by Rob Marchant
When Labour folk woke up on Wednesday morning, almost all of us surely felt a sharp pang of disappointment, accompanied perhaps by a much deeper uneasiness about the state of the world. Of course, we hate it in when “our team” loses but this was an election with potentially far-reaching consequences for us in Europe.
Ukraine is surely lost in its current form and Putin emboldened. And we are a facing an isolationist – and possibly even NATO-withdrawing America as our partner, run by a man whose brain is clearly not wired up like most of the rest of humanity, whatever their politics, and could care less for the law of the land, let alone the rules of constitutional democracy.
It is quite probably a truly historic moment, when the world’s tectonic plates shift. Our own country’s security is surely less than it was a few days ago. The only question is by how much.
What the Trump victory also shows is there is a tidal wave of the populist and authoritarian right washing over the Western world, one which Starmer’s government is vigorously swimming against and which is not going away. We can no longer pass it off as some blip of the late 2010s.
While we can be thankful for small mercies – we in Britain have already passed through a half-decade of disastrous populism and reacted against it – we should also recognise the precariousness of the privileged position we have found ourselves in since July.
If, after a very uneasy start, there were still any doubt how much of Labour’s vote were composed of true love for the party’s policy platform and how much simply of being utterly fed up of the Tories, there shouldn’t be after Tuesday’s Democrat meltdown.
The only sensible conclusion is that the Tories did most of the heavy lifting, by being incompetent and dogmatic, as well as more than a little corrupt.
And, just like the Dems, Labour has not yet completed the full pirouette around from fairyland leftism. Harris was dealt a tough hand and precious little time to play it; she was also not battle-tested in a primary. She should have paid more attention to inflation and immigration, yes. But her ultimate Achilles heel was that it was easy, even for those warm to her agenda, to be dismissive of her party.
Even if we can overlook the party trying to gaslight us into thinking that a clearly unwell president is well, there are other problems, which go deeper.
A party that thinks of people of the same colour, sex or other demographic as a homogeneous block who all think the same.
A party that claims to be the party of women’s rights but then seriously puts a male admiral in a skirt as deputy at the Department of Health, or has as a senior nuclear government official a shaven-haired transvestite, later convicted for stealing other women’s luggage, can be difficult to take seriously when these things are pointed out.
These last few are ideas which the Democrats not only espouse but which they have exported to the global left, to a greater or lesser extent, including Labour.
And they are the same weaknesses Labour now has to learn from, off its own bat. If it has not yet learned from the fate of “woke” governments in Ireland and the US (plus the SNP in Scotland, whose ultimate implosion is just a matter of time), it is because the party is not paying attention. It needs to.
One other impact, of course, is that the radical right faction currently running the Tories feels vindicated, and are unlikely to move back to the centre any time soon. But suppose they can win, like Trump, from where they currently are? Badenoch has already won more grudging respect than some predicted. She should not be underestimated, as the Independent’s John Rentoul points out.
Starmer has ultimately shown himself to be a pragmatist, exemplified by his patience and flexibility in sitting out the Corbyn years and then ruthlessly turning on his former colleagues. But he now needs to take firm action, to finish the job of sorting out the dead wood in his Cabinet, if he does not want to be a one-term, or less, prime minister. For in this climate, woke will undoubtedly mean broke.
Rob Marchant is an activist and former Labour party manager who blogs at The Centre Left
Tags: competence, Donald Trump, Keir Starmer, Rob Marchant, special relationship
