Keir Starmer

How will Labour’s new desire to be the party of war shape British politics?

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[This article was published 3 July 2024, a day before the UK General Election 2024.]

Original article by Iain Overton republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Protest against nuclear war outside Westminster Abbey, London 2019 | Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images

What’s the difference between the defence policies of Labour and Conservatives? Spoiler alert: there isn’t one

Days after Rishi Sunak announced the country would be going to the ballots, Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg released a campaign video in which he declared “security is at the forefront of this general election”.

It was a grand claim, but an astute one. Sunak and Keir Starmer have indeed spent much of the past six weeks fighting over who is leading the party of defence, while the subject has also dominated headlines (or it did until Nigel Farage re-entered politics and made the election considerably more about immigration).

From existential concerns about the size of the British army to debates about who supports Trident (and who doesn’t) and the shock announcement of the possible return of National Service, you’d be forgiven for thinking the election is less about voting red, blue, green or yellow, and more about what shade of camouflage you’d prefer your leaders in. 

But how, exactly, do Labour and the Tories differ when it comes to matters of defence? And how will rising fears from politicians and pundits over threats from Russia, Iran and China affect British politics?

Early on in the election campaign, Labour leader Starmer declared his the ‘party of national security’ – a sentiment echoed by his shadow defence secretary, John Healey, who said “Labour is now the party of defence.” Their claims came weeks after Starmer took to the pages of the Daily Mail, not his natural ally, to proclaim: “We will back our Armed Forces. We will back our nuclear deterrent. We will back Britain.”

This messaging appears to be working. That same pro-Tory paper reported in March that Labour is now more trusted than the Conservatives on defence, with voters reportedly associating the latter with cutting military spending, not increasing it.

This is all quite a reversal. For a time, much of the media painted Labour as actively hostile to the military. It led to the BBC even asking “Has Jeremy Corbyn ever supported a war?” And, in 2019, when a video emerged showing members of the British parachute regiment firing at a poster of the then-Labour leader at a target range in Kabul, it seemed to reflect a wide sentiment that the military and the left were no longer friends. 

Matters military, it was long felt, were best left to the Tories. After all, in 2021, a Byline Times analysis found that 91% of the veterans who sit in either the House of Commons or the Lords were Conservatives. Of the 44 veteran MPs, 40 were Conservative, while only 2 were Labour.

It was not always thus. The 1945 General Election, for instance, held as an army of men returned home from World War Two, saw a massive victory for Labour in the UK. Labour won decisively with 393 seats, the Conservatives securing only 197. Labour’s emphasis on social reform clearly resonated with those who had served – the promise of a better country for those who had been ready to die defending it.

It could be that Starmer is seeking to reignite this spirit, where national defence and the left are not deemed antithetical. And there are some canny election reasons for this.  

At Action on Armed Violence, we analysed the locations of the ten arms manufacturers based in the UK that have received the highest value and quantity of domestic defence contracts over 2022/3 – finding a significant Conservative bias. The ten firms have 130 locations (listed offices or factories)  across 94 parliamentary constituencies – 67% of which are represented by Tory MPs. Labour represents just 16% of the seats. 

Of the 20 constituencies with two or more arms manufacturers present, 14 were held by Conservative MPs and just three by Labour. But predicted voting data suggests the Tories will hold onto just two of them on 4 July, while 13 will switch to Labour.

It is no wonder the Starmer wrote in the Mail: “With Labour, the defence industry will be hardwired into my national mission to drive economic growth across the UK.” If polls are to be believed, the military-industrial complex is about to be painted red – and it’s no coincidence that at least 14 prospective MPs standing for Labour today are ex-military.

Where does this leave the Tories, then? Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) is frantically coming up with new, harder-right ideas to separate the party from Labour. Its National Service ploy, Sunak claims, is “to strengthen our country’s security”. Exactly why battalions of 18-year-olds on Salisbury Plain will make the UK more secure than its nuclear arsenals is not clear.

As for other differences, while the Conservatives focus on defence spending and global strategic engagement, Labour emphasises European alliances and a broader security perspective. The Liberal Democrats and SNP, meanwhile, both advocate for strong European ties and proactive foreign policies, and the Greens prioritise environmental security. 

In truth, though, there is seemingly not much to distinguish Labour and Conservatives when it comes to matters of defence. As with Starmer working to avoid the red-tops claiming the nation is not safe in his hands, Labour has been deafeningly silent on issues such as the inquiry into Special Forces’ extra-judicial killings in Afghanistan, the widespread concerns about misogyny, sexual assault and systemic racism in the British military.

When there is not so much as a camouflage fag paper between the defence policies of the right and the left, the danger is that there are no oppositional voices of any merit. And, in a world where sentiments of war seem to be spreading much faster than sentiments of peace, this lack of critique could easily lead us all to very bad places indeed.

Original article by Iain Overton republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Simon Jenkins: It’s worrying to see the prime minister cheerleading for war. Will Ukraine turn into Starmer’s Iraq?

Continue ReadingHow will Labour’s new desire to be the party of war shape British politics?

Devastation in Gaza poses an increasingly serious problem for Starmer

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Original article by Paul Rogers republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Labour’s stance on Gaza under Keir Starmer cost the party votes at the general election | Chris Kleponis/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Starmer’s stance on Gaza has already reduced support for Labour – and that will only worsen in the coming months

The Labour Party’s landslide general election victory on 4 July has been compared to the party’s previous wins under Tony Blair in 1997 and Clement Atlee in 1945. But Keir Starmer won a far smaller vote share than either Blair or Attlee and, unlike in 1997 and 1945, the mood of the victors was hardly euphoric – more damp squib than firework display.

The party’s win was not down to any widespread love of Starmer’s policies, but a deeply embedded antagonism to the 14 years of the Tory rule, aided by Nigel Farage’s Reform Party taking votes from the Conservatives, the collapse of the SNP vote in Scotland and an unusually low national turnout.

Labour was further held back by an unexpectedly large number of voters who abandoned the party – many of whom were motivated by its stance on Israel’s assault on Gaza. The mainstream media has wrongly attributed this to the UK’s substantial Muslim minority, portraying it as just a sectarian issue – ignoring the anger and hurt felt by many on the left.

Independent candidates stood primarily on a pro-Gaza ticket across many parts of the north of England, the Midlands and London. Five were elected – a record for a general election – and many more came close, most notably Leanne Mohamad in Ilford North, who managed to reduce new health secretary Wes Streeting’s majority from 5,218 to just 528.

Overall, in 57 constituencies, Labour’s biggest challenger was an independent or a candidate from the Green Party or the Workers Party. The Greens’ leap forward was particularly notable – they came in second place in 40 seats, all currently held by Labour, up from three in 2019.

As the new independent candidates said repeatedly throughout the election campaign, Gaza is just one reason for dissent from the new Starmer norm. Many traditional Labour supporters are also unhappy that the party is moving decidedly rightwards and embracing Big Business, as revealed last week by openDemocracy. Labour now seems likely to end up as a centre-right party – effectively disenfranchising several million people.

Even so, Labour’s position on Gaza was undeniably a big factor in its fall in majorities in many seats. It presents a problem for Labour in general and Starmer in particular that is simply not going to go away – and has several components.

The first is that Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his far-right Knesset supporters have long espoused the view that defeating Hamas in Gaza requires inflicting punishment on the whole civilian population. It is this so-called Dahiya doctrine that is largely responsible for the appalling loss of life among Palestinians.

The death toll in Gaza is at least 37,000, with as many as 10,000 missing, mostly buried under the rubble, and well over 70,000 wounded. The Lancet, the world’s leading medical journal, recently published a letter that suggested that if indirect deaths – including those due to disease, malnutrition and increased infant mortality – are included then the total number of human lives lost could reach 186,000.

The second is that there is no end in sight for the current war. There are occasions when talks seem to be getting underway but they repeatedly come to nothing, as they have done for the past six months at least. The Palestinian suffering is huge but the Hamas military leadership believes it can persevere, especially as claims by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) that most of Gaza has been cleared of Hamas turn out to be false.

Israel’s current leadership has little interest in a long-term ceasefire. Netanyahu will certainly persist with his attack on Gaza until at least the US presidential election in November, now hoping that Donald Trump surviving the recent shooting will help to secure his win. Meanwhile, Israel’s steady encroachment on Palestinian land and people in the West Bank is a further sign of a long-term insistence on permanent control “from the river to the sea”.

Finally, there is one more factor that is rarely understood. The sheer scale of the loss of life and wider Palestinian suffering due to the Israeli assault on Gaza has already caused a long-term – perhaps permanent – shift in attitudes towards Israel and support for Gaza in the UK, which reaches far beyond Muslim communities.

This shift will likely only increase as more and more evidence emerges about the Israeli conduct of the war. Last week the highly experienced foreign correspondent, Chris McGreal, published a report on the IDF’s repeated use of fragmentation artillery shells in densely populated urban areas. Perhaps the most devastating of all such ordnance being used is the Israeli M339 tank shell, whose manufacturer, Elbit Systems, describes it as “highly lethal against dismounted infantry”. No doubt even more so against children.

The deliberate human impact, especially on children, is appalling and causes injuries that would be difficult to treat even in well-equipped and fully functioning hospitals – of which there are none left in Gaza due to Israel’s bombing campaign.

Other similar reports will surely follow McGreal’s and the combined impact will last years, substantially adding to calls for international legal action against Netanyahu and his government.

This is where Starmer is so vulnerable. Thanks largely to the work of a handful of investigative journalists, especially Declassified UK, we know more than the British government would like about the UK’s close links with Israel – including the multiple roles of RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus in aiding Israel and the hundreds of thousands of pounds flowing from the Israeli lobby to Cabinet ministers.

Unless there is a radical change in policy towards Israel now that Starmer is in Downing Street, the assault in Gaza will remain a problem for Labour well into the future. Add to this the wider view that Labour is moving markedly to the right and the huge parliamentary majority may not be as stabilising as it first seemed.

Original article by Paul Rogers republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
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Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.

UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party's support for and complicity in Israel's genocide of Gaza.
UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.

dizzy: We get news stories in the UK recently – since the general election and the new Labour government – of Zionists Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy calling on Israel for a ceasefire, even allegedly saying this to Benjamin Netanyahu, etc. That’s very difficult to accept and you can see through their actions e.g. objecting to ICC warrants, that they are fully supportive, assisting, aiding and abetting, complicit in Israel’s actions.

Continue ReadingDevastation in Gaza poses an increasingly serious problem for Starmer

George Monbiot: Labour can end austerity at a stroke – by taxing the rich and taxing them hard

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/14/labour-end-austerity-tax-rich-uk-economic-growth

 Illustration: Kingsley Nebechi/The Guardian

The focus on growth to ease the UK’s economic ills will not be nearly enough, but there is a way to raise the sums needed

Never let your opponents define the terms of a debate. All too often, Labour has allowed the Conservatives and the billionaire press to demonise the notion of “tax and spend”. It went to great lengths before the election to assure voters it had no such intention. Now it drives home the message: instead, our needs will be met by “growth, growth, growth”. But tax and spend is the foundation of a civilised society.

Few of the changes this country requires can be achieved while adhering to the “tough spending rules” the new government has imposed on itself. We urgently need massive public investment in the NHS, social care, schools, environmental protection, social housing, local authorities, water, railways, the justice system and virtually all functions of government. We need a genuine levelling up, across regions and across classes. The austerity inflicted on us by the Conservatives was unnecessary and self-defeating and Labour has no good reason to sustain it.

The new government insists it is ending austerity. It isn’t. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) pointed out in June, Labour’s plans mean that public services are “likely to be seriously squeezed, facing real-terms cuts”. Similarly, the Resolution Foundation has warned that, with current spending projections, the government will need to make £19bn of annual cuts by 2028-29. However you dress it up, this is austerity.

We are constantly told: “There’s no money.” But there is plenty of money. It’s just not in the hands of the government. The wealth of billionaires in the UK has risen by 1,000% since 1990. The richest 1% possess more wealth than the poorest 70%. Why do they have so much? Because the state does not; they have not been sufficiently taxed.

…

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/14/labour-end-austerity-tax-rich-uk-economic-growth

Continue ReadingGeorge Monbiot: Labour can end austerity at a stroke – by taxing the rich and taxing them hard

With the UK creeping out of recession, here’s an economist’s brief guide to improving productivity

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Keep on digging. kstuart/Shutterstock

Nigel Driffield, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick

At the end of last year, the UK was officially in recession. The economy shrank by 0.3% between October and December 2023, after a previous contraction between July and September.

New figures for January 2024 show a slight improvement. But there is nothing to indicate that the UK has made meaningful progress when it comes to productivity growth – and how the UK needs to produce more goods and services if living standards and wages are to improve.

Productivity growth in the UK has been virtually non-existent since the financial crisis of 2008. It lags significantly behind countries like Germany and France, and even further behind the US.

Growing productivity is not easy. Having researched this area of the economy extensively, I’m acutely aware of the the challenges facing firms which are trying to be more productive. They include everything from investment levels and access to research and development to regional inequality and a shortage of skills.

But there are some things that could be done to improve the situation. And two of the most important ones are greater investment, and a more localised approach to the national economy.

For example, one major problem in the UK is that its labour market prioritises what economists call “flexibility” – allowing firms to hire and fire employees fairly easily (compared say with France, where it is more difficult) – and getting people into entry-level jobs. It is much less focused on training and development.

Major investment in training at all levels, from basic skills through to high-level technical and managerial skills, would make workers more productive. It would allow greater job mobility, which in turn leads to a better match between demand and supply.

The UK also needs to invest in what’s known as “capital equipment” – the stuff that businesses use to produce things. For a building company this might mean buying a JCB digger instead of shovels, or for a dressmaker it could be buying a sewing machine. Put simply, if UK industries had more kit, productivity would improve.

A recent change to capital allowances which allows firms to offset investment against tax is welcome. But companies need to know that this will stay, and not be subject to political changes and inconsistent economic policy.

Freedom to grow

So money needs to be spent, and investments need to be made. But another crucial element is that the money needs to be invested locally, in the places where people actually live and work.

To be truly beneficial, this needs close collaboration between local authorities, education providers and the private sector. Local knowledge about where certain sectors are being held back, what skills are required and where they are needed, is fundamental.

Local authorities should be able to address these issues, rather than having to constantly defer to London. This means doing two more things (neither of which have ever had national government support).

The first is simplifying the workings of local government, which is notoriously complex and a constant drag on regional productivity.

And the second is helping those local governments financially, not just in terms of the current funding crisis, but also by allowing then to plan investments in skills and infrastructure over the long term, rather than having to bid piecemeal for short term funding.

Labelled cogs in a machine.
Everything connects. EtiAmmos/Shutterstock

It is clear to me from the work I have done in the West Midlands area of England that the UK economy is far too centralised. Everything from access to finance and venture capital, to investment in skills and infrastructure is heavily skewed towards the south east.

Away from that region, the UK has a low level of what economists call “aglomeration economies”, where a particular industry is concentrated within a geographical area, and supported by decent infrastructure and a good supply of skilled workers.

Compared to Germany or France, public transport in the UK is expensive and patchy, meaning people in towns often can’t access employment opportunities in cities which are relatively close by. This means that we see high levels of inequality over short distances, where poverty exists close by to great wealth.

This kind of imbalance could be addressed by combining increased investment (both public and private) with a much greater willingness to understand the various British regions which make up a currently disunited kingdom. These two steps would make the whole economic system more resilient, and in the long term, more productive.

Nigel Driffield, Professor of International Business, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Continue ReadingWith the UK creeping out of recession, here’s an economist’s brief guide to improving productivity

NGOs Urge UK Labour Government to End ‘Complicity in Israeli Crimes’ in Gaza

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Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is seen at the NATO 75th anniversary summit in Washington, D.C., on July 10, 2024. 
(Photo: Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images)

“We are asking this government for leadership and to take a just decision, for the sake of Palestinians in Gaza who are living through ‘hell on Earth,'” said six rights groups.

A week after the British Labour Party won control of the United Kingdom’s government, six rights organizations called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to bring the country “back from the brink” and restore its “credibility on the international stage” by ending its military support for Israel.

“The Labour Party now has the chance to start restoring some credibility by ensuring the U.K. abides by international law, thereby extricating the U.K. from the indelible stain of complicity in Israeli crimes that deeply shock the conscience of humanity,” wrote the British Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) and Al-Haq, based in Palestine.

The groups wrote the letter with the support of the International Center of Justice for Palestinians, War on Want, the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Addressing Starmer along with newly appointed Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Secretary of State for Business and Trade Jonathan Reynolds, the groups reminded the prime minister that following his election, he promised Britons that the “sunlight of hope was shining once again” after 14 years of Conservative rule, and called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to say there is a “clear and urgent need for a cease-fire.”

“Calls for a cease-fire are evidently not enough, in particular when the U.K. is arming one party to the conflict,” wrote the groups, pointing out that earlier this week Palestinians in northern Gaza reported that recent bombing there has “matched October 2023 in its intensity—with levels of destruction not witnessed since World War II, nearly all civilian infrastructure is completely destroyed.”

“We are asking this government for leadership and to take a just decision, for the sake of Palestinians in Gaza who are living through ‘hell on Earth,'” they wrote. “The world should have put an end to their unimaginable suffering a long time ago. Labour must suspend, revoke, and refuse all arms licenses for Israel now.”

The U.K. licensed about £859,381 ($1.09 million) of weapons to Israel in the last three months of 2023, as the Israel Defense Forces relentlessly attacked Gaza and blocked nearly all humanitarian aid, leading to what 10 independent United Nations experts this week said is now famine across the enclave.

“The new Labour government’s calls for a cease-fire are meaningless while it continues to arm Israel. British weapons have killed too many Palestinians,” said GLAN lawyer Charlotte Andrews-Briscoe. “This government knows that the only lawful and moral decision is to stop arming Israel. Britons have voted for change: This government must deliver that change.”

On social media, GLAN amplified a video posted by Starmer on Sunday in which he pledged to “restore politics as a force for good.”

“We are calling on Keir Starmer to put these words into action,” said the legal group.

When the war on Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people ends, said the groups, Starmer’s government must expect that there will be “a reckoning in which Israel will be found to have committed mass atrocities.”

But the organizations called on Starmer—who, months before he called on Netanyahu to agree to a cease-fire, said Israel had “the right” to withhold power and water from Gaza—to see that ending military support for Israel “is not only the legal obligation of the U.K., it is a moral obligation.”

“Schoolchildren will learn about this period for years to come, just as we have all learned about past genocides and wondered how they could be allowed to happen,” reads the letter. “Will they read about a new Labour government that acted with respect for the sanctity of all human life?”

Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.

Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Continue ReadingNGOs Urge UK Labour Government to End ‘Complicity in Israeli Crimes’ in Gaza