By Daviemoo
Last night was the first presidential debate in America for 2024 and we saw a stumbling, juddering performance from the sitting president versus the same nonsensical divisive rambling rhetoric of a convicted felon and thrower of coups.
Trump accused Biden of being a “bad Palestinian” and assured us he would “finish the job”. For those pro Palestinian, it was a stark message that neither option is good.
Joe Biden’s ineptitude around the atrocities in Palestine, his reneging on green promise central to his 2020 campaign and his lassitude against the continual rights violations of queer and female Americans is poised to bring the keys to the Oval Office back into Donald Trump’s hands. Meanwhile, in the UK, Starmer’s Labour are removing a popular candidate from Clacton because… why? They seemingly want Farage to take the seat, Starmer is in deep trouble for insulting Bangladeshi expats to the UK, is in lock-step with the conservatives on the demonisation of trans people and promises to “remove gender ideology from classrooms” which is quite literally part of Reform UK’s “contract with the people”.
Meanwhile over in Europe the recent elections saw the galvanisation of the far right, Macron’s centrism is no foil for Le Pen’s carefully manicured extremism, and we’ve seen her form a pre-emptive pact with Georgia Meloni’s far right Italian government. So, a question:
If the hard left is the issue, how come all these centrist icons of common sense, the harbingers of this return to normality we keep hearing about, are helping the fascists everywhere you turn?
Joe Biden has been a good president for the economically stable. If you weren’t already verging on or facing hardship during the nightmare events of early 2020 onwards you’ll probably think he’s done a good job. Biden’s blended policy approach, relying on Keynesian ideas of long term infrastructure don’t create the flash-bang of sudden improvement but focus on keeping the lights on. America won’t see payoff from long term infrastructure projects like bridges, roads, rails and more until the projects, sometimes years long, are completed. Thats the trouble with Keynesianism- it isn’t a quick fix, it’s a long one.
The problem also lies with the glaring wealth inequality the US faces. Too many people the world over cheer on billionaires without the puzzle pieces slotting together that as the rich become richer, the poor get poorer. It’s hardly complex- yet masses of people simply fail to notice.
Further exacerbating this feeling that power rests out of the everyman’s hands because of governmental flippancy is Biden’s utter indifference to his voters: over 70% of Democrats think withdrawal of support for Netanyahu’s one sided war of attrition is vital but Biden scorns them, allows police brutality against them, legislates against their ability to divest- and in last night’s debate we saw Trump still claim he wasn’t doing enough. On matters of importance- mass slaughter and death- Biden continues to feign concern whilst continuing on, confident that throngs of his supporters- more “vote blue to stop Trump” than “Biden is good”- will continue lambasting those who vacillate in their support for him.
Now, to last night: Biden’s support vs that of the MAGA cult has always been thready- consider that only- yes only- 7 million more people voted for Biden than Trump and because of the US’ electoral system, that number isn’t always useful- remember that Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 and still lost. Biden’s support has been in decline because of his treatment of his own base and because Trump’s powerful if poisonous political presence continues to attract people disenfranchised with “the system”, somehow convinced that a millionaire given more federal tax relief than all of his voters put together, who was allegedly involved in high crime in New York, who ran beauty pageants where he bragged about groping and staring at young girls and has rubbed shoulders with the world elite- is somehow not the epitome very system they claim to hate.
Biden’s uselessness in the face of catastrophe in the Middle East, his open contempt for those in his party who disagree with him- it has continually driven voters into apathy, and all it takes is more people voting in key areas for Trump than Biden and Trump is back in control.
Many of Biden’s enablers will point at the left, complaining all the while- it’s a matter of a month since Clinton herself was on a national talk show telling people unhappy with their awful choice of Biden to “grow up” clearly showing that Clinton’s pig headed dismissal of those who don’t align with her beliefs hasn’t changed. She has had every opportunity to understand that engaging with those who aren’t servile to Trump but unhappy with her may have had a different outcome- but still she sits in her confidence that scorning people on your way to power is effectual for “the left” option. But can the left be blamed for drawing lines that stop short of endorsing these people?
It seems to me that our defining characteristic on the left is that we don’t capitulate when it isn’t absolutely necessary. Too many of the terminally liberal think this aversion to compromise is childish, is foolish, is what locks us out of power- and yet they steadfastly do not compromise with us.
As we see all too often the centrist politicos are more happy to compromise with parties like Reform, adopting their “anti woke” stances without using the word, or (to use Rachel Reeves’ full throated endorsement of “modern supply side reform”) fully take on the identities of those we’re told are our adversaries.
Rather than looking at the shambling mess of Biden’s administration and himself directly, US democrats will blame people unwilling to vote for him- even knowing that replacing him and engaging with their base would likely see a true surge in the polls. Is it really the fault of individuals for not compromising their vote on a man clearly struggling to be competent and making decisions that result in us watching headless children on our screens day after day after day?
Is it really our fault for being reluctant to vote for Keir Starmer’s hollowed out corpse of a Labour Party whose manifesto says the word “change” 198 times whilst offering a change of party in power and little else?
Oh it’ll keep out the Tories, it’ll slow down Reform- but what are we doing but enabling the continual rightward jolt of our politics without even the dampers of a different school of politics applied?
Too often on the left we’re told we’re the reason politics is so fractured- but are we not an inevitable byproduct of a political system that doesn’t even perfunctorily cater to our voices? Labour had a decent gathering of leftists, purged (ironically) liberally to fit Starmer’s new brand and many of us reluctantly viewed it as a way to moderate the party more in line with a country split over which flavour of leftism to enact- and at first we accepted this as perhaps a way to gain power- but there was balance in that idea and not just compromising but getting directly into bed with the policies of the parties we revile is insane- the equivalent of arguing that we drink one poison to avoid the bitter taste of another.
For too long liberal commentators have blamed leftists, focusing on the derisive replies they receive on social media over the actual arguments made. I know: I was one. I used to revile leftists in my comments, not because I didn’t see their points but because I used to believe that “stop the tories” was the beginning and the end of political praxis. It isn’t- the tories, as hard right governments do, destroyed themselves more utterly than anyone else could: they spent fourteen years enriching themselves, scorning their supporters, ignoring their mandates, strangling the country- all for what? For this golden moment to occur, when finally we could have made an eloquent case for politics that still isn’t my own, but was more in line with the mood of a nation who voted mainly against the tories in 2019 but ended up with them anyway, and for it to be dashed away on this idea that moderated centrism is the way to defeat our enemies.
What they say
The problem we battle is that pundits like Nigel Farage actually do capitalise on real problems and fears. The UK’s deep pull for immigration happens because we don’t have enough people being born and from there being trained into the jobs which we need to keep healthy, wealthy etc. But when people look at a country with 1% of it’s land mass built on and complain we’re full, the true picture is this: the UK isn’t full, it just hasn’t been invested into with large scale government projects to ensure the country can load bear it’s populace.
I’m no huge adherent of Keynesianism but if the tories had even tried to plough money into infrastructure years ago the country might well be in a better place. Instead we had Cameron who decided punitive cuts rather than spending during recession to create new pillars of income would fix the country- and here we are, 14 years later with a country whose schools are collapsing, hospitals bare of staff (and also collapsing- not to mention that pesky “40 new hospitals” lie), whose rivers flow with human effluence, a populace divided, poor, sicker, who don’t live as long, who struggle to get on the property ladder- it’s not the immigration that’s the problem. It’s a country whose government hasn’t paid back into it to make the country fit for the purposes of a higher population and a country that doesn’t focus on actual fact over knee jerk dislike of “them”.
Every economist with sensible grasp of human behaviour understands that legal migration benefits a country: when people come to do jobs with a full set of skills and experience and potentially don’t pay into pensions but do pay tax, and who use public and private services increasing demand and stimulating the economy it’s a net benefit. Anyone who claims immigration is 100% good is a fool, there is nuance and there are issues we can discuss- but anyone who claims immigration is 100% bad is just as foolish, and yet our politics is dominated by them.
Farage wants to change the NHS, structuring it as a “pay if you earn enough” service but ignores the problems that would cause- we have a glut of elderly in this country who need NHS care but don’t earn: what about them Nigel, how do you plan to pay for them whilst also cutting the NHS’ entire budget by 5% as it says in your “contract”?
These, of course, questions he won’t answer without his usual head to the side waffle about how “we can’t go on like this”- the only correct thing he’s reliably known to say. And where is Starmer in all of this, but planning to allow expansion of Tory style policy: more private clinics dealing with NHS overflow, further incentivising the expansion and parasitic draining of the private sector off the beating veins of the NHS. We’re offered naught but the same, worse or even worse and people RAGE against those of us who dare to say “all these options are bad”. The threadbare self fulfilling prophecy of “we have no other choices” is only made manifest by those who don’t understand that all it takes to change that is numbers- and by being against the possibility of that change, they assure it.
The UK, the US, Central Europe- all of these locales have the same problem- wealth imbalance and a lack of political nous, mainstreamed through media that exists to profit by selling itself over giving people real, balanced information- and behind it all, this continued deference to political ideologies it’s quite possible we’re simply outgrowing. Conservatism is a school of thought many hundreds of years old, that has not moved with the times and does not work now- but we’re offered three iterations in an election, and there is surprise that we’re unhappy?
Many people who are in their thirties who can’t afford their homes or who had to downsize because of the economic destruction wrought by Truss et al, don’t want to live in a country where Frank Hester is rich enough to give the tories fifteen million pounds, whereupon he’s rewarded with lucrative NHS contracts worth over £100 million. Many of us would like to be able to afford to pay rent, bills and all the essentials- and also add some accoutrements. It’s quite possible- but unlikely when every turn against the establishment politicians brings you face to face with the same answers in different tie hues. And worse still, this continual abandonment of the common man is mainstreamed as minority uplift and a forgetting of the working class- how many times must we hear the word woke used as a slur? But “the woke” are as common as the unwoke- the unawake, whatever moniker they’d prefer- and factually “the woke” and “the unawake” are all part of “the proletariat” together- we’re all on the periphery of society, with the haves parading around in their air conditioned sphere as we sweat together and blame each other for the searing heat.
I don’t think it’s possible to create a culture shock big enough for the right to see sense- too focused on interfering in pronouns and women’s bodies. That’s a lofty goal- but who knew it would be so hard to get the center to look a bit left?
If compromise is what’s needed, let’s see some: let’s see some centrist types who are willing to entertain the idea that leftist politics isn’t anathema, who are willing to work with the left over pandering to the right.
Starmer recently described himself as a “committed socialist” despite not one policy in Labour’s manifesto even approaching socialism. Even the “public ownership” in labour’s manifesto is as transparent as glass- the energy company will be an investment vehicle, meaning public money paying private corporations and whilst it offsets the massive spend, it also means that it’s not publicly owned.
I’ve covered much on this blog about how the hard left also needs to compromise- sick as I am of seeing hard leftists lambasting those who don’t already agree with us- but it becomes increasingly hard to work with people who refuse to see their creeping servility towards the people with guns to our heads. So if you find yourself being glad that Labour has come down hard on the hard left, understand that the narrative is that you’d rather work with the parts of the party that offer policy in line with the Reform and Tory manifestos than those who push the values Labour had in it’s own mission statement until 2015- equality, egalitarianism and socialist “for the people” politics.
A worrying future
The main fear we all have in my sphere of politics is as simple as this:
Starmer has moderated Labour to attract the votes of ex tory loyalists, after a few years of the type of policy that they think they want that never pleases them, the ex tory voters fall to apathy and are scooped up by Farage, labour panics about losing it’s new toys and moved further in that direction but why have diet when you can have full fat, and then we see the reality of a Faragian primacy. If you think Farage is a bit of a joke and shouldn’t be taken seriously I encourage you to read about how Hitler and the Nazi party were viewed in the Weimar Republic for all too long.
This shift in our politics and its divisiveness isn’t because the left are stubborn children- it’s because there is no space for us in mainstream politics, and the people not making room for us aren’t the hard right headbangers who never would anyway- it’s the “sensible sensible” center types who think they occupy the no mans land between, but who sit a football pitch away from the left and a whisker’s width from the right, sneering at the left for not compromising.
Politically Enraged 