Mr Brightside: Say Hello, Wave Goodbye 

 

“You and I, it had to be the Standing joke of the year” 

 

The term “from hero to zero” could have been written for the Starmer government. With the exception of the Truss debacle it is unprecedented

 
Keir Starmer’s personal ratings dropped further during his first Labour conference as PM, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer. 

Prior to the conference, Starmer’s ratings had collapsed 45 points since July to -26 by last weekend; 24% approving of the job he was doing, against 50% who disapproved. Rather than being the hoped for celebration of Labour return to power after 14 years in opposition, there was a further drop of four points to -30, the lowest he has ever recorded. 
 

• Ratings for the chancellor to -28, down from -25 last weekend. 

• 34% of people thought Starmer made a bad speech last Tuesday as opposed to 19% who thought it was a good one; 46% said they did not have an opinion or, more likely, were beyond caring. 

• Only 20% of voters think Labour has been good at providing hope and optimism following its landslide ­general election victory, against 56% who think it is has done badly in this respect, and 

• Despite promising to lead a “government of service” and rebuild faith in politics, only 17% of people think it is doing well in this regard, against 58% who think it is doing badly. 

 
With a promised tough budget still to come, things will clearly get worse before they get better. 

Adding to the government’s woes was the resignation from the party of Rosie Duffield, the Canterbury MP, who criticised Keir Starmer’s “cruel and unnecessary” policies and lambasting the prime minister’s “managerial and technocratic approach” to politics. 

It is thought that it is the fastest an MP has given up their party’s whip after an election in modern times. 

She said that the row over freebies handed to Starmer and his top team demonstrated that “sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale”… Duffield said the behaviour of Labour figures who accepted gifts from donor Lord Alli had left her “so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party”. 
 

“sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale”

 
She also launched a vitriolic attack on the decision by Starmer to make unpopular decisions in order to keep spending under control – most notably the refusal to end the two-child limit on benefits and the cut to pensioner winter fuel payments. 

“Someone with far-above-average wealth choosing to keep the Conservatives’ two-child limit to benefit payments which entrenches children in poverty, while inexplicably accepting expensive personal gifts of designer suits and glasses costing more than most of these people can grasp –… this is entirely undeserving of holding the title of Labour prime minister.” 

While Duffield’s criticisms are by far the most vociferous expressed by a Labour figure in public, there will be concerns that some resonate with those made in private by Labour MPs and ministers during the party’s conference last week. 

Personally, I support all she said, this is a government that has lost it way almost before it has begun. It does however, highlight one clear issue both major parties are having a personality crisis, no one, not even them, know what they stand for anymore. 
 

‘this is a government that has lost it way almost before it has begun’

 
I decided to turn the party’s own website for help. 

As a summary it said: “The Labour Party has always been about people. It was formed to give working people a voice and has sought power in order to improve their lives. Labour has changed Britain for the better, through the most progressive governments in our country’s history. 

“Ours is a proud history, with achievements – from the NHS to the minimum wage– that have made a lasting difference to the lives of people across our country.” 

At inception, in 1900, the party described itself as “a new party for a new century. Its formation was the result of many years of struggle by working class people, trade unionists and socialists, united by the goal of working class voices represented in British Parliament.”  

The party’s manifesto going into the post-war 1945 was entitled “Let us Face the Future” was based on vision and pledge “to destroy the five ‘evil giants’: want, squalor, disease, ignorance and unemployment”, and led to a landslide victory, winning 393 seats. 
 

‘Today, we are told there is no money therefore the welfare state will continue to be underfunded, and the poorest in society are penalised’

 
The Labour governments of 1964-70 and 1974-79 led by Harold Wilson and then James Callaghan “were marked by a period of great change: the permanent ending of the death penalty, decriminalisation of homosexuality, legislation to outlaw racial discrimination, and the establishment of the Open University. 

As Secretary of State for Employment, Barbara Castle, “brought about significant social change, as she introduced the groundbreaking Equal Pay Act of 1970. Once again Labour men and women led the way in modernising and reforming Britain to improve the lives of millions.” 

The governments of Tony Blair then Gordon Brown from 1997-2010, “brought many of the changes our country desperately needed. 

“Record investment in the NHS, schools and the police rescued our public services. The introduction of the National Minimum Wage and the New Deal meant more jobs paying a decent wage, while devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland put power in people’s hands while peace came to the latter through the landmark Good Friday Agreement. 

“Labour put into practice our values of equality and social justice, introducing Civil Partnerships, the Equality Act, the Human Rights Act and legislating for equality of opportunity for all. We cancelled up to 100 per cent of debt for the world’s poorest countries and brought about the world’s first Climate Change Act.” 

There is a clear picture forming; the importance of the welfare state including the NHS, equality in terms of gender, sexuality and economically. 

Today, we are told there is no money therefore the welfare state will continue to be underfunded, and the poorest in society are penalised. The two-child benefit cap is still in-force, and majority of pensioners will lose their winter fuel allowance. 
 

‘two different philosophies creating an underlying tension between the individualism of the market and private property and the communality of custom and tradition’

 
Small wonder party members are confused. 

The picture for the Conservatives has always been more confusing.  

On the one hand there is their belief in the importance of the free market, of private property and of individual choice. Whilst, at the same time, believing in the overriding significance of community and tradition as setting limits to the reach of individualism.  

There is in effect two different philosophies creating an underlying tension between the individualism of the market and private property and the communality of custom and tradition, between innovative capitalist development and the fetters of history and culture. 

Margaret Thatcher typifies this confusion; on one hand she is revered as the PM who transformed both Britain and the Conservative party, whilst others regret the destruction Thatcherism wrought on our social fabric, customs and traditions.  

Thatcher’s favourite free-market economist, was whose book, “The Constitution of Liberty” was the basis of her policies, yet he is also seen as one of the founders of globalisation, which has become the bête noire of contemporary conservatism. 

Today the party’s wrangling over what they stand for is at the heart of the leadership campaign. In the opinion of Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, the Tories lost the election because “they were insufficiently conservative. Both demand a more muscular nationalism, fear immigration is undermining the soul of the nation, challenge what they regard as “woke” history, and desire the restoration of more traditional cultural values.” 
 

‘wrangling over what they stand for is at the heart of the leadership campaign’

 
The significance of history, community and tradition to conservative thought derives largely from the work of the 18th-century philosopher Edmund Burke (1). For Burke, a nation was “a partnership between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born”, its values defined not by reason but by what Burke called the “latent wisdom” of prejudice and custom accumulating across generations. 

Many believe that there is a thin line between Burkean and the “Völkisch” visions of nationhood. As a result many mainstream conservatives now identify with the far-right themes of immigration and identity, which manifests itself in terms of migrant “invasions”, of Britons “surrendering their territory”, of white Europeans “losing their homelands” and “committing suicide”, of the perils of London becoming less white. 

And what of the aspiring Tory leaders?  

Well, at first glance Mr Tugendhat is the most leftwing candidate, representing the Tory One Nation tradition, On the other end of the spectrum we have Jenrick and Badenoch, with James Cleverly sandwiched in between. 

Only it isn’t that simple, Tugendhat, a former remainer now indulges the radical Eurosceptic delusion that Britain might leave the European convention on human rights. Mr Cleverly has pledged to bring back the ill-fated scheme to deport asylum claimants to Rwanda, despite reportedly dismissing the project as “batshit” when in government. 

Jenrick started life as a Tory moderniser, a wannabe David Cameron, and is now following the prevailing wind and is joining in with the hard-right faction, warning viewers on GB News that “people will die” if immigration isn’t curbed. Put another way, he’s interested in himself.  

Badenoch is somewhat of a confused picture, she seems to indulge in stirring culture, whilst wanting to return the party back towards the electoral mainstream. She is also big on Islamophobia, labelling the five independent MPs elected on pro-Gaza platforms as practising “sectarian, Islamist politics”, whose ideas “have no place here”. Put another way, she doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going. 
 

‘Put another way, she doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going’

 
Overriding all of them is the prevailing narrative that their defeat was caused by not being enough in  their dealings with immigration. They live in mortal terror of losing yet more support to Reform, whilst appearing blithely ignorant of the scores of voters leaving them for the LibDems, often because of their tacking towards Reform. 

There is also a clear message that they do not think they have done anything wrong. The main legacies of their 14-yrs of misrule, austerity, Brexit, anti-migrant policy have not been disowned, rather they are doubling-down on them. 

With both parties clearly suffering major identity crisis where does this leave us? 

Labour are becoming One Nation Tories, and the Tories are becoming Reform, the question for voters is why have the decaf espresso, when you can vote Reform  and have a proper espresso? 

As an example we can look to Austria where on Sunday, for the first time since the Nazi era, the hard-right, pro-Kremlin, anti-Islam, Freedom party (FPÖ – the full espresso) driven by public anger over migration and the cost of living won 29.2% of the vote, defeating the centre-right People’s party who scored 26.5% (ÖVP – decaf version). Despite this apparent success it remains to be seen as what role the FPO and its leader, Herbert Kickl, will play in the new government. 
 

‘the question for voters is why have the decaf espresso, when you can vote Reform  and have a proper espresso?’

 
During his final rally in central Vienna on Friday, Kickl railed against anti-Russia EU sanctions, “the snobs, headteachers and know-it-alls”, climate activists and “drag queens in schools and the early sexualisation of our children”. He hailed a proposed constitutional amendment declaring the existence of only two genders. But the biggest applause line remained his call for “remigration”, or forced deportation of people “who think they don’t have to play by the rules” of Austrian society. 

This is only the latest success for hard-right parties in Europe. All have benefitted from the model of Viktor Orbán in Hungary. The FPÖ capitalised on fears around migration, asylum and crime heightened by the August cancellation of three Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna over an alleged Islamist terror plot. Mounting inflation, tepid economic growth and lingering resentment over strict government measures during Covid dovetailed into a huge leap in support for the FPÖ since the last election in 2019. 
 

‘traditional parties are not delivering the those that feel left behind…when they try to imitate the hard-right, voters chose the hard-right option’

 
Kickl campaigned using the “people’s chancellor”, a term previously used to describe the Austrian-born Adolf Hitler, said he was ready to form a government with “each and every one” of the parties in parliament. 

The governing centre-right party had campaigned on a similar immigration line to the FPÖ’s, which the far right hopes to bring to bear at the EU level using Austria’s outsized influence in Brussels due to its geographical prominence and strong alliances. 

All this proves is what I constantly write; traditional parties are not delivering the those that feel left behind. In addition, when they try to imitate the hard-right, voters chose the hard-right option. 
 

“And you’re a prima ballerina on a spring afternoon 

Change on into the wolfman howlin’ at the moon, ooh” 

 
Notes: 

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke 

 

‘Sometimes I feel like I am existing in a surreal vacuum and no one is listening.

At home we have a PM and government, who couldn’t be more disappointing.

Nothing is changing, in fact it’s just more of the same; austerity, sleaze, and ruling in a totally autocratic manner.

Last week, the government lost an important vote at the party’s annual conference, this week they lost an MP. Whilst neither are crucial, they help provide a picture. If a government is, after 4-months in-power, already out-of-step with its party members ist very telling. Unsurprisingly, it is being echoed in the polls.

I feel a large part of this problem is due to politics moving to the right, there seems to be an identity crisis about both lain parties. Labour are now One Nation Tories, and the Tory’s, well let’s say they are undecided, but a Reform tribute act appears likely.

Where all of this takes us is to Reform, gaining greater traction. Every week I say the same, and I am not alone. If you don’t believe me, look to mainland Europe, each election there sends the same message, the hard-right, fascism, marches.

However, let’s finish with something more light-hearted.

In his memoirs former PM, Boris Johnson, revealed that he “had commissioned some work on whether it might be technically feasible to launch an aquatic raid on a warehouse in Leiden, in the Netherlands, and to take that which was legally ours and which the UK desperately needed”.

The AstraZeneca vaccine was, at the time, at the heart of a cross-Channel row over exports, and Johnson believed the EU was treating the UK “with malice”.

The deputy chief of the defence staff, Lt Gen Doug Chalmers, told the prime minister the plan was “certainly feasible” and would involve using rigid inflatable boats to navigate Dutch canals.

Life would be so dull without people like Boris!

Lyrically, we start with Soft Cell and “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye”, which might be the case for our PM. In tribute to the main parties as they struggle with their identities we finish with “Personality Crisis” by the New York Dolls.

Enjoy!

Philip.’

 
@coldwarsteve
 

 

Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.

Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s

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