democracy – Outsider Insight

What a big surprise. The blob has engineered another colour revolution. Nominally the leader of the blue team, Rishi Sunak, conceded defeat to the leader of the Red Team, the charmless Sir Keir Starmer of Davos. If you only watched the BBC, ITV or Sky News you might be forgiven for thinking Starmer had been swept into 10 Downing Street by a whirlwind of popular discontent with fourteen years of Tory mismanagement. Now at long last, we’d have a caring government in power that would reverse the austerity the nasty Tories imposed on us. Once again Britain would welcome newcomers from around the globe with open arms, as the country realigns itself with the European Union, builds a high-tech green utopia and joins NATO’s progressive forces in their battle to spread the joys of drag queen story time to Eastern Ukraine. No sooner had Sir Keir settled into his prime-ministerial home than he elevated lockdown king and former head of research at GlaxoSmithKline, Sir Patrick Vallance, to the House of Lords and then gave him a cabinet post as Minister for Science, Innovation and Technology. By sheer coincidence, last year Sir Paddy Vallance had accepted a role with the Tony Blair Institute.

Yet despite favourable media coverage and a massive online advertising campaign, Labour failed to win over many hearts and minds, except as fallout from widespread disillusionment with the SNP in Scotland and with the Tories in England. Only a couple of months ago, Sir Keir Starmer’s Party was riding as high as 46% in the opinion polls. Yet in the event, only 59.9% could be bothered to vote, including postal votes, and only 33.7% of those supported an official Labour candidate. Indeed under Sir Keir Starmer, Labour got fewer votes than it did in 2019 under Corbyn and yet it won more than twice as many seats owing to the distortions of the First Past the Post system.

Year	Popular votes	% of voters	% turnout	% of electors	Seats
1997	13,518,167	43.2	71.3	30.8	418
2001	10,724,953	40.7	59.4	24.2	412
2005	9,552,376	35.2	61.4	21.6	355
2010	8,609,517	29.0	65.1	18.9	258
2015	9,347,324	30.4	66.4	20.2	232
2017	12,877,918	40.0	68.8	27.5	262
2019	10,269,051	32.1	67.3	21.6	202
2024	9,704,655	33.7	59.9	20.2	411

If we drill down, a different picture emerges. Labour only gained in two areas. In Scotland as former Labour voters return to the fold after lending their votes to the SNP over the last decade. Central belt voters have distrusted the Tories since the Thatcher era. The Scottish protest vote went largely to Reform despite its association with British Unionism with the SNP getting just 9 seats with 30% of the vote and Labour winning 37 out of 57 seats with only 35.3% of the vote. In the southern English shires Labour’s share increased marginally helping it to unseat many Tory MPs with as little as 26.48% of the vote as the remainder was so even split among the Conservatives, Reform and independents. Labour only regained its traditional Red Wall seats because many who lent their votes temporarily to the Tories to get Brexit done either stayed at home or voted Reform. Indeed, Reform did best in some of the most economically deprived areas of Eastern and Northern England.

One of the biggest surprises came from the cosmopolitan urban constituencies with large Muslim populations. This is where Labour did best under Jeremy Corbyn. Although George Galloway lost in Rochdale, five independent candidates won on a Pro-Palestine ticket. In Luton South, Labour’s share declined from 51.8% to 35.4% shedding votes to an independent and a Workers’ Party candidate with 14 and 8.1% respectively and both standing on a pro-Palestine ticket. Sir Keir Starmer himself lost around 18.9% to Andrew Feinstein and the former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, won as an independent.

If we had proportional representation or even a French-style two round contest, the outcome would have been very different. Labour won with 40% or less in 122 constituencies and in 175 constituencies the combined Conservative and Reform vote share would have beaten the winner, but to be fair we may have to add the LibDem votes to Labour’s.

However, this assumes the traditional left-right paradigm that places Reform on right and the Worker’s Party on the left. A more honest appraisal would be rank parties by the social class of their supporters. The Conservatives may still have a bedrock of support from affluent boomers in their 60s and Labour still do better in urban areas among the managerial classes, but the Greens and LibDems did best either in posh neighbourhoods or places with large student or post-graduate populations. A top-to-bottom spectrum might look more like this:

LibDems and Greens	Trendy upper middle classes, students and business leaders
Labour	Billionaire bankers, media moguls, conformist managerial classes, social workers and some welfare-dependents via postal votes
Conservatives	Conformist suburban and rural middle classes and property traders
Workers’ Party & Independents	Rebellious working classes and some and small business owners
Reform	Rebellious working classes and some maverick business leaders

When it comes to transferring more power to remote technocrats at the World Health Organisation, rejoining the EU, transgenderism in primary schools, clamping down on free speech, raising green taxes on the lower middle classes or going to war with Russia, another pattern emerges. Upper middle-class Labour, LibDem and Green supporters are much more likely to support these policies, while Reform and Workers’ Party supporters are more likely to oppose them. Only on Israel and mass migration do we see distinctive tribal loyalties come to the fore among Britain’s disparate lower classes and only on Israeli war crimes do the Greens still take a firm stance against the Military Industrial Complex.

By now it should be crystal clear that there is no grassroots support for extreme centralisers who have embedded themselves in the UK government with the full blessing of the Tony Blair Institute.

Trendy Lefties – The No-Logo Generation

Over the last 30 years middle-class students have embraced a series of cultural fads, some pure commercialism and others worthwhile causes, which later sold out to commercialism. Beatlemania, anti-Vietnam War protests, Punk Rock, Rock Against Racism gigs, CND demos, gay pride marches, Reggae music, politically correct speech, MTV and anti-WTO demos. Wow, so it's now cool to join the international campaign against globalisation, boycott brands and recycle environmentalist rhetoric - before we settle down to the serious business of earning a living in the rat race.

In the same period much of the world has undergone the most thorough transformation of the economy, environment and lifestyle ever. After a crippling war Vietnam now hosts sweatshops with some of the world's lowest wages. Former CND members are now prominent Nu-Lab politicos advocating humanitarian militarism and slandering opponents as fascists. Homosexuality is a big business and homophobes are vilified as outmoded bigots, while politically correct speech masks real intents. Secret services plant agent provocateurs and assorted troublemakers at anti-WTO demos to trigger violent police repression. Neoliberal intellectuals appear on TV voicing doubts on the extent of globalisation with platitudes about a greener future. Multinational PR executives promise their goods are not made by child labourers and their involvement in Public Private Initiatives will help to pay for school sports facilities in socially deprived neighbourhoods. MTV shows multicoloured faces with captivating views of African village life interspersed with Black American rappers jumping on gas guzzlers.

What do young nologoers want? ask vote-hungry politicians. Walmart-style hypermarkets with unbranded consumer goodies? Trendy mountain bikes with child seats to replace the Land Rover or Grand Cherokee on the school run? Neatly packaged documentaries on Discovery channel? Holidays in Kenya? Volunteering to raise funds for Oxfam? Food labelled "organic" with a 50% price markup?

Think of the coup they'd achieve, if they could persuade a personable Irish musician to hail Nu-Labs third-world debt-relief scheme.

Mass marketers know what the affluent trendy wishful-thinking middle class really wants. They want to indulge, but be seen to care. They need their safe homes with all mod cons, cars complete with bike carriers and dinghy trailers, computers, mobile phones, foreign holidays, rewarding jobs and social life - or in its absence soap operas, Hollywood movies and pulp fiction. The better educated want better, environmentally friendly and socially conscientious food.

Affluent teenagers see the English language, rock music, international (i.e. mainly US) movies and video-games as liberating forces that will let the world live as one to paraphrase John Lenon. Out with the old and in with the new, let's embrace the multicoloured harmony of Coca Cola ads set in Zambia and IBM think pad spots filmed in Tibet. The more educated will later backpack across Africa, South America, the Indian Subcontinent and South-east Asia before commencing their careers in web-design, PR, advertising, law, insurance, business intelligence, HR management, public services admin, education etc.

The big question is why so few stop to ponder if and why the globalisation of transnational corps with their brands and logos is necessary to save capitalism? All too often we tend to look at symptoms rather than root causes. Global brands and sweatshops are symptoms. Greed and capitalism's innate need for constant growth with diminishing returns (the bit Marx got right) are the causes and explain why capitalism can no longer grow in protected national markets.

There is only one thing worse than narrow-minded nationalism: Internationalism controlled by an oligarchy of corporate and superstate interests.

If we were to implement the far-reaching structural changes required to bridge the north-south and rich-poor gaps, divert resources away from opulence and hedonism to nutrition, sustainable farming, environmental renewal and education, most service sector jobs in post-industrial states such as Britain would disappear overnight. More significantly most residents of wealthy countries would have to accept a lower material standard of living with car dealerships, filling stations, advertisers, law firms (largely dependent of corporate greed), high street and Internet retailers going bust. Indeed with the bankruptcy of all businesses reliant on the Stock Exchange and the abolition of the arms trade, Britain would no longer earn all the extra revenue it needs to import goodies from the rest of the globe.

In the near future we will see two alternative reformist solutions to world's ills. The neoliberal intelligentsia will advocate benevolent globalisation coupled with foreign aid linked to IMF and WB economic diktats and humanitarian intervention to solve ethnic disputes caused by economic woes and covert destabilisation. Charities and NGOs will be taken on board to sell these policies and reassure doubters of their harmful effects.

The alternative, unthinkable to neoliberal globalisers and internationalist Marxists alike, is a return to national pre-colonial economies centred around farming, essential raw materials and natural renewable energy sources, in which self-sufficiency in staple foods and energy represents a prerequisite for a sustainable economy and for independence from unaccountable global institutions and multinationals. Trade would still take place, but among equals, and governments, freed from the restraints of international capitalism, would be more accountable. Technological advances would not be abandoned, but harnessed for the good of all and not for profits of the few. It is only by decentralising government and giving people the means to determine their own future, that we can see the evolution of a fairer low-impact society that values long-term sustainability and social cohesion more than fashions, consumption and indulgence.