By Curtis Daly
With Owen Jones and many other figures on the left abandoning Labour, the attack on the left has intensified.
So many times I have heard the phrase “Tory enabler” for simply stating opinions and criticisms of the current Labour leadership. But does publicly denouncing Keir Starmer, and even supporting smaller parties mean that many of us on the left are dooming Britain to another five years of a Tory government? The answer is no.
On the 11th of January 2020, the then Labour leadership hopeful, Keir Starmer, uttered the words: “We should treat the 2017 manifesto as our foundational document, the radicalism and the hope that that inspired across the country was real”. This was a bid to convince the membership that he was firmly on the left.
Fast forward four years, and Keir Starmer as Labour leader is a completely different person. The Ten Pledges he made to the membership have all been dropped, and instead of retaining the left-wing domestic policies of the Corbyn era, the front bench has been talking up austerity and tax cuts for the rich.
Rachel Reeves, who is the current shadow chancellor, has copied the Tories’ policies and rhetoric on the economy; dropping Labour’s core ideology of redistribution in favour of improving people’s lives by ‘growing the economy’.
Under the umbrella of ‘growing the economy’, Labour has shifted toward tax cuts (including for the very rich), ‘opening the floodgates to NHS privatisation’ and continuing to rely on the private sector, which includes our public services. The only big policy that planned to kickstart much-needed investment via the state was Labour’s Green Prosperity Plan – yet it was dropped, as with every other pledge.
“FPTP means there’s only one choice: Labour or the Tories”
It is certainly true that our voting system is undemocratic, and yes, there can only be either a Labour or a Conservative government.
But many on the ‘progressive’ side of our politics have been open about ‘tactical voting’ for years. Dubbed the ‘progressive alliance’, a high-profile campaign that urged people to vote for Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, where they stood the best chance of defeating the Tories.
However, many proponents of the ‘progressive alliance’ were so infuriated with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership (especially on Brexit), that they opted to support smaller parties regardless of whether they stood a chance – it was a rebellion against Corbyn’s leadership. Today, it seems many are far more outraged that we deploy the same tactic under Keir Starmer, with even those who refused to vote Labour last time screaming “secret Tory!”. You have to ask whether these people possess any capacity for introspection.
As of today, the Labour Party is enjoying an astronomical lead over the Conservatives. Polling has shown that Labour is ahead by twenty or even thirty percentage points which puts them on course for a historic landslide victory. The truth is, Labour is going to win and the Tories can’t do anything about it.
This is a very unique opportunity where we can vote with our conscience without the risk of allowing the Conservatives to win another term. We haven’t been in this scenario for decades, so we should seize the moment. The goal for us on the left isn’t for the Tories to win as some claim, but neither is it the goal to give carte blanche to a very right-wing Labour Party either.
Voting Green or Independent is the tactical vote
If you like green policies, if you like public ownership, and if you support PR, I can guarantee you, this won’t happen under a Labour majority government. But leverage is the key, voting elsewhere signals to the Party that abandoning any semblance of progressive politics has its downsides.
For me personally, I would like to see a hung parliament where Labour is propped up by smaller progressive parties. I too would like to see PR, but we won’t be getting that with a party that can win a landslide with FPTP. What incentive would Labour have to implement PR, which would give power away to smaller parties? The answer: there is no incentive. But if Starmer is deprived of a majority, the Lib Dems and the Greens (as well as left-wing independents) can demand PR if he seeks to govern, and this can also be the case for many other progressive policies.
Keir Starmer is uniquely right-wing
Often we are charged with the ‘purity’ label, if we don’t back Labour in its current form, we are accused of throwing our toys out of the pram. This isn’t about purity; rather, this is about rejecting a very right-wing Labour Party. It’s not too much to ask for a so-called center-left Party to invest in the economy, stick to strong climate policies, pledge to improve public services and not support the genocide of the Palestinian people.
Instead, we have a party that talks about kicking sick people off benefits – thanks to Liz Kendal’s recent intervention – shadow cabinet members such as David Lammy praising Margaret Thatcher, and the leader himself openly saying on LBC that Israel “has a right” to cut off power and water to the Palestinian people – which is a war crime. I would have thought these reasonable objections would be met with good-faith discussions, but instead the response has been to label anyone vaguely critical of Starmer as ‘hard-left’.
Jeremy Corbyn – whatever you think about him – is not hard-left; his leadership was not hard-left and his policies were not hard-left. Yet, Starmer supporters have always maintained this idea that Corbyn and his supporters were ‘entryists’ into the Labour Party, and it is in fact Keir Starmer who represents ‘traditional Labour values’.
In 1945, Clement Atlee’s government created the NHS, the welfare state and engaged in a large state program of building houses. The Labour Prime Minister even nationalised a fifth of the economy! The idea that Keir Starmer’s politics is closer to Clement Atlee than Jeremy Corbyn’s, does not come close to the realms of reality. Corbyn’s economic policy was to build one million new houses a year with 500,000 of them being council houses, an end to privatisation, increase taxes on the wealthy and a clean break from neoliberalism.
This isn’t about rejecting a Labour Party that isn’t ‘pure’ enough; this is about rejecting a Labour Party that has become identical to the Tories. I hate Tory ideology and I hate Tory policies, so if I see Labour moving closer to that, then I’m going to hate that too.
Voters should be able to sway Labour from the outside, forcing them to be a better Party in government. Given where the Tories are at, I can confidently say we can support the Greens or independent candidates (including some Labour MPs) without fear of a Tory election victory.
So far from being a ‘Tory enabler’, this is about using the little power we have to try and change the country for the better.
Politically Enraged 