Labour and the future

 

Hi All,

It is clear from current opinion polls that the current conservative government is going to loose the next election, confirmed by various by-election defeats last Thursday. The takeaway is that the voters are against the conservatives, but not necessarily for Labour, given the drop in conservative vote, but the small rise in actual people voting for Labour (in English, the Conservative vote stayed at home). This may impact the scale of a Labour victory, but it seems they are likely to form the next government, unless there is a big ‘black swan’ event in which we end up at war with Russia between now and next year, which I would see as a 50-50 chance, but is increasing every day. But assuming this does not happen….

At present our conservative government is basically keeping the seat warm for Labour as a sort of ‘managerial caretaker’ government, being lead by the woke civil service. The left generally are projecting a lot of hope onto this win, but the reality is that Labour are likely to try and be centralist Blairites. Thus on social issues, the Labour Party has come up with a fudge approach which will tinker with and end up satisfying no-one approach. The other domestic issue- public spending- will also be controversial. While the civil service is centralist- woke, part of that deal is that on economic matters they are, especially in the Treasury, still wedded to the orthodox financial economics of neoliberalism. Thus you can except more upheaval and strikes, especially in the NHS.

That leaves us with foreign & defence policy. I except Labour will continue to support Ukraine, although whether or not the planned increases (marginal at best) on defence actually goes through is doubtful. Even though when in power Labour is more hawkish on defence, they, like the conservatives talk a good talk about British power, but always fail to fully arm, equip and fund defence spending, which means that all reviews either end up being ignored or are excuses for cuts to the defence forces. This might make some sense if Britian had a foreign policy similar to Ireland, where it is hope for the best and a small territorial homeland force. It makes no sense whatsoever for a country which believes it is some kind of  global military class power, aligned as America’s sock puppet or even one which wants to be Europe’s (via NATO) strongest military power, which is constantly sending in forces to wars, even as cuts are being made or illogical decisions taken (aircraft carriers with no aircraft for example). But that’s what we will get, until the shit hits the fan and if we do end up in conflict with Russia, even as part of NATO, the shit will hit the fan and all those previous cuts will come to haunt us.  One lesson from Ukraine , which is current a world war 1 ‘meatgrinder’ is that ‘force multipliers’- e.g. a single weapon costing billions of pounds being ‘modern’ can take on 40 old cold war tanks-  are not as effective as the spin of defence corporations like to make out.  

The other area of foreign policy is of course the UK’s relationship with the EU. Now this is also a domestic issue as it touches on trade, immigration and the Brexit vote, which internalised Britain’s external relations into a domestic issue. The fact is one side has simply not and never will conceded defeat and have been curning out propaganda ever since 2016 and this, couple with the fact that incompetent elites have blamed Brexit and covid  and then Ukraine, for any and all problems, the public has shifted to wanting to go back into the EU. The Labour Party is the bastion of remain and you might except (the civil service will salivate at it ) the UK to formally do so. They may try and tinker, by going into the single market first or they may try to fully re-join. The problem with the current public support to join the EU is that it is taken from the perspective of the UK bubble, as if 2016 is a moment frozen in a time loop, where Labour waves a wand and then the status quo is restored. Alas neither the UK or the EU is in a bubble. Things have moved on and if we did join the EU it would come without our opt outs on a variety of matters,  especially on the single currency (no-one in British mainstream would be able to sell that) and immigration (a prerequisite of joining the EU) or for that matter things like energy ownership .

But an even bigger shock to these issues will be European governments themselves. In post-war Europe the left have been democratic socialists in a way the Labour Party has never been and the European ‘Christian Democratic’ right being managerial corporatists akin to country club Republicans or One Nation British Conservatives. Today and if we include  Eastern Europe, we have in the continent the rise of right of centre parties, which are dismissed as ‘far right’ and ‘populist’ by the centralist/left/woke elite. In actual fact rather than being ‘far right’ these parties offer a mixture of neoliberal economics and socially conservative content that would have been mainstream centre-right politics even 5 years ago, let along 20 years ago. It is not that these parties are ‘far right’, but that the left mainstream has drifted society into a very socially liberal direction, in a very short space of time,  which is now leading to a pushback not only across the Anglo-sphere, but also Europe. In fact in Europe it is the young voters who are at the vanguard of support for these so-called ‘far right’ movements, in contrast to the Anglo-sphere were the generational split is mostly reversed.

In short this means that the British left fell in love with Europe because even the traditional right was prepared to offer the ‘workers’ a better set of protections than the Thatcher government of the 1980s, along with things like the Green ideology (which actually allowed Russia to blackmail Europe, gas was used as coal and nuclear stations were being shut down). This love in is going to quickly sour as Europe shifts right: right on social issues, but also right in terms of economic and labour-welfare reforms. This will clearly cause Labour to choose between their love on internationalism and the form that it takes. Maybe they will take it on the chin, given the love of the UN. But the UN doesn’t have the power that the EU would have over Britain, so we’ll see.