General Elections

Starmerism won't win elections

Keir Starmer’s Blair tribute act is promoted as the way to win elections. It is not. “Mainstream” social democracy has done badly for decades in elections, as well as in bringing social progress. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the French Socialist Party was the strongest party in France, with 37.5% of the first-round vote for the National Assembly in 1981, and 49.3% in the second round. Even in 1997, it had 23.5%. In 2017, it was down to 7.4%. The Labour Party in the Netherlands was in government most of the time from 1946 to 2002. Its vote share has gone down from 29.0% in 1998 to 5.7% in 2021...

Five arguments about why Labour lost

“Labour has lost the working class” Over the years, but particularly in the Brexit era, older people have swung to the right and younger people to the left. In 1983 18-24 year olds backed Thatcher over Labour by 9 points, while over-65s backed Labour by 6. This time 18-24s backed Labour 57-19, while over-65s backed the Tories 62-18! Among women voters aged 18-24, only 15% went Tory. Older people are more and more over-represented in areas where Labour lost the bulk of its seats, and young people more and more under-represented. And older people are much more likely to turn out and vote. What...

Johnson's Brexit: Thatcher reloaded

On 3 December Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab squirmed when asked why he’d advocated that the NHS should follow the model of Germany, where “two thirds of German hospitals are run privately or not-for-profit”. It was “a snippet from a pamphlet written a long time ago [it was 2011!], but I can tell you categorically I’ve never advocated privatisation of the NHS.” He was, he protested, only one of five authors. The other four are all core members of the Johnson team: Trade Secretary Liz Truss, business minister Kwasi Kwarteng, Home Secretary Priti Patel, and junior minister Chris Skidmore. In...

After 12 December, what?

If Labour wins a majority government, some activists will think or semi-think “job done”. There will be a feeling we have navigated deadly rapids to a place of a safety. But in fact the struggle will likely intensify, and become harder. Labour’s manifesto only moderate higher taxes on the best-off, and nationalisation with compensation of selected sectors, not a democratic seizure of the productive wealth currently held by the plutocrats. But we should not assume Labour’s manifesto will be implemented easily. There will be many Labour MPs and leading party figures hesitant about or hostile to...

No backlash in PCS

Our intervention in this election is unprecedented in the history of PCS. In previous elections, the union has run a neutral campaign called “make your vote count”. Some in the union were worried that our stance would provoke a negative response from members, and maybe even resignations from people who wanted the union to remain strictly apolitical, but this hasn’t materialised. The previous line proceeded from the premise that all parties were objectively the same, and our job was simply to provide members with information about their various policies, especially those affecting the civil...

What if a hung parliament?

On 25 November Jeremy Corbyn reiterated his opposition to a coalition with the Lib Dems if the Tories lose the election but Labour does not win a majority. He did not respond to a question about coalitions versus forming a minority government. Mostly Labour’s leaders have rightly said they oppose a coalition and that, if Labour comes out from 12 December ahead of the Tories but short of a majority, they will go for a minority government. The Lib Dems have gone even further and said they will not vote to make Corbyn prime minister, let alone join a coalition. However, on 19 November the...

Lib Dems: turbo-charged neoliberalism

Quite a few of the Lib Dems’ manifesto pledges read as quite leftish. Their opposition to Brexit is clear, though revoking Article 50 without a new referendum is misguided. On migrants’ rights and free movement, they stand in many respects to the left of Labour. Even on public services, they are promising something like £50 billion above the Tories’ spending plans, and in a few areas have outflanked Labour – for instance childcare, where they are pledging more free hours from earlier and specifying it will be almost all year round. In general, though, what marks out the Lib Dems’ plans is not...

Tories pledge new anti-union law

The Tories, in their manifesto, signal their intention to launch a new assault on trade unions, with a pledge to ban transport workers from all-out strikes by requiring the operation of a “minimum service” during action. Otherwise the Tory manifesto is very content-light. Despite all the stuff about the Tories junking austerity and spending big on public services, the manifesto pledges barely any new money – about £3 billion, as against tens of billions from Labour and the Lib Dems. On social care, for instance, it offers virtually nothing beyond an appeal for cross-party consensus. It pledges...

Push out the Tories, sort out Labour

To respond to Orthodox chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis’ attack on Labour over antisemitism by pointing out that it is exaggerated only gets you so far. The reality is that since Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader, Seamus Milne took over the Leader’s Office, and some thousands of “returners” from the 1980s became newly vocal, a culture of antisemitism has flourished on the margins of the party and, in somewhat less virulent forms, deeper inside it too. A significant strand in Labour antisemitism is connected to a particular view of Israel and “Zionism”. While the party’s formal policy on Israel...

Sanders campaign: Impeachment? What impeachment?

Something strange is going on with the Democratic presidential candidates and the impeachment of Donald Trump. All the candidates support Trump’s impeachment. But none of them want to talk about it. At a recent event in Las Vegas, Bernie Sanders said that Trump “will be impeached, and he should be impeached.” But he quickly added that his own campaign is about “more than just defeating” the Republican president. When California Senator Kamala Harris was asked recently if she was following the impeachment hearings, she replied “not so much”. “I’ve been in Iowa,” she explained. As Politico put...

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