Labour Party

On Saturday some of us were walking from a Workers’ Liberty meeting in York to the rail station. At one junction we couldn’t remember whether to turn left or right. We looked at Google Maps on our phones. Before we could see the answer there, one of us glanced at the real world. There was the station, visible on our right! With the “don’t vote Labour” agitation on the (sort of) left now, it’s an inverse problem. Look on your smartphone, and it’s huge. Watch the real world, and it’s elusive. None of the groups — Collective, No Ceasefire No Vote (NCNV), Transform, We Deserve Better, Workers...

The election results for Young Labour and Labour students committees, announced 8 April, were bad for the left. In the 2022 elections, slates backed by the Labour-left group Momentum won majorities on both committees, though the Labour Students majority then let rings be run round it by the chair and secretary, both soft-left “Open Labour”. This time Labour-right candidates won almost a clean sweep. For Labour students chair, Ruby Herbert won 255 to 141 for Anya Wilkinson (left) and 73 for Anna Baxter (Open Labour). Jack Lubner got 2,397 votes for Young Labour chair, against 1,135 for the left...

Labour Party leaders have been repeating Keir Starmer’s claim that they have changed Labour “from a party of protest to a party of public service”. “Party of government” is another favourite. They want to be, not representatives of the working class, the class which protests against exploitation and lack of social provision, but alternative managers of the private-profit capitalist system. Worse: alternative managers of capitalism pretty much as it is , with almost the same fiscal (budget-balancing) rules, the same tax rates for the rich and big business, the same level of privatisation and...

Since September 2022, when the Tories lost patience with Boris Johnson’s buffoonery, and the Truss and Sunak fiascos followed, Keir Starmer has kept a big opinion poll lead. And so he still holds the political whip hand in the labour movement. He does not deserve it. Starmer has poor “approval” ratings. Even a small scandal or mishap could destroy the poll lead quickly. And more. Starmer draws on the myth of Tony Blair as Labour’s great election-winner. In 1994-7 Blair managed, as the Tories stumbled from blunder to debacle, not to lose the poll lead built up by Labour partly from the...

Few left papers host a regular columnist who obviously disagrees with the editorial line on many issues and even uses their column from time to time to “have a go” on such issues. We do. We also carry polemics against us like John McAnulty’s on Ireland, and sometimes angry polemics between our own core activists. We think the left needs a culture of open debate. Eric Lee’s column on Biden and Starmer ( Solidarity 704) had a different slant from most of our coverage. That one, though, I found it more not making sense than disputing directly. Maybe inadvertently, the article seems to equate “pro...

From discussion in Workers’ Liberty One The current shift to the right is no more fixed forever than previous shifts to the right. A sizeable challenge from the left is unlikely in the run-up to a general election which Starmer looks like winning, and is unlikely to be rapid even after Starmer takes office, but, as the right wing nervously notes, is far from excluded as a Starmer government stumbles. The Blairite apparatus around Keir Starmer has been able to disperse most of the “Corbynite” left (by exclusions, and, more, by pushing them to drop out in disgust); isolate and cow the left of...

The social media "brand" that is Owen Jones has resigned from the Labour party, saying “It’s difficult to disentangle Labour from my sense of self.” And, indeed, it’s difficult to disentangle his resignation from his self-righteousness.

Something strange is happening in American and British politics this year. According to a report in this week’s Sunday Times , the Labour Party under the leadership of Keir Starmer seems on course not just to win the next general election, but to win with a historic landslide. That poll is showing the Tories falling to below 100 seats, winning none at all outside of England. Many Tory cabinet ministers will lose their seats. Even Rishi Sunak is at risk of losing his. It will be the worst Tory defeat in more than a century. Labour is on course to win nearly 500 seats. No party that has won a...

On 19 March 2024, Rachel Reeves, Labour's shadow chancellor, gave the Mais Lecture at the Bayes business school.

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has responded to Jeremy Hunt’s 6 March budget by saying that things will be difficult under a Labour government and she may “have to” cut public spending. Hunt made some tax cuts — 2% off national insurance — scooped Labour’s plan to end the “non-domiciled” tax exemption for rich people, and squared it all with the “fiscal rules” by projecting public spending cuts in years ahead. Reeves makes dogma of no tax rises on the rich other than ending a few loopholes. So, “do the math”, as they say... A first answer to Reeves was given by Andrew Harrop of the Labour...