2023, a year of rot and stagnation in British politics
JVL Introduction
Surprising how much one forgets about the absurdities and outrages of a year in Brtitish politics.
Mike Phipps makes good some of the memory lapses with a survey of the last twelve months.
Both Sunak and Starmer figure large as they vie to stoop lower, though not all is doom and gloom.
Do suggest other points in the year that you would like to have seen included.
RK
This article was originally published by Labour Hub on Sun 31 Dec 2023. Read the original here.
2023: A year of stagnation
January
Tory backbencher Andrew Bridgen is suspended from the Party – and later expelled – for comparing the Coivd vaccine to the Holocaust.
Labour front bencher Wes Streeting is condemned by both Momentum and the Socialist Health Association for accepting donations from private health lobbyists.
Cal Corkery, Leader of the Labour Group on Portsmouth Council, is barred by the Party from standing again because seven years earlier he had shared an innocuous Facebook post and liked the page which posted it. Although part of the Labour Party at that time, the group the page belonged to was proscribed in 2021. A few days later he is expelled.
Ex-Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi is fined a reported million pounds over unpaid tax. After a week of dithering, Sunak finally sacks him as Tory Party Chair on January 29th.
February
Half a million workers – rail workers, teachers, civil servants – take strike action on a single day.
Keir Starmer announces that Jeremy Corbyn will definitely not be a candidate for Labour at the next election and says if members don’t back him they should leave.
March
Matt Hancock’s leaked WhatsApp messages reveal that he ignored medical advice to test all residents entering English care homes and that he knew care homes were using staff who were Covid-positive. Meanwhile, a cross-party committee of MPs finds Johnson misled Parliament over Partygate.
At Keir Starmer’s initiative, the NEC votes to block Jeremy Corbyn being a Labour candidate at the next election.
April
Keir Starmer says he stands by every word of a widely criticised Labour attack advert on child sexual assaults, which uses the words “Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn’t.” John McDonnell MP and others called for the ad to be withdrawn.
Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary Dominic Raab is forced to resign for bullying. BBC Chairman Richard Sharp resigns over breaching the Code On Public Appointments after being investigated over whether he should have revealed his role in facilitating a loan for Boris Johnson at the time.
Diane Abbott has the Labour whip removed after she sent an ill-considered letter on racism to the Observer newspaper, which she quickly repudiated and apologised for. Many see the issue as being used for factional advantage by Labour’s right and contrast the treatment of non-left wingers who made worse comments.
May
Keir Starmer drops his pledge to abolish tuition fees.
Local council elections see Labour win over 500 seats and 19 councils in total, many in areas that will be crucial battlegrounds in a future general election, including Swindon, Plymouth, Stoke-on-Trent, and East Staffordshire. Labour is now the largest party in local government, taking Medway for the first time since its creation. Nottingham now has no Conservative councillors at all for the first time ever.
The Tories perform poorly, even in Kent, where their focus on ‘stopping the boats’ might have been expected to shore up their fortunes. Labour gain Thanet and Dover and some of the Labour councillors elected are also high-profile supporters of refugee rights, such as Bridget Chapman in Folkestone.
Labour do particularly well in areas where radical change is on the agenda, as in Worthing, Preston and Broxtowe.
Keir Starmer supports the government’s anti-protest legislation and fails to oppose its anti-refugee legislation in the House of Lords.
June
The government launches a judicial review against its own public enquiry’s demand that it hand over ex-PM Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages to the enquiry.
The Labour leadership bars sitting North of Tyne Mayor Jamie Driscoll from running for the new northeast mayoralty – with no reason given. Ex-shadow chancellor John McDonnell says: “To refuse to allow a serving mayor onto even a selection long list demonstrates that factionalism in the party is completely out of control.” The following month, Driscoll announces an independent candidacy.
The Labour leadership announces it is delaying its ‘green prosperity plan’ (cost £28bn), a decision criticised by John McDonnell MP. It then scraps its plan for universal childcare, announced only a few months ago. In the House of Lords it abstain on a statutory instrument that gives the police unprecedented powers to ban public protests.
The House of Commons Privileges Committee report on Partygate is published. Boris Johnson would have got a 90-day suspension had he not resigned as an MP earlier in the month.
On June 30th, the Tory policy on deporting migrants to Rwanda is ruled unlawful by the Appeal Court.
July
The Labour leadership abstains on the second reading of the Anti-Boycott Bill which would bar local authorities and other public bodies from operating Boycott Divestment Sanctions campaigns. This is despite evidence that the Bill violates the European Convention of Human Rights.
Keir Starmer announces he is sticking by the two child benefit cap policy introduced by the Tories, despite front benchers having previously condemned it in the strongest terms.
The Conservatives lose two out of three by-elections, Selby & Ainsty to Labour on a huge swing, and Somerton & Frome to the Lib Dems. They narrowly hold Uxbridge.
August
The Conservative Party’s Deputy Chairman Lee Anderson says asylum seekers complaining about being moved into the Bibby Stockholm barge should “f*** off back to France”. Days later, the barge is evacuated over fears of an outbreak of legionnaires’ disease. Meanwhile, children reaching the UK in small boats are sent to a jail for adult sex offenders.
On August 27th Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves rules out a wealth tax if Labour wins the next election.
September
As children prepare to start the new year, school buildings across England made with a certain type of concrete are forced to close over safety fears.
Keir Starmer moves his Cabinet to the right. Owen Jones concludes: “The soft left has no meaningful future in Starmer’s Labour party.”
October
A tightly-managed Labour Party Conference sees the leadership mostly get its own way, notwithstanding some policy defeats.
Conference coincides with the deadly Hamas attack on Israel and the latter’s ongoing genocidal response. As Labour officials instruct members not to discuss Gaza or go on protests, several high-profile members leave the Party.
Keir Starmer’s refusal to call for a ceasefire leads to increasing opposition inside Labour. High-profile resignations will eventually lead to the Party losing control of four councils. Hundreds of individual councillors and many Labour Groups join the Welsh Senedd in calling for an immediate ceasefire.
Keir Starmer suspends Andy McDonald MP for remarks made in a speech to a demonstration for Palestinian rights in London. “We won’t rest until we have justice. Until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea, can live in peaceful liberty,” the former Shadow Secretary of State for Employment Rights and Protections is reported to have said. James Schneider, who was Director of Strategic Communications under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, denounces the suspension as “Deranged McCarthyism.”
Labour win two rock-solid Tory seats in by-elections in mid-Beds and Tamworth.
November
London see the largest anti-war demonstrations since Britain’s invasion of Iraq twenty years earlier. The largest ever pro-Palestine march in London on Armistice Day is labelled by Home Secretary Suella Braverman as a “hate march”. She says police are biased in favour of left wing protesters. Emboldened by such rhetoric, far right protesters scuffle with police at the Cenotaph. Two days later, Braverman is sacked as Home Secretary and the newly ennobled David Cameron becomes Foreign Secretary.
On November 15th, ten Labour frontbenchers and 46 labour backbenchers defy the whip and vote for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The government’s policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda is ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court. Sunak promises immediate legislation to declare Rwanda ‘safe’.
The BBC reports that, “Members of the RMT union agreed to an offer from 14 train companies, which included a backdated pay rise of 5% for 2022-23 as well as job security guarantees.” The offer is accepted by 90% of those voting on a 79% turnout. All the attacks on members’ jobs and conditions have been withdrawn – an important victory for the union and the tactics it deployed.
December
Starmer praises Margaret Thatcher’s leadership. A day later he says Labour “won’t turn on the spending taps” if it wins the general election.
Former Tory peer Baroness Mone admits repeatedly lying as she concedes she stands to benefit from £60 million in profit over a PPE contract won at the height of the Covid crisis.
Tory MP Peter Bone loses his seat in Parliament in a recall petition following his suspension from the Commons after an inquiry found he had subjected a staff member to bullying and sexual misconduct. Another by-election looms.
Home Secretary James Cleverly has to apologise after telling female guests at a Downing Street reception that “a little bit of Rohypnol” in his wife’s drink every night is “not really illegal if it’s only a little bit”, the Sunday Mirror reports.
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss, who in 49 days managed to wreck the British economy, is allowed to confer a host of honours and three new peerages – including for one of the architects of Brexit, for a Tory donor and for her former deputy chief of staff. Critics react with outrage and call for reform of a corrupt system.
The rot continues.
Mike Phipps’ book Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022) can be ordered here.
And Starmer/Labour can’t tell you what a woman is. Tory and Labour really are as bad as each other.