Why Starmerism is so tragic
He is too inspired by neoliberal fallacies and shows no real vision
Since taking over Starmer has purged any authentic leftist foundation within the Labour Party, through means of dooming the hard left and arguably even the soft left to the edges of the party, making them isolated in ideological gulags set up by the centrist core of the Labour leadership. Starmer is now Sunak’s continuity candidate, as the Labour Party markets themselves as the party of big business and Starmer has no intention of repealing the authoritarian legislation passed by the Conservative government.
RMT boss Mick Lynch slammed Starmer by labelling Starmer as not being on the side of working people, adding that there isn’t any significant difference between Labour and the Conservatives under Starmerite leadership. This illustrates how an actual left-wing leader who represents working people comprehends the current state of the Labour Party — a party that has abandoned the pursuit of socioeconomic equality and left-wing ambition.
The replacement of Labour’s leftist foundation can be understood through analysis of two different factors: Starmer’s revival of Blairite New Labour attitudes, and adopting a neoliberal framework to tackle Britain’s modern malaises.
A New Labour revival
Tony Blair and New Labour have an interesting presence within the Labour Party. New Labour is indeed the most recent memory of Labour victory in Britain with two consecutive landslides in 1997 and 2001. However, Blair’s legacy is controversial as for every admiration there is admonishment. Some supporters argue that there was increased spending on social services such as the NHS and tax credits and that Britain was experiencing a period of great economic growth. Conversely, New Labour did nothing to reverse Thatcher’s instalment of neoliberalism in British society, culture, and economics. The consequence was failing the working class and maintaining the causes of Britain’s woes. Despite this, Keir Starmer has modelled himself on Blair in both ideology and methodology to achieve success.
The NHS is an example of Blairite failure to recover Britain’s social services. New Labour supported the tradition of kneecapping hospitals and their staff by maintaining a business mindset in administering healthcare, instead of returning to the core doctrine of simply treating patients for healthcare’s sake. Defenders of Blair can claim that he increased spending and reduced waiting times, and yet doctors are still striking and the NHS is in a perennial crisis. Strikes and failures in healthcare service are being presided over by the Tories, however, it is imperative to remember how New Labour did not abolish the root causes behind the NHS’s issues.
New Labour upheld the process of de facto privatisation by forcing the NHS to take loans to build hospitals and encouraging private financing for what should be a public service. Furthermore, Blair claimed that his government would abolish the internal market but instead revamped Tory market reforms by embracing the principles of competition and outsourcing services to private firms. Labour had three consecutive majority governments and decided not to steer the NHS back into the correct direction of solely being a public service under New Labour. Why? — Because New Labour was soft neoliberalism incarnate, rejecting structural reform and embracing market fundamentalism.
The NHS is just one example of how New Labour tolerated the neoliberal takeover of Britain’s social services and public sector. It was New Labour that implemented a system of student loans, preventing education for education’s sake so students could continue being treated as customers and compelled to learn degraded degrees. Not renationalising crucial services such as the railways and energy industry meant the private sector maintained its control over hardwiring public services to think within a business framework. Blairite Britain fuelled the neoliberal capitalist machine that was not about helping people use capital but instead encouraged transforming people into capital itself.
Even the argument that New Labour still delivered tax credits and anti-poverty measures becomes tragic; New Labour did alleviate suffering but did not eliminate the cause of suffering itself. Low-income individuals don’t only suffer because of a lack of financial support, they also suffer because there isn’t enough regulation to ensure they are paid a living wage; unions are still suffering from restrictions on mobilising against oppressive business practices; windfall taxes help generate money to provide welfare, but it doesn’t change the fact that public services are still run by the private sector driven by greed, not a desire to help people. Blair admitted in 2013 that his job was to “build on some of the things [Thatcher] had done rather than reverse them”.
The defence of New Labour runs out very quickly when analysing the reality of his legacy. His failures are as real if not more real than any of his supposed successes. He threw money at the country’s problems because he was in a convenient position to do so when Britain was experiencing high economic growth, but New Labour still supported parasitic market fundamentalism and the normality of neoliberalism.
Now why paint the lengthy picture of the fallacy of New Labour and Blairism? — Because Starmer has been consolidating his leadership by surrounding himself with centrists and Blairites, while directly engaging with Blair himself to adjust Labour to be a centrist force. This doesn’t mean that in the strictest terms, Starmerism equals Blairism; there is nothing wrong with being inspired by past victories to strategise for future victories. The problem is that Labour currently has a centrist leadership that shows no genuine leftist vision to transform Britain, displaying ignorance towards the root causes of Britain’s socioeconomic suffering, and operating with a simplistic mindset of politics.
No real alternative
Detailed analysis of Blairite negligence is only the first component of understanding why Starmerism is so tragic. The second component is that his leadership offers no real alternative in policy and governance. New Labour at least sought to market itself as seeking to usher in a new era of change and progress (even if the political reality was contrary to its marketing). Starmer’s u-turns show that his Labour Party is not about policy, instead, it’s about appearing as a more suitable Conservative Party that is less afraid of welfare and minuscule reform.
Any pledge that would have been a step forward in reviving Britain from its neoliberal hellscape has been abandoned. Just like how Blair only intended to build upon Thatcherism, Starmer seems to be more concerned with being a better Sunak. He has refused to empower unions, renationalise key services, reverse the role of the private sector in the NHS, and end the system of student loans. All of these policies are necessary to reverse the cancerous impact of neoliberalism on Britain, but Starmer’s u-turns and rejection of radical reform show him succumbing to the neoliberal establishment. On top of all this, the Labour Party is undergoing another u-turn on its plans to transition to a green economy, meaning no fixation on long-term policy. This is reminiscent of Blairite pro-establishment values, except Starmer does not even pretend like he is a reformist.
It can be forgivable for a party leader to make difficult u-turns and unpopular pragmatic decisions. What is tragic and shameful is that the Labour Party has given up on being an alternate party. Starmerism is not about being a better government, it is about appearing as a better government. Trying to look like a government-in-waiting, instead of being one is a political party with no substance. This is what Starmer’s Labour Party is — an empty shell that deleted leftist vision from what is meant to be a leftist alternative to right-wing Conservative governance.
The tragedy of complacency
The Labour Party’s transformation through recycled Blairism and abandonment of reformist policy all indicate a takeover by the tragedy of complacency. This complacency is the acceptance of neoliberal capitalism and obliviousness towards the root cause of Britain’s malaises. Starmer is ready to make the Labour Party, and in turn, the government he leads, into the straw man that distracts the public from why Britain is suffering so much. A Starmer government would be identical to the Sunak government in its attempts to absorb the anger against socioeconomic malaise in place of people being angry towards the private sector’s role in causing most of the salient problems in modern society.
Starmerism has surrendered the Labour Party into the vacuum of neoliberal thinking, showing no desire for structural change and transformation of exploitative fundamentals in modern British socioeconomics. It is counterintuitive to what a leftist party with the name “Labour” should be about, which is trying to overcome the causes of oppression against working people and not be puppets of the bourgeois elite. This makes the nature of Starmer’s leadership somehow worse than Blair’s leadership — there is not even a pretension of vision, any innovative policy is abandoned, and the left is being purged.
What Britain and its Labour government should do is be the opposite of the Tories. If money is a concern then plans to end the trend of wasting state funds and imposing a wealth tax is what is needed, to balance financial contributions from the country’s people and corporations. Alongside the financial resources, Labour needs to focus on ending institutionalised anti-union attitudes, acknowledge that investment in a green transition is necessary for job creation and growth, make long-term plans to renationalise the water, energy, and rail industries, and remove private-sector influence on the NHS and implement structural reforms to end business-oriented priorities by healthcare workers. It’s not to say that there is no good policy left as the Labour Party still intends to end fire-and-rehire schemes and zero-hour contracts, and even if watered-down some policies do remain.
Nonetheless, it is time for the Labour Party, and by extension any establishment politician to reverse their thinking. Assuming that simple solutions will solve Britain’s problems is not visionary, all it shows is that the party’s leaders can only think in simple ways. Modelling the Labour Party on faux centrist success under Blair due to a hard-left Corbyn’s failure is narrow-minded. Starmer and the Labour Party need to abandon the culture of abandoning pledges itself and relegate Blairism to the past.
The Labour Party needs to be a political party that tries to advance beyond the establishment, not be a party for it. Until the Labour Party reboots itself to be such a leftist party, the tale of Starmerism’s takeover will be a tragic one; a story of anti-leftist leadership taking over what should be a leftist party.
