Glyn Ford calls for an urgent change of direction
For Labour Party members and supporters, the last twelve months of the first Labour Government in a generation has been little short of catastrophic. Starmer’s reassurances to the moderate centre to validate a vote for Labour with ‘not very different, but better’ quickly turned from tragedy to farce. Government is the realm of difficult decisions, yet we seek to achieve office because this is the only place where we deliver the interests of our voters. Labour’s hard choices to date have been unerringly the wrong ones; whether on winter fuel allowances and PIP, Palestine Action, the expansion of Heathrow Airport or the Strategic Defence Review. We have imperilled and threatened the sinews of the Labour Movement as the increasingly lose political ties that bound TU’s, members and conference to the PLP and the Government are now fraying.
The pressures are clear. Britain, Europe and the World face a set of political, economic and existential challenges that echo those of a short century passed. The rise of Hitler came in the wake of the Wall Street Crash. Trump and his cohort of fellow-travelling right-wing populists are the morbid symptoms of the 2008 Financial Crisis. The answer then is the answer now – Big Government dragging people, communities and countries out of poverty. Clipping the wings of the billionaires rather than feeding their frenzies.
There is time in Britain to turn this around, but we need to start now. The 2017 General Election showed the electorate is not frightened by bold ideas. Currently, there is an unhealthy obsession with Nigel Farage and Reform. We beat him by NOT joining him. Our threat in the 2029 General Election will come from the Left, not the Right. It will not come from England’s working-class Tories, but from those voting Green, for Jeremy Corbyn’s New Party and those – this time – staying at home. The Runcorn by-election in May would have been held by Labour without the increase in the Green vote.
Our Fresh Start should set stiff questions as to the merits of wealth and inheritance taxes, the justice of the triple-lock on pensions and why not a gambling tax, with monies raised to restore the dented shields of local government. We should put ourselves to the question as to whether the right answer on defence should be to spend better, not bigger. Whether to work convivially with the EU or become still more dependent on an increasingly unpredictable and capricious US, to crazily commit to spending 5.0% of GDP when they spend a quarter less. Banning arms sales to Israel should take pride of place over banning pro-Palestinian marches and organisations.
Are we going to settle for merely tinkering with the voting age, or take on the whole gerrymandered system and redistribute constituencies by population, abolish the House of Lords, and introduce proportional representation that retains a constituency link? Infrastructure spending should be green and renewable rather than runways and nuclear power. Clive Lewis’s initiative with his Climate and Nature Bill needs repeating across the board. We need to start preparing the electorate for a new close relationship with Europe. There is no prospect of reversing Brexit until over 70% of the population currently regretting or sceptical over leaving the Union, recognise the road to redemption lies through accepting the single currency and free movement. You can’t step in the same river twice. Our Big Government needs to be coloured, red, green and EU blue.