This is not about the left but whether a Starmer Government will make the world a slightly better place.
Writing in the Financial Times (2nd August paywalled) right-wing Labour figure John McTernan argues that Starmer needs a distinctive selling point for his project,
Biden has Bidenomics which ties policy into the US Labour movement which has its issues but is still better than Starmer has done, even if Rachel Reeves says she supports it
McTernan argues that Starmer needs to look to the 1980s project of Marxism Today which talked of Post-Fordism and New Times and Gransci’s words that the old is dying but the new can’t be born
As Stuart Hall later reflected while New Labour was influenced by this it failed to grasp that what was needed was a new project on the left not just chasing a Thatcherite one
McTernan argues that to do this Starmer must make it clear that the era of neoliberalism and marketisation of everything will end. He claims this is already implicit in Starmer’s policy.
We shall see..
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