03.10.2024
Davos on the Mersey
Corporate representatives flocked to attend the Liverpool conference, where they could freely lobby, influence and bribe. Eddie Ford looks at the root-and-branch cynicism, corruption and sectionalism of Labourism
Last week some very well dressed folk took part in ‘Davos on the Mersey’ - that is, the Labour Party conference in Liverpool. Just like the previous year, corporate interests descended in full force with exhibitions, sponsored events and receptions staged by the likes of Barclays, Bloomberg, Uber, Ikea, Specsavers, etc.
Therefore we had all the usual crap that comes with such a junket, some of it quite creepy.1 A ‘QR code wall’ that allowed organisations to advertise in a prominent area of the conference site; ‘room drops’ that delivered your message straight to hotel rooms for “direct engagement” with delegates and parliamentarians; a ‘distribution zone’ to promote your campaign or organisation that is “perfectly positioned” for maximum exposure, as you first enter the site; and a conference app that allows attendees to create a “personalised agenda” (this had over 15,000 unique users last year). There was even a “lead retrieval” that captured the details of people who visited your stand or fringe event by scanning the barcodes on their badges. Nothing is too much trouble for business.
This year we were particularly treated to a £3,000-a-head “business day” taking place alongside the main party conference.2 If you were lucky enough to get one of the tickets, which sold out instantly, of course, like an Oasis gig, then for your money you were promised attendance at “In Conversation” and “Q&A sessions” with Keir Starmer, a “networking business lunch” with key Labour politicians, access to the “business and international drinks reception”, complete free rein to fringe events, wider conference activities, and so on.
With such a golden opportunity to exert influence, more than 500 lobbyists and executives from big banks, oil companies and tech firms flocked in - where Starmer was introduced by the chief executive of HSBC UK, and then interviewed by the UK chief of Google. No awkward questions were asked, it goes without saying - definitely no mention of his Pabloite past. Naturally, he told businesses that they should “come directly” to No10 if they had problems with anything the government was doing and stressed how he wanted to “reinforce our invitation to partner with us”.
True, not everything was totally rosy in the garden. Some of the lobbyists were “anxious” about the coming budget, tax changes and the government’s new workers’ rights bills, which apparently will bring in “day one rights” for employees and an end to zero-hours contracts. Other were “still unclear” about who would lead the government’s industrial strategy council and complained that an “investment minister” had yet to be appointed to work with business. One particularly ungrateful rep grumbled about the “stale sandwich” buffet lunch and lack of “top-tier” cabinet ministers in attendance at the “networking” session.
Yet you can guarantee that Sir Keir, alongside chancellor Rachel Reeves and business secretary Jonathan Reynolds, worked hard to calm their anxieties - mere teething problems of a new government. But, if you have had your winter fuel payment cut, then tough luck - “hard choices” have to be made (though maybe consider sending an email to your MP). Obviously, the idea that the Labour Party conference acts as a parliament of the working class is a sick joke.
Avarice
Apart from the corporate hoopla, the conference was notable for two things. Firstly, the leadership was defeated on a show of hands over the winter fuel payment, but they always knew that was going to be the case. Hence the conference arrangements committee, doing the bidding of its master, cynically moved the debate from Monday to the very end of the conference on Wednesday after the ministerial speeches had taken place - with bigwigs like Starmer and Reeves safely back in London.
The Guardian’s reporters, Aletla Adu and Kiron Stacey claim that the vote was “narrow”. That is how they explain the call for a count. But that only goes to show how little they understand the Labour Party. The chair knew perfectly well that the margin would be, and was, wide. After all, trade unions tops cast bloc votes, so the result was clear from the get go. A count would simply have underlined the government’s defeat.
The other issue that dominated the conference, much to the fury of Keir Starmer and the apparatchiks, was ‘trousergate’ and all the rest. Like ‘borrowing’ an £18 million penthouse flat from Labour donor Waheed Alli during the election, so that his son could study in peace for his GCSEs without being bothered by journalists or protestors outside Starmer’s house. Naturally, the prime minister insisted that no actual cash had changed hands as a result of the deal, which is true on a technicality, but the several weeks’ rent-free accommodation is recorded as being worth more than £20,000 in the register of MPs’ interests. Must be nice to have generous friends like that.
Waheed Alli is, of course, himself now under a Lords’ investigation over registering interests and Sir Keir is busily paying back £6,000 of the bribes (whoops donations). However, the real question here is not that the Labour Party leadership is so uniquely corrupt, compared to the Tory leadership, which is obviously not the case. Rather, that professional politicians of all the mainstream parties view these perks as “part of the job”, as Jonathan Reynolds said recently about Arsenal matches, Taylor Swift concerts, and so forth. Along with a minister’s salary, and the expectation that upon leaving office they will be showered with job offers, maybe a lucrative role in advising some giant transnational or a cushy post in Nato, a big bank or the UN doing worthy things.
What is truly incredible about these establishment politicians is that their sense of entitlement is so overweening that they think you cannot dress or house yourselves properly without taking individual donations. We are not talking about donations to the actual Labour Party and its national executive committee. No, they have to pocket the money themselves. By contrast, we are reminded of the Paris Commune, the early communist parties, even the ‘official’ Italian Communist Party of Enrico Berlinguer. It had loads of MPs in the Rome parliament and enforced a partymax on its MPs. Everything above an average skilled worker’s wage went to party coffers.
But in today’s Britain inhabited by professional politicians, you can imagine the retort - we couldn’t possibly live on that! How could Angela Raynor dress herself in the style that she would like to become accustomed to, or celebrate the new year in some New York penthouse?
Another noteworthy Labour event is the resignation of Rosie Duffield, the MP for Canterbury, citing the “cruel and unnecessary” policies of the prime minister and his “managerial and technocratic approach” to politics. Now, she is certainly no friend of the left or a rebel (except perhaps over the trans question), having previously abstained on votes to cut the winter fuel payment and on an amendment to end the two-child benefit cap.3 But she is quite right to attack the Starmer government for its endless freebies and avarice that she calls “off the scale” - apparently her constituents have been bombarding her with emails and phone calls expressing bewilderment at the Labour leaders’ attack on old people, while living the life of the bourgeoisie.
Of course, this government is not about serving the working class, but looking after number one - which is what rightwing Labour politicians have always been in it for. Think about Tony Blair and his account of being at Oxford University, weighing up career options - successful lawyer or politician? If politician, then what party to join? Blair decided upon Labour precisely because they were out of office, providing him with a greater opportunity to rise up the greasy pole than if he was in a party holding office. One thing that was certainly not part of the equation was principle - or the ‘vision thing’.
Cynicism
That sort of cynicism encapsulates the Labour right. But as communists we should also make the same point about the Sharon Grahams, or even the Jeremy Corbyns, of this world. Are they representatives of the working class, as they claim to be? In reality, if you take the classic Marxist view of trade union politics of the sort that Graham personifies to a T, what they actually represent is the bourgeois politics of the working class. As for the right, Keir Starmer is just a bourgeois politician no different from Rishi Sunak or David Cameron. But it is Sharon Graham who trades with the capitalist class in the labour market over the commodity of labour-power, haggling over its ‘proper’ price or value.
Sure, her politics are about improving the condition of the owners of wage labour - ie, workers - but this relies on the working class remaining a slave class. That is the whole point about being an intermediary between capital and labour. Unlike a trade union functionary, the politics of Marxism seeks to represent the independent politics of the working class - which are not sectional or national, but have to be international. Marxism stresses the interests of the working class as a whole - not the British working class, not this or that trade union committed to maintaining in perpetuity employment in jobs like prison officers, or making torture equipment or weapons of mass destruction such as Trident.
Nor do we have any time for the myopic Gary Smith, GMB general secretary, who backs fracking and opposes the “bourgeois environmental lobby”, as well as the expansion of the London Ultra-Low Emissions Zone, and wants the Labour government to “rethink” its plans to ban new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea. A classic example of the bourgeois politics of the working class.
No, the project of Marxism is to lift the working class from sectionalism to universalism - to think of themselves as a future ruling class. And that requires the liberation of all workers, no matter what country they are from, whatever their nationality, ethnicity, gender or sexuality.