The Times They Are A-Changin; The End of New Labour  

 

 

“Take it on from here you know 

I know that things can only get better” 

 

 

Whilst this article is about New Labour, Starmer, McSweeney and Mandelson, there is a bigger picture of the uber rich wanting to set their own rules, buying influence with their wealth, and politicians with the sole ambition of becoming rich. 

 

Clearly, the expose of all this is based on Epstein, and it should never be forgotten that his, and his cohorts abuse of young girls who are the real victims here. 

Within this Epstein serves as an example of someone extremely wealthy, using that for his own ends. For him to succeed you needed hungry, ambitious people of influence who could be bought off. 

This is, unfortunately, a very sorry story of modern society. If it proves anything, it is that the capitalism in its present state serves only the very few.#    

Lyrically, we start with appalling “Things Can Only Get Better” by D:Ream. We finish on a high with “5 8 6” by New Order 

 

@coldwarsteve

 

At outset, an apology for picking the perfectly dreadful D:Ream song to start this article, unfortunately it was appropriate as it was the song that ushered in New Labour. Perhaps it was BaD:Dream? 

 

Ironically, Labour’s victory in 1997 followed a long period of Tory governments, just as Starmer’s 2024 victory did. Both were met with a heady optimism, and new broom sweeping away the sleaze that had gone before them. 

In 1997 “things could only get better” we were told. These were the heady days of “Cool Brittania”; Oasis, Blur, the Spice Girls, Euro ’96 when football almost came home. 

Within this wave of optimism that swept through the country in 1997, was Tony Blair and New Labour; young, energetic, a new government promising to make a real difference. Progression was in the air: the minimum wage, devolution, anti-poverty measures and refinancing the NHS. But, as with Britpop, New Labour was just a pastiche. 

Before long, their true colours were revealed as the government pursued public sector reforms that were designed to woo big business. Marketisation and privatisation became a central pillar of New Labour, under Mandelson’s influence. The ultimate betrayal was, of course, the criminal decision to go to war in Iraq, as we desperately sought to show America how much the special relationship meant to us. 

And there it is, the “M” word; Mandelson. 

Mandelson was at the heart of Tony Blair’s transformation of Labour into New Labour. More accurately the transformation of a party for the workers as opposed to big business, into an out-and-out capitalist party. 

If ever a quote summed-up New Labour, it was this from Mandelson in 1998; he was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”. What he really meant was he who wanted to be filthy rich. He surrounded himself with rich people, and his desperation to join them led to his first political demise in 1998 and a second in 2001. Both times he resigned from the Cabinet as a result of dodgy financial dealings. 

 

“intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”

 

New Labour, under Mandelson’s guidance thought that working-class voters had nowhere else to go, that the government didn’t need to fight to secure their votes. This result of this fundamental miscalculation first came to the fore in the Brexit referendum, when the political refugees New Labour had created found an unlikely home with the UKIP inspired vote “Leave”. Since then the disenfranchised have moved from UKIP to Tory, to Labour, to Reform, and each time they have found that the different dog still had fleas! 

New Labour was the highlight of Mandelson’s career, seeing him feted as a supreme strategist and master of the dark arts who made Labour “electable”. In reality, he hollowed out what was the Labour Party, severing it from its social base and replacing their democratic socialism with technocratic elitism.  

The New Labour clique no longer wanted the party to be a vehicle for the working-class, instead they wanted to suck-up to corporate power.  

Mandelson solidified the idea that ideology was an embarrassment and class politics was obsolete. Party members became largely impotent in the eyes of a leadership that neither trusted nor listened to them. As a result, the all-important grass roots withered, along with the moral clarity as a movement built on the principles of social justice. 

Even after the left returned to the fore under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, Mandelson pernicious influence bubbled under-the-surface as he worked “every single day in some small way to bring forward the end of his [Corbyn] tenure in office.” 

 

‘UKIP to Tory, to Labour, to Reform, and each time they have found that the different dog still had fleas!’ 

 

This “messianic drive to annihilate Corbynism and to make Labour once again a reliable representative of the capitalist elite – is ‘Starmerism’ personified”. 

Mandelson might have openly admitted to wanting to be filthy rich, but it was his leader, Tony Blair, who achieved it, with a post-premiership career including being a consultant to dictators, and viceroy to Emperor Trump in Gaza. 

Mandelson’s third, and surely final fall from grace, looks the be one of the final nails in New Labour’s coffin. The great irony of this is the fact that PM Starmer’s right-hand man, Morgan McSweeney is, in many ways, this generations Mandelson. 

As with Blair before him, Starmer was swept into power with thumping majority, sold as competence incarnate: committed to public service, with a team totally different from the psychodramas of the Tory era. They appeared to be offering something for everyone, no tax rises for the wealthy, attacking the welfare state and bashing migrants.  

This created fools gold, the sweeping majority was achieved with only 33.7% of the vote, which pales into insignificance when compared to the 40% achieved if the 2017 election achieved under Corbyn. Despite losing, this was the party’s best showing since 1945, overturning a significant Tory majority with a traditional left-wing manifesto. 

This appeared to be the moment, for Corbyn, who became leader in 2015, to dispense with a New Labour that was both ideologically exhausted, and still shaken by the GFC that laid waste to their Torylite policies. 

Instead, the party’s right chose a different path, with McSweeney to the fore. He organised the leadership campaign of the Blairite torchbearer Liz Kendall in 2015, based on a political agenda similar to the eventual Starmerite offering. Kendall failed badly, securing 4.5% of the vote, leaving McSweeney et al to seek out a malleable MP who wanted to be PM. Stamer was their choice, he had served in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet and opportunistically sounded off against Brexit, he was an ideal stooge for the party members.   

 

‘Mandelson brings with him a clear political analysis, however wrong, whereas the leadership lacked one’

 

With hindsight Starmerism via McSweeney was based on a series of lies, rather like vote “leave’s” Brexit campaign. In his April 2020 leadership campaign, Starmer stood on a relatively left-wing ticket, since then, for a host of excuses, virtually all those pledges have been dropped. Again, with hindsight, Starmer appears to have been a useful idiot to front McSweeney desire to return to New Labour, no doubt aided by his friend and mentor, Mandelson. 

As a former McSweeney associate reportedly said: “Morgan wouldn’t breathe without consulting Mandelson first”. 

Simon Fletcher worked as a senior adviser for Miliband, Corbyn and then Starmer, said: “I think they brought Mandelson in because it would provide a frisson from the association with Blair-era New Labour. They knew it would be received badly in many parts of the Labour movement but they would think that was a net positive – it would build on the conflict over suspending Jeremy Corbyn to show they were prepared to embrace the previously unthinkable. 

“Mandelson brings with him a clear political analysis, however wrong, whereas the leadership lacked one. So it is a conscious choice to head down a very specific political road.” 

One of the changes promised by Starmer was an end to sleaze and freebies, unfortunately history shows that he was recipient of more than every Labour leader on record including Tony Blair. Clearly, New Labour’s its obsession with wealth, proximity to power and elite approval never really went away.  

 

‘The past 10-yrs has seen the PM’s job passed around like a parcel at a children’s party’

 

Labour’s problem is the sheer number of influential people within the party of the Blairite legacy. The new generation of Blairites believe that they have been tarnished with the perceived failures of this government, which is too often casually described as “Blairite”, despite being more properly understood as of the old Labour right. The misinterpretation comes from the predominance of ex-Blair staffers were hired at the start of this government. There is also their belief that Starmer leaderships was a compromise, with a temporary alliance of the Blairites and the old right formed in opposition to Jeremy Corbyn. 

To some extent, this has led to a mish-mash of policies, that, whilst not traditional Labour, frustrates the new generation of Blairites, including measures such as taxes on business, education reforms they see as retrograde, and what they regard as the government’s feeble first response to rising racial hatred.  

This can be seen in Wes Streeting, who once saw himself a Blairite, but now prefers “progressive” or a member of the “new right”. 

Of course, this all leads to the question, what now?  

The past 10-yrs has seen the PM’s job passed around like a parcel at a children’s party. There has been three elections, one change of governing party, and six PMs. 

At the risk of repetition this uncertainty can be traced back to the GFC, the economic system fell apart and was repaired with Elastoplast, leading to an unprecedented fall in living standards and a hollowed-out public sector. There has been a total void in terms of credible alternatives, which has led directly to mass political disillusionment and anger. As our politics becomes riven with instability, the hard-right weaves vicious fantasies around a narrative of a zero-sum struggle between citizens and migrants. 

This void was highlighted in the last election, which had the one of the lowest turnouts in history, and returned a sweeping Labour majority, based largely on the unpopularity of the incumbent Tory government.  

Labour has descended into the same factionalism that bedevilled the Tory’s post-2016. Reprising New Labour has failed, as have its cynical tenet of neutralising the party as a threat to wealthy interests. 

Their claim to economic competence was based on a fiscal straitjacket that, Starmer was told, would win him the 2024 election. Now, an economy already hobbled by Brexit, is left with no room to manoeuvre.    

 

‘an economy already hobbled by Brexit, is left with no room to manoeuvre’

 

Another example of the behind the scenes machinations of McSweeney et al was Starmer’s leadership pledge #5, “Common Ownership…. Support the Common Ownership of rail, mail, energy, and water.”   

 

Source: https://www.chartist.org.uk/how-is-starmer-doing/ 

 

Ahhh, yes, the water industry. Perhaps the best example of “robber barons”, the rich getting richer at the expense of the poor. Whilst taking consumers money, they illegally dumped sewage into our rivers and seas and presided over water shortages which left thousands of people in misery. And, their bosses get millions in bonuses for their trouble. 

 

‘Thames Water had its bonuses banned after being deemed a failing company, but still plans to pay its top staff millions in “retention payments”’

 

Not only did Starmer renege on his pledge, his government put-in-place half-assed bans on bonuses that a first year lawyer could navigate around. Specifically, the legislation passed in the Water (Special Measures) Act last year only referred to “performance-related” bonuses from specific regulated companies. 

Thames Water had its bonuses banned after being deemed a failing company, but still plans to pay its top staff millions in “retention payments” from a controversial high-interest loan that was meant to be used to keep the firm afloat. This is now allowed as these are labelled as non-performance-related bonuses. 

Yorkshire Water was also banned from paying its bosses bonuses this year, but its chief executive, Nicola Shaw, netted £1.3m in an offshore parent company over two years. The boss of South East Water, David Hinton, is on track for £400,000 in bonus pay by 2030 despite tens of thousands of people in Tunbridge Wells having had their water cut off for weeks. 

Wessex Water’s former boss Colin Skellett received a £170,000 bonus in the same year as the bonus ban on the utility. The payment was labelled as a bonus, but was allowed because it was made by a parent company. 

Still, it might mean that ex-Starmer cabinet members, maybe even Starmer himself could find consulting roles with these miscreants! 

If Labour is to rise, phoenixlike, from this bonfire of the vanities, they need to return to their roots. We have already heard union leaders voice similar. 

Andrea Egan, the new general secretary of Unison has declared the trade union will end its support for the “destructive right wing of the Labour party” and said any leadership election in 2026 should not swap Keir Starmer for Wes Streeting. 

 

‘One word to describe Starmer’s first 18-months as PM, is woeful’

 

Talking about Streeting’s handling of the resident doctors’ dispute, Egan saying it was “simply unacceptable for a Labour politician to describe striking workers as morally reprehensible”. 

Steve Wright, the head of the Fire Brigades Union warned last week that all eleven trade unions formally affiliated with Labour could come together to tell the prime minister to step down, if the May elections “are as painful for the party as predicted.” 

Wright criticised the government’s initial refusal to scrap the two-child benefit cap, and the decision to block Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham from standing in the upcoming Gorton and Denton by-election. “I want to see Labour in a position to fight” off the “real threat” from Reform UK. “And I’m not sure who’s best to do that at the moment.” 

One word to describe Starmer’s first 18-months as PM, is woeful. A young government looks haggard. It has offered nothing different to its Tory predecessors; same dog, different fleas. 

It is true that Starmer still has three years to turn things around, but, for too many voters, he a technocrat, a robotic status-quo politician. Basically, everything we didn’t vote for! 

The problem any incumbent will have I,s that turning the economy around means tearing-up the manifesto’s fiscal straightjacket, and further reintegrating with Europe. There is nothing left to cut in terms of benefits and social care, meaning austerity, isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be an option, therefore we have to increase revenue, and hope increasing growth is forthcoming. 

Streeting, whilst no-doubt wanting the role, is simply a continuity candidate. 

 

‘the ineptness of his government, has opened the door for Farage and his hordes

 

Of those that could actually do something different, Andy Burnham needs to find a way back into parliament after his candidacy for the Gorton and Denton byelection was blocked by Starmer et al. 

Angela Rayner needs to get her tax affairs straight. 

One of the highlights of Starmer’s premiership was reputedly his speech to conference last year when he took on Farage and Reform, but, as, I wrote in “Fine Words, Good Intentions, But…..”, it was, well, just that.  

If anything, the ineptness of his government, has opened the door for Farage and his hordes. His desperate, hardline stance on immigration has achieved nothing other than to make it acceptable and mainstream, allowing Reform to further plumb the depths of racism itself. 

McSweeney, like much of New Labour, was without substance. A recent article considered his supposed three claims to fame. 

The first was when he was supposed to have been the “hammer of the left” against what was left of Ted Knight’s Trotskyism in the London borough of Lambeth. Unfortunately, it’s wrong; Knight ran Lambeth back in the 1980s when McSweeney would have been in primary school in County Cork. 

He was also meant to have been the he was the hero of the 2010 Battle for Barking, that mass mobilisation of anti-fascists against the British National party. Research suggests that no one remembers him being there, including Nick Lowles of “Hope Not Hate”, a longtime anti-fascist.  

Lastly, there is the 2024 electoral victory which, if anything, was won for Labour by ongoing Tory ineptness, with Liz Truss to the fore. 

I suspect Starmer will limp on until the May local elections, and, after the expected catastrophe, challengers will emerge. 

When history judges Starmerism there will be a realisation that there is, was, no such thing. He was just a supplicant, parachuted in by Mandelson et al, the remnants of New Labour, who needed a front-person for their retaking of the party. As with other bits of Cool Brittania, such as Oasis they are no longer relevant…    

 

“I see danger 

On the corner sent by me” 

 

 

 

 

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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