The Embers

10 November 2023

Just when Keir Smarmer might have begun to think that he could ride a low turnout to electoral victory, the world’s most intractable conflict has emerged from the Void to wreck his plans. The Labour leadership’s idea was to bore its way into government by saying as little as possible. But now that strategy may not survive the reappearance of Israel-Palestine.

The stand taken by an almost entirely impotent opposition party in a mid-sized European nation on a conflict quite distant from any reasonable practical view of its national interest may be enough to tear the party from its remaining base of active support in the population – British Muslims and left-ish activists for whom this distant conflict is an existential commitment. And to provoke conflict from the bottom to the top of the party itself.

Admittedly, poor Sir Keir Hardly did inflame the issue rather by blundering a little close to the position of publicly implying support for collective punishment. (But then who among us can say they have not inadvertently backed a category of war crime at one time or another?) However his backing for Israel’s right to self-defence is part of his overall technocratic strategy aiming to signal ‘credibility’ both on the international stage and to an abstract atomized voter. It is a strategy that goes beyond merely distancing Labour from Corbynista Left-populism, and beyond the entirely admirable goals of stamping out anti-semitism and recognising the sovereignty of the Israeli nation.

Starmer’s policy not only deliberately obfuscates the government of Israel’s longstanding policy of violent repression against its Palestinian subjects but also obscures the way that policy undermines Israel’s own aspirations to sovereignty. In the process he has been careful to remind the world of the UK’s own subservience to US interests by trailing behind Biden’s call for a ‘humanitarian pause’. But it looks like New Labour 2.0 is already past its sell-by date.

The Northern Star authors elsewhere

‘Perversely, Palestinian solidarity cast in humanitarian terms is strengthening the likelihood that Palestinian freedom will be eclipsed for the foreseeable future.’

Over at UnHerd, Philip Cunliffe looked beyond the current tensions between Israel and the UN to note that ‘historic tendencies to international oversight in the region are being reinforced by the dynamics of the current conflict.’ The Palestinian solidarity movement’s humanitarian focus and the Israeli government’s inability to accept responsibility for Gaza suggest an increasing possibility of the territory becoming subject to ‘some kind of UN-approved international protectorate’.

In other news

Failing politician Rishi Sunak made a reach for some global technocratic authority, as failing politicians are wont to do. But seeking authority in the international landscape without having first secured it at home is practically asking to be upstaged by bigger international players. The prime minister embarrassing himself acting as a fawning participant in an oddball billionaire’s delusions of intellectual grandeur suggests one eye being kept on his future job prospects as election time grimly approaches.

Brexit Perplexity, or A-Voiding the Issue

Brexit has exposed the void where national democratic politics should be. And the void leaves an awkward silence in public life, the collective interests of citizens are left unformed and unvoiced due to the lack of adequate representative institutions. Commentators, rather than face up to the void, have been trying to fill the silence with speculation about what voters might really want from their Brexit vote:

More state spending

‘the UK voted to leave the EU essentially to become more European – to have more spending on public services’
Stephen Bush, Financial Times

Anti-capitalist culture war

‘Brexit was a vote against this progressive culture of capitalism, with its moral detachment and disrespect for the traditional and the parochial.’
Jonathan Rutherford, Compact

Pro-capitalist culture war

‘The appeal of issues like Brexit, gender and conspiracy is that they elevate cultural divisions over economic ones, while the influence of millionaires and billionaires over our politics is relegated from the conversation.’
Samuel Earle, The Guardian

Quiz: EUtopia or Brexit Britain?

It should be no challenge at all to spot which of these recent news items are from EU member-states and which are from the rainy fascist island of Brexit Britain, given the much-touted night-and-day difference between life inside and outside the EU:

A report found people of African descent reporting increased experience of racial discrimination since 2016. (Answer)
Asylum seekers’ access to benefits is to be restricted to ‘reduce the attractiveness of the welfare state’. (Answer)
The economy failed to grow in the third quarter of 2023. (Answer)
The economy shrank in the third quarter of 2023. (Answer)
A politician from the country’s second-most-popular political party was arrested for possession of Nazi material. (Answer)

News from EUtopia

Italy: Prime Minister Georgia Meloni struck a deal with former (short-lived) Italian colony Albania to host ‘centres’ for ‘processing’ thousands of migrants. Meloni hailed it as ‘a truly European agreement’.
Netherlands: Prime Minister Mark Rutte has hopes of becoming NATO Secretary General following the collapse of his government at home. International institutions continue to play their important role as a welfare safety net for failed national politicians as the EU-NATO doom loop rolls on.
Poland: Donald Tusk is hoping to make a transition back to national elected office after a leading role at the EU, as the recent election results in Poland offer him a chance to form a new coalition government. When it comes to national democracy, however, Tusk’s heart does not seem quite in it: he quickly jetted off to Brussels hoping to gather support and funds from EU bigwigs to pressure Poland’s institutions into appointing him prime minister.

Ollie Richardson
The Embers, 10th November 2023

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