Mark Perryman selects his reading matter to make sense of a party in trouble
The 4th July 2024 landslide seems like a lifetime ago in the lived experience of this Labour government and attendant party. A Prime Minister elected on a record-breaking low share of the vote: 33.7%. A victory secured by the split in the right’s vote between the Conservatives and Reform UK. Further aided by the unwritten pact that meant Labour effectively withdrew from seats where the Liberal Democrats were best placed to oust the incumbent Tory MP, and where Labour best placed the Lib Dems doing likewise.
Once victory was secured however, what has been dubbed the ‘loveless landslide’ could – should – have been turned into an era to inspire and give hope. But nothing of the sort has appeared. Instead Keir Starmer is achieving record lows in polls measuring favourability. Meanwhile, Reform UK has such a big and consistent lead in the polls and Nigel Farage as the next Prime Minister has moved from a nightmare to realistic possibility.
As Labour meets for its annual party conference how might we make sense of a party in such trouble.
The Starmer Symptom – Mark Perryman
OK I have to declare an interest here… Nevertheless, The Starmer Symptom, written in the year since the landslide, is the first book to account for how those twelve months have shaped Labour’s prospects. This is a collection of essays, edited by me, with a foreword by Clive Lewis MP, the collective thoughts infinitely more incisive than anything I could have come up with on my own. Comprehensive too, mapping the 2024 vote, measuring the fallout for the parties, a critique of Labour’s response to the key issues facing it in government, and an outline of the alternatives to a party in impasse.
The Starmer Symptom here.
The Most Dangerous Man in Britain? – Tony Benn
Labourism has a terrible habit of always looking backwards rather than forwards. But a modernisation so intent on appearing forward-looking at the expense of learning everything from the past is every bit as bad, if not worse. In the early-to-mid-1980s ‘Bennism’ was a hugely popular movement in and around the Labour Party, never dominant, its rise bitterly contested by the Labour Right. It was nevertheless part and parcel of Labour and a wider left. Benn however wasn’t just a leader but a thinker too, with this new collection of his political writings testament to that. Whether you agree or disagree with Benn’s thinking, there are few Labour figures who have matched him since for his boldness and originality including the one figure from that Bennite left to lead the Labour Party – Jeremy Corbyn.
The Most Dangerous Man in Britain? from here.
Run Zohran Run! – Theodore Hamm
Looking for a sign of present-day hope? While the Green Party under Zack Polanski show all the signs of a party with the potential to repeat their successes, winning inner city seats off Labour in Brighton and Bristol, and the civic-nationalism of the SNP and Plaid Cymru continue their revival, and those who have promised a left alternative to Labour – Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana – offer only that well-worn experience of the internecine and the warfare. Hopeless? Theodore Hamm’s book is a gripping account of how Zohran Mamdani defeated his party’s machine from within to win the Democrat nomination for November’s New York City Mayoral Election. If he proves victorious in the election itself then it’s an addition for Andy Burnham’s bookshelf and all who’d back him to win the Labour leadership.
Run Zohran Run! from here.
Gaza: The Story of a Genocide – Fatima Bhutto and Sonia Faleiro
Beyond the looking-glass world of Westminster politics and the ups (or mainly downs) of Labour’s poll ratings, Gaza has provided the basis for a generational shift. In much the same way as Hungary in 1956, Vietnam in 1968 and Iraq in 2003, Gaza – since the murderous Hamas attack in 2023 followed by Israel’s deadly assault which is now internationally recognised as genocidal – is a conflict that has come to define the current era. 1956 had dire consequences for the Communist Party but was hardly an issue to affect Labour. With Vietnam, despite the huge pressure to do so, Harold Wilson refused to send British troops. Iraq damaged Blair, deservedly so, yet his 1997 landslide recorded a huge 43.2% of the vote, which meant unlike Starmer he had a sufficient cushion to ride the declining support for Labour in 2001 and 2005 to victory. Fatima Bhutto and Sonia Faleiro’s collection is a wide-range of cultural responses to Gaza displaying a hugely imaginative breadth of anger, and hope. It is a testimony to a shift that a tin-eared Starmer seems almost entirely oblivious of and Labour will pay the price for.
Gaza: The Story of a Genocide from here.
The Next Crisis: What We Think About the Future – Danny Dorling
The latest from the extraordinarily prolific Danny Dorling and like all his other writings this book doesn’t disappoint – anything but. Combining empirical analysis with originality of insight is Danny’s style. Together they make for a convincing argument, but does he have the ear of a government minister or two? He should! Across key issues, including the cost of living, immigration and the climate crisis, the book digests polling data to uncover a range of universally powerful anxieties that don’t fit either the conventional picture we have of voters or the limited range of responses politicians choose their responses from. An essential read to map out any kind of Labour recovery.
The Next Crisis: What We Think About the Future from here.
Eviction: A Social History of Rent – Jessica Field
For many voters the number one issue will be housing. The lack of, rising cost to rent, treatment by landlords. Labour’s response is build, baby, build! Yet almost entirely absent from that project is the issue of ownership. A party more identified than any other council housing, where ownership lies with the local state instead of the weasel word language of ‘affordable housing’ and ‘social ownership.’ Jessica Field mixes the historical with the personal to document the central social conflict in contemporary Britain: tenant vs. landlord. Council housing was never perfect but it remains the only way to inject a democratisation founded on accountability into that relationship because it isn’t founded on the profit motive but a social objective. This is the book on which to found such a switch.
Eviction: A Social History of Rent from here.
Radical Abundance: How To Win a Green Democratic Future – Kai Heron, Keir Milburn and Bertie Russell
Ed Miliband is one of the Cabinet Ministers who it could be said doesn’t fit the Starmerite yes-man, or yes-woman, mould. He has made arguments around energy and climate change very much his own as the ‘Green New Deal’ morphed into ‘Great British Energy’. But despite those best efforts none of this can amount to much so long as the government’s one word response to all matters economic is ‘growth’. And never mind the consequences for the climate. ‘Radical Abundance’ is the answer the authors of this wonderfully engrossing book offer. Not hair-shirted socialism but a flourishing of pleasurable possibility via the democratic control of the green means framed by actually-existing examples of how, this is a handbook for a new economy and society.
Radical Abundance: How to Win a Green Democratic Future from here.
Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy
Don’t be fooled by the sub-title, a journal? Of social democracy? Dating its intellectual origins to the 1970s soft left, Renewal has been relaunched this year to serve a more dissident purpose in the era of Starmer and McSweney .
The relaunch issue featured a lengthy interview with Andy Burnham making it pretty clear where Renewal would be positioning itself henceforth. The latest issue, out just in time for Labour Conference, combines some of the most thoughtful responses to Reform and the attendant Far-Right from anywhere in and around Labour with an admirable pluralism. Paul Mason has fallen out with many of his former allies following his ardent support for Starmer but in his contribution Social Democracy for a Zero-sum world he absolutely returns to intellectual form and then some. Concluding the issue with an afterword from Caroline Lucas, an indicator that this version of social democracy is more than aware of its own limits. Now that’s what I call an honest ambition, something now referred to in the new, longer version of that sub-title, “a quarterly journal of politics and ideas, committed to exploring and expanding the radical potential of social democracy.” Hurrah!
Renewal from here.
Tribune
Tribune enjoyed a more thorough-going relaunch during the peak Corbynism years. Modelled on and owned by the US socialist magazine Jacobin it rapidly established a substantial subscription base and high street availability via WHSmith as well a hugely impressive online daily version of the bi-monthly magazine. A recent change of ownership doesn’t appear to have harmed its ambitions, while a change of editor to Alex Niven has proved absolutely inspired creating the most inspired iteration of the magazine to date. Alex had previously provided for Tribune his hugely original ‘grey labour’ analysis of Starmer’s Labour now with a well-chosen core of young writers including Dan Evans, Grace Blakeley and Owen Hatherley whose originality of thought is positively flowering across its pages. Yet the era now is very different to when Tribune was relaunched, the challenge will be for the magazine to appeal to readers in, against and outside Starmer’s Labour. Accomplish that difficult task and not only will the readership grow but the magazine’s influence too.
Tribune from here.
FIVE STAR CHOICE – How to Defeat the Far Right – Nick Lowles
Whatever happens at Labour conference, however good the speeches, wherever the votes end up (not that these have any impact on Labour policy whatsoever nowadays) one thing is certain: Reform UK will still lead the opinion polls, Nigel Farage will remain a credible contender to lead his party to winning the next General Election, and ‘Tommy Robinson’ will continue to whip up a tidal wave of popular racism.
Nick Lowles has form in stopping all of this. A combination of undercover work exposing the murderous intent of neo-nazi grouplets, the huge effort to defeat Nick Griffin’s credible effort to win Barking in the 2010 General Election, research, surveys and community-based initiatives to challenge the far right in the localities they would seek to lead. ‘HOPE not hate’ is a campaign like no other and all the better for that, free of the placard-waving and name-calling in order to make a difference. This book should have been given to every Labour conference delegate, Keir give up his party leader’s slot for Nick to address conference, campaign workshops replace the rituals of resolutionary labourism. For this is an emergency.
In the absence of any of that grab yourself a copy, it might just be our last chance to stop a nightmare becoming a reality.
How to Defeat the Far Right from here.
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Mark Perryman is the editor of The Starmer Symptom.