The Tories are triumphant. Johnson’s brand of populism plus a successful vaccine roll-out continues to draw the oxygen from opposition parties. England and, at least for now, the UK, is a one-party state. The dangers of this are obvious but for most voters won’t be visible for years.
You have to congratulate Johnson. He has landed on a winning formula as the face of Cummings’ strategic planning…
And what are the consequences for Labour and the LibDems?
These two parties are hopelessly adrift. At the start of 2021, this blog highlighted the uphill struggle for Starmer/Labour and the requirement of a new centrist party to counter the death of the Liberal Democrats. Today, this has become painfully obvious much earlier than expected.
Starting with the Labour Party, there is simply no point to it as it is currently constructed. Its grass roots are mostly too left-wing. Corbynites, like the Trumpites in the US Republican Party, are endemic but, unlike Trump, have no electoral appeal whatsoever. The influence of trade unions is also out of date and undemocratic. What clothes Labour had; public sector investment and notions of working-class solidarity, have been stolen by Johnson’s Conservatives. Add to this toxic mix for Labour of splits over Brexit and an inability to embrace nationalist sentiment convincingly in its heartlands, and it feels like game over for another generation. Keir Starmer is a decent man and the best available leader but that is not enough.
Turning next to the LibDems, there is nothing new to say. They screwed up Brexit, are too nice and too vague. Outside pavement politics, they lack a killer instinct and, even if they had one, wouldn’t know where or how to apply it.
So, for the Opposition, the way forward is a new party; a carefully constructed centrist one which will have to be years in the making to work and probably led by a Blairite. For all his faults, one is struck by the fact the most incisive, commonsensical commentary on current events often comes from Blair himself. Indeed, if you read about his time in government, his largest mistakes domestically often came when he had to pander to his left-wing in the Labour Party. Imagine if a Blairite was free from historical baggage…
I know we have been here before and for a new party to work, it will take patience as well as talent to succeed. A fresh start would ultimately involve the evisceration of both Labour and the Liberal Democrats before tackling Tory hegemony. It won’t be easy.
We shall see but the health of democracy, at least in England, demands a better choice than we have now.
Inside Right Politics 