Sir Keir Starmer (SK) gave a 'zoom' speech to the British people on Thursday the 18th of February. The speech got the expected proclaim from the usual corners in the traditional parliamentary Labour party and, more recently, the new LP officials who are currently smashing up what remains of the left-Labour Constituency parties. SK taunted Tory Boris, repeating his sad commentary about the Prime Minister's failure in the first half of Covid. And he described for the 100th time that the Tories were more interested in money than in the 'new' contract that SK was now about to present - his combined efforts uniting business, the workers and a 'good' (SK) type government. SK does not want people to get poorer. He is very sad about the poor. So, SK is going to hold on to peoples own money, make sure there are many homes to buy, and offer government bonds so that the investors are ok and the poor can keep all their money in government savings! Would you credit it?
He went further. Harold Wilson had taught SK that Labour was all about 'the soul.' And Clement Attlee had been successful because he had worked together with society (just like SK wants) at a really difficult moment. And so it went on - the repetitive drivel, offered by yet another Labour politician who's dad worked on the shop floor and who made it clear that you had to come together with labour and business and work with a good government. What a novelty. The minor change away from the 'bus-driver dads' that seem to litter the references of would-be Labour MPs, did not provide any relief. SK managed his public babble about his family - particularly embarrassing.
Clement Attlee won a Labour government because millions had beaten Hitler and because he would use that potential momentum to build the NHS. The NHS was mentioned by SK. But not mentioned were the removals of the great private moguls of the day (who offered no future investment - just personal profits) and which were replaced instead by nationalised transport, coal, steel etc; covering the heart of British industry. Amazingly SK seemed somehow to have forgotten the two previous, popular Labour Manifesto's in 2017 and 19, which were prominently proposing social ownership in various industries - for the same reasons that were prevalent in 1945 - that concentrated wealth is not being distributed and production is not progressing
Harold Wilson's main 'achievement' was to try and fight the unions but slyly - because British capital was then on a decade-long investment strike and because the Tories had been beaten when they attacked the miners and failed to win the election. Sadly, Wilson did not resolve the crisis by challenging capital. Like the Tory Heath, Wilson failed as well (and he also appeared to have no soul whatsoever.) As for SK's dad, you might have thought that he could expect his son, with the name that he had been given, to offer something beyond government bonds and private homes - for the poor!
Since his 18 Feb., speech, SK has gone on to support Tory Boris recommending that there should be no increase in Corporation tax after Covid (although some Tories and a few more Labour MPs, in shame, have forced a certain step back.) And, most recently, SK has sworn that Labour would press the nuclear button with full gusto. With the unspoken denial of Attlee's main economic policy, with a Wilson type (non) soul, and his dad's supposed desire for getting it all together on the shop-floor, SK has got nowhere. He has even managed to drop the public's devastated memory of the Tories first stage of Covid.
The UK is now in the third stage of Covid. This new stage has to be the beginnings of the new economy and politics, required to deal with one of the most catastrophic crises across the world, and particularly as a large country in the West, with one of the largest proportional death roles. So far SK offers a poor version of an already declining Labour Party. What is needed is the greatest, most bold measures - requiring a change of politics based on a new democracy; regular and prepared referenda; national and local independence; and with economics; based on the distribution of wealth and social production. KS is nowhere near any of this. His world is firmly locked in the dwindling past. Normally Labour would just meander on. Today, KS and the bulk of his MPs have got absolutely nothing to offer anybody about the avalanche just ahead. It is the lowest ebb of the remains of British social democracy. It will not participate in the UK's politics and economics in next decade.
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