{"id":1158219,"date":"2023-07-28T00:20:46","date_gmt":"2023-07-28T00:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/?p=142512"},"modified":"2023-07-28T00:20:46","modified_gmt":"2023-07-28T00:20:46","slug":"starmer-is-selling-labour-to-big-business-in-power-he-will-do-the-same","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/07\/28\/starmer-is-selling-labour-to-big-business-in-power-he-will-do-the-same\/","title":{"rendered":"Starmer is selling Labour to big business; in power he will do the same"},"content":{"rendered":"

What has happened to Britain\u2019s opposition Labour Party under Keir Starmer? The familiar adage \u201cfollow the money\u201d helps make sense of the party\u2019s policy shifts ever further rightwards.<\/p>\n

Labour plumbed new depths earlier this month\u00a0when it conceded that, in power, it would maintain the government\u2019s cap on child benefit, restricting financial help to the first two children<\/a> in a family.<\/p>\n

The cap, one of the Conservatives\u2019 most socially regressive measures, was denounced as \u201cheinous<\/a>\u201d and \u201cobscene<\/a>\u201d by shadow cabinet ministers after it was introduced. Even Starmer called it \u201cpunitive<\/a>\u201d when he was trying to win over Labour members in the 2020 leadership vote.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of children and their families are reported to have been driven below the breadline<\/a> since the benefit cap came into effect in 2017.<\/p>\n

No other country<\/a>\u00a0in the world has a similar policy. But in Britain, punishing children is now a bipartisan issue.<\/p>\n

It is just one of many progressive policies Starmer has ditched in recent months: from funding tuition fees to ending the so-called \u201cbedroom tax<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

The proffered excuse is always the same: that Britain cannot afford to care for its most vulnerable citizens. Or as Shadow Culture Secretary Lucy Powell put it<\/a>: \u201cThere just, frankly, is no money left.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet at the same time, Labour is tearing up its pledges to raise government revenue by increasing income tax on the rich<\/a> and by imposing a windfall tax on tech firms<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Popular insurgency<\/strong><\/p>\n

Strangely, too, Labour has promised it will continue the government\u2019s policy of spending billions on shipping weapons to Ukraine, to perpetuate a war<\/a> that is killing Ukrainians and Russians alike and chiefly benefits the arms industry.<\/p>\n

Underscoring quite how low a priority caring for children at home now is for Labour, compared to fighting a proxy war abroad, Starmer repeatedly chuckled<\/a> at a conference last week as he discussed the \u201chard choice\u201d he had taken on child benefit.<\/p>\n

Notably, he was sitting alongside Tony Blair, a former leader remembered both for refashioning the party as \u201cNew Labour\u201d in the 1990s \u2013 to snatch the centre-right ground from under the Tories\u2019 feet \u2013 and for launching a criminal invasion of Iraq<\/a>\u00a0alongside the United States in 2003.<\/p>\n

Starmer has been actively rehabilitating Blair\u2019s image<\/a> within the party, as well as leaning heavily on figures such as Peter Mandelson<\/a>, Blair\u2019s former chief adviser.<\/p>\n

The ugliness of Labour\u2019s new iteration derives from more than the fact that Starmer has been frantically purging the party of anything that might smack of the socialist-lite agenda of Jeremy Corbyn<\/a>, his predecessor.<\/p>\n

Corbyn\u2019s election by the wider membership as party leader in 2015 unleashed a political transformation that left the party bureaucracy and parliamentary party reeling<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, many of them disillusioned with a British politics that had for decades offered them no meaningful political choice, hurried to sign up<\/a> for a Corbyn-led party.<\/p>\n

Soon Labour\u2019s membership had rocketed to more than 560,000<\/a>, making it the largest party in Europe. It presaged a grassroots movement that threatened to take politics out of Westminster\u2019s rarified corridors and initiate a popular, street-level insurgency against austerity.<\/p>\n

That danger needed to be neutralised \u2013 and Starmer, knighted at the age of 52 for services to the British state as head of the Crown Prosecution Service, proved to be just the man for the job.<\/p>\n

As well as effectively ousting Corbyn from Labour, he set about abusing, alienating and persecuting the left-wing membership<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Coffers dry up<\/strong><\/p>\n

The latest victim is Jamie Driscoll<\/a>, the North Tyne mayor who has been barred from standing for re-election as a Labour candidate \u2013 apparently because he is seen as too left-wing and has been a success in his job. The danger is that he makes Starmer look like a sell-out.<\/p>\n

Within a couple of days of setting up a crowdfunder<\/a>, Driscoll had built a war chest of more than \u00a3100,000 to run as an independent.<\/p>\n

To get a flavour of why Labour has no place for a politician like Driscoll, who persuasively argues that it makes both financial and moral sense to implement kinder, fairer policies, watch him take on<\/a> former Blair adviser and Starmer loyalist John McTernan on Newsnight.<\/p>\n