I’ve already put up a piece about some of the events at this year’s Arise Festival. Yesterday I had a further email about their programme, which added these events to it.
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4) NHS @ 75 – How can we repair & restore it after 13 years of austerity?
Online. Wed. June 7, 18.30. Register here // Share & Invite here // Get Festival Ticket here // Retweet here
With: Nadia Whittome MP // John Lister (Keep Our NHS Public) // John Puntis (Doctors for the NHS.) // Chloe Brooks (North West. Rep, Labour Students.) July marks 75 years of our NHS. In light of Starmer and Streeting’s recent remarks, join the discussion on how we can end the current crisis, & secure its future as a universal publicly-owned, public service for all.
Hosted by the Labour Assembly Against Austerity at Arise 2023.
5) Sylvia Pankhurst: Suffragette, Socialist & Scourge of Empire.
Friday June 9, 1pm, Online. Register here //Share & Invite here // Retweet here // Get festival ticket here
With Katherine Connelly – author of ‘Sylvia Pankhurst: Suffragette, Socialist and Scourge of Empire.’ Sylvia Pankhurst dedicated her life to fighting oppression & injustice. This event will look at how this courageous & inspiring campaigner is of huge relevance today.
Register here to get a link to join live or watch back later. Part of the ‘Socialist Ideas’ series.
6) People & Planet on the Brink – Socialist Solutions to Climate Catastrophe
Online, Sunday, June 11, 5.00pm. Register here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here.
With: Olivia Blake MP // Tess Woolfenden, Debt Justice // Sam Knight, Green New Deal Rising // Sam Mason, Climate Justice Coalition trade union officer // Fraser McGuire, Young Labour. The world is on brink of five ‘disastrous’ climate tipping points, threatening the very future of humanity. Yet our Government – like many others globally – are more interested in protecting the profits of the fossil fuel giants than urgent action to tackle the climate emergency.
A Socialist Sunday session at Arise 2023.
7) Free Palestine – Mustafa Barghouti briefing + Q&A
Monday June 12, Online, 6.30pm. Register here //Share & Invite here // Retweet here // Get festival ticket here.
In-depth briefing + Q&A with Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian National Initiative, on the latest developments in Palestine as Israel’s far-right government steps up its aggression. With supplementary contributions from Young Labour, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign & Labour & Palestine. Chair: Louise Regan, National Education Union & PSC.
Free event but solidarity tickets & donations essential for funding Webinar & streaming. Hosted by Labour & Palestine as part of Arise.
8) The Case for Labour Party Democracy – for Members’ Rights & the Union Link
Online, Wednesday June 14, 6.30pm. Register here // Share & invite here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here.
With: Jon Trickett MP // Mick Whelan, ASLEF GS//Simon Fletcher // Rachel Garnham, CLPD // Nabeela Mowlana, Young Labour. Join a vital discussion to make the case for a democratic party & movement – & to map out next steps in campaigning for members’ rights & in defence of the union-link.
9) What would Marx & Engels say about today’s global capitalist crisis?
Online, Friday June 16, 1.00pm. Register here // Share & invite here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here.
With Michael Roberts – economist & author, The Great Recession – a Marxist view.
Register here to get a link to join live or watch back later. Part of the ‘Socialist Ideas’ series.
10) The New Colonialism- resisting racism & exploitation of the global South
Online, Sunday June 18, 5.00pm. Register here // Share & invite here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here.
With: Asad Rehman, Director, War on Want // Heidi Chow, Director, Debt Justice // Lubaba Khalid, Young Labour BAME Officer // Chair: Denis Fernando, Arise volunteer.
A Socialist Sunday session at Arise 2023.
11) No more Pinochets in Latin America – Stand with social progress, democracy & regional integration
Online, Monday June 19, 6.30pm. Register here // Share & invite here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here.
With: Guillaume Long, former foreign Minister, Ecuador // Nathalia Urban, Brasil Wire // Claudia-Turbet Delof, Wiphalas Across the World, Bolivia, // Dave McKnight, UNISON NW // Gawain Little, GFTU.
Hosted by Labour Friends of Progressive Latin America at Arise 2023.
12) Socialist economic policies explained: the alternative to never-ending cuts
Online, Wednesday June 21, 6.30pm. Register here // Share & invite here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here.
Richard Burgon MP // Laura Smith, Labour Councillor & co-author of the No Holding Back report // Professor Özlem Onaran, University of Greenwich // Cat Hobbs, Director of We Own It.
Ask your questions & make your contributions on socialist alternatives to ‘Austerity 2.0.’
13) The Paris Commune – “Glorious harbinger of a new society”
Online, Friday June 23, 1.00pm. Register here // Share & invite here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here.
With Sandra Bloodworth. Australian labour historian & contributor to The Paris Commune, An Ode To Emancipation. The Paris Commune is still studied throughout the world as one of the first working-class attempts at emancipation, direct democracy & social change – why?
Register here to get a link to join live or watch back later. Part of the ‘Socialist Ideas’ series.
14) Push for peace – No to forever wars
Online, Sunday June 25, 5.00pm. Register here // Share & invite here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here.
With: Kate Hudson (CND) // Steve Howell (author, ‘Game Changer’ & former advisor to Jeremy Corbyn) // Shadia Edwards-Dashti (Stop the War Coalition) // Chair: Logan Williiams, Arise volunteer.
According to new polling, 63% of British adults now say that Brexit has caused more problems than it solved. While some of you may be shocked that the number isn’t even higher, given the shambolic economic state of affairs in Britain over the past several years, that figure is proof that the public attitude towards Brexit has changed. The big question is: why are neither of the major parties saying it?
It should be clear to everyone by now that the Conservatives have permanently pinned their colours to the Brexit mast and that there is no going back for them. The cult of Brexit has subsumed the entire party’s identity. With an evangelical glint in their eyes, ministers pontificate endlessly about the sunlit uplands, plucking imaginary “Brexit benefits” out of thin air and holding them up as victories.
For the Brexiters in the Conservative and Reform parties, anything that goes wrong – as so much has lately – is attributed to a lack of dedication to the cause. As Labour backbencher Hilary Benn put it so eloquently during the recent e-petition debate on a public inquiry into Brexit:
“It is like all revolutionaries, if I may use the analogy. When the revolution does not quite work out, they say, “But comrade, it was not applied with sufficient vigour and purity”—an argument that some Members in the Chamber might be more familiar with than others.”
But what about Labour? While lacking the religious fervour of the Conservatives, Keir Starmer has also insisted that Britain’s future lies “outside the EU.” Beyond that comment, we have no idea what Labour’s specific position is.
A recent YouGov poll made it clear that the general public is completely uncertain about Keir Starmer’s stance on Brexit. He seems to be trying to assuage the right-wing press who want to attack him as a remainer, while also trying not to alienate his remain-heavy base. It’s a tough balancing act.
We have to ask why no major party in the UK is willing to come out as unapologetically anti-Brexit. At the next general election, we’ll almost certainly have just two options to form the next government – Labour or Conservative. Westminster’s bubble is now so insular that it’s barely possible to see daylight between their stances on this, the biggest issue of our time.
63% of British adults are not having their voice heard. These are people who want their freedom of movement back, who want an economy bolstered by the single market, who want the worker and environmental protections previously attached to our EU membership. They are a silent majority that our broken political system has systematically sidelined.
A political system that excludes a majority can’t really be called a democracy. This is yet another glaring indicator of the UK’s democratic deficit, and the abyss that awaits us if we fail to get a grip on our failing institutions and policies.
Earlier this afternoon I posted a piece about an article by Fraser Nelson, the editor of the Spectator, about how there were too many people off sick when they were tens of thousands of jobs going vacant. Some other politico, I don’t know if it was one of the Tories or Starmer’s crew, has also announced that they intend to retrain those currently off sick to fill those vacancies. I’m certain they were talking about the ill, rather than the unemployed, though the article revealed the same persecutory attitude the Tories have towards them. I’m afraid I really don’t know much about the current official processes governing the long term sick and disabled. I’m therefore grateful to Trev, one of the great commenters on this blog for the information he’s posted about the treatment of the sick and disabled wishing to claim benefits And one of the things that is very clear is that they are expected to look for suitable work. Which shows that, if Nelson really was talking about the sick rather than the unemployed, he’s talking massive nonsense. Even if Nelson was talking about the unemployed, some of my arguments against the policy still stands. And Trev’s comments still show the persecutory and vindictive nature of Tory policy towards the sick and disabled.
Trev writes
‘I didn’t know there still was any Sickness Benefits. There are no Sick Notes anymore because the Tories scrapped them. You have to get a Fit Note that says what you can do not what you can’t do, then apply for ESA (Employment Support Allowance) which replaced Income Support, then once in receipt of ESA you are still required to look for work if placed in the ESA Work Related Activity Group. People are routinely informed that their ESA has been stopped and the DWP have decided they are now fit for work. I have health problems but I think it better to stay on legacy JSA instead of bothering to apply for a Fit Note and ESA because once lost I can never get my JSA back again and the conditions on legacy JSA are more favourable than UC.
Many of the sick or disabled who are claiming Benefits are forced to look for work and apply for jobs, as well as attending Government schemes such as the Health and Work Programme run by Reed in Partnership aka “Better Working Futures”. I’m currently on that scheme and they are always texting you with “Hot Jobs”, which could be virtually anything, a part-time Cleaner 2 hours a week or a full-time factory/warehouse job involving shift work and heavy lifting. Everyone who is sent there is out of work but has some ailment, illness, health condition, physical or mental. One week they sat us down in a classroom and showed us a video of a man born without limbs, then we had to write a list of things in our lives that we feel grateful for. Last week I was in a class being taught how to write a cover letter for a job application. It lasts for 15 months and is compulsory if referred by the Jobcentre.
P. S. If you have a health condition or disability that prevents you from leading a normal daily life such as needing help to get dressed, cook a meal or move around, for example, you can apply for PIP (Personal Independence Payments) of varying levels and amounts, and which replaced DLA (Disability Living Allowance). I don’t know about how that relates to work requirements or jobsearch, might depend on whether you’re also getting ESA and are in the WRAG or not. And the Tories said their Welfare Reforms were intended to simplify the Benefits system! They lied.
Oh and I almost forgot, there’s also the much dreaded WCA (Work Capability Assessments) whereby a private company gets public money to find sick & disabled people capable of working. I’m not sure which particular group it applies to, ESA or PIP. WCA was introduced by New Labour.’
My best wishes to Trev and to everyone else struggling with this vile system designed to humiliate and degrade some of the poorest and most vulnerable in society.
I’m going to have to do a bit more digging on this, because I think I might be missing something. Yesterday Starmer and Wes Streeting announced that if Labour is elected, they’ll reform the NHS. Starmer has been saying for a very long time that the health service is in an existential crisis and that radical reform is required in order to save it. I think he’s absolutely right about this, especially as Sunak wants even more of it privatised as he deludedly thinks this has worked so well, and former Health Secretary Sajid Javid wants to introduce a £20 charge for people seeing their doctor. I also remember Lord Warner back in the ‘teens suggesting that there should be some kind of additional private insurance scheme or tax or something levied to support the NHS. This was, of course, another step on the road to full privatisation, as was pointed out to Warner. Who subsequently left the Labour party. Starmer also announced that Labour would demand increased efficiency in the NHS with targets set to reduce waiting times. This is all good stuff, but I don’t recall any mention on the mainstream news about how exactly he was going to do all this. It should be done through re-nationalisation and the statements from my local Labour MP, Karin Smyth, certainly suggests that Labour’s committed to a nationalised NHS. But Labour has also said that in the short term they’ll use private healthcare to clear the waiting list. This sounds good, but I have a feeling that the arguments for privatising the NHS the Tories have been using recently included the same statement that they were going to use private healthcare to cut the backlog created by the Covid crisis. New Labour was as committed to privatisation as the Conservatives and went further in the privatisation of the NHS than the Tories had dared. I’m therefore at a loss how Starmer and Streeting plan to reform the NHS so that it again meets the needs of this country’s great working people, and whether it’ll still be nationalised at the end of it, whatever the impression Starmer wants to give about it now.
Two of the proposals in the leaked Labour manifesto were bringing the voting age down to 16 and giving the vote to EU nationals. Starmer had said in an interview that it felt wrong, when knocking on doors, to deny voting rights to people who had been here, contributing to the economy, for 10, 20, 30 years. However, That Preston Journalist put up a piece last night saying that these policies had not gone down well with the public, and that Starmer was now already thinking of ditching them, if not the entire manifesto. The Depress has run a story today reporting that Starmer had issued a sort-of climb down after Michael Gove, the ‘Levelling-Up’ Secretary, had written to him asking why he wanted to give the supreme benefit of British citizenship, the right to vote, to people who weren’t British citizens. And, of course, there are also the usual allegations that Starmer was trying to rig elections and drag Britain back into the EU. The first of these allegations is massively hypocritical, of course, after Reet-Snob admitted that the Voter ID laws were the Tories’ own attempt at gerrymandering. Starmer has responded by saying that the proposal to enfranchise EU citizens wouldn’t be a priority, considering the more pressing problems of the economy. He said that none of his five missions concern electoral change. But Tory MPs have commented that he hasn’t repudiated the policy either.
I think they’re right. He hasn’t repudiated it. He’s given the same answer he gave about trans rights when he was asked about that issue during the controversy about it in Scotland. He said then that it wouldn’t be a priority under Labour, before going back to support them, or apparently support them later. And given the way he breaks promises like the Tories, you have no idea whether he’s serious about these policies or not.
I got this message from the Labour leader celebrating Labour’s victories in last Thursday’s local elections, and praising the great work he expects the new Labour councillors will do.
‘David, last week’s local election results saw Labour become the largest party in local government.
Labour offered a positive alternative, and people have given us their trust. It’s now our duty to tackle the Tory cost of living crisis and ease the burden on working people.
Now, we cannot waste a day in delivering on the Labour commitment to put money back in people’s pockets.
That’s why we’re setting the pace. I’m working with our new council leaders to create emergency cost of living action plans and review local housing plans.
We’ll act now, to ease the squeeze on people’s pockets, and support their aspirations.
Our new leaders will review their inheritance and pull every lever possible to relieve the pressure that this government has placed on working people.
Because, where Labour is in power, we deliver. We make fairer choices for working people and their families, and we improve lives.
I’m proud of the gains we made last week, but that pride will now fuel our pursuit of change.
We have a chance to show that Labour can not only improve communities across the country, but that we have plans to build a better Britain for everyone.
It’s time for change and Labour will make that change happen.
Thank you,
I’m sure the new councillors will work hard for their communities, but last week’s elections weren’t the golden victories Starmer seems to believe. To many people, Labour doesn’t offer an inspiring alternative that fills them with enthusiasm for a Labour government. It’s why the cephologists are predicting a hung parliament. Starmer has rejected all the socialist policies that gave working people such hope for real change under Corbyn. And Starmer has also shown himself to be personally vindictive, persecutory and untrustworthy. When Rachel Reeves was called upon to defend him during a brief TV interview and the list of all the promises he’s broken was mentioned, she could only reply with telling the interviewer all he policies he had kept: that’s right, all three of them. Policies to tackle the cost of living crisis and provide proper, affordable housing are sorely needed. But I’m not sure Starmer can be trusted even here. His promise that the new Labour councillors would cap council tax was meaningless. By the time he stated the policy, the tax had been set for the year. And it was only a cap. The tax would still remain at a level many citizens would find difficult to afford. Any true reform could only come from a Labour government.
There are a whole range of local issues that require reform at the national level. Bus services have been cut so that many working class, suburban communities around the country – my home city of Bristol is one example – don’t have them are effectively cut off. Privatisation of the bus companies has failed. But national legislation passed by Thatcher prevents local governments from renationalising them. This needs to be repealed, but I doubt that Starmer will do it. Similarly, we need a return to council housing, but Thatcher again banned local councils from doing so. A piece of legislation that also needs to be repealed. But I doubt he’ll do that either.
Labour offers to make things a little better than the Tories, but that’s all. It won’t do any more when the leadership, the bureaucracy and the parliamentary party are still in thrall to Blair and his brand of Thatcherism. I’m glad Labour did do so well last Thursday and want it to win the national elections. But I also want a leadership that recognises that, whatever the establishment says, Thatcherism is a dismal, destructive failure.
Okay, I’ve got to confess to making another mistake. Earlier today I put up a piece reporting that Starmer had told the leaders of the Labour party that people weren’t interested in woke, and condemned the Tories for being ‘out of touch’. This had been covered in a video put out by That Preston Journalist. I watched it and got the wrong end of the stick. He seemed to me to be saying that Starmer had decided that woke policies weren’t appealing to the public and was ready to ditch them. At the same time I thought that Starmer was also attacking that part of the Conservative party that is woke.
How wrong I was! It seems Starmer isn’t prepared to ditch ‘woke’ at all. He just doesn’t think that voters care enough about it to vote against Labour because of it. Instead they’re more interested and concerned about the NHS and the cost of living. When he said that Sunak and the Tories were out of touch, he meant that they failed to appreciate that these issues took precedence over the woke policies Starmer is promoting and defending and that the British public generally didn’t share their concerns about woke policies. This is how it’s been interpreted by GB News and their presenters.
Before I go further, let’s try and unpack what is meant by the term ‘woke’. Gillyflower, one of the great commenters here, remarked that I should refresh my memory over what it means. As I understand it, it’s Black slang meaning being awake to injustice. Looking at how it’s now being used, it seems to have replaced the old term ‘political correctness’ for extreme and intolerant anti-racist, feminist, anti-homophobic and anti-transphobic views. More narrowly, it’s being used to describe the various Critical Social Justice ideologies derived from the Postmodernist, Critical Theory revision of Marxism which narrowly sees societal issues through the lens of privilege and oppression. These differ from previous forms of anti-racism, feminism and so on in rejecting individualism. In Critical Race Theory, all Whites are privileged because of their skin colour and the fact that some Whites are less privileged than some Blacks is ignored. It isn’t enough to be non-racist, and judge people on their merits and character regardless of race. You must be positively anti-racist and fight against White privilege and for Black uplift through social programmes that demand the granting of opportunities to Blacks and other underprivileged minorities simply because of their colour. For example, in America Black and Mexican students generally do less well at Maths at school than Whites and Asians. So some schools in California are trying to even these results out by giving pre-calculus lessons only to Black and Hispanic students to the exclusion of Whites and Asians.
In the eyes of GB News’ Mike Graham, however, woke means just about every anti-racist, feminist, environmentalist and radical gender view or ideology. Yes, he conceded, people did care about the NHS and the cost of living, but people also cared about: woke teacher telling kids there were 73 genders, environmental protesters gluing themselves to the road, petrol and diesel cars being phased out in favour of electric vehicles, and the cost of power rising due to green energy policies. And so on.
Piers Morgan also did a piece about whether people cared about ‘woke’. This included Reform’s Richard Tice and a woman from the Labour party. Unsurprisingly, Morgan and Tice believed that people did care about ‘woke’. The lady from Labour didn’t. She didn’t like biological men being allowed into women’s private spaces and sports, nor rapists in female prisons, when asked by the former editor of the Mirror. He replied with, ‘Ah, but they’ve prevented you from talking about this’. She replied that they hadn’t, and she’d been talking about it for a year or so. This contrasts with the case of Rosie Duffield, who has been isolated and shunned by Starmer and other senior Labour members for her views. I can’t remember whether the lady believed that people didn’t care about woke policies, or did, but that they were far more concerned about the cost of living and the NHS. I think Morgan had claimed that it was because Labour was pushing these woke policies that it looked like they would not have an absolute majority at the election next year.
My guess is that the Labour lady is probably right. People are directly affected by the cost of living, and wondering how they will afford food, heating and their rent or mortgages. The latter was one of the major issues on the local news tonight in Bristol, which has been revealed as the most expensive city outside London. One woman spoke of how she had been forced to move back in with her parents after the landlord raised the rent by 66 per cent. And they are very much concerned about getting hold of a doctor, thanks to all the wonderful privatisation that Rishi’s so proud of. These are issues that immediately affect everyone. I’m not sure how many people are aware of the debate over transgenderism, let alone so concerned that it affects the way they vote. Some are, and it may become a more important issue in the public consciousness by the time the next election comes round.
But Starmer’s less than exciting performance can also be blamed on other problems apart from the ‘woke’. Like he broke every promise and pledge he made, and has done his level best to purge the left. Corbyn’s policies were genuinely popular, and he enthused and inspired the public in a way Starmer can’t. The turnout at the local elections was low, and my guess is that many of the people Corbyn had appealed to didn’t vote. They had been alienated by a party leadership that was actively hostile to them and which to many people just offers the usual Tory policies, or something not too different from them. Tice, I think, said that Labour’s woke policies wouldn’t appeal to the socially conservative voters of the red wall. He might be right, though if they do become disenchanted with Labour, it’ll be far more to do with the lack of proper, old-style, socialist Labour policies.
Okay, there are reports now that Starmer might be ready to ditch another set of policies and attitudes. Yesterday That Preston Journalist reported that Starmer had supposedly told his top team that woke didn’t interest the British public, and condemned the Tory party for supporting it. The Tory Journalist correctly pointed out that this was a bit rich coming from Starmer. The Tories weren’t much better than Labour when it came to these policies, but they had done more to oppose them. And Starmer had still been photographed taking the knee for BLM. The only Labour MP who had stuck up for women against the gender ideology was Rosie Duffield, who had been given no support from her leader and the rest of the party whatsoever. He then quoted Sir John Hayes, a Tory, who said that Labour was totally out of touch with the public on these issues.
In fact, not only has Rosie Duffield received no support for his opposition to the transgender ideology and its detrimental impact on women, but she has been isolated and vilified. Last week Starmer paid a visit to her constituency of Medway in order to boost morale among the Labour activists there. Duffield is the local MP, but was not invited.
I will definitely not be sorry if the Labour party ditches the woke ideologies entirely. I consider them entirely destructive, doing little except to increase grievance and resentment rather than promote real policies to resolve them. Black Lives Matter has become somewhat passe following the revelations about the way Patrice Cullors and the leadership of the parent organisation in America used the donations to enrich themselves and their families, Conservatives have also cited statistics that show that more American cops are killed by Blacks than the other way round, and that more Whites are killed by the police than Blacks. The gender ideology behind the trans rights movement is profoundly dangerous. Apart from its effects in allowing trans identified biological men into women’s spaces, it demands that gender nonconforming young people should only be treated as members of the sex they imitate or identify with, even though this may not be appropriate. It therefore sets them on a path to surgical transition that may severely damage their health and require them to receive additional medical care and support for the rest of their lives. Gender critical gays, like the LGB Alliance, reject the notion that trans rights are merely an extension or continuation of gay rights. Instead, they see them as a continuation of gay conversion therapy, in which society treats gay young people by transitioning them into members of the opposite sex, just as previous medical treatment included castration. But trans activists have denounced the LGB Alliance as a hate group. They were not allowed to attend last year’s Labour party conference while trans activists not only did, but were allowed to speak.
Starmer’s support for wokeness always was conditional. When the BLM protests broke out, he declared that it was ‘a moment’ and it took considerable time for him to be seen showing his support for it. And his remarks now don’t change the fact that he still said that 99.99 per cent of women don’t have a penis, meaning that he thought some do, and his panicked reaction when asked if women have cervixes. His response was that it was a question that shouldn’t be asked. The Journalist says that, whatever he’s said, he still relies on the support of the students and activists who support these policies.
He does, but it looks like he’s prepared to do what he’s done to so many other groups, and ditch them if he thinks they’re a liability. The trans lobby is very loud in its criticism of those who don’t follow their demands, and so if he reneges on his support for them completely, I think he’s going to face some very loud opposition and denunciations from the activists within his party, like LGBT Labour.
Mea culpa! Yesterday I put up a piece reporting that David Lammy had declared that Labour would not repeal Tory legislation, as otherwise the party would spend its time doing nothing else. This raised questions about whether it was worth voting for Starmer’s party in the first place if they weren’t going to repeal deeply unjust and illiberal Tory legislation. Now it seems I may have jumped the gun somewhat. The left-wing vlogger, A Different Bias, has put up a video stating that Lammy may have been somewhat clumsy in the way he answered the question, and that the Labour party certainly does not support the Tories’ anti-protest legislation. He states that Wes Streeting condemned the legislation and supported the anti-monarchy protesters’ right to demonstrate, and denounced their arrests by the Met police. As for repealing legislation, he states that this would indeed take up too much time as the bills were passed from one committee to another. He also argues that while the legislation against demonstrations does contain deeply illiberal curbs on freedom, some of it is still worth keeping. This includes the prohibitions on demonstrations outside abortion clinics. This legislation needs, therefore, to be amended rather than repealed. Furthermore, repealing it would take up too much that could be better spent on measures to grow the economy, stop the health service being run down and improving conditions for ordinary Brits.
I was influenced in my views about Lammy’s comments by Robespierre, who has since declared he made a mistake and issue this video retracting his views.
I hope I have been wrong about this, though many of the commenters on yesterday’s blog post pointed out how authoritarian Labour was, with their plans to introduce national ID cards. The pro-democracy group Open Britain don’t seem to be entirely convinced that Streeting genuinely objects to the Tory legislation. And there is the general problem of credibility. Starmer has broken every promise and pledge he made as leader of the Labour party, and I doubt he’ll change once in government. He may still end up supporting the anti-demonstration laws if he decides it suits his purpose.
David Lammy was on LBC Radio yesterday, and gave an answer to an interview question that left many listeners stunned. Kernow Damo has put up a piece about it on his vlog, as has Maximilien Robespierre, the smooth-voiced Irish vlogger. The Met’s heavy-handed policing of the Coronation and its arrest of 62 anti-monarchy protesters, simply for protesting, has raised questions about both the Met’s conduct and the Tory legislation allowing them to clamp down so hard on peaceful protesters. People are concerned about the draconian laws curbing protests and strikes. Lammy was asked if Labour intended to repeal this legislation. ‘No,’ he said, ‘because otherwise we’d spend all our time just repealing Tory legislation.’ This left Robespierre thoroughly gobsmacked. Because people are voting Labour in the hope that they’ll revrerse the Tory legislation allowing the water companies to dump raw sewage into our waterways and seas, stop the running down of the NHS, the impoverishment our great, hard–pressed and underappreciated working people. Now Lammy says that Labour doesn’t intend to do any of that. Robespierre raises the obvious point that this is a strange attitude for a party whose electoral line is that people should vote for them because they aren’t the Conservatives.
But I think this attitude is part and parcel of Starmer’s return to Blairism. Blair was a Thatcherite, who went further in the privatisation of the NHS and reforming – read: cutting back even further – the welfare state than the Tories themselves. One of the criticisms of Blair’s and Brown’s governments was that New Labour really didn’t differ at all from the Conservatives. They just promoted themselves on being able to implement the same wretched policies better and more efficiently. And in the case of the ‘welfare to work’ legislation, in which benefit claimants only got their welfare cheque if they did mandatory voluntary work for grasping, exploitative charities like Tomorrow’s People or the big supermarkets, Blair spun a profoundly reactionary policy introduced by Reagan’s Republicans in America and mooted by Thatcher over here as somehow left-wing and radical. It was all part of Blair’s New Deal, a modern version of Roosevelt’s make-work schemes during the Depression. The result of New Labour’s shameless emulation of the Tories was that an increasingly large part of the electorate stopped voting. They felt that it didn’t matter who you voted for, because they were all the same. Corbyn offered some escape from this electoral trap by promoting socialist policies. Hence the screams from the establishment both inside and outside the party that he was a Commie, Trotskyite anti-Semite. Because you can’t have someone offering the proles something that will actually benefit them.
And now it seems it’s back to business as usual under Starmer.
And the return to Blairism is already having the effect it previously had on the electorate. The Tories took a hammering at the local elections, and has naturally been held as an historic win by Stalin. Except that it was more a comment on how the electorate was fed up with the Tories than an overwhelming victory for Labour. According to some experts, by this measure Labour will be 28 seats short of a majority at the next general election. I seem also to recall polls that indicated that while people liked Labour, they didn’t like Starmer and didn’t think he was anywhere near as good a leader as whoever was the Tory prime minister at the time. And it’s obvious to see why. Starmer is deeply treacherous and untrustworthy, ditching nearly every pledge and promise he declared he believed in. He has done everything he could to purge the left with the usual smears of anti-Semitism. But his personal performance against the Tories has been dismal. For a long time he offered no alternative policies. His tactics seemed to be to wait for the Tories’ own failures and duplicity to catch up with them and then hope that the proles would vote Labour as the only alternative. This seems to have worked to a certain extent, but it also shows that the same tactics is failing to energise any enthusiasm for a Labour government. In fact, it’s put many people off.
Not that this necessarily bothers Starmer. As we’ve seen from the various coups and plots against Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour right would prefer to destroy Labour than accept any return to socialism.
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