The end of an era

The UK goes to the polls tomorrow. Labour is expected to win a landslide victory. But storm clouds are already gathering.

The UK goes to the polls tomorrow. Opinion polls are predicting a landslide victory for the Labour party and a catastrophic defeat for the ruling Conservatives.

For me, this is the end of an era. I started writing this blog soon after the Coalition came to power in 2010. Much of my work was on banks and central banks, of course. But I also severely criticised Tory policies, and in particular the austerity that has shredded the social safety net and wrecked public services. Austerity has done terrible damage not merely to our economy, but to the very fabric of our society, setting people against each other and engendering hate and callousness towards vulnerable people. Now, the Tories’ appalling reign is coming to an end. Hallelujah.

But although I rejoice at the crushing of the corrupt and self-seeking Tories, I am aghast that we are about to elect a Labour government that seems to have nothing better to offer than more of the same. Where is the investment that our economy so desperately needs? Where are the repairs to our social safety net? Where, oh where, is the commitment to putting care for people and the environment at the heart of our politics and our society?

This is not merely a despairing rant on my part. Unless Labour does something very different from the Tories’ menu of the last 14 years, I fear for the future of this country.

Supermajority - or black hole?

“Landslide” doesn’t really capture the sheer scale of Labour’s expected victory. “Cataclysmic” might be a better word. Estimates of Labour’s majority are eye-watering. YouGov’s final poll forecasts 212 seats, the biggest majority of any single party since 1832. Only the National Governments of the two world wars and the Depression had larger majorities. After 14 years of Conservative rule, including a landslide of their own in 2019 (though their majority was a mere 80 seats), this will be an extraordinary reversal.

I cannot remember another election in which the people of the UK were so united in their determination to evict the ruling party, and so uninterested in the policies of its replacement. In 1997, the last time Labour had a landslide victory, voters were desperate to get rid of a tired and sleazy Tory administration. But they were also voting for New Labour’s vision. In the wake of the terrible property crash and recession of the early 1990s, Tony Blair offered people a renewed economy and a more compassionate politics. That’s what they were voting for. That’s how he got his landslide.

This time, there is no vision. Labour’s mantra of “change” seems to mean little more than “not the Tories”. And that seems to be all the voters want. People aren’t voting for anything. They are voting against the Tories.

In 1932, John Maynard Keynes commented on the nihilism of German voters:

....many people in Germany have nothing to look forward to – nothing except a ‘change’, something wholly vague and wholly undefined, but a change.

This sounds exactly like what Keir Starmer is offering the British people. A vague and undefined “change.”

To me, the “supermajority” looks more like a black hole. A void is growing at the heart of British politics. And as Jesus pointed out, voids are dangerous:

“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.”

(Luke 11:24-25)

I am desperately worried by Labour’s apparent lack of any clear vision for what they want to achieve in the next five years. It’s terribly dangerous for Starmer to think he can ride to victory on a wave of popular anger against the Tories while offering people nothing but a vague and undefined “change”. The wicked spirits of fascism are back, and they are looking for a home.

France, which goes to the polls on Sunday for the second round in its general election, is dangerously close to electing a far-right government. The centre is not holding there. Nor is it holding in the US, whose Supreme Court has just granted a corrupt and self-seeking former President with fascist instincts immunity from prosecution. And unless Starmer rapidly fills the void left by the failure of austerity and Brexit, it won’t hold here either. For just as Marine Le Pen has bided her time, waiting for popular opinion to turn in her favour, so here too, waiting in the wings is someone who is playing the long game. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is only going to get about two seats this time, but he has already said his real target is the 2028/9 general election and he aspires to be Prime Minister.

Unlike Labour, Reform UK does have a vision. It is not one that I will ever vote for, but many people find it attractive. If the only alternative offered by the main parties is endless stagnation and misery, Reform UK’s vision could be the one the British people vote for in five years’ time - the vision that I rejected ten years ago:

…when times are hard, people become resentful of giving up to others what they consider to be rightfully theirs. And they start to blame those others for their current difficulties. This is what drives nationalism. At its extreme, it destroys families, friendships and communities. It sets neighbour against neighbour, community against community, country against country. It is fundamentally destructive and it should be resisted, not welcomed.

My work here is far from done.

Related reading:

The terrible price of austerity

Reflections on Rochester and Strood

Why the Tories’ “put-people-to-work” growth strategy has failed

A case for fiscal austerity - Stumbling and Mumbling