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New Statesman
11 hours ago
- Business
- New Statesman
Labour is losing its mind
Labour is attempting to govern in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. In terms of the geopolitical order, demographics, class relations and technologies this is a period of revolutionary change and political reaction which is sweeping away the old political settlement and its established ideological forms. There is widespread economic insecurity and disaffection. The country's criminal justice system, welfare system, water industry, universities, housing market and armed forces are either impoverished, broken or dysfunctional. Over-regulation stifles initiative and our ability to build. Governance and administration are hamstrung by a state bureaucracy mired in HR regulations, complacency and risk-aversion. Local authorities are bankrupt. Yields on 30-year government bonds are rising as markets lose trust in indebted Western capitalist economies, foremost being the US, Japan and the UK. 'Nothing works' is a common refrain. The political corollary of 'nothing works' is what in France is called dégagisme: clear them out. Confronted with these systemic crises, Labour faces a populist revolt that is gathering energy and confidence. The party's difficulty in understanding populism risks echoing the American army in Vietnam. Its generals were fighting a previous war, incapable of adaptation, intellectual curiosity or revolutionary organisational change. Labour won on an anti-Tory majority not on a pro-Labour coalition, and so it lacks popular consent to govern. It has a large majority but is politically insecure, already u-turning less than a year into office. And because it has no diagnosis of the crises assailing the country it has no political narrative or strategy to guide it in office. What are the obstacles relating to Labour's own politics that stop it taking the country into a new political settlement and how should it overcome them? The obstacles Since the 1990s, the professional and managerial class has surpassed organised labour as the dominant political force within the party. This change has happened in tandem with Labour's loss of the working class vote which in turn has been caused by the disintegration of the industrial working class and organised labour, a process first recognised by Eric Hobsbawm in Marxism Today in September 1978. The dominance of this class and its culture – higher educated, socially liberal, based in the cities and regions of prosperity – replaced the old Labour collectivism with a liberal progressive politics. This enabled New Labour to build a majority coalition in 1997 around aspiration, globalisation, and individual consumer choice. Regional and class inequalities were offset by redistribution via a steadily growing economy. However the party failed to recognise that it was starting to sow the seeds of a populist revolt with its class-based cultural values, its support for high levels of immigration, and failure to recognise the early years of wage stagnation. In 2016, this class along with Labour suffered a profound political defeat when the Remain vote lost in the EU Referendum. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Labour currently lacks a feasible alternative to the class ideology of progressivism and its cultural politics. The party membership is dominated by what the campaigning organisation More in Common describe as 'Progressive Activists', who form under 10 percent of the population. Like the Conservatives, dominated by an aging rentier class, Labour is no longer broadly representative of the voters it seeks to attract, nor is it able to intuit the populist mood of our times, and so forge a winning national cross-class coalition for 2029. The economy and society have profoundly changed since the New Labour years. Progressivism as an ideology and worldview is incapable of responding. And yet Labour has made no radical reassessment of its politics or its political economy, nor has it sought ignited energy but could never lift itself out of the politics of the 1980s. This failure is spread over its 14 years in opposition. The party lacks a diagnosis of the systemic crise and so it has no strategy to match Reform in breaking the political inertia. Instead it has fallen back on a pragmatism of 'what works' and technocratic solutions to systemic crises. These have proved grossly inadequate to the challenges of government. Over this same period, the party did not give thought to renewing the media, intellectual, and policy making infrastructure necessary for its political renewal. Much of it has now disappeared or become ineffective. Successful attempts at fashioning new political and economic settlements, such as in 1979 or, to a lesser degree, in 1997, have all leant on such an infrastructure, yet Labour has allowed it to ossify. Both the government and the PLP find themselves isolated from pluralist cultures of intellectual curiosity, thinking and ideas. How to respond? There is a great deal at stake in resolving Labour's historical predicament. A divided right opens up the prospect of an unloved Labour limping over the line again as part of a progressive coalition. This would only cement the class, cultural and regional divisions in the country. More likely, though, failure in government will mean either Reform or a right-wing coalition wins the next election. And what comes with the failure of a Reform or right-wing government? The stakes are high in a country where disaffection is so great. Farage understands this. But does Labour? There is both deep threat and historic opportunity. Labour is unprepared for either. Some may reject this analysis as too negative, pointing out that Labour has four years to turn things around. But four years to do what? Labour possesses one highly significant advantage which is state power. To use this power with the necessary force requires a strategy and a powerful executive leadership able to overcome the obstacles facing Labour. A political strategy would be based on a two-fold political purpose with different timelines. One part would be geared towards the short-term, building a Labour coalition for the next election. The other part would be longer term, defining a programme for a decade of national reconstruction and social renewal. Each would give definition to the other. Broadly speaking this means restoring Britain's broken social contract between government and citizens and developing an economic analysis and political economy that unites the national interest with the labour interest. This coordinated work must go on inside the government machine, outside in a community of thinking and analysis, and within the PLP. Political choices and policy priorities must directly contribute to this governing narrative. The aim is to build popular consent for a Labour government. The basic elements of a governing narrative already exist. The idea of a social contract has been a constant if irregular expression of Labour's politics both in opposition and in government. It offers the government a potentially powerful story about its national purpose, and provides a catalyst for building a new coalition across class, region, and nation for the 2029 election. However to date the idea has remained unexplained and undeveloped. It has been used to suggest both a liberal social contract and the more radical idea of covenant. Keir Starmer first used the idea of a contract with the country in a speech in Birmingham in 2022, when he called for a contract with the British people, defined by 'security, prosperity and respect'. It was soon dropped. It reappeared in a more covenantal form two years later in January 2024, when he spoke to the Labour and Civil Society summit. Starmer called for a 'social contract' with 'a new focus on those who build the bonds that connect us, the communities that nurture us, and the institutions that support us.' In January 2025, and now Prime Minister, his statement on the murders of the three small girls in Southport acknowledged the loss of a social contract, recognising the growing sense that the rights and responsibilities that we owe one another, the unwritten rules that hold a nation together, 'have in recent years, been ripped apart'. 'More and more people retreating into parallel lives, whether through failures of integration or just a country slowly turning away from itself'. He went on to say, 'We will have to ask British industry, British universities, British businesses, and the British people to play a bigger part; use this to renew the social contract of our nation, the rights and responsibilities that we owe one another.' Economic security is national security but both will require 'a whole society effort that will reach into the lives, the industries and the homes of the British people'. On February 25th in the House of Commons, responding in a way to this earlier speech, the PM defined the political future of the country as a form of national covenant. He committed the government to stand behind the people of Ukraine. It will require, he said, extremely difficult and painful choices through which the country must find social unity. In March, in a speech on the reform of the state, he accused politicians of 'hiding behind a vast array of quangos, arms-length bodies and regulators' – a 'cottage industry of blockers and checkers'. The state demanded more and more from people as it failed to deliver on its core purpose. And then in May, his statement on immigration reaffirmed this emerging narrative. The PM redefined Labour's view of immigration by describing the Conservatives 'one-nation experiment in open borders conducted on a country that had voted for control'. A country depended upon fair rules and responsibilities, 'the obligations that we owe to one another.' The current system of immigration was threatening to pull the country apart and lead to an 'island of strangers'. To settle in this country, 'is a privilege that is earned, not a right, easier if you make a contribution, if you work, pay in, and help rebuild our country'. A new social contract Instead of shying away from this language Labour needs to explain its social contract and identify the causes of social disintegration and political disaffection which have led to social anomie and the collapse in trust in the government. They extend beyond immigration and include crime and social disorder (including the perception of the contrast between the militant policing of 'online hate crimes' vs burglaries, anti-social behaviour and theft); restoring the visibly decaying public realm; the shortage of decent homes; the porous border of which the boats are a daily reminder; and the perception of asymmetric multiculturalism and 'two-tier justice' in which the elites, associated with identity politics, are perceived to favour minority cultures over the majority culture. The first and essential task is to restore a social contract in order to secure democracy and start to win popular consent for a Labour government. In the longer term, reducing social disaffection and restoring popular trust in our democratic institutions depends on national social and economic developmental growth and the reconstruction of the national economy across the UK. In opposition, Labour defined its economic approach in a series of shifting abstractions and half-formed ideas – the Everyday Economy, Levelling Up, National Missions, Industrial Strategy, Green Prosperity Plan, Plan for Change, Securonomics, then Growth. These culminated in Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves' 2024 Mais Lecture, in which she argued that her economic policies represent a break with the liberal market order and the beginning of a new economic settlement. They herald a 'decade of national renewal' that will shape the institutional architecture of the British economy with the central mission to restore economic growth. Reeves declared that globalisation 'as we know it' has ended. Where things are made and who owns them matters. The economy is rooted in the places people live, and industrial policy should focus on the Everyday Economy that sustains daily life. Entrepreneurial risk taking and workers capacity to move jobs to better their circumstances require economic stability, safety and security. Reeves called her thinking, Securonomics. The development of the national economy is linked to geopolitical strategy, social stability and national security, in order to reconstitute the government's social contract with the people. By the time Labour took office it was trailing behind it a series of priorities, plans and commitments but no clear agreement about its economic thinking. The Everyday Economy quietly disappeared having never been properly developed. Levelling Up was left behind when Lisa Nandy was moved from her brief. The Green Prosperity Plan, stripped of its annual £28bn funding became a vehicle for wishful thinking. No-one spoke about Securonomics. Instead the new government had one answer to Britain's social and economic dilapidation: growth. The 2024 Green Paper Invest 2035 the UKs modern industrial strategy is emphatic: 'growth is the number one mission of this government.' In addition to driving growth nationally, the government will support regional growth, net zero and the UK's economic security and resilience. It identifies eight growth-driving sectors. But as the economist, Andy Haldane has pointed out, in many regions these sectors do not cover 80-90 percent of the workforce, 'especially the poorest areas'. There is no obvious underlying methodology behind choosing so many sectors. Should the government focus effort and resources on areas of comparative advantage or on areas of deprivation? There is no clear answer. Events have overtaken the Green Paper and it is being rewritten. But without undertaking the necessary work, much of this approach will remain in place. The lack of theoretical depth and practical substance to Labour's attempts to reshape its political economy leaves it reliant on the liberal market model which cannot resolve the economic problems the country faces. Compounding this is Labour's commitment to fiscal rules designed to reassure the bond market, and the widely held perception that Labour expends its political energy not on ordinary working people as a whole but on small politically charged subgroups – migrants, benefits claimants, etc. Who then does Labour stand for and who should growth be for? Growth is a precondition for national reconstruction but there are political choices involved in how and where it is generated. The answer must be those who, 10 years ago, Theresa May called 'the just about managing class'. Without their support Labour has little chance of winning in 2029 and therefore limited ability to pursue its agenda. Today the living standards of many in this class are precarious. Working hard does not translate into being better off, and yet they are the workhorse of the economy. Aged around 35-60, their households have the highest proportion of people in jobs and the highest proportion of children. They are a mix of middle and working class (mostly B, C1, C2 and D) who work mostly in the private sector. They are a generation beyond their parents'traditional lower middle and working class ways of life. They feel the loss of these cultures, but they want a better world for their children. Labour should be their natural home but they no longer see a party cast in their image or one which holds their values. They have diminishing confidence in any political party turning the country around. They would give Reform a go without much confidence. To win the support of this large demographic, Labour needs to develop a political economy that will shift the economic balance from wealth extraction to creation and from asset wealth to production, increasing working people's share of national income. It means focusing a new industrial strategy around their economic interests, as well as intervening on their side against those who threaten their economic interests. National economic reconstruction needs to build up the necessary productive power for place-based reindustrialisation, utilising new technologies and AI, investing in our armament production, national defences and so raising per capita GDP across the regions. Regional, social and economic development should prioritise work, skills, and the local places people live. The crucial factors for a thriving national economy are strong local economies and communities. When community subsides, so too does the economy. Government needs to recover its unfinished work in opposition to develop a new approach to political economy. The only viable programme for national reconstruction is a levelling up to radically reduce regional inequality on a similar scale to Germany's rebuilding of East Germany. It will require a radical reform of statecraft asserting national sovereignty, backing our AI and technological innovation, establishing the political primacy of No.10 over the Treasury, and institutionalising a national developmental approach to economic policy under the authority of the PM, and restoring parliamentary democratic power over unaccountable quangos. A Left infrastructure needs rebuilding to provide intellectual thinking, analysis and critical support to help reconnect the governing class to the people, and win the commanding heights of national intellectual life. A Labour narrative about the country must be hopeful and patriotic. It must be covenantal in its political economy, and it must be authentic and heartfelt. The current system is condemning Labour to political failure. The task of political leadership requires an insurgent, radical politics that integrates the theoretical, political and organisational, using concentrated state power to drive forward a national popular politics toward a new political settlement, in a way quite foreign to Labour's recent history. Is it possible? Without it the future will be dark. Related
The Herald Scotland
24-04-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Tories accuse Labour of lining up ‘crony' to head new football regulator
But the Conservatives claimed his links to the Labour Party called into question his 'ability to operate with the impartiality fans deserve' and showed the Government was 'more interested in rewarding its donors than serving the public interest'. A Labour source did not deny that Mr Kogan was under consideration, but said the accusation was a 'shameful attempt' to undermine the regulator and 'smear a highly qualified, respected candidate for its leadership'. Mr Kogan has considerable football experience, having spent years negotiating media rights deals across the sport, and is reported to have been approached about the role at the head of the new regulator by the previous Conservative government. He is also a Labour donor, having given more than £30,000 to figures in the party in recent years, including £5,000 to Rachel Reeves in 2023 to support her work as shadow chancellor and £2,500 to Sir Keir Starmer's constituency party last year. And he was a director of LabourList, a pro-Labour news website, until April 14 this year. Floodlights (Peter Byrne/PA) Shadow sports minister Louie French said: 'This Labour Government has been caught offside yet again, installing one of their key cronies at the helm of what should be an independent regulator. 'This deeply political appointment calls into question the regulator's ability to operate with the impartiality fans deserve. 'It's yet another example of a Labour Government more interested in rewarding its donors than serving the public interest.' A Labour source said: 'This is a shameful attempt by the Tories to undermine the Independent Football Regulator and to smear a highly qualified, respected candidate for its leadership. 'Labour backs a regulator that puts fans first and safeguards the future of English football, ensuring our clubs are run sustainably, fairly and with the supporters at the heart of the game.' Under the previous Conservative government, several Tory donors also received appointments to public sector jobs. In 2022, Wol Kolade's appointment as deputy chairman of NHS England also sparked allegations of 'cronyism' due to his donations of almost £1 million to the Conservatives, while fellow Tory donor Simon Blagden's appointment to the UK Health Security Agency's advisory board faced similar criticism. There is no suggestion an improper recruitment process was followed in either case.
The Guardian
28-02-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
The UK has a history of coddling authoritarian leaders – now it's happening again
Why is Westminster, supposedly one of the world's great centres of democratic moderation, so welcoming to far-right foreign governments? For more than a century, since the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, authoritarians have often found allies, apologists or a deliberate absence of criticism in the Commons, despite our parliament's self-image as a historic enemy of fascism. One reason for this forgiving attitude is that foreign policy is a pragmatic business, and Britain has increasingly become a country that can't afford to make enemies. The Starmer government's determination to see no evil in the Trump administration can be partly explained in those terms. Yet other, darker and less-examined impulses have also shaped the behaviour of some of our MPs, ministers and political journalists towards rightwing autocrats – both those who have wielded absolute power and those who apparently would like to, such as Trump. These impulses reveal much about British politics and the frustrations, fears and fantasies of some of its practitioners and observers. To some jaded or impatient players of the Westminster game, the regimes of foreign strongmen – so far, female authoritarians have been far less common – are objects of fascination. They represent politics pursued by alluringly different means. At times such as now, when many voters are disillusioned with liberal democracy and its compromises, abandoned commitments and slow pace, autocrats can appear to be politicians who actually get things done. 'People ask me what difference new leadership will make,' said Kemi Badenoch last week. 'Well, take a look at President Trump.' Admiration for his new administration is not confined to the Tories. Last month, Anna McShane of the New Britain Project, a thinktank which describes itself as 'progressive', wrote on the pro-Labour website LabourList: 'Starmer must learn from Trump: act fast, prioritise visible change … While his policies remain polarising, the effectiveness of this approach cannot be ignored.' For some on the British right, foreign autocrats also appeal if they appear to be leading a crusade against one of conservatism's global enemies. In 1927, Winston Churchill, then a Tory chancellor, met Mussolini in Rome, five years after the dictator had seized power and begun violently suppressing the left. At a press conference after the meeting, Churchill said: 'If I had been an Italian, I am sure that I should have been wholeheartedly with you … in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.' In the 1970s and 1980s, many Tories and British rightwing journalists similarly supported Augusto Pinochet's brutal military regime in Chile, as an anti-communist ally in the cold war. Nowadays, the British right's bogeyman is the supposed threat to western values from Islam and immigration. The ultra-aggressive approach of Trump to both, with his contempt for the law and the whole concept of multiculturalism, offers political cover and encouragement to Badenoch and Nigel Farage, as they take up ever-more illiberal positions. Trump's transgressive, seemingly all-powerful populism is the kind of politics they might dream of practising, were either of them to occupy Downing Street. His presidency also thrills the Tory press. 'Trump has an extraordinary knack for tapping into the frustrations of … the respectable working class – the quiet, skilled or semi-skilled man paying for the food on the family table,' wrote John MacLeod in the Daily Mail last year. That Trump, with his vast inherited wealth and endless personal scandals, can appeal to millions of voters with utterly different backgrounds and values is a conservative fantasy come true. Since the dawn of mass democracy, the right has been trying to make its elites politically palatable. In Britain a century ago, Mussolini also 'attracted the admiring attention of leading Conservative journals … as well as several newspapers, notably the Daily Mail,' wrote the historian of fascism Martin Pugh in his 2005 book Hurrah for the Blackshirts! As the paper's pro-fascist then owner, Lord Rothermere, put it: 'In my judgment, he [Mussolini] saved the whole western world.' Apparently successful autocrats reassure rightwing journalists and politicians that history can be shaped by individuals, as conservatives have always wanted. An autocrat's cult of personality also provides the media with constant stories and opportunities for character studies. Among the Italian dictator's British admirers, wrote Pugh, 'those who met him invariably depicted Mussolini as simple, charming, businesslike, not the bombastic and theatrical figure portrayed in leftwing demonology.' In January, the foreign secretary, David Lammy, described the new US president in a strikingly similar way. 'The Donald Trump I met,' he told the BBC, 'was a man who had incredible grace, generosity, very keen to be a good host, very funny, very friendly, very warm about the UK, our royal family, Scotland …' Gone are the days when Lammy, as a less guarded Labour MP, called Trump a 'tyrant in a toupee'. One problem with Westminster's warmth towards autocrats, whether diplomatic or genuinely enthusiastic, is that it eases their way by making them seem more respectable – rather than influencing them to moderate their behaviour, as is often claimed. All the British deference towards Mussolini in the 1920s and early 1930s did not stop him from eventually forming a hostile alliance with Adolf Hitler. Similarly, the refusal of Labour and the Tories to label Trump an extremist who is subverting the US constitution enables the BBC and other mainstream media organisations to avoid calling him an extremist, too. Meanwhile, his escalating transgressions continue. Sooner or later, the far-right tide will recede in the US and elsewhere. Authoritarian populists are often poor at governing, as Trump showed in his first term. This time, his approval ratings – already very low for a new president by historic standards – have started to fall, as the drawbacks or impracticality of many of his policies have become clear to more people. When the authoritarians do lose power, their acceptance or encouragement by so many British journalists and politicians may be widely seen as a huge moral and strategic misjudgment, as it was after Italian and German fascism had been defeated in the second world war. But Westminster will probably quickly move on. We are a moderate country, after all. Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist
