Labour must improve its offer to the people – or hard right populists will seize the agenda

Martin Shipton

This week’s two by-elections may have confirmed that Labour will win this year’s general election, but I’ve never been so apprehensive about what may follow the victory.

Most people are heartily sick of the Conservatives and there’s a tangible sense that the curtain is falling with increasing rapidity on their pantomime of a government.

But there’s no excitement about the prospect of Labour under Starmer taking charge, as everyone at least half awake knows will happen.

The fact is that he and his Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves are spending their time reassuring the business world that they won’t make fundamental changes from the neo-liberal status quo – pre- and post-Truss,of course. Every time they ditch an ambitious policy, saying it is unaffordable, they diminish the hope that things can only get better.

Tony Blair

It’s unlikely that the song which provided the score for Tony Blair’s landslide in 1997 will get much airtime this year. From a musical point of view I wasn’t a fan of it back then but I’m happy to concede that for many people it captured the sense of optimism that pervaded Britain at the time.

What would be the best anthem for the coming election? A funeral dirge, maybe. The point I’ve been leading up to is that Election 24 could be the last chance we have to avoid a descent into populism of a really nasty kind.

As someone pointed out the other day, Starmer is possibly the first British politician to face street shouts for him to be “out” before he’s even got in. He’s already alienated a lot of sensible people on the left of his own party by approving none-too-subtle manoeuvres that ensure they won’t be selected as Parliamentary candidates.

Far more importantly, because it directly affects ordinary people rather than aspiring politicians, he’s progressively getting rid of pledges that could rejuvenate the economy. Already, before the general election has been fought and won, members of the Shadow Cabinet like Wes Streeting are going on TV to lecture live audiences and viewers about why they shouldn’t expect things to get better, because the country can’t afford it.

Starmer and Reeves talk about the need for growth while at the same time making it clear that their determination to continue austerity – for that’s what their approach to the economy amounts to – makes it less likely that growth will occur. When people have less discretionary spend available to them because of rising mortgages and energy bills, as well as stagnant wages, there’s a negative trickle effect that sends the economy into a downward spiral. Hence the problems in the hospitality industry, for example, that lead to significant job losses.

Absurdly, the incoming Labour government is committed not to return to the European single market – a step that would be of immediate benefit to many businesses and lead to new inward investment opportunities that Britain is missing out on because we can’t provide access to EU consumers. The excuse for not doing it is because we might upset a dwindling band of people jealous of the “Brexit freedoms” that they can’t explain.

Unpopular

My apprehension stems from the likelihood that Starmer’s government will rapidly become unpopular because of its failure to deliver tangible improvements. What comes next is the worry.

Our population has largely resisted the toxic allure of hard core racist and fascist parties. We’re fortunate that those who lead such groups have tended to be unprepossessing at best, and usually surrounded by snarling thugs whose appeal is to a tiny demographic essentially composed of themselves.

But as we know, there are others whose outlook and prospectus are objectionable to many of us, but who are able to deploy a roguish charm that superficially softens a harsh message – and makes it somehow respectable.

Into this category I would place Reform UK, the renamed Brexit Party, which of course claimed more votes than any other at the final European Parliament election in which we participated.

In the early hours of Friday morning candidates and officials of Reform were congratulating themselves and each other while celebrating the 13% and 10% of the vote they gained respectively at Wellingborough and Kingswood – more than the party had achieved at any other Westminster election.

Its leader for now is Richard Tice, an odious and smirking toad whose partner Isabel Oakeshott is equally obnoxious. But waiting in the wings is Nigel Farage, whose skills as a confidence trickster reached their apogee in the 2016 referendum campaign that culminated in the UK’s departure from the EU.

Jacob Rees-Mogg

Reform already has a chunk of disillusioned Tory voters, and the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg have no compunction about cosying up to Tice and Farage. Their strategy seems to be to do as much damage to the Conservative Party as possible, in the hope that the British right can realign. There has already been speculation that Farage’s ambition is to lead the Tory party. His best chance of doing so would be to offer himself up as its saviour if it had gone down to a huge defeat at the hands of Labour. It’s highly plausible that such is the master plan.

A weak Starmer-led government, unable to engineer an improvement to the economy because of its adherence to austerity spending limits, and under pressure from a range of increasingly disenchanted groups, some of them militant, would be a sitting target for an insurgent New Tory party run by Farage that offered simplistic solutions and created a full panoply of scapegoats to victimise.

We live in a troubled society where many people are beyond disillusion and wholly alienated from the political process. This applies just as much in Wales as in the rest of Britain and especially among the poorest, of whom we have more than our fair share.

Starmer and his team should have a rethink about their general election offer. Currently it’s likely that they will come up with a minimalist manifesto and rely on the electorate’s weariness with the Tories to sweep them to victory.

When they’ve taken power, however, people will demand that their expectations – articulated or not – will be fulfilled.

If Labour’s vessel is empty, others which are far less palatable will emerge.