Former shadow chancellor says public disillusionment could set in and calls for ‘real strategy’ on wages and incomes
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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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.