Just as Labour announced £6bn cuts, the DWP reveals it’s stripped 170,000 kids of benefits

The arbitrary dichotomy ‘hard-working people’ and ‘benefits scroungers’ is not supported by fact. Yet Labour uses this fantasy as part of a dangerous rhetoric to divide the electorate into ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’. By telling some voters they are ‘deserving’, Labour hopes to secure their support. By telling others, they and their votes do not matter, Labour is abandoning that part of the electorate. If we examine the ‘hard-working, deserving’ sector of the electorate, we find many of those identify as ‘natural Tory voters’ and they are not likely to vote Labour if the Tories ever reorganise into an electable political party (I would not discount the Tory ability to rise again like a phoenix from its own ashes, it haunts Britain like rust in a caravan park). Thus Labour is trying to flatter voters who will most likely vote Tory. As for the despised ‘scrounging’ others, most of whom are indeed hard working yet need benefits because they are so low paid or overcharged for essential services such as housing, they feel that Labour offers them nothing but contempt. Such voters have nowhere to go except ‘new political parties’ and for many that means Reform and the largely US-led dark enlightenment and similar Far-Right authoritarian political movements. When they are pushing an end to democracy, what does Labour actually gain? Is Labour going to try to be the British GOP and pull a coup here rather than leave it to the Tories or Reform? What exactly is the forward planning by Labour? Is there any?!?

Every time Labour uses this ‘them and us’ rhetoric, they lose votes to Tories and Reform and to something even worse lurking post-democracy on the Far-Right. Occasionally, they will push voters Left and promote the Greens or relatively Far-Left groups (e.g. TUSC, if they still put up candidates?) or independents (e.g. ex-Labour politicians ousted by Starmer or who resigned in protest over principles like refusing to tolerate genocide). I wonder if they ever actually gain a single vote. Labour are a prime example of the principle that ‘divide does not always mean you conquer’ sometimes you divide your support and you get conquered.

Despair over the utter stupidity of Labour, the total absence of political nous or winning instincts, is why I cancelled my Labour Party membership and now vote Green or independent. Yes, Labour won a landslide but only because voters wanted rid of the Tories, not because they wanted anything Labour offered – because, frankly, Labour offered nothing but more of the same under new branding, new talking heads on the news. I suspect most voters behaved like brexit voters i.e. voted for their hopes not the reality. Which is why ‘buyer’s remorse’ and Labour’s record level of unpopularity has quickly set in. They voted for ‘unicorns and sunlit uplands’, they voted for radical change, and ignored anything which warned them this was not on offer. Now Starmer offers only more austerity and a Labour version of ‘the nasty party’ and the voters are enraged and will not give Labour another chance. And Labour is doing nothing to deserve another chance – they cannot provide unicorns and rainbows but they could ease back on the austerities and vicious attacks on the vulnerable and try to unite the nation around principles like compassion and community, try to rebuild a nation after Tory ruin. Nope, Starmer and Reeves prefer warmed-over Thatcherism with a side of Osborne austerity, now with extra savage cuts, cruel enough to make your eyes water.

This nation needs new political activism from the Left. I said Momentum should have just become its own party. But that energy was wasted and now what have we got to put up a challenge to Starmer?