After reading coverage of his recent Fabian pamphlet and what he said in his speech to the Labour Conference I include at the end of this piece, the 10 pledges that Sir Kier Starmer made to party members during his campaign to become leader Note; 10 Pledges . They are all still on his website, but not obvious though you can still tweet support for each one individually (no longer c. Dec 2023)
Questions abound:
- Why didn't he state these 10 things crisply in his pamphlet and conference speech developing them into practical policies for a programme of government?
- Does he believe them, but actually think people won't vote for a programme based on them; if so, who did he say this to and when?
- Did he ever believe in them; any of them, which ones?
- If Labour needs to be trusted how does saying one thing and doing another help?
All of this begs the question – what should Labour be doing? I am writing this from a non-party perspective but also from one that wants to see a broad a coalition to bring in change for the better. However that works Labour has to be part of it.
Because, as the cliché has it, “we are where we are” some context is in order. Before I look at what Labour should do I am going to look at electoral mathematics and election behaviour.
Read more: Kier Starmer and that Conference Speech, October 2021
The 10 pledges are listed at the end of this article
They can also be found here; https://www.clpd.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Keir-Starmers-10-Pledges.pdf
The link above goes to the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy who have preserved them. They used to be access by the link below, its still showed them for some time after it was clear they were being jettisoned, I last accessed them Saturday 9th October 2021, they have since been erased and a slick corporate site has been put in place, you'd never know they existed.
https://keirstarmer.com/plans/10-pledges/
The National (Scoland) spotted the erasure 2nd December 2023
https://www.thenational.scot/news/23964078.keir-starmers-pledges-2020-election-erased-website/
House of Commons Briefing Paper 7529, UK Election Statistics; 1819-2021: A century of elections, Wednesday 18 August 2021
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7529/
Somethings do get better, such as the ease with which this type of data can be accessed
John Curtice, is the first speaker in this election special podcast
It's Bloody Complicated - A Compass Podcast, Election Special, Ep.42.
Democracy for Sale, Dark Money and Dirty Politics by Peter Geoghegan, Head of Zeus, 2020, ISBN 9781789546033
Summarising the content based on the publishers blurb;
Peter Geoghegan is a guide to the shadowy world of dark money and digital disinformation that stretches from Westminster to Washington, and beyond. He shows how out of date electoral laws are broken with impunity, how secretive lobbying bends our politics out of shape, and how Silicon Valley tech giants have colluded in selling out democracy. Geoghegan investigates politicians, well-funded partisan think tanks, propagandists who game the system, as well as the campaigners and regulators trying to stop them. This is the story of how money, vested interests and digital media manipulation are eroding democracy - and what needs to be done about it.
In plain sight, Boris Johnson is rigging the system to stay in power
Access to the Tory party is being bought by a new class of tycoon funders, Peter Oborne
In 2011 there was a survey of the membership and a report produced
https://labourlist.org/2011/03/hain-and-miliband-set-out-to-refound-labour/
and
https://debatsocialista.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/refoundinglabour.pdf
Ed Miliband wrote in the preface; In 13 years of government, Labour achieved a great deal of which can be proud but we also lost touch with many of the people we were founded to represent." The body of the report gives chapter and verse on the decline, e.g. "during thirteen years in government, sometimes we lost our way: we lost hundreds of councillors, thousands of members and five million voters - and then we lost the general election"..."Our affiliated membership among unions linked to Labour has gone down too, from a peak of 6.5 million in 1979 to 4.6 million in 1992, and in 2010 just 2.7 million"
There is also an acknowledgement that the two horse race no longer applies;
"General elections used to be a two horse race. No longer. In the 1950s and 1960s Labour and the Tories regularly took 90 per cent of the poll - fully 97 per cent in 1951. That dropped to 75 per cent in the mid 1970s. And it has dropped at each of the past four general elections, reaching a new low last year of only 67 per cent. This is the lowest level since 1922 when Labour first emerged as the main opposition to the Tories"
The idea of refounding hasn't gone away, in May 2021 Neal Lawson of Compass called for it.
Labour has caught the mood of the times. Now it needs new ideas to remake capitalism
and
The zeitgeist has shifted. Now the left is fizzing with ideas for a smarter economy
William Davis writing in the Guardian 9th October; When others stay silent about the ills of British capitalism, liars like Johnson rush in.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/09/ills-british-capitalism-liar-boris-johnson
In the internal report Refounding Labour op.cit. there is a clear acknowledgement that the two horse race (which made first past the post defendable) no longer applies. At least some in the Labour Party understand even if they are not willing to embrace the implications.
"General elections used to be a two horse race. No longer. In the 1950s and 1960s Labour and the Tories regularly took 90 per cent of the poll - fully 97 per cent in 1951. That dropped to 75 per cent in the mid 1970s. And it has dropped at each of the past four general elections, reaching a new low last year of only 67 per cent. This is the lowest level since 1922 when Labour first emerged as the main opposition to the Tories"
From the Introduction by Peter Hain