With Labour 20 points ahead of the Tories in the opinion polls, it is now highly likely that it will form the next government when the general election is held sometime in December 2024. That is, if the Tories can survive until then: their record of incompetence and corruption suggests that this will not be easy. There is little doubt that the ruling class wants them gone – it sees Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer as a safer pair of hands. Yet it does not have the direct influence over the Tory Party that it had in the past, and if it cannot engineer Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s resignation, it will have to wait out the next 21 months. ROBERT CLOUGH reports.
There will be many who are desperate to see the end of this vicious, racist and repressive government. Yet a Starmer-led Labour government will be even more reactionary because the depth of the underlying crisis of capitalism will force it to be. Parallels are being drawn with the period leading up to the 1997 Labour landslide with a Tory government mired in sleaze and hopelessly split over Europe. In that election campaign, Tony Blair committed to Tory spending plans, and stated he would not raise income tax or national insurance rates. However the economic conditions in the decade following Blair’s election were very different from what they are now or will be at the end of 2024:
‘Over a period of ten years, Britain’s overseas assets grew from £1,9765bn in 1997 to a staggering £6,486bn in 2007, 4.7 times its GDP, with ‘other investments’, predominantly bank loans and deposits by UK banks, 2.74 times GDP – a gigantic usury capital. Two consequences followed. First, the Labour Government had to ensure that British imperialism maintained a close military alliance with the US in order to protect these expanding worldwide interests. Second, a steady increase in real earnings – an average of 10% over this period for the mass of the working class and petit bourgeoisie, and more for higher earners – ensured social and political stability.’ (R Clough: Labour a party fit for imperialism, p196; overseas asset figures from D Yaffe: ‘Britain – parasitic and decaying capitalism’, FRFI 194)
A continuous growth in GDP over the ten years from 1997, averaging more than 2% per annum, supported a steady improvement in material conditions for the majority of the working class throughout this period.
‘Constructive engagement’ during a deepening crisis
Things now are very different. The economy is just avoiding recession, and will be scarcely growing by the time of a 2024 general election. The balance of payments deficit is at record levels. Real household living standards will have fallen by 5.7% by the end of 2024/25. Inter-imperialist rivalries will be at a completely different level of intensity, with little chance of an early end to the war in Ukraine, and increasing belligerence towards China. The notion that a Starmer-led government will offer any relief is a fantasy; the record since his election as leader three years ago in April 2020 demonstrates this without doubt. He announced then that his policy towards this most reactionary of Tory governments would be one of ‘constructive engagement’. The meaning was clear: he was not going to challenge it ideologically, but only on its performance. In other words he would ensure the government had bipartisan support, criticising it on the detail and then only when it was politically expedient. This meant eradicating any vestige of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, and crushing the left of the Labour Party.
The first test of ‘constructive engagement’ was the coronavirus pandemic. Starmer offered no opposition as the government’s privatised management of the public health response moved from disaster to disaster. There was the PPE scandal where companies run by Tory donors ended up with delivery contracts despite having no experience in the manufacture of such equipment. There were criticisms of performance – but they were obvious to everyone, especially when it came to the supposed ‘world-beating’ Test and Trace system. As Starmer told the Andrew Marr show on 19 September 2020, six months into the crisis, ‘they [the government] make a decision, we will follow that and we will reinforce their communications because in the end this is not about party politics.’ The point of course is that it had everything to do with class politics as every decision that the government made hammered the working class and protected the wealthy.
No rights for asylum seekers
‘Constructive engagement’ also extended to the government’s asylum seeker policy. 2,000 asylum seekers had crossed the Channel between January and June 2020. In August, Starmer’s then Shadow Immigration Minister, Holly Lynch, criticised the government not for its inhumanity but because of its ‘lack of grip and competence’ and called on the government to ‘urgently provide detail’ of how it would address the issue. She did not bother to defend the right of such migrants to claim asylum in Britain. Starmer also remained silent on this, despite his pledge in the leadership campaign to protect migrant rights and to press for the closure of detention centres such as Yarls Wood. The perception that Labour was ‘soft’ on migration, that it had failed to listen to people’s concerns on the issue, had been one of the principal explanations offered by the Labour right-wing for its loss of the 2010 and 2015 general elections.
A leader fit for imperialism
Starmer settled quickly into defining himself as a true patriot, and one who would defend Britain against all forms of foreign ‘aggression’. Along with the tabloids he opposed the BBC’s rumoured decision in 2020 to drop Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory from the Last Night of the Proms, and in his speech to a Labour Connect Conference declared ‘we love this country as you do. This is the country I grew up in and this is the country I will grow old in.’ By February the following year he was draping himself the Union flag – the Butcher’s Apron – with the accompanying advice from an internal strategy group about the need to dress smartly to win back voters from Red Wall seats.
From an early point, Labour was demanding that the Tory government do more to confront Russia and China. In summer 2020, Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy claimed ‘The government has underestimated the response required to Russia and it is imperative we learn the lessons from the mistakes that have been made.’ Starmer already wanted to up the ante on China over its alleged treatment of the Uighur people, saying that Labour would look at the government’s suggestions about suspending the Hong Kong extradition treaty, but that ‘ we would say go further … You can impose sanctions, and you should impose sanctions here in the UK’. Nandy supported the Conservative government’s proposals to offer residency to nearly three million Hong Kong people, called on the government to force the UN to investigate police brutality in Hong Kong, and demanded it re-examine its whole commercial relationship with China.
In a speech to Parliament on 25 January 2022, just weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Starmer was clear that ‘The Labour Party supports the steps that the government has taken to bolster Ukraine’s ability to defend herself’, and asked the Prime Minister to ‘assure the House that during talks, the UK and our partners will be resolute in our defence of Ukraine’s sovereignty, and the security of our NATO allies?’ Following the invasion, he added ‘we must make a clean break with the failed approach to handling Putin, which after Georgia, after Crimea, and after Donbas, has fed his belief that the benefits of aggression outweigh the costs. We must finally show him that he is wrong.’ It was therefore not surprising that he supported the extra £5bn promised for defence in the recent Budget, saying that Labour had long been calling for such a move, although Shadow Defence Secretary John Healey complained that it ‘does not deal with capability gaps that weaken our national defence and undermine the UK’s NATO contribution.’ On 8 March, Healey confirmed that Labour’s support for the AUKUS military partnership with Australia and the US directed at China would be ‘absolute’, and that his party’s backing would extend to all parts of the security and technology alliance, not just the nuclear-propelled submarines. Labour has no trouble taking sides amid deepening inter-imperialist rivalries.
Supporting repression
When Bristol demonstrators toppled the statue of slaver Edward Colston on 7 June 2020, Starmer complained their action was ‘completely wrong’. He then backed government proposals for harsh prison sentences for those who desecrate war memorials. Two weeks later, Starmer weighed in more strongly against Black Lives Matter, describing its call to ‘defund the police’ as ‘nonsense’ and dismissing the Black Lives Matter movement as a ‘moment’. In effect rejecting any criticism of British police as racist, he added that as Director of Public Prosecutions, ‘I worked with police forces across England and Wales bringing thousands of people to court. So my support for the police is very, very strong and evidenced in the joint actions I’ve done with the police.’
Starmer continued in this vein when in September 2020 Extinction Rebellion supporters blockaded the distribution of some national daily newspapers, saying that ‘The tactics and the action of Extinction Rebellion, particularly blockading newspapers, was just wrong in my view and counterproductive’, adding for good measure that ‘a free press is a cornerstone of our democracy and people should be able to read the newspaper that they want to read.’ Responding to Just Stop Oil street protests in October 2022, Starmer said that a future Labour government would back proposals to introduce stiff sentences for people who protest by blocking roads. Following a parliamentary debate over the Tories’ public order bill introducing draconian sentences for ‘locking on’, he said ‘What we were pushing for in that was longer sentences for those who were gluing themselves to roads and motorways, because that’s where you are putting lives at risk. We didn’t get that through, but that’s what I wanted.’ A month later, Shadow Justice Secretary Steve Reed opined that ‘When the eco-zealots return to cause their latest round of counterproductive misery, Labour will clamp down on their disruptive nonsense and use all means available to get injunctions in place. We stand firmly on the side of the public.’
Driving out the left
From the start of his leadership, Starmer organised a relentless assault on the Corbynist left. Ideologically negligible, they were quickly thrown into disarray and were no match for his ruthlessness. Hundreds have been sanctioned or expelled, many on bogus charges of anti-Semitism, others of associating with a proscribed organisation. Separately, an estimated 100,000 members have left over the last three years, disillusioned both by the direction of Labour under Starmer and the absence of any serious response from the Labour left. Corbyn himself remains true to form: he gives no leadership, and clearly refuses to draw any conclusions from the fact that he will be prevented from standing as a Labour Party candidate in the next general election.
Blair had not needed to kick out the left because it had already been marginalised under Kinnock following the defeat of the miners’ strike. He had also eviscerated the political role of the annual Labour Conference and ensured his complete control of Labour’s political agenda. Starmer faces very different conditions. He has had to persuade the ruling class that under his leadership Labour is now once again a safe option. He has demonstrated this with his ruthless handling of the left. He has ticked every box as far as British imperialist interests are concerns. He is prepared to implement severe measures against resistance. His migration policy is tailored to the needs of the ruling class. With the Tory Party hopelessly split and mired in sleaze, Starmer’s Labour Party will be the only option for the ruling class.
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 293 April/May 2023
