The Centre Is Dead
The system is imploding and the people that are benefitting are the Far-Right. They’re organised
I like Starmer’s presence and action on the world stage. I like the investment in the education system, the NHS, a green economy, prisons and the justice system, the nationalisation of railway contracts and water. These are good things and a good start.
However, you don’t proscribe Palestine Action. You don’t take the whip away from MPs who vote against welfare reforms that will make disabled people worse off. You don’t show more care and attention to Bob Vylan for calling out the IDF and their genocide than you do about the genocide itself.
Despite the good stuff, it’s only the bad stuff that gets heard. As a consequence, people will move to more extreme political parties.
Most concerning is the idea of Reform getting in. They’re not serious politicians, have terrible policies and will only divide people and society whilst furthering wealth inequality.
Reform winning is likely because the Far-Right have their solution in place already. The Left still needs to create the infrastructure of a solution and find a charismatic person to run with it.
Mick Lynch is a good example of such a personality. Brilliant communicator; he became a celebrity overnight because people are crying out for someone they can relate to. Someone who’s saying stuff in a rational way about how the system works and how they’re getting fucked over by it.
They’re currently only getting that from Nigel Farage.
The vehicles for the Right to go to are clear. The Reform Party exists, and before that UKIP and the Brexit Party.
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Now, I’m a paying member of the Green Party but I get that to a lot of people they’re weak and not a viable entity. So we have people struggling and with nowhere to go.
The Left in this country has been hamstrung for many decades by what people call ‘labourism’. This belief that labour (lowercase L) is the only vehicle that can affect change. It’s perfect for the oligarchy; they love it.
Critical to solving this is the unions disaffiliating and not funding Labour. Because the whole ecosystem works in a very beautiful way for the oligarchy.
Organised labour, which is meant to be the one liberating force in our society able to take on the power of the corporate estate sector, is affiliated to a party that is a main element of the oligarchy itself.
Workers are actually paying for their own oppression. £30m a year is given by organised labour to Labour. There are people in the public sector, especially in local government, subsidising being laid off or their own wage repression.
Breaking that link between organised labour and this party that was captured by the oligarchy a long long time ago is key.
You might say Corbyn proved Labour hasn’t been captured as I describe. But who took him down? It wasn’t the Right, although they tried their best. The main people that destroyed him was the Labour Party itself. He would’ve won in 2017 if he hadn’t been fighting a guerrilla war against his own party for two years.
The Labour Party’s role is to absorb and neutralise the Left. That is its role for the British oligarchy. It is the service it provides to the British oligarchy and has done for many decades.
We need to untether our collective power, our working class power, our organised labour, our union power from that institution. And put those resources, which are significant, somewhere where they can actually do good and promote the interest of working people.
We have to start that process because the Right have started it already, and they’re winning.
