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The significance of the British Labour conference

A triumph of reaction in many dimensions

05 October 2024


Keir Starmer & Rachel Reeves.

One Labour minister complained that new governments could normally rely on a year’s honeymoon period before losing support. Sir Keir Starmer managed to drive himself and his party downwards in a few weeks.

There was chaos surrounding the high levels of sleaze and corruption in the new government, but the real issue, as another commentator quipped, was that Sir Keir: “promises nothing, then takes it back a few days later”. In this case it was the two-child income support cap and the cut in winter support for pensioners that promised a harsh continuation of austerity under the new government, alongside much playacting about a financial black hole that Labour had “discovered” and that would make reform impossible.

The audience of the new Labour Government was not the delegates in the hall, it was the banks and global imperialism. They want to reassure the imperialists that attacks on the working class will continue and to drain the workers of hope so that they are demoralised from the start.

Few commentators looked at the new party in detail.  The starting point is to contrast Starmer’s programme of Growth, Growth, Growth, with the Blair government’s mantra of education, education, education.

All Labour governments focus on improving capitalism. Blair, like Harold Wilson in the 60s, (the white heat of technology) argued that they could supercharge capitalism to benefit the working class.

Starmer does not believe this. Having ruled out extra borrowing and taxes on capital, the only possible source of growth is to reduce the living conditions of the working class. The route is pump priming; state funds will be donated to capitalist firms in the hope that they will themselves invest more. However, the amount set aside for this constantly failing strategy is not only less than that promised by Jeremy Corbyn, it is actually less than that set aside by the last Conservative government!

For all that, the conference was a success for Starmer. The trade union motion on winter fuel was pushed to the end of the conference. The vote in favour will be immediately discarded.  And yet that was the highpoint of the conference.

The Corbyn “opposition” was invisible. The visible opposition, the current that had opposed Labour support for genocide in Gaza, was assaulted and forced out of the conference. According to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Labour party managers refused to allow the words genocide and apartheid to appear in the name of its fringe event.

Whilst critics were barred, those permitted entry included Israeli politician and former IDF officer Yair Golan, who discussed increasing weapons supply for the genocide. Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli Ambassador in the UK, was also present.

Migration was not an issue. The fact that Starmer’s law and order approach to race riots was followed by a meeting with Italy’s fascist leader to initiate further attacks on refugees didn’t register.

On the level of political invisibility, it would be hard to beat Sir Keir’s preconference visit to Washington DC, where attempts to fire long range weapons deep into Russia were dismissed by the Biden Administration, suddenly concerned that a wider war would be triggered.

At the end of the Labour conference Starmer finds himself in the same space as many other capitalist governments in Western Europe. He is wildly unpopular distinguished only by the breakneck speed with which he accomplished this, but yet the absence of opposition gives him freedom of movement to enforce austerity, placate racism and continue a terrifying drive to war in Europe and West Asia.

Probably the major initiative of the new government is a reset with Europe.  This is going nowhere. Europe will be pleasant, will cooperate militarily, but the cost of open trade remains acceptance of European market rules, effectively reversing Brexit.

The problem for British socialist movements is that they have not identified Brexit as the reactionary offensive it was and have not produced a counter programme.  Starmer is running scared of the protofascist movement Reform and the open scramble by Tory leaders to move in the same direction.

A lack of firm opposition to Labour reactionary policies is likely to lead to a government of the far right at the next election.


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