Martin Seale

Keir Starmer has a primary objective – that Labour forms the next government.  For that to be achieved he believes that he will have to convince voters who have never voted Labour before to switch their vote to Labour in the 2024 general election.

Anything that in any way endangers this happening will be ruthlessly disposed of.

The political manifesto on which he was elected as leader of the Labour Party in 2020 has been abandoned.  It is feared that that the mildly radical social democratic ideas in that manifesto could alienate wavering voters.  Indeed, left wing members in the party are seen as a threat to securing a labour victory.  Many have been expelled on false antisemitic charges.

The left in the Labour Party is obviously very disillusioned.  There is much talk that the Labour Party is beyond redemption and that a new party should be formed.  

Such a view fails to grasp that the Labour Party is a fundamental institution of the British working class.  Most support for it is almost tribal in nature.  When Derby North MP, Chris Williamson, expressed scepticism about the level of antisemitism in the Labour Party, he was blocked from standing as a Labour candidate in 2019.  He chose to stand as an independent.  He lost the seat and his deposit despite being a well-known politician both locally and nationally in Derby.  Williamson, as Labour Party candidate, had got over 23,000 votes in 2017.  In 2019, as an independent, he got a mere 635 votes.

The Labour Party is the main institution through which the British working class will advance their interests in the society.  Currently it is in the grip of a conservative and authoritarian clique.  Left wing people should stay in the party and bide their time.  It may look at the moment that Starmer has an iron grip on the party but, in politics, thing can change very fast.  Less than 4 years ago, Johnson seemed to dominate British politics after securing an 80 seat majority for the Tories.  Now, he has resigned from Parliament.  Corbyn must be smiling on the back benches.

It seems highly likely that Starmer will be the next prime minister.  The mistake is to see this as his moment of strength.  It is not his moment of strength.  Rather, it is precisely his moment of greatest weakness.  Now his problems really begin.  He will have to deal with real issues not just Downing street drinking parties.  It is far from clear that he will be able to do that.

At the top of that issue list for the British people are the ‘cost of living’ crisis and the state of the NHS.  

The cost of living crisis has been brought about by the war in Ukraine.  Starmer is a firm supporter of NATO’s role in that war.  Families are not going to see any drop in their cost of living while that war continues.  There is little evidence that a Starmer government will be able to deal with this crisis much better than the Tories.

The NHS is in trouble because of years of underfunding.  Yet Starmer’s shadow chancellor has locked Labour into a policy of keeping both taxes and the national debt low which would make it very difficult to effect the changes required.

The lack of substance in Labour Party policies could become evident very quickly.  It would only take a few by-election losses for Starmer’s leadership to be challenged.

In short, the left must remember that it is real events that will determine what happens.  If Starmer cannot deal with real events then he will be disposed of as rapidly as Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn.

The left should be ready at that point to step into the breach.  But are they ready to do that?  

On Ukraine, most Labour party members are still inclined to the view that Putin launched an unprovoked attack on Ukraine.  Few would agree that it was NATO’s eastward expansion that provoked Putin’s invasion.  The left should put their energy into clarifying this issue rather than exhausting themselves trying to replace the Labour Party.

On the NHS, and indeed, on economic matters generally, the starting point of the left is poor.  They assume that there is no difference between the budget of a government and the budget of a household.  This fundamental error always leaves open to the question ‘How will you pay for it?’ which generally reduces the Labour Party and the left to incoherence.

While they bide their time, the left need to master the mechanics of how a currency issuing government finances its spending.  They need to get themselves into a position where they are completely comfortable arguing that the size of the national debt is an irrelevant statistic and that it should never influence government policies.  A failure to understand that led to the complete collapse of Labour in the face of George Osborne’s austerity.  Let’s make sure it does not happen again under Starmer.

How to Pay For It — Q & A