I started writing this blog the day before the 2024 UK General Election, an unexpected gamble called on a rainy afternoon in May, finally giving the British public the chance to rid itself of an inept, divided and corrupt government. Unexpected? It’s interesting how some of Rishi Sunak’s closest parliamentary advisers, their family members and a number of police officers with MP protection duties should find themselves under investigation or suspended following successful bets on the date of the election…
I grew up in an unashamedly left-wing family, joined the Labour Party as a teenager and cast my first vote, age 19, in the 1979 general election. I had a postal vote because the occasion fell during the third term of my first year at university and putting a cross in the box for the Labour candidate for Sidcup would have been wasted where the sitting MP was former Prime Minister Ted Heath, the man who had signed up the UK for European Economic Community (now EU) membership in January 1972. He ended the night with a 13,456 majority on a 6.9% swing; my vote helped to increase Albert Booth’s majority in Barrow-in-Furness but I was gutted that Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party won the election. Booth was a principled left-wing MP who favoured unilateral nuclear disarmament and represented a constituency where submarines carrying Britain's nuclear deterrent were built.
For anyone waiting for some kind of reference to prog, Rick Wakeman’s track Arthur (from The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table) was used as the BBC Election Night coverage theme tune between 1979 and 2005 and an updated version has been used on the latest two polling days, in 2019 and 2024.
Albert Booth campaigning in Dalton Road, Barrow-in-Furness in 1983. He lost his seat to the Conservative candidate Cecil Franks in the May election
I was working by the time of the next election in May 1983 and although Thatcher was deeply unpopular for her first couple of years as Prime Minister as she presided over mass unemployment and squandered tax revenue from UK North Sea Oil reserves, her armed intervention when Argentina attempted to reclaim Las Malvinas from British colonial rule, the seductive lure of ‘right to buy’ (which created our present housing crisis) and an improving economy at home broadened her appeal, resulting in an increased Conservative majority in parliament and condemning Labour to its lowest share of the vote since 1918. James Callaghan had resigned as Labour leader after losing to the Conservatives in 1979 and was succeeded by the left-winger Michael Foot. Labour’s manifesto was full of accounted solutions to the country’s economic woes but the inclusion of a policy to end the proliferation of nuclear weapons and Tory scaremongering about pulling out of NATO didn’t chime with the jingoistic atmosphere following the South Atlantic escapade. The admission that a Labour government would borrow money for some of its projects also exposed the party to attacks because Thatcher, who swallowed the political philosophy of Friedrich Hayek when she was 18 years old and found state planning an anathema, was about to unleash reactionary policies associated with economic liberalism, the effects of which are still being felt today despite neoliberalism being exposed as smoke and mirrors following 2008’s global financial meltdown and the economically illiterate Liz Truss-Kwasi Kwarteng ‘mini budget’ in 2022. Creating markets and competition for natural monopolies was dressed up as a ‘share-owning democracy’ to tempt voters but in reality individuals who invested in shares generated by each privatisation were far more likely to trade-in their paper wealth within a year, enabling financial institutions and wealth funds to increase their stake. Thatcher was accused of selling off the family silver so it’s somewhat ironic that the last government had to bail out a number of energy companies during adverse market conditions to prevent consumers from being deprived of heating, hot water and the ability to cook.
The drubbing of Labour in 1983 was partly due to the creation of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) two years previously by 28 breakaway MPs who thought that Labour had been hijacked by Trotskyites from Militant tendency. The SDP occupied the middle ground between Thatcherism and Labour, favouring a European form of social democracy and enjoyed a long media honeymoon. They fought the 1983 election in a pact with the Liberal Party, the SDP-Liberal Alliance, and took 11.5% of the overall vote but ended up with only 6 MPs. I voted for Tom Cox, the (successful) Labour candidate for Tooting.
I’d become a home owner in Selhurst by the time of the 1987 election when I voted for Labour’s Malcolm Wicks who was beaten by the sitting Conservative MP Humfrey Malins by around 4000 votes, and the Tories won the election with a majority of 102 seats. The SDP-Liberal Alliance was still in operation but was less effective and Labour’s defeat, under the leadership of Neil Kinnock who had been working to drag the party to a more centrist position, was primarily down to scaremongering over defence and the economy. Thatcher had vowed to close down ‘uneconomic’ coal mines and engaged in a dispute with the National Union of Mineworkers between 1984 and 1985 (‘Coal Not Dole’ stickers adorned my bass and amplifier and I would buy tinned food to donate to the striking miners at my local supermarket) which she would eventually win. Loved by the right-wing press, she also presided over the deregulation of the financial markets which was a boost for the City, cementing London as the foremost financial trading centre in Europe but also spawning a ‘greed is good’ ethic parodied by the Harry Enfield Loadsamoney character.
Showing solidarity with the striking miners, 1985
The Conservative TV attack campaign shamelessly misappropriated Holst’s Thaxted, a portion of Jupiter from The Planets used for the hymn I Vow to Thee My Country, which was played over an image of a fluttering Union flag. Holst was a Christian Socialist inspired by William Morris and Cecil Spring-Rice’s lyrics have also been misinterpreted as nationalistic; according to his own notes he was writing about the kingdom of Heaven.
Thatcher’s third term marked her downfall; forced to resign on 29th November 1990 following a challenge to her leadership, though not before she’d set in motion the current decline of the NHS. With her eye on US-style healthcare provision, The National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990 created an ‘internal market’ for the supply of healthcare so that the state would no longer be the main provider, but to act as an enabler, forcing local authorities to assess people for social care and support to determine a patient’s requirements and to purchase the care from providers – the new NHS Trusts. Guy’s, my place of work, joined with Lewisham Hospital and became the Tories’ flagship Trust thanks to the friendship between Thatcher and Baron McColl of Dulwich, Professor of Surgery at Guy’s.
Thatcher also unwisely favoured the imposition of a local tax, the Community Charge, dubbed the ‘poll tax’, which led to rioting on the streets of the UK; a mass disturbance in London on 31st March 1990 was instrumental in stopping the tax from coming in to force. It was rumoured that up to 18 million people were planning on not paying and its unpopularity was reflected in an opinion poll taken at the time giving Labour an 18.5% lead over the government. This was a time of persistent high unemployment, deepening recession and interest rate hikes, the latter an attempt to control rising inflation largely caused by spiralling house prices, peaking at 15%. Europe was also a point of contention between the Prime Minister and her Cabinet with Thatcher, probably influenced by voices in the US, becoming fearful of a Federal Europe while members of her cabinet favoured more European integration, leading to the resignation of the Party’s deputy leader Geoffrey Howe. She had already defeated the virtually unknown backbencher Sir Anthony Meyer in a leadership contest in 1989 but with support for the PM ebbing away Michael Heseltine, who had argued with Thatcher in 1985-86 over the survival of Westland, the UK’s last helicopter manufacturer, launched his leadership challenge. Thatcher received the majority of the first round votes but didn’t manage to reach the designated winning margin and with her reputation damaged, was persuaded by cabinet colleagues to step aside. The contest was eventually won by the Chancellor John Major who led the Conservatives into the 1992 election.
Labour was ahead in the polls when the 1992 contest was called, but somehow managed to lose their fourth election in a row, which I found deeply disturbing. The shadow budget put together by John Smith and Margaret Beckett had been carefully costed and was well received by business because the shadow treasury team had been working hard since 1987 to nullify the public image of Labour as a high tax party; even the Financial Times endorsed Labour. Even though house repossessions had peaked with home-owners unable to make their monthly mortgage repayments, the Tories were quick to launch ‘Labour’s Double Whammy’ attack adverts, suggesting that Labour would introduce more taxes and prices would rise. Along with Labour’s missteps over potential changes from a first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system to a form of proportional representation, the leadership thinking that a left-of-centre government was unlikely to be elected ever again with FPTP, a fug was created by the fallout from a campaign intended to illustrate how unsafe the NHS would be in the hands of the Tories, the so-called ‘War of Jennifer’s Ear’. It was also claimed by the newspaper itself ‘It’s The Sun Wot Won It’, thanks to a circulation of 3.6 million and a front page on polling day with Neil Kinnock’s head depicted as a light bulb and the headline ‘If Kinnock Wins Today Will The Last Person In Britain Please Turn Out The Lights’. Whatever the reason, the Conservatives had an overall majority of 21 with 336 MPs and Labour with 271. I voted for Labour’s Malcolm Wicks who was the successful candidate in the Croydon North West constituency.
The power of the Press? The Sun front pages, 9th and 10th April 1992
The Opposition was now led by John Smith but it could safely watch on as Major’s government and Party divided over Europe and lurched between crises. On 16th September 1992, ‘Black Wednesday’, Sterling crashed out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism despite the interventions of Chancellor Norman Lamont, destroying the Conservative’s reputation for financial stability and in July 1993 the PM was unable to get his Maastricht Treaty opt-out clause ratified by parliament because a number of right-wing Eurosceptics voted with the opposition. A few days later he was caught on tape describing three unnamed Ministers as ‘bastards’.
On a personal note, a London-wide NHS reorganisation threatened the viability of Guy’s Hospital. The creation of NHS Foundation Trusts in 1993 conferred a degree of financial autonomy for these ‘health providers’ and Guy’s was paired with the geographically proximate St Thomas’ Hospital to form Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, the first of its kind. A few years before, Guy’s had been singled out for major improvement, the construction of the £140m Philip Harris House, a state-of-the-art seven storey wing designed to be conducive to effective healthcare. However, the inexplicable transfer of acute services to St Thomas’ Hospital where the finances and physical fabric were in a parlous state before the formation of the Foundation Trust, a politically motivated move disguised by the London hospitals’ reorganisation, led to carpet magnate and Conservative Party donor Philip Harris withholding his £6 million from the project, so the building sat empty for some time before being reassigned for outpatient services and some research facilities under the name of Thomas Guy House. The loss of services from Guy’s was fought under the banner ‘Save Guy’s Hospital’ where one of the main organisers of the campaign was a senior surgeon, colleague and friend. Anyone interested in the current state of the NHS should check Hansard for a record of the debate on March 29th 1995 which details Guy’s predicament and touches on topics such as numbers of patients attending A&E departments.
The Conservatives were also engulfed in ‘sleaze’, a number of high-profile improper financial and sexual cases including the cash-for-questions debacle involving then MPs Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith. Jonathan Aitken, Minister in charge of Defence Procurement subsequently jailed for perjury, allowed members of the Saudi Royal Family to pay his Paris hotel bill despite his position within government, and Heritage Secretary David Mellor and Tim Yeo, the Minister for the Environment and Countryside were both exposed for having extra-marital affairs.
John Smith died unexpectedly in 1994 and the mantle of Leader of the Opposition was taken on by Tony Blair. As a Labour member I had a choice in this process and after agonising over which of the three candidates should get my vote, my preference having been for Robin Cook who didn’t stand, I decided that Blair was the best person to lead the Party into government. Despite an improving economy, the UK public were tired of the Major administration and Blair’s New Labour swept into power on a landslide on 1st May 1997 with 418 MPs.
I had moved to the Croydon Central constituency which was won by Labour’s Geraint Davis with a 3,897 majority, which included my vote.
The two terms of Blair and the third term, shared between Blair and Gordon Brown saw many improvements for the general public but I regretted my Leadership vote for Blair when he sided with George W Bush’s US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, a decision based on feelings, not facts and a strategy lacking any post-war planning. I didn’t renew my Party membership that year and have never re-joined. I was also becoming disillusioned with the acceptance of super-wealth, having never believed in the effectiveness of ‘trickle down’ wealth creation, a philosophy adopted by Blair when he re-wrote Clause IV of the Labour Party Constitution and launched ‘New Labour’ in 1995, appealing to middle class voters by dropping a commitment to mass nationalisation which had featured in the Constitution since 1918, causing a great deal of consternation in the Labour left. The pursuit of non-traditional Labour voters seemed to affect the clarity of the Party’s long-term thinking; the liberalisation of the betting industry through the Gambling Act 2005 was intended to raise tax revenue but created disastrous social issues when smartphones became commonplace (the UK’s Mobile Lottery launched in 2003 and Apple’s iPhone became available in 2007) and the use of Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) and Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) which had originally been introduced by John Major but were adopted by New Labour as part of Blair’s so-called ‘Third Way’ of UK politics, even though it rapidly became clear these would eventually become a burden to the tax payer. Geraint Davis got my vote in 2001 (when he increased his share of the vote) and again in 2005, when he lost by 75 votes to the Conservative Andrew Pelling.
Screenshot of betting apps on Google Play
I don’t blame Brown or his Chancellor Alistair Darling for the 2008 financial crash which was caused by weak regulation of banks and the markets, where but for Darling’s intervention the situation could have been much worse. This should have signalled the end of neoliberalism but with the economy stabilising Brown called an early election in May 2010 which resulted in a hung parliament where the Conservatives had the most seats. The Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg had performed well in televised debates and promised to scrap student tuition fees but giddy with a sense of power (the last Liberal government was between 1905 and 1915) and 56 other MPs behind him, he signed the Lib Dems up to form a coalition government with the Tories and took the title Deputy Prime Minister, then reneged on all his promises. My local MP Andrew Pelling had been deselected by the Conservatives for the 2010 election after some well-publicised personal problems but stood as an Independent and took a number of votes from the successful Tory candidate Gavin Barwell. I cast my vote for Labour’s Gerry Ryan who lost by 2,879 votes.
We’re still feeling the effects of austerity 14 years later, a political choice made by PM David Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne. The drift towards an acceptance that austerity was the only possible answer to the global crash was simply the will of corporate giants and international banks who wanted to carry on as normal. The coalition inherited an economy that had begun to shows signs of recovery but following the dogma that decried the requirement for any form of state control, they imposed a wage cap on the public sector and began a series of cuts to services which hit the poor, the ill and the young while cementing the lifestyle of the top earners. The downward pressure on wages of already low-earners in an economy dominated by the service industries provided one of the sources of anti-immigrant sentiment; another was a chronic shortage of appropriate housing stock. No one in a position of power had the will to challenge the causes of this tension because of the risk of upsetting the orthodoxy, a refutation of the centrist social democracy model and the unpalatable adoption of economics proposed by the left. Instead, we witnessed the return of slum landlords and an increase in top-end properties bought by foreign investors who never set foot in their purchases; the divide between haves and have nots got ever wider and resentment simmered in former industrial heartlands, stoked by the multimillionaire proprietors of The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Daily Express and The Telegraph and the people ignored by Westminster. The unforeseen consequence was detachment from politics, leaving the environment free to the influence of the far right where immigrants could be blamed for anything and everything, and not just in the UK; any country that imposed austerity created the same toxic conditions without addressing the real cause: inequality.
From public school to Oxford to Parliament: Cameron and Osborne, architects of austerity
(screengrab from BBC TV)
I became active in my local Unite union branch when pathology at Guy’s & St Thomas’ was threatened with privatisation, a battle that was eventually lost when outsource darlings Serco were chosen to form a ‘joint partnership’ with Guy’s & St Thomas’, Kings College Hospital and Bedford Hospital to form GSTS Pathology on 1st January 2009, something none of the staff involved wanted but the hospitals’ management boards thought was a wonderful idea, removing staff from the payroll to save money. I became politically active when Health Secretary Andrew Lansley proposed the Health and Social Care Bill after the formation of the coalition government in 2010, despite the promise that there would be no top-down reorganisation of the NHS. It may have been absent from the Conservative manifesto but its swift introduction suggested it had been pre-planned and fresh from experiencing the part-privatisation of my pathology department, I could see that the Bill spelled out the certain break-up of the NHS. Over the following years I marched, sat down in the middle of Westminster Bridge and made connections with like-minded individuals. The highlight of this time was giving a short address to a crowded Central Hall, Westminster, about the threat of privatisation in the NHS. I’d just organised a ‘Hands Around St Thomas’ Hospital’ event, held opposite Parliament during some of the most dreadful spring weather imaginable and Jeremy Corbyn was one of the only MPs to attend; then, when I’d given my speech, John McDonnell approached me to say how much he enjoyed what I’d said.
I was deeply frustrated by the lie that austerity was ‘necessary’ and that immigration was becoming a major issue. I’d used my union member entitlement to vote for Ed Miliband as the leader of the Labour Party when Gordon Brown stepped aside, because his credentials seemed more closely suited to my thinking than did his brother David’s, the Blairite favourite for the post. Unfortunately, politics was becoming uglier and Ed Miliband foolishly adopted a ‘strong on immigration’ position for the 2015 election, rather than explaining how migration played an important role in the economy and kept the NHS running.
Protesting over the privatisation of Guy's & St Thomas' Hospitals pharmacies
My choice in 2015 for Croydon Central MP was Labour candidate Sarah Jones who lost to the incumbent Gavin Barwell by 165 votes. The Lib Dems were reduced to only 8 MPs, punished by the electorate for their inability to ameliorate the harsh policies of their former coalition partners and though the Conservative share of the vote only increased by 0.8% on the 2010 figure, they had a net gain of 24 seats. Labour had a net loss of 26 seats and was reduced to one MP in Scotland, handing control north of the border to the Scottish National Party (SNP) who had narrowly lost a referendum for independence in September 2014, giving the Tories an overall majority. Miliband stepped down as leader of the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership contest by a huge margin under a change of rules to One Member One Vote following Miliband’s unexpected and unwelcome election to the post. Corbyn, my choice for leader as a union member, was a latecomer to the contest and his appearance on the ballot upset a large number of centrist Party grandees but it was obvious his hopeful vision contrasted with other politicians which helped him connect to urban, predominantly young voters who shared his concerns about social injustice and economic inequality. A challenge to his leadership in 2016 saw him win again with an increased proportion of the vote and under his leadership, Labour Party membership increased from around 200,000 to over 500,000.
In government, Cameron wasn’t having it all his own way with the Tory Eurosceptic right siding with an ascendant UKIP over a number of contentious issues, including a demand that the UK leave the European Union. To finally lay this schism to rest, Cameron opted for an in/out referendum on our membership of the EU which ended his premiership when the lies and machinations of the ‘No’ campaign won the day. Theresa May was victorious in the subsequent leadership election when Andrea Leadsom, her remaining challenger withdrew after a second round of Tory MP voting on 11th July 2016. Cameron had walked out of his personal thorny problem and dumped the issue of negotiating Britain’s way out of the EU on May, who had no mandate from the public to lead the country and had voted ‘remain’ to boot, struggled badly even with a parliamentary majority. She took a gamble and called a general election in June 2017, aiming to bolster her negotiating hand for our exit from the EU, but it didn’t turn out that way, resulting in a hung parliament after the Conservatives lost seats and Labour gained seats, including mine in Croydon Central won by Sarah Jones. Prior to the election there was a tacit understanding, promoted by almost all mainstream media, that Labour faced annihilation and that Jeremy Corbyn would be personally responsible for the wipe-out at the ballot box. However, on the morning of Friday 9th June commentators and a large proportion of the Parliamentary Labour Party had to admit just how wrong they’d been; though Labour didn’t get more seats than the Tories it was widely recognised that in overseeing a net gain of 32 seats, including positive results in Conservative heartlands such as Canterbury and Kensington, Corbyn had emerged as the biggest winner of the previous night.
Sarah Jones wins Croydon Central in 2017 (photo: Chris Gorman for The Standard)
At the start of the 2017 campaign, the contradictory behaviour of May, parroting that she was ‘strong and stable’ while embarking on a series of damaging U-turns seemed to be sufficient to dispel any vestiges of interest in politics in all but the politicians themselves, numbed as we were by the inane slogans of a political class which frequently put itself before the constituents. The gap in the polls between the two main parties had been running at over 20 points, leading to the conclusion that May was calling the election, already with a working majority, for simple political gain. Despite the backing of media moguls and big business, however much money was thrown at the Tory campaign it was insufficient to hide May’s innate deficiencies. Badly advised and playing to vested interests, projecting many of the damning qualities she accused the Labour leadership of possessing, her presidential-style campaign came unstuck with her refusal to debate head-to-head, a catalogue of changes in policy, a lack of empathy towards struggling working people, plus her dismal record as Home Secretary as she sought to pin the blame for the murderous bomb attack on Manchester Arena and the London Bridge stabbings five days before the ballot on ‘terrorist sympathisers’ leading the opposition.
Corbyn was far more effective giving stump speeches out around the UK. Helped by the most socialist manifesto since Michael Foot’s 1983 campaign, one which had been agreed by the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), his message was a rejection of seven years of failed neoliberal economics. Knowing that the Labour document would undergo more forensic scrutiny than anything produced by the incumbents, it was fortunate for Labour that the Tories relied on their entirely unwarranted reputation for sensible fiscal management and didn’t bother to properly cost their programme, revealing a deep disdain for the voting public. The trend for the poll gap to close in some surveys, attributed to Corbyn’s message of hope to the young, was also dismissed as being of little concern because of the perceived notion that young people wouldn’t bother to turn out to vote.
Another misplaced presumption was that UKIP votes, even those from former Labour supporters would end up with Conservative candidates. This worried many prospective Labour MPs in the north, in Wales and the Midlands where they believed that Corbyn was responsible for alienating voters. A February by-election in the hybrid former-industrial, part-rural Lake District constituency of Copeland, Cumbria saw Labour lose the seat by 2,147 votes, the first time a governing party had gained a seat in a by-election since 1982 and the first time the Conservatives had been successful in that constituency or its predecessor since 1935; the UKIP vote also collapsed.
If Corbyn was perceived as an ogre it was mainly down to how he was portrayed in the UK’s predominantly right-wing press and their fixation on his leadership rather than Labour’s policies. Away from the bear-pit of the House of Commons with its turn-off adversarial politics, a game Corbyn was unhappy playing, he went down very well with thousands of people, filling town squares all around the country and when reported on the news outside the prism of normal parliamentary coverage, millions more could hear his inclusionist message of positivity. If you were impartial it soon became obvious that he wasn’t a monster with fringe ideas dedicated to destroying the UK but quite the opposite; he wanted a fairer system where those who could afford to pay more tax should pay a bit more tax, wealth would be better distributed and services pared to the bone by austerity were to be resumed for the benefit of all.
It can’t be denied that Corbyn inherited a divided Party in 2015 and while the PLP proclaimed it was a ‘broad church’, Corbyn found it very difficult to fill a shadow front bench because of ideological differences within his cohort of MPs, a prime example being the failed attempt to replace him as leader in 2016 instigated by Owen Smith, an MP on the right of the Party who had advocated a role for the private sector in the running of the NHS. The most damaging row under Corbyn’s leadership was the claim that antisemitism was widespread in the party, which had been problematic for previous leaders. Traditionally, many Jewish people tended to vote for Labour, the party most supportive of oppressed minorities, up until the 1967 Six-Day War when Israel defeated Egypt, Jordan and Syria and Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip came under Israeli occupation. Labour aligned with the Palestinian cause, a position well-entrenched long before Corbyn became leader when some pretty horrible examples of antisemitic behaviour came to light. Corbyn supporters would claim that the attacks on him were promulgated by MPs from the opposite end of Labour’s broad church who used accusations of rife antisemitism and Corbyn’s perceived lack of action to deal with it as a means of undermining his leadership. He set up an independent inquiry into antisemitism and other forms of racism in the Party in 2016, chaired by Shami Chakrabarti, the director of human rights organisation Liberty following the suspension of the MP Naz Shah and former MP/former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone. Reporting two months later Chakrabarti, who had joined the Labour Party two weeks into the inquiry, concluded that the Party “[wasn’t] overrun by anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or other forms of racism” and noted there was “an occasionally toxic atmosphere” with a suggestion to curb the hateful language. There was no recommendation of lifetime bans for any MP found guilty of antisemitism, which disappointed many.
The distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism is nuanced, making criticism of the increasingly authoritarian State of Israel difficult without being accused of antisemitism even though Israel is in breach of over 30 UN Resolutions, dating back to 1968. Labour eventually adopted the full International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism incorporating all its 11 examples in 2018, but added the caveat "this will not in any way undermine freedom of expression on Israel or the rights of Palestinians" and the perception that the Party hadn’t adequately dealt with the issue dragged on into campaigning for the snap 2019 general election, after the Equality and Human Rights Commission was asked to investigate antisemitism in the Party at the end of May that year, reporting in October 'serious failings in the Labour party leadership in addressing antisemitism and an inadequate process for handling antisemitism complaints' and inappropriate instances of interference in the complaints process. Corbyn was subsequently suspended from the Labour Party for claiming that the scale of antisemitic behaviour had been overstated for political reasons.
Fast forward to 7th October 2023 and Hamas’ murderous attack on Israeli citizens and abduction of more than 250 hostages was rightly condemned by the international community, but it took time for those friendly towards Israel to condemn what Israeli leaders classed as ‘defending themselves’, in reality a wildly disproportionate retribution rained down on the people of Gaza with around 39,000 Palestinian deaths, 90,000 injured, mass-displacement with homes and hospitals targeted by the Israeli Defence Force and evidence of starvation being used as a weapon. With calls for a ceasefire being ignored by Benjamin Netanyahu who was desperate to drag out his tenure and would not countenance a two-State solution, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory does not comply with international law, that their policies in Gaza amount to annexation and should end ‘as rapidly as possible’.
Protesting against antisemitism in the Labour Party, March 2018
(photo: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Rex/Shutterstock)
Theresa May clung on to power after her 2017 election fiasco with the support of MPs from Northern Ireland’s pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) but had to resign in July 2019 after failing to get her European Union (Withdrawal) Act through parliament, recording two of the heaviest Government defeats in parliamentary history. Boris Johnson, a man unafraid of hyperbole who had withdrawn from the 2016 leadership contest after the somewhat untrustworthy Michael Gove had thrown his hat into the ring, was duly appointed, promising an ‘oven-ready Brexit’. May’s downfall was predictable, with the DUP and Tory Eurosceptics unwilling to consider any form of customs border between Northern Ireland and mainland UK (what May called the ‘Irish Backstop’) when a land border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland would have caused the breakdown of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement which had largely ended sectarian violence and brought peace and prosperity to the Province. Johnson brushed the mainland UK-Northern Ireland problem under the carpet and became PM on 24th July, the day before the House of Commons rose for summer recess; on 28th August, a week before parliament was due to sit after the break, the Queen, on the advice of Johnson, announced a proroguement lasting from 10th September until the State Opening of parliament on 14th October. Widely seen as an effort to stifle debate about Brexit it fell to the activist Gina Miller, who had previously successfully stopped Theresa May’s government from implementing Brexit without the approval of parliament, to take the case to court where it was found illegal on 24th September, allowing parliament to sit. Joanna Cherry QC MP was the leading litigant against the government in the Scottish courts. Was lying to the Queen one of Johnson’s greatest moments?
Johnson’s team renegotiated May’s Brexit deal, making it even less appealing to the DUP and unable to get the deal through parliament, Johnson called a snap general election for 12th December 2019 promising that if the electorate granted him a majority, he’d ‘get Brexit done’ before Christmas and the UK would leave the EU by the end of January 2020. The Conservatives duly won the election with an 80 seat majority and Labour ended the night with 59 fewer MPs, prompting Corbyn to step down as leader, the defeat attributed to the antisemitism row, an overcomplicated manifesto, a muddled position on Brexit and Corbyn’s unpopularity on the doorstep. Former Labour supporters voiced their displeasure at their vote ‘being taken for granted’, precipitating the collapse of the ‘red wall’, presumed safe Labour seats in the midlands and the north, but I think they were seduced by Johnson’s boasting, lies and bluster, imagining him as a different form of politician from the rest of those making up the House of Commons. My vote in Croydon Central went to Sarah Jones who was re-elected with a majority of 5,949.
The Labour leadership contest took place between February and April 2020. I’ve actually forgotten who I voted for but I did believe that Labour needed to elect a woman leader. Three candidates made it onto the ballot and Keir Starmer won with over 56% of the first round votes; I wasn’t too upset because at the time he claimed he wanted some radicalism in the party.
The Conservative majority safely saw the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill pass on 20th December and given royal assent on 23rd January. The UK officially withdrew from the EU at 23.00 GMT (midnight CET) and entered a transition period where details of the relationship between Britain and the Bloc were to be worked out, where a number of deadlines would be passed and redrawn.
Boris Johnson borrows a JCB excavator from his friend and Conservative donor Lord Bamford for an inane publicity stunt
I’d always hoped Johnson would be recognised as a charlatan but no one could have predicted the means of his downfall. The Covid-19 pandemic struck in March 2020 and despite dithering over when to call the first lockdown or whether or not to cancel sport, the PM somehow managed to maintain a decent approval rating in the face of a rising national death toll. It was obvious from the start that the UK was unprepared for such an event with a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) for health and care workers and bed-blocking by patients too ill to be moved out of hospital before the winter crisis had subsided. To make matters worse, Johnson’s demeanour betrayed the fact that he was clearly out of his depth; appearing ill-at-ease during his daily briefings and boasting about shaking hands with everyone, genuinely believing he was Superman, so it was no surprise he’d contracted the virus by the beginning of April. Some credit should go to the Chancellor Rishi Sunak for introducing furlough but much of the impetus had come from the Trades Union Congress and the UK scheme wasn’t as generous as many in Europe, ending too soon; one of the sectors which suffered badly was the live entertainment industry with its large number of self-employed. Sunak also blotted his copybook with his attempt to lure customers back to restaurants with ‘Eat Out To Help Out’, dubbed ‘Eat Out To Help The Virus’ by the government’s scientific advisors, and a general unwillingness to re-establish restrictions when incidence of the virus increased. There was some over-zealous policing of regulations during the early days of lockdown but as time went on Johnson and some members of his government abandoned the rules they’d set for the rest of the country. ‘Partygate’ began with a report in the Daily Mirror on 30th November 2021 detailing a number of gatherings in Downing Street which were in breach of the government’s own guidelines. A police investigation in 2022 resulted in fines for both Johnson and Sunak and despite the repeated lie ‘no rules were broken in Downing Street’, public outrage at the perceived ‘one rule for us, another rule for them’ grew as statistics showed the UK had one of the highest Covid-related death rates in the world. The image of the solitary Queen at Prince Philip’s funeral plastered over front pages when details of two parties the previous evening emerged certainly didn’t do Johnson any favours. Sue Gray, a high-ranking civil servant, was chosen to write a report on Partygate after the Cabinet Secretary Simon Case was also implicated in a breach of the social distancing rules, though he escaped without sanction from the police. While Johnson was referred to the Parliamentary Privileges Committee in April 2022 over allegations he had lied to parliament, Gray’s report was published in May, concluding that senior political and civil servant leadership had to bear responsibility for the culture of excessive drinking and lack of respect to domestic and security staff in Downing Street.
Out of his depth: Boris Johnson (screengrab from BBC TV)
The Conservatives lost the North Shropshire by-election on 21st December 2021 after the sitting MP Owen Paterson resigned. He’d been found to have been in breach of the rules on paid advocacy by a parliamentary standards committee, with a suggested punishment of suspension from the House for 30 days – which would have led to a recall petition. Paterson denied any wrongdoing and Boris Johnson had originally been very supportive but the outrage created when the Tories attempted to postpone the suspension was enough to make them drop their plans. The whiff of sleaze and breaches of Covid rules were enough to see the Lib Dems easily overturn Paterson’s 2019 majority.
May’s local election results were also dire reading for the Conservatives and Johnson became embroiled in another scandal involving the MP Chris Pincher, a former Deputy Chief Whip. Allegations of sexual misconduct by Pincher surfaced at the beginning of July, along with historic allegations dating from before his appointment to the Whips’ office. Johnson was said to have been fully appraised of the nature of these complaints and originally denied that he was aware of Pincher’s alleged behaviour, subsequently admitting that he did know (but had still appointed Pincher as Deputy Chief Whip). This caused something of a crisis for the government with an unprecedented number of Ministers and government staff resigning between the 5th and 7th July, having lost confidence in Johnson who then resigned as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservatives.
It’s hard to image the economic chaos created by a die-hard neoliberal who evidently didn’t understand how markets work, unless you’ve read the fantasy novel Britannia Unchained. The Conservative leadership election lasted from July to September, with the victorious Liz Truss becoming PM on 6th September whose first act of drowning, not waving, was when the Queen died on 8th September. Parliament went into recess until after the State Funeral, a national holiday, held on 19th September and the disastrous ‘Growth Plan’ Ministerial Statement, in effect a mini-budget cobbled together with encouragement from 55 Tufton Street, a hotbed of right-wing think tanks was delivered to the House by Kwasi Kwarteng, Truss’ friend and Chancellor, on 23rd September. There had been no scrutiny by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), so the occasion was characterised by HM Treasury as a ‘fiscal event’, a series of unfunded tax cuts (mostly benefiting the wealthy) that the Trussonomics team believed would deliver growth. The UK was already in a cost-of-living crisis with high inflation and on the verge of recession so it must have been hurtful for Truss that the markets didn’t agree with her thinking. Sterling fell sharply and the Bank of England had to step-in to buy government bonds to prevent pension funds from collapsing, banks and building societies began withdrawing their mortgage products and mortgage interest rates rose above 6% for the first time since 2008. Initially bullish about their approach, Kwarteng suggested he was planning further tax cuts but the reaction of the public, the markets and the political world forced the government into a rethink. Kwarteng was dragged home from a finance meeting in Washington and sacked on 14th October and was replaced by Jeremy Hunt, who had previously been a clueless Culture Secretary and a hopeless Health Secretary. He immediately began scrapping most of the mini-budget while his fellow Tory MPs lost confidence in government policy and called for Truss’ resignation. Bookmakers were taking bets on how long she’d be able to remain in post and the Daily Star newspaper asked if she’d outlast a supermarket-bought lettuce. She didn’t. Truss resigned on 20th October having held the office for 49 days, the shortest ever tenure of a UK Prime Minister.
Britannia Unchained. Written by people you'd not want running your economy
Self-awareness had never been a Truss strength and she began blaming everyone else for her downfall, invoking the language of Donald Trump to describe the machinery of government. The unopposed winner of the leadership contest was former Chancellor Rishi Sunak who had warned of the madness of Truss’ economic policy when he stood against her following the demise of Boris Johnson, becoming Prime Minister on 25th October, the fourth PM in six years elevated to the post without the input of the general public.
Sunak was no stranger to negative headlines, having received a fine for a breach of Covid rules, a 2022 revelation that he’d held on to his US green card allowing him permanent residence until the previous year and his wife’s non-dom status allowing her to avoid UK tax, but his decision to install a heated swimming pool in his grade II listed constituency residence while many were struggling to choose between heating and eating due to the continuing war in Ukraine and the concomitant energy price rises furthered the impression that he was out-of-touch with the real world. The Tories safe choice for PM was easily rattled when challenged or questioned but increasingly turned to the Johnson-Trump playbook of bare-faced lies, repeated again and again until they became the truth. The weekly parliamentary Prime Minister’s Questions became unwatchable; no opposition questions were answered and the Speaker didn’t exercise his authority to request answers. The ridiculousness of ‘stop the boats’, Bibby Stockholm and the Rwanda plan didn’t help his poll rating either, with Labour consistently around 20 points ahead as inflation remained stubbornly high and the economy showed no signs of significant or sustained growth. There were 23 by-elections during Sunak’s premiership and the first of these, Hartlepool in March 2021, went well for the Conservatives when the ‘red wall’ crumbled a little more. Three more were Conservative holds: one of went uncontested by the main parties after the previous MP was murdered; one was former PM Edward Heath’s old seat; and the other was a shock hold in Uxbridge following Boris Johnson’s resignation as an MP. Labour gained seven seats from the Conservatives and one from the SNP, while the Lib Dems overturned four huge Conservative majorities. Reform UK gained their first MP when Lee Anderson was suspended as a Tory MP and then defected to Nigel Farage’s new party and two MPs crossed the floor to join the Labour benches.
Sunak's 'successes'
I have no pity for Sunak, caught between the crazy ideas of the right and the ineffectual One Nation grouping who wouldn’t vote against the government if their lives depended upon it, and shedding MPs made his position even less tenable. With the country crying out for change, he made the decision to go for an early election, no doubt knowing that the economy wasn’t going to improve by the autumn, but every decision his team made during the election campaign suggested that he no longer wanted to be Prime Minister. He announced the election in the pouring rain, without an umbrella; he visited the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast where the Titanic was built; he gave an interview on an aircraft where the framing of the photos showed an ‘exit’ sign above his head; campaigners were directed to seats where the party had unassailable majorities. The exit polls on Thursday 4th July indicated a Labour landslide and the final count came pretty close, with Labour ending on 411 seats, the Conservatives 121, Lib Dems 72, SNP 9, Sinn Féin 7, Independents 6, DUP 5, Reform UK 5, Green 4, Plaid Cymru 4, SDLP 2, Traditional Unionist Voice 1, Alliance 1, UUP 1.
It was obviously a very, very good night for Labour, the Lib Dems and the Green Party. Reform UK might have been hoping for around 10 seats but I’m disappointed they even got one.
UK General Election 2024: Exit poll and results
The new constituency of Croydon East returned Natasha Irons for Labour, whose predicted success allowed me to vote with my conscience. To paraphrase Charlotte Brontë, reader, I voted Green.
Postscript
It’s good that the first couple of weeks of Keir Starmer’s term feels like a return to democracy even though he’s got such a huge majority Labour can pass any legislation it wants. We appear to have a government of grown-ups who want to act for the good of the people of the UK, not to feather their nests. However, I’d very much liked to have seen the seven MPs who voted to scrap the two-child benefit cap, an act of conscience rather than an act of rebellion when they supported the SNP amendment to the King’s Speech escape without suspension; eradicating child poverty should be everyone's priority.
The climate crisis is an existential problem and with a bit of luck Labour’s policies will help to reduce the threat but there are some stiff challenges ahead, least of all ending world conflict so that everyone can put all their resources into stopping global heating. I believe that all conscious actions are political. With the Olympics just about to start it’s important to point out that sports events are political and should be used as levers for global change. I believe in boycott and I welcome that those who oppose the imposition of sanctions feel uncomfortable. I believe that music and the arts are political. I believe soft power can be used to change the world for good if we all stand together. Assuming it doesn’t turn out to be Tory-lite, the UK has elected a progressive government. Now it’s time for the world to follow.
This article contains much of the lost blog ‘Winner? Loser! Loser? Winner!’ posted on 11th June 2017 which detailed Theresa May’s calamitous 2017 election; I'd written the section on deregulation of the City before Nils Pratley's article 'Cheap sales, debt and foreign takeovers: how privatisation changed the water industry' appeared in The Guardian on Wednesday 10th July, which contained the line: 'It was a period of corporate exuberance, lampooned by Harry Enfield’s “Loadsamoney” character.'
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