SS Westminster heads for black hole

Westminster is fast becoming the political equivalent of an emerging black hole, with the political elite engaged in an increasingly futile struggle to overcome the collapse of their own system into a region where nothing, including light, can escape.

The edge of a black hole is known as the “event horizon”. It marks the point of no return. There is a strong possibility that point has been reached, judging by the mayhem in the mainstream parties, which an astounding opinion poll is bound to reinforce.

A dramatic ­Guardian/ICM poll reveals a previously unrecorded decline in 30 years of surveys in support for the Tories, Labour and LibDems at the same time. Support has literally drained away at a rapid rate of knots, washing up at the door of the right-wing populist Ukip under Nigel Farage. 

Ukip has soared to 18%, while the Tories have plummeted to 28%, Labour to 34% and the LibDems to a miserable 11%. The patent disintegration of mainstream politics has led to a rapid Titanic-like rearranging of deckchairs as the SS Westminster heads for the iceberg.

In a desperate bid to thwart Ukip’s anti-Europe stance and a backbench rebellion, David Cameron is rushing out a draft bill to introduce an in-out EU referendum, even though it has no chance of getting through parliament and could break the Coalition.

Vince Cable is allegedly involved in a dastardly plot to oust Nick Clegg as leader of the LibDems to prevent a wipe-out of MPs at the next election.

Labour is under pressure to sack the under-performing shadow chancellor Ed Balls, who is closely associated with the failed policies of the last Labour government. Ed Miliband is also being told to go down the “Blue Labour” path of being tough on immigration, benefits and spending or face the chop as leader.

The decision of Lord Sainsbury, formerly one of the party’s biggest donors, to stop giving to Labour can only strengthen the Blairite/Blue Labour factions.

The pressure on Miliband will also grow as a result of a report that shows traditional Labour supporters are more and more unsympathetic towards welfare recipients. A big group is saying that individuals are responsible for their own predicament. After more than 15 years of New Labour/ConDem propaganda along these lines, it’s no surprise that social attitudes have shifted.

Ukip have rounded up voters who – rightly – feel powerless and dominated by forces beyond their control. These include the massive, impenetrable European Union bureaucracy, the major corporations and banks and an unresponsive political system at Westminster.

Add into the mix a spurious fear of Rumanians and Bulgarians heading for Britain in their millions, and it’s a heady, dangerous brew that Farage is stirring. Ukip’s trajectory is unpredictable but the emergence of right-wing nationalist politics is succeeding where the fascists of the BNP and other have failed. 

Clearly, the response to Ukip cannot be to urge support for the mainstream parties. Labour, for example, is opposed to self-determination for Scotland on the grounds that it would create a permanent Tory majority in England! Hardly the stuff of principle.

Political and economic institutions, including the European Union, are indeed broken and oppressive. Events since the collapse of the financial system in a number of countries demonstrate that a virulent, dangerous, anti-democratic nationalism is making headway against the old order.

There is a real opportunity to pose a revolutionary, democratic alternative to the present state, both here and in the EU. We need to campaign for that right now, not wait until the political system becomes so unstable that dark forces within the state emerge to enforce order. They were ready to do that in the 1970s. Don’t think they are not waiting in the wings now.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

The incorporation of Labour

The assimilation of Labour into accepting the Tory Party’s narrative is moving at such a pace that it is no wonder that David Cameron finds his party ahead in the polls.

In virtually every major policy area, Labour’s own views are hardly distinguishable from those of the government; on crime, immigration and anti-terror laws, Ed Miliband’s crew are actually to the right of the ConDem coalition.

Only this week, Liam Byrne, the shadow work and pensions secretary, claimed that the benefits system had “skewed social behaviour”, provided “unearned support” and run up an unsustainable housing benefits bill.

In an articlefor the Guardian, Byrne called for “fresh thinking” and an abandonment of the party’s “old agenda”. In practice, Byrne and Labour are backing Iain Duncan Smith’s “welfare reform” bill.

On education, where Michael Gove is busily breaking up what remains of the comprehensive schools system, there is tacit backing from Labour. As the astute Tory commentator Peter Oborne
notes: “Gove is the first post-war education secretary to challenge effectively the power of the teaching unions – and move against an educational establishment that is constitutionally opposed to excellence and high standards. Amazingly, he seems to be bringing the Labour Party with him.”

Similarly on the economy. The ConDems have insisted draconian cuts in spending were made necessary partly because of the failed economic policies of the Blair/Brown governments. Shadow chancellor Ed Balls originally rejected this simplistic, half-truth.

Now, according to Oborne, even Balls agrees with “the need for drastic cuts in public spending” and only “the relatively minor detail of timing” is in dispute. “In all essentials, Ed Miliband’s Labour Party now accepts the fundamental economic insights of the Cameron Coalition.”

No surprise then that Miliband, propelled into the party’s leadership by the three largest trade unions in the hope he would be their prisoner, is struggling to find a coherent strategy that differentiates Labour from the Tories. Enter Lord Glasman, a founder of so-called Blue Labour and a Miliband advisor, whose statements on immigration could have come from the right-wing of the Tories.

Just to make sure Miliband gets the message, Glasman has told him that “there seems to be no strategy, no narrative and little energy” at the top of the party. Glasman urges the termination of what he terms “an unhappy and abusive relationship with the unions” and to end being identified with the interests of public sector workers.

Miliband is almost there. He opposed last year’s strikes in defence of public sector pensions and there are reports that he intends to reduce the reliance on trade union funding (Rod Aldridge, the former chief of outsourcing firm Capita who donated £1m to Labour was given a knighthood in the New Year list. One of Miliband's newest advisers is Andrew Rosenfeld, the property tycoon who has also given £1m)

Glasman is kicking at an open door when he urges Miliband to “leave behind stale orthodoxies and trust his instinct that change is essential”.

Oborne’s view that the “facts of life are Conservative” and that Labour has accepted this is, of course, used to damn what he terms the “Left” which he identifies with the 13 years of Blair/Brown governments.

This is historically inaccurate as well as misleading. New Labour long ago accepted the facts of corporate-driven globalisation and came to believe in a “new paradigm” of a crisis-free capitalism, with uninterrupted growth and riches for all. It was a view shared by many economists and politicians around the world, including the present Tory leadership.

The “facts of life” are actually those of an economic and financial system in profound crisis globally and not principally because governments spent too much. Reliance on credit/debt was the only way to sustain ever-growing consumption and, more significantly, profit levels.

So the credit crunch and financial meltdown was an expression of this permanent, inner-tension between production and profit that lies at the heart of capitalism. And the result is not just the wiping out of vast areas of capacity, leading to mass unemployment, but the integration of Labour into the ConDems’ desperate strategy to turn things round.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor