By Daviemoo
The painfully tone deaf talk from many liberal commentators is increasingly irritating- what’s meant, between the lines, is “we just want things to tick along and not affect us”, because fourteen years of tory austerity and the simultaneous decline of a party traditionally outlined by fierce commitment to workers’ protection into another establishment pillar has actually affected them, and they’d be much more comfortable if they could bob along as they always have.
Everything is political, from the price of a pasty from the supermarket to some people’s right to identify as they do legally or get married- perhaps Starmer will be able to smother the daily outpouring of Westminster scandal, but the days of politics being some tangential force which barely whispers past us are over- the veil is lifted and we see the British political establishment and their enablers in the media as it is: as a repressive force, bent to immiserate the working class by adhering to conservative policy.
It’s clear that the media will not take a lack of Westminster scandal lightly- the blood in the water with the corruption of the tories sold countless newspapers: something tells me that journalists whose entire career has been made by exposing our politicians’ rotten behaviour are hardly going to quietly shuffle off to find new things to talk about.
Starmer’s Labour will be anything but painfully dull (dependant on what you consider dull) considering he’s planning to build on a legacy of restrictive legislation the tories created- less rights to protest, less freedom to vote, harder to strike, harsher sentences for protesting or disruption, all whilst a wholesale slaughter of civilians rolls on in the middle east which everything from the hummus we buy to our universities helps advance and fund- what’s dull about that?
The scandal of politicians paid for by foreign powers and big business will continue unabated under this changed Labour that Starmer crows about so often- and that’s why it’s so clear that people like Hyde are extolling Starmer to please just keep the visible, embarrassing scandals down a bit so they can pretend it was wise to back labour to hashtag GTTO so you can hashtag FBPE and so on ad nauseam.
Many of us didn’t read the papers explaining the deep rot infesting our governmental apparatus as some thrilling little side quest in our day: some of us have been changed deeply by realising just how full of iniquity our government is, and it doesn’t stop at the sitting government’s behaviour or actions.
This isn’t just about some shallow scandal about cocaine on a kitchen tray or the odd one out behaviour of a (somehow disturbingly large) raft of perverts in the house of commons: this is about how that behaviour is indicative of a group of people who desperately need screening, because if they’re unable to behave in their personal lives they’re unable to make legislative decisions that affect the rest of us, firstly, but it’s also about how that behaviour and being surrounded by it means many of us don’t trust our governmental class to do the right thing by us.
More than that, Starmer’s labour probably could relegate these daily scandals to more occasional tidbits- and that still won’t stop the machine of a government now defined by their shift towards rightwards economics and social positions from churning on, butting in on our social freedoms, on our friends’ abilities to express themselves, on our own personal hatred of ineffectual governments convinced that to be “sensible” in times of crisis is the only way forward when “sensible” is the nom-de-plume of visionless, of cowardice, of spending more time making glad-eyes at former tory donors than writing policy to help the working class.
Starmer’s enablers in the press and the public like to pretend that this oh so changed labour is just hiding its fangs until the election is over. But what then? Will the cries of “but the right wing press” die down? Will Starmer suddenly start doing socialism, or will, every time any more moderate plans get dragged out, everyone suddenly act like if he does it there’ll be full scale rebellion?
The manifesto is out, it’s moderate and barely changes anything- and still the press crows about a decade of socialism. If socialism is “when you pay taxes and the government does things” then yes, we’re about ready to be a bolshevik state, but there is quite literally nothing socialist in this manifesto- even plans to take “ownership” of public utilities aren’t as they seem to these anti-socialist pretenders: GB energy is an investment vehicle, meaning public money goes to private entities to build new infrastructure which we’d need to buy out down the line. Are PFI’s particularly socialist, or do you just define socialism as “when everyone is poor :(“- because if that’s the case, about 80% of the country is socialist under the tories.
Public ownership of transport is so hopelessly limited it won’t actually do anything to benefit us the way true public ownership would- some things don’t matter; freight lines might not be useful to own publicly. But the things that do matter? Forget it. Meanwhile government ministers who stood under the previous labour manifesto keep telling us how bad it was- weird, that you stood behind it but thought it was terrible but NOW we can trust you? I mean, if you backed crazy old Corbynite manifestos that “don’t make sense” (it did, borrowing was ridiculously cheap then) or “aren’t costed” (it was fully costed), why can we trust what you’re saying now…? This question for Lisa Nandy, Rachel Reeves, for David Lammy and for industrious old Starmer himself- each one of them has taken time to insult their old manifesto- seemingly forgetting they all endorsed it.
Ultimately, what’s meant when people talk about an end to governmental scandal seems to be “I can’t wait til the government doesn’t make us all look stupid for backing them” because half the commentators loudly extolling the virtues of the tories voted for them anyway- the darling of the GTTO movement, Carol Vorderman herself, voted for Cameron’s tories: this is about having a government who still does bad policy, but doesn’t assault the voter’s ego.
I don’t want the government out of the spotlight- look how they’ve behaved in it, for goodness’ sake. If we go back to an era where our politicians act appallingly in the dark but all we see is the dull drudgery of Hansard minutes of meetings in the House of Commons then less people will stand against it, at a period where we absolutely have to be holding the government to intense scrutiny.
This government is set to refuse to repeal the draconian actions of tories past- one might call that the epithet so many of us get, aka “tory enabling” but I doubt it’ll be seen as such. But I also don’t think we’re out of the woods just because a moderated party is taking over from a radical one; if anything we’ve been dragged downwards so hard that replacing the tories with anything but another radical government in the other direction is all but pointless.
Every action I’ve seen from this vapid new Labour tells me they’ll be disappointing: from courting vast swathes of ex tory voters and ignoring their long standing base, trusting that they won’t go anywhere because they can’t, to endlessly talking about changing the party (yes, by kicking out the leftists or watching them leave in disgust, or by decimating inter-party accountability to parachute people like Luke Akehurst into safe seats, or deselecting candidates critical of a foreign country under investigation for fomenting genocide), fully costing a manifesto which ties your hands to the liberal wheel of low public spending, the sudden clarion cries of “wealth creation” without the wider acknowledgement that creating wealth without direction always and only benefits the already rich (see what happens when you use Quantitative Easing without directing the new liquidity into the hands of those who need the investment instead of those with already existing investment portfolios)… this Labour Party might stop the forehead slapping scandal that enrages us all into talking about politics on the surface level, but the foetid type of politics that tangibly worsens our lives; austerity cuts and restrictions on rights and freedoms- oh, that will continue to thrive. But the liberal type seem not to care about that, don’t care that labour’s capitulation to the rightward tilt means the enablement of Farageian politics- even the other day Farage talked about being opposition leader for the next election. These things haven’t happened in isolation and they didn’t happen just because of the (admittedly galling) list of tory scandals- they happened because there is no real sizeable leftist pushback from what should have been an opposition, who decided not opposing was the winning strategy.
Why do we think Farage is back in politics wholesale again? Because the relatively isolated ideological dog-earing of our historical political texts means people can plainly see what happens when extremism is on the rise and our politicians don’t stand decisively against it. Unfortunately every leadership debate featuring him has been maddening: people would rather call him a bigot than point out that his policies are insane, which doesn’t help. People know Farage is a racially insensitive turnip, as they knew Johnson was when he was elected (letterboxes, tank topped bum boys, watermelon smiles- 80 seat majority). People know Farage is a rancid arse who has backed every radical movement going, from the BNP to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine- you can’t call him a bigot to affect his polling because thats WHY his polling is where it is.
The Reform manifesto is out- has anyone talked about the billions wide fiscal hole in his “contract with the people” or asked him why his party is a limited company? Has anyone taken his rhetoric and refuted his numbers? They plan to stop any but essential immigration: before you do that, Nigel, you might want to answer how you plan to recoup the billions of pounds we’re subsidised with when we attract foreign students- I doubt it’ll be through a wealth tax..?
Everyone is too pearl clutchingly obsessed with calling Farage nasty frog man to actually point out that his policy is dire and would make the country much, much poorer which would directly affect the people he so claims to care about – yet would mysteriously leave enough money in the private sector for the Coutts’ account owning elite to keep having high tea at the shard… how queer.
For such a long time we’ve been assured that ending the tory madness will be step one, and thats true- for the honest amongst us. The problem is, for others it’s the first- and only- step. Half the commentators desperately urging us to get the tories out are already sharpening their pencils to write out the defensive lines about why Labour just can’t be more radical- they can’t upset the right wing press, piss off the donors, they can’t be seen to be doin’ a socialism… not realising they have taken on the personae of the Tory enablers they’ve spent fourteen years wringing their hands over, who made excuse after excuse for why the tories are so awful.
And on scandal- everyone has that. This isn’t about scandal being under control, it’s about honesty. That positions of power attract people with sometimes malleable moral frameworks, and we know that. We need a system of checks and balances, some sort of way to scrutinise our government ministers fairly. But more than that, we need decisive action to depart from this last fourteen years when what we’re about to be immersed neck deep into is another decade of governmental malaise, propagated by ministers who decided Blairian politics is better than tory ones, without ever actually offering us good, not just the lesser evil. And what do we have but another group of political commentators, media personae and government ministers all too eager to forgive labour any tedious legislative trespasses as long as they can be on the team wot won an election, even if nothing actually improves for the already disadvantaged?
Politically Enraged 