The Change You Want Is Not The Change The Country Needs

The focus shouldn’t be on rearranging the deckchairs, but on how the party might save itself from oblivion.

Who better to tell us what went wrong and what to do now than one of the Lanyard Class?  

How did it come to this? Ultimately the answer is simple. Labour has strayed a very long way from its founding mission when it was set up by the labour movement well over a century ago: to unashamedly represent the interests of the working class and its organised industrial expressions.

And I suspect you’ll tell us nothing to make us think you’ve learned that lesson yourself and are going to suggest any different tack.

The prime minister has deliberately hollowed out the Labour party, completing its transformation from a mass social democratic party into a brittle elite club.

The Greens under Zack Polanski have gained so much support because they are defending the progressive values Starmer has abandoned. It is always welcome to see political leaders defending migrants, opposing Israel’s genocide and arguing for economic justice.

Yes, as I figured - none of these are subjects that the average man on the Clapham omnibus thinks is a burning issue.

Time is short – and as we look to Labour’s near-future, there can be no doubt that a radical policy rethink is necessary. Repairing our public services by taxing extreme wealth should be the starting point.

And neither is that and it’s not why the Greens picked up so many votes either. Or if it was, the voters were ignorant of the facts about the Greens.

Then we need to see a restoration of pay for all the public-service heroes on whom we rely so much (many of them represented by Unison), and on whose backs the government hopes to rebuild the country: nurses, paramedics, care workers, council staff.

Job for my boys in other words:

As the leader of the UK’s biggest trade union and Labour’s largest affiliate, though, I don’t hesitate to say that this stuff really is the bare minimum.

Unions will try to convince you to join because they are protecting your rights, but these days, that's no longer true - they are cut from the same cloth as the politicians anxious to give away the country.