Written by James
Dickins
The Labour
Party has returned to the politics of blaming the victims and rewarding the bankers
and super-rich who have got Britain into its current catastrophe. In his speech
on Wednesday this week, Keir Starmer, the Labour
party leader’s message to the Labour left was, “If you don’t like the
changes we’ve made,” “the door is open, and you can leave.”
Maybe for these
honourable people, it’s time to embrace a new kind of politics which
prioritises ordinary people and common decency instead. Despite maybe it being
imperfect, should left Labour voters send a message to Labour, and back the Greens
at the next General Election?
Rachel
Reeves, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor – 'dog whistle’ politics
In 2013, Reeves
said that Labour would be “tougher than the Tories” in slashing benefit payments.
In 2020, Reeves
led a campaign to erect a statue of notorious Nazi sympathiser, Lady Astor, who
once described Hitler as a potential “solution” to the “world problems” of Jews
and communism, and said “there must be something of the Jews themselves which
had brought them persecution throughout all the ages. Was it not therefore, in
the final analysis, their responsibility?”
In 2022, Reeves
falsely claimed that “the Government are not deporting people today even when
their [asylum] claims have failed.”
The Green
guarantee:
We will never
engage in ‘dog whistle’ politics – which targets the vulnerable and minorities in
search of cheap votes.
Rachel is a
banker
Between 2006
and 2010, Reeves worked for Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS), which was
centrally involved in the 2008 financial crash. In 2017, two former senior HBOS
officials were sentenced to 11 and 4 years respectively in prison for fraud in
the period leading up to the financial crisis. Reeves is currently Labour’s
Shadow Chancellor. The bankers got Britain into its financial crisis. Now
Labour is now proposing to use them to get us out of it!
The Green
guarantee:
We will never
allow special interest groups to make national policy – particularly when these
groups have themselves caused our problems in the first place.
And Starmer
is a liar
In 2019, Keir
Starmer made 10 pledges to Labour members to get himself elected Party leader –
all of which he has now broken. The Green Party supports all the policies
abandoned by Starmer in an attempt to appease powerful interests. We will work
tirelessly to carry them through.
Pledge 1 - Economic Justice:
“Increase
income tax for the top 5% of earners, reverse the Tories’ cuts in corporation
tax and clamp down on tax avoidance, particularly of large corporations.”
Pledge 2 - Social Justice:
“… Stand up for
universal services and defend our NHS. Support the abolition of tuition fees
...”
Pledge 3 - Climate Justice:
“Put the Green
New Deal at the heart of everything we do …”
Pledge 4 - Promote peace and human rights
No more illegal
wars. Introduce a Prevention of Military Intervention Act and put human rights
at the heart of foreign policy. Review all UK arms sales and make us a force
for international peace and justice.
Pledge 5 - Common ownership
Public services
should be in public hands, not making profits for shareholders. Support common
ownership of rail, mail, energy and water; end outsourcing in our NHS, local
government and justice system.
Pledge 6 - Defend migrants’ rights
“Full voting
rights for EU nationals. Defend free movement as we leave the EU. An
immigration system based on compassion and dignity. End indefinite detention
and call for the closure of centres such as Yarl’s Wood.”
Pledge 7 - Strengthen workers’ rights and trade
unions
Work shoulder
to shoulder with trade unions to stand up for working people, tackle insecure
work and low pay. Repeal the Trade Union Act. Oppose Tory attacks on the right
to take industrial action and the weakening of workplace rights.
Pledge 8 - Radical devolution of power, wealth
and opportunity
Push power,
wealth and opportunity away from Whitehall. A federal system to devolve powers
– including through regional investment banks and control over regional
industrial strategy. Abolish the House of Lords – replace it with an elected
chamber of regions and nations.
Pledge 9 -
Equality
Pull down
obstacles that limit opportunities and talent. We are the party of the Equal
Pay Act, Sure Start, BAME representation and the abolition of Section 28 – we
must build on that for a new decade.
Pledge 10 - Effective opposition to the Tories
Forensic,
effective opposition to the Tories in Parliament – linked up to our mass
membership and a professional election operation. Never lose sight of the votes
‘lent’ to the Tories in 2019. Unite our party, promote pluralism and improve
our culture. Robust action to eradicate the scourge of antisemitism. Maintain
our collective links with the unions.
What Starmer
Did
Pledge 1 - Starmer has abandoned all of these
policies. He also took £50,000 (only declared after he was elected) to fund his
Labour leadership bid from wealthy businessman Trevor Chinn, who has defended
low income-tax rates and the loopholes used
by the wealthy to avoid paying tax. Chinn is also a major donor to Rachel
Reeves.
Pledge 2 - Labour has now abandoned universal
services, in favour a contributions-based system – meaning
the poorest and most vulnerable will get less under Labour. Labour’s Health
Minister Wes Streeting has said Labour will further privatise NHS services. Streeting
has taken £15,000 from John Armitage (who has also donated over £3 million to
the Tories) who has huge investments in private health-care firms. Armitage
will no doubt be expecting a ‘return’ from his ‘investment’ in Starmer’s Labour
Party. Labour no longer supports the abolition of tuition fees.
Pledge 3 - Starmer has abandoned the Green New
Deal, now saying that Labour will only match the Tories’ commitment to go
‘carbon-neutral’ by 2050. By then, it will be too late to avoid catastrophic
climate change.
Pledge 4 – This remains to be seen, if Labour
wins the next General Election, but Blair’s Labour said the same thing, and
look where that led.
Pledge 5 - Starmer has abandoned the public
ownership of mail, energy and water. Labour now supports further outsourcing
(privatisation) of the NHS. When Reeves was asked in 2021 if she supports
renationalising the railways, she
just laughed.
Pledge 6 - Instead of ‘compassion and dignity’,
we get Rachel Reeves’ dogwhistle lie, “the Government are not
deporting people today.”
Pledge 7 - Starmer’s Labour Party has time and again refused to
back striking workers, even those on the lowest wages. Asked whether he
supported the strike by British Airways check-in over management’s refusal to
reverse a 10% pay cut, Shadow Cabinet member, David Lammy said: “No, I don’t.
It’s a no. It’s a categorical no.”
Lammy was paid
£140,000 over three years as a Labour MP, for after-dinner speeches he gave to
international banks, and other corporations, like Citicorps, Deloitte and
Novartits – firms that will certainly be wanting to see a ‘return’ on their
investment should Labour ever get into power.
Pledge 8 - Starmer’s Labour has no intention of redistributing
wealth from the rich to ordinary people; it is too tucked up in bed with the
banks and powerful commercial interests. Under New Labour, the rich actually
got richer and the poor poorer, as the meticulous research of Prof. Danny Dorling (University of Oxford)
has shown.
Pledge 9 - While
Labour may be “the party of the Equal Pay Act, Sure Start, BAME
representation and the abolition of Section 28”, they are also the party, which
under Blair and Brown made Britain more unequal by 2010 than it had been when
Blair was first elected in 1997.
Under Keir
Starmer, racism has been allowed to flourish in the Labour Party. “They don’t
value us,” one Black councillor told me. “As a community, we are politically
lost” (Independent, Mar. 1, 2021).
Pledge 10 - Far from offering ‘forensic
opposition’ to the Tories, Starmer’s Labour Party hardly offers any opposition
at all.
Former Tory mega-donor,
Gareth Quarry, who recently defected to Labour, giving it £100,000, commented “Under
Starmer, it is not a dramatic change.”
What The Greens
Will Do
Pledge 1 - We will do all this – and more – to
build a genuinely fair Britain, where the rich, who have benefitted massively
from the ‘neoliberal’ Tory and Labour policies of the past 40 years, are made
to pay more to support hardworking ordinary people.
Pledge 2 - The Greens absolutely support
universal services, and oppose the further privatisation of the NHS. We will
abolish student tuition fees.
Pledge 3 - The Greens will implement Labour’s
abandoned Green New Deal – and more – by 2030. Unlike Labour, we believe in
giving our children, our children’s children – and the world, a viable future
in a world not destroyed by climate change.
Pledge 4 - The Greens will continue to be a
force for global peace. This is why, in the Middle East, we oppose Israel’s
apartheid against the Palestinians (through the peaceful civil-rights-based
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movements, we oppose Saudi Arabia and
the UAE’s war on Yemen (through a ban on weapons sales to both these
countries), we oppose the Iranian regime’s suppression of its ethnic and
religious minorities.
We similarly
oppose Russia’s war on Ukraine, China’s oppression of the Uyghurs and Tibetans, and Modi’s anti-Muslim
Hinduvista. Unlike Labour and the Tories, Greens know that peace has to be
built through international solidarity, rather than waiting until a war breaks
out.
Pledge 5 - The Greens absolutely support
renationalisation of rail, mail, energy and water, and a fully public NHS –
public services for the public good.
Pledge 6 - The Greens recognise that immigrants
– from doctors and nurses, to agricultural workers, IT specialists and
professional carers – have made, and continue to make, a massive contribution
to Britain’s economy and society. We absolutely reject Labour’s anti-immigrant
dog-whistle politics.
Pledge 7 - The Greens support a national ‘social
contract’, under which all workers will get fairly and decently rewarded for
the work they do.
Pledge 8 - The Greens are committed to a fairer,
more equal, as well as greener society. Unlike Labour, we do not take funding
from powerful business interests, and we will not bow to these interests at the
expense of ordinary people.
Pledge 9 - The Greens stand for genuine equality
and social justice – unlike the empty rhetoric of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.
Pledge 10 - The Greens offer real, principled
opposition to the Tory policy of making the rich richer, and the poor poorer –
and to Labour’s feeble, watered-down version of this. Britain deserves better
than Keir Starmer, and his corporate-backed Labour Party.
Keir Starmer
lied to get himself elected as Labour leader. How could we possibly trust him
to do what he said he will, if he was leader of the country?
The Green
guarantee:
Unlike Labour,
we will stick by our commitments. We will never allow wealthy and powerful
interest groups to dictate national policy – particularly when these groups
have themselves caused our problems in the first place.
James Dickins is a member of Leeds Green Party and a Green Left supporter.
