It seems almost certain that the next General Election in Britain will deliver a Labour government, with Keir Starmer as Prime Minister. Based on everything we know about Starmer and his restored Labour Party, and their public statements on taxation, welfare, civil liberties and international relations, the Starmer-led government will deliver, in effect, a version of do nothing conservatism. As such, the next government does not have the capacity, vision or will to address the major overlapping crises that face us all.
This means that the next Labour government will preside over continuing economic stagnation and decline, growing inequality, collapsing public services and accelerating climate break down. In light of how they have spoken about “getting tough on immigration”, and that they have indicated they will not roll back the recent raft of anti-protest laws – it is patently clear that, much like the outgoing Tories, the next Labour government will veer towards racism, nationalism and authoritarianism, to maintain the status quo.
For the next few years, then, the focus of most working class and socialist struggles will be against a right wing Labour government, which will do little or nothing to address the needs of working class communities, but instead will continue the great moving right show of contemporary British politics. While we must, of course, prepare for and focus on Labour and the coming fights, we should never lose sight of the Tories.
Within the Tory Party there are already several individuals and factions manoeuvring for the inevitable post-election fight for leadership of the party, and, crucially, for shaping the future direction of the party. In this regard, we get some insight into the direction the Tories are travelling by events over the last year, such as the National Conservatism Conference, the establishment of Liz Truss’s “PopCons” and others.
For anyone who has lived through the last 13 years of Tory government, it might seem unimaginable that the Tory Party could veer any further right than it has, but that is precisely the direction of travel. Both the NatCon conference (an import from the US) and Truss’s PopCons have set out their stalls, with a focus on reducing immigration, protecting borders, resisting liberalism (whether “woke” or otherwise), restoring economic freedom, and law and order.
Through Theresa May, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman, the Tories have already introduced a brutal, racist anti-immigration system, with flights to Rwanda and a floating prison standing as the most grotesque symbols of this “hostile environment”. Even so, both the NatCon and PopCon groupings, along with more traditional Tory groups, insist on the need for tighter controls on immigration and protection of national borders. In this regard, the already racist and nationalist Tories promise to move further down that road, whoever takes control post-Sunak.
Alongside the attack on immigrants, the new Tory groupings are also focused, obsessively, on fighting against “woke” culture, or more generally against what they see as a failed, permissive liberalism. In this context the Tories, like their cousins in the US and elsewhere, will increasingly weaponise the issue of trans peoples rights, blaming “woke” culture for all the ills of modern society. Rising stars on the Tory right, like Miriam Cates, explicitly frame the attack on this “woke” culture as centred on restoring the traditional family, and traditional (christian) values.
This increasing focus on culture war conservatism stems from the fact that the Tories, like Labour, cannot fathom the true source of the major crises we face today. Whether it’s the so called “cost of living crisis”, collapsing wages, unaffordable housing or climate breakdown (which, as it happens, they deny), the root cause is capitalism, and the exploitation and inequality it invariably produces.
Unable to countenance this, the Tories, going forward, will want the terrain of politics to be principally defined by issues of culture, to avoid facing up to the realities of the economic system they sustain. This politics will have very real, and devastating, consequences for women’s rights, the rights of trans and other LGBTQ people as well as workers rights and our democratic freedoms.
The implications of this for working class and socialist activists, is that we must organise and fight in defence of women’s, trans, workers and democratic rights. But, crucially, we must work tirelessly and systematically to shift the terrain of political understanding and debate. We cannot confront the Tories, and their junior partners in the Labour Party, with a politics of moralism and outrage – this plays into their hands.
Instead, we must re-claim the central principle of the working class and socialist tradition and insist that any injury to one is an injury to all of us. The very real fears and anxieties people feel around their living standards, and the prospects for the future, are rooted in a system that exploits the majority of us (working class people, who are men, women, trans, black, white and everything else under the sun). It is only in fighting against this system that we can free ourselves.
The fight to overcome the crises that confront us, and the system that degrades us, imposes an obligation on us to build a united, fighting working class. To do this, we must resist the incoming Labour government and its inevitably reactionary politics, and the even more reactionary emergent Tories that Labour will pave the way for.
In Rise, we understand the nature of the system that exploits, degrades and divides us. As such, we work in our communities, workplaces and unions to build an empowered, united working class that will fight to transform the world completely. In this process we must also be ready and able to confront the growing reactionary and authoritarian politics of the mainstream political parties and media. Instead of their shallow, divisive culture wars, we will wage a ceaseless class war until all of us are free.
If you agree with what Rise stands for, and if you are ready to get organised to build a better world, sign up to explore how you can best help support and build Rise.
Capitalism, which dominates every aspect of our lives, is in terminal decline, it will limp from crisis to crisis, each one more devastating than the last.
It is clear to everyone that our society does not work for us all. Working class people, who produce the wealth, and without whom nothing works, have seen their wages, living standards and quality of life collapse. At the same time, the wealth of a tiny minority in society grows without restraint.
The Origins and Importance of May Day. On this May Day we send fraternal greetings and solidarity to the struggling working classes around the world and re-commit ourselves to the pursuit of working class liberation, socialism and world peace.
