Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party in the UK, and the next Prime Minister, likes to boast on social media that he has changed the Labour Party. This is a change which has seen him take the Labour Party further to the right than even Tony Blair, who won an equally resounding victory in the 1997 General Election.
There is some satisfaction in seeing the Conservative Party trounced. They have led the country through fourteen years of mismanagement and chaos. While their rich friends and allies have been the beneficiaries of tax cuts and government contracts, the rest of the country has suffered. Wages have stagnated while public services have deteriorated. Government spending on social services have declined substantially and the health, education and other social services have been reduced to the point of crisis. More families are living in poverty in the UK than in almost any other country in the developed world when, at the same time, the number of billionaires has increased more than tenfold.
Surprisingly it was the Conservative Government which reduced manpower in both the army and the police force and created a situation in which crime has surged. The roads are a national disgrace, and the rivers are filled with sewage after the privatisation and deregulation of the water companies.
It was the Conservative Government which led Britain through Brexit. A move which has led to a fall in the British economy as well as a decline in the role of Britain on the international stage.
In their move towards radical neoliberalism, the Conservatives have seen the decline of British manufacturing, agriculture and trade in general. It is not surprising that, eventually, people have had enough and decided that, not only was change necessary, but that the Conservatives should be punished by having their worst election result in history.
The win for Labour is not the overall victory it seems to be, at least as reported by the media. The party will have a huge majority in the British Parliament, currently estimated to be an overall lead of 170 seats in a parliament of 650 members but is has achieved this largely because of Britain’s first past the post (FPTP) system of voting. This is a system where whoever has the largest number of votes wins the seat in parliament. In a very large number of cases the Labour Party will gain the largest number of votes but will be far behind having a majority of the combined votes cast. In fact, the supermajority being forecast is in an election where the Labour Party will be lucky to get support from 40% of the votes cast and 30% of the electorate as a whole.
At the same time, the Reform Party, the extreme party led by Nigel Farage, is likely to gain 13 seats. In some cases, it is managing to get 20% and more of the vote and is beating the Conservatives into third place or even worse. If Britian did not have a FPTP system, Reform could easily have expected to produce a far greater number of seats in Parliament and be a real threat to conventional political parties.
Support for Reform is coming from right-wing disillusioned Conservatives, of course. But it is also coming from working class voters who see that neither party is protecting their interest. They have seen a decline in jobs, in income and in government provision and are seeking someone to blame. Too often they are guided by politicians to look at immigrants as a source of their problems and not to the neoliberal policies, under both Labour and Conservative governments, which actually caused the problem.
Britain might no longer be in the European Union, but the political move to the right being seen in countries across the globe is being seen in the UK in this election.
Ever since the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher moved British Government policy away from Keynesian economics and social welfare, arguing that there was no such thing as a society and allowing unregulated capital to do what it wanted, British governments have moved progressively towards the right in economic policy. The period under Tony Blair and Gorden Brown saw a more liberal approach to social policy, but it did not stop moving to the right in economic terms. Keir Starmer’s Labour Government is yet another move in that direction.
However, insane it might seem to support even more extreme parties like Reform, it’s understandable that a lot of people feel the system has failed them – because it has. Donald Trump understands this disillusionment and is making the most of it in the USA, just as Farage is in Britain, Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in The Netherlands and the other extremists elsewhere. They will not provide any meaningful answers, but they will, given the opportunity, provide extremist governments who will further forward the interests of capital and the rich.
