In the UK, we’re all waking up to the prospect of a new government. The election was an oddity: Labour has converted a modest 35% vote share into a whopping Parliamentary majority; the Tories did somewhat better than suggested, on around 24%, but have lost more than two-thirds of their MPs. (The final figures were closer than most opinion polls suggested). But the election was not a story of Labour advances: they did little to increase their vote share (and neither did the Lib Dems, whose seats went up dramatically, from 11 to probably 71, on a virtually unchanged vote share). The real story was a fracturing of the Conservative coalition, with some voters locally going to Labour, some locally to the Liberal Democrats, and many going to Reform. One big question over the next few years will be how the Tories respond to this fracturing of that coalition. While they have long been divided and in decline, they no longer have Brexit to paper over their differences. Will they tack left, or right? (Answer: Electoral rationality suggests left; the demographics of their membership suggests right). Another is how Labour will attempt to sustain what is in fact a rather fragile electoral advantage in the coming difficult years, given that many wins were narrow, and given that they already appear destined to disappoint many of their voters.
Any predictions, then, about what the next four or five years hold for either Labour or the Conservatives?
{ 112 comments }
nastywoman 07.05.24 at 10:18 am
‘Any predictions, then, about what the next four or five years hold for either Labour or the Conservatives?’
YES!
If Labour doesn’t do what the British Voters
LIKE –
they will be again voted out of power faster than they can say ‘Rwanda’!
(so much about the power of 21c Voters)
Alex SL 07.05.24 at 11:10 am
That first part seems key: a lot of the media and social media seem to focus on the parliamentary seats when Labour only convinced one in three voters. That is not a lot for a mandate, really. I also strongly assume real preference for Labour may be closer to 20%, only a lot of people vote tactically because they know their vote would be wasted on the smaller party that they actually support. What is more, reverse the splintering of the right, and the result is reversed without anybody shifting camps. The first past the post system is simply not fit for purpose.
My prediction would have been that Labour, having promised not to do anything that would improve the economy, will in 2029 have disillusioned many of its voters and lose against a reinvigorated, perhaps even more radicalised right wing party. Seeing these numbers I now realise that this could happen even if Labour has a lot of luck on the economy and entirely maintains its vote share, because it is so small to begin with.
As I wrote before, the ratchet applies across much of the Western world since the 1980s: conservatives sow fear of immigrants and promise to lower taxes, they win elections, then privatise, deregulate, suppress wages, and cut services until voted out. Then the centre-left wins an election or two on the promise of being less incompetent and less corrupt than the right, and does nothing substantial to re-nationalise, to re-regulate, or to re-build services. Rinse and repeat until we are in late stage of the Roman Empire territory and our social structure falls apart because nothing works anymore.
MisterMr 07.05.24 at 11:20 am
More or less what Alex SL said, Reform will simply be the “new right”, tories will either merge with reform or become a subordinate ally, everybody else will be part of a “center left” that has no real sense of identity and therefore breaks every 5 minutes.
Not very nice, I personally hope lefish parties (in the UK and outside of it) will find a way out of this problem, but currently I don’t see it: it is like the left has two souls (or perhaps even more) and cannot coalesce.
engels 07.05.24 at 11:37 am
That first part seems key: a lot of the media and social media seem to focus on the parliamentary seats when Labour only convinced one in three voters.
Yes: their vote share is much lower than Corbyn’s in 2017 (40%) and barely improves on 2019 (32.1%). Also the lowest turnout in 20 years.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/05/election-night-labour-wins-smaller-vote-share-than-corbyn/
Fits with Starmer’s aspiration to be a fake rerun of Blair I suppose.
Akshay 07.05.24 at 12:21 pm
Twitter user Flying_Rodent’s analysis of the last 45 years in the UK automatically leads to a prediction:
https://x.com/flying_rodent/status/1757000875241877788
Basically agrees with Alex SL@2 in more colourful language
CalgaryGuy 07.05.24 at 12:55 pm
Another seconding of AlexSL. England is not immune from the right-wing winds hitting Continental Europe. See also Pollievre here in Canada.
engels 07.05.24 at 1:12 pm
On the plus side, “stability of change” is a brilliant slogan that succeeds in sounding managerialist and Orwellian whilst strongly evoking Lampedusa.
RobinM 07.05.24 at 1:42 pm
Yes, I know, what happens in England is very significant. But in keeping with the tenor of the observations so far, I just wanted to remind (a) that Labour seems to have returned to dominance in Scotland and in Wales, and (b) that Scottish Labour was an important presence in “New Labour.”” My guess is that the latest Scottish Labour contingent at Westminster will be Starmerite to their core and that, being rigidly so, they’ll bear a lot of responsibility for sending the new Labour government down the awful path some others have suggested here.
Guano 07.05.24 at 1:58 pm
This article
https://archive.ph/UA68E#selection-2421.0-2421.196
says that Labour’s mission in the first term is to revive economic growth, restore public services and reduce immigration.
(“Now, they could form a triangle with Starmer as the most powerful people in No 10, delivering his mission to revive economic growth, restore public services and reduce migration in his first term.”)
Doing all three is very difficult, especially because the UK economy and public services depend on immigration. The strategy for reducing immigration is improving skills and education in the UK, which will take more than one term to filter through to reduced immigration.
Meanwhile there appear to be lots of voters who think that it is possible and essential that immigration is reduced, and few politicians who are willing to contradict them. That spells trouble.
“Now, they could form a triangle with Starmer as the most powerful people in No 10, delivering his mission to revive economic growth, restore public services and reduce migration in his first term.”
engels 07.05.24 at 2:04 pm
As to what might happen, the Guardian’s vox pop of the bourgeoisie might help. Bungs to green (and not so green) business, “stability around taxes” and “bold reforms” especially to planning law and pesky banking regulations might be on the cards… hallelujah and hosanna (to quote the Graun’s top thinker, Polly Toynbee, elsewhere in the same edition).
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/05/need-brave-business-leaders-react-labour-victory-industry-starmer
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/05/general-election-tories-politics-labour
notGoodenough 07.05.24 at 2:19 pm
To avoid repetition, I will simply say I mostly agree with Alex SL’s prediction. To justify my comment, I will however note the following
In 2019, approximately 10.2 million people voted for Corbyn; in 2024, approximately 9.7 million people voted for Starmer. This represents a decrease of ca. half a million voters.
My prediction: the former election will continue to be used as a justification that the UK rejects left-wing politics, while the latter will be held up as a demonstration that centrist neoliberal politics are overwhelmingly popular by comparison.
Chris Armstrong 07.05.24 at 3:51 pm
The Labour election campaign was often (and appropriately) described as a Ming Vase strategy: no surprises, avoid controversies, just don’t drop the damned thing. Since that worked quite well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by Starmer’s victory speech (which was full of references to service, decency, and competence but otherwise largely devoid of content), or by the ministerial appointments that are happening today (which seem to involve pretty much all of his ‘shadow ministers for x’ simply dropping the ‘shadow’ part). I’m beginning to wonder if Keir lays out tomorrow’s shoes and tie before going to bed.
Cheez Whiz 07.05.24 at 4:59 pm
Alex SL’s prediction is essentially Nigel Farage’s plan to become PM in 2029.
brian 07.05.24 at 5:38 pm
Short version. Both parties subscribe to the same bullocks about government spending with a model that has nothing to do with reality. Loans create money. Money is not a fixed amount. If economists ran physics we would still believe that heavy things fall faster, and there are 4 elements, earth, air, fire, and water.
Per Steve Keen:
The root problem, as I noted in my previous post (Substack;Patreon), is that both parties—and almost all of the bureaucracy, the media, and economic thinktanks, as a reader pointed out—have Neoliberalism “embedded in them”. They hold the belief, derived from supply and demand analysis, that the government borrows from the private sector when it runs a deficit, and that, therefore, a deficit reduces total savings.”
Subscribe to Steve’s Patreon account.
Harry 07.05.24 at 6:50 pm
The highly efficient use of tactical voting between Labour and LibDem supporters that AlexSL mentions, tacitly encouraged by both party leaderships. depends on each side feeling confident in the probability that the other side will play ball, and being very well-informed about which party is more likely to beat the Tories in your seat, which voters were. My guess is that conditions for efficient tactical voting will still be favourable in 2029. There’s a huge incentive for the right to reach a similar accommodation… (which of course might consist in an effective merger). Whether Labour can win again in 2029 depends very much on how vicious the internecine conflict within the right is, and how long it lasts.
Unless they get lucky with growth. If they do, they’ll probably be ok, and will spend much more than the Tories would, and more effectively, on public services.
Their ultra-cautious offer looks ludicrous now, and has done for a while. They could probably have afforded to commit to raising income taxes some. But nobody thought they even had a chance of winning this election 3 1/2 years ago, and even after Truss they couldn’t have anticipated that Sunak would be quite so useless, and even at the beginning of this election everybody assumed that the polls would narrow somewhat; Farage’s entry into the election was a surprise (without which we’d be looking at a small majority at best) and although everyone knew Sunak wouldn’t be a great campaigner did anyone really anticipate him being quite this awful?
“I’m beginning to wonder if Keir lays out tomorrow’s shoes and tie before going to bed”
Of course he does. And so he should. Don’t we all? (I mean I don’t exactly but that’s because my clothes are all the same so no choices have to be made).
Seekonk 07.05.24 at 6:55 pm
“Starmer’s victory speech was … largely devoid of content”
Since the Reagan-Thatcher era, UK Labour, like US Dems, have pretty much accepted the neoliberal view that economic policy should be made by private actors (i.e., rich people), not by government. I expect do-nothing obfuscation and obscurantism from Starmer. I fear that he will open the door to a Farage/Trump-like successor.
engels 07.05.24 at 7:02 pm
“Getting BlackRock to rebuild Britain”
https://x.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1806361514820907238
engels 07.05.24 at 7:39 pm
Btw since this is a thread about Alex’s prediction, I broadly agree—I think I might have advanced something similar when CT was anointing Macron in 2017 (it gives me pleasure etc)—however I dissent from the implication that the centre-“left” is the stationary moment of the neoliberal ratchet: in Britain among other innovations they marketised HE and created the monstrous “work capability assessment” system the Tories would later use to massacre large numbers of the disabled (ofc they also joined neoconservative US in massacring millions of Iraqis and destabilised the surrounding region but that’s water under the bridge now apart from the waves of refugees and the breakdown of a law-governed international order).
Barry 07.05.24 at 11:04 pm
“That first part seems key: a lot of the media and social media seem to focus on the parliamentary seats when Labour only convinced one in three voters. ”
This is the same phase as we see on the Yank side of the pond.
The Tories, and their auxillary wing in the ‘liberal’ mass media will not deny the legitimacy of any election which the right lost. They will totally ignore the elections that the right won, and the fact that the Tories ruled the UK for 14 years under the same system.
From what I’ve heard, the Tories lost more seats due to the Reform Wing running as a separate party, but they’ll use that lost as further denial.
engels 07.06.24 at 12:36 am
Bbtw having encountered an unusually broad sample of British society today (mostly not far-leftists) I have to say the Guardian opinion section’s K-pop concert audience mood seems unrepresentative to put it mildly. Did they all do too many pills at Glasto?
steven t johnson 07.06.24 at 1:57 am
Don’t know enough about UK to really weigh in, but I am puzzled at the thought Sir Keir Starmer is insincere in aping Tony Blair’s push to the right. A knighthood is almost an official certification these goods are past their sell by date, no?
Chris Armstrong 07.06.24 at 8:20 am
Steven, Starmer did a job (he was the chief prosecutor for England and Wales) which is automatically rewarded with a knighthood when you finish. Of course, he could have refused it, and I wonder if he sometimes wishes he had – it does make him look conservative and establishment, and people like Boris Johnson sometimes mocked him for it (while dishing out knighthoods to his friends).
Sam 07.06.24 at 12:47 pm
I don’t think he’ll tack left, because the faction from which he derives most of his support hates the left, and enjoys “punching left”. Also, when has a Labour government in power ever governed to the left of its campaign?
They’re more likely to follow Farage all the way to the right – at least on issues like immigration.
engels 07.06.24 at 1:13 pm
The Blair comparisons don’t do justice to Starmer’s factionalism and extreme intolerance to even the moderate left.
https://tribunemag.co.uk/2024/06/keirll-fix-it
Chris Bertram 07.06.24 at 1:13 pm
Much talk about Labour’s vote share and how Starmer has actually done no better than Corbyn etc. But, Corbyn’s Labour vote was incredibly inefficient, piling up votes in the cities among young people and ethnic minorities and losing contests in post-industrial towns and the so-called “red wall”. Starmer has chosen to dump the city voters in order to chase the peripheral ones, betting correctly that Labour would retain enough in the cities to edge contests there and gain enough on the periphery to win those one too by a bit. BUT, the Bristol Greens (won one seat, 2nd in three) and the Gaza independents show the dangers Labour now faces in the cities if Labour annoys people there (as it will) and the Faragists loom on the periphery. So a Labour government, even with a large majority, trying to governm Macron-style from the centre, faces the prospect of a French-style polarisation, losing votes to the left in the cities and the far-right on the edges.
engels 07.06.24 at 2:05 pm
This is good on the precarity of Starmer’s en marche. Nice vase you got there…
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/majority-without-a-mandate
RobinM 07.06.24 at 2:12 pm
I take Chris Bertram’s point, that Starmer seems to have successfully played the existing electoral system, just as, say, Trump or Biden will again successfully play the US Electoral College system. But that will not quieten down the criticisms that these systems are in some sense undemocratic and unfair. Indeed, there is already quite a lot being said about the disparity in Britain between the partisan proportions of the votes cast and the partisan distribution of seats in the H of C, a related consequence of the electoral system. And there must surely be some disquiet somewhere about the decline in turnout—though that’s surely something some (some even in the Labour Party) will be celebrating as a sign that ‘the wrong sort of people’ are disengaging from even a minimal political role.
engels 07.06.24 at 7:59 pm
Meet the shad cab:
Reeves: ‘There’s not a huge amount of money’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cldyeykzp33o
Life on benefits will not be an option under Labour, says Liz Kendall
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/04/life-on-benefits-under-labour-will-not-be-an-option-says-liz-kendall
Labour would ‘hold the door open’ for private sector in NHS, says Wes Streeting
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/labour-private-sector-nhs-wes-streeting-2760505
Two-fifths of Starmer’s cabinet have received funds from pro-Israel groups, Declassified UK finds
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/two-fifths-starmers-cabinet-have-been-funded-pro-israel-lobbyists-declassified-uk
engels 07.07.24 at 2:15 am
Er cabinet. I forgot Jacqui Smith:
How Jacqui Smith racked up £157,000 in expenses claims (including £2,500 for her husband the porn film fan)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1165985/How-Jacqui-Smith-racked-157-000-expenses-claims-including-2-500-husband-porn-film-fan.html
John Q 07.07.24 at 10:02 am
“So a Labour government, even with a large majority, trying to governm Macron-style from the centre, faces the prospect of a French-style polarisation, losing votes to the left in the cities and the far-right on the edges.’
I’ve been making this general argument for ages now
https://crookedtimber.org/2016/02/29/the-three-party-system/
In this context, what we need to hope for is to keep Trumpist support low enough that they can be beaten by a coalition of soft neoliberals and the left, and that this coalition should actually form. Given the irrelevance of neoliberalism to the actual problems we face, this coalition should eventually be dominated by the left
novakant 07.07.24 at 11:32 am
I will grant myself the privilege of being relieved that the nasty and dangerous party has lost power. Just looking at the evaluation of the environmental policies of the parties gives me some relief and hopefully the Lib Dem and Green Party successes add a little bit of pressure in that regard. The Tories were, unsurprisingly, absolutely terrible when it came to the environment.
While unfortunately neither Labour nor the Tories will let go of FPTP out of self interest, it seems that despite the odds we are on the way to a multi-party democracy, which is a good thing.
I share Chris’ and John’s concerns, but I’m sure Starmer is aware of this as well.
Generally it might be good to remember Bismarck’s definition of “politics as the art of the possible”.
steven t johnson 07.07.24 at 2:44 pm
RobinM@27 Was there any such talk about the inherent unfairness of FPTP when the Tories got a lopsided number of seats before?
As I understand it, the Bush people had prepared a campaign against the Electoral College to be undertaken if Gore had won the EC and lost the popular vote. If Biden carries the EC this fall by slim majorities in a number of states but Trump is reported a massively lopsided majorities from Red States, resulting in his first winning vote, I am somehow certain the Trumpers would instantly reverse their 2016 position that only the EC counts.
In other words, is this what is going on with “a lot being said…?”
engels 07.07.24 at 4:20 pm
Was there any such talk about the inherent unfairness of FPTP when the Tories got a lopsided number of seats before?
Yes: the Lib Dems never stopped complaining about it (until now?)
RobinM 07.07.24 at 6:05 pm
While I don’t doubt, Steven @ 32, that there are those who respond to FPTP or the EC depending on whether it favours or disfavours their partisan wishes at this or that election, there are surely some people who take a rather less partisan position on these matters.
Harry 07.07.24 at 6:15 pm
I think that the Labour Party conference has regularly considered resolutions in favour of some unspecified form of PR, and i thought that a resolution passed at the 2023 conference, no? Its very popular with Labour members, and with some unions (who believe, rightly or wrongly, that it would strengthen the left). The vulnerability of Labour’s majority (given its low share of the vote, and its dependence on the strong performance of Reform) give them a reason to support PR. But even if they strongly supported it, its hard to make it a priority given everything they’ve inherited and the indifference of voters to constitutional issues. The last time electoral reform was considered was in 2011 when a national referendum on replacing FPTP with AV (not really a form of PR) was rejected decisively.
Daragh McDowell 07.07.24 at 7:14 pm
So a couple of thoughts on what was a very weird election –
1) Labour’s vote share – I go back and forth on how significant the 34% figure is. I’m a PR advocate because FPTP is democratically indefensible, but I’m also not sure I agree with Chris Bertram’s analysis about what happened with those missing votes. Basically this election result was nailed on from the start – a lot of the Labour ‘excess’ vote took the opportunity to give a free kick to Starmer and might reasonably be expected to return home when things tighten up a bit. In this sense its a little like the 2017 election – there was a widespread (correct) assumption that Corbyn couldn’t possibly become PM so it was safe to vote Labour to kick May for her terrible campaign. When it was an actual choice, a not terribly popular Tory leader (Johnson) was able to run a pretty mediocre campaign with a simple offer and absolutely bury Labour. I don’t think the Tories are going to suddenly discover that tacking endlessly rightward was a bad strategy, and will make someone like Badenoch or Braverman leader. That is, someone who doesn’t fix the competence problem and will conclude that trans issues and turning the racism dial rightward is the way to win.
In other words I think the odds of ten years of Starmer are pretty solid (followed by Phillipson, Reeves, Nandy or some other ambitious female Labour MP not yet identified as a potential leader). The key take away is that under the system as it is Starmer took Labour from an epochal defeat to a massive majority in five years, which should lead to the conclusion that he and his team are indeed Very Good at Politics, but I suspect won’t. The “broad but shallow” mandate could also be good from a party management perspective if handled skilfully – If Labour is going to build on this result its going to have to deliver results, particularly in planning reform and housebuilding. Being able to tell a bunch of possibly recalcitrant MPs on thin majorities that their hopes of a second term depend on a rising tide lifting all boats is probably a more effective strategy than “2024 isn’t going to happen again, so just accept you’re here for five years”, which is what was was going to be the case when Labour was expected to win over 40% and 450+ seats.
2) Labour has been in power for less than 72 hours but so far the signs are good. Timpson, in particular, is the kind of ministerial appointment that should be taken as evidence that Starmer is more progressive than the popular caricature suggests. Also – rail renationalisation. Great! Engaging with the mayoralties and devolved administrations is also a sign that regional development is probably going to get more constructive and practical attention rather than vague bullshit about ‘levelling up’. Giving Burnham the resources to pursue development projects in Manchester is much more likely under Labour for political reasons and likely to be both effective and popular. Above all we can be very confident Starmer will have zero time for the idea that he should be bound by things he said in the election campaign if they prevent him from doing things that will improve the state of the country in government. This is also good.
3) The Tories probably got saved from outright oblivion by Nigel Farage indulging in a bit of ill-timed Putin-snuggling at the end of the campaign. That said, for building up Reform going forward the five seat caucus is probably the perfect result for them. If Farage had found himself at the head of 13 MPs, of whom roughly half couldn’t be trusted not to show up to parliament in a replica SS uniform, he would have been spending all of his time trying to wrangle a parliamentary party and absolutely hating it. As it stands, Farage, Anderson, Tice and the other two are a tight enough unit that they can maintain discipline and maybe even avoid having to vote on controversial bills while also benefitting from a lot more short money. That said, they’ll all be subject to declarations of interest which will be very, very funny when Farage fills out his.
4) The Tories themselves look like they’re going to straight up ignore the fact that they lost dozens of seats to the Liberal Democrats and fool themselves that if they can just add Reform’s vote to their own everything will be hunky dory. This is an idiotic strategy particularly given Reform’s vote is probably a lot more heterogenous than just ‘pissed off right-wing Tories’ and can’t be trusted to move over en masse. They’re in a bad position in that if they DO try something like merging with Reform they’ll just add to the Lib Dem tally, but if they don’t its not clear where their niche in the market is. Oh dear what a pity never mind.
5) The left-wing is jubilant due to the success of the Greens, Gaza independents and Jeremy Corbyn. I think this is probably short sighted. I have no notion of the politics of the Gaza independents who were elected but will note that one who narrowly wasn’t is Akhmed Yakoob, whose policy views on Israel-Palestine may appeal to Owen Jones, but whose social views are unlikely to do the same. The Telegraph shrieking about sectarianism is clearly sotto voce racism but I also wouldn’t be surprised if the Gaza block voter base isn’t a million miles away from Reform’s in terms of basic values and priorities, minus the white-power racism.
Similarly, the Novara media types seem to have convinced themselves that the Green party is the new vanguard of democratic-socialism without considering that its national electoral coalition might be more complicated than that. For every Bristol student progressive in there there is also a country-side turbo-NIMBY – call them Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall Greens.
What happens to Jeremy Corbyn in all of this is intriguing. Personally, I think it speaks to the immense strategic short-sightedness of the UK left that they poured significant resources into making him an irrelevant backbencher for largely sentimental reasons when they could have been doing something politically useful, but you won’t see me complaining. I could see him trying to form some kind of left-wing ‘popular front’ on the backbenches with the Greens and the Gaza independents which, for the reasons outlined above, would probably collapse in on itself extremely quickly. As I’m always in need of a good laugh and it is for the good of the country that Corbyn’s energies be diverted into the least harmful avenue available to them I hope this happens.
6) The “Starmer as Macron, Handmaiden to the Far Right” argument: Well for one thing, its just an exit poll but it looks like Macron’s gamble seems to have paid off, so I dunno, maybe the people who have continually failed to gain political power may want to give a bit more credit to the people who have, and perhaps even try to understand why.
As a nudge in that direction – the French left made a deeply unpleasant egotistical narcissist with terrible politics and a cult-like following that repels most voters its standard bearer in the presidential elections. In the current legislative elections it made him a key figure in its coalition and a likely candidate for prime minister. France Insoumise is now projected to come behind Macron’s Renaissance.
While Jeremy Corbyn differs from Melenchon in that the former’s anti-semitism is more down to a kind of passive indifference rather than the latter’s active hostility, both men continually and reliably cap the ambitions of the political forces they affiliate with due to their manifest unsuitability for political leadership.
The Corbyn cultists doing their absolute best to preserve Corbyn’s potential to be a challenger to Starmer from the left exponentially increases the chances of that project failing. The Tories are likely to make a similar, inverse mistake on the right flank.
Obviously Starmerism is going to live and die on economic results, which will in large part be shaped by events beyond his or any UK politicians control (a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan first among them). But the signs so far that while his coalition may be narrow and vulnerable his opponents on both sides are likely to simply vacate the field.
engels 07.07.24 at 8:16 pm
This is more like it
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/french-pm-attal-i-will-hand-my-resignation-monday-morning-2024-07-07/
John Q 07.07.24 at 9:26 pm
Big mistake of Libdems in 2010 was to agree to a referendum on AV. They should have demanded legislation as a condition of coalition.
Labour should legislate AV, but won’t. They prefer taking turns with the Tories to anything likely to produce leftish minority governments or coalitions.
engels 07.07.24 at 9:37 pm
it looks like Macron’s gamble seems to have paid off, so I dunno, maybe the people who have continually failed to gain political power may want to give a bit more credit to the people who have, and perhaps even try to understand why. As a nudge in that direction – the French left made a deeply unpleasant egotistical narcissist with terrible politics and a cult-like following that repels most voters it’s standard bearer… France Insoumise is now projected to come behind Macron’s Renaissance.
Check your Bloomberg terminal.
Daragh McDowell 07.07.24 at 10:06 pm
@John Q
Agree on the legislation but I don’t think the Tories would have worn it and opens up the path to it being legislated away. And ANY party that gets in under FPTP is going to have a strong incentive not to reform. The idea that there’s a permanent progressive majority in the UK is a myth, and you’d get plenty of right wing governance under PR too.
Alex SL 07.07.24 at 10:41 pm
Daragh McDowell,
I find your analysis rather odd, and it seems all designed around a distaste of Corbyn. Don’t get me wrong, despite leaning towards them myself I don’t claim that Corbyn’s economic policies appeal to >50% of the electorate, but it seems rather obvious that the 2017 and 2019 elections were about Brexit, not about the qualities of the party leaders, except those of Johnson only to the degree that he promised to get Brexit done easily and without downsides, which appealed to people after three years of gridlock.
And regarding whether the Tories will fail if they continue tending right, see Meloni and Le Pen plus the UK system allowing somebody like that to win an absolute majority with 30% and change, as we just saw. Unless one assumes the UK electorate is uniquely immune to anti-immigration propaganda and anti-intellectual grievance (ahem, Brexit, anybody?), a far-right government is much easier to establish in the UK than in continental Europe. Case in point, France with its two-round voting system that allows candidates to back down as they just did; that couldn’t happen in the UK.
In the end, the fundamental problem with the centrism espoused by the likes of Scholz, Albanese, Biden, and Starmer is that it fails to grasp that radical change is a matter of societal survival. Quite apart from inequality and the growing concentration of power in the hands of a few billionaires, we needed to get to net zero yesterday unless one day we want the population of Denmark (and Bangladesh, and Florida…) to starve in refugee camps in surrounding areas, and that won’t happen if we leave things largely to the market.
And, what engels wrote. Amusing to read a comment saying that Melenchon is poison, google “french elections”, and find that his alliance has won the most seats… polarisation, instability, and wild swings are the flavour of our times, as voters flail around trying to find somebody who can get a handle on our growing number of permacrises.
J-D 07.08.24 at 1:12 am
Insisting on AV without a referendum would clearly have been more in line with considerations of Lib Dem partisan advantage, but the proposal for a referendum wouldn’t have been as easy for them to resist with arguments consistent with their stated principles. Obviously AV would give the Lib Dems more seats (and probably even more influence even for the same number of seats, or votes), but if you are arguing ‘AV will do a better job of giving the voters the Parliament they actually want’ then it’s difficult to consistently resist the argument that the voters should be allowed to say whether they actually want AV. (Why the voters did reject AV I don’t know–I mean, there must have been more than one reason why people voted the way they did, and I could hazard a guess at what some of those reasons might have been, but I have no idea which were the most important in swaying the aggregate result.)
Having mentioned considerations of principle, though, I add that there was a different option open to the Lib Dems in 2010 which would have combined consistent defensibility on principle with partisan advantage: they could have announced that their purpose was to represent in Parliament the principles for which they stood and which their voters had endorsed, not make deals with other parties, and that in the Commons they would take each vote on its merits. The predictable consequence (not that they would have had to say this) would have been the formation of a minority Conservative government. In some ways, without the constraining presence of any Lib Dem ministers, that government might have been worse than the actual Coalition government, but on the other hand their legislative agenda would almost certainly have been significantly constrained by their prccarity of their position in the Commons. Be that as it may, the outcome would almost certainly have been more to the future advantage of the Lib Dems as a party, compared to the actuality in which they still have not recovered from the damage that clown Nick Clegg did to them. (I am aware that they have just done well in terms of seats won in the Commons, but my point is confirmed by looking at the vote share. In ten elections from 1974 to 2010, the lowest vote share for the Lib Dems or their predecessors was 13.8% for the Liberals in 1979; in four elections from 2010 to 2024 it’s never been that high again. The Lib Dems now, nine years since the coalition came to an end, are still less popular with the voters than David Steel’s Liberals in 1979.)
John Q 07.08.24 at 5:11 am
“the proposal for a referendum wouldn’t have been as easy for them to resist with arguments consistent with their stated principles. ”
What principles are these? There’s no general tradition of making decisions by referendum in the UK. In 2019, the LibDems ran on a promise to rejoin the EU without a second referendum.
Unless they are regular enough that people get used to the idea, as in Switzerland and some US states, referendums are a terrible way of deciding anything, with people voting mainly out of fear or the desire to give someone a kicking.
J-D 07.08.24 at 5:35 am
Maybe I buried my point in my comment, so I’ll repeat just that part:
The underlying principle, to be even more explicit, is that the voters should get what they want.
J-D 07.08.24 at 5:38 am
I am making no general suggestion about the merits (or demerits) of referendums as a mechanism; I’m just saying that once the Conservatives had proposed a referendum it would have been difficult for the Lib Dems to resist the proposal (even if, privately, they agreed with your reasons for thinking that referendums are a terrible idea).
nonrenormalizable 07.08.24 at 8:40 am
Re: the vote share and tactical voting, would this not have also worked in the other sense? I.e. reducing Labour’s vote in the Home Counties/”Blue wall” as voters looking to remove the Tories consolidated their efforts on electing the Lib Dems? Might also explain the discrepancy between the various MRPs and the final outcome, in that people who professed a preference for a Labour government may have voted in the way most likely to bring that about — which may not necessarily have been to vote for a Labour candidate.
There’s also the question of how salient the war in Gaza will continue to be: is it the start of a permanent rift between Labour and some socially conservative ethnic minority groups, or a temporary split that could be reconciled when (or should that be if?) the conflict cools down again, and the UK officially recognizes a Palestinian state?
As for predictions, it’s quite hard to make them when within 5 years, we go from a hung parliament to a +80 majority to a +180 majority in the other direction. There’s no sense of finality about this either. I can see two alternatives:
Starmer manages to reduce the political “noise” in everyone’s day-to-day lives, by running a relatively competent government that doesn’t have a major scandal every fortnight, and manages to stop the economy and NHS from declining further — but not securing any great changes. In 4 years they run and get a majority of about 100 as the parties of the right continue to be in disarray.
Either through their own mismanagement or external factors, Labour’s tenure is somewhat rocky and more parts of the country start falling off. As Tories and Reform dig into the culture war issues and immigration, infighting between the Labour left and centre ratchets up. In the next election, the Labour vote in middle England and Scotland falls, and their support in urban areas continues to decline, handing some combination of the two right wing parties a plurality of seats.
Daragh McDowell 07.08.24 at 9:16 am
@AlexSL
I think you’re completely misreading the 2017 election. May WANTED it to be a Brexit election but it turned into a domestic policy one. 2019 definitely was a Brexit election (because Corbyn went for an election rather than standing aside to allow a unity government a chance to resolve the issue). But it was also a “who is going to be in charge” election in which Corbyn’s deep unpopularity was a huge factor.
You might also want to upgrade your knowledge of the French political landscape. NPF isn’t Melenchon’s party – it’s a broad left alliance, most of which can’t stand Melenchon and his France Unbowed party for the same reason that most UK voters couldn’t stomach Corbyn’s Labour (led by a charlatan who is ten times less smart than he thinks he is and riddled with anti semites). France unbowed itself will have fewer seats than Renaissance, Macron’s party, last time I checked the polls, despite his deep unpopularity.
The left could probably had an absolute majority and real power after these elections if they could have ditched Melenchon, who is absolutely toxic to most of the electorate. Instead they’ll have to form a coalition with the centrists (Melenchon’s demands that his program be immediately implemented by decree isn’t going to happen).
Chris Armstrong 07.08.24 at 9:25 am
@46. I think / worry that your predictions are not mutually exclusive. i.e. Starmer could run a competent government for four years, do lots of sensible things, AND get absolutely hammered in the press, and the polls, on culture war issues and immigration. (One reason for thinking that is that we’re going to be hearing a lot from Farage. And Farage, like Johnson, is an absolutely awful person who I wouldn’t trust to tell me what day it was, but who (like the playground bully that he allegedly used to be) nevertheless often hits on an opponent’s perceived weak spots quite effectively).
Tm 07.08.24 at 10:04 am
Labour’s vote share increased by all of 1.7%, the LibDems’ by 0.6%. The Labour increase seems mostly due to former SNP voters switching. A few Tory voters probably did switch to Labour but were compensated by Labour voters moving to the Greens (which improved from 2.6 to 6.4%) or independent left candidates. But mostly they went to Farage.
To me it seems that the story is very simple. A good share of those voters who supported Brexit and who supported Johnson in 2019 to “get it done” but are now pissed off at how badly things have turned out have defaulted to voting for the same (renamed) far right party that gave them the Brexit trainwreck. By splitting the former Brexit vote, they enabled Starmer’s victory. These voters won’t likely come back to Labour, they’ll double down on the right I suspect.
What I wonder is this: Farage was quite successful with 14% of the vote but how can he build on that success? How can he gain a national platform with just 4 MPs and without being identified with a big issue like Brexit? How does he get voters to even remember him in 5 years? Even in the local elections, his party didn’t get a foothold (just 2 councillors according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_local_elections#Results_analysis). The unfairness of the system should really handicap him.
Under PR, Labour would have to form a coalition with the Greens and the LibDems. I consider PR the only fair electoral system but looking at Germany, I can’t really recommend the consequences. Let’s hope Starmer doesn’t totally squander his chance.
Tm 07.08.24 at 10:13 am
Thanks to FPTP and Farage, Starmer now has the chance to govern. Let’s hope he doesn’t squander it.
engels 07.08.24 at 11:14 am
A stable and competent vampire squid:
https://tribunemag.co.uk/2024/07/no-we-havent-run-out-of-money
Tm 07.08.24 at 11:30 am
Daragh 36: “the French left made a deeply unpleasant egotistical narcissist with terrible politics and a cult-like following that repels most voters its standard bearer in the presidential elections. In the current legislative elections it [the French left] made him a key figure in its coalition and a likely candidate for prime minister. France Insoumise is now projected to come behind Macron’s Renaissance.” [since LFI competed as part of the NFP alliance, the statement is meaningless.]
Daragh 47: “NPF [should be NFP] isn’t Melenchon’s party – it’s a broad left alliance, most of which can’t stand Melenchon and his France Unbowed party”
The first part of the second quote is correct, the rest is all bs.
Daragh McDowell 07.08.24 at 11:58 am
@TM
Whether you use the acronym NFP or NPF kind of depends on whether you’re using the French or translating Nouvelle Front Populaire to New Popular Front.
As to the other points, if you want to pretend that Melenchon isn’t deeply unpopular among both the French electorate as a whole and the rest of the French left, you’re free to do so. But he’s a braying jackass and a charlatan, who polls showed would have lost handily to Le Pen in 2022, so you’ll excuse me if I’m more sceptical about the potential success of his and LFI’s “no compromise with the electorate” strategy.
Tm 07.08.24 at 12:50 pm
Daragh, you are getting into trolling territory. You claimed that the left did poorly because it’s dominated by Melenchon, then claimed that the left (but not LFI, which btw is the largest fraction within NFP) did well because Melenchon doesn’t matter within the NFP. One of both of these statements has to be wrong. The election results are what they are irrespective of your or my opinion of Melenchon. I won’t engage any further.
Daragh McDowell 07.08.24 at 1:31 pm
@Tm – you’re misreading me. The French left did OK, but still nowhere near majority territory. It put a cap on its popularity precisely because it made Melenchon such a prominent figure in the coalition. In a Melenchon-less world its very likely Macron is being forced into cohabitation with a socialist PM. In the world we live in there’s a good chance Ensemble still forms the core of the government with support from the more moderate elements of the left and right.
Harry 07.08.24 at 2:16 pm
“Under PR, Labour would have to form a coalition with the Greens and the LibDems.”
This may be right, but we don’t know because, eg, we don’t know what the right split would look like under PR. Under PR there might be a larger Reform party, and a moderate right party that many LibDem voters would be entirely happy to vote for. And Labour might be two (or even three) parties — a center-left one with a roughly Starmer-ish program which includes the lefter LDs, a more metropolitan left one and, possibly, a more authoritarian left party exploiting the situation in Gaza (maybe Workers Party plus). I’m inclined to think the left-of-center parties in England would probably have gotten more than 50% of the votes under PR at this election, but maybe not, and anyway if we ALREADY HAD PR we have no idea where we’d be.
For reasons I don’t really understand, precedent is that major constitutional changes are expected to go to referenda, and I really doubt that either Labour or the Tories would have coalesced with the LDs if they’d insisted on A/V legislation in 2010. A/V lost because it wasn’t a priority for the government that introduced the referendum, and voters just don’t care much about electoral reform (or other constitutional issues).
Chris Bertram 07.08.24 at 3:40 pm
Daragh is mistaken to suggest that the French left chose to make Mélenchon the standard bearer of their campaign. First of all, including Mélenchon in the alliance wasn’t a choice: since he’s the leader of the most powerful group on the left you can’t very well include them without also including him and you can’t get their voters without including them. That said, I thought that while he made a lot of noise and threatened the wreck the alliance through his authoritarian behaviour within LFI, he wasn’t really the leader of the alliance as a whole and the campaign has seen other figures emerge on the left as “leading”, notably Tondelier. I see today that the many leading figures in NFP have said that Mélenchon will not be a candidate to be prime minister.
Daragh McDowell 07.08.24 at 4:04 pm
Chris @57
The French left, defined as both the parties and their electorates, absolutely did make Melenchon the standard bearer by your own logic. The voters lining up behind LFI even as Melenchon goes further off the deep end are making a choice, just as Labour members supporting Corbyn to the bitter end made a choice. These people are adults, with agency.
As to the parties themselves, you may be right that the NFP/NPF couldn’t afford to simply refuse to deal with Melenchon. OTOH, the other parties of the left might have expanded their potential electoral coalition by making it very clear at the start of the campaign that they wanted nothing to do with LFI and that Melenchon’s brand of politics was destructive, alienating and pointless. But that’s a counterfactual.
Tm 07.08.24 at 4:17 pm
I would add that in both of the last presidential elections, Mélenchon did far better than any other candidate of the left. In that sense it were the voters who “chose” Mélenchon to be the de facto leder of “the left” for a while. Those pesky voters, one might despair of them.
In the EU election, the parties ran independent of each other and there was no tactical game to play. And the Socialists got all of 14%, LFI 10% and the Greens 5.5%, a total of 29.5%. In the first round of the Parliamentary election, the combined left got 28%, slightly below the aggregate total. I don’t like Mélenechon much either. But the weakness of the French left (and really the whole international left in the 21st century) is hardly caused by Mélenchon.
Chris Bertram 07.08.24 at 5:17 pm
Daragh, the purge at LFI nearly broke the alliance, and leaders of other parties NFP were very open and explicit about what they thought of Mélenchon’s antics then. I think you are sounding off on the basis of what you’ve read in the anglophone press, which very much ventriloquized the Macronist take on the NFP.
Tm 07.08.24 at 6:46 pm
Each of Daragh’s comments contradicts what was claimed before. What they have in common is that they are full of wishful thinking. I was right, it’s trolling.
engels 07.08.24 at 7:32 pm
Y’all should watch the speeches from LFI’s victory rally in the Place de la République last night: moving, inspiring, and a million miles from the mass depression Reeves and Starmer are busy cultivating here (even if ending with the national anthem is a little hard for a British leftie to grok).
steven t johnson 07.08.24 at 8:03 pm
Not a Brit, to my ears the Marseillaise comes across more like the Battle Cry of Freedom or the Battle Hymn of the Republic than God Save the King/America or the Star Spangled Banner.
qwerty 07.08.24 at 8:35 pm
Not a Brit either, and don’t give a damn about fine details. But my daughter lives there, in a run-down London suburb. She says a round trip train ride to London (30 minutes each way) costs 13 gbp. She says if the rail network was nationalized again, and its prices brought to a reasonable level, it would be a huge help. Is there any chance of that now? Internet is not too helpful in getting the answer. Thanks.
Alex SL 07.08.24 at 11:04 pm
Tm,
Every electoral system has a failure mode, and for PR it is the parties being too polarised and at odds with each other to form a functional coalition government, here the FDP blocking everything useful the SPD and Greens would otherwise do. But that being said, if the parties are that way then they are that way because the voters who put them into parliament are polarised and have extremely divergent views. And if that is the case, there is at any rate a deeper problem that won’t be papered over for long by a different electoral system.
Daragh McDowell,
I am not given to putting leaders on a pedestal, and Corbyn or Melenchon aren’t even in my country, of course. But if I want policies that most contemporary centrists consider to be unspeakably scarily radical, like, say, higher top marginal tax rates, abolishing student fees, or active steps towards saving our civilisation from suicide by carbon emission, I can’t necessarily wait thirty or fifty years until a party leader arises who is privately a perfectly virtuous human being and who even the right-wing media can’t find an attack vector on.
I also wonder if there could be any hypothetical leftist leader who you (and the relevant media) would not find enough fault with to describe them as a destructive, alienating, pointless, and toxic charlatan, and if you would describe entirely identical characters in the same way if they lead a centrist party. Let’s just say I have suspicions.
engels 07.09.24 at 1:11 am
if the rail network was nationalized again, and its prices brought to a reasonable level, it would be a huge help. Is there any chance of that now?
No.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy63j4x66ylo
Tm 07.09.24 at 7:12 am
I wouldn’t rely on that particular BBC article. Here’s the key quote:
“However, those networks also receive lots of government investment, which can mean higher taxes.
Mr Miles argues the UK’s franchising system, whereby the government owns the network through National Rail and hands out operator contracts to private companies, was the “envy of Europe” before Covid hit.”
Yes, nationalisation only improves things if there is also investment. It doesn’t magically solve problems. That the British rail system was the “envy if Europe” otoh is … not very likely.
J-D 07.09.24 at 7:19 am
If there is evidence that there was more anti-Semitism in the Labour Party (before, during and/or after the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn) than there is in the Conservative Party, or than there is across UK society generally, it hasn’t come my way. If it exists, it would be worth it to me to know about it.
Given the known history and prevalence of anti-Semitism, I assume by default that it exists to some extent in most places: it might be absent in very small groups (although of course there do exist some very small groups which are explicitly organised around anti-Semitism) and in parts of the world where there are no Jews (although even there it exists sometimes), but the default expectation has to be that there is some of it in any country as large as the UK (where there are Jews) and also that within a country like the UK that there is some of it in any significant political party. The complaints from people in the (UK) Labour Party about encountering anti-Semitism there confirm the default expectation; but a lot of the complaints about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party while Jeremy Corbyn was its leader came from Conservatives and their sympathisers and from other opponents of Jeremy Corbyn, who had obvious axes to grind. It is emphatically correct for people inside the Labour Party to focus as a priority on anti-Semitism in their own party, but any Conservative who attacks Labour for anti-Semitism while saying nothing about anti-Semitism in their own party is obviously not to be trusted. Given the known history and prevalence of anti-Semitism, the default expectation must be that anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is no worse (not that this is any excuse) than anti-Semitism in UK society generally, and not as bad as anti-Semitism in the Conservative Party.
Even more emphatically, the default expectation must be that anti-Semitism exists in LFI but is not as bad as anti-Semitism in the RN, in which case anybody who had justification to regard LFI with suspicion because of anti-Semitism would also have had justification to support it against the RN.
engels 07.09.24 at 10:39 am
I wasn’t relying on the BBC analysis but on Louise Haigh’s comments.
maxhgns 07.09.24 at 3:06 pm
‘Charlatan’ is a weird thing to call the leader of a political party.
Tm 07.10.24 at 8:31 am
Something about the original topic (the tories):
“A friend points out to me that a Yougov UK poll indicates that Donald Trump’s approval rating among Tory voters in last week’s election was -65% (!) while among Reform voters it was +15%.”
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/07/the-tory-dilemma
novakant 07.10.24 at 11:48 am
Yes TM, but these are the Tory voters.
The Tory members – who brought us Boris Johnson – are another matter:
Braverman is the only potential leadership candidate who has suggested the Tories should seek an accommodation with Farage and the hard-right Reform UK. Of those surveyed, 47% of Conservative members said they were in favour of a merger, with support strongest among the over-50s and those from lower-income backgrounds.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/10/almost-half-of-tory-members-wants-party-to-merge-with-reform-poll-reveals
nastywoman 07.10.24 at 5:22 pm
OR –
as my friend George wrote:
‘This can be an exciting time for democracy, as we’ve just seen with the 200 or so French candidates who stepped aside and put their personal ambitions on hold to save their democracy from the far right’.
Harry 07.10.24 at 9:04 pm
J-D: Two very good accounts of Corbyn’s time as leader of the Labour Party (Macguire and Pogrund, Left Out, and Owen Jones, Our Land — note, Owen Jones was and is an enthusiastic supporter of the Labour Left, and very close to McDonnell) make clear that there was a serious antisemitism problem in the Labour Party. More tellingly, both show that Corbyn was a disastrous party manager. Things seem to have improved over time, but, really, Corbyn had spent his entire political career avoiding picking up the skills needed to lead the Labour Party. There’s a possible world in which McDonnell, someone with relevant management skills and dispositions, and real ambition for power, was Labour leader instead, but its very distant from ours — people like Sadiq Khan and Andrew Smith who nominated Corbyn for the leadership to promote debate wouldn’t have done the same for McDonnell. The point is that the problem wasn’t just Labour having a lot of anti-semitism, but the persistent unwillingness/inability of the leadership to deal with the problem.
engels 07.10.24 at 10:06 pm
Jamie Stern-Werner: There were no witches in Salem; Jewish elders did not gather in a graveyard at night; a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy did not target Nazi Germany. The allegation that Labour is rife with antisemitism is of a piece with these fantastic antecedents.
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/smoke-without-fire-the-myth-of-a-labour-antisemitism-crisis/
OJ was close to the leadership (although he didn’t back Corbyn initially) and was in the same appeasement camp as Corbyn, which imo was one of his most disastrous errors. Al Jazeera’s documentary “The Labour Files” is very good on the whole ghastly business, as was the short video David Gaeber made at the time.
Jim 07.11.24 at 7:03 am
A former friend sent me an invite to the Palestine Live fb group (this was before the furore ). I saw that my wife’s former boy-friend Jeremy Corbyn was a member, as were dozens of other people known to me. The antisemitism on display was graphic and revolting. I posted my reaction. Someone else in the group personal-messaged me and “accused” me of being a Jew, and of being responsible for the deaths of family members of his who had died in the world wars. He went on to tell me that he knew where I live, did not live very far away, and would visit me sometime.
I copied Elleanne Green into the exchange. She brushed aside my anxieties, expressed sympathy for the other guy–described him as a good guy and a valued member of the group. She implored me not to leave the group, but I did.
I take the word of my Jewish wife that Jeremy Corbyn is not antisemitic. Nor do I think the Labour party is rife with antisemitism. There are some though, contemporary and historically. Perhaps someday there will appear an illuminating revisionist account of the posthumous scapegoating of Peter Rachman and the part played in that by Labour MPs at the time.
John Q 07.11.24 at 7:45 am
Worth pointing out that Labour didn’t gain from FPTP. Rather, the emergence of Reform nullified the benefit previously gained by the Tories.
Daragh McDowell 07.11.24 at 8:41 am
@Chris Bertram
I actually get my takes on France more from my French in-laws and from various Blablacar passengers and drivers we’ve met while visiting them.
On Melechon, charlatanism and the French left generally. Melenchon is a guy who ran for president on a platform of a 100% tax on incomes above €400k, something that is both practically impossible and economically unwise. His foreign policy stances have generally been “America=bad” while equivocating about Russia’s ongoing imperialist war in Ukraine. He is very good at shouting slogans, jumping up and down and generally posturing as a ‘radical’, and a plurality of the French left-wing electorate unfortunately thinks this is good enough to earn their vote, even as it repulses the great majority of the rest of the French electorate. Head to head match up polling in 2017 showed that he would have lost roundly to Macron or Le Pen. While it may be comforting for some to think that any serious left candidate would be subject to the same criticisms regarding toxicity and charlatanism, it doesn’t change the fact that he’s a toxic charlatan.
Jim has already eloquently explained why the issue of whether there is more or less anti-semitism in the Labour party generally as opposed to other UK parties is besides the point. Corbyn and his clique, through their actions and inactions, encouraged anti-semites in the Labour party to be open in their anti-semitism particularly in party forums. This was a problem, just as the Tories leniency on Islamophobia is an ongoing problem in their party.
As to Jeremy Corbyn himself – I used to be of the opinion that he was not personally anti-semitic. However – during his time as LOTO Corbyn refused to unequivocally condemn terror bombing in Syria (as noted in Andrew Fisher’s resignation letter) and when Russian GRU agents used a Russian poison to try and kill a former Russian spook on British soil responded first by refusing to acknowledge the obvious and then caviling about the OPCW.
By contrast when the Al-Ahli Arab hospital explosion occurred, Corbyn had no problem immediately blaming Israel. He did not correct the record when it became clear that it was most likely a failed rocket launch by a Palestinian group. This was at a time when British Jews were facing increased threats and the overall situation was incredibly tense, and political leaders had an obligation to avoid inflaming the situation. Corbyn’s reaction, particularly given his record with states other than Israel, is what poker players would call “a tell”.
engels 07.11.24 at 11:31 am
Corbyn and his clique, through their actions and inactions, encouraged anti-semites in the Labour party to be open in their anti-semitism
Do you know who was responsible for this inaction? The answer may surprise you.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/were-labours-antisemitism-failures-really-corbyns-fault/
steven t johnson 07.11.24 at 2:15 pm
Daragh McDowell@78 This intervention is more evidence that anti-Zionism is defined as anti-Semitism in the UK as well as the US, at least by the acceptable people. This is also evidence against the position that “Labour”/Corbyn were disastrous failures at party management for not whipping the membership into shape, into acceptable people who supported Zionism.
Daragh McDowell 07.11.24 at 2:24 pm
@Engels – gosh a report written and released by Corbyn’s allies exonerates Corbyn? This is even more convincing than the time Shani Chakrabarti gave Corbyn the all clear and was ennobled by Corbyn two months later in a completely unrelated manner.
engels 07.11.24 at 2:50 pm
Ok, Daragh, Melenchon is a “braying jackass”, Corbyn is a racist, Shami Chakraborti is bent. Did you, by any chance, ever have Bernie Sanders in the back of your Blablacar?
Daragh McDowell 07.11.24 at 4:01 pm
@engels
Always loathe to engage with you given you seem to be once again making snide asides about what it is I do for a living without knowing anything about it but – FWIW, I quite like Bernie Sanders, even though I preferred Warren in the primaries given that she tended to think about how policy would be enacted, rather than handwaving about a revolution. Big fan of AOC and most of the squad as well (notably, the DSA has just snottily ‘un-endorsed’ her on purity grounds). Meanwhile LFI is now demanding “tout ou rien”, guaranteeing they’ll get rien, and Corbyn is an irrelevant backbencher who the vast majority of the country’s voters despise, with good reason. Meanwhile Starmer is building onshore windfarms, reforming prisons and blocking North Sea drilling. Those are actual, concrete achievements that will make the world a better place, which is perhaps less emotionally satisfying than repeated glorious failures, but does have the advantage of improving the lives of actual human beings.
Steven @80 – if you think making inflammatory claims about Israeli war crimes in the middle of a situation where British Jews are fearing for their safety is ‘anti-Zionism’, and people like Rivkah Brown and Ashok Kumar are openly celebrating Hamas’ massacre (both members in good standing with the Corbyn crew, BTW) you might want to re-evaluate your definition of ‘anti-Zionism’.
engels 07.11.24 at 5:48 pm
I quite like Bernie Sanders
Well that’s one thing we’ve got.
steven t johnson 07.11.24 at 6:21 pm
Daragh McDowell@83 confirms my belief that anti-Zionism is falsely redefined as anti-Semitism.
engels 07.11.24 at 11:23 pm
Amazingly enough Corbyn isn’t even an anti-Zionist but a long-standing supporter of a negotiated two state settlement.
J-D 07.12.24 at 9:59 am
I am grateful to Harry for his responding to me, partly because I can see that I must have failed to make clear the point I had in mind. So I will take another stab at it.
Let’s say that there is a problem of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, which I am going to call ‘L’ for short, and also a problem of anti-Semitism in the Conservative Party, which I am going to call ‘C’ for short. Harry’s response makes a point of assuring me that L is real. But that wasn’t my question! I don’t doubt that L is real. I made a point of explaining that I assume by default that L is real. Harry’s response points me at specific evidence that L is real, but I was trying to be clear that I wouldn’t need specific evidence to suppose that L is real, I would need specific evidence to make me doubt that L is real.
No, ‘Is L real?’ isn’t my question. My question (or at any rate one of them) is ‘How do L and C compare?’ In the absence of specific evidence to the contrary, I assume by default, on the basis of more general considerations (which I didn’t explain at length but could if challenged), that C is worse than L. Evidence that L is real, which I never doubted, is also no basis for doubting that C is worse than L.
Two other parts of Harry’s response to me are the general suggestion that Jeremy Corbyn was a bad party manager, and the more specific suggestion that he made a bad job of responding to L (the problem of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party). The general suggestion isn’t relevant, because the question I was discussing was not ‘How should we evaluate Jeremy Corbyn?’ but something more specific. As for the specific suggestion, for short I am going to write ‘L1’ to refer to the job the Labour leadership does (or did) responding to L, and ‘C1’ to refer to the job the Conservative leadership does (or did) responding to C. and then I’m going to ask ‘How do L1 and C1 compare?’ Telling me that L1 is (or was) very bad does nothing to answer that question.
Moving from Harry’s response to Daragh McDowell’s comment–
–that depends on what the point is. It’s not beside my point. Of course, nobody is obliged to take an interest in my point if they don’t want to.
Harry 07.12.24 at 12:32 pm
Thanks J-D.
Politically, whether anti-semitism was worse in the Tory party than in the Labour party didn’t matter. The media (including the BBC) was so outraged that Labour had elected a left-wing leader that it focused relentlessly on Labour. Just to be clear, this was entirely predictable, and predicted. So, politically, Corbyn’s failure as a party manager mattered.
But, sure, it didn’t answer your question. I don’t know of any good studies of anti-semitism in the Tory party, though no doubt someone does. For most of the twentieth century the Tories were where you would look for anti-semites (much less so after Thatcher became leader) But few senior Tory MPs have shared platforms with members of Hamas or Hezbollah, or referred to them as “friends”, or stubbornly refused in interviews to call Hamas a terrorist organization. And the most virulent right wing anti-semites usually have other parties where their views are enthusiastically welcomed (my guess is that if Galloway can turn the Worker’s Party into something more than a vanity vehicle, it will play the same role on the left).
Even if the proportion of anti-semites in the Tory party were higher than in the Labour party, they wouldn’t have had as much of a political problem, because the press never scrutinizes the Tories as much as Labour, and never any party as much as a left-led Labour Party. Undoubtedly (and by the testimony of some senior Tories) Islamophobia was and remains a problem in the Conservative Party, as Corbyn’s leadership pointed out. But, just as my last sentence is irrelevant to what you asked, it is irrelevant to the fact that Labour had a problem with antisemitism, and pointing it out made Corbyn look like he wasn’t taking responsibility his own party’s problem.
engels 07.12.24 at 2:53 pm
It’s not just that “Labour’s antisemitism problem” was no worse than the Tories’, or the wider country’s, but that it was no better prior to Corbyn and probably isn’t any better now. Labour is infinitely more accommodating towards Netanyahu’s genocide than a Corbyn-led party or country would have been and everyone who joined in the smear campaign, however opportunistically or passive-aggressively, or didn’t speak out against it, bears responsibility for that.
Jacob 07.12.24 at 4:25 pm
J-D @ 87: “Is there more anti-semitism in the Labour or the Conservative party?” isn’t a well-defined question, because different antisemitism isn’t a well-defined term – different people disagree about which forms of anti-Israel/anti-Zionist sentiment count as antisemitic, and to what extent, compared to “traditional” antisemitism.
I think that “traditional” antisemites are probably more likely to vote Conservative (or Reform) than Labour (although I wouldn’t swear to this), but I am absolutely certain that critics of Israel are far more likely to vote Labour.
So that if you use a “minimalist” definition whereby you can say whatever you like about “Zionists”, no matter how transparently euphemistic, without it being antisemitic, then there is probably (not certainly) more antisemitism in the Conservative party, whereas if you use a “maximalist” definition whereby not engaging in full-blown Nakba denial is antisemitic then there is definitely more in the Labour party, and somewhere in between is a definition whereby it’s 50/50.
engels 07.12.24 at 6:45 pm
That the right (including avowed racists, fascists and Jew-haters) can be seen as less antisemitic than the left if antisemitism is redefined to no longer means prejudice against Jews but “excessive” hostility to Israel might seem to be a reason against such a redefinition.
novakant 07.12.24 at 8:12 pm
This was a problem, just as the Tories leniency on Islamophobia is an ongoing problem in their party.
The difference is that hardly anyone ever talks about Islamophobia in the Tory party.
engels 07.13.24 at 12:52 am
Hardly anyone talks about the fact that Labour’s anti-Zionism witch hunt effectively was antisemitic, at least in statistical terms.
engels 07.13.24 at 2:08 pm
Ie. “Jewish members are six times more likely to be investigated and more than nine times more likely to be expelled from the Labour Party for anti-semitism than non-Jewish members”
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/campaigners-file-formal-complaint-to-ehrc-over-labour-mistreatment-of-jewish-members
J-D 07.13.24 at 9:36 pm
Therefore (and on reflection, I think this is a large part of the point I was struggling to formulate) nobody who is interested in a serious analysis or evaluation of the Labour Party, or serious recommendations about it, should uncritically rely on media reports about it. More particularly, anybody who decided not to vote for the Labour Party because of the media-enabled and media-promoted public fuss, without any further consideration of media bias, was making a grievous mistake.
People do, of course, make grievous mistakes.
Harry 07.14.24 at 2:21 pm
Honestly what really did for Labour in 2019 was Brexit, and to be perfectly honest I think Corbyn’s instincts on Brexit were probably quite in tune with those of the part of the electorate that defected from Labour. [1] I would bet his instinct was to support May’s deal, and if he’d done that, Labour would have lost votes to the LDs (many of which they could have afforded to lose, because in seats with large majorities) and lost fewer to the Brexit party (which targeted Labour to deflate its vote in marginals). On the other hand, Labour might have split apart over it, and even if not, of course, there wouldn’t have been a 2019 election, and we wouldn’t have a Labour government now). His political instincts on the anti-semitism issue were terrible (have you looked at the notorious mural?; he should have been utterly revolted by it at first glance), and following them was politically damaging; his political instincts on Brexit were pretty good, and not getting the party to follow them (which of course would have been extremely difficult even for a much more capable leader) was disastrous.
[1] I remember in the summer of 2017 Peter Oborne, then a brexiteer, commenting on a Week in Westminster, saying that he was pleased Corbyn was Labour leader, because Corbyn was going to be the person to deliver Brexit, and I don’t think that was a ridiculous thing to think.
steven t johnson 07.14.24 at 2:30 pm
From this distance, the “notorious mural” isn’t so notorious as to be remembered by disinterested bystanders, much less uninterested ones.
engels 07.14.24 at 9:38 pm
My possibly unreliable memory: the mural showed white and Jewish capitalists exploiting black people. (If it had shown only white exploiters it would perhaps have been fine and PC and could have been incorporated into an advert for hamburgers or Harvard.) Corbyn’s crime was to ask, without noticing the Jewish bourgeois (who aren’t explicitly identified), in a 6-year-old Facebook comment he made as a back-bench local MP, why it was being removed. Fwiw I agree with Corbyn’s considered judgment that the council was right to remove it. There was an useful discussion to be had about the potentially problematic intersection between anti-capitalism, especially of today’s race-focussed kind, and antisemitism but that was not the discussion the media gave us.
engels 07.14.24 at 10:45 pm
An informed view: “the mural undoubtedly was antisemitic, but you couldn’t tell that just by looking at it”
https://medium.com/@pitt_bob/antisemitism-and-the-brick-lane-mural-a-retrospective-assessment-8a4e6b67f259
Harry 07.16.24 at 4:54 am
Ok, I’ll admit, I wrote a several sentence response taking you seriously. Well done! That “Bob Pitt” piece is hilarious.
engels 07.16.24 at 12:54 pm
Harry’s Place (which iirc once declared a pizza to be antisemitic because it resembled a map of Palestine) also didn’t judge it to be antisemitic at first glance.
https://web.archive.org/web/20121008052140/http://hurryupharry.org/2012/10/05/i-was-wrong-about-the-mural/
anon/portly 07.16.24 at 6:00 pm
People looking at mural: “hmmm, seems kinda anti-semitic – for example, that one guy looks obviously Jewish.”
Essayist:
In fact the mural would appear to be based in large part on Icke’s deluded antisemitic fantasy that the world is under the control of “Rothschild Zionism”.
(The guy who looks Jewish turns out to be a Rothschild).
Essayist:
In short the mural undoubtedly was antisemitic, but you couldn’t tell that just by looking at it….
I don’t know about (100) “hilarious,” it’s certainly comedic but there’s a sad quality to to the whole exercise as well.
Harry 07.16.24 at 6:54 pm
It’s visibly antisemitic before the faces come into focus (and anyway I wouldn’t trust the testimony of an anti-semite who posts it on an anti-semitic website, when challenged, about whether any of the characters are Jews). Interesting that neither of you are familiar with anti-semitic tropes, maybe not so surprising that someone posting on Harry’s Place pretends not to be.
Imagine a mural portraying lynch knots and KKK robes, and someone saying its not obviously racist. Of course, other interpretations are available. But one’s first reaction is revulsion, and if not that’s because one is very surprisingly unfamiliar with the imagery. An ordinary regular person who wasn’t repulsed, sure I’d give them the benefit of the doubt (but, I’m not black). The leader of a left-wing party who isn’t repulsed: I’d probably give them the benefit of the doubt too (but, I’m not black), but I’d think he was in the wrong job.
J-D 07.17.24 at 10:21 am
What started me down the rabbit hole of a discussion about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership which described it as ‘riddled’ with anti-Semitism. Why ‘riddled’? What impact is that word choice having in that description?
I know myself that my own word choices are sometimes the product of deliberate reflection and sometimes not, and as far as I can tell this is true of other people as well. But even when people have not deliberately reflected on why they are choosing to use a particular turn of phrase, there’s always a reason for it: the difference is that it’s easier for me to explain why I have made a particular choice when I gave it conscious thought in advance than when I didn’t.
The most likely reason why somebody would make the particular phrasing choice of describing the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership as ‘riddled’ with anti-Semitism is that they were influenced by a particular narrative prominent in the media at the time. To me, this makes it germane to point out that the narrative, although not entirely without basis in fact, was a distorted one, distorted partly by a cynical exploitation of the issue of anti-Semitism by opponents of Labour in general and Jeremy Corbyn in particular to use it as a stick to beat them with. Anybody who is genuinely concerned about the problem of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party and wants to do something about it should understand it in the broader context of anti-Semitism in British society in general, a connection conspicuously neglected in the media narrative I mentioned. It’s not easy, though, to discuss this succinctly. If I write (what is, as far it goes, true) that anti-Semitism in the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership was the subject of a media beat-up, then I am liable to be interpreted (and naturally and understandably so) as denying that there was anti-Semitism in the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. To guard against that misinterpretation, I could add something like ‘of course there was anti-Semitism in the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership’, but then I would be inviting the natural and understandable (but inaccurate) interpretation that I was trying to excuse or mitigate that anti-Semitism. I was careful in my original comment to make an observation about the justifiability of people inside the Labour Party fighting against anti-Semitism inside their own party (and it’s because I consider that important that I add that they will be hampered in doing so if they don’t consider the connection between anti-Semitism in the Labour Party and the broader context of anti-Semitism in British society generally). On reflection, I feel that despite my best efforts to guard against misinterpretation, I still didn’t extend my commentary, long-winded though it already was, sufficiently to guard against the misinterpretation that I was suggesting it would be appropriate for the Labour Party to respond to charges of anti-Semitism by pointing to anti-Semitism elsewhere, including in the Conservative Party, as if that were a defence or a mitigation, which it wouldn’t be. However, I still think it’s appropriate to point out (not as a defence of the Labour Party but as a contribution to the general fight against anti-Semitism) that Conservatives (and Conservative supporters) who drew attention to the phenomenon of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party without reference to its connection with the broader phenomenon of anti-Semitism in British society generally, including in the Conservative Party itself, were not making a genuine contribution to the fight against anti-Semitism but were showing themselves up as the disgusting cynical unscrupulous lowlifes they were.
engels 07.17.24 at 10:33 am
A recent article on the wider witch hunt:
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/same-blade
Harry 07.17.24 at 11:23 am
Actually nobody here described the LP as being riddled with anti-semites. But, your general point: yes, I got that eventually, and you’re absolutely right.
notGoodenough 07.17.24 at 11:35 am
At the risk of completely derailing this thread: opposition to hierarchical oppression and exploitation (e.g. sexism, racism, class, etc.) must surely be consistent and address systemic issues, otherwise root causes will be left unaffected and double standards will lead to the reinforcement of other forms of oppression?
I have been on the sharp end of this for most of my life, and I do think it fair to criticise left-wing groups where they insufficiently address oppression (something which has resulted in no little disingenuous and malicious invective!), but such criticism must be undertaken in good faith rooted in a desire for liberation for all. If oppression only politically matters (to any significant degree) when it occurs under the left, then firstly it doesn’t matter non-politically as it will not be meaningfully addressed, and secondly it doesn’t even matter politically as it exists only as a useful rhetorical cudgel – with the exact nature of the oppression being irrelevant (that is to say, if it wasn’t one specific thing, another would be found or conjured out of thin air to meet the need).
In short, either oppression matters or it doesn’t; if it only matters sometimes, then it does not really matter in practice – and perhaps everyone should stop pretending that it does (at least then society can afford those suffering the small dignity of acknowledging they are, quite literally, considered worth less).
Maxlex 07.17.24 at 12:40 pm
Daragh McDowell did, and JD quoted him in his original comment.
J-D 07.17.24 at 12:45 pm
Here’s a link directly to the comment I was referring to:
https://crookedtimber.org/2024/07/05/bye-bye-tories-hello-what/#comment-833270
Here’s a direct quote from it:
Maybe I misinterpreted that sentence, but my interpretation of it was and is that it means: (1) that Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Jeremy Corbyn are both charlatans ten times less smart than they think they are; (2) that LFI under Jean-Luc Mélenchon is, and Labour under Jeremy Corbyn was, riddled with anti-Semites; and (3) that (1) and (2) are the reasons most people in the NPF alliance can’t stand Jean-Luc Mélenchon and LFI and the reasons why most UK voters couldn’t stomach Labour under Jeremy Corbyn. I understand, however, that the syntax of the sentence I quoted does leave it open to other interpretations and the commenter who wrote it can disavow my interpretation if they choose. I mention my interpretation of the sentence because that’s what prompted my response.
steven t johnson 07.17.24 at 2:14 pm
If you’re surprisingly unfamiliar with the imagery on a US dollar bill, then misinterpreting the mural would be natural. Ditto if you’re surprisingly unfamiliar with the Monopoly game imagery.
Harry 07.17.24 at 3:31 pm
You’re right. That’s not how I read it, but your way of reading it is right.
Harry 07.17.24 at 3:38 pm
Or at least, far better than mine!
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