EVERY 10 minutes since last year’s general election, a member has left the Labour Party.
As a result, Labour’s total membership figure has dropped by more than 11 per cent since Keir Starmer entered Downing Street — and that was already a party 200,000-plus smaller than at its peak under Jeremy Corbyn.
Of those who remain, half think the party is going in the wrong direction.
Given this week’s economic statement, the only surprise is that the figures are not even worse. Whatever the vast majority of Labour Party members think they are signing up for when they join, few would give “serving finance capital” as a reason.
Yet that is what Labour in government has proved to be all about. Rachel Reeves’s statement should remove the blinkers from even the government’s most committed supporters.
It is not rhetoric to argue that Starmer and Reeves serve finance capital above all. It is an orientation reflected in almost every decision they make.
You can see it in their commitment to deregulation, giving more scope to capital to act as it pleases without regard to the economic consequences — which, from the 2008 crash to the Grenfell inferno, are frequently catastrophic.
You can see it in their refusal to countenance a wealth tax or raising corporation tax as an alternative to savagely cutting benefits for disabled workers.
You can see it in the stubborn resistance to nationalising the bankrupt, exploitative and polluting Thames Water, for fear of scaring off global investors.
You can see it in their dogmatic adherence to self-imposed fiscal rules — designed by the Treasury to reassure the City and the bond markets rather than promote the real economy and justice for pensioners, Waspi women, children in poverty and the disabled.
And you can see it in the ever-escalating militarism, as Britain builds up its weaponry for a new era of great power competition and imperialist rivalry.
And the bill for this subservience to capital is now coming due. On the one hand, projections for economic growth slashed in half. On the other, thousands of children pushed into poverty to fund the war drive and keep the fiscal rules sacrosanct.
None of this can be what most Labour members wanted or even expected — despite the clear warning signals coming from Starmer as to his focus and purpose from the moment he tricked and bluffed his way into the Labour leadership.
It is therefore unsurprising that almost all Labour’s affiliated trade unions were firm in opposition to the cuts in benefits announced by Reeves. Some also expressed doubts about the arms build-up.
And a significant number of back-bench Labour MPs, including some newly elected, have defied the regime of authoritarian intolerance in the parliamentary party to speak out.
One, Richard Burgon, put it clearly: “Making cuts instead of taxing wealth is a political choice, and taking away the personal independence payments from so many disabled people is an especially cruel choice.
“Have not the government taken the easy option of cutting support for disabled people rather than the braver option, which would be to tax the wealthiest through a wealth tax?”
Suspended MP Zarah Sultana was even blunter. Pointing out that she was impoverishing 250,000 people, Sultana asked Reeves — “who earns over £150,000 annually, who has accepted £7,500-worth of free clothing and who recently took freebie tickets to see Sabrina Carpenter — does she think that austerity 2.0 is the change that people really voted for?”
Clearly, the answer is no. But unions and MPs need to pass from protest to more determined action to force a change of course — before the Labour Party evaporates entirely.
