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Britain risks shift to far right if Labour fails to enact ‘radical change’, says John McDonnell (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 10 months ago by GreyShuck@feddit.uk to c/uk_politics@feddit.uk

24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

British politics risks an unprecedented shift to the far right as a result of public disillusionment if a Labour government fails to enact radical change, the former shadow chancellor John McDonnell has warned.

Writing in the Guardian, McDonnell said the threat would come not just from Nigel Farage’s resurgent Reform UK but from the return of a Conservative party “shorn” of its moderate wing and dominated by populists.

McDonnell, who served in the shadow cabinet under Jeremy Corbyn, reflected the views of others on his party’s left who are impatient with what they regard as Labour’s too-cautious approach. “The central messaging of Keir Starmer’s electoral strategy is that he’s not Jeremy Corbyn and that Labour is not the disaster that is the Conservative party,” he said.

McDonnell pointed to the polling figures of Reform UK, reaching as high as 11%, as evidence of “how a far-right populist programme can pull the major parties on to a rightwing agenda”.

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[–] TawdryPorker@lemmy.world 23 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

There's a lot of people who don't like the label fascism but just fucking love what fascism does. I think the problem is that a lot of people don't understand how complex the world is and fascism always tells them that their stupid, lazy thinking is correct. Universal suffrage is the only way to that democracy can work in this day and age and I would literally fight to save it... but boy does it come with some downsides.

[–] steeznson@lemmy.world -1 points 10 months ago

The definition of fascism is a society where the needs of the individual are subsumed by the needs of the state. I'm not sure I understand how you are using the word here.

[–] hellothere@sh.itjust.works 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is a bit rich really. Firstly, he's had two opportunities to get the Tories out and failed. And second, their lurch to the right in 2019 was made easier by his and Corbyn's desertion of the centre.

And, again, not that this needs repeating, but I voted for Corbyn as leader twice.

Labour pulling left didn't have the effect I hoped it would when I voted for them to lead the party, if anything, it had the complete opposite one.

[–] frazorth@feddit.uk 6 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Exactly this.

As much as people on here bitch about Starmer, it's not like Corbyn didn't already have a go and gave us fucking Boris.

The lurch to the right will continue until it actually hurts. At the moment it just keeps circling the drain, as much as the Tories are cutting the NHS and benefits nothing has actually collapsed. Sure some businesses didn't make it past Brexit, but we don't have mass unemployment. There is a delicate balance and it could all go really wrong fast and I don't see significant change until it does.

[–] hellothere@sh.itjust.works 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

nothing has actually collapsed

Respectfully, I think this betrays your privilege / position.

Things very much are collapsing, and it isn't limited to the poor and destitute anymore.

A friend of mine was telling me recently how the foodbank they volunteer at has had an absolute explosion of demand and is now being used by people who previously would have been donating food. This is because they are spending every penny they can on their mortgage.

Granted, we are not in the middle of a great depression or anything like that, but things are very bad for a lot of people.

[–] frazorth@feddit.uk 3 points 10 months ago

Granted, we are not in the middle of a great depression or anything like that, but things are very bad for a lot of people.

But that's my point. We are going to have to drop further for people to actually push back because obviously all the shit that's going down isn't making people revolt.

It's not "betraying my privilege" this is me watching the Tories get a stupid amount of votes considering their platform and there has to be a percentage of those struggling voting for them for any of this to make sense.

Or the votings rigged.

[–] MadBob@feddit.nl -1 points 10 months ago

It's not like the fact that Corbyn was leader was what pushed voters away from Labour. The press were pretty merciless with him while his policies themselves were popular, I seem to recall.

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 3 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

McDonnell, who served in the shadow cabinet under Jeremy Corbyn, reflected the views of others on his party’s left who are impatient with what they regard as Labour’s too-cautious approach.

McDonnell pointed to the polling figures of Reform UK, reaching as high as 11%, as evidence of “how a far-right populist programme can pull the major parties on to a rightwing agenda”.

Farage has continued to keep people guessing about his intentions of a return to politics, which could involve coming back as the leader of Reform or joining the Conservatives.

Our five bold missions will spark a decade of national renewal, to make working people better off and give Britain its future back.”

The original article contains 543 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 66%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] jabjoe@feddit.uk 2 points 10 months ago

We need to ditch FPTP. It's the right who have been benefiting from it. We are quite a progressive country, it's just that is split over multiple parties. Even a tip of a wing of the Conservatives. On the whole, the right is more stuck together in the form of the Conservatives.

Only 2015 that didn't have a progressive majority of the vote. I'd argue that was because people mistakenly thought Cameron's "hug a hoodie" Conservatives were progressive.

I think we need some thing like Mixed Member Proportional Representative or Range voting.

[–] steeznson@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

They should wait until after they win the election before they start squabbling like this.

[–] Biohazard@feddit.uk 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Of course John McDonald would say that. He probably things labour is rather right wing.

[–] peg@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

He wouldn't be wrong.

[–] rayquetzalcoatl@feddit.uk 0 points 10 months ago

Guess we're risking a shift to the far right then lol

[+] Wanderer@lemm.ee -14 points 10 months ago (2 children)

More govement spending.

Voter reform. Fptp is trash.

Vastly reduce immigration from countries that don't have very similar cultural identity.

Those are the most important things for the country to focus on and labour is only dealing with one, maybe.

They aren't going to get my vote.

[–] frazorth@feddit.uk 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

How many of those are the Tories, Greens or Lib Dems focussing on?

[–] Wanderer@lemm.ee -3 points 10 months ago

Tories. Don't know they won't push for ending FPTP and that's a line that I won't cross. So they won't ever get my vote.

Greens and Lib Dem. Two I guess.

[–] mr_strange@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Vastly reduce immigration from countries that don’t have very similar cultural identity.

So the best way to fight the fascists is to give them what they want?

[–] Wanderer@lemm.ee -1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Are you saying that fascism is exclusively about not having open border immigration? I'm not really sure what point you are trying to make.

Let me break it down just for this example and excluding the other three. The British people want less immigration, that's shown know the studies. Admittedly this is based on my own perception, but people have issues with parts of the UK being full of immigrants (or their children) from say the indian subcontinent or from Nigeria and not integrating. Almost no one, if any are complaining about the towns and communities full of Australians.

Now if you care about immigration you are going to vote for a party that cares about immigration. If the left doesn't do this then they will go to the right as it is the only option.

The right party for me would be:

Pushing for single transferable vote

Lowering immigration from the third world.

Massive restructuring of cities and towns for higher density and public transport.

Higher taxes and more govement spending.

Free education.

Monetary allowance ideally or more realistically low interest government loans for young people to start their lives.

More protection for workers with things like unpaid work.

Push towards less work per hour.

Eventual UBI

Externalities.

That's left leaning policies, in some waves very left. But for some reason in the uk immigration is seen as far right policy, it's not but for some reason people incorrectly think it is. Plenty of left parties have been for less immigration to boost wages for example.

I will not vote for a party that wants FPTP. Then the next biggest issue is immigration so I will vote based on that. All the other issues can be fixed in the future.

[–] mr_strange@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

British people want less immigration because they have been fed a deluge of racist, far right propaganda for years, if not decades. Propaganda that mainstream parties have failed to counter, or even tacitly endorsed.

Immigrants are not just good for the UK, they are essential. Of course immigration grows the economy, and makes us all richer (yes, even the poorest segments of society). But more than that, without immigration, our population will shrink, slowly at first, and eventually catastrophically. We need people to keep everything working, lest there is literally no one left by the time we get to retirement age.

Of course immigrants struggle to integrate when right wing governments have cut the programmes that existed to help them do that! In the 2000s, my wife (an immigrant) trained to teach English as a second language - a programme specifically designed to help immigrants learn English. The Conservatives cancelled that, along with a slew of similar initiatives. And then they feigned surprise when the far right stole their voters, and eventually took over their entire party.

[–] Wanderer@lemm.ee 0 points 10 months ago

I think you have been fed propaganda from the left.

First British culture has value to it. People like it and people want it. By bringing in a lot of immigrants that don't integrate that value is lost and people are unhappy with that. That is a real concern people have that the left act like it is made up. Sure new culture has value but it doesn't diminish the argument of the first and the great thing about travel is seeing new cultures, no one wants the world to be identical. People do not want to lose British culture and identity and that might surpass any other metric.

There has been far far too much focus on GDP and GDP per capita in my mind. First GDP is largely meaningless to the individual and even GDP per capita is meaningless if you are in a cohort of the population that is doing worse.

You show me that people in the lowest tax bracket are happier, have more home ownership, have more employment, have more dispatchable income, from all this immigration. Then we are talking but other figures aren't the whole picture.

The world is dying. Population decline is good. Japan manage it. They have high homeownership and low crime. Sure not much has changed since 2000. But you ask an average brit if they will probably say 2000 is better than 2024. Also if people had a home, more free time and more excess money they will probably have more kids.

The reason we need immigrants to do stuff is because things like education has been underfunded and wages are kept low by immigration. Fix them and those jobs will be filled with locals, plenty of the country is suffering horrifically and they could be trained to do jobs but instead it's cheaper to bring in immigrants. This is an example of increasing GDP at the expense of the everyday man.