FOR THE MANY, NOT THE FEW

As disaffection grows with Keir Starmer's Labour Party, former leader Jeremy Corbyn and MP Zarah Sultana are hoping to build a progressive alternative to Labour's centrism. 

 

JUST AS Jacinda Ardern's centrist Labour Government failed to deliver for working people and was tossed out of office as a result, although Ardern had resigned by then, this could also be the fate of the UK Labour Party under leader Kier Starmer. Its failure to implement a pro-worker agenda has only allowed Nigel Farage's far right Reform Party to rise in the polls.

The news is all bad for Labour. A June 26 poll revealed that, if an election was held today, Reform UK would be Britain’s largest political party and Nigel Farage, on a potential course to become the country’s next prime minister. 

That awful prospect is now a real possibility; such is the widespread disaffection with Labour. Just like the timidly centrist Democratic Party delivered Donald Trump the US presidency not once but twice, Starmer could also deliver Britain to the forces of the hard right as well.

Indeed, the Labour Party describing itself as the party of labour is false advertising. Under Kier Starmer, after a brief pro-worker revival under former leader Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Parry has reverted to its old role of being British capitalism's B team.

The ultimate irony is that even the Guardian, the same publication that sought to undermine Corbyn's leadership, is now critical of Starmer, who it supported to replace Corbyn.

In a July 4 editorial, the Guardian comments: 'The prime minister seems like a politician suited to managing decline, rather than overcoming it.' But, hey, isn't centrism all about not rocking the boat?

And in a comment that the cautiously conservative New Zealand Labour leader Chris Hipkins should take heed of when formulating his party's policies, the Guardian observes that the 'structurally and emotionally broken Britain requires more than moderate gradualism.' 

It seems that the Guardian is now campaigning for the kind of policies that it opposed when Corbyn was Labour's leader.

I doubt that the Guardian has had a political change of heart. Rather, it's probably more concerned that Labour is going to be outflanked on the left by the new party proposed by Jeremy Corbyn.

He has been joined by MP Zarah Sultana. She was suspended by Starmer from Labour a year ago after voting against a number of welfare cuts. Both Corbyn and Sultana will be hoping that disillusioned present and former Labour Party members and supporters will swing in behind the new party. Judging from some comment in the social media, it seems that a lot of the initial groundwork has already been done. According to one report, over 17,000 people signed up for the new party in just twenty-four hours.

In a statement, Zarah Sultana said:

'Westminister is broken, but the real crisis is deeper. Just 50 families now own more wealth than half the UK population. Poverty is growing, inequality is obscene, and the two-party system offers nothing more than managed decline and broken promises. 

'Meanwhile, a billionaire grifter is leading in the polls, because Labour has completely failed to improve people's lives…

It's clear that centrism has nothing to offer the British people other than a neoliberal dystopia of grinding poverty and growing inequality. Sultana says that at the next election, in 2029, the choice will be between socialism or barbarism. The reference to the iconic socialist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg is probably deliberate. In a society that has been straitjacketed by the ideology and policies of neoliberalism for over four decades, what the new party will propose will seem revolutionary: for the many, not the few.