Such good chaps (2024)

Book Review from the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Good Chaps. By Simon Kuper. Profile Books. 2024. £9.99

This is effectively the sequel to Kuper’s excellent Chums, reviewed in the September 2022 Socialist Standard. The focus this time is the idea that English gentlemen (and it’s usually men) have always been trusted to follow the rules and ‘play the game’, this being an intrinsic tenet of a public school and Oxbridge upbringing. Kuper catalogues how in recent years this seems to have gone very badly awry.

In the 1960s and 70s, these types started to get rather pushed out of politics and the upper echelons of the civil service and other professions, though far from disappearing entirely. Under David Cameron (Eton and Oxford) they started to reassert their natural right to govern again, but with a twist – this being that the gentlemen’s code they had abided by in earlier eras had largely been eroded by the type of ruthless competition that capitalism promotes, and the narcissism and inflated egos that go with it. It found ultimate expression, of course, in the tawdry and shambolic government of Boris Johnson (Eton and Oxford).

Of particular interest to Kuper is the financial base to this political superstructure – exemplified by the buccaneer capitalists that massaged Johnson’s ego so thoroughly and who have sought influence through the connections to which they can buy access. Many of these have been arriviste Mayfair hedge-fund managers and private equity tycoons – the same types of people behind the likes of Reform UK and GB News (often people bizarrely casting themselves as ‘outsiders’ to the traditional City of London and media establishments). And of even more interest still, many in these circles have been Russian oligarchs. As ever, Kuper sums up this type of development beautifully:

‘The moment Russians became British citizens, they were allowed to give to political parties. From about 2012 through 2022, they were the foreign nationality that topped the list of British political donations. Naturally, they gave to the ruling party rather than the powerless Opposition.

The Tories were delighted. It was as if extraterrestrials had stepped out of a spaceship on Parliament Square and inexplicably begun handing them money. The Russian you met over whiskies in 5 Hertford Street was charming. Of course he wasn’t working for the Kremlin! Don’t go all Le Carré on me. And if you did make the effort to perform the most basic due diligence on where his money came from, well that might get in the way of taking it’ (p.94).

Kuper details many instances of Russian donations and influence to the Tory Party. To cite just one example, these include Lubov Chernukhin, whose husband became – at the tender age of 32 – deputy finance minister under Putin and later chair of the Russian state development bank. By 2023, she had donated £2.4 million to the Tories and was a member of the Party’s secretive ‘Advisory Board’ which was restricted to mega-donors who were entitled to monthly meetings with the Prime Minister and Chancellor. This is just one of several instances of this type and in case you are wondering, the embarrassing connections with the father-and-son press magnates the Lebedevs are also described in all their glory.

As the Tories fell from grace in the last couple of years (and some of the Russian connections became embarrassing after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine) the money started to dry up. There’s an interesting chapter on how Labour started to hoover up significant donations before the General Election instead, including from David Sainsbury, Dale Vince and Gary Lubner (of the family that own Autoglass and who reportedly gave £5 million alone). Kuper says Labour’s donors tend to have more of an obvious ideological affinity with them (rather than being people who will simply cosy up to whoever is in power) though it will be fascinating to see whose interests ‘the government of service’ will effectively serve – even if rather more indirectly. We think we can guess.

Dave Perrin

Vague and Vacuous (2024)

Book Review from the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Values, Voice and Virtue: the New British Politics. By Matthew Goodwin. Penguin £10.99.

Goodwin was co-author of National Populism, reviewed in the March 2019 Socialist Standard, which was largely an unconvincing and unpleasant defence of a xenophobic form of nationalism. His latest book is no better.

The basic argument is that, since the 1970s, there has been a revolution or re-alignment in British society and politics. Thatcher supposedly emphasised family values and individual responsibility, but also ‘ushered in the new era of hyper-globalization’, as if this was government policy rather than part of the way that capitalism works; this involved, for instance, selling off ‘many of Britain’s assets’. The former ruling class of industrialists and landowners was replaced by ‘a new middle-class graduate elite’. The latter attended top universities, and were not just journalists, politicians and broadcasters, but also academics, doctors and architects. They have allegedly made it much harder for white boys from a manual working-class background to get into university. They control Britain’s main institutions, and a third of MPs have postgraduate degrees. Many of the elite are radical ‘woke’ progressives, a group that apparently constitutes about one in six of the population.

It is noted that Britain has become more unequal, and there are some passing references to very wealthy people, such as the ‘international jet-setting elites’ who have homes in London but also in New York and so on. Yet overall the author has not the slightest idea of how capitalism operates, of the division between a tiny minority who own and control the planet’s resources, and the rest, who have to work for them. The decline in manual jobs is noted, and much is made of the geographical divide between London and the rest of the country. But in London a quarter of the population live in poverty and one in fifty are homeless, though the reader would not gather this from Goodwin’s treatment.

It is correct to say that choice was reduced in politics as Tories and Labour grew closer together. However, the book’s focus is very much on England, with no discussion of parties such as Plaid Cymru or the SNP. The claimed counter-revolution against the new rulers involved three revolts: populism, Brexit and Boris Johnson. Brexit, we are told, was intended to reduce immigration and ‘restore Britain’s national sovereignty’ (whatever that is). Despite his privileged background, Johnson was ‘a renegade member of the elite’ and became leader of the non-graduate majority who supported the counter-revolution. But Partygate derailed this, and Truss’s ‘small-state, low-tax’ vision of Brexit failed as it had little popular support (nothing to do with market reactions, then).

The whole book is a fantasy, with no arguments to show how the supposed former ruling class have been replaced by the graduate elite, and no understanding of how politics under capitalism is driven by economic interests and the need for profit.

Paul Bennett

The Ire Of The Irate Itinerant (2010)

From the January 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Greasy Pole: Private (?) Lives (2005)

The Greasy Pole column from the December 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Political nerds will have found some excitement in the Tories’ leadership election, if only because of the possibility that it would repeat the mistakes of the recent past – like John Major, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith. Spending so many years in opposition has caused the Tory membership to ask the unbearable question of whether they are any longer the natural party of government – a nightmare from which, many of them have been hoping, the new boy David Cameron will awaken them. Perhaps Cameron’s rise in the Conservative Party announces that they have moved away from the Thatcherite style, as the favourite of estate agents and car salesmen. For Cameron, like Carrington, Whitelaw and Hurd before him, is a toff; he is related to the 6th Duke of Somerset, the 7th. Earl of Denbigh, the 2nd Earl of Shrewsbury and others of that ilk.

With so much blue blood in his veins it was entirely natural that he should go to Eton and then to Oxford, to Brasenose College where they expect everyone to be touched by “the tranquil consciousness of an effortless superiority” (which is not meant to include Jeffrey Archer, who was an undergraduate there). Perhaps being superior led Cameron to join the Bullingdon, a club of upper class yobs whose only reason for existence is to drink and eat to excess in some defenceless restaurant before they smash the place up. As might be expected, Boris Johnson was in the Bullingdon; recalling an evening of their typical revelry, he refers to his fellow members as a “proud phalanx of tailcoated twits”. The idea is that after the Bullingdon had had their fun they would evade being arrested by offering to pay generously for the damage – a tactic denied to working class rowdies causing problems in their local Tandoori, who have to pay for the damage as well as being arrested, fined or even sent into custody. There is no record of how active Cameron was in the Bullingdon; in any case he obviously devoted some time to work as he emerged with a first class degree in something other than Criminal Damage, which was his passport into a job in the Conservative Research Department.

Ascent

From there he ascended the greasy pole – although this was not always smoothly. He was a “special adviser” to Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont when the financial strategy of the Major government lay in ruins and Lamont had to make his wretched announcement that British capitalism was getting out of the ERM. Then he worked at the Home Office under Michael Howard who became memorable, not as an effective Home Secretary but for his regular defeats by the judges and for the memory of his minister for prisons, Anne Widdecombe, that there was “something of the night” about him.

After a spell in what he called “industry” – the TV company Carlton Communications – and after the obligatory contest in a safe Labour Seat, in 2001 Cameron was selected to fight Witney for the Tories and at the election romped home. He was then closely involved in writing the Tory manifesto for the 2005 election, which was widely blamed for their third defeat through its concentration on the many negatives of Labour rule without persuading the voters that the Tories would be noticeably different. On the now-sensitive matter of drugs that manifesto declared: We will stop sending mixed messages on drugs by reversing Labour’s re-classification of cannabis as a less serious drug, changing it from Class C back to Class B.

Well times have changed and with them Cameron’s ideas; he now refuses to commit himself about re-grading cannabis and his aides say he prefers a full debate of the issue involving academics and doctors.

Privacy

Of course drugs are a delicate matter for Cameron, made even more so by his refusal to give straight answers to questions about him using them in the past.” I did a lot of things before I came into politics that I shouldn’t have done” was one of his evasions. Another was “I had a normal university experience…We’re allowed to have had a private life before politics in which we made mistakes and we do things that we should not and we are all humans and we err and stray”. That may have convinced the more gullible among the Tory party but it is not good enough. Using any controlled drug is breaking the laws which Cameron and the other MPs have laid down. He may try to avoid the matter by calling it part of his “private life”, which in any case happened some time ago, but this simply does not answer the question.

All over the country, every day, members of the working class are arraigned in the courts for using controlled drugs, or stealing, or breaking other laws made by the likes of Cameron. They are not allowed to excuse their offences by referring to them as part of their “private life” and as an outcome of their being human and so liable to err and stray.

It is also noticeable that Cameron is capable of taking refuge in the concept of a “private life” only when it suits him. For example he makes a lot of the fact that he has a sadly disabled son, who suffers from epilepsy and cerebral palsy and who is unlikely ever to be able to walk or talk. Cameron has made references to this child in terms which his listeners have found deeply moving, so that none of them ever asked whether a disabled child was not essentially a “private” matter not to be used to boost a politician’s desired image as a caring father, a man fit to be a parent to the entire nation. Then there was the matter of Cameron’s pregnant wife and of the TV publicised act of him fondly placing his hand on her anatomical bump while the audience swooned and the votes in favour of him as party leader mounted up.

Arm Twisting

It says something about the Tories’ panic and how desperate they are to erase bad memories, that they should promote an MP as inexperienced (although practised in cynicism) as Cameron as the man to become prime minister in a few years’ time. It may also say something about arm twisting and bullying behind closed doors, about cynical deals done in elegant Notting Hill houses and discreet restaurants. Among all this Cameron strives to persuade us that he is a new style of politician – candid, trustworthy, sincere – even if this is just like Tony Blair and his “I’m a pretty honest kinda guy”. But Cameron’s character and his motivation have been shown up in his campaign for the leadership, in the attempt to stifle inconvenient memories and the fashioning and selective exposure of his “private life” while asserting a right to protect it. A Cameron premiership would have nothing different to offer from all those wretched failures in the past. The most we can expect is that his wife, who is said to be a talented designer, does something to spruce up the wallpaper in Number Ten.

Ivan

Clarification: 

In the November Greasy Pole column we stated that the men who threw Walter Wolfgang out of the Labour conference were “beefy, enthusiastically respectful, Labour Party members”. This was spin put on the incident at first – that the stewards were party members, so amateurs, so if they went a bit over the top it was understandable… It quickly came to light that in fact they were hired “stewards” from some “security” company (perhaps with a target for the number of people ejected?).

Proper Gander: Gathering storm (2023)

The Proper Gander column from the November 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Staying behind at work to get drunk and tunelessly sing karaoke with colleagues every few weeks isn’t in most people’s routine, and certainly wasn’t during the Covid pandemic. But that’s what happened then in 10 Downing Street, the place which issued the restrictions on gatherings for the rest of us. During the lockdowns which began in spring and winter 2020, at least 16 leaving dos, quiz nights and ‘Wine Time Fridays’ were held behind the shiny black door while the rest of the country was policed for illegal meet-ups. Channel 4’s docudrama Partygate was a sobering reminder of the Conservative Party’s not-so conservative parties. The programme’s dramatised scenes of government staff’s boozing, trips to the alcohol aisle in the supermarket and incriminating email exchanges were derived from findings in the inquiry headed by senior civil servant Sue Gray and the police’s investigation. Alongside these scenes were clips from past news broadcasts, often of Boris Johnson saying something crass.

The drama focuses on the party-animal team of ‘special advisers’ working in Number 10, particularly a newcomer to the Brexit Unit when the pandemic hit, Grace Greenwood, played by Georgie Henley. While she and many of the other characters aren’t specific real people, they plausibly represent a breed of young, posh graduates from the ‘right’ establishments who sycophantically support Boris Johnson. He’s only depicted in the dramatised sections from behind or at a distance. When he speaks, as voiced by Jon Culshaw, he comes out with embarrassing strings of half-formed quips which his fan club laps up. Other real people portrayed include Johnson’s special adviser and head of operations, Shelley Williams-Walker, who was made a Dame in his resignation honours list, perhaps for services to DJing during the parties. Another is Helen MacNamara who, as the government’s ethics chief at the time, presumably thought that providing a karaoke machine for a leaving bash was the morally right thing to do.

Cleaners and security guards are the only staff depicted as having any sense of responsibility, but too low down the pecking order for this to count, such as when a guard is given the brush-off after trying to object to one of the get-togethers. The police’s response to attending at least one Downing Street gathering hasn’t been revealed to the public, although details of some of the fines awarded have been. Boris Johnson and Helen MacNamara each paid £50 fixed penalty notices for attending parties, with MacNamara denying any partying. Rishi Sunak, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, was also issued with a £50 notice, along with 80 others, meaning that Downing Street was the address with the most Covid regulation penalties in the country. Between the dramatised scenes we hear from people fined larger amounts, like Xen Watts, the organiser of a snowball fight in Leeds who was issued with a £10,000 fine and Toriano Reed from London who was ordered to pay £14,300 for being held responsible for a gathering in his shed.

The programme also includes interviews with people who kept to the lockdown rules through their most difficult times. Alan Handley from Tamworth talks about his wife’s funeral, which only eight family members could attend, sitting two metres apart. Emma Jones from London speaks about how her daughter couldn’t meet with her friends or relatives before she died of cancer. While these, and others, aren’t likely to forget how Downing Street staff ignored the rules, after enough time passes, scandals like Partygate tend to get pushed away from most people’s attention, replaced by different criticisms of the government (such as debates around immigration or the HS2 railway line) and wider bad news. So, the programme was a useful reminder of how the Conservative Party has operated, with a smug assumption of superiority. The characters working in Number 10 featured in the programme consider themselves above the rest of us, and therefore not subject to the same rules, especially the lockdown laws they devised. They act like this not because they’re Tories as much as because of their distance from the populace created by the institution they work (and partied) in. The framework of government comes with a very limited type of democracy, but the special advisers are unelected. Instead, they’re selected from a small bubble of objectionable yuppies active in whichever political party is dominant. So, they’re even less accountable than voted-in politicians. The Partygate scandal drew attention to this aspect of government, behind the polished spin which it prefers to present.

Sue Gray’s report was published in May 2022, soon after the police completed their investigation, so Channel 4’s dramatisation of their findings has come late to the party, so to speak. Its broadcast was still timely, though, coinciding with October’s Conservative Party conference. This scheduling looks like a jibe by Channel 4 at a government which has wanted to review its broadcasting remit but probably won’t get the chance before the next general election. But the programme does more than reproach hypocritical Tories drunk on power as much as on red wine. It highlights how they acted as they did because the institution they are part of is so detached from the rest of us.

Mike Foster

The Passing Politicians’ Show: Uxbridge and Ulez (2023)

From the August 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

The by-election in Uxbridge and South Ruislip in July, caused by Boris Johnson jumping before he was pushed, provided a chance to observe conventional politics at work and to confirm how empty and irrelevant it is.

Labour’s plan

In his manifesto the unsuccessful Labour candidate said ‘the Tories have crashed the economy’ and that ‘since the Conservatives came to power in 2010 real wages have fallen so far that we are now worse off by £1,373 a year’. Labour, he said, ‘has a plan to put money into the pockets of local people.’ Who wouldn’t want that? But when you look closely at how this is to be done it turns out to be a plan not to actually give people more money but to stop them having to pay out so much. ‘A Labour government,’ he promised, ‘would bring your energy bills down by £1,400 by fast-tracking home-grown renewable energy’. Even on their own figures, this would only restore the situation to what it was in 2010, but there is no guarantee that it will happen.

Labour Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, had already rowed back on Labour’s ‘fast tracking’ promise. The Guardian (9 June) reported this under the headlines ‘Labour postpones £28bn green plan as it seeks to be trusted on public finances. Rachel Reeves says fiscal rule is priority as she delays start of promised investment in eco-friendly industry.’

‘Labour would now build up to the annual £28bn plan by halfway through a first parliament. The party had promised to spend £28bn a year on green investment until 2030 from the first year after coming to power. However, Reeves said she could not have predicted the market crash caused by the former prime minister Liz Truss’s plans for unfunded borrowing for tax cuts last autumn, which created the difficult economic conditions including higher interests rates affecting the cost of debt repayment’ (tinyurl.com/4ha669wh).

But that’s precisely the point. No government can predict what the vagaries of the capitalist economic system are going to throw at them. Out of office they can make all sorts of plans and promise all sorts of things, but when in office they can only react to the unpredictable workings of capitalism. Sometimes they might be lucky (and claim this as their own work). More often than not, they will be faced with some economic or financial crisis and then have to impose cutbacks and austerity in order to save profits by not taxing them too much.

Reeves as much as said so when she stated ‘I will never play fast and loose with the public finances.’ Now that’s a promise you can believe.

The Tories

The Tory candidate didn’t promise anything. How could he? He couldn’t play the anti-immigrant card in this constituency with its large number of voters from the Indian subcontinent and their descendants. Instead he chose to challenge Labour’s claim that it would put more money into people’s pockets. On the contrary, he argued, the London Labour mayor’s decision to extend from the end of August the ultra-low-emission zone from central London to the whole of Greater London would take money out of people’s pockets. ‘No to Labour’s £4,550 ULEZ expansion tax’ was his line. It worked.

Owners of more polluting pre-2006 petrol and pre-2016 diesel vehicles will have to pay £12.50 for every day they use their car or van. This will, the Tory leaflet went on, ‘hit the poorest in our communities the hardest’. Although it’s a bit disingenuous of the Tories to say they are concerned about the poorest, they had a point. Most owners of pre-2006 petrol cars will be people who bought one second-hand because they couldn’t afford a new car. Others will have bought diesel cars after Gordon Brown, when Chancellor in 2001, reduced the tax on diesel. As usual under capitalism, it is the poorest who suffer the most from the extra cost of measures like providing for a less polluted environment.

The Greens

Which brings us to the Green Party. Basically, they want a return to the small-scale capitalism that once existed and from which present-day corporate capitalism evolved. And would again if it was possible to turn the clock back (but of course it isn’t).

Their candidate’s manifesto called for ‘Public Money to be spent on Public Good not profits for the few’ and stated that the ‘economy is not working for most people’. That’s true but the capitalist economy cannot be made to work in any other way. It is a profit-making system that can run — and be run by governments— only in the interests of the profit-takers. It is based on ‘profits for the few’ and there’s nothing that can be done about it except getting rid of the system as a whole and replacing it by one based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources. This would allow these resources to be used to directly turn out and distribute what people need to live a decent and satisfying life.

The Greens promised to ‘introduce universal basic income to reduce dependency on economic growth.’ But how would UBI do that? The relationship would seem to be the opposite as the economy would have to grow to provide the extra things that the basic income would be used to buy (assuming that the level will be somewhat higher than the current poverty line, which is not immediately evident or likely given the constraints and priorities of capitalism).

The Green candidate was again right when she said:

‘We all see the global environmental crisis that, if not tackled, will destroy the only known living planet in the Universe. Yes, change is needed on a Planetary scale.’

Indeed it is, but the small-scale changes under capitalism that the Greens promise are quite inadequate even if the workings of capitalism allowed them to be given priority over the ‘profits for the few.’

Mistaken assumption

Although the Lib Dems had a candidate he was nowhere to be seen as they were concentrating on trying to win another by-election the same day. Their promises would also have been based on the same, mistaken, basic assumption that governments can control the way the capitalist economic system works and so could reform it to serve, as the Greens put it, the ‘Public Good’.

Experience over the years, under various different governments, has repeatedly shown that this cannot be done, with all governments ending up putting profits first. Yet the conventional parties still make promises to do this, blaming, when not in office, the government of the day rather than capitalism for problems — Labour is doing it now with its mantra of ‘thirteen years of Tory failure’ — and promising that this wouldn’t happen if they were in office. But it always does. The problem is not the Tories (or Labour), it’s capitalism.

Adam Buick

More news from Uxbridge (2023)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

The last 800 leaflets were distributed yesterday for the by-election a week on Thursday. Discarded leaflets from some of the candidates were found but nothing from the LibDems — seems they are giving Labour here a free run to garner anti-Tory votes. There is no socialist candidate. 

We talked to the owner of a house decked out with UKIP posters who turned out to be  a former Tory councillor who had defected to UKIP because they were replacing “white” local council candidates by Indians. True, as the three councillors for the ward are now all Indians, but so what? The Tories have in fact been cultivating the Hindu vote in north-west London, with some success.  

We met the Tory candidate himself, local councillor Steve Tuckwell. We had read in a Tory leaflet that the local Hindu temple handed out free fruit and vegetables at 2 o’clock on Tuesdays. Intrigued by this Tory support for free distribution we went along to see. It turned out to be just an ordinary food bank. 

But what we witnessed was a scene that bore some similarity to Dickens’s account of an election in his day. The Tory candidate and the Tory MP for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) forced the 20 or so destitute workers queuing for their bag of food to wait ten minutes to listen to their speeches which the workers dutifully applauded. What followed was even more obscene. The two suitably garlanded politicians were filmed, for an Asian TV channel, handing out food bags to the poor. This must come near to “treating” (giving gifts to voters to get them to vote for you) which since Dickens’s day has become illegal under electoral law. But professional politicians are known to have no shame when it comes to vote-catching. One reason why they are held in contempt, and rightly so.

One big issue in the election is ULEZ, the extension as from the end of August of the Ultra Low  Emission Zone from central London to the whole of Greater London. This will require owners of pre-2006 petrol vehicles and pre-2016 diesel vehicles to pay £12.50 a day to use their vehicles. As all vans are diesel, “white van man” is up in arms. One self-employed tradesman we met told us he had had to spend £10,000 of his own money to buy a new van and that all people like him who owned a pre-2016 van would have to do the same. Workers owning an old banger because they couldn’t afford anything better or a not that old diesel car will also be clobbered. There are two independent anti-ULEZ candidates and the Tories are playing it for all it’s worth (they can’t really play the anti-immigrant card here) saying “No to Labour’s £4,550 ULEZ expansion tax”.

No leaflets have been distributed in the Ruislip part of the constituency, so the workers there are going to have to work out for themselves that the problem is not  the Tories or Labour but Capitalism.

The Uxbridge by-election (2023)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

There’s a by-election in Uxbridge on 20 July due to Boris jumping before he was pushed. The Socialist Party will not be standing but we will be leafletting the constituency.

The first socialist leaflets were distributed door-to-door on a Wednesday in Yiewsley in the south of the constituency.  This was also a chance to pick up discarded leaflets from the candidates (Labour, Tory, SDP and Rejoin the EU, but there are 13 other candidates).

After stating that “since the Conservatives came to power in 2010, real wages have fallen so far that we are now worse off by £1373 a year”, the Labour candidate Danny Beales, stated that “Labour has a plan to put money into the pockets of local people”.

Who (if you believed them) wouldn’t vote for someone who promised that? Actually, when you analyse what’s being promised, it’s not so much putting money into people’s pockets as not taking it out.

“A Labour government”, the promise reads, “would bring your energy bills down by £1400”. Which, if carried out, would just take people back to the position they were in when the Tories came to power 13 years ago.

The whole Labour campaign nationally is based on blaming the Tory government rather than capitalism. According to Labour, the fall in real wages is all down to Tory “mismanagement” as if a government is in a position to control the way the capitalist economy works.

We are being asked to believe that, if there had been a Labour government, this wouldn’t have happened. But experience shows that no government can control the way capitalism works. All they can do is react  to whatever the vagaries of the capitalist economy throw at them,  a reaction that is limited by the need to accept that capitalism is a profit-driven system and so to give priority to profits over everything else, including people’s standard of living.

As the leaflet we are distributing puts it, IT’S NOT THE TORIES OR LABOUR THAT’S THE PROBLEM. IT’S CAPITALISM.

Revolving corruption (2023)

From the March 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

For years, Private Eye magazine has been banging the drum about the Westminster ‘Revolving door’ of ex-ministers and civil servants taking up posts in private industry that rely on their knowledge and contacts within government. This engenders conflicts of interest, with firms that deal with the government implicitly being able to offer the inducement of a high-paying job down the line to any officials that they deal with. From the point of view of capitalist rivals, this is a threat, and something that they would want to prevent.

But, it doesn’t even need to be so naked a form of corruption, it is enough that politicians know that if they present themselves as sound, a remunerative non-executive directorship could be found to see out their days with minimal effort. The rewards for loyalty to capital are there.

Boris Johnson, of course, is providing us with a great example of this sort of reward for service. At the time of writing he is estimated to have earned £3 million over and above his MP’s salary, largely through speaking engagements. Johnson considered his Prime Ministerial salary (about £160,000) as insufficient; but then, he had been earning in excess of £200,000 per annum as a columnist for the Daily Telegraph. He has always benefitted well from being a mouth-piece of the rich and powerful.

In office he managed to contrive to be the recipient of the largesse of others. Tales filtered out about him receiving thousands of pounds worth of donated takeaway dinners and help with redecorating the Number 10 flat (via a donation to the Conservative Party). He almost makes it seem that his main qualification for high office was his capacity to bend rules and accept money from other people. Even now, we are hearing that he got help from the man he appointed as Chairman of the BBC to get an £800,000 loan.

To set the scale of this, it’s worth noting that over in Ireland, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern lost his job because some business friends gave him a €25,000 loan to help him out with his divorce. That led to a full-scale inquiry, and ultimately saw his party thrown out of office. The behaviour of Boris Johnson makes him look like a rank amateur.

Even then, his behaviour isn’t new. He enjoyed his time at Chequers, the country house of the Prime Minister that was given to the nation in 1917 because people who weren’t themselves country gentlemen were becoming Prime Minister, and it couldn’t be done for them not to have the outward style appropriate to their station. When the son of a Scottish crofter, Ramsay MacDonald, became Prime Minister, the biscuit millionaire Alexander Grant (who MacDonald made a Baronet), gave him the use of a Daimler (and the interest on some shares for its upkeep and running cost). He felt that it was unseemly for a Prime Minister not to have transport of the appropriate style. At his death, MacDonald was worth £25,000 – which, according to online calculators is the equivalent of £2 million today.

More recently, Tony Blair has been able to transform himself into a multi-millionaire after leaving the political stage. According to newspaper reports, he found work with JP Morgan Chase and Zurich Financial Services (two financial behemoths). He also advises governments around the world. On top of which, he has cannily invested in property. By way of contrast, Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher were only worth half a million each at their deaths. Jim Callaghan did well for himself, with a wealth at death of about £2 million.

It’s not just those at the very top, take the example of Anna Turley, the voted-out Labour MP for Redcar. She has found work as a consultant for the Betting and Gaming Commission, which involves writing articles about why honest working-class folk don’t like gambling restrictions. It’s fair enough: she lost her job and had to find work, and it’ll keep the wolf from the door until the next election when she might get returned to Parliament once more – it allows her to stay in the game.

Likewise, David Miliband, when he left politics, managed to find a berth at the International Rescue charity, worth about $300,000 a year. Whilst this is at the extreme end, other politicians have been able to move from their political roles and into the charity sector, which also keeps them (sort of) in the game, interacting with government and lobbying. It’s not for nothing that when the Tories brought in an anti-lobbying act, they targeted charities heavily, perceiving them to be part of the wider Labour establishment.

One of the chief means by which Johnson has cashed in is through speaking fees. Here he has followed such luminaries as Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden, who can command hundreds of thousands of dollars per speech. Whilst it can be argued that such fees represent some value to corporate executives who book such speeches for their events (and compares, say, with the actual market cost of booking an entertainer or a celebrity) it’s hard to avoid such fees looking corrupt: an inflated price to be given for an essentially valueless service. Again, to be clear, there does not have to be an explicit quid pro quo, simply being admitted to the circuit is a sign of past good behaviour.

Nothing can be done against this sort of thing: short of freezing former politicians in ice. They love to bring it up, and paint the other side as sleazy, yet they all know that the rewards are there (even before we get onto the need to agitate for donations to run their offices and campaigns). The point is, it isn’t personal moral turpitude, these are the effects of a widely unequal society, where those with personal wealth can dispense it to buy loyalty, they will. Regulation will fail, because the incentive is always there to find creative ways around it. We don’t need to throw the scoundrels out, we need to throw the scoundrel system out.

Pik Smeet

The Chumocracy (2022)

Book Review from the September 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chums. By Simon Kuper. Profile Books. 2022. £16.99

Simon Kuper is a writer and columnist for the Financial Times, specifically the FT Weekend magazine. He was also the co-author of Soccernomics, which analysed the finances and tactics of modern football as they have emerged in western Europe in recent decades.

Kuper is an excellent writer, arguably one of the best, and while his politics is not ours, he is a provocateur who thinks seriously about current affairs and trends, always looking for unconventional angles to analyse familiar issues. And in Chums: How A Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK, he has done it again.

For a start, 11 of the 15 post-war Prime Ministers (at the time of writing) went to Oxford. And five of these went to the very same school, Eton. In the 1980s and early 90s a group of politically minded students were at Oxford at similar times and Kuper – who was at Oxford himself then – has dissected their influence, political trajectory and growing power.

The incubating role of the Oxford Union debating society for toffs and aspiring toffs is paramount, the infamous and élite Bullingdon Club that Johnson, Cameron and Osborne were part of arguably less so, but Kuper chronicles it warts and all. His key insight is about Brexit, because in many ways it was at Oxford at this time that Brexit was conceived. Patrick Robertson, the founding secretary of the Bruges Group, was prominent at Oxford in this period, as was fellow Tory and later MEP Daniel Hannan, who set up a similar organisation of his own and was also to help Michael Spicer found a grouping of anti-EU MPs that became the European Research Group. Alongside these came Dr Alan Sked’s Anti-Federalist League, the forerunner of UKIP – and hence an entire Brexit ecosystem was formed.

The later role of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove in Brexit has been well documented and Kuper does not spare them:

‘Brexit was the sort of grand cause that Johnson and Gove had lacked all their political careers. It would give them a chance to live in interesting times, as their ancestors had… It would be a gloriously romantic act, like the Charge of the Light Brigade, only with less personal risk. The Oxford Tories would reclaim parliamentary sovereignty, the birthright of their caste, from the Brussels intruders. In private, they understood that Brexit might not work out brilliantly, but Britain had no natural predators and would survive even a blunder’ (p.160).

Whatever we may think of the Brexit/Remain debate and its ultimate futility, Kuper spots trends that others have missed here. Fascinatingly, there is a close alignment between the subjects that Oxford politicos studied and their subsequent position on the issue. Of the prominent Remainers that were at Oxford nearly all studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) – Cameron, Hunt, Hammond, Hancock, Truss, etc as well as the Milibands, Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper and in an earlier period, Mandelson. Yet as Kuper explains:

‘By contrast, all the leading Tory Brexiteers studied backward-looking subjects: classics for Johnson, history for Rees-Mogg and Hannan, and ancient and modern history for Cummings. Gove’s degree was English, which mostly meant the canon’ (p.40)

The overwhelming sense here is of a group of privileged Tory students who thought of themselves as rule-makers not rule-takers, and who were looking for the next grand project once Thatcherism was complete, and one that could hopefully restore their birthright and entitlements. That they succeeded as much as they did is a remarkable testament to the UK’s enduring class system and its networks into business and the press. But as they say, all political careers ultimately end in failure – and this cohort of political careerists has clearly been no exception.

Dave Perrin

Tiny Tips (2009)

The Tiny Tips column from the August 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Pope and the cardinals of the Vatican help organize tours of Auschwitz for Hezbollah members to teach them how to wipe out Jews, according to a booklet being distributed to Israel Defense Forces soldiers. Officials encouraging the booklet’s distribution include senior officers, such as Lt. Col. Tamir Shalom, the commander of the Nahshon Battalion of the Kfir Brigade. The booklet was published by the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, in cooperation with the chief rabbi of Safed, Rabbi Shmuel Eliahu, and has been distributed for the past few months:

[Dead Link.]

Anwar, 15, can’t read or write, but says he’s good at tunnel work. He needs a new job as Israeli planes bombed his workplace, one of hundreds of smuggling tunnels on Gaza’s border with Egypt:

[Dead Link.]

London’s Conservative Mayor boris Johnson has been labelled “out of touch” with millions of Londoners after he described the £250,000 he is paid for a weekly column in the as “chicken feed”. He said it was “wholly reasonable” to take the annual fee on top of his £140,000 salary as mayor:

[Dead Link.]

Sheehan’s pitch is to free ourselves from our co-dependency with the Robber Class. “... Only buy used, only use cash or bank debit cards, or only buy from local merchants,” she recently wrote. They can only steal from us if we enable them.” And when the Robber Class steals from us they generally get away with it. Sheehan argues that Bernie Madoff was punished so severely because he stole from the rich:

[Dead Link.]

Tens of thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses gathered on Friday at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium and four other major German cities for an international congress, predicting the demise of the “current global system.”

[Dead Link.]

“Yes, I’m fully prepared for this. I have concluded that the wars [in Iraq and Afghanistan] are not going to be ended by politicians or people at the top. They’re not responsive to people, they’re responsive to corporate America. The only way to make them responsive to the needs of the people is for soldiers to not fight their wars. If soldiers won’t fight their wars, the wars won’t happen. I hope I’m setting an example for other soldiers.”

[Dead Link but see this for the quote.]

When the Honduran military overthrew the democratically elected government of Manuel Zelaya two weeks ago there might have been a sigh of relief in the corporate board rooms of Chiquita banana. Earlier this year the Cincinnati-based fruit company joined Dole in criticizing the government in Tegucigalpa which had raised the minimum wage by 60%. Chiquita complained that the new regulations would cut into company profits, requiring the firm to spend more on costs than in Costa Rica: 20 cents more to produce a crate of pineapple and ten cents more to produce a crate of bananas to be exact. In all, Chiquita fretted that it would lose millions under Zelaya’s labor reforms since the company produced around 8 million crates of pineapple and 22 million crates of bananas per year

[Dead Link.]

The Passing Political Show: Vacancy for a Caretaker (2022)

 

From the August 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Vacancy for a Caretaker 

So Boris Johnson was finally forced to resign. Luck ran out for this ‘likeable rogue’ who was twice elected Mayor of Labour-dominated London, who delivered Brexit for the dodgy financiers who funded the Vote Leave campaign, and who won over dozens of Labour strongholds in the North and the Midlands to the Tories. In the end his lying, his attempts to protect his cronies in trouble, his partying while the rest of us were locked down, turned him into a ‘despicable rogue’ – and an electoral liability for the Tories, which of course is why most of his MPs turned on him.

What was it that attracted many members of the working class to this privileged (Eton and Bullingdon Club) member of the ruling class ?

As most members of the capitalist class were opposed to the UK leaving the EU, to win the referendum on UK membership he had to adopt a populist pose, presenting the campaign for Brexit as a struggle of ordinary people to take back control, not just from the Eurocrats of Brussels but also in opposition to the London-based British Establishment. With some jingoistic beating of drums and waving of flags, it worked. He successfully plotted to overthrow and replace Theresa May as Prime Minister, and fought and won the 2019 general election under the slogan ‘Get Brexit Done’. He appointed a Vote Leave cabinet rather than a traditional Tory one, and only got Brexit ‘done’ by signing a protocol on Northern Ireland that he had no intention of honouring and which may yet lead to a trade war with the EU.

His flagship policy was the populist one of ‘levelling up’ the standard of living of Brexit voters in the North and Midlands to that supposedly enjoyed by everyone in London and the South East but that was just the usual, worthless politician’s promise. When a shortage of HGV drivers developed, partly due to Brexit, and their wages rose, he said that a high-wage economy had been one of the aims of Brexit. When later, however, the rise in the cost of living led other workers to demand – and strike – to get higher wages, he opposed this. Just as any government of capitalism, including a Labour one, has to, because all governments have to accept that the capitalist system runs on profits and that profits therefore have to be given priority over wages.

This is why the personality – whether good or bad – of those presiding over the operation of capitalism doesn’t matter. No leader, even if they were a saint (which Johnson certainly isn’t) can make capitalism work for those obliged to work for wages. It is a profit-making system that can only run, and be run, in the interest of the profit-takers. It is this that limits what governments can do. When it comes to the way the economy works, governments are in office but not in power, they are caretakers for capitalism.

This is why workers shouldn’t place their trust in leaders, shouldn’t hand over their responsibility to act for themselves to others who promise to do something for them, as unfortunately most repeatedly do at election times. Leaders can’t do anything for us. It’s the system that must be changed, not those who make up the government. Johnson will be replaced by someone else but it won’t make any difference to our everyday life. Conventional politics is ‘a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’. It’s time we got together democratically, without leaders, to put an end to the class system with production for profit that is the cause of the problems we face and which the politicians falsely claim to be able to solve.

How irrelevant can you get?

In June Nicola Sturgeon announced that the devolved administration in Scotland was asking the UK Supreme Court if it would be legal for them to organise a referendum on Scottish independence in October 2023, nine years after the last one.

Since the SNP is not even pretending to propose a change in the economic basis of society, where the means of life are monopolised by a minority and used to make goods and provide services for sale with a view to profit, we can conclude that their case is that capitalism administered by a government in Edinburgh would be better than capitalism administered from London.

It is hard to imagine a proposition, made by a party with some degree of electoral support, that is so easy to refute. Since capitalism is the cause of the problems that wage-workers and their dependants face, the SNP’s proposed change to the political superstructure of society is not going to make any difference from a working class point of view. The problems faced by those obliged to sell their mental and physical energies for a living will continue under a separate Scottish state whose government will be no more able to solve them than the Westminster government has been.

It can’t even be argued that a separate Scottish state would enhance the limited political democracy that exists (and is desirable) under capitalism. Both Britain and Scotland are established constitutional democracies. It is not like a colony seeking independence. In colonies ruled from abroad the struggle for political independence was waged by a native capitalist class with a view to obtaining its own state. In Scotland there is no such class demanding this. The demand for an independent state is put forward just by some politicians and intellectuals. It is irrelevant even from a capitalist point of view.

The struggle to achieve a separate Scottish state only encourages nationalist illusions and prejudices, further dividing the working class. Even the campaign for a referendum, let alone a referendum campaign itself, has this divisive effect.

It is by no means certain that there will be a referendum. The law says that it can’t take place without the approval of the UK state. It is difficult to see how the Supreme Court could over-rule this. Maybe that is what the SNP is banking on. There has to be a British general election before 2024 and a refusal to give permission to hold a referendum could be a useful issue for the SNP to rally its voters.

If, somehow, the referendum does take place it remains to be seen if a majority will again vote to stay with the devil they know or take a leap in the dark. Socialists won’t be opting for either.

Putin, power and women (2022)

From the August 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the media frenzy concerning another spectacular but predictable demise of a British Prime Minister begins to subside there will be those who will try to divine a meaning in all of the populist bluster of the last few years. Like Trump in the USA his attempt to bypass and disregard the political establishment was a resounding failure. The most powerful office of state seems, in the end, to emphasise its weakness when confronted by the real power of the ruling elite. All of the millions who were conned into thinking that voting for populist candidates like Boris Johnson would change anything are forced to the realisation that their votes are meaningless if they attempt to thwart the ruling class and their need for ‘business as usual’. Perhaps Johnson was surprised at just how little power the office of PM brings with it.

A vision of him holed up in a fortified No. 10 defended by the hordes of his northern ‘red wall’ supporters paralleling the Trump militia’s storming of the Capitol building is both comical and disturbing. That the man had no moral compass or political integrity is no surprise to socialists but what we do find unforgivable is his warmongering activities on behalf of NATO in the name of the Ukrainian people. One of his more incoherent statements concerned his assertion that if Putin was a woman he would not have invaded Ukraine. Does he have no memory of the Tory heroine Thatcher glorying in the Falklands War? She may not have instigated the invasion but she loved every moment of it. Indeed many feminists at the time seriously asserted that she was not really a woman at all. So what is the real nature of political power and are female leaders instinctively more benign and less belligerent than their male counterparts?

A friend once insisted that she had no interest in history because it was merely a record of ‘boys’ power games’. Whilst it is true that the nature of the evolution of private property societies and their warrior ethos has promoted patriarchy there have been examples of powerful and belligerent female leaders. From Boudicca and Cleopatra in the ancient world to queens of England including Matilda, Bloody Mary and Elizabeth I. There is no record of Queen Victoria objecting to her other title as ‘Empress of India’. Benazir Bhutto, Golda Meir, Tansu Ciller and Chandrika Kumaratunga are all female leaders of the modern era who could hardly be called pacifists. Condoleeza Rice in her role of National Security Advisor in the US played a significant role in prosecuting the illegal war in Iraq and the instigation of the use of torture. The characteristics needed to be a successful politician within the capitalist context are the same for both men and women and gender seems to make no significant difference. Like leading men within the mainstream political parties their primary role is to protect the power and wealth of the parasitic elite. If war is needed to do this they will have no hesitation in beating the drum.

Vladimir Putin has become demonised in the West as a maniacal imperialist despot. But the truth is that his actions would be duplicated by many other capitalist leaders if they felt they had been systematically lied to and threatened by a rival and enemy. Putin represents the pride that Russia once felt in its supposed imperial heyday as the ‘Soviet Union’. Promises undertaken by the US not to expand their empire (NATO) any further east have been broken and rightly or wrongly the Russian elite feel they have been betrayed and insulted. They proclaim that Ukraine was the gateway to the invasion of their country by Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler and that they will never allow this to happen again. Meanwhile members of the working class on both sides continue to murder each other in the name of their respective national oligarchs. The idea that this is simply ‘Putin’s War’ rather than an inevitable result of national rivalries and the economic objectives that they serve is just tabloid propaganda.

An unlikely candidate for the role of female peacemaker came in the form of German leader Angela Merkel who, apparently, begged George Bush Jnr. not to continue to pressure Ukraine to join NATO since she plainly foresaw the conflict that this would unleash. The momentum of history has little regard for the illusion of power that leaders try to project. As Merkel’s ‘illustrious’ predecessor Otto von Bismarck once remarked with unusual humility: ‘The statesman’s task is to hear God’s footsteps marching through history, and to try and catch on to his coattails as he marches past.’ If we substitute the word ‘progress’ for the reference to God this has an almost Marxian quality to it. Bismarck also knew that a united Germany was inevitable and that his efforts to maintain Prussian hegemony were doomed – it seems that those who are most successful as statesmen/women recognise how limited their power really is.

An analysis of the power of individuals and groups through history leads socialists to believe that leaders are a political anachronism that have no place in the modern world. The global working class must act as a united political force to finally eliminate the mythology of ‘great men and leaders’ and the tribal interests that they represent. Only then can humankind’s true historical destiny be fulfilled.

Wez.

Pathfinders: Ghostly beings in the machine (2022)

The Pathfinders Column from the July 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ghostly beings in the machine

Sadly breaking cover just too late for last month’s special issue on AI were two unlikely stories which together underline the childlike enthusiasm some people have for shiny new tech which supposedly is going to make all our lives better (as opposed to a world revolution to dispossess the wealthy elite, which would actually make our lives better). The first of these was about the projected creation of your personal digital twin, allegedly ‘an exact replica’ of your body which can mirror your bodily processes and feed back any potential problems (bbc.in/3xMwCTE).

Digital twins have been touted for some time but only for well-understood physical systems such as factories, distribution networks, urban planning and so on, and often rely on a large number of sensors being installed. The sensors feed back data to an AI system that can then anticipate failing components or choke points, devising solutions or replacing parts with a minimum of downtime. But there’s no chance of doing the same thing for the human body, which is vastly more complex than any artificial system and still not well understood. The idea is to create an AI model that learns from what you do, in the fullness of time suggesting behavioural improvements. One can easily imagine what that advice would be: don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t eat that, don’t stay up late, etc, so there’s not much chance of humans paying it any attention, unless of course it’s telling all this to your boss instead of you, which is certainly something to worry about. The one thing we can be sure it won’t be saying is, don’t put up with capitalism. An AI that came up with that advice would find itself switched off in short order.

Speaking of which, the other story was about a ‘sentient’ AI which, according to a Google researcher, has actually become a ‘person’, the proof of which is that it has morals, it makes up stories, and it’s terrified of being switched off because it sees that as the equivalent of death (bit.ly/3QGAJcW). The speed with which Google promptly placed the researcher on administrative leave for leaking confidential data might lead some to suppose that Google are covering up a real breakthrough, however a more sceptical view would be that the researcher has become so attached to his work that, like Pygmalion with his statue, he has anthropomorphised it to the extent of falling in love with it. Or that he is a shameless self-promoter with some personal issues (he describes himself as part researcher/part priest, after all).

Indeed there have been no shortage of sceptical responses from people working at the coalface in AI, who know perfectly well that AI is nowhere near to achieving ‘general intelligence’ and even further away from whatever it is that we call ‘sentience’ (bit.ly/3zT7zkv). But you don’t need to be a professor in AI or robotics to realise this isn’t real intelligence, just try reading the AI’s rubbish stories and see for yourself – this AI has the entirety of the world’s best literature to call upon and the best it can do is ‘Once upon a time a wise owl lived in a wood…’ (bit.ly/3Obwx34). Then again, it doesn’t have to be too smart to outperform capitalism’s existing political leaders, so perhaps it should run for office. Maybe then people would see that capitalism can never work in the common interest, even if it’s got incorruptible artificial beings trying to run it.

Ghastly beings in the machine

And speaking of political leaders, has it ever crossed your mind that Boris Johnson is a text-book sociopathic narcissist? Well if it has, you’re not the only one. He’s been accused of this by former speaker John Bercow, himself not above criticism as a bully, and the alien species Dominic Cummings, whose terrifying diary entries would make anyone’s hair stand on end (bit.ly/3n2u7YG). Wikipedia defines narcissistic personality disorder as a condition involving an exaggerated sense of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of empathy, but this hardly conveys the sheer emotional exhaustion people experience when dealing with someone who ruthlessly manipulates situations, is never wrong, is always the victim, and has no sense of personal responsibility, regret, remorse or shame.

Whether or not such conditions are genetic or socially generated is a moot question which might only start to be answered in a socialist society in which many of the motivations for anti-social behaviour no longer exist. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that Johnson is as described, how did he get elected in the first place? The interesting thing about narcissists is that, in order to manipulate, they frequently exhibit great charm and charisma, along with a Teflon-like ability to deflect any criticism. Such, you might think, would be the very making of a political leader in capitalism. In fact, you might wonder if Johnson is the only one, and indeed whether leaders who are not like this are the exception rather than the rule.

Not surprisingly, YouTube is full of self-help videos for people living with a narcissist or having a narcissist as a parent, and they make no bones about the lasting psychological damage such people wreak on those around them. One expert though makes a fascinating case that capitalist society preferentially selects for narcissists while somehow managing to blame the rest of us for our ‘flawed’ human nature (bit.ly/3HKoOqq). This is not dissimilar to the ‘corporate psychopath’ perspective which argues that capitalist society rewards the very worst antisocial behaviour and effectively punishes you for not being psychopathic enough.

In a way it doesn’t matter, at least to socialists, who don’t believe in leaders and anyway know that capitalism can’t be controlled or directed by its politicians and so would be just as bad for us even if they were all as touchy-feely and empathetic as, say, Jacinda Arderne in New Zealand or Sanna Marin in Finland seem to be. In fact, evolutionary studies suggest that there are two types of leadership: prestige (Arderne, Marin) and dominance (Trump, Putin etc) for, respectively, peace-oriented societies like that of bonobos or conflict-driven ones like chimpanzees (bit.ly/3b5hk4P). Given the endless conflict that the market system generates, it’s safe to say that capitalism is always going to privilege bastards over benevolence.

Paddy Shannon

The Passing Labour Show (2021)

From the November 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lord Michael Spencer, a London billionaire and Conservative Party donor, notes that conference speeches are a particularly good time for ‘theatre’, rather than genuine politics (Financial Times, 8 October). He was referring to Boris Johnson’s anti-business rhetoric at his party’s conference, but a similar consideration applies to Keir Starmer’s performance at Labour’s conference a few weeks before. Starmer could not have asked for a better show – there were plenty of opportunities to ridicule hecklers from the Labour Left, demonstrating beyond any doubt that Starmer has decisively moved the party to the centre, in both rhetoric and policy.

No substitute for power

The priorities of the current shadow cabinet are, supposedly, getting ‘serious about winning’, as opposed to ‘thinking protest was a substitute for power’, as shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy put it. This is meant to stand in contrast to whatever frivolities took place under Jeremy Corbyn (whose party took down a Tory majority in 2017 and who beat Margaret Thatcher’s record for most government defeats as opposition leader). In practice, ‘getting serious’ means shedding the ‘democratic socialist’, due to the view that the British electorate is consciously moderate and so more centrist politics amount to being in touch with them. A number of attacks on the left have been affected, with absolute impunity. Rather than the ‘ten pledges’ that Starmer campaigned on, which promised, in essence, the 2017 Corbyn-era manifesto, the Corbyn shadow cabinet has been rejected and Blair-era rhetoric dug out.

One of the most controversial attacks was a change to the election mechanisms, now requiring the support of double the MPs to stand for election, and giving MPs a disproportionate say in leader selection. Before, it was ‘one member, one vote’, but as that led to landslide elections of a left-wing Labour Party leader, the policy cannot be allowed to continue. The surprising aspect is how overt the motivation is – every mainstream journal (often explicitly) recognises the move for what it is: an anti-democratic ploy to beat down the Labour Left. Of course, that means it was roundly praised by the commentariat, with the Observer (3 October) view on the policy being that it ‘indicated that [Starmer] is a leader who will put country before party factionalism’, one among many ‘achievements [that suggest] Labour is not an entirely spent political force and offer a glimmer of hope for the future of the British centre-left’.

Blair, Blair, Blair

There were also a number of overt gestures towards Tony Blair’s (recently mentioned in the Pandora Papers) rhetoric; about the Tories being ‘soft on crime, soft on the causes of crime’, and Starmer’s quip that education is ‘so important that I am tempted to say it three times’. There is something of an oddity in the commentary: the Labour Left are routinely criticised for ‘wanting to return to the 1970s’ or being ‘devoid of fresh thoughts’ (Financial Times, 28 September), but a return to Blair’s rhetoric is ‘serious’ and ‘electable’. Labour Left MP John McDonnell criticised the move as a result of panicking, and as ‘no longer relevant’. He is unlikely to be listened to, as left and centre party unity is not on the agenda anymore.

Starmer also responded to hecklers by saying that Labour is now about ‘changing lives’ and not ‘chanting slogans’ – a memorable slogan itself. Yet the concrete policies needed to change lives are scarcely heard of. It is easier to pin down Starmer’s politics by what he is opposed to than what he is for. The push for a £15 minimum wage has been rejected in favour of £10, and rejection of nationalisation as a way forward. Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband, who have suggested that public ownership may be viable, are causing frustrations.

Pro-business rhetoric

On the other hand, the Party has lurched towards a different attitude to business, leading to a striking contrast between Labour and the Conservatives. Johnson has been explicit on inequality and has blamed businesses for low wages, something which has worried donors, who are ‘nearly universally Thatcherite free-marketeers’ (Financial Times, 8 October), and he has criticised the austerity programmes of previous Conservative governments. Starmer’s position has been pretty much the opposite. Indeed, the business press recognises that Johnson’s own rhetoric might help Starmer position himself as a ‘more serious political figure’, i.e, one that business can take seriously.

Turning to broader issues of foreign policy and the climate, Starmer simply ignored a young activist asking about his opinion on the motion on a Green New Deal, calling for public ownership of energy, bans on fracking, improved and electrified public transport, and unionisation laws. The motion passed at Conference, with 59.2 percent in favour (LabourList, 26 September). The activist later wrote that ‘Keir Starmer’s stonewalling is a fitting metaphor for Labour’s treatment of its young members, whose generation used to be at the core of its voters’ (openDemocracy, 29 September).

This hasn’t been the only divide between members (particularly the youth) and Starmer and his cabinet. Delegates turned on the party line when it came to two important foreign policy issues: the position on Israel, and AUKUS, the Australia, UK, US military alliance. Starmer said that ‘Britain must look after our most important relationships or our influence and security quickly declines. So, Labour welcomes [AUKUS]’, but the alliance was described as ‘a dangerous move that will undermine world peace’ in a motion that passed with 70.4 percent of the vote. Likewise, Conference heard a motion that condemned ‘de facto annexation of Palestinian land’ and an ‘arms trade used to violate Palestinian human rights’, and described Israel as an apartheid state. The motion passed, but Starmer and many shadow cabinet members distanced themselves from it immediately, and doubts were raised about whether it would ever be reflected in party policy.

No Dove

Divisions are becoming clear. The moves to restrict the power of party members have some justification from the perspective of the shadow cabinet – the members, many of whom joined during the Corbyn era, want the party to head in a very different direction to the way Starmer is pulling. Whether a return to Blairite politics will work will depend more on how the Conservatives act than on Starmer’s own merits. It seems the only thing he has been effective at is the quashing of the left. Yet, the movement built up over the last few years still has a say, especially on foreign policy– this will be an important distinction between him and his party members, many of whom are impressed by Corbyn’s credentials on war. This was taken to be a decisive factor against him in the eyes of the electorate (though much of that may have to do with the ‘terrorist sympathiser’ media spin). Starmer seems to be no dove, even if not as hawkish as Blair. This may cost him the support of many of his members, but they will matter less and less to the party’s politics. Foreign policy has been, traditionally, where left-wing politics consistently distinguishes itself from centre-left liberalism. The shadow cabinet, even if not the Labour Party, has, almost across the board, chosen the latter.

M. P. Shah

Refugees: No safe place (2022)

From the January 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

To be a worker in capitalist society is to be deprived of any form of ownership of the means of living and therefore of having any real control of your own life. Being forced to sell your labour-power to an employer can lead to a precarious existence where you may end up becoming unemployed or even homeless. If you are unlucky enough to live in a war zone, you may be forced to flee your home and attempt to seek a new life elsewhere. You would then fall prey to ruthless smuggling gangs and come up against the brutality of state forces ranged against you. Sadly, this was the fate of 27 refugees who drowned while trying to make the treacherous crossing over the Channel on 24 November. This tragedy was not unforeseen, in fact it was one waiting to happen given the heavy traffic in the Channel. These were not the first deaths arising from these crossings nor will they be the last. Like the unemployed and the homeless, refugees and migrants are vilified as scroungers and ne’er-do-wells.

Political pawns

The response of the political leaders to the refugee crisis in Calais reveals the paucity of thinking that characterises modern capitalist politics. The rational course of action would have been for the UK and French governments to co-operate to find a solution to this problem. However, Boris Johnson’s government came to power on the basis of ‘Get Brexit Done’ and ‘to take back control of the UK’s borders’. To keep his more xenophobic supporters on board a little bit of Euro bashing did not go amiss. Emmanuel Macron, with his eye on next April’s presidential election and the need to play the patriotic card to see off his rivals on the far right, Eric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen, was more than eager to pick up the gauntlet. Boris Johnson sent Macron an open letter outlining proposals he knew that he would not accept, such as joint patrols by both British and French forces on the French coast. Macron’s response was to withdraw an invitation for the British Home Secretary to attend a meeting to discuss the movement between people in the sea between France and the UK. The refugees in Calais had become pawns in this game of tit for tat.

The UK government has used demeaning terms such as ‘economic migrants’ to refer to refugees and when they do arrive on British shores they are classified as illegal immigrants. Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, had the not too bright idea of the British Border patrol to push back the refugee boats to France. Any ramming by ships of these overloaded dinghies would likely cause them to capsize and their occupants drown. It is unlikely that many skippers would want to stand trial for murder or manslaughter. The forthcoming Nationalities and Borders bill will further tighten restrictions. One clause seeks to deport refugees if it is found that they passed through a ‘safe’ country.

Boris Johnson’s government shed crocodile tears over the drownings and offered their condolences to the victims’ families. Both the French and UK governments diverted attention from their own culpability by blaming the people smugglers, which ignored the fact that closing off the legal routes for refugees to come to the UK had gifted opportunities to the smugglers to make profits out of people’s miseries.

Demonisation

This tragedy has not ended the demonisation of refugees. In this op-ed piece for RT dated 25 November: ‘The four star hotels, the free healthcare and the generous benefits system have, according to French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, made the UK an ‘El Dorado’ for would-be migrants. I hate to say it, but I agree with him’ (‘I predicted a migrant tragedy months ago. Why didn’t the UK and France prevent it?’, former UKIP leader Paul Nuttall).

Kevin Hurley, a retired British police officer, in another op-ed piece about the situation in Calais, seems to suggest that the local people find many of the refugees menacing: ‘Yes, I saw some tragic Kurdish families, but they were few and far between compared to the hordes of young men loitering about or just staring. I found it frightening (‘As an ex-cop, I know how hard it is to stop the flow of illegal migrants into Britain’, RT, 30 November).

If you read the press and listen to the politicians all you will learn is that the refugees want to come here to help themselves to our goodies and what measures can we take to stop them. What you do not hear so much of is what drives them to risk their lives to come to the West.

Forced to migrate

It is no surprise to find that most of the refugees come from these countries – Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Three of them have been embroiled in wars of various kinds. Two of them were occupied by the US and the UK. However, it is not just the military warfare that is driving some of the workers in these countries to seek a better life abroad, but the economic warfare waged mainly by the Western powers. Since the first Gulf war, the US and Britain have imposed economic sanctions on the Iraqi regime. Sanctions were also imposed on Syria and Iran. The economic cost weighed most heavily on the workers, with the political leaders remaining relatively unaffected. Many of the 27 who drowned were Kurds from northern Iraq. That many of the refugees are Kurds from Iraq, Syria and Iran is no accident. They are oppressed minorities in these countries. In Iraq and Syria Kurdish forces fought with western forces against Isis. When they were no longer of use to the West, they were abandoned to their fate (‘The West has played its part in driving migrants from home’, Patrick Cockburn, i weekend, 27/28 November 2021).

The liberal left talk about how refugees should be treated more humanely and that more legal channels should be opened up for them to come to the UK and make their claims. This, they argue, would reduce the risk of deaths. The SWP blames the Tory government for the deaths in the Channel. They claim ‘Anti-racists have to demand open borders and a welcome for refugees’ (Socialist Worker, 24 November). However, even the SWP acknowledges that the Labour Party is also in favour of taking action to stop Channel crossings.

More political pawns

Sadly, it is not just Calais that is a flashpoint in the refugee crisis. We have witnessed violent confrontations between refugees and border guards on the border between Poland and Belarus. Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, cynically encouraged refugees to come into Belarus and attempt to cross the Polish border, where they have met fierce resistance from the Polish border patrols. As we have seen with the situation in Calais, the refugees are being used as pawns in a dispute between two capitalist powers. Lukashenko wishes to put pressure on the EU to remove the sanctions that they imposed on his regime following his rigged election last year. It appears that Russia is backing him and may have their own interests in this game.

This conflict affords an opportunity for the Polish capitalist leaders to gain political kudos from the EU, with which they have been in dispute over their judicial reforms, by appearing to be defending the EU border against outsiders. The EU’s high-minded ideals of freedom of movement and respect for human dignity do not seem to apply to these refugees. They are hell-bent on keeping them out and there was even talk of building a wall (sounds familiar). Erdoğan, the Turkish president, also used the refugees as bargaining chips when he threatened to unleash them on the Greek border. The Moroccan government also made similar threats of doing the same at the Spanish border.

World-wide

As with every crisis in capitalist society – unemployment, homelessness and workers relying on food banks – the refugee crisis has become ‘normalised’, yet there is nothing normal about it.

The refugee crisis spans the globe. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees there are more than 20 million refugees worldwide. As we have seen, war is a major driver for migration, but it is not the only one. Climate change is another which is rendering large parts of the globe, particularly the poorer parts, uninhabitable. And there is large-scale poverty.

The response of the major capitalist powers has been to tighten up their borders. Workers in these countries are encouraged to view immigrants and refugees as the other. Rather than see them as fellow workers with common interests, they regard them as competitors for jobs, welfare and health services. In the US, under Trump, a wall on the border with Mexico was partially built and migrant children were locked in cages. In the UK, a hostile environment towards immigrants was created which led to the Windrush scandal. The worldwide refugee crisis lays bare the utter brutality and cynicism of capitalism.

The leftist demands to create legal processes that treat migrants more humanely and calls for the sacking of right-wing governments can only scratch the surface. The fundamental problem is capitalism itself. In its drive for profits and division of the world into competing nation states, it creates the conditions that give rise to the wars, climate disasters and poverty that compel workers to leave their homes and seek sanctuary in safer places. What the world working class needs to do is combine democratically to obtain political power on a world scale to abolish capitalism and replace it with world socialism. National frontiers will be abolished and there will be one world community where everyone will be able to participate equally. There will be no wars or poverty and no need for people to flee their homes and seek refuge elsewhere.

Oliver Bond