August 26, 2024 - 8:00am
For much of the last decade the lens of vanguardism has been applied to the politics of the British Left. Momentum, we were often told, was the Militant tendency reborn for the age of the iPhone, with several hundred thousand Trotskyists joining Labour to vote for Corbyn in 2015 (no matter that the largest Trotskyist organisation, the SWP, numbered fewer than 1000 members).
You would sometimes hear the same rhetoric against the pro-Brexit Right, although in their case that was a marker often enjoyed by its targets. Regardless of whom it was aimed at, such language was geared to discredit and delegitimise those political forces the establishment didn’t like. Corbynism and Brexit, and individuals such as Dominic Cummings and Seamus Milne, were treated in a different way to “normal” politicians and advisors because they were regarded as an invasive pathogen. This was clearly an anti-democratic impulse from the centre. So, by necessity, those pushing it claimed to be defenders of democracy.
But while the centrist talk show hosts were having daily aneurysms about mandatory reselection and the BBC delivered monologues about advisors who enjoyed no right of reply, a genuinely vanguardist organisation was emerging. Its name? The suitably anodyne “Labour Together”, which in recent days has been at the centre of a Government cronyism spat.
Jess Sargeant, who previously worked at Labour Together, was recently appointed as deputy director in the Cabinet Office’s Propriety and Constitution Group. Unusually, Sargeant was not subject to an independent recruitment process. That would be concerning for any Civil Service role. Yet in this instance it is especially troubling, because the body in question is responsible for the enforcement of Whitehall rules. If you were a secretive, vanguardist organisation that wanted to parachute chosen candidates into roles with outsized influence, the Propriety and Constitution Group is where you would start.
What the Sargeant story reveals is that Labour Together is not only trying to influence individuals and policy, but also capture key parts of the permanent state apparatus. Keir Starmer has been in Number 10 for less than two months, and already we are witnessing a masterclass in anti-democratic politics.
While it started life in 2015, it was only after Starmer’s ascent to the leadership that Labour Together became a political powerhouse. To understand the scale of its ambition, one need only glance at its finances. In March and April this year, Labour Together received more than £1.3 million from hedge fund manager Martin Taylor. Its second biggest donor, Gary Lubner, has donated more than £600,000 since the beginning of 2023.
Trevor Chinn, a director who has also donated more than £175,000, is a senior advisor to one of the world’s largest private equity companies. Ian Laming, Chief Executive of Tristan Capital Partners, had never made a political donation before — but he broke that duck when he parted with £100,000 for the group. Since Starmer won the leadership, Labour Together has raised £4 million, a sum which makes the Right-wing think tanks of Tufton Street, so often the target of criticism from the Left, seem almost trivial by comparison.
Morgan McSweeney was Labour Together’s director between 2017 and 2020. His CV since testifies to how the organisation first parasitised the Labour hierarchy and is now aiming for the British state. After 2020 he went to work for Starmer, who had just become Labour leader and on whose campaign Sweeney had worked. Today, McSweeney is the Government’s head of political strategy and works out of Number 10.
It’s a similar story when considering how a number of individuals associated with Labour Together were parachuted into Parliamentary seats. Josh Simons, who replaced McSweeney as the organisation’s director, is now the MP for Makerfield. Other associates who have since joined the Commons include Hamish Falconer, Chris Curtis, Luke Murphy and Gordon McKee.
More remarkable still is how the organisation gave more than £300,000 in staffing costs and secondments to various members of the then Shadow Cabinet — now Cabinet — including Rachel Reeves, David Lammy and Yvette Cooper. This, alongside the direct funding of candidates, is not something think tanks usually do. Labour Together should thus be viewed instead, in the words of former MP Jon Cruddas, as Labour’s “first super PAC”. Internally, its aim is cementing the grip of the leadership and the party’s Right. But as far as governing the country is concerned, the resources are coming from those who want Labour to remain in hock to financial interests. They would call it “political moderation”, but it essentially means not addressing the country’s many challenges and leaving things as they are.
Momentum — the subject of so much venom from the press — was, for the most part, about ordinary people trying to influence the political process. It was often messy, and poorly organised, but it was immeasurably more democratic than Labour Together. After all, nobody can join the latter and its policy priorities aren’t shaped by a membership.
And yet the organisation is seeking to not only shape the party of government, through both its personnel and policies, but — as the Sargeant story reveals — the contours of the British state too. Who controls it? And whose interests does it serve? The answers to those questions aren’t forthcoming.
Fidel Castro once said of his seizure of power in Cuba in 1959: “I began the revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I would do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and a plan of action.” The remark might have been flippant, but Castro was merely distilling the case for vanguardism. If he were to look at Labour Together, he would no doubt be impressed.
Aaron Bastani is the co-founder of Novara Media, and the author of Fully Automated Luxury Communism.
AaronBastani
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SubscribeThe government have let us down badly, not listening to a broader science and SAGE have been nothing short of criminal.
PCR testing – is route of there still been a pandemic with high false positive numbers, SAGE know this. Funny how the NHS staff now use a lateral test, too many staff off with false positives.
COVID- death figures, nobody dies other diseases now.
Distorted data being provided.
SAGE – starting at the point that no one has immunity across the public. Vallance knows this isn’t true – let’s Dr Mike Yeadon prove this he calls Vallance a down right liar!
The pandemic won’t be over until SAGE say it over.
This goes further than not listening the situation we are in is a criminal act of TREASON!
The Sunday Times refers to its latest ‘investigation’ where “Insight asks whether the PM’s decision to prioritise the economy over ‘following the science’ led him to repeat the errors of the spring”.
It is hardly worth reading any further because the article fails to produce a shred of evidence that the PM prioritised the economy. Indeed, I am not sure how anyone could argue that blowing 3 x the annual budget of the NHS in just a few months is prioritising the economy, particularly when the end result is significantly longer waiting lists for health care and higher insolvencies and unemployment. We are now heavily in debt with nothing to show for it – hardly prioritising the economy.
If the PM failed to follow ‘the science’, it would be the significant scientific evidence that shows lockdowns don’t work. The medium and long term costs of lockdown far exceed any short term gains. Interesting that when the PM announced the second lockdown, the number of daily cases were around 22,000 which is almost exactly what they are today after a month of lockdown.
This nonsense has got to stop, but when you’ve got the mainstream media such as the ST & BBC publishing alarmist garbage it is hard to see where or when it will all end.
at least Unherd is able to employ some people capable of doing actual trustworthy, balanced journalism
Completely agree. I read the Times article thinking the same: they are just trying to maintain the argument that we didn’t do enough, sort of like trying to shift the overton window. This has the effect of making it harder to question the effects or necessity of the lockdowns, and gives the government an excuse not explain their reasoning. If everyone is shouting for more, then why explain yourself? Some of us want the government to make a logical, scientific case for it, not be given a free pass by vocal lockdown supporters.
Absolutely Peter.
What also scares me, apart from an article like that in The Times, is almost all the comments below it! They’re playing yo the audience for sure.
One lady said ‘but flu doesn’t have the potential to overwhelm the nhs’ I thought, every other winter that’s all over news!
Spiked has a great article taking apart the “insight” in more detail too btw.
Over and above the fact that any arm of the British state will always achieve precisely the opposite of that which it intends to achieve, it seems that these circuit breakers and lockdowns fail for the following reasons:
– You confine people to their homes, which are often cramped and have poor air circulation etc, making it easier for the virus to spread. In addition, some people break the law to gather in their homes to drink and watch football etc with other people.
– Everyone is compelled visit the same few shops, instead of at least some people going to some smaller, different shops.
– When confined to their homes, people get less vitamin D (not that there is much of this to be gained from the sun at this time of year)
– Face masks are a giant racket that only makes things worse.
I spend two hours minimum, every day, out dog walking. I never wear a hat and my vitamin D lever is ” off the Richter scale, according to my GP!
Apparently the ‘sun’ gets through even the thickest clouds! Astonishing n’est pas?
Yes, I’m out walking for quite long periods most days, without a hat. And I pop out for a few minutes whenever there is a bit of sun. I didn’t know that the sun gets through the thickest clouds, although I always assumed that to be outside was better than nothing. Whatever, I haven’t even had a cold for some years.
That is astonishing, since in winter you could probably walk about naked and not get enough vitamin D. In most of the British Isles the sun is too low to make much difference during winter time. Fortunately, you can easily up vitamin D levels with cheap supplements 10ug or 20ug will do fine. I take these every day from October to April. I have never had a cold since I started doing that.
Jolly Good
Yes, I think there maybe a mistake, but isn’t that heresy these days?
The Sunday Times appears to have lost all sense of balance, and the ability to analyse and report with objectivity. One D. Lawson was tub-thumping and disparaging Gupta et al a couple of issues back ,and last weekend was more of the same, but vaccine-themed, and this article follows a similar pattern.
It’s hard to determine whether the ST is Johnson-bashing, absolutely convinced of the truth of this, or indeed the whole thing is some form of “straw man” effort, designed to bolster the Government’s preferred narrative (aka lies and propaganda). I incline to the latter view.
It is no secret that the government is putting massive amounts of money into broadcast and print advertising, national and local for itself and “our NHS”; a variation on the Bevan “stuff their mouths with gold” approach. Having established such a dependency, I can’t see that many such media would risk the loss of the bribes by opposing that which they are simultaneously advertising.
The BBC is at present engaged in a government boot-licking exercise, most likely connected with appeasement to avoid any of the threatened penalties touted earlier in the year, pre-Covid.
Yes, someone pointed out a few months ago that the press and media are getting huge amounts of govt money for Covid information/propaganda. Another reason not give the MSM any of your money.
I’m afraid that the ST is drowning itself in the “Zeitgeist”. Apart from the nonsense promulgated in the main paper, the magazines are a tour-de-force in “wokery”, the politics of race (a BLM fan club) and the rest; all with a dash of conspicuous consumption and slack-jawed admiration of the wealthy and the latest crop of “celebs”. The only bit which is vaguely informative is the Business section, but for those of us not enjoying government PPE, track and trace, testing and other contract largesse, it makes for pretty grim reading.
The crusading Harold Evans days of exposing the Thalidomide Scandal, Paris Air Disaster and other such things are long gone.
The ST has been garbage for years, Rod Liddle notwithstanding. It even looks horrible.
A friend was boasting a few months ago that he always read the ST and was therefore sophisticated and well informed. I told him in no uncertain terms that the ST is now just garbage, along with all the vast majority of the rest of the MSM.
Great article Freddie!
Even Karl Friston from Sage said that lockdowns would only prolong the agony.
I nowadays get the feeling that the politicians are going to do whatever they want regardless of what new data comes along. They just don’t want to be blamed of inaction. No matter if those actions are detrimental to everyone.
It reads like a complete attack on Guptra and Heneghan. Fuelled more so by the likes of that Trisha Greenalgh.
Good god. I remember her. She used to write for the ICAEW’s Accountancy Magazine.
(This is also ridiculously woke)
In order for the GBD strategy to have any real hope of success: two measures have to be put in place:
1) devise and implement methods to shield the vulnerable;
2) the non-vulnerable must resume normal-ish life.
The former, to reduce the toll from the virus. The latter, to minimize the time, for which the vulnerable must shield. Both measures need public buy-in, and hence a public declaration of intent.
It seems to me, there would be considerable cognitive dissonance at such a turn of policy. given the rhetoric used and the atmosphere established so far. Not to mention the pushback from the “doomers”. So Boris could not go through with it even if he wanted to.
In the absence of explicit adoption, only half-measures could be applied, but these couldn’t have been robust enough to have a similar enough outcome.
I like this article- I like it a lot!
‘Second, when people are concentrated in homes, many of which are small with little or no outside space, this could actually increase the risk of transmission.’
That was written by a doctor in The Spectator today with regard to Wales and a Covid caseload that is ‘spiralling out of control’. I have been saying since March that staying at home is the worst thing you can do. After all, 66% of those in New York who contracted Covid or died from Covid (I don’t remember which it was) had followed the orders to ‘stay home’. If I, with no medical training or knowledge of epidemiology etc was able to see this nine months ago, why weren’t all the ‘experts’ and politicians?
Of course, the problem in Wales is compounded by the fact that when confined to their homes they are compelled to have sex with each other instead of with their woolly friends.
I too was left confused by the ST article. But, just in support of the ST and indeed other analysts, it must be difficult to coherently report on what is happening inside an incoherent government…
OT:
Can someone explain to me the difference between “The post” and “Unherd”?
/OT
“Unherd” has a teal background and the Post” has a light green background.
Hahahahaha. Very true indeed!
I *think* the idea is the articles in The Post are more like a blog post (shorter, more immediate) whereas the rest of UnHerd is more like a paper with published articles etc. I appreciate that’s a fine distinction but it feels like that’s what they’re going for. Maybe.