By John Pickard
It was not unexpected for Keir Starmer to finally dump the pledge for a Labour government to spend £28bn a year on green investment. It is something that has been trailed in the press for weeks, besides which, the words ‘pledge’, ‘promise’ and ‘commitment’ have no meaning for the current Labour leadership.
It was at Labour conference in 2021, in her keynote speech, that Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, gave a pledge to spend £28bn every year into ‘growing a green economy’. By last Summer, this was already scaled back to investment that would rise to £28bn, but no sooner than 2027. In November last year, a senior Labour source told the BBC that “the level of investment previously promised might never be reached”. Finally, today, we have the coup de grace.
There is a profound irony in the fact that Starmer has finally killed off this plan, all that is left of the ‘Green New Deal’ bandied about in the Labour Party in the Corbyn years. Ironic, because various scientific agencies have announced that for the first time, there has been a global average temperature rise (above pre-industrial levels) of 1.5oC, which has persisted for a full calendar year. The cost of turning in the direction of a non-carbon economy may be high, but the cost of not doing so will be far greater in the longer term. Unfortunately, that is lost on the Labour leadership.
Right wing seeking a ‘bomb-proof’ manifesto
To sugar the pill, the Labour leadership is still offering a plan to insulate homes and implement other non-carbon policies. But given the disappearance of so many other policies, even the most modest ‘commitments’ are no longer credible.
The over-arching aim of the Labour leadership is to produce an election manifesto that is ‘bomb-proof’, that is, immune to criticism from the likes of the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Express. Not that this is a winning strategy: Labour’s manifesto could be a blank booklet (and more likely will be), and rags like these will still urge a vote for the Tories.
Labour’s retreat from any sort of radicalism is part of a deliberate policy to drive members away. The right wing of the party have never been comfortable with having any kind of mass membership and the size of the membership is for them still too high. Too many members means too much accountability for careerist MPs. So every time a new policy U-turn is announced – and this one will be no exception – a few thousand more good Party members give up in disgust and the right wing rub their hands.
But there is more to the retreat than that. The Labour leadership understands that British capitalism is in such dire straits that as long as they base their policies on the ‘market system’ – as they will – they will be obliged to carry out counter-reforms. Keir Starmer has complained about Rishi Sunak’s government “salting the ground”, by baking spending cuts into future government spending.
But Starmer and Reeves will do nothing to ‘unsalt’ the ground. They will faithfully abide by the swingeing spending cuts factored into future government spending by the Tories. As night follows day, it is inevitable that a Starmer administration will be one of counter-reforms and ‘Labour’ austerity. Running away from even the smallest spending commitments now comes from the realisation of what follows next.
Labour is still on track for a massive election victory
But here lies the paradox. As much as the right wing are consciously driving the left out of the Party by their incessant U-turns, as much as they are losing thousands of Muslim votes over their disgraceful support for Israel, as much as they are disenchanting so many youth over the absence of any radicalism – nevertheless, Labour is still on track to win a massive victory when an election comes.
The big majority of voters are not looking in any detail at what Labour stands for, and is oblivious of the dead hand of bureaucracy and the shutting down of democracy within the Party. The man and woman in the street are fed up to the back teeth of the most incompetent and corrupt government in modern times; they are simply desperate to get rid of the Tories, and Labour is perceived as the only alternative.
The latest ‘calculus’ poll (see chart) highlights the stark collapse of the Tory vote. The Tories themselves are resigned to a big defeat in the coming election and nothing, not even some tax give-aways in the March budget, will change that. With different scenarios outlined in the polling, the Tories are heading for at best (for them) a defeat and at worst a wipe-out.
There is a glaring contradiction, therefore, between the fact that the right wing are strangling the life out of the Labour Party, much to the dismay of the membership and the left in general, and the fact that Starmer is heading for a massive election victory. Despite the many calls in various social media bubbles for a ‘new party’ of the left, it will be Starmer’s Labour Party that is going to sweep into office on a tsunami of anti-Tory sentiment.
A different political scenario will begin to unfold
The big question is what happens next. Faced with a government that has no connection with ‘Labour’ tradition, other than the name, a different political scenario will begin to unfold. It took Tony Blair three elections to throw away four million Labour votes, but the Starmer-Reeves axis will produce the same scale of disillusionment in a single parliament.
Many Labour voters may turn in disgust, not to the left, but to parties of the right. However, within the ranks of the organised labour movement, and particularly the trade unions, different processes will be at work, and opposition to the right wing will grow.
Everything that the right wing has done to the Labour Party – the policy shifts, the closure of CLPs, expulsions, the ‘fixing’ of parliamentary and local government selections – have been done because of the acquiescence of the trade union leadership.
The leaderships of the three big affiliated right wing unions – GMB, USDAW and UNISON – have sat on their hands while the right wing have carried out policies and actions in direct opposition to the interests of their own members. Their representatives on Labour’s NEC and on regional boards have nodded like toy dogs, as the right wing have ridden rough-shod over all the democratic norms and traditions of the Party.
Even UNITE, today the only one of the ‘big four’ that is on the left, and Labour’s largest affiliate, has shown a naivety towards Labour’s right wing that is jaw-dropping. This union could have provided a dynamic and vibrant focus for a fight-back against Labour’s right-wing, but it has done next to nothing. Its leadership has even been unable to develop a radical policy on the savage bombing of Gaza, for fear of antagonising its own (minority) right wing.
The affiliated trade unions are the key
When Labour comes to office, however, the rules of the game will change. Rather than disaffiliate from the Party – as some ultra-lefts advocate – it is far more likely that the trade unions will become a focus of opposition to Labour’s right wing. It will be despite and not because of the leaderships of the unions, that there will be opposition within their membership to a new ‘Labour’ austerity regime. How could it be otherwise, when the realisation dawns among tens of thousands of union activists that the ‘Broken Britain’ left by the Tories will not be repaired by Starmer, Reeves and Co?
Even with all the sabotage and destruction by the right wing, there is still a large membership in many Labour Parties, but the trade unions are the key to the future. Although most of the left are keeping their heads down, there are glowing embers of opposition in many quarters and already to some extent in the unions.
In a certain sense, Labour ‘history’ is on pause for the moment; it is standing still. But when Labour is elected into office, as it will be, things will change. The embers will begin to flare up and Labour history will resume its march. As Left Horizons has argued many times, Keir Starmer is not the Labour Party and the Labour Party is not Keir Starmer. That will be amply demonstrated in the coming months and years.
