious careerist.
In the UK the power of Party is its capacity to control Parliament through the leadership’s use of patronage (exercised by the PM), which is often cabalistic; because only Party can exercise political and sovereign power. Power is only achieved for Party through an FPTP system which is managed through the Partonage system and by the Whips.
The first step to end this is not by trying to change the Parties. This will fail. The starting point must be to change the FPTP system, the mechanism for vested interest, neoliberal control; and not to do what Westminster did in Holyrood; set up a PR system that in fact still served Party interest, through a Party list system. The choice in PR must always be left in the hands of the voter, so the PR system requires to be chosen, that best serves the voter (for example only, STV). This is only the first step to changing our politics from the corrupt state into which we have fallen, but it is the non-negotiable entry point for change in our government, to achieve a democracy that actually serves the electorate, and not some vested interest exclusively looking after itself.
Parliament requires to do this, because people are no longer voting in elections. Turnout in UK elections has fallen from 84% in 1945, to 60% in 2024; but the result of elections is now an unprecedented 158 seat majority for Labour with 33.7% of the vote; a very small change over the 32.2% vote in 2019. Labour isn’t persuading anyone. Nor are the conservatives; but between them the capture more and more power, simply by turning more and more people away from politics. That is how bad, and corrupting our politics has become. Bigger majorities, allowing more power for government is being won by parties that are supported by fewer and fewer people.
On current trends Britain will soon be governed by Parties supported by very small fractions of the electorate, but given more and more power to govern with complete freedom to do what they wish. This is exactly what Neoliberalism intends.
Thanks
I am particularly glad to see the focus on the STP because, I thought Aurelien’s reference to “The Party”, just doesn’t work. The whole Party, democratic scam is built on the ability to present the STP, as if it was a real Two Party system. It can only work as an STP. This binary choice that isn’t a choice, underpinned by the immovable FPTP electoral system is the whole basis for the success of the political ponzi scheme; that has two outcomes. First, people fall for the two party scam, and assme they can have change by changing their vote. Second, if the voter realises it is a scam, their only option is to give up, preferably for the scammers, stop voting. Then you acquire more power from a smaller and smaller pool of active voters; the mugs that still believe there is a choice. Since there isn’t a choice the ‘winners’ eventually do not believe they are entitled to lose; and will not accept that defeat is legitimate. The result?
Where we are now. It is a ponzi scheme, because it always ends by running out of road, with very bad outcomes when everybody realises there is nothing there for anyone but the scammers.
I’d just note that proportional representation is not a panacea. New Zealand has a mixed member proportional system where parties have electorate MPs and list MPs. Voters have two votes: one for their electorate MP and one for their preferred party. The list is drawn upon to ensure the proportion of members of each party in parliament (unicameral) is the same as the share of party votes for each party.
What NZ has now is a coalition of the right, the far right and ultra far right (in largely economic terms) going hard on neoliberalism, cutting social services and all manner of government expenditure to pay for tax cuts for the rich. The country is already sliding into recession.
It’s not a panacea
But the right system (and you have not got that) would help
One word: Funding.
The late great Robin Williams made a quip that was worth a thousand words.
He felt our politicians should be like racing car drivers who wear patches of the names of their sponsors on their clothing. This way he said, you’d know who and what you were really voting for.
The STP exists like it does in the U.S. because the rich with money to fund, just check which the way the wind is blowing and offer their cash accordingly. America eh – it avoided having a royal family but ended up having royal-like families anyway by virtue of its capitalism. Another failed state is the result.
You cannot have a minority over-influencing the ‘demos’ by virtue of their money. I’m sorry but that is not on.
Not only is that corruption in my view, it is simply unfair competition between ideas. Politics is not the arena to practice private sector competition strategy. It’s too important to turn into a commodity.
And our worship of money and ascribing super-human qualities to those who have it does not help either.
Sure, some of the super rich have worked hard and made a difference, but a lot of modern capitalism is just theft, moving resources around, taking other people’s money and claiming that they have made ‘money’, when it was money that had already been made and belonged to someone else and is not new money at all.
Like everything else, politics is infrastructure and it needs direct government/state investment – not private investment that will just extract what it wants every time.
Finally, I think democracy is finished until this is sorted out. I think democracy is actually dead in the water, a ship without power, sails or a rudder. We are encouraged to worry about ‘left entry-ism’ when the capital order has already done its break and entry and moved in.
Why not face up to that and reconfigure what to do from that lower base?
Richard and readers may be interested in what Naked Capitalism, which often publishes Richard, has to say about what the left should do in power, https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/08/whats-wrong-and-right-with-project-2025.html.
Machiavelli certainly does recommend destroying your enemies.
He called this ‘killing the sons of Brutus” – by which he meant destroying all future potential for the restoration of tyranny, though by assassination in Medici style.
The Romanovs also suffered that fate. Here, the Windsors probably have sufficient self destructive urges to render that unecessary. Sue Townsend’s council estate in Leicester beckons though.
Unless we follow the IDF strategy of extra judicial murder, we may not need to assassinate the oligarchs and plutocrats, but to avoid the pitchfork brigade, for their own welfare and safety we do need to dispemower them completely.
There used to be genuine legislative power behind the control of monopolies and financialisation, but then anti Trust and Glass-Steagall Acts were repealed by Reagan and Clinton, who thus rewarded their anti-liberal business and corporate backers.
Unless Labour conquers its longtstanding fear of the City and acts in the public interest we are in rinse and repeat mode.
And “Killing the sons of Brutus” includes the Monetary Policy Committee.
I see no need for either the MPC or the OBR.
They both seem to me to be a fig-leaf behind which the government can hide.
I want to see the ministers of all departments accountable for their, and their departments actions. That’s how it used to be and the system was, in my view better for it.
I’m not sure where to start; but to me, the first issue (perhaps among many) is the neoliberal world and its embodied ideas that so many espouse. That puts an overlay of sameness within which it is difficult to achieve much variation of real programs that could significantly affect people’s lives for the better. In short, it is a stiff, unyielding straitjacket. Thus, much of the state’s expenditure, for a political party newly in power, is a given room to change is limited – unless there are cuts, which generally disadvantage the poorest in society. I suggest that it will only be possible to have real change when this straitjacket is removed and then the true financial capabilities of the state will be unleashed.
Richard is showing, in bite sized chunks, what the reality of the UK’s financial system is; invaluable, if enough people read and understand it and then use that knowledge to seek change.
There are, of course, many other issues, but there is another I wish to mention here – that is education. The general level of education needs to be raised significantly. I suggest it is intolerable that economics students, at all levels, are seemingly taught badly and, to me, incorrectly. Where a text book contains information that is incorrect, it should be banned. Similarly, where a lecturer/teach teaches incorrectly, that person should be re-educated. (I am not advocating anything like Orwellian thought police). For example, when I started looking at economics text books, several stated that ‘deposits in banks allow loans to be made’. The truth is the exact opposite, loans create deposits.
Anyway, that is my starting point, in what I think is a very large and diffuse subject area. The next area is changing the voting system, but that, for me anyway, is an area fraught with risk.
@ Rich
‘Twas ever thus,
When I trained as a teacher, the Americans Postman and Weingartner published a book “Teaching as a Subversive Activity” with a seminal chapter “Crap Detecting”.
Critical evaluation and thinking have never really been a primary goal of British pedagogy, nor truly in the States, and Sir Keith Joseph virtually destroyed discovery based learning.
Bruner and Dewey’s well thought out and articulated educational discovery and enquiry learning principles were sacrificed on the altar of Thatcherism, in a return to 19th didacticism.
Then, over a decade later, when Scotland developed the Curriculum for Excellence in the early days of devolution, it was based on the Finnish system, which had adopted enquiry and active learning principles. Finland was then in the top 3 globally for educational standards.
By 2014 this rolling system of reform – and CfE was very well thought out (in theory anyway) had reached secondary S4, so 15+ assessments were due, and Scotgov had guaranteed the additional funding necessary to complete the circle. But they didn’t.
Basically this innovative approach then foundered on the SQA’s appallingly traditional exam methodologies and lack of investment by Scotgov. At this time, I was teaching both History and Geography for this first run through and my new History text books designed for the new methodology, just did not arrive until 6 weeks before the exam., so I was forced to use 30yr old topic books on Weimar and other course modules.
Of course 2014 was at the height of Tory austerity, and Scotland’s attempts at curriculum reform were effectively sabotaged by Cameron’s government.
The idiot Gove, then did his worst south of the Border.
There were other problems, SQA being a failing organisation, and the academic secondary instructional mindset prevailed, when we had an opportunity to move forward to an advanced educational curriculum, which valued enquiry and critical thinking.
Central for me is that until voters understand understand how and who can create money together with double-entry accounting which shows how that money moves through the economy and its effects nothing much is going to change. Monetary system education therefore remains critical. In the process of educating the politicians who’ve tried to argue that government has no money of its own and the blackhole in the government accounts mean government can’t effect much change will prove to be anathema to the well-being of the country.
@Schofield.
SO true, it’s worth quoting the observation of the late Stephen Zarlenga, author of “The Lost Science of Money” (a book I’ve read more than once), and the founder of the American Money Institute, that:
“Over time, whoever controls the money system, controls the nation.”
– Stephen Zarlenga (1941 – 2017)
It is interesting to read the Wikipedia entry for Zerlenga. Under “criticism”, it says this:
“Critics state that ‘debt-free money’ advocates are ‘confused on the accounting, vague on the terminology, and rarely provide details on their proposal’ and point out that the suggestion to have, for example in the United States, the central bank, instead of providing the government with a ‘loan’, simply ‘transfer[ing]’ money to the government’s account with the Fed, would not make money ‘debt-free’ because the Fed’s liabilities grow: first, in the form of Treasury deposits, and, then, as the Treasury draws down those deposits, in the form of bank reserves. And they note that the Fed would continue to pay interest on reserves in order to control the interest rate. In the critics’ words, ‘debt-free money’ can never be either debt-free or interest-free and the positions advocated by Zarlenga and supporters of ‘sovereign money’ would only be ‘logically consistent’ with zero interest-rates in the economy ‘forever'”.
The critics appear principally to be the Austrian School, though it is conveniently vague. Note that this critique involves a criticism of a failure to understand the “accounting” (from orthodox neoliberal economists who do not understand accounting, nor even include it in their education curriculum, and therefore are in no position even to offer an authoritative opinion). Commit a non-sequitur; because money is a debt of Government means only that Government alone can extinguish it; and it does so by circulating the debt. Only sovereign Government can do this in a fiat system, and it is enforced by law, and taxation. This exclusive authority cannot be privatised, and that is what the critics cannot answer, or even acknowledge.
The problem here is that neoliberals do not either believe in money, or understand it. They believe only in private debt; because debt that is not money can always attract interest, and the capacity of the debt holder to extract a continuous profit from debt, by making look like money. It is just another neoliberal scam.
Money that a holder cannot keep, except by paying interest isn’t money; and an issuer of money not either a sovereign issuer able to tax, or its agent cannot issue money. It only issues commercial debt.
All money is debt; not all debt is money. The difference is what Neoliberalism denies; but it is undeniable in a fiat system.
Thanks
You can download a copy of The Lost Science of Money here:
https://archive.org/details/economics-nat-soc-federal-reserve-stephen-zarlenga-the-lost-science-of-money-the_202309
Hmmm……………..
I prefer what the Czech writer Milan Kundera said because to me it seems deeper and more profound (he suffered communism):
“ The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past. ”
This is what the Neo-liberals have done in the West – von Hayek basically re-wrote human history, completing ignoring (for example) altruism in his ‘theories’ about economic man.
To which you could add another quote of his:
“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”.
Again, in the West, our biased media, 24/7 marketing and poor education ensures we are distracted to death and kept in ignorance as to the real source of our torments.
Uncomfortable as it may be for left (or any) intellectuals, it is not the profundity of the idea of money that is relevant here; but the profundity of money’s real effects. It is a serious failing of the intellectual history of ideas, that the intellectual historians focus on the politics, the ideology or the morality of ideas; and simply do not understand the extent to which economic activity, and money as its necessary initiator (not their subject); overwhelms the forces they insist are “deeper” or more influential. As a general rule, and save by very rare exception, the real world marches to a different drum, and it is counted out in real effects; produced by money, or the lack of it.
Politics bends like a reed in the wind to the power of money, the economic forces money unlocks, and its unique capacity to captivate and motivate people to exploit its potency and serve its purposes. Unlike anything else people do, or believe in; they need not be proud of their subservience to money or proclaim its primacy in their life (and may even rationalise it’s significance to them away), and yet the vast majority are
participants (willing, reluctant or resigned), accepting the necessity of the centrality of money to their whole life, and accept what it both offers and demands. This is an uncomfortable fact of life, but it has permeated our modern history since the seventeenth century. And we are still denying it, for a loftier narrative that is largely fictional.
That takes some thinking about
Chantal Mouffe has written of a ‘Left Populism’ and why not?
The Public Choice libertarians cynically look down at democracy and slag off the relationship between politicians and the people as corrupt if the politicians actually respond to their concerns. This piggy backs on the Right wing claim that the post war welfarism and unions etc., were the source of our problems in the 1970s (ignoring the real cost of the West’s support of Israel as well the complacency in the West’s manufacturing economies as Germany and Japan caught up).
Politicians dealing with popular causes – cause that are the result of shared suffering – are encouraged to ignore these naturally occurring sentiments and show their ‘strength’ by ignoring such sentiment and offering alternative explanations dreamt up by ‘independent’ think tanks and Right wing extremists.
We are encouraged instead to disrupt this win/win relationship with politicians by inculcating lies into society about how tax actually works, and how money is created and ‘tax payers money’ amongst other diversions.
Yet this position is pure hypocrisy when one considers how modern political funding works and the leverage it gives the elite over politicians and our lives.
It is a typical Right wing tactic to always get your accusation in first – usually an accusation of what the Right is actually doing itself.
The Left/progressives everywhere seems to have lost its mojo, its confidence, without ever realising just how overwhelmed it has been by the gishing bullshit of the Right, the Chicago school etc.
The Left could co-opt popular causes like environmentalism as Mouffe suggests – but look what happened with Stymied and his green pledges? Money talks folks.
[…] Now Labour is the incumbent Single Transferable Party of government what chance is there for the Lef… Richard Murphy. Colonel Smithers highlights big shout out to Aurelien. […]
The UK is, when compared to other European democracies, still in its juvenile phase. It must reach ‘the age of consent’ by introducing a much more representative voting system.
I still believe that will allow the blairites and tory-lites to be ejected from the labour party and opens the way to sensible coalition politics.
What then happens (with the coalition-forming process) will be key to where the UK would go from there.
I could regale you with in-depth analyses of how the coalition process has reached its nadir in the Netherlands, but here it’s not the system forcing the majority of Dutch people to vote right through to extreme right, it’s the inate conservatism of the majority here.
I still firmly believe the UK is a centrist to left leaning country and would prosper under a proper voting system.
John
I cannot agree.
My view is that those who rule over us rule with the use of disorder.
They divide and conquer and are long established.
It’s all done by design.
And it is traditional.
We are kept in this country – with the exception of one or two episodes – in a state of constant fear by greed.
The point being, with a fairer voting system, the current overlords who gain 100% of power on 36% of the vote are kicked out, or at least have their power seriously reigned-in.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/08/links-8-7-2024.html has reposted Richard’s post.
Thanks
They have a licence to do so
Thank you, Richard.
Disaffected voters who have figured that the STP doesn’t work for them can be recruited to populist political movements on the left or on the right. (By populist I mean, roughly, anti-elitist, i.e. opposed to the elite investor class that the STP serves.) In France and in Germany research shows that large numbers of independent voters are prepared to support RN or AfD if all the alternatives are STP. Most of them are not the ghastly right-wing nationalists the STP-aligned media makes them out to be, although some are. Ask them and they say they are voting tactically. There exists no left populist alternative. Similarly in the UK Labour can thank the success of right populists for its parliamentary majority. If there were a genuine, plausible and attractive left populist party, Labour would be humiliated like the Tories were last month.
This being the situation:
1. How does a left popular movement form? It needs to be genuinely beyond the STP’s power to co-opt.
2. A genuine left popular movement would represent a real danger to the wealth, power and privilege relations of the status quo. This is why all such organizations have been the object of active disruption by government since the 1960s. (Spycops is just one example.) Look at how Sunak responded to Galloway’s win! He was frightened, shaken to his core and promised to stamp out any further such left populist politics. Starmer’s New Zionist Labour actually did the dirty work to get him and Murray defeated. And he announced his opportunistic plans for even more authoritarian surveillance, pre-crime, enforcement and punishment than the Conservatives.
3. Liberal social justice activism has proven very effective at dividing the left against itself. And the most radical social liberalism has been attached to the left and made it odious to many voters. (Makes me wonder if radical social liberalism isn’t actually a right-wing strategy.)
[3a. Not to mention the left’s great tradition of infighting. omg]
4. This situation is entirely different for right populism. While Reform, RN, AfD may take some power from center right political parties they do not threaten the status quo. Right populists may be embarrassing sometimes but they can be useful to the establishment. Hence we see even the Inner Party of the EU adopting some of those weird positions, e.g. that the USSR was the aggressor in WW2.
5. The SNP under Sturgeon joined the STP. When the talk is all about aesthetics, idpol and those bstrds in Westminster, the status quo is pretty comfy for the pols. What a disaster for Scottish independence. The only media people I know of that talk seriously about left politics and independence are at Conter (marginal).
All this leaves me with a very bad feeling for the near term. What would it take? Charismatic and purposeful leaders with good ideas and lots of education and organization, which takes money and some amount discipline and commitment.
Well, they got here at last in the railway town I work in, coming in by train it seems, and began to make their way to where the town dumps its immigrants and where the mosques are. Cue lots of emails from directors and HR about avoiding said area and taking care (ah, bless, we can see that lot earning their money for once).
So, some have already been thrown in jail I gather? It brings the climate change protesters sharply into focus don’t you think?
What does the great British public fear most – peaceful protest up a motorway gantry with the inconvenience of a traffic jam or over turned cars, burning buildings and damaged people? Can our poxy-ticians (sic) discern real good from bad?
I think the climate change folk should be released don’t you? This puts things into perspective.
Except, perhaps not? You know – thanks to Cameron, May, Johnson, Sunak and even Truss, I don’t think this country knows what it wants anymore. Like the Grant Lee Buffalo song – we’ve been lied to and now we’re ‘fuzzy’. Really fuzzy.
We’ve had Tory politicians creating hostile environments for nearly everyone and this is what you get. And they’re still at it! And now we have a craven new government worshipping and aping the behaviour of the cruel swine we apparently got rid of!
The Tories belief in choice – rampant again – this time with a huge range of people to blame and have a pop at for life’s ills who just happen to be your friends, neighbours and fellow strugglers are no different to you really.
But the people who have instigated and paved the way for all this? I doubt they will be held accountable at all – not by the thugs on the streets nor by the thugs in parliament and our mass media.
And that is pitiful.
Agreed
The Greens are left of centre in their economic policies (and liberal in their social policies, unlike Galloway’s Trots).
This is from page 14 of their 2024 Manifesto (“Public Sector Debt”):
“Choosing to trap us all in a self-imposed fiscal straitjacket is a false economy. It is clear that investing in protecting our climate now will save
vast costs in the future. Investing in our public services and infrastructure is essential to a flourishing future for us all. As Greens we will
never allow an obsession with fiscal rules to stop us investing in the public transport, schools and hospitals we all rely on – nor from taking the steps necessary to protect the climate for our children and their children.
[…]
Greens will not allow our country to be held back by fiscal rules that don’t serve us all – we’re prepared to tax wealth and carbon emissions and
prepared to borrow to invest in a fairer future. We do however acknowledge that public expenditure can only be expanded as far as the economy has the capacity to absorb it without triggering dangerous levels of inflation. This would be our overriding fiscal rule.”
Link: https://greenparty.org.uk/about/our-manifesto/2024-manifesto-downloads/
Disclaimer: I am a Green Party member 🙂
Yes, I’ve recognised this for some time. In the US, the Republicans and Democrats are referred to as the ‘uni-party.’ Regardless of which one is in power, the American people never get what they want – universal healthcare, affordable education, clean water, etc. The reason? They are funded by the same corporate interests. Here in the UK, we see the same phenomenon. Labour and the Tories are Tweedledee and Tweedeldum. https://dearscotland.substack.com/p/the-two-english-uni-parties-will?utm_source=publication-search