Labour Party

What’s the point?

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

My previous post on McSweeney and Starmer was full of anger towards both. Principally, this is because they have betrayed a zillion solid Labour values. Specifically, they cynically and deliberately weaponised ‘feeling’ against immigrants, in a way that was shamefully reactionary and should have no part in the thinking or activity of any reasonable or progressive political party. (And that particular approach goes on, through the hostile language used in government socials accounts and through Shabana Mahmood’s calculatedly weighted grandstanding on these issues). McSweeney plainly ordered them to shift hard right… Starmer utterly capitulated… and it really stinks.

Interestingly – or not – there’s been a lot of stuff in the political ether around how votes are won or cast because of feeling rather than understanding or fact. So maybe, by roaring my opposition, I’ve just fallen into that Modern Way. Government People (or their advisors) might recommend a ‘time for reflection’ before the issue of an ‘I could do better’ statement: and yes, they might have a point. Calling our Reform-voting friends ‘neanderthals’ was neither wise nor fair. It smacks of pomp and maybe even contempt for The Working Classes. But I can promise you I am not guilty of the latter: I just really don’t like racism.

The fella Ratcliffe’s recent intervention makes it clear that people *do have* opinions about immigration. But I would argue that most of these opinions are either racist to their core, or those propounding such notions have been coached towards xenophobia (+) by (what I would view as) our appalling and bigoted press. Ratcliffe is a special (and an especially foul) case because of his obscene wealth. Private-jetting-it waaay above all economic plight and yet scapegoating the most vulnerable. On the one hand to further empower and bejewel himself, and on the other out of sheer and obvious prejudice. Find your own four-letter word.

Starmer has, I believe, *actually called-out* Ratcliffe over his offensive, Reformist nonsense. Hoo-rah! Tiny steps?

I wrote in my last blog that I cannot abide the Prime Minister, for his spinelessness and the HUGE (MORAL) FAILURES around immigration/Gaza/abetting Trump/Mandelson/Palantir etc etc. For the general failure to bring back honesty and decency. Finding ourselves with this or any Labour leader being even remotely in the frame of comparison with Johnson for duplicity and corruption is an astonishing failure for a party predicated upon social justice.

Starmer is not as wildly amoral as Johnson. And he palpably doesn’t drive agendas in the way Alexander Boris de Pfeffel did. But the more we find out the more it seems that his failures of judgement have been contingent upon being ‘won over’ by lobbyists, influencers or multinationals.

Weirdly, I think maybe Starmer should stay – for now. There is merit in those making ‘politically-mature’ arguments around both the unfairness of coverage of Labour – no question! – and the need for ‘some stability’. Give the PM a little time… but don’t necessarily forgive, or forget. Despite his feeble protestations, he is not a Labour Man – or perhaps more exactly, he has drifted, shockingly but perhaps not surprisingly, from core, progressive views. (As I write this I can hear the voices calling out from the List of Good Things ticked-off, which I acknowledge. But you know as well as I do that Blue Labour is not Labour and not right).

So. In the face of billionaire ignoramuses, a mostly diabolical media and a Labour government absconding from the very decencies it was founded for and upon, what’s the point? Where do we go or look? In terms of voting (obvs), we get tactical. In terms of political philosophy, surely we either literally follow Polanski and the Greens, or we follow what they do with interest and maybe even some hope.

Zack Polanski has barely put a foot wrong, since becoming leader of his party. He is bold and real and he cuts the bullshit. He has been overwhelmingly right on immigration, Gaza, Trump and the whole repulsive White Supremacist Project – so across Musk, Thiel, Bannon and the rest. He is all over the Epstein thing and all over the umbilical links between that and the privileged, untouchable few. At home he has been in a different league in terms of compelling narratives and calling-out the economic injustices and imbalances the Labour Party was set up to address. He is killing it on necessary monopolies and progressive state intervention. His plausibility, manner and willingness to speak are different league. The Powers That Be – and they really are out there – will be looking to crush him. Don’t let them.

You had one job.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

McSweeney’s gone and even those of us who’d never been in the man’s orbit are punching the air. We didn’t need to be in those eight zillion meetings where he flew his poisonous kites or ‘took account’ of the murderously stupid or prejudiced and then ‘made policy reflect their concerns’. The world is better for his going. If we could believe this was somehow a turning-point towards widespread intelligence and fairness in the public domain then we might expect *things* to actually get better. But we know, do we not, there’s almost no chance of that?

Labour came in on a huge wave of nothing; meaning there was no real enthusiasm for Starmer but the universe had at least, at last understood that the Tories were unelectable, either for their incompetence or their contempt for decency, fairness and respect for the law. Starmer and McSweeney had a huge opportunity, a playing-field to frolic in, with just the one job – to restore some faith. They could have been radical: they could have really done some good.

Their failure lift us, at a moment of such opportunity, is an affront on so-o many levels, it’s hard to know where to start. It speaks to a remarkable level of soullessness and even cowardice. (And, of course, a pitiful narrowness – the sole ambition being to stay in power. Career politics of the most repulsive kind).

The longer the McSweeney-Starmer together-thing endured, the more wrapped in clingfilm they seemed. How, despite all the focus-groups(!) could they not hear/feel/see most things revolve around massive concentrations of wealth and influence? Why nothing meaningful to address either that or the associated control of media and corporations?

Falling back into Tory/Reform-lite tropes which are patently, deliberately and knuckle-draggingly racist (and therefore foul and indecent) registers pretty high on the list of offences with me. More importantly, in a stroke it repulses (and therefore alienates) most of what we might provocatively term the Good Labour Folk out there. So as vile as Farage and Trump, morally wrong and politically stupid. Driven by a foul, ‘popular’ ideology that sets theoretical vote-winning beyond any sense of that which is right. Laughably but obviously, this ‘listening to the concerns’ of neanderthals*…

(*get that this is offensive; don’t care; am angry and I know I’m right – in both senses).

resulted in a net loss of support. Because despite the scary levels of xenophobia (or worse) out there, almost no Reform-leaning clown was ever going to ‘come back to Labour’. And yet the language of division continues almost daily, from Labour’s execrable Home Sec, who thinks Powellite soundbites are still the way to go. They are not. They are grotesque and unworthy of us and of any progressive party. Labour is dead to many of us as long as it continues to deliberately demonise ‘illegal immigrants’.

McSweeney we can pretty sure – alongside the cabal of Blue Labour influencers – has shaped the imagery and language around the government’s lurch/capitulation/strategic realignment to the right. It would of course not have been possible without Starmer’s characteristic spinelessness.

Dull Prime Ministers are a commonplace – and not in themselves a particular issue – but Sir Keir’s feeble malleability and susceptibility to influence put him in a kind of world-level category for vacancy and lack of direction. It’s as though he wants to disappear. The ideas, the motivation, the sense of any compulsion towards re-balancing patently obscene injustice or privilege – local or international – has gone. Replaced by McSweeney’s ‘targets’ and subsumed in endless fire-fighting or briefing to hold things together against revelation, corruption, dissent. Plus, let’s be clear, on the biggest issues of all – Gaza; Trump; Epstein; Mandelson; Palantir; Russian interference – Starmer’s regime has been disastrously wrong, on every single one.

To err is human (as they say) but for leaders to be so wrong on the major issues of the day is extraordinary. To be wrong because you or your processes have been so blatantly corrupted or influenced by sources of power known to all of us – whether that be the machinery of the Israeli or Russian states, or the machinery of technocrats and the obscenely rich – takes political misjudgements into a whole new realm. That of blatant, Kafkaesque or Orwellian falsehood. Plainly we are there now. Presented with imagery, with narrative, with economic truth and necessity which is outrageously false.

The one job that Starmer and McSweeney had was to bring back a bit of honesty and truth. And ideally bring the discourse back towards a level of civility and tolerance. They have scorched away in the other direction. Lobbied. Bought. And in any case immune to the stuff that decent people know will always be right. Both have contributed – almost unbelievably – to a further degradation in the quality of political life in these islands.

Beyond the budget.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

(A prologue – not by way of apology but certainly to note the significant and progressive nature of the Reeves budget. Adults are in the room: some congratulations may be in order. However, I stand by what follows)…

Many of us fail to (ahem) network or even accept capitalism(?)/business/the ‘run-of-the-mill’* as a way or The Way because we don’t accept its values. It’s crap; it’s low; it’s a signal underachievement given how brilliant and generous and intelligent people can be.

*(Great phrase, by the way!)

Why would we pretend that systems designed to keep certain wealthy people wealthy and beyond accountability are satisfactory? Why would we accept them? We’re better than that.

Why are there billionaires (and why are most of them vile humans?) when most people have little or nothing by comparison? It’s not right. Why is so little of what we might call politics about redressing these obscene imbalances? (We know why: because most politicians lack the courage or decency or heart to make change and the media universe is nobbled – crippled with corruption and dictatorial myopia – by those billionaires and/or ‘media barons’ effectively corralling or twisting our views towards their own).

This may all boil down to privilege and the protection of privilege. And that may be why I have an issue with private schooling – the Industry of Privilege.

Sure there are wunnerful people – kids/families/teachers – at private schools (I know there are, I’ve met plenty of them) but they all need to be big enough to accept that they are buying or serving privilege. There can be no meaningful change – no ‘re-distribution’, no ‘levelling’ – without this first building block being hauled out, or at least called out. That is, discussed as a real thing.

The assumptions of entitlement – in the ether, in fact – start and are cultivated here. They finish, maybe, they reach their catastrophic low-point with Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and his ilk. How can this world (our world, Blighty) have come to be designed so that a human so grotesque and unworthy in every respect could make good on his wild, childhood intention of being Universe-King (or whatever the feck it was?) Johnson was and is a kind of icon to our system failure. It’s utterly obscene that an arse of his scale could believe and then absolutely find that everything and everybody really would fall in behind his boorish megalomania. Because of family and money and Eton and yup, everything.

In this landscape a budget from a centre-right Labour regime which has eminently capable but some might argue pitifully conciliatory people at the helm is likely to be an irrelevance: relatively. There may be encouraging splashing of the pool but there is already too much invested in  the appeasement of the World Order – from issues of class to the markets, to the media, to Israel, to That Which Is Thinkable – that we know Starmer and Reeve ain’t gonna stir things too much. The leadership is largely of this place; or content with it. There is no anger and no compelling sense of mission – though they talk of little else.

The party has already fallen into the trap of silencing dissenters. However much talk we hear about ‘changes of direction’, The Radical is very much out.

Sadly both this fact and the (less heinous than the Tories but still hugely galling) evidence of ‘successful’ gifting and lobbying feeds into the painful narrative that ‘them fookin’ politicians are all the same’. Plainly they’re not, but who can blame Dave from Wythenshawe for equating hugely trumpeted Labour indiscretions with heavily obscured Tory filth? With media and social media often acting deliberately against truth, how are we to engage intelligently with anything?

I won’t watch the budget coverage because it bores me and I don’t expect it to offer much of a lift. Plus the coverage will be depressingly dim. I do hope they prove me wrong and that there are some brilliant ideas – the Labour hierarchy, unlike the previous clowns, is quite possibly capable of that. Mainly though, it will tinker when we need to rip it up..

#Preseli #Pembrokeshire.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

I was a Labour Party member, moons ago. Think I drifted because of the New Labour thing (Mandelson, the cynical centrism) but it may actually have been before that.

I reckon I’ve stayed loyal to something but would I call that Corbynism? No, not instinctively, certainly not entirely. And yet I very much wanted to go to my local town centre – Haverfordwest – and stand with those exuding comradely love, or just ‘wanting to see’.

Once there, it felt good to see the old Solva & St David’s Labour Party banner spread un-stylishly but proudly at the rear of the makeshift stage. I came away both glad that I went and with any reservations about The Campaign swept away: we must a) get the tories out and b) begin to claw back some social justice, some dignity. People, it’s just right.

 

It’s been a dank, grey old day. There’s a storm a-comin’ again, tomorrow, too. The will, therefore, was medium-tested.

Daughter failed the test – stayed, to continue a teenage kip. It was left to us, the Older Generation to join with the carnival.

I say carnival but this overstates the level of upfulness. Sure it was comradely and good-natured in Castle Square but things were pitched more towards what we might call like-minded solidarity than street-dancing euphoria. There is work to be done and Jeremy Corbyn is doing it.

From Swansea to Carmarthen to Haverfordwest; the last stop of another exhausting day, or so you might think. Another crowd to raise, another marginal to cover, spirits to be stirred and maybe inspired. Unforgiving; relentless; necessary.

At about 4.45 pm we hear that ‘Jeremy will be late. Because of the crowds and the travelling’. Nobody really minds but a few of us nip to the local caffeine emporium.

We return to be entertained, more or less, by several hugely worthy speakers (who speak like Ordinary-but-committed People) and by an endearingly average local musician. There are flashes of good stuff but nobody’s pretending this is anything other than the warm-up.

It’s fine that these big-hearted people are filling the gap; it’s fine that they lack the brilliance of a great, public orator. We get that they have thrust themselves forward in the knowledge that they are Orn’ary Folks, out of belief, because they want to put their shoulder to the cart, to shove, forwards. Whilst they own the stage, there is almost no sense that ego is in play; more that solidarity is being imperfectly expressed.

Inevitably local activists featured strongly in this – forgive me if I don’t namecheck them all. Inevitably, too, there were union representatives and a young bloke from Momentum who has obviously been a force even when no-one was listening. (He spoke without sufficient fluency or authority to bear his message, as did others. I don’t mean to criticise any of them; they are not career politicians or public intellectuals. They are just people who want to change things – genuine respect to them for that).

Intermittently, we hear Jezza updates. He is forty minutes a way, then nine. We must listen out for the Big Red Bus. The Withybush Event (indoors, up the road) has been cancelled because timings are out due to big crowds and long-distance travel. Those booked into the later gig will be joining us in the square: cue tribal roar.

Grace Blakeley is welcomed to the stage. My wife – being typically more informed than my good self – breaks out her ‘this will be really top’ look and we recalibrate our attention.

Ka-pow. If we needed oratory and brilliance, we got it. If we needed someone to truly articulate both the economic and moral arguments, we got it. In an outstanding, flawlessly eloquent speech lasting about twenty minutes, Grace proper-delivered.

She was spiky and clear, without being cheaply adversarial. She was intellectually plausible, whilst making an invigoratingly radical case for system change. Blakeley absolutely smashed it, in terms of communicating Ideas We Might All Recognise, whilst raising the level of discourse to edifying (and again one suspects necessary) heights. Put her in against anybody; Grace will joust superbly well for us all. She lifted us.

Back to local activists and the MC, briefly, before the bus nudges into view.

A welcome that speaks of real warmth, flecked with a smidge of adoration. The “Oh Jeremy Corbyn” bass-line sparks up, along with most of the 1500 or so voices, gathered for the visit. This isn’t, it seems, all-out love – there’s too much plain, unsexy, hard-won respect – but there is excitement and palpable warmth.

Philippa Thompson, the Labour candidate for Preseli Pembrokeshire speaks briefly first. The sound is imperfect but she does well enough and is wise enough not to ‘rattle on’ and undermine the moment. She defers to Jeremy pretty promptly – quite rightly.

(Minor but maybe important note, which I will preface by saying that with every fibre of my being I hope she can unseat the incumbent Tory, Stephen Crabb; yes-man, former careerist now shamed into bland irrelevance.

Philppa, you spoke about four words of Welsh. Take it from me, as somebody with little Welsh but with a family now full of Welsh-speakers, that your pronunciation was beyond poor. It was insulting, or would be to anyone blessed with the language – and therefore you are strongly advised to either avoid, or get immediate help with this. It really matters… & it’s such an obvious own goal for a public figure – particularly an ‘incomer’).

But now Jezza, plus more activists and more locals, joining us from the battle bus and/or that cancelled event. We have a crowd, we have The Attraction and we have goodwill.

Corbyn is good. Fluent without being schmaltzy, prepared, without being in automatic mode. If Grace Blakeley was 9.5 out of 10, Jezza is 8 plus. Because he’s not a fabulous public speaker (and this is fine!) – he’s goodish.

Corbyn, flawed like all of us, inspires quietly, more by his common decency (remember that?) than any sparkling wit, or weighty or ‘Churchillian’ intervention. By and through the epic contribution he’s made to thoroughly commendable, often unfashionable causes.

Of course many either hate him or are deeply suspicious but I’m simply not lingering there. Let’s dismiss them as either conned by the billionaire press or prejudiced by dumb acquiescence to their betters – the toffs, the tories, the Natural Leaders. Back to Jezza.

It might even be that he isn’t an elite-level intellectual, he’s merely competent-plus. And this is fine. Jezza feels cut from our cloth: he’s believable and now projected forth into believe-in-able, by circumstance. The man may need to scheme behind closed doors, but he is publicly apparently without side or ego. He could be a teacher, postie, or the bloke who shuffles papers in the council office.

He speaks well, covering ground now familiar to all of us. Social Services, Education, plans to transform towards a green economy. To his credit, despite knowing surely that the crowd might lap it up, Corbyn remains notably averse to the kind of personal attack to which he is relentlessly subjected: Johnson is barely mentioned. Instead we get sketches of the vision, the hope.

There are ‘highlights’ but this is not highly-coloured fayre: the rabble in us is not roused, is not meant to be. That wouldn’t be Jezza. Our communal sense of what is right and fair and proportionate is rather gently appealed to, or stimulated. There could be barely be a greater contrast between this man and his showy, brainy, brazenly mendacious opposite number.

I’m dealing in generalities but trying to reflect how this felt. Seeing Jeremy Corbyn address a biggish bundle of people in Haverfordwest. On the eve of an extraordinarily important election. Being no longer a Labour Party member (and I promise you, not entirely doe-eyed, when it comes to Jezza) but supportive, nevertheless – and being daft enough to remain attached to ideas around virtue, around moral imperatives.

Wow, the pull towards optimism is strong. I want the guy to go well and will be punching the bloody air if Philippa Thompson wins. And the arguments feel won after a night like this. And there were lots of people. And Corbyn was good and Blakeley was wonderful.

Too much, to be optimistic? Maybe. But whatever. This was a restorative night – a valuable night.