Reforming UK politics? (2025)

From the April 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party has consistently questioned the efficacy of reform. Capitalise the word and it takes on a specific significance. Reform UK emerged as a political force of note by securing five parliamentary seats at the last general election.

The Green Party increased its representation in Parliament to four, which was impressive considering the difficulties posed by the first-past-the-post-system. Even more remarkable, though, was Reform’s performance. Considered along with its former incarnation as the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), its electoral progress is of interest. In the 2015 general election, one seat was won with an overall UK vote share of 12.6 percent. By the 2019 election, standing as the Brexit Party, its vote share had declined to around 2 percent, with no seats gained. This was the time of Boris Johnson’s Tory Party undertaking to ‘get Brexit done!’ The moment and purpose for UKIP/Brexit Party appeared to have passed.

Five years later though, emerging as Reform UK with a political platform expanded beyond just Brexit, came an apparent breakthrough. However, at 14.3 percent of the vote, the improvement on the 2015 performance was less than spectacular. The major factor was not so much the increased Reform vote, but the near collapse of Conservative Party support. In 2015 they took 36.8 percent of the vote, which increased to 43.6 percent in 2019. Five years on they were down to 23.7 percent. This seems to indicate many Conservative voters relocating with Reform, enabling the taking of seats previously denied them. The Tory right split and its largely extra-parliamentary pressure group was able to become in-house (of Commons).

A determining factor in Reform’s rise must be its leader, Nigel Farage. He had founded Reform UK, originally the Brexit Party, two years after he left UKIP following the Brexit referendum. He then effectively left Reform UK and concentrated his political activities around the Trump camp in America. Up to just a few weeks prior to the 2024 general election Reform UK was being led by Richard Tice. Initially Farage declined to advance himself as a candidate, undertaking to proselytise for the Tice campaign around the country.

Who owns Reform UK?

A sudden volte-face occurred when Farage claimed he had a sense of guilt about not stepping forwards and letting his supporters down. In short order, Tice was replaced as Reform UK leader by the apparently selfless Farage. Previously, Tice had been a member, and co-founder with Arron Banks, of the Brexit campaigning group Leave EU. This organisation distinguished itself in 2018 by being fined £70,000 for breaching electoral law during the referendum campaign.

Tice’s tenure as leader of Reform had been marred by fractious personal relations in the party. He had secured, in March 2024, the defection of a former Conservative Party deputy chair and MP for Ashfield, Lee Anderson. This was achieved despite Anderson, just a few months earlier, having referred to Tice as a ‘pound shop Nigel Farage’ who should ‘pipe down a little bit’ so as not to exacerbate tensions between Tories and Reform to the benefit of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.

Tice’s response was to tell Sky News, ‘…we’re going to replace the Tories as the main alternative to Labour in those red wall seats.’ As the election turned out, the red wall seats the Johnson Tories took in 2019 largely returned to Labour. It was the Conservative Party that suffered loss of support in 2024.

The relative success of Reform under the renewed Farage leadership has also led to a reorganisation of the Party. Unusually, Reform UK was founded and owned by its leader, Farage, who initially established it as a private limited company in which he was the majority shareholder. Rarely, if ever, has a political party so blatantly reflected the capitalist system it is dedicated to serving. It was this that enabled Farage to simply take over the leadership again. As owner he didn’t require the democratic inconvenience of being voted into position by the membership.

Two months after the 2024 general election, at its Birmingham conference, Reform was informed by its leader that he intended giving up his shares, and thereby his personal ownership. For the first time since its inception, members would be able to vote on party matters. The party leader was, in future, to be elected and could subsequently be removed by a vote of no confidence. However, such a vote would only happen if 50 percent of the membership wrote to the chairman requesting one.

Alternatively, Reform MPs can trigger such a vote if 50 of them, or 50 percent, demand one. This only applies when there is a minimum of 100 MPs. The purpose behind this change is to attract a larger membership, although it does leave the leader in a strong, dominant position.

Companies House records show that Reform 2025 is now the shareholder, and that neither Farage nor Tice continue to hold shares. Reform UK has become a non-profit organisation limited by guarantee. Again, a reflection of capitalist structure is maintained.

Demagogic populism

Unsurprisingly, the policies of Reform, styled as a ‘contract with the people’ are, in many ways, largely indistinguishable from those of the other parliamentary parties, excepting differences of emphasis and nuance.

Policies include immigration and its control, increasing police numbers with more ‘bobbies on the beat’, cutting NHS waiting lists, reducing the tax burden and tweaking various taxes, freeing businesses from red tape, fast tracking brownfield development sites for housing, speeding up development of nuclear energy, increasing defence spending etc.

Education policies do give an insight into the political shading of Reform. They propose to scrap student loan interest (going for the youth vote?), ban teaching critical race theory and gender ideology, fine universities guilty of political bias or cancel culture, offer private school tax relief, re-introduce home economics, double pupil referral units, and make the school curriculum more ‘patriotic’.

There is a pervasive demagogic populism running through Reform UK. This is personified in Nigel Farage who does not typically appear as a fanatical ranter. Rather, his style is that of the plain speaker of common sense, appealing to the interests of various groups of voters.

There are business tax cuts for one section of the Tory-minded, VAT adjustments to deal with the cost of living, anti-woke messaging for the ‘you can’t say anything these days’ brigade and, of course immigration control. It’s pick-and-mix politics, a selection of flavours so nearly everyone’s taste is accommodated.

Underlying it all, as with the other parliamentary parties, is the broad if unacknowledged agreement not to challenge capitalism at all. That leaves the cause of the various concerns afflicting people free to operate as it does, as it must, driven by the absolute unquenchable thirst for profit. Production for profit and not for need would continue unhindered under a Reform administration.

The myriad problems people face in the UK, as around the world, cannot be solved by Reform or any other party committed to capitalism, the very system that is the source of the problems. Voting is important, but voting for another status-quo party, no matter how populist, will solve nothing.

Because the vote is valuable don’t give it away to a party making promises it can’t keep. Like any scam call ask the question, am I going to take what is offered on trust? Or should I take a considered, conscious decision to act in concert with others like me to achieve what will benefit us all?

Regressive mouthpiece

Reform UK has recently begun to show itself, for all its democratic claims, as a party where personal ambition and in-fighting are the order of the day. Rupert Lowe, just 8 months on from the general election, has had the Reform whip withdrawn. Also, the party has referred their MP to the police for threatening Zia Yusuf, the chair. There is also an internal investigation into possible staff bullying. Lowe has responded by appointing his own legal team. Perhaps of greater concern for Reform is that Lowe dominates Reform’s digital-first community with more than 300,000 followers on X. It may well be that Reform UK has had its moment in the political sun.

It is not possible to predict the future for Reform UK. It seems unlikely to garner enough support to amass a parliamentary majority. It may well have significant influence as the repository and mouthpiece of regressive, even xenophobic sectors of the electorate. Unfortunately, those sectors may, at present, constitute a rather greater number of voters than was once the case.

This indicates the importance of socialists continuing to challenge capitalism directly, and not to get drawn into specific concerns about Reform UK or any similar political group that might emerge in the future. Only when the majority of people come to embrace socialism and actively seek to abolish capitalism, will all the present parties, including Reform UK, become wholly irrelevant and disappear from the political sphere. This would be truly ‘reforming’ UK politics.

D. A.

Where Farage won (2024)

From the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

A leprous body rots not from the head but from the extremities: this applies also to our diseased body politic. Starved of the lifeblood of economic activity, England’s forgotten peripheral towns have become necrotic tissue, an economically irrelevant expulsion of the disabled, the unemployed, the retired, along with a sufficient garrison of minimum-wage staff to run the tills and dole counters and care homes: the underpaid and the undermourned.

Welcome to Clacton

A decision was made, long ago, to arrange matters in this way, first under Thatcher and then under New Labour and subsequent governments. The focus would be the City, and such industries that were most profitable to export such as the arms trade, and the rest of the nation’s economy that was ill-served by this focus would be maintained by subsidy and the dole, paid with largesse from profits. Then once this policy was in place the other shoe dropped and the subsidy was withdrawn. A wildly unequal society emerged where a regional working class possessing only the ability to labour found no one who would buy, and no one who would make up the difference. There is a profitable economic axis from London to Liverpool with industry either side of the line: agricultural labour in the shires; but at the periphery there is despair brought and compounded by the arrival of uneconomic migrants who can no longer afford to live alongside those who still have wages.

These inward migrants of course blame immigrants of a darker hue for their troubles. A classic case of a post-hoc argument, whereby cheap labour arriving in the economic centres coinciding with the displacement of English workers is treated as a cause. And there is a certain reason: arriving workers are simply better skilled and less organised, commanding lower wages and conditions for a given productivity. Instead of insisting on integrating new arrivals, as workers in the core are wont to do, they blame them for their troubles. Which is why they can be found abusing lifeboat crews and hapless seaborne migrants, resisting the immigrant wave across the South Coast like so many latter-day Cnuts.

This is the classic view, but there are significant mitigations. For example, during the Corbyn years the Clacton Labour branch as least trebled in size, hardly a sign of universal right-wing opinion. In local politics, Clacton has one Labour ward, largely of local people who work in the town. Jaywick, which one would think the most viscerally aggrieved, returned two independents, at least one of which is of a left-Labour bent and a former Labour councillor. The trend for much of the town, however, is for Conservative councillors in the business town wards but pro-Brexit independents dominating most of the just-scraping-by residential areas of the town, who are by and large expelled Conservatives. Further out, like some political chromatography experiment, the countryside is Tory, the villages are LibDem, and neighbouring Harwich and Dovercourt, being a working town, is pretty solidly Labour. So there’s nothing in the sea air that necessarily drives the Reform/UKIP vote. Inland, political views normalise. And where there is local economic activity, politics arguably fall almost as Left as one can expect south of the Wash. Brexit and anti-immigrant politics express themselves partially across the dispossessed, but mainly the displaced from London, and mainly east London, who are arguably the plague carriers, self-employed traders such as plumbers but also East End retirees migrating down the A12 corridor, bringing the knuckle-dragging Alf Garnett politics of the I’m-all-right-Jack boomer generation. Meanwhile the spouses of such workers are under pressure to, well, espouse their spouses’ views for the sake of a quiet life.

Electoral evidence

This picture tends to be supported by the electoral evidence. It is hard to recall, fifteen years on, how significant the BNP was in the 2010 general election: the year the Clacton constituency was formed, now separated from the more industrial (and Labour) Harwich. They received 4.6 percent in Clacton, but in the East End of London Nick Griffin achieved a record 14.6 percent of the Barking vote. Dagenham and Rainham was their second most successful at 11.2 percent; Thurrock at 7.9 percent, Upminster at 6.4 percent, Basildon 5.6 percent, Romford at 5.2 percent, all kept their deposits. The BNP imploded after 2010, but the hate they had inhabited and encouraged lingered, and as the years passed this rough beast shuffled along the road towards Clacton, waiting to be reborn.

If we look at the Clacton general election results we find the following. In 2010 the Tories won 53 percent, Labour 25 percent, LibDem 12.9 percent, BNP 4.6 percent, and ‘Tendring First’ (a grouping expelled from the Conservatives) 2.5 percent. In 2014 the Conservative MP, Douglas Carswell, switched to UKIP and forced a by-election which he won with 59.7 percent, with Conservative Giles Watling on 24.6, and Labour with 11.2 percent. The LibDems had collapsed to 1.3 percent. In 2015 Carswell kept the seat for UKIP with 44.4 percent as opposed to 36.7 percent for the Conservative candidate. In 2017 Carswell didn’t stand, Watling secured 61.2 percent for the Conservatives, but Labour got 25.2 percent with a local (now Green) Left candidate, and UKIP trailed at 7.6 percent with a new candidate. In 2019 Watling gained 72.3 percent of the vote, Labour 15.5 percent under a centre-right unknown (the initial Left candidate was smeared as an antisemite and replaced by head office), the LibDems won 5.8 percent, the Greens creeping up on 2.8 percent. Which brings us to the current 2024 result with Farage on 46.2 percent for Reform, Watling for the Conservatives on 27.9 percent, a foisted (but later withdrawn for apparently being too charismatic!) Labour candidate on 16.2 percent, and the LibDems on 4.4 percent and Greens on 4.2 percent. There was an additional 1 percent for two disgruntled UKIPpers standing as independents: one had been the Reform candidate before Farage thrust him aside.

So, wading through the data, the right-wing vote in Clacton (Con, UKIP, Reform, BNP, Independent) was 61 percent in 2010 but has been steady at about 75 percent since. There was a pulse of personal and UKIP support in 2014 and 2015 for Carswell’s candidacy which may have helped drive further into the rump vote for a few extra percent. 2017 was left-Labour’s year under Corbyn, gaining fully 10 percent from the Conservative vote, but sinking back later to an average 15 percent. And in 2024 the right-wing vote was arguably ‘average’ for the seat. Farage didn’t take votes off Labour, LibDem or Green (who increased their vote by 50 percent with left-Labour votes), he simply split the Conservative vote, doing much worse than Carswell did for UKIP a decade ago. Both right and left have radicalised, the right to Reform and the left to the Greens, while a 10 percent vote, rootless since the LibDem’s self-immolation, has swung to Carswell, to Corbyn, and now straddles LibDem and Green.

How did he do it?

As a Clacton resident, I can speak to how the trick was done. Money. They rented prime town space for a campaign office, just round the corner from the Wetherspoons pub. There were the Reform leaflets. Then there were several ‘personal communications’ from supposed private citizens, like a doctor begging us to vote Reform to save the NHS. As well as enormous and copious signage, there were A-frame flatbed lorries with mobile signs, at least one with a massive TV display, and also parked on prominent bridges, across not just the constituency but the surrounding council area. And of course the celebrity factor of Farage’s name. And, as Channel 4 discovered, racists from London come down to spread their filth door to door.

In conclusion, there hasn’t been a shift to the right. There has been a shift rightwards within the right (and, within the left, leftwards), while 10 percent of voters will vote for anything that looks fresh. While Thatcher defeated the National Front by stealing their policies, so the far right has metastasised within the Conservatives and Farage is holding what now amounts to an internal debate. But whereas many Northern towns can see the same right-wing voters emerge in the same place decades later, London has flung its white, politically dispossessed to the coastal periphery. In the end, Clacton’s political change may depend on probate as a resentful post-war generation, that watched the Empire fall and colonials progress to equals, and then shuffled to the coast to retire, shuffles a little further off.

Clactonian

The big picture (2024)

From the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

I have a few friends who are politically active. One with the Green Party, another for Labour. A third is/was in the Jeremy Corbyn camp, though comes from a Trotskyist background. All three agreed the priority in the election was to get the Tories out.

I must confess to an emotional sympathy with this sentiment. The Tories seem to embody the worst political features of selfishness, virulent nationalism and an absence of empathy for the plight of others. Their appeal is to encourage such in others. However, the socialist knows no matter how accurate this view may be, the alternatives cannot offer policies of significant difference. They may well have varied and more humanely positive motives, but the practical outcomes of their governance would be so similar to a Tory administration as to be virtually indistinguishable.

This is because at root the political problem was not the Conservative Party, no matter how unpleasant it may be, but the economic system that drives all government policy, whatever party label it is enacted under, capitalism.

Billions of pounds required

It was instructive listening not to what the parties claim to be offering the electorate, but the advocates for various groups and sections of society. Child care, for instance, the expense or lack of it, inhibiting family incomes and, often, women’s career opportunities. Billions of pounds required.

Care for the elderly presents increased life expectancy as an ever burgeoning financial burden society must find billions for.

The National Health Service is unable to meet the demands made upon it. People in long term pain or dying prematurely for want of appointments, treatment and operations. Hospitals literally crumbling. Another pot of gold required.

Many incomes are below what workers and their families require simply to sustain themselves. Men and women often doing two, sometimes more, jobs and still not having enough money to afford rent, never mind buy, a home, or put adequate food on the table. Food banks and income credits/ benefits required: more billions of pounds.

The mantra of the anti-Tory parties was that all this, and more, was the result of 14 years of Conservative government. Which surely poses a question. Why would they intentionally govern to deprive the vast majority of what they need?

Perhaps it is because they are the nasty party. Yet, if this was the case they would be foolishly prioritising their visceral nastiness at the expense of their hold on government. Surely, if they could simply arrange the money transfers to meet all such urgent needs they’d garner the votes of the electorate for the foreseeable future.

The argument may well be made that the Conservative Party is in such collusion with the capitalists their priority is to protect capitalism’s profit-making at the expense of the workers, the great majority. This analysis is correct, as far as it goes.

Unfortunately, the Tory motivation, in this respect, is not unique to them, but fundamental to whichever party assumes government responsibilities. It is instructive to consider what occurred when a Tory administration acted against the interests of capital.

No one could accuse Liz Truss as being anything other than an archetypal Tory, other than she has blonde hair rather than a blue rinse. Yet her premiership was brief and quickly ended not via the ballot box, but the actions of the market. The leader of the democratically elected government was brought down because she was perceived to be a threat to the financial structure of capitalism. No secret cabal required, no illicit meeting of shadowy figures acting on behalf of capital. Merely the mechanisms of the market were enough to be self-protecting and dispense with the prime minister. What price democracy?

All this will have been, and still is, perfectly obvious to the now Prime Minister and his Chancellor of the Exchequer even when they saw themselves as the government in waiting. The Labour Party campaign in this general election was founded on protestations of fiscal probity.

It’s time for a change, but without spending more. Or at least no increase in taxation. As taxation is the only source of government income, other than borrowing which is also being disavowed, the financial requirements just to sustain society, set out above, cannot be met.

Not created by governments

Unless, of course, there is the sharp upturn in the country’s economy that is being cited as a potential wellspring for meeting the increased and increasing demands. There is historical precedent. The post-Second World War boom did enable an expansion of government spending on social programmes by Labour and Conservative administrations.

But that financial boost was not created by governments. The recovery from the destruction of the war created the possibilities for capitalism to exploit and create the wealth. It was starting from the very low baseline of the economic depression preceding the war and ended rather abruptly in the 1970s.

Since when, governments have largely been managing greatly reduced financial resources. The Thatcher years saw manufacturing subordinated to finance capitalism and the supposed free market. That baton was then handed on, via John Major, to the Labour administration of Tony Blair. His government benefited from a financial uplift for a while, then in 2007-8 came the crash. By the 2010 general election the Conservative opposition was proclaiming 13 years of Labour misgovernment as being responsible for the general financial woes.

This was as an unjustified claim as is the present Labour one of 14 years of Conservative maladministration. The similarity of time periods is interesting. Governments create neither booms nor busts. Undoubtedly if they did there would only be booms.

So, voting Labour, whether of the present Starmer, or previous Corbyn, variety could not fundamentally change the economic situation. It matters little how good or bad their intentions are. The Green Party could, along with the Liberal Democrats (and even Reform), make whatever promises they wish as they won’t be in a position to realise them.

Even a proposal such as the basic income, advocated by the Greens, is really just another form of benefit that would have to be funded. Ultimately, that funding, via income tax, business tax or some sort of tax, would come from capital. However attractive that might seem initially, it is a subtraction from wealth creation that capitalism would be bound to react to. The markets would decide and an economic downturn would be of no benefit for workers.

International dimension

It always has to be kept in mind that capitalism, while it has national iterations, is an international system. A government policy, no matter how well intentioned, that was deemed adverse to capitalism would see its productive resources relocated elsewhere.

Presently some FTSE 100 companies are deserting the City to relocate in other stock exchanges. Their motivation is simply expectation of greater financial returns. The Henley Private Mitigation Report indicates that 2024 will see a net loss of approximately 9,500 of what the report terms high-net-worth individuals, compared with 4,200 the previous year. The Henley is a consultancy that monitors migration trends. It reported that between 1950 and the early 2000s Britain saw a continuous influx of millionaires. That trend has now been seriously reversed. This has been exacerbated more recently following Brexit with 16,500 leaving between 2017 and 2023.

Such is surely a demonstration of how government policy, even if implementing the decision of the ballot box, can adversely affect capital decision making. No matter how determined a particular government might be to access the wealth of non-doms, for instance, those funds all too easily migrate.

This is how capitalism works, no matter how reformers wish it were otherwise. Consider what happened to British manufacturing in the Thatcher years. For example, it is still possible to buy the quintessential British motorcycle the Royal Enfield, but made in India.

Any short-term gain made by a basic income will be undone in the medium to long term. Just as has, and is, happening to the welfare state and National Health Service.

What’s the alternative?

Supporters of the ‘let’s get the Tories out’ parties asked what other alternative there was. Truth can be difficult, especially when it is inconvenient or not immediately helpful. The only truthful response is, look at the big picture.

There is indeed a better way. That is a worldwide commonwealth based on meeting people’s self-defined needs through production based on those same people contributing whatever they can. Then there will be no need for billions or even trillions of pounds or dollars or whatever as there’ll be no money.

Capitalism transcended by socialism is the only solution. Otherwise, the electorate are merely voting to maintain what presently is with all its ills unaddressed and beyond solution while things stay as they are. Every vote, for whichever party, is a vote for capitalism.

Voters can decide they will pursue real change, but they must act consciously together to achieve it. No party, including The Socialist Party, can deliver it for them. It is undoubtedly a tremendous task and responsibility. Although it does not address immediate concerns which are so very difficult for many, it is the only real alternative.

Capitalism has developed the technology and the means for the socialist change, but its own fundamental motivation of capital accumulation through profit-making will always prevent it from being generally beneficial.

So democracy will either continue to be the means of choosing governance on behalf of capitalism, or become part of the change to socialism. That is the big picture.

Dave Alton

Party News: Election results (2024)

Party News from the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party stood candidates in last month’s general election and also in the previous month’s elections to the Greater London Assembly. Here are the detailed results.

General Election

Clapham and Brixton Hill: Ribeiro-Addy (Lab) 24,166; Curtis (LD) 6,161; Yuen (Green) 5,768; Saroy (Con) 4,360; Matlock (Reform) 1,758; Key (Ind) 406; Martin (Soc) 122.

Folkestone and Hythe: Vaughan (Lab) 15,020; Collins (Con) 11,291; Wright (Reform) 10,685; Brett (Green) 3,954; Ngan (LD) 1,736; Khanom (TUSC) 249; Allen (Fairer Voting) 240; Thomas (Soc) 71. 

Greater London Assembly

Barnet and Camden: Clarke (Lab) 70,749; Redmond (Con) 51,606; Tokley (Green) 18,405; Emery (LD) 12,335; Forhad (Reform) 7,703; Martin (Soc) 1,369.

Lambeth and Southwark: Ahmad (Lab) 84,768; Sheppard (Green) 35,144; French (LD) 22,030; Wallace (Con) 22,121; Sharp (Reform) 8,942; Buick (Soc) 2,082.

Nothing to get excited about (2024)

From the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reporting the result of last month’s general election, Reuters said ‘Keir Starmer returned the Labour Party to power’. ‘Power’ is not the right word as it suggests that being the government gives its members more control than they actually have and in fact generally believe they have. It suggests that they have the power to control the economy and make it work as they want. However, the capitalist economic system operates according to economic laws which are beyond the control of governments, however resolute or well-intentioned those who compose them may be.

Of course, governments are not completely powerless. There are some things they can do. They control the armed forces and other means of coercion. On the economic field they can control the issue of the currency, levy taxes, grant subsidies and impose tariffs. But they do not control and cannot control the way the economy works. They can pass laws and draw up plans about economic matters, but this does not mean that these laws and plans can be implemented as envisaged nor, if they are, that they will have the intended effect. Capitalism is an economic system that operates according to its own economic laws which governments ignore at their peril.

These economic laws can be summed up as:

• the capitalist economy is an integrated world economy; there is no ‘British economy’ or ‘German economy’ or even ‘American economy’. What exists is a world capitalist economy which dominates all countries.
• since government activity does not produce any wealth, all the resources consumed by governments, whether for ‘defence’ or social reforms, have to come from the surplus over costs created in the productive sector of the economy, whether private or state.
• the private sector is motivated by the search for profits since these are the source of funds which private enterprises need to continue productive activity; in fact, making a profit is the only reason why this sector produces anything.

Given this, it is more accurate to say that when a party wins an election and gets to form the government what happens is that they come into office. Members of their party replace as ministers members of the outgoing party. It’s a replacement of decision-making personnel, but personnel without the power to make the economy work otherwise than it does.

It would be a rhetorical flourish to describe them as office clerks since they do have more decision-making power than that. A better term would be that are the middle management of the world capitalist economic system. Like middle managers they are given a remit from above with some leeway as to how to implement it. In the case of governments, the remit is to apply the economic laws of capitalism that dictate that priority must be given to profits and conditions for profit-making. Although the economic laws of capitalism are impersonal they are not self-enforcing but require personnel to enforce them, and this is what governments are alongside the executives of business enterprises.

All that happened on 4-5th July was a change of middle management. Nothing to get excited about.

Cooking the Books: The blame game (2024)

The Cooking the Books column from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to the media, the main issue in the election has been the state of the economy. The Labour Party has made it the central point in their campaign, seeking to blame the outgoing Conservative government for slow growth and stagnating living standards. In a typical example of their (rather overblown) propaganda Rachel Reeves, the would-be Chancellor of the Exchequer, stated:

‘The Tories have had 14 years to fix the nation’s roof. Instead, they smashed the windows, kicked the door in and burnt the house down. Here’s the honest truth about Rishi Sunak’s record in power in ten words: our country is poorer and working people are worse off’ (fundraising email to Labour supporters, 25 May).

This is to put the blame for the current state of the economy entirely on the government. It is to assume that a government can control the way the economy works. This is an assumption made not just by the Labour Party but shared by the Tories themselves and by other groups of politicians who aspire to be the government such as the Lib-Dems and the Greens. But it is mistaken.

The economy is driven by the quest for profits by private and state enterprises competing to sell the goods and services that they employ workers to produce or provide. This gives rise to impersonal economic forces which determine the level of production and employment.

Governments can only react to the economy as it goes through its never-ending cycles of expansion and contraction. They can’t control this. As far as the operation of the economy is concerned, governments just preside over what is happening; they are in office but not in power. The power that they do have to intervene in the economy, through taxation, subsidies and spending, is limited by the state the economy is in at any particular time and the permanent need to give priority to profit-making and conditions for this. It is this that leads them, when the economy is not growing, to cut spending on public services and social benefits.

In the political game played by parties competing to stay in or come into office, the ploy of the Outs, when a government is forced to cut back its spending, is to blame the Ins for what the operation of capitalism has forced them to do, which in this election the Labour Party has been playing for all its worth. On the other hand, when capitalism is in a period of expansion which a government happens to be presiding over, the ploy of the Ins is to claim credit for this even though this has nothing to do with what they have done.

While the economic policy a government pursues can’t make things better it can make them worse. The short-lived Truss government is a case in point. A government which tried to spend its way out of a period of contraction or stagnation would be another.

The Labour Party has learned this since the end of the 1970s and its current policy is based entirely on trying to encourage economic growth. It’s a gamble. They could be lucky, as the Blair government was for a time, and be in office when the capitalist economy spontaneously expands, but it doesn’t look like it. A government can no more bring about growth than it can spend its way out of a period of slow or no growth.

A Starmer government won’t be able fix the roof either. On the other hand, when the windows get smashed and the door kicked in, they won’t be to blame; capitalism will be.

What is socialism? (2024)

From the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the beginning of the election campaign Starmer was reported as saying that he considered himself a socialist. According to Chris Mason, the BBC’s Political Editor, ‘Starmer told me today he sees himself as a socialist. For those scared of that label, he said he saw it as putting “the country at the service of working people”’ (27 May 18.04).

Few can have believed that Starmer is in any sense a socialist, but it at least provoked the media into talking about ‘socialism’. In an ‘explainer’ article, the Guardian (28 May) even asked ‘What is Socialism?’ Their answer reflected dictionary definitions, which describe how a word is used rather than how it should be:

‘Like many political philosophies it means different things to different people. But broadly socialists believe all human beings are of equal worth and that society should be organised to reflect that. Fairness, equality, justice and the common good are the foundations of socialism. The wealth created by humans should be used to benefit everyone. Some socialists believe that key industries and sectors, such as utilities, transport and housing, should be owned by the state and run in the public interest rather than for private profit. Other socialists believe that all industries and sectors should be run this way’.

We have inherited a definition of socialism which we consider to be both logically and historically correct — a system of society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of living by and in the interest of the whole community. But we can go along with some of the things the Guardian says. For instance, that ‘all human beings are of equal worth and that society should be organised to reflect that’ and ‘that wealth created by humans should be used to benefit everyone’.

On the other hand, describing the foundation of socialism as fairness, equality, justice and the common good doesn’t tell us anything as different people have different opinions as to what is fair, just or in the common interest. Supporters of capitalism could — and in fact do — claim this for capitalism.

The question is: on what basis would society have to be organised to ensure everybody is of equal worth and wealth used to benefit everyone? In our view it could only be on the basis of the means of living (land, industry, transport, communications, etc) being the common property of the whole community. In other words, belonging to everybody but this is the same as belonging to nobody. A socialist society is one where no individual or group of individuals has ownership or controlling rights, in law or in fact, over the resources to produce what society needs to survive as this puts them in a privileged position vis-à-vis the rest of society.

A classless society means that everybody stands in the same relationship to the means of living as everybody else, each having the same opportunity to have a say in how society is run, through democratic procedures of one kind or another. Without the means of living being commonly owned and democratically controlled, the wealth that humans create cannot be used to benefit everyone. Only once freed from the constraints of sectional ownership and the economic forces set in motion when there is production for the market, can society be in a position to do this.

The Guardian (and dictionaries) attempt to grasp the idea of common ownership, which is indeed the basis of socialism, by equating this with ‘public/government ownership’ defined as ownership by the state. But the state is not the same as the community. The state is an institution standing above society controlled by and for a section only of the members of society. Under capitalism it is controlled by that section that owns and controls the means of living. The ‘public interest’ is their interest and ‘public ownership’ is ownership by them as a class. What government ownership amounts to is state capitalism.

Ever since our foundation in 1904 we have consistently argued that government ownership is not socialism. See, for instance, ‘Nationalisation not Socialism’, March 1908 and ‘Evolution and State Capitalism’, April 1910.

That state capitalism is the same as socialism is the most common misunderstanding as to what socialism means. It can even be described as the illusion of the epoch. It is only on the basis of this mistake that the Labour Party (at one time, a long time ago) and Russia when it was the USSR could be described as socialist.

What Starmer thought socialism is was not clear, but he did mention to Chris Mason that it meant ‘the country in the service of working people’. That’s not socialism either. In fact it’s how the Conservatives might describe conservatism and the Lib Dems liberalism. But at least it is something that a Starmer Labour government can be judged by.

The trouble for him is that a country with a capitalist economy simply cannot be made to serve the interest of ‘working people’, or the social class made up of people who, through being excluded from ownership and control of the means of living, are forced by economic necessity to sell their working skills to some employer. A society based on minority ownership and production for profit can never be made to work in their interest as making profits for capitalist enterprises ahead of satisfying people’s needs is built into it. Hence the problems that the working class face. As these arise from capitalism, they cannot be solved without getting rid of capitalism.

We confidently predict, therefore, that Starmer will fail in his endeavour to make capitalism serve the working class. Socialism, properly understood as the common ownership and democratic control of the means of living, is the only framework in which people can be social equals and production re-oriented to serve people’s needs.

Adam Buick

All change for the gravy train (2024)

From the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The next prime minister on the gravy train arriving at the Westminster platform will have won a general election with bold promises of change. Welcome to more of the same shit, different day!

At the time of writing, we can’t say with total certainty what the outcome of the election will be. And unless you are someone who enjoys a flutter at the bookie’s in the hope of predicting the result of such an event correctly, the reality is that it will make little or no difference to your future as a member of the working class.

What with the two mainstream parties of Labour and the Tories alongside the likes of the Lib Dems, the Greens, or the more colourful characters such as Nigel Farage from Reform UK, or George Galloway of the Workers Party all offering ‘change,’ it is impossible to understand just how much society could realistically be reformed to include the content in each of their false speeches and empty rhetoric. Unless of course they had developed new magical powers. A potential claim that would probably surprise no one, had one of them dared to make it. Or perhaps that would be taking Artificial Intelligence a bit too far. Even by a professional politician’s standards. Frankly, in the absence of there being an SPGB candidate in your area, you may well as vote for the Monster Raving Loony Party. Or if you want to make a more meaningful statement, try writing ‘World Socialism’ across your ballot paper. It will be noted by the vote counters and tellers.

Should there be a new government on 5 July (aka executive committee of the capitalist class) one thing we can say for sure is that whichever leader appears victorious will no doubt be declaring what glorious days lie ahead as they take up residence at number 10 Downing Street.

Having just spent the last six weeks successfully convincing enough voters that they represent the party of change, much like characters from a Batman movie with Rishi Sunak playing the part of Joker and Keir Starmer playing the part of Riddler, it was barely possible to distinguish any degree of sincerity or integrity between them as they both tried to outfox each other with a combination of dubious facts and figures during those cringeworthy televised debates. How often have we heard before that they will be the solution of all that is wrong, before we are exposed to another five years of lies, deceit and excuses as to why they have failed to deliver on their false promises? And when the honeymoon period is finally over, it will not be long until they start blaming the previous administration for the mess they inherited when things inevitably start to go wrong, as they fail to fulfil the promises and commitments of their pre-election manifesto. Instead of being honest and accepting that the real problems we face in society lie in the economic priorities that underpin capitalism’s insatiable appetite for profit at the expense of real human needs.

In summary, no matter which party goes on to govern, so long as the status quo remains, the outcome will once again mean victory for the capitalist class and defeat for the working class. Only when the majority of workers across the world develop a true understanding and consciousness of the need for socialism will we be able to form the kind of society necessary to fulfil our individual and collective needs.

Paul Edwards

Our candidates in the July 2024 election (2024)

Party News from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

FOLKESTONE AND HYTHE

Want real change? Vote for a new world

For the last 120 years the Socialist Party of Great Britain has been fighting for a new world. A world owned and democratically controlled by all the people on this planet instead of a tiny minority interested only in raking in profits at the expense of human happiness and the health of our fragile planet.

This new world will be a world without borders, with free access to the abundant wealth we will create by working together, A world where work is freely contributed according to our abilities and interests. Where communities self-organise without the need for leaders.

A world in which we will live in harmony with the planet, taking just what we need to live a good life. We will grow food locally and build houses and public buildings using the best materials and in sympathy with the natural environment. We will choose the most sustainable – not the most profitable – forms of generating power.

We believe recent advances in technology have made this new world possible to bring about as soon as enough people want and vote for it.

Contrast this vision of how we could live with the appalling reality we will be forced to live whichever ‘mainstream’ party is elected on July 4th.

A collapsing health and social security system; growing childhood poverty; construction of monstrous blocks of housing for the rich along the Folkestone seafront and harbour arm while most Folkestone residents live in increasingly unaffordable and dilapidated rented accommodation or struggle to afford a mortgage; profit-driven water companies pouring raw sewage into Folkestone and Hythe’s rivers and beaches. Add to this the daily tragedy of fellow humans risking life and limb to cross the Channel to escape the poverty and war directly caused by the global profit system carving out empires across Africa and the Middle East.

It does not matter which of the ‘main’ political parties you vote for – Conservative, Labour, Greens, Lib Dems and the rest. They all support the continuation of the profit system with all the deprivation, destruction and division it brings.

A vote for the Socialist Party is not a wasted vote. It is a positive choice rejecting the horrors of the profit system and embracing a new future for humanity free of poverty, war and environmental devastation.

If you agree VOTE SOCIALIST on Thursday 4th July

CLAPHAM AND BRIXTON HILL

VOTE SOCIALIST

The Socialist Party urges a truly democratic society in which people take all the decisions that shape their lives. This means a society without rich and poor, without owners and workers, without governments and governed, a society without leaders and led.

In such a society people would cooperate to use all the world’s natural and industrial resources in their own interests. They would free production from the artificial restraint of profit and establish a system of society in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation.

Socialist society would mean the end of buying, selling and exchange; an end to borders and frontiers; an end to organised violence and coercion, waste, want and war.

You can use your vote to show you want to overturn capitalism and end the problems it causes once and for all. When enough of us join together, determined to end inequality and deprivation, we can transform elections into a means of doing away with a society of minority rule in favour of a society of real democracy and social equality.

If you agree with the idea of a society of common and democratic ownership where no one is left behind and things are produced because they are needed, and not to make a profit for some capitalist corporation, and are prepared to join with us to achieve this then vote for the SOCIALIST PARTY candidate BILL MARTIN.

Promoted by the Socialist Party of Great Britain on behalf of Bill Martin, both of 52 Clapham High Street, SW4 7UN, and of Andy Thomas, of 74 Linden Crescent, CT19 5SB

Socialist Sonnet No. 156: Before Polling (2024)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog 

Before Polling

 By the day before polling, all speeches

Are spoken, the arguments won or lost,

Promises promised, fingers firmly crossed.

Meanwhile, common experience teaches,

Manifestos are just works of fiction,

No matter how detailed, or blessedly brief,

They require suspension of disbelief.

Everyone who has a predilection

To regard suffrage as a precious gem,

Might consider the parties and decline

To cast the pearl of their vote for the swine

Who have all consistently misled them.

Day after polling, as things are arranged,

Voters will find that very little’s changed.

 D. A.

A socialist future? (2024)

From the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the many organisations standing candidates in the General Election is the newly founded Communist Future (see their no-frills website at communistfuture.com, which includes their manifesto). They are contesting just one seat, the Manchester Central constituency.

They say in their manifesto that the working class are those who have to work for a wage. Capitalism cannot achieve the potential of giving everyone a life of fulfilment, as a small minority own most of the resources needed to produce and distribute goods and services, resulting in crisis and instability. Instead of capitalism, they stand for a society with no class system: the means of production should be the shared property of everyone and be democratically managed. The communist future will be ‘a society of freedom and fulfilment for all, a setting free of human potential.’

This all sounds very promising, and is on the same sort of lines as the case of the Socialist Party, though it would be good to hear a bit more about what their future society would involve, such as implying the ending of wage labour. On the other hand, Communist Future do express support demands for reforms, such as controls on rents and reduced working hours, though accepting that these can only provide short-term gains. They also support ‘demands that promote political freedom’, including an end to the House of Lords and the monarchy. They say they are not standing in the election in order to do things for people.

So they could certainly say more about the kind of society they want, and their advocacy of reforms is a sticking point. But it is certainly encouraging to see such an organisation making its voice heard.

Paul Bennett

Small change (2024)

From the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Islington North used to be the sort of quiet Labour safe seat where the staff could weigh the Labour vote and all go home. The Rise and Fall of Jeremy Corbyn has turned it into a place where national politics is played out.

With his campaign as an independent candidate (noticeably, he has not used his ‘Peace and Justice Foundation’ to create a new party, nor joined in with any other left party), Corbyn was early out of the blocks with leaflets delivered by volunteers: ‘Corbyn, an Independent Voice for All of Us’.

This was his chance to put out an uncompromising personal manifesto, freed from the shackles of Labour Party compromise. But the only time socialism is mentioned in the whole leaflet is an endorsement from a member of the Jewish Socialist Group, though only in that group’s name. Given how central Corbyn’s support for Palestine is in his personal politics (to the extent that it was the core of the antisemitism smear used against him) this is the only reference to the Gaza conflict, and it is a reference only to Corbyn’s call for a ceasefire.

The list of policies (broad strokes as befits a leaflet) are for a more equal society, housing for all, a greener Islington, fully public NHS and peace and human rights. No mention of common ownership of the means of production.

Of course, a well-established candidate has the right to stand on their record; and Corbyn does, listing the campaigns he has been involved in over the years, like standing up for the local hospital, saving the number 4 bus, and turning a disused space into a park. All laudable local things.

It is a failure of an opportunity to make a case for socialism if that was his priority, and what we are left with is a clear case that what Jeremy Corbyn has always stood for is campaigning for small changes. Win or lose, this leaflet is his political testament.

Pik Smeet

Editorial: A chance to vote for socialism (2024)

Editorial from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the coming General Election, you’re being asked to vote for parties who all have the same way of looking at things. They all support the continuation of the present system of money and wages, buying and selling and production for the market rather than for human need. There are marginal differences between them as to how this system should be run, for example with more or less control or ownership by government rather than by private companies or individuals.

But whichever one of them comes to power, the same thing always results – crises of one kind or the other, damage to the environment, wars causing death and suffering in various parts of the world, and in the UK many people going without even the basics of food and housing. This is in a country – and a world – that could produce abundance for everyone and easily satisfy the fundamental interest shared by everyone – a secure, comfortable life for ourselves and our families.

But this is not possible – and never will be possible – in a world where a tiny minority of people possess the vast majority of the wealth, governments run this system and the vast majority of people have to be satisfied – if they are lucky – with just getting by.

Voting for any of the established parties in the forthcoming election will not help to change this and in fact will just mean more of the same. But the election will nevertheless give you the opportunity to register your opposition to the existing system of society by voting, in the two constituencies the Socialist Party is contesting – see page 5 – for the Socialist Party candidate and, everywhere else, for none of the candidates or parties who are standing but by writing ‘Socialism – a world of free access’ across your ballot paper and doing this in your thousands.

When enough people are prepared to do this and take democratic action to bring the new system of society about, we already have, with modern means of communication and technology, the means to give everyone on the planet a comfortable life in a society of voluntary cooperation and planned abundance. This will be a society of free access to all goods and services, without buying and selling, without markets, without leaders and without frontiers – a society where people co-operate freely and produce what is needed to satisfy everyone’s needs.

STOP PRESS: News just in for 4 July elections (see your area for a detailed breakdown). Overall confirmed results are as follows: Capitalism has won an overall majority, while capitalism also came second and simultaneously trailed in third place. Stand by for our special in-depth analysis on the hugely positive differences this result will make to your life and the future of the planet, but don’t hold your breath as there won’t be any.

Socialist Sonnet No. 151: What Choice to Be Had? (2024)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog 

What Choice to Be Had?

Conservatives are the honest party

As it’s not their intention to deceive,

But make a virtue from what they believe:

Capitalism’s the best that can be.

Labour, meanwhile, has carefully nursed

A leftish image when it arranges

Sops and reforms, although little changes,

That can be quickly and easily reversed.

Neither will hinder private wealth taking,

While pursuing general prosperity

Via perpetual austerity

For all those who must work at wealth making.

Whichever party might suffer defeat,

The choice will be between con or de ceit.

D. A.

Socialist Sonnet No. 150: General Election (2024)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog 

 

General Election

 

The prime minister’s been to the palace,

As the royal prerogative’s involved,

The monarch declared parliament dissolved.

And then there began the unseemly chase

For votes; promises made that can’t be kept

To enhance general prosperity,

While maintaining stringent austerity;

Just mark your cross and passively accept.

Even the best of intentions must fail,

Left, right or centre put on a good show,

But whoever wins most certainly knows

Capital’s priorities will prevail.

Then, when a new government’s been arranged,

Whether red, yellow or blue, nothing’s changed.

 D. A.

Letter to the Islington Tribune (2024)

From the SPGB Discussion Forum

The below letter has been sent to the local freesheet in Islington:

Dear Friend,

It is impressive that within two days of Jeremy Corbyn announcing he is standing as an independent candidate his campaign volunteers have put a leaflet through my letter box.

Freed from the shackles of putting the Labour Party line, he has been free to put his true self and programme forward.

Yet, in his election address there is no mention of socialism, nor any discussion of the common ownership of the means of creating wealth.

Taxing the rich means you have to let the rich earn the money to be taxed, relying on the capitalist drive to profit. Common ownership instead means democratically directing wealth to match human needs.

At this election, then, Socialist Party members will not be supporting Mr. Corybn’s campaign. As we can’t vote for a socialist candidate in this constituency this time, we will be carrying out a write in vote, with our members writing “World Socialism” across their ballot papers. We urge anyone who supports our case to do likewise.

Pik Smeet