Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell has issued a warning to Sir Keir Starmer that failure to deliver in his first tenure as Prime minister could see a dramatic shift to populist “far right” parties.
Mr McDonnell, in an opinion piece he wrote in the Guardian, stated that Starmer’s election strategy seems to be that he is not Jeremy Corbyn and Labour won’t be the disaster that the Tories currently are.
The MP for Hayes & Harlington voiced concerns about a potential political void if Labour wins, with disillusioned conservative voters turning to far-right parties like Reform.
McDonnell and his like sit on the far left of the Starmer/centre-left Labour front bench. He, if you remember, famously threw a copy of Chairman Mao’s little red book at then-chancellor George Osbourne, which is typical of the more communist end of the political left.
They are more worried about stopping the so-called far-right than actually getting on with running a country.
My dad once told me that there are two types of people: those who produce more than they complain and those who complain more than they make; the far left, pretty much to a man, falls into the latter category.
In true dissident anti-establishment style, McDonnell uses his column in the Guardian to tell you what you think. After the usual, though not incorrect, condemnation of the government, he states, “They (the public) know there won’t be an overnight miracle performed by an incoming Labour government.”
Those of you who are regulars to this website will know that Labour politicos have started to water down the rhetoric and are now managing expectations of the electorate before this year’s inevitable general election win.
He also inadvertently points out something else: he, as you would expect, is seething at the prospect of Reform and, by extension, Nigel Farage holding undue influence in the next few years of British politics and here’s the thing.
Farage, love him or loathe him, has never set foot in Westminster and probably never will, yet this eccentric, beer-swilling, embarrassing uncle of a man is perhaps the single most influential British politician of the last fifteen years.
So to all of you, “there’s no political solution”, naysayers out there. Whether you like it or not, Farage and Co. prove you can influence politics as a small populist party.
