Bryn Jones finds Starmer’s Labour failing to listen and abandoning core social democratic values, but will its MPs act?
Was it the leadership’s “lack of political management skills” that torpedoed the Labour government’s 1st July Bill to cut invalidity benefits? Perhaps. It also panicked at public anger over the impact on the disabled. However, the fiasco also expressed fundamental flaws in Labour’s general political paradigm. Essentially, it’s the erosion of the social and political rights of Labour’s traditional creed of social democracy: social rights as welfare state benefits for all, enacted and protected through democratic representation. Labour’s current paradigm undermines social democracy in four related spheres.
Fiscal neoliberalism (a.k.a. “austerity”, “budgetary discipline”, etc) reduces social rights of welfare provision. Second, political rights, as equal rights in freedom of assembly and protest, have been diluted through authoritarian policing. Thirdly, managerial prerogative is eclipsing democratic decision-making in society, the Government and the Labour Party. Plus, fourthly and interpenetrating all these shifts is alignment with US President Trump’s crusade to dismantle international trade and human rights institutions. Labour MPs” resistance gutted the Bill’s more punitive aspects, but each of these four elements underlay the Bill’s purposes.
The leadership justified this Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill (UCPIP) on neoliberal fiscal grounds: an alleged need to cut back the rising costs of PIPs as a right, a non-means-tested disability benefit. Eligibility would have been restricted and disability tests tightened. Allegedly, to help lower public sector debt and create “headroom” for other, more important Government priorities.
Priorities which now include acceding to the push for more military spending from Trump and NATO. An expanded military budget with announced plans to spend big on warships, aircraft carriers, Army AI, software, long-range weapons, and land drones. Plus, an estimated £31 billion just for nuclear-armed Dreadnought-class submarines. Estimated savings from PIP reform were put at only £4.5 billion a year. Putting disabled claimants into poverty to pay for a slice of nuclear weaponry is not a good look for a “caring’, erstwhile social democratic party and its supporters. However, meeting emperor Trump’s demand for a gross increase in military budget to 5% of GDP by 2035 is militarily irrational. Paul Teasdale and Mary Kaldor (in previous editions of Chartist), as well as some in the “defence” commentariat, have argued that such relatively arbitrary percentage increases will not secure the right kinds of weaponry and resources for likely conflicts, or their deterrence. Protest against disability benefit cuts, or against the expansion of the UK’s nuclear bombing capacity – perhaps reprising the Greenham Common upsurges of the 1980s – would risk conflict with another Starmer fixation: the prohibition of “violent” (read popular) acts of protest. The UCPIP fiasco overlapped another Government pronouncement: banning the Palestine Action group that had graffitiied UK aircraft suspected of potential Israel support roles. After sustained lobbying by Parliamentary hawks, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Starmer insider and Labour Friends of Israel stalwart, finally classified Palestine Action as an illegal terrorist organisation. A move heavily criticised by legal and civil liberties groups as another step towards authoritarian intolerance. Besides embellishing ex-Public Prosecutor Starmer’s tough guy image, the ban shows a determination to suppress opposition to the Anglo-American connivance in Israel’s annihilation of Gaza. It also deepens Labour’s abdication from Party democracy and social democratic values.
Starmer began this intolerance for dissent when purging the Corbynite left of the Labour Party, on tenuous antisemitism allegations, charges queried by the Party’s own Forde inquiry. Membership purges often lacked due process, appeals or personal hearings. Fast forward to 2025, and such arbitrary decision-making has become a Starmer reflex. NEC member Ann Black’s recent Chartist article spotlights the shifting of policy decisions from the NEC and the Policy Forum involvement to a small top team that then instructs Labour MPs to vote for them. Which brings us back to the Parliamentary vote on UCPIP. Apart from the legislation’s iniquitous impact on claimants, a common reaction amongst rebels was annoyance at Labour’s general style of top-down decision-making, reflected in the lack of consultation or debate over the Bill’s content. This was criticised by suspended MP Brian Leishman as contrary to basic democratic values. Diktats replace internal Party democracy.
Ironically, the Court of Appeal judges deciding Palestine Action’s appeal against its proscription dismissed its case as ignoring Parliamentary democracy: “This is a matter, under the relevant Act of Parliament, for the Secretary of State, who is accountable to Parliament for [her] decisions.” How could Yvette Cooper be said to be “accountable” when Labour whipped through the Commons hearing on the proscription as a Statutory Instrument: a type of order which MPs cannot amend? For at least one Labour peer, Lord Beamish, “freedom of speech” was at stake, not necessarily the “right to protest’. Nevertheless, both Houses of Parliament approved this order thus mirroring the suppression of civic rights in authoritarian regimes such as Hungary. Protesters” subsequent arrests, for merely challenging the proscription, suggest the “Police State” cliche could be morphing into reality.
Such anti-democratic moves represent not only a further hardening of Starmer’s latent instincts. They also align UK governance closer to the prejudices and predilections of President Trump, whose administration effectively oversees a range of UK policies. Like Trump, Starmer is now intent on deporting “criminal” immigrants, who can now be removed without the right of appeal against their convictions. The UK’s long-standing military-economic dependence, highlighted in accounts like Vassal State by Angus Hanton, is now exploited by Trump, demanding more European military spending and more favourable treatment for US multinationals. Coupled with Trump’s economic belligerence and Starmer’s desperate and obsequious attempts to beg economic crumbs, this makes the UK a soft target. Victorian and Cold War animus against the “Russian bear” may be rekindled, but should we be more alarmed by the sharpened claws of the American eagle?
Trump’s supporters amongst far-right think tanks and lobbyists are working to spread his authoritarian populism to overseas states. Will Labour MPs lead resistance to the attendant retreat from democratic rights? A drift encompassing not only the stifling of Party democracy, MPs’ dissent and suppression of pro-Palestine protest, but also, potentially, Labour’s proposed curbs on rights to jury trials to enhance “efficiency’. The dozens of MPs either suspended or losing PLP membership, surely have little to lose from standing up to this trend.
Others ought to follow this resistance if they recognise that these particular abuses of power are part of a major retreat from social democracy’s rights to care, welfare and accountable representation. Rights won through the now crumbling liberal democracy. It was through this, admittedly imperfect system, that socialists and social democrats established the advancement of social rights. Labour’s pick and mix of Trumpian authoritarian imperialism – including annihilation in Palestine for “national security” – could prepare the system for Farage’s British version.
To preclude this outcome, Labour MPs must urge a break from these interlinked economic, social policy and political strategies. Beginning with a reassertion of basic democratic rights in the Party. If, most likely, the leadership refuses to change, then the leadership must be changed: to stop authoritarianism taking root to the advantage of Farage’s Reform. Otherwise, Labour will go the way of the Conservatives. Shrunk by Reform’s rise from the right and the loss of voters, activists, councillors and, eventually, unions, to the much more popular paradigm of Corbyn and Sultana’s mushrooming incipient party of the Left.