There was quite a lot of surprise when Labour withdrew the whip summarily from seven MPs after the child benefit cap vote. Simple outrage from the Left, of course; but even some of the more measured commentary was along the lines of "these minor revolts have happened under many a previous government without such draconian reactions" - and the suggestion that Starmer's was a gratuitous & rather undignified piece of macho posturing. Hey (*beats chest*), it wasn't in the Manifesto so that really means we ain't rushing to do it! And we are really gonna have some discipline around here, you better believe it!
OK, everyone knows the perils of a big majority buts surely, there's more to it than chest-beating. Starting from the trivial: who in Starmer's position wouldn't want to take an early opportunity to suspend, ideally to expel, Corbynite throwbacks the like of Rebecca Long-Bailey, John McDonnell, Richard Burgon & Ian Byrne? This is a man who fully ejected the saintly Corbyn himself. And Apsana Begum, Imran Hussain and Zarah Sultana can confidently be recognised as part of the 'independent' tendency Starmer has every electoral wish to suppress. Let 'em all defect formally to a new Parliamentary grouping: the sooner the better.
Next up, just look at how few there were of them! Without a merciless whipping operation, might we not have expected dozens of protest-voters? A quick look down the list of back-bench Labour abstainers gives an indication. Obviously, the likes of Dianne Abbott have been shaken into sullen compliance. When they want to lull themselves to sleep at night, they can all tell themselves the Polly Toynbee story: don't worry, the two-child cap will be removed in the autumn for sure.
Well, but will it? Toynbee is perennially hyper-ventilating her characteristic brand of premature wishful thinking: served up confidently as fact, but so often to be so sadly disappointed. More realistic (and these days quite panicky) leftist commentators seem extremely fearful that the autumn will bring measures that in their terms means a fully-fledged re-run of Osborne Austerity, even if it will be sprinkled with a few tax measures they'll applaud. The winter fuel announcement serves only to heighten their fears. The child benefit whipping operation was couched in terms of "you all signed up just six weeks ago for the Manifesto": and that very document is exactly the flag under which Reeves claims to be sailing. Cite her 'Keynesian' Mais Lecture all you like: that's not what the Manifesto says.
IMHO, this bears every sign of (a) prudent attention to Machiavelli's dictum that the new Prince should set the tone by getting his punitive first strikes in at the earliest opportunity; and (b) a leadership that expects to be whipping hard and frequently on many an uncomfortable Parliamentary occasion in the months to come. Cow those waverers good and early: their political will needs to be broken right from the off.
Many of them must be trembling at the thought of what they're going to be told to vote for. The Smack of Firm Government, eh? And a summer of riots still to come ... Kier "I banged them all up in 2011" Starmer will be in his element.
ND
17 comments:
It was a good election to lose, but only because Tory green (and immigration, and foreign, and housing) policies were so damn stupid that they've stored up plenty of trouble for the future.
I hope the Chancellor's chutzpah in breaking so many campaign promises so quickly and with so little apology will cast a very long shadow.
decnine - he is well practised, based on abandoning almost all his leadership election promises. The usual formula is "things have changed / it's all very difficult / you wouldn't expect me to stick to something in these circumstances"
we'll be following forensically the energy segment of his manifesto. Trouble is, I can already draft his excuses, it's all too easy
anon - "good election to lose" has been voiced around these parts several times over the years (often by the good Kev) and I have given it short shrift: you should always have enough imagination to know what to do with the levers of power
this time, I must confess, I see the force of the slogan ...
There was never any austerity (at least not across all state spending) as there was never a reduction in spending in any fiscal year.
What did happen is that (some) department budgets didn't grow as quickly as they might have been expected to. That didn't please those departments who then threw their toys out of the pram about it.
Really, we need to make sure that lies like this aren't continued. The state continues to grow beyond it's means.
Take the recent discovery of a £22b hole in budgets. That's dwarfed by the £100b we borrow each year on top of all the tax revenue. If the government was serious about addressing holes in budgets, they'd do something about that!
It was the "know what to do" bit the Johnson and Sunak regimes fell down on. When Cummings went out of the window I knew Boris didn't have a clue.
Cummings was too clever for his own good, and Boris was simply unspeakable, while very entertaining. But on policy Boris was utterly clueless
Starmer der Stürmer?
According to Jacob Rees-Mogg, in something of a throwaway comment on GBNews, the vote on the King's Speech is traditionally seen as a Vote of Confidence — so, those voting against risked toppling the new government.
As such, Starmer has a reasonable grounding for giving his rebel MPs a good kicking...
DK
Who'd want to be PM now ? Though, with the number of seats he has, now's the perfect time to ratchet up the police state a few notches.
The country has finally snapped, it seems. This isn't the usual BAMEs kicking off here and 'far right' does not address the underlying issues nor the fact that a vast proportion of the population must have at least a smidgen of support for them.
I wonder who put out the "it was a muslim wot did it" rumours.
a) sends protesters off on wrong track, “attacking innocent Muslims”.
b) lets Starmer strike pose as “protector of the mosques”, even as the UK govt supports Israel doing what it likes in Gaza/Lebanon/Syria/Iraq/Iran/Yemen.
c) and you can say the false rumours were “Russian disinformation” !
It's a threefer !
EK - working class Brits v police, 1984 - heroic proletarian victims of police brutality
working class Brits v police, 2024 - uneducated, hateful scum getting better treatment than they deserve
Nick - When I said that 2010 was the election to lose I didn't mean a tactical loss from the Conservatives point of view but a rejection by their voters so that they might get the message and reform.
Anonymous - Rubbish. Swamp 84 was in response to little old ladies being mugged and beaten up. I lived in London then and policed it a little bit later. Blacks were a total pain in the arse. Lawless and violent.
E-K - I was thinking more about the miners strike...
Anon - Fine. Not the police's finest moment and a lot of them were motivated by greed. I joined in '86 and the section house was full of nasty divorced coppers who made my life such hell that I got mugged in Old Street getting a kebab rather than hang around the section house canteen. Happily most of them died painfully, broke and of smoking/drinking induced cancer.
I'm proud to say that Dad refused to go ooop North - he refused the indignity of bunking down on a scout hut floor while the senior officers got hotels.
In retrospect I think we were better off with a subsidised miner class rather than subsidised shameless class and Net Zero would be a whole lot more difficult to pass.
Shipping everything out to China was a catastrophic mistake too not least because of Covid.
Our welfare system became world famous and Maastricht soon opened it up to all and blessed us with mass immigration and the eventual civil war we now see unfolding.
Throw in the rivers full of turds and the abolition of affordable housing from the council house sell off and yup...
Just about every Tory policy has been a complete and utter disaster.
PS
I did say that Covid/Ukraine would lead us to this and to communism.
Glad to say one of my lads emigrates this week. I'm working on the other too. Both first class brains that any civilised country would welcome.
Yeah.
"Rivers of Turds." I don't remember that in Enoch's speech.
Nor do I remember face masks and social distancing in Orwell.
I never imagined that the reality of either could actually be WORSE than they had predicted.
This:
In retrospect I think we were better off with a subsidised miner class rather than subsidised shameless class and Net Zero would be a whole lot more difficult to pass.
Thank you E-K
To be fair, EK, I paddled in Swansea Bay as a child and there was an outfall pipe in the bay - I remember occasionally having loo paper or sanitary towels clinging to my legs.
20 years later I would swim in the Warwickshire Avon in summer, and when four of you had dried out and got in the car, it smelled as if someone had farted.
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