Tuesday, March 26

Starmer has yet to answer the big question: what is Labor’s position on socialism? | Simon Fletcher


THEn the back of encouraging polls – including one That wiped out the Conservatives ‘edge on the economy: Keir Starmer kicked off the new year with a speech linking the Conservatives’ months of corruption and incompetence with a broader discussion of Britain.

While the Labor leader is surely correct in acknowledging that his party cannot simply rely on the collapse of the Conservatives, there is a way to go in turning the titles of safety, prosperity and respect into something that can capture the public imagination.

Hidden near the beginning of his speech was a small reference to the other Keir, Hardie, in the context of a point about patriotism. “The Labor Party is a deeply patriotic party. Keir Hardie once said that British socialism must “wear local garb”. It meant that British socialism was rooted in the everyday concerns of the workers. ”

But even though Hardie’s socialism was cited, we hear no more from today’s Keir about his. It’s something you need to address, but you seem reluctant to do so.

In a interview Last month, Starmer was asked if he was a socialist. He refused to say, asking “what does that mean?”, Quickly turning to the question. It was a strange response.

Every Labor leader has had to define his position in relation to socialism. The work was established through an alliance that included trade unionists and socialists. Through clause IV of its constitution, it committed itself to a generalized form of common property. Leading figures from all parts of the party have argued about what socialism is. That controversial nature is a reflection of his role in the party’s political life.

There are two general considerations that follow from Starmer’s answer. One is the perennial need to engage and answer what is, or should be, a central question; and it is worth noting that the leaders of the center and the right of the party have done so to further their own purposes as much as the left. Answering it, with certainty and clarity, certainly does not have to be a barrier to electoral success.

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But the other is that the crises of the 21st century – the pandemic and the climate – surely cry out for a politics based on socialism.

The reaction to Starmer’s position was not limited to the Labor left. Commentator John Rentoul, hardly a leftist proselytizer, argued that he I should have answered “Yes, sure,” and then he should have defined what socialism means to him.

The Labor leader’s response was particularly unusual because in 2020, he had laid out his vision of socialism in a Guardian article. “If I see something wrong or see an injustice, I want to correct it,” he argued, adding: “We can win again if we morally defend socialism, a moral socialism, that is relevant to people’s daily lives and the challenges we face. As we move into the 2020s and 2030s. ”

I participated in the discussion that preceded the publication of Starmer’s article. There was never any doubt that such a declaration of political values ​​was unnecessary or a hostage to fortune. Based on being a high-ranking Labor politician, you established a broader philosophy.

His was not the vision that everyone had of socialism. But in a sense, it was his attempt to answer in advance the question that was posed to him most recently. That carefully thought-out piece of “moral socialism” makes the Labor leader’s subsequent lack of response even more puzzling. Why give it up?

Perhaps the Labor leadership is inclined to avoid anything that points to the broader left. Yet all Labor leaders, left and right, have to resolve their approach to socialism. Ed Miliband said he would return it. Tony Blair’s replacement by clause IV declared that “the Labor Party is a democratic socialist party.” Neil Kinnock, well versed in the language of the labor movement, was interviewed for Marxism Today, whose analysis was deemed useful for a Labor leader moving the party to the right.

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Some may say that talking about socialism is a detour, but no one is naive enough to believe that Labor should fight in the next election with socialism as its motto. Jeremy Corbyn’s general platform was not “vote Labor for socialism” but “for the many, not the few.”

People will vote for leftist politicians from all walks of life because their positions and policies connect with the direct interests and values ​​of the voters. The challenge is figuring out how to apply socialist ideas to advance at the electoral level.

Our times demand more socialism, not less. Polls consistently show high levels of support for socialism among young people, to the alarm of right-wing analysts. Even among the general population, even in the US, the positive and negative views of capitalism and socialism sound closely.

More importantly, the free market has not offered solutions to the most fundamental aspects of the current pandemic. The State has had to intervene massively and repeatedly. Ninety-seven percent of funding for the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine came from the public sector and charities, for example. Vaccines would have been impossible without the state.

Gordon Brown’s demand for global action to end the worldwide undervaccination scandal should remind us that this is an unequal planet, organized for the benefit of a relatively small number of wealthy countries. A socialist vision analyzes the conflicting class interests in society. In any given situation, socialists will ask, who pays?

This is the case with the aftermath of this pandemic. No new permits for the Omicron wave have left large numbers of workers in the lurch. The TUC highlighted the worst Christmas wage contraction in nearly a decade. Many key workers, having seen the economy through the phases of the pandemic, can now look forward to a pay cut. The Treasury’s argument that public sector payment settlements should not keep pace with inflation amounts to a reduction in real terms.

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The pandemic has seen our society dominated by issues long posed by socialists: internationalism, collectivism, inequality, class interests, planning, public property, and state intervention in the face of the free market. The same applies to the climate crisis. Labor seems reluctant, but it must simply commit to its position on socialism.

Just over 30 years have passed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. At the time, many on the right hoped that the seismic event would also spell the end of a politics that looked to a future beyond capitalism. It was never likely then, and the twin global challenges of Covid-19 and the climate emergency must surely lead to the opposite conclusion now.

  • Simon Fletcher is a former advisor to Keir Starmer, Jeremy Corbyn, and Ed Miliband. He previously served as Chief of Staff to the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, from 2000 to 2008.




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