Andy Beckett's Blog, page 2

Why is Labour so afraid to admit that we must tax the rich? | Andy Beckett

There have been modest redistributive reforms, but the party of the workers still daren’t admit that Britain’s rampant inequality needs to be addressed

After 125 years of practice, Labour ought to be good at saying why resources should be redistributed from the rich to everyone else. Its founding conference in 1900 passed a motion calling for “a distinct Labour group in Parliament”, to collaborate with any party “promoting legislation in the direct interests” of the working class. Creating a more egalitarian society and politics – which by definition means redistribution from the powerful – was Labour’s original purpose.

Britain was then, and remains, a highly unequal country: more unequal currently than neighbours such as Ireland, the Netherlands and France. This week the children’s commissioner, Rachel de Souza, said that some British children were living in “almost Dickensian levels of poverty”. But as any expensive but packed restaurant, pavement lined with new Range Rovers or row of smoothly renovated home exteriors will tell you, the rich have been enjoying a long boom in Britain, arguably ever since the Conservatives abolished the top 60% income tax rate 37 years ago.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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The time is right for Zarah Sultana’s new party – but it’s already facing its first test | Andy Beckett

The left has been discussing this for months, but tactical differences will need to be overcome, as will the threat of Reform

An effective new leftwing party is one of the recurring dreams – or nightmares – of British politics. Many have tried and failed to create one that wins and then holds a significant number of seats in parliament. Labour, founded 125 years ago, has been the only successful example. Others have been defeated by the electoral system, the sheer number of interests ranged against the left, loyalty to Labour and the left’s tendency to over-promise and quarrel.

Could Zarah Sultana’s sudden announcement last night that she “will co-lead the founding of a new party” with Jeremy Corbyn and other “independent MP’s… and activists across the country” – a statement that he did not acknowledge until lunchtime today – finally begin to change the rigid shape of British left-of-centre politics? And would that help the left – or help destroy it?

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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From LA to Paris, the populist right hates cities – and it’s fuelled by a sense of bitter defeat | Andy Beckett

LA was once a conservative stronghold; now the military is occupying it. Liberal cities have become targets for politicians looking to stir up their voters elsewhere

From Los Angeles to London, Istanbul to Warsaw, cities are making rightwing populists angry. Their liberal elites, immigrants, net zero policies, leftwing activists, globalised businesses, expensive transport infrastructure and outspoken municipal leaders – all are provocations to populist politicians whose support often comes from more conservative, less privileged places.

Three years ago the founders of national conservatism, the transatlantic ideology on which much of modern rightwing populism is based, published a statement of principles. One of these, surprisingly little noticed at the time, declared with some menace: “In those [places] in which law and justice have been manifestly corrupted, or in which lawlessness, immorality, and dissolution reign, national government must intervene energetically to restore order.”

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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Why does Nigel Farage get to play British politics on easy mode? | Andy Beckett

The UK’s electoral system traditionally makes it hard for new parties to succeed. Not Reform. Sitting back from the fray, it sets the agenda

In today’s rundown, discontented Britain, politics is supposed to be hard. Deep national problems need to be solved, but voters are impatient and often contemptuous of politicians. Past mistakes are rarely forgiven. Promises are treated with scepticism. The costs of policies are scrutinised and often resented. Attempts to set out priorities, such as the government’s spending review this week, face endless questioning.

Disagreements inside political parties, meanwhile, are seen as signs of weakness and division. MPs with outside interests are seen as greedy and uncommitted. As for the minority who survive these pressures long enough to have a significant career – the electorate usually grows bored with them. Few retain its interest beyond a dozen or so years.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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Keir Starmer's muddled politics are reaching their limit. It's time for him to make a choice | Andy Beckett

Veer left or double down on the right? Either way, the prime minister needs to commit and sell it to an impatient electorate

After less than a year in power, Labour has reached a familiar place. Keir Starmer’s troubled government is at a fork in the road, wondering which direction to follow. With the delivery of its spending review next week after several acrimonious delays, and a Commons vote on its divisive welfare cuts expected later this month, the government’s unity and morale are fragile. The public finances are severely strained, with ever more competing demands, such as for extra defence spending. Though much more energetic than its Tory predecessor, this government often seems opaque, unable to explain its purpose in a compelling way.

Many voters and journalists – even more impatient than usual after years of manic politics – are already considering what might replace Starmer’s administration. At barely 20% in the polls, Labour is as unpopular as in its most disliked days under Jeremy Corbyn – and unlike then, has been overtaken by Nigel Farage’s latest vehicle. Most ominously of all, perhaps, even the government’s successes, such as its trade deals, seem to make little or no difference to its public standing or sense of momentum.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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The least ‘integrated’ part of British society isn’t the immigrants – it’s the elite | Andy Beckett

Politicians and the rightwing press talk about integration in a selective and politically loaded way. The reality is quite different

Amid all the acrimony surrounding Keir Starmer’s recent remarks on immigration – a row that could follow him into retirement and beyond – there has been one little-examined area of agreement between the prime minister and his critics. “When people come to our country,” Starmer said, “they should also commit to integration.” You may believe that integration is not best achieved by government decree, yet in conversations about what sort of society Britain should be, it has long been generally accepted that integration is a good thing – not just for immigrants but for everyone.

Mixing, empathising and collaborating with people who aren’t like you has benefits, the argument goes, for individuals and the country as a whole. Perspectives are broadened. Inequalities are softened, at least a little. Lives are enriched, and feelings of loneliness and alienation are diminished. Who would want to live in a country without such social exchanges – in other words, in a segregated society?

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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What if one key problem with British politics at the moment is us – the voters | Andy Beckett

Westminster has become fearful of a fickle and vindictive electorate. There’s value in that, but it’s also holding back our politics

The voter is never wrong. In this era of vox pops, phone-ins, focus groups and constant polls, this view of democracy is more prevalent than ever. Labour strategists reverently refer to switchers from the Tories as “hero voters”, while Keir Starmer often says his government is “in the service of” the electorate. With British politics fragmenting, voters are now being wooed by five national parties – an unprecedented situation, made even more unpredictable by an electoral system designed for serious competition between just two. It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that we are all swing voters now.

In some ways, this is a welcome and potentially exciting change. Since the late 1980s Westminster has mostly offered voters a limited menu – usually bland Labour centrism or ever staler Tory variations of Thatcherism – accompanied by patronising messages that no other recipes are practical. Yet now ministers, shadow ministers and MPs of all parties are hurriedly trying to come up with fresh or fresh-seeming dishes: rightwing populism, radical environmentalism, mild anti-capitalism mixed with social conservatism, and remedies of all sorts for the political and social indigestion caused by globalisation.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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Populists like Farage promise voters a simpler life. In fact, they produce ever more hassle and chaos | Andy Beckett

Centrists won’t beat Reform UK by echoing its messages. They should emphasise the true unworkability of policies like Brexit

In the middle of an election or the early stages of an administration, populist politics can feel like a liberation. The unsayable is said. Political rules are broken. Constitutional restrictions are flouted. Populist rallies are boisterous, seemingly uninhibited, with enemies of the movement taunted or intimidated.

For many voters, and even some activists and politicians, conventional politics can be boring, with its careful rhetoric and predictably choreographed campaigns, its compromised and complicated centrist policies. Populism promises something much more visceral, with larger-than-life leaders and dramatic national goals: “make America great again”, “take back control”. Digital media, with its constant hunger for brevity and straightforward narratives, is a perfect environment for populism’s seductive claim that politics is actually quite simple.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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Why is Ed Miliband a target for all sides? Because he’s a lefty politician who gets things done | Andy Beckett

Not since Tony Benn has a Labour minister been so assailed – and not just by the Tory press, but also by his own colleagues

Why exactly does Ed Miliband make so many people so angry? At 55, 20 years into his parliamentary career, with rare ministerial experience under both New Labour and Keir Starmer, and a reputation around Westminster and Whitehall as one of politics’ nicer, more knowledgeable characters, he could be a respected figure in a generally inexperienced government. Instead, he’s this unpopular administration’s most controversial member.

“An eco-zealot”, “a net-zero fanatic”, a “nauseating” hypocrite, “a cackling madman”, an “eco-Marxist”, “out of control”, “trashing Britain”, “a recruiting sergeant for the opposition”, the “most dangerous man in Britain” – Miliband provokes rightwing journalists and voters like no other minister. Possibly not since the onslaught in the 1970s on the socialist disruptor Tony Benn, whom Miliband later worked for as a teenager, has a Labour minister been so relentlessly targeted. Even the long-running and complex crisis in Britain’s steel industry has become an opportunity to blame him, despite him being secretary of state for energy security and net zero for fewer than 10 months.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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Keir Starmer is one of Labour’s most rightwing prime ministers. And one of its most leftwing, too | Andy Beckett

The PM offers a political hybrid designed for a fickle electorate. There are short-term electoral gains to be won, but risks in the long term

For more than eight months now, since shortly after Labour won power, more and more people have been outraged by the government’s moves to the right. Starting with its decision to keep the Conservatives’ cruel two-child benefit cap last July, the government has regularly given these critics reasons to feel shocked, betrayed or just disappointed.

From deportation videos to Keir Starmer’s declaration that “I like and respect” Donald Trump, from repeated public sector cuts to the chancellor Rachel Reeves’s talk of “tearing down regulatory barriers” in this week’s spring statement, Labour has often behaved as if the boundaries between its supposedly centre-left politics and the politics of the right or even the far right have simply melted away.

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