Michael Chessum

In the wreckage of the neoliberal order they once championed, there are a number of paths available to Europe’s social democrats. Keir Starmer’s Labour has chosen one: a hawkish fiscal policy combined with rearmament, moderate improvements in employment rights and a shift to the extreme right on migration. Labour has consolidated the UK’s harsh border regime while modestly raising the minimum wage, continuing austerity in many areas and insisting on the private ownership of water. Whether you call this ‘national renewal’, as Starmer does, or Blairism without the progressivism or the money, support for it now sits at around 20 per cent in the polls. 

As Starmer drove Labour to the right, the Greens argued for a wealth tax and against the genocide in Gaza. Zack Polanski’s pitch in the leadership contest, in which he got 85 per cent of the vote, was an attack on billionaires and landlords. Where once the aim was incremental electoral advance, it is now to challenge for power.

‘Can’t you ping elsewhere?’ The question, daubed on the twelve-foot green fences encircling much of Brockwell Park in South London, has long been on the minds of local residents. For months, the park has been the subject of a battle over urban public space and culture. Austerity is driving it. Facing a large budget deficit, Lambeth Council is expected to cut local services by £99 million over the next two years. To boost its income, the council has been renting out Brockwell Park to Summer Events Ltd (which operates under the brand name Brockwell Live) since 2018. Between 23 May and 8 June this year, the park hosted five festivals – Wide Awake, Field Day, Cross The Tracks, City Splash and Mighty Hoopla, followed by the non-commercial Lambeth Country Show. As well as the direct revenue, the events boost trade for local pubs and music venues.

Starmer’s strategy of modest progress and alliance-building could be scuppered by the fiscal hawks in his government. Since 2008, British workers have suffered the worst wage deflation in modern history. Without significant progress on pay, even trade union leaders inclined to support Starmer will find it difficult to avoid industrial action. As Callaghan learned to his cost in the period that culminated in the Winter of Discontent, a model of negotiated industrial peace only works if government policy keeps pace with working-class demands.

Labour members have long used the party conference to push for a more humanitarian approach to immigration and asylum. In Liverpool this week, however, at the redeveloped docks from which more than five million Europeans travelled to America at the end of the 19th century, the only progressive motion on immigration was arbitrarily ruled out of order. On Tuesday afternoon, delegates were instead invited to debate a motion that would have committed the party to ‘establish a new Border Security Command’, ‘negotiate additional returns arrangements to speed up returns’, ‘increase the number of safe countries to which failed asylum seekers can swiftly be returned’ and ‘deliver new counter-terror powers to tackle organised immigration crime’. It pledged to ‘act upstream’ to stop ‘the humanitarian crises’ that fuelled immigration.