red tories

Morning Star: Mass action is the antidote to Labour-Tory policy consensus

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-mass-action-antidote-policy-consensus

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves speaking about the economy at the Association of British Insurers in the City of London, May 7, 2024

“LABOUR and the Tories move closer on economy.”

Thus a headline in the Financial Times last week. The FT speaks not just to and for British finance capital, but to capitalists worldwide needing a steer on British and international politics.

Unlike the bought-and-paid-for Tory press, it usually does so without demagogy or partisan point-scoring. Its conclusions are therefore to be taken seriously.

It writes: “Despite being the official opposition, Labour has signally refused to oppose many of [Jeremy] Hunt’s recent economic policies…” including the cuts to National Insurance.

Further: “Hunt set out 110 measures to boost the economy in his 2023 autumn statement and Labour opposed none of them. The same applied to all of the policies announced in the chancellor’s spring budget this year.”

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has also agreed with all Chancellor Hunt’s financial services reforms, has accepted his target of ensuring falling debt as a share of national income within five years, and adopted his corporation tax rate.

The Tories have repaid the compliment up to a point, stealing Labour proposals on taxing non-doms and the North Sea oil and gas industries.

But this convergence is mainly on Tory terms, with Labour dumping any proposal, like its green investment plans, which sit outside the consensus around a new austerity.

For that is what is on offer at the general election. It is a further squeeze on public services and wages to help improve the competitive position of British capitalism.

Reeves and the Labour Party pretend that their approach represents “change” because it offers “stability” after years of Tory chaos.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-mass-action-antidote-policy-consensus

Continue ReadingMorning Star: Mass action is the antidote to Labour-Tory policy consensus

‘Stop Starmer’ initiative launches at London’s Conway Hall

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Original article republished from the Skwawkbox.

Campaign group warning of the dangers of red Tory government and to inform the public about Starmer’s authoritarianism and ‘murky’ past holds launch event featuring leading left speakers

Image rights: S Walker

A campaign to inform the public about the dangers of a red Tory ‘Labour’ government launched in London today, with a range of leading left speakers. Crispin Flintoff, the former Labour fundraiser expelled by the party in Starmer’s cowardly purge of the left after sharing, as constituency party secretary, the resignation letter of the group’s chair, told Skwawkbox that the campaign’s aims are:

to educate people about how dangerous a Starmer government would be. The media are unwilling to probe into Starmer’s murky past, expose his dishonesty or report on his alarming authoritarianism.

A healthy democracy requires an enlightened population and Trilateral Starmer is firmly opposed to that.

Ours is a grassroots campaign to get the word out via street stalls, leaflets, tailored social media posts and publicity stunts that emulate Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action. We see this as the only way to get our message out there. If the media pick up on it that would be a bonus.

A Starmer government would be just as bad – or worse – than a Tory government.

The event, which saw London’s Conway Hall full of activists outraged by Keir Starmer’s eager betrayal of the false promises he made to con Labour members into selecting him as party leader, featured:

  • former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein
  • homelessness campaigner Andrea Gilbert
  • tax and economics expert Richard Murphy
  • Sheila Day
  • DPAC’s Ellen Clifford
  • Liverpool’ Audrey White, who famously gave Starmer a dose of uncomfortable truth during his sneak visit to the city
  • former Labour and Respect MP George Galloway
  • ‘free Assange’ campaigner Deepa Driver
  • Palestine Action leader Huda Ammori
  • purged Labour member and star of ‘The Labour Files’ Becky Massey
  • NHS campaigner Dr Bob Gill
  • Jewish former party member Frances Rifkin
  • investigator Ben Timberley
  • Eric Jarvis and Phil Davison of OCISA, the group aiming to fight Starmer in his London seat at the next election
  • Colin Hendrie

Video messages were sent by former miner John Dunn, former union leader Tosh McDonald, ex-Labour MP Chris Williamson, forensic author and journalist Asa Winstanley and Carel Buxton that time did not allow to be shown, but these will be published in due course.

The event has already been targeted by apparent pal of the security services Paul Mason, so it’s doing something right.

There is, of course, no functional difference – at least for the better – between ‘long-time servant of the security state’ and compulsive promise-breaker Starmer’s red-Toryism and the blue version.

Original article republished from the Skwawkbox.

Continue Reading‘Stop Starmer’ initiative launches at London’s Conway Hall

Keir Starmer’s reshuffle moves Labour further away from its core values

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https://leftfootforward.org/2023/09/keir-starmers-reshuffle-moves-labour-further-away-from-its-core-values/

Starmer should be looking to Clement Atlee for inspiration, not Tony Blair

Keir Starmer sucking up to the rich and powerful at World Economic Forum, Davos.
Keir Starmer sucking up to the rich and powerful at World Economic Forum, Davos.

With the Government on the rack amidst the austerity-fuelled school building crisis, yesterday’s shadow cabinet reshuffle gave Keir Starmer one final chance to live up to his leadership pledges: to unite the Labour Party and offer the country a transformative programme, one which is more urgent and popular than ever in the Tories’ broken Britain. Sadly, what we got, as commentators have concluded, was yet another shift to the Right. 

Nowhere was this clearer than in moves against the soft left, particularly Lisa Nandy, who was demoted for the second time, now to shadow an international development ministry which doesn’t even exist. Preet Gill, in turn, left the shadow cabinet, while Nick Thomas-Symonds faced another demotion, to Shadow Minister without Portfolio. Rosena Allin-Khan left the Shadow Cabinet after Starmer told her he did “not see a space for a mental health portfolio in a Labour Cabinet”, despite having herself sat in the shadow cabinet in such a role

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Meanwhile, the scrapping of the dedicated Shadow Development brief means that Starmer’s pledge to re-establish the department abolished by Boris Johnson will be added to his long list of broken promises. Nor will there be a dedicated employment rights role, the first time in nearly half a decade that Labour’s Shadow Cabinet has not contained such a role; big business has a dedicated secretary of state, but workers don’t. The loss of these roles signals danger for progressive politics.

Of course, it goes without saying that there were no promotions for members of the Socialist Campaign Group, who are uniformly excluded from the Shadow Cabinet. How far we are from the days when Starmer promised to build on Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-austerity agenda and ‘end factionalism’. 

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https://leftfootforward.org/2023/09/keir-starmers-reshuffle-moves-labour-further-away-from-its-core-values/

Continue ReadingKeir Starmer’s reshuffle moves Labour further away from its core values