17th September 2023
Labour leader Kier Starmer – Tory policies in a Labour wrapper?
With the looming political party conference season likely to be the last before a General Election in 2024 there will be a strong pre-manifesto air as the main contenders set out their stalls.
Not exactly contenders but the Liberal Democrats, in Bournemouth from 23rd September, will still be hopeful of increasing their vote share and MP representation by pedalling their usual bland Tory-lite fare, in an effort to take seats from the Tories in the South. With no hope of actually forming a government, the Lib Dems will be hoping to swing enough votes to be part of a balance of power negotiation, should neither of the two main contenders manage a clear majority. Given how well that went for them, getting into bed with the Tories in 2010, expect some grass roots scepticism about the prospect.
The Tories stray into Northern territory, holding their conference in Manchester on 1st – 4th October. Already bookended by rail strikes on 30th September and 5th October the symbolism of the Tories being hemmed in by working class discontent is not difficult to read. With disputes having rumbled across the rail network, the NHS, schools, the postal service and others over the past year the fact that the Tories are not delivering for working people could hardly be clearer.
Led by a multi-millionaire, bankrolled by big business and with a Cabinet straight out of the public school sector, the sense of the Tories being the party of the ruling class, seeking to protect the privileges of the ruling class could hardly be stronger. Nevertheless, Tory divisions continue to reflect the tug of war within the capitalist class in Britain as to whether their best interests lie in an alignment with the European Union or in forging an independent path outside of the constraints of the EU, while still being governed by the economic strictures which twenty first capitalism implies.
It is an irony that it may be Labour who save the Tories’ bacon, by settling some of these issues, should Kier Starmer end up with the keys to number 10, Downing St. For the Labour leadership there is no dispute about membership of NATO; fuelling the ongoing NATO inspired war in Ukraine; wasting public money on weapons of mass destruction, such as Trident nuclear submarines; or ramping up anti-China rhetoric which could ultimately lead to a war in South East Asia.
On the issue of Europe Starmer is currently making conciliatory noises about greater cross border co-operation and having a closer ongoing relationship with the EU. Shadow Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, has also been very clear, stating,
“We want to approach the review of our trade arrangements in a very constructive manner, and we want to build on the partnership that we have seen on Ukraine. That is why we are proposing a new security pact.”
While some of the more rabid right wing Tories, locked in their Eurosceptic world may balk at such talk, there is nothing here to scare off many Tories. If such arrangements were in place by the time a 2029/30 General Election came around the Tories would be unlikely to want to unpick them, should they end up back in Downing St.
With Starmer and his cohorts already having form for doing the Tories dirty work, by torpedoing the prospects for change which Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership held out, it would be a small step for them to continue down that road should they find themselves in government.
The Labour Party conference, in Liverpool from 8th – 11th October, will be the most significant of those coming up in 2023. Having nailed their colours to the Tory mast in the field of foreign policy the hope is, as ever, that Labour’s domestic agenda will at least make some difference to the working class after what will have been 14 years of Tory austerity.
The investment in green infrastructure, borrowed from but not credited to the Corbyn manifestos of 2017 and 2019, offers some hope of industrial modernisation and new jobs as a consequence. Angela Rayner has made much rhetorical play of the workers’ rights agenda that Labour propose, without any concrete promise to reverse the avalanche of anti-union laws the Tories have enacted over the past forty years.
The need to invest in local government, on the brink of bankruptcy; rebuild local services, including crumbling schools and social housing; and properly fund the NHS, through investment in fair wages and a long term training infrastructure; are all shrouded in talk of fiscal rules and finances being tight, though not too tight to spend on weapons of mass destruction or the war in Ukraine, both of which remain Labour commitments.
Unless Labour’s conference does see a dramatic shift in policy direction the coming General Election is going to offer little difference of substance for working class voters. The pressures upon the working class will remain and the development of mass parliamentary action, to force change within the system but ultimately to change the system itself, will only grow.
If Labour continue to see themselves as merely keeping front bench seats warm for the return of the Tories that will not be enough to move towards real transformational change .
Trade union action over the past year has shown that action on the economic level can force concessions but in itself this will not be enough, important as victories in the wages struggle may be. A wider political agenda for change is required and a further Labour term in office, which fails to deliver for the working class, will only sharpen the urgent need for revolutionary change and organisational structures fit for purpose in the twenty first century to fulfil this role.
Avanti Populo 