December 4, 2023 - 10:30am
Tony Blair is the Prometheus of modern Labour mythology. He won three consecutive general elections, stealing the knack of winning from the Tories. One can debate his legacy — at home and abroad — but he was undeniably a serial winner.
More overlooked is the 15-year period between 1964, when Harold Wilson formed his first government, and 1979, when Margaret Thatcher entered Number 10, during which Labour ruled for more than a decade. Tough circumstances — from currency devaluations to the oil crisis — arguably underscored political accomplishment rather than diminishing it.
So it is surprising that Keir Starmer, successor to both Wilson and Blair, should refer to such a period as a “stupor”. In a piece for the Telegraph at the weekend, aimed at wavering Tories, the Labour leader declared that moments of change begin “with the realisation that politics must act in service of the British people, rather than dictating to them”. Clement Attlee and Blair grasped this, he went on, but so did Margaret Thatcher. Indeed, it was the Iron Lady who sought “to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism”.
Given Starmer has never started a business himself, one might question whether he believes this. Prior to politics he was a lawyer — as were David Lammy, Shabana Mahmood and Jo Stevens. Rachel Reeves, who hopes to be the next chancellor, was an economist. Pat McFadden became a party advisor straight after university, as did Yvette Cooper, Jon Ashworth and Lucy Powell. Thangham Debonnaire and Peter Kyle herald from the charity sector. With a few exceptions, the parliamentary Labour Party is a sea of lawyers, apparatchiks and third-sector bureaucrats.
This says a great deal not only about Starmerism, but also about the party more widely. Historically, Labour’s numbers were swollen by manual workers, as well as a wide range of middle-class professions. Ramsay MacDonald was the teenage farmworker who became prime minister; Ernest Bevin the labourer who would ascend to the office of foreign secretary. Yet Labour was also the home of the liberal-Left bourgeois, from the Webbs to Attlee and Mo Mowlam.
As recently as 1979, 40% of the party’s MPs had a background in manual or clerical work. By 2010, that figure had fallen to just 9%. But while it’s true Labour’s parliamentarians are increasingly middle-class, this fails to capture just how rarefied it is. There is, after all, little petit bourgeois presence in the party.
It is precisely this absence of a relation to small business which explains Starmer’s desire to signal his agreement with parts of the Thatcherite zeitgeist. Meanwhile, those who generally make the country work — public-sector employees, blue-collar workers, retail workers, tradespeople and, yes, small business owners — are missing. Labour can’t comprehend the politics of these voters, largely because it doesn’t recruit from within their ranks.
The Labour Right’s charade as businesspeople, and Starmer’s veneration of Thatcher, suits a certain fragment of internationally-minded capital. For corporate multinationals, the Financial Times and the City of London, it is useful that Labour — as the party of Walter Mitty capitalists — associates business with the FTSE 250, Linkedin “consultants”, major supermarkets and financial services.
That is certainly preferable to a party which not only seeks to improve the conditions of workers, but which grasps that there is more than a single, monolithic “business interest”. Something which might benefit Amazon, Uber or Tesco can obviously be to the detriment of a family-owned business on the high street. To the layperson that is obvious, yet the Labour Right dismisses such an idea as Left-wing nonsense.
There is a major difference between the larping of Gordon Brown, who told the CBI three decades ago that business was “in his blood”, and Starmer today. That is because, unlike the mid-1990s, when Britain’s underlying growth model was strong, the country has now endured almost 16 years of stagnant productivity. Cosplay is fine when you just need a frontman for a system that runs itself, as was the case before 2008. The opposite holds true at times of crisis and chronic national decline.
Aaron Bastani is the co-founder of Novara Media, and the author of Fully Automated Luxury Communism.
AaronBastani
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SubscribeLabour the party of entrepreneurialism and small business? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on. This is the party that has dived head first into the realm of diversity – which, among other things, pushes business to appoint people according to sex/skin colour rather than their qualifications. That is not in the best interests of business.
Just another thing to nod along to and say “Alright Keir. If you say so.”
Labour won’t win the next election, the Tories will lose it. And it won’t be about anything Starmer does or doesn’t say to “wavering Tories”. It will be about angry Tory voters wishing for the creative destruction of the party in the hope they will return in a different better form in 2029 – but mulling over the tradeoffs (i.e how much damage Labour can inflict in the meantime).
But let us not be SO cynical and weary. After all, we have been reminded that there is someone in the Labour ranks called Thangham Debonnaire, which is reason for cheer all on its own. What a splendid name.
Although someone with less of a bon aire about them is hard to imagine.
Mainstream conservatives in America and Britain make a big show about caring about business, but only big business is what they actually care actually about, due to that they donate more money and that small or medium size business are seen as threat to big business, so they work in secret to undermine two of former with taxes and regulations. Left wing parties are the same, but they do it under the guise helping the common man, who is at best they see them as stooge to them they can manipulate, or worse don’t give any thought at all about them at all.
All so true. The depth of cynicism of the Say Nothing Voidoid ‘Securonomic’ Starmer is so great we must weigh the costs of the Righteous Vengeance Option – of punishing the cowardly Fake/Progressive Tories – very carefully indeed. One already can identify a number of really serious threats which could means 5 years of the Party of the Blob makes our decline irreversible. New race hate equality/,blasphemy laws a la Ireland which will kill Unherd, free speech and let the (masked) peace loving Marchers own the streets. Assisted Dying to pop off those hateful oldies with nice houses quicker…the no bed hospitals becoming New eugenic Lazaret. Yet more ESG and garotty strangulation of small business by the progressive white collar Army of risk averse EU style Regulators..and more angsty generations of teens ‘educated’ to think the world is on fire, Hamas are freedom fighters…and duly given the vote. Any hope of restoring a democratic,free, pro business independent nation state from this scorched earth via a reformed Tory Party 5 years on already looks scarily naive…and that does not factor in what will happen to the economy and state finances in the hands of more fervent Anti Growth maniacs.
I think a persuasive argument could be made that the so-called Tory (Globalist) elite conspired to destroy the Conservative Party so completely that it would be rendered unelectable and thus leave the path clear for Labour and outright socialism.
So Boris was correct to say “F… business!”. He was of course addressing the, now discredited, CBI, a lobby group for the UK arms of multinationals that had no interest in British business, especially not small business.
Labour nowadays is so obviously the party of those who live off the state that it’s hard to believe anyone is taken in by Starmer’s latest venture into the panderverse.
That said, now that most people in the UK who work do so in small businesses, their own or someone else’s, there is a tremendous opportunity to build a new political power base.
Sadly, no mainstream politician seems to have noticed this, let alone devised any policies that would appeal to this massive constituency, such as creating an even playing field for business online by tackling the monopolistic and tax-avoiding activities of Amazon, for example.
Alas all political parties including the Conservative Party are now wholly detached from us and the real economy. They are a remote Politico Blob Uniparty in a Bubble. Tories too are more likely to be lawyers or journos or posh doctors. The very few that do operate in business are being hounded out- remember how Boris thought hard about banning second jobs? The political class revealed a deep seated animosity toward the private sector, lauding only workers in the (broken/run by greedy millionaire pension striker-consultants and fabstic weirdo young doctors) NHS. The gulf is too great now. And the PB is totally insulated from the chaotic financial impact of their lockdowns and net zero madness, with 80k salaries and vast pension guaranteed by the suffering taxpayers.
Do you include pensioners in “those who live off the state”?
I think the polling shows they skew Tory.
Keir is trying to act like a human and it hilarious!
Presumably he thinks ‘we’ have all forgotten his grotesque knee bending!
Of course he is a knee-bender, he is a text book example of the professional managerial class, they are cowardly, insecure people pleasers who serve power, being sycophant’s comes naturally to them. That because they lack imagination or creativity and have no real leadership ability of their own. Which is why globalist’s love these people, they very are easy to control do to how dependent they are on them and know to pray on their character flaws. What little talent they do have is a low cunning in the form of how to play the system to their advantage and to ingratiate themselves with the powerful. They are like courtiers to a noble, they fear and may even hate and envy their lieges’ but will never turn on them do to fear of losing their status and a lack of bravery. The result they tend to punch down on the lower orders to vent frustration, passive aggressively of course in the form of wokeness most often, because they have to keep up appearances of caring about the lower orders do to maintain social legitimacy.
Wow, you could just as well be describing higher education.
So you like Mrs. T now do you Mr. Starmer?
Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink, Say no more!
Erm, Mr. Starmer, …what’s it like then, liking Mrs. T?
I really cannot trust Starmer
A wriggling, snake-like charmer
Beware of Sir Keir
he too easily veers
Elected he’ll be a harmer
“…Meanwhile, those who generally make the country work — public-sector employees, blue-collar workers, retail workers, tradespeople and, yes, small business owners — are missing…”
That ‘and, yes, small business owners’ came out through gritted teeth, Aaron, did it not? I mean, the ‘yes’, gives it away. In contrast to ‘public-sector employees’, lovingly put first in that list, no doubt because of the sheer exploitation they face by their rapacious, um, employer. Put ahead of even ‘blue-collar workers in your list, who, let’s be honest, most of the technocratic Labour middle class now regards as ‘deplorables’ – obvious ever since Brown’s ‘Duffy’ moment. Which pretty much says it all does it not? I mean by this, I’m struggling to see how *your* stance is any less cynical than Starmer, the same bad-faith, um, ‘offer’, is on offer.
I feel sure there’s a typo in here:
“…Meanwhile, those who generally make the country work — public-sector employees, blue-collar workers, retail workers, tradespeople and, yes, small business owners — are missing…”
Surely that’s “private sector employees”.
Particularly since the very next sentence is:
“Labour can’t comprehend the politics of these voters, largely because it doesn’t recruit from within their ranks.”
Freudian slip more like, than a typo. I doubt private sector employees figure high in Aaron’s (or Starmer’s) priorities.
I agree. It makes more sense that way. Quite apart from anything else, surely Labour does in fact recruit from the ranks of the public sector, and even if not, the fact that the public sector is one of the most important sources of labour voters surely renders absurd the idea that Labour “can’t comprehend” the politics of such voters. Of course it does and always has.
And… yet another comment ‘awaiting approval’. Despite not a single objectionable thing said. It really looks like UnHerd doesn’t want my custom anymore.
It’s happening to all of us. Sometimes you just need to wait six hours or so. There is no pattern or sense to it.
Many many young labour supporters seeing there are few decent jobs have set up their own business, start ups, etc, Starmer ignores them at his peril.
They called us every name under the Sun when we talked about 40 years of Thatcherism, but now Keir Starmer positively revels in it. The Labour Party wants to cut the minimum wage to £10 per hour. Having taken oodles of cash from the American healthcare companies, Starmer and Wes Streeting want to privatise the NHS in England.
Labour opposed the temporary ceasefire in Gaza, and it therefore supports, for example, today’s bombing of the Holy Family School in Gaza City, which could not have been mistaken for anything else, which had been sheltering hundreds of displaced persons, and which is maintained by the Dominican Sisters of the Most Holy Rosary of Jerusalem, which was founded by Saint Marie-Alphonsine Danil Ghattas, a modern Palestinian who died under the Mandate in 1927.
Labour is now the greater evil, worse than the Tories. We should no more want it to win the next General Election than most of its MPs wanted it to win the last two, or than any of its staff wanted it to win the last four. But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair’s Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.
To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.
“The Labour Party wants to cut the minimum wage to £10 per hour.”
?
Oh, yes. Vote Labour to cut the minimum wage.
£10 is a round enough figure for Rachel Reeves to be able to copy it off the person sitting next to her.
The type of Tory who lionised Thatcher is never going to vote Labour irrespective of who in charge, so it seems a strange strategy. For most floating voters who are more centrist (the ones Starmer needs) she remains an incredibly divisive figure
I suspect you’re right that such voters won’t support Starmer’s Labour, but they did switch to Labour after 1997 when Tony Blair won three elections in a row.
Bastani may be on the left, but I have a great deal of respect for him. Starmer’s “pro-Thatcher” remarks came in the week he spoke at the Resolution Foundation 2030 review. In this document are small nuggests like Land Valuation Tax replacing business rates, the revaluation of residential property from the 1991 levels with the tax moved to proportion of value rather than fixed bands, the taxation of self-employed income in line with employed rates, and same for other forms of income (rental/shares, etc). The idea that Labour either support SMEs or wish to hold the line on taxation is for the birds. As for the Tories turning things around for 2029? I was with John Gray and Lord Sumption in hoping for a hung parliament which could see PR ushered in (no panacea, but at least it might break up the Uniparty). With Hamza Useless in Scotland’s woes, I doubt this is happening. We will need to run the socialist experiment for 2 terms before people who have never lived under a Labour government led by a senior and wily lawyer. After the damage Blair did to our parliamentary democracy with the supreme court and the HRA I dread to think what remnants will be left.
Sir Keir and friends follow the new gospel of managerialism as it enters more universally into a post-liberal order in which various futuristic forces of authoritarianism with congeal.
The role of the Tories in opposition will hence be to rein back a British variation on all the measures typical of Trudeau’s regime.
Starmer parking a Tank on the Right’s lawn bound to send some into a frenzy – on both extremes of Left & Right – which is why politically probably astute move.
Thatcher of course no record of entrepreneurship pre political career. She was a research chemist and went into politics v early.
Last 13yrs not exactly been a fertile period for economy, entrepreneurs or growth. Being daft enough to leave single market and increase cost of living shows how far Tories moved from prioritising business and SMEs esp.
Starmer is only going to get traction here because the Right been overtaken by the Populist Sloganeers who’s dishonesty (or for some – just ignorance) about trade-offs led us into such a mess.
There have been 15 Leaders of the Conservative Party since the War, and beyond shareholding, or being married to businessmen, none of them has had any business background worth mentioning, if at all. They have had stopgap jobs and what have you, but nothing more than that, and not even that in some cases. Nearly half have been beneficiaries of the massive public subsidies to landowning.
Winston Churchill, toff. Anthony Eden, toff. Harold Macmillan, toff enough. Alec Douglas-Home, toffee toffee toff toff. Ted Heath, full-time politician since university. Margaret Thatcher, millionaire’s wife. John Major, full-time politician all his adult life. William Hague, full-time politician since childhood. Iain Duncan Smith, paid by the Army to go away. Michael Howard, full-time politician since university, more than 40 years earlier. David Cameron, toff. Theresa May, millionaire’s wife. Boris Johnson, semi-aristocratic Classicist whom none of his hearers at the CBI would have employed. Liz Truss, failed at Shell, and then unemployed for several years before a sinecure at a thinktank enabled her to sleep her way into Parliament. Rishi Sunak, briefly at Goldman Sachs before he became the full-time son-in-law of a foreign gazillionaire.
Yes and I think one could keep going back in time with similar conclusions.
Which probably goes to prove either you don’t need to be a Business entrepreneur to recognise the business climate needed for the ‘good society’ or somehow we create a half decent business climate despite, not because of, our politicians. I personally think more the former. Despite the blunders of last few years the British rule of law, social cohesion, education and standard of living still makes us a place many the world over like to live or have investments. But it could be better couldn’t it and we haven’t helped ourselves much recently.
Thatcher had no record of entrepreneurship !
Surely, you’re forgetting that her father was a small businessman who started his own business. Her husband ran a family business.
She also preferred competition, choice and free markets over state planning and subsidy. The “mixed economy” was the accepted status quo in the 1970s. Not after the 1980s. You never hear the phrase any more.
Did you miss the 1980s ?
Thatcher had a gut feeling for entrepreneurship and business that hardly any politicians have. Neither Labour, Lib Dems or Conservatives.
Starmer’s Labour will be another corporatist nightmare where the state constantly meddles and thinks it knows best. We know how that movie ends.
Thatcher’s Dad ran a Grocery shop. He wasn’t exactly Elon Musk. (Apparently he abused some of his staff and whilst that’s another story, one wonders what she learned from his management style?)
Your second point confirms the point – you don’t need to be an entrepreneur yourself to have a view and approach to creating the right business climate. We may get to see what climate Starmer creates in due course. He would struggle to do worse than the lot been in power last 13yrs wouldn’t he.
“Thatcher of course no record of entrepreneurship pre political career. She was a research chemist and went into politics v early.”
Margaret Thatcher – or Margaret Roberts when she was growing up – idolised her father who was a small businessman and who gave her an instinctive understanding of the importance of the so-called “small battalions” – small businesses, civic society and local institutions. After marriage to Denis Thatcher, she could hardly avoid constant exposure to the private sector commerce in which he became highly successful.
As for your claim about the Single Market, nonsense. EU institutions are at best merely uninterested in small and medium businesses, and more commonly actively hostile to them.
Brussels is a mecca for EU corporate lobbying. It’s a huge industry. But only for the big boys. Europe – and most especially Germany – has created almost no large major companies over the last 50 years – quite unlike the US. It is surely not a coincidence.
Same fella who ran arms to Rhodesia despite sanctions? And a grocery shop for goodness sake.
But irony of ironies who championed the Single Market and signed us into it?
And a Single Market we are now closely shadowing and still essentially tied to because we recognise the Brexit ‘freedoms’ were total twaddle. Now, for example, go have a chat with a farmer or a fisherman about how it’s all gone for them – most will fall under the SME category.