CROYDON COMMENTARY: As the new government under Keir Starmer and Morgan McSweeney reaches its 100-day milestone, former Labour councillor BRIAN FINEGAN shares his perspective
Harold Wilson famously declared that the Labour Party “is a moral crusade or it is nothing”.
Politics is now a game played by successful sociopaths. They’re not really bothered how the playing, or “winning”, of the game harms real people, particularly the most vulnerable who rely on them to act decently. The vulnerable are the people about whom the players care least.
After 100 days of a Labour government and its claims of “Change”, it all looks much the same to me, just with some added cruelty thrown in just to test how spineless MPs are.
Wilfully pushing families into deeper poverty by maintaining the two-child benefit cap. Taking away winter fuel payments and cost of living allowances, causing untold distress and worse on 10million pensioners (already on the lowest pensions in Europe). Knowingly arming and defending a genocide. And demonstrating time and again that sleaze, the freebies culture and dodgy donations are not the sole preserve of the Conservatives. Now it’s Labour’s turn to fill their (hand-made designer) boots.
The Labour Party “is a moral crusade or it is nothing”: under Keir Starmer, after 100 days in government, it looks like it is nothing
Maybe this game is called The Price is Right?
Of course, all the required declarations have been made, and some of the donations have even been repaid. But is this really what we expect, what we want from our Labour politicians?
Locally, the big legacy parties are desperate to keep the status quo because they’ve effectively been getting away with managing the rapid decline of the borough since about 2010, thanks largely to the brutal cuts in funding by the Liberal Democrat and Conservative coalition.
Neither the elected Mayor nor the leader of the opposition is brave enough to admit self-evident truths of poor decisions taken by both parties. To be a councillor is a thankless task, as I well know, but it is thankfully now a paid position, and for some quite well-paid, so don’t cry too many tears for them.
Anyone who is perceived to be a troublemaker, not obedient enough, or even who dares put their electors (or the law) before the party has no place in polite party political circles.
Most elected politicians who have hung about for years end up like Gollum and his precioussss. The young, ambitious, wannabe politicians who pass the party loyalty test and get elected are allowed to play the game so long as they stick to the rules and vote how they are told – remember every Labour councillor abstaining on the 15% Council Tax that they campaigned against?
I think this game is called Charades.
In government, Labour MPs are suspended from the parliamentary party for voting to alleviate poverty. Gob-for-hire Chris Philp has been keen to highlight how he voted to alleviate some of the poverty recently – that’ll be the grinding poverty that he and his party created and maintained over the last 14 years. When Philp goes through the lobbies at Westminster, he does so performatively, in a deceitful form of gesture politics.
I honestly didn’t have high expectations of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party before the General Election on July 4. But even an old cynic like me, who has been around the block a few times, is astonished at the callousness of this government and their carefree abandonment of pledges.
This game is probably called Would I Lie To You?
- Brian Finegan was a Labour councillor for Woodside ward
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Read more: #TheLabourFiles: MP Reed, Evans and the Croydon connection
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
I remember when Labour got in in 1997. Having spent years in opposition they arrived full of new ideas they wanted to introduce and a list of bad things they wanted to get rid of. Personally, I think that Blairite Labour was politically still too close to the Conservatives, but I will not deny that the new Government did bring in significant changes.
In contrast, Keir Starmer’s Labour don’t seem to be acting like a new Government at all. If anything, they act just like a new set of managers taking over the business – different faces in the offices and a few minor tweaks here and there but essentially carrying on business as usual.
Having worked in Government I’ve also seen how the whipping system used by Labour (and the Conservatives and LibDems) forces even the most worthy of MPs to vote against their better judgement. The recent votes on the 2-child benefit cap and removing the winter fuel allowance made no sense from a policy perspective and seemed to be staged just as a test of how loyal Labour MPs would be. Loyalty to the Party is clearly far more important than making people’s lives better!
In Croydon I’ve heard of Councillors who were opposed to the Conservatives 15% Council Tax rise but, in the end, they abstained in the vote just like they were told to.
The question for Croydon voters is do you want politicians who will stand up for you or do you want ones that will just do what their Party tells them to do?