Only tyrants and technocrats with a penchant for authoritarianism run on a platform of "stability."

Spoiler Alert, but Britain's General Election will be won by Labour on July 4th. I suspect that Rishi Sunak knows this as well and pulled the gun early on his political assisted suicide because he wants the summer off.

Photo by Red Dot on Unsplash

If it was 2015, 2017 or 2019, I'd be excited at the prospect of a Labour government being elected. In 2024, however, it fills me with dread because I know they will be as harmful as the Tories to the NHS, refugees and the environment. It will be a disaster because the corporate news media will give them a blank cheque for at least two years.

Any government formed by Keir Starmer won't be transformative or compassionate. It will be as cold, efficient and "fair" as a human resource officer- on the day when one is laid off from work.

Starmer forming government in the summer of 2024 will not be like when Labour won in 1945. That was a different era- one that was owned by the people rather than today's age, which is owned by top-income earners.

My dad described the election victory for Clem Attlee in 1945 as something magical. It was a time when ordinary citizens like him were considered to be more essential to society than the entitled.

I, like most of my generation, voted for the 1st time in 1945. We voted for the future. We voted for justice, we voted for democracy, we voted for the creation of the welfare state.

It's not that I don't want to see the Tories binned this July, To be honest, I want to see them charged with high crimes and corruption. I want them jailed for decades with forfeiture of their wealth. However, that is not how neoliberal politics works because the system of war, inequality and monetisation of social services always remains. Elections in 2024 are about voting for managerial changes to the system rather than structural alterations to its rotting edifice.

Politics under a new Labour government will begin with greater efficiency and competence followed by pleas from a Prime Minister Starmer that "Rome was not built in a day."

 But nothing new will be constructed. Instead, the status quo will get a facelift from a new Labour government. It will be as performative, hollow and fake as Joe Biden’s Botox treatments to pretend- 81 is the new 51. To Believe Starmer will end the housing and cost of living crisis is like thinking dressing a corpse in a freshly laundered shirt will bring the dead back to life. It’s important to remember the people selling this nonsense live in nice houses and can afford their grocery bills and expensive holidays abroad.

This election is as bereft of hope if Labour's winning strapline is "stability." Only tyrants and technocrats with a penchant for authoritarianism run on a platform of "stability." 

Socialism's last stand in a General Election was in 2019. It is not ever coming back. The best that can be done is to vote in as many Green and Independent politicians as possible and hope the SNP does better than forecast. The terrifying reality is that a Keir Starmer government will have no opposition inside parliament or in the corporate news media. I don't have much confidence that the Trade Unions will stand up to Starmer, either.

It is going to be a massive sell out of establishment activists and NGOs, who will keep schtum against any Starmer government's political transgressions in hopes of plum jobs and contracts that do nothing to help the struggling but place them in a comfortable lifestyle.  

Neoliberalism is like the Borg in Star Trek because it assimilates everything for the benefit of capitalism.  In our century, there is now no centrism, leftism or conservatism despite a pretence that political divisions exist in its mainstream politics. It is all different shades of a dull day that drags us towards democratic sunset.  So, vote and then prepare to take your anger and disappointment out onto the street.

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