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The Uncuts: 2023 political awards (Part II)

01/01/2024, 04:42:03 PM

Politician of the year: Team Starmer

For the 2023 award, Uncut is bending the rules a little to hand the politician of the year gong to a team. There is a logic. Keir Starmer had an excellent year, he has palpably learned, adapted and overcome the challenges in front of him. But politics is a team sport and while he has been front of office, the back-office team have made much of this progress possible.

In the 1990s, Tony Blair had a close-knit team around him that propelled him to power. The big names are well known – Jonathan Powell, Anji Hunter, Alastair Campbell, Peter Mandelson and Sally Morgan. Even at the time, each had their own distinct profile, just as Gordon Brown’s team with Charlie Whelan, Ed Balls and Ed Miliband, each had their own media profile.

The difference in the 2020s is that team Starmer is just that, a single unit, there is little briefing or publicity for the different members. No running storyline on tensions with the shadow chancellor’s team where the advisers become the story. After the psychodrama of the TB-GBs, fuelled in large part by advisers, and the scorched earth of Dominic Cummings tenure, a return to the days when advisers remained firmly in the back-office is a welcome change, not to mention an important part of minimising stories of splits and backbiting in any future Labour government.

So, congratulations to Morgan McSweeney, Matt Pound, Matt Doyle, Deborah Mattinson, Peter Hyman and Muneera Lula for not being the story with an honourable mention for Sue Gray, only recently in post as chief of staff, following a highly publicised exit from the civil service, but resolutely absent from the headlines in her new role.

Most underrated in 2023: President Biden

America is heading towards a presidential election between a candidate facing nearly 100 criminal charges and another that has delivered unprecedented and, given the shocks of Covid and Putin’s war, unexpected economic strength.

It should be a no brainer that the latter will win. By a landslide. And yet the polls suggest otherwise and nervousness – Democratic (as in the party) and democratic (as in the political system) – is pervasive.

When Americans vote, Democrats win. In the 2022 midterms, Democrats won by larger margins than in the 2020 presidential election in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania — all battleground states. Democrats also performed strongly in 2023: flipping a Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin; defeating a six-week abortion ban in Ohio; and keeping the Virginia state house.

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Antisemitism is bad enough right now, without trying to frame actual Jewish allies

28/11/2023, 09:23:59 PM

by Rob Marchant

If the horrific news coming out of Israel and Gaza resulting from Hamas atrocities were not sufficient, the last six weeks have been the worst period of antisemitism in living memory, not just in Britain but in many other parts of the world.

Some Labour figures have not exactly covered themselves in glory: if you can manage to live with the cognitive dissonance of framing the “ceasefire” narrative as a neutral one, rather than one which helps Hamas; or recent serial hate marches as “peace demonstrations” – as it seems both Andy Burnham and Sadiq Khan were able to, not to mention a highly-predictable Jeremy Corbyn – you are not going to get to common sense or coherence any time soon.

However, at national level, Keir Starmer has largely avoided the platitudes of his predecessors and has managed to hold a sensible line with his Shadow Cabinet in not “both-sidesing” the Hamas atrocities and the civilian casualties resulting from Israeli counter-attacks. This all in the face of Chicken-Licken comment pieces predicting imminent, and terrible, splits in the party over this stance, which in the end have turned out to be rather overblown.

In difficult times, then, Labour has managed to truly move on from the Corbyn years and not fall into the trap which has recently befallen the Spanish, Belgian and Irish prime ministers, in wetting the bed on this issue. Bravo to Starmer.

So far, so good; until we come to last weekend’s Sunday Times piece, in which it was revealed that Rosie Duffield MP, one of the very few MPs to stand up and be counted as a Jewish ally when antisemitism was rife in the party and is, let us not forget, a vice-chair of the APPG on antisemitism, has not yet been added to the approved parliamentary candidates list, despite having been reselected for Canterbury seat, on grounds of a complaint over alleged antisemitism.

You what, mate?

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Revealed: Labour high command planning for TWO elections – 2024 and 2026 – with ‘the longest and most expensive ever rolling general election campaign’

06/10/2023, 01:27:58 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Labour high command has begun planning for a single general election campaign that does not end with the next general election but continues through to the election after that. The rationale is that while Labour will likely win the next election, the majority will be sufficiently narrow to make a quick-fire return to the polls almost inevitable.

Speaking to multiple sources, Uncut understands that expectations across the shadow cabinet are for a majority between 10 and 40 with a clear understanding that even a majority of 40 would likely be unworkable to deliver the scale of change needed by the country.

Labour won 202 seats in 2019 and to achieve a majority of 40 at the next election would mean winning an extra 158 seats, significantly more than the boost of 146 seats that Tony Blair secured in 1997.

Even if the upper end of expectations was somehow reached with a majority of 40, a rebellion of just 20 Labour MPs could derail government plans. Currently the hard left Socialist Campaign Group has 35 MPs with a swathe of other backbench Labour MPs, most of whom are likely to be in the next parliament, disgruntled with the leadership and already identified as likely serial rebels.

The experience of the Lib Dems in the 2010 coalition which resulted in their near total wipeout at the 2015 election combined with the nature of seats that they are currently targeting – Blue Wall, long term Tory bastions where voters have a historic hostility to Labour – means that the prospect of anything other than a slightly augmented confidence and supply agreement with Ed Davey’s party is remote.

A vulnerable majority would not only place huge constraints on policy but the longer the parliament ran the more Keir Starmer’s authority would be eroded as the political debate increasingly focused on Westminster psychodrama rather than the government’s agenda. The fate of past PMs with narrow majorities such as Theresa May, John Major, Jim Callaghan and Harold Wilson, looms large in the thinking of key figures around the Labour leader. (more…)

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The big winner in last week’s reshuffle was Labour’s old right, not Tony Blair

10/09/2023, 10:57:09 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Most media reports of last week’s Labour reshuffle described a scene of Blairite triumph: the old master’s grip on the party was being reasserted, his policies and personnel were to the fore, Keir Starmer his willing proxy. It’s an easy story to write, one with familiar beats, but a story that is quite wrong.

It is a symptom of the simplified, bipolar frame through which Labour’s internal politics is viewed: Corbynite left or Blairite right, where all developments are reduced to a zero-sum game of one side winning and the other losing.

What this approach misses is the divide among party centrists between Blairites and the old Labour right, dating back to the early 1990s. There’s certainly much commonality between the two groups across large swathes of policy and on the importance of fighting the hard left, but as that latter threat recedes and the choices of government heave into view, the differences from thirty years ago will become more evident. Last week’s reshuffle marked the clearest possible ascendancy of the old Labour right rather than a move to full throttle Blairism.

Blairites are revolutionaries. Many of the original generation, including Tony Blair, started their political lives on the radical left and moved to the centre; what they retained on their political journey was their restless dissatisfaction with the status quo; social democratic incrementalism wasn’t enough, Britain needed fundamental reform. The focus of this reforming zeal was typically old Labour sacred cows–Labour’s internal structures, the party’s relationship with the unions and public service reform.

The old right is the embodiment of incrementalism. A bit more redistribution, increased public spending and support to bolster the position of unions. This isn’t a faction temperamentally suited to radical upheaval, least of all when it comes to the ceremonies of Labour’s traditions which are intertwined with the union movement and wreathed in emotion and sentimentality.

Think of the contrast between John Smith and Tony Blair.

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Looking ahead to a massive political year

25/08/2023, 11:15:52 PM

by Jonathan Todd

The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk, according to Hegel. He meant, of course, that we won’t know until 2024 who got the worst of 2016: the UK with Brexit or the USA with Trump.

Next year will be a big one on both sides of the pond as Sunak v Starmer and Biden v Trump shape up to produce fireworks, says the blurb on the 1000 Trades website. On 5 September, David Aaronovitch will lead a journey through the political landscape as we approach the foothills of this immense political year.

A Labour general election victory will begin to heal the wounds opened in the UK’s relationship with the EU by Brexit. And much more besides: tackling the deep weaknesses of low skills, productivity, and investment that have bedevilled the UK economy for much longer than we have been outside the EU; repairing a public realm battered by 14 years of Conservative government; and seizing the opportunities of the major waves of change, such as Net Zero and Artificial Intelligence, that are reshaping the global economy.

A Conservative win will do the opposite. No reset in our relations with the EU. No change of national direction. No end to our self-harm.

There’s a lot riding on our next general election. But even more on the next US presidential election. The global consequences of the presidential election dwarf our general election.

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Keir’s Spanish lessons

27/07/2023, 10:44:52 PM

by Rob Marchant

It would be easy for Labour to derive some trite answers from the result of Sunday’s general election in Spain, where many international commentators were holding their breath.

In the end, wily PM Pedro Sánchez managed to frustrate the advance of the far right – which almost got back into government for the first time in half a century – and may well end up continuing to run the country after all. Hurrah, a victory for Western social democracy.

The quick and comfortable answer for Labour to take away is this: in the end, given a stark choice in times of hardship, people saw through right-wing populism and agreed that the left are the good guys, who will look after their needs. The needs of the many won over needs of the few. The left is on its way back.

Sadly, this is not the right lesson.

Sanchez has, a little like Joe Biden, managed both to do some good things, and meanwhile seriously irritate many electors in the political centre who would otherwise vote for him. The radical end of the global left, spearheaded by the likes of the Democrats’ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is starting to drive us all a little crazy.

Spain, which has enjoyed a leftist government for the last five years, is little different. The uncomfortable truth is that the Spanish leader has, and only maybe, clung on by the skin of his teeth, when he could potentially have won a comfortable second term. Being a smart political operator, he gambled that most Spaniards would recoil so much at the thought of neofascists in government, that he could avert disaster, and therefore brought forward the election five months in a “back me or sack me” move. He turned out to have made a smartish bet.

But not only may that trick not work next time, one also has to ask why he ended up in such dire straits that he had to resort to it in the first place– that so many voters disliked the Socialists so much, that they could come that close to putting Franco’s unpleasant heirs into government in their place. The best Sánchez can hope for now is an unstable, rainbow coalition, in hock to the demands of nationalist parties.

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Labour needs to battle through Long Corbyn to overcome Long Thatcherism

06/02/2023, 10:44:58 PM

by Jonathan Todd

The most common symptoms of Long Covid, according to the NHS website, include extreme tiredness, loss of smell, and muscle aches. It is Zoonotic: transmitting between species and from animals to humans. It also moves from the medical to the political.

“In 82 opinion polls since January,” lamented Denis MacShane on The Article in October 2020, “the Labour Party has only been ahead in one of them”. Despite Keir Starmer outperforming the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, “in terms of competence and coherence.”

“The party,” diagnosed MacShane, “is suffering with symptoms of “Long Corbyn” … The virus of hard leftist unelectability is not easy to eradicate.”

Liverpool had not won the league in 25 years when Jürgen Klopp was appointed manager in 2015. Past glories felt unlikely to be recaptured. Klopp urged doubters to be believers. His Liverpool became the first British team to hold the European Cup, European Super Cup, Club World Cup, and league titles simultaneously.

Three months after MacShane’s article, I paraphrased Klopp to argue that Labour doubters should become believers. The symptoms of Long Corbyn were at their height: extreme tiredness (years of Labour doorstep with little to show for it), misplaced sense of political smell (failing to sniff the weaknesses that clung to Johnson even at the height of his powers), our muscles ached from the strife and disappointment under Corbyn.

This context made eccentric my prediction of Labour victory. Things have dramatically turned.

All who doubted Labour now believe. Once tired activists, bouncing back from Long Corbyn, stride purposefully towards power. The whiff of Labour government permeates all corners of national life. My reasons for optimism have come to pass – and then some.

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The Uncuts: 2022 Political Awards (Part II)

31/12/2022, 04:48:53 PM

Comeback Of The Year: Keir Starmer

Starmer has spent the last two-and-a-half years quietly playing a long game. While never to everyone’s satisfaction – that would be unfeasible – he nevertheless has addressed most of the issues he had on the table back in the spring of 2020, even largely cleaning up the smell of antisemitism which the Corbyn years had left hanging over the party. Corbynites have left in droves; Momentum marginalised; and, perhaps most importantly, the backroom political pressure exerted by Unite has been dramatically reduced.

This is not so much to do with Starmer directly: a major factor has been the transfer of power between former leader Len McCluskey and his successor Sharon Graham; and also the financial and political impact of multiple investigations (including criminal ones) getting close to McCluskey and his cronies, effectively pulling the plug on the old money-machine which funded Labour’s entryist cabal for so long. But these things might also not have happened, had Starmer not secured a convincing win over the Corbynites.

Starmer has not been perfect, by any means. He has failed to be ruthless with his frontbench, with the result that it is still rather weak in political heft. And his vacillation on women’s rights has created a potential Achilles heel for Labour, which the Tories have already shown themselves keen to exploit. He is still failing to beat Sunak in “best PM” polling.

But Labour’s current strong showing overall under his leadership is an undeniable achievement, when you consider the nadir it faced just three Christmases ago, after the party’s worst defeat in three-quarters of a century.

He now needs to ensure he doesn’t throw it away, which is still eminently possible.

The Order Of Black Wednesday Award: Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng

The Order Of Black Wednesday Award is a special prize, awarded by Uncut for wanton, gratuitous attempted or actual destruction of the UK’s finances (for political historians, the award is named after the fateful Wednesday in 1992, when Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont and the then non-independent Bank of England conspired to make UK interest rates jump massively several times in the same day; in the end proposing to hike to 15%, before collapsing out of the ERM, the EU’s currency-pegging system prior to the euro. He resigned in disgrace shortly after and his party lost its reputation for economic competence; not to mention power, in a Labour landslide five years later.)

Close to being awarded during the Johnson administration for the final Withdrawal Agreement, it was felt however by the judges that, although the damage was significant and the policy management cack-handed, it was not of the order required.

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Power cuts, military superpowers in conflict, and Labour taking office in the midst of economic meltdown – could it be 1964 all over again?

13/10/2022, 10:41:59 PM

by Declan McHugh

The incredible divergence of political fortunes that has seen Labour open up 30-point poll leads has given rise to a growing belief that the Conservatives are heading out of government. That view isn’t confined to those on the Labour side. It is now widely held in the business community, the media and indeed in the Conservative Party itself. Tory MPs openly lament that their party is careering, inexorably, to a catastrophic defeat at the next general election. The parallel that many draw is with 1997, when Tony Blair led Labour to an historic landslide. But is 1997 the right point of historical reference? Or do we need to look back several decades earlier for a more apt comparator – all the way to 1964?

That year saw the threat of blackouts at home and the eruption of superpowers in armed conflict abroad. It also saw Labour end 13 years in opposition; a narrow election victory enabling Harold Wilson to become PM. With a majority of just four, his new administration faced major political challenges from the outset. But the bigger problem facing the Wilson government was the economic inheritance left by the departing Conservatives.

An ill-fated ‘dash for growth’ had left the UK economy in a nose-dive. So much so that when the outgoing Chancellor, Reggie Maudling, handed Number 11 over to James Callaghan, he cheerily told him: “Sorry old cock to leave it in this shape. I suggested to Alec [Douglas Home] this morning that perhaps we should put up the Bank Rate but he thought he ought to leave it all to you.”

The incoming Labour government was saddled with an £800m deficit that immediately triggered a series of Sterling crises. One of Callaghan’s first acts was to raise interest rates to 7%, leading the Building Societies Association to hike rates for new mortgages to 6.75%. Although the party won a bigger majority in the 1966 election, it was never in control of the economic situation. By 1967 the Wilson Government was forced into a devaluation that saw the pound reduced from $2.80 to $2.40. Hopes of investment in the ‘white heat of technology’ were crushed as the administration was pushed into a programme of austerity that brought it into conflict with unions and, ultimately, contributed to electoral defeat in 1970.

By contrast, the political and economic conditions in 1997 were far more favourable. Labour went into that election facing nothing like the electoral mountain that stands before it today. Although the Conservatives had won a shock victory in 1992, they had done so with a majority of just 21. The electoral arithmetic today is starkly different. Assuming Labour don’t make spectacular gains against the SNP, the party requires a swing from the Tories of more than 13% just to get a bare majority. To put that into perspective, Blair won a landslide with a swing of 10%; Attlee won a post-war landslide with a swing of just over 12%. So for Labour to win a majority of any kind it must surpass those two landmark victories.

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Labour conference 2022: The Mersey wind of change

28/09/2022, 11:08:56 PM

by Jonathan Todd

The turbulence around Labour conference was much more than the Mersey wind. Sterling hitting an all-time low versus the dollar. 900 mortgage deals pulled by banks and building societies. Criticism of last Friday’s “mini budget” from the IMF.

The collapse in sterling means rising inflation, higher interest rates, and more pain for already suffering households. Government capacity to ameliorate this is limited by higher borrowing costs than Greece and Italy.

Dramatic changes in the UK’s economic fortunes are often driven by global events. It was OPEC and the oil price in the 1970s. American subprime mortgages and collateralised debt obligations in the 2000s. It takes a special kind of budget to crash the economy outside of global events – such as Nigel Lawson’s tax cuts in 1988 that overheated the economy and precipitated the 1990s recession.

The Tories will try to blame our economic problems on global events (Covid-19 and Putin’s war in Ukraine). “Global financial markets,” said the Treasury’s statement in response to new purchases of government debt by the Bank of England, “have seen significant volatility in recent days.” That the Bank of England acted after the “mini budget” reveals blame much closer to home.

“Panics do not destroy capital,” according to John Stuart Mill, “they merely reveal the extent to which it has been previously destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works.”

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