New Realist Endorsement - General Election 2024

For most voters the choice at the next General Election is simple: Vote Labour. This is not because the New Realist endorses the Labour manifesto - in fact the opposite. Rather, a historic opportunity exists for dealing a crushing blow to the political right in this country resulting in a major realignment alike the 1920s and 1930s, which the left can exploit. This fact alone, helped also by the fact Labour will be more competent than the Tories, is sufficient for the advocation.

In some seats where Labour can't win, tactical voting is essential. Vote Liberal Democrat, Green, or Workers Party when they have the best chance of winning. The objective is simple: crush the Conservative Party like a python ensuring it'll take decades to recover, if they do. The left should be as ferocious and brutal Orca's hunting prey, ensuring the annihilation of the political right.

The grand strategist of the left Owen Jones has been supporting votes for the Greens at the expense of Labour. Given that a landslide is inevitable, surely building up a left opposition to Labour is paramount. Having Greens in second place in so many seats would surely be a tiding for a future left opposition. Owen Jones correctly observes the necessity of a strong left opposition. However, the Conservatives need destroying electorally first. Otherwise, the Greens will fragment the left because Labour cannot adequately move into the territory of the Conservatives. The most effective means of doing that is voting Labour or the candidate with the best chance of winning who isn't either Conservative or Reform.

There's no guarantee that this outcome will occur. The Conservatives are teetering between oblivion and a landslide loss. It is our responsibility as voters to ensure oblivion is the outcome. Tory austerity and their callous welfare polices has shamefully destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives. 300,000 lives have been lost because of austerity measures, according to a study by the University of Glasgow and the Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH). The UK is rotting like a living corpse. Our public services are inefficient, ineffective, and costly. NHS backlogs still blight it. We have a mental health pandemic caused not just by the neoliberal capitalism and callous austerity measures, but the COVID-19 pandemic which the Conservatives mismanaged resulting in an estimated 276,192 excess mortality.

Furthermore, they have disrupted our trading relationship with the rest of Europe, while achieving absolutely nothing. They've done an amazing job at angering both Leave and Remain voters. We witnessed the shorted premiership in history under Liz Truss who broke Britain. Even the financial markets, known for their devout 'leftism', strongly opposed the 'unfunded' tax cuts proposed by Liz Truss.

The Conservatives deserve no mercy. Their corruption, incompetence, and immorality make them deserve their coming destruction at the ballot box. Despite the fact of the New Realist being secular humanist, this election will be like Yahweh's smiting of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The New Realist is only endorsing voting for strategic and tactical considerations. It is not endorsing any of the manifestos or party platforms! The New Realist is unconvinced by any of the offerings reflecting the mood the public has towards politics in general.

Wary the left must be! The right-wing propaganda machine will blame any mishandling of the UK solely on the left. The political right will seek to bounce back with a severity and ferociousness not seen in this country for a long time. The left must be prepared for what comes next as this will happen no matter how devastating the defeat of the political right on July 4th.

The New Realist wants a radical and credible social democratic platform that will reinvigorate Britain and give hope to all fighting the far-right. It's extremely disappointing that no such platform exists today. Without drastic change, the left will not seize the opportunity that awaits after this election. There is a gaping hole amongst the left which needs filling. However, the left must confront some very hard truths first.

Neoclassical social democracy for the New Realist is not the wishy-washy social democracy of today. Contemporary social democracy seeks to regulate capitalism putting a human face on it. As the power of capitalists rises, then the humanism of contemporary social democracy fades away.

The New Realist, on the other hand, envisages social democracy as the application of the principles of scientific mutualist government with the aim of gradually moving toward a new socialism. The New Realist calls this by several names: Scientific Mutualism, Meta-socialism, Neoclassical Social Democracy, and the New Socialism.

Labour, the traditional social democratic party in the UK, has a manifesto which is mildly 'progressive' at best. Labour's manifesto offers nothing transformational despite its title 'Change'. Transformation is what the UK desperately needs, however. Starmer's Labour has two strengths of note, which the rest of the left should learn from.

First, it adopts a methodology of governance taking seriously the responsibilities and duties governing entails. All the other parties of the left revel in opposition. Populist opposition is a means of achieving influence, but it is not a means of governing. Furthermore, the populist left has no influence whatsoever in UK politics. Critiques of the left in British politics focus on how 'impractical' leftist policies are with smears used when this tactic is ineffective. How will the left govern effectively, efficiently, and compassionately?

Second, there is an inherent pragmatism underlying Labour's manifesto which speaks to the British public far better than idealistic and utopian nonsense, which most of the left blights itself in. A major issue of the contemporary left is when they aim to be pragmatic, it's clearly a veil disguising idealism rather than a genuine pragmatism seeking the realistic application of ideals. This is clear throughout the Green manifesto which is not pragmatic in outlook while trying to appear as such.

For instance, the Greens advocate a downright reckless fiscal rule of continual spending until "dangerous levels of inflation" are reached. This is a vulgar application of modern monetary theory (MMT) demonstrating how ill-suited the Greens are for governance. MMT critics and climate deniers are licking their lips at tearing the Green's programme. Rather than endorsing a sound alternative political economy to the current neoliberal order, instead political parties abuse them gifting critiques an easy win. While the Greens advocate for an economically illiterate and nonsensical 'fiscal rule' themselves, the New Realist cannot take them seriously as a force of the left no matter how strong their stance on the environment and climate change is.

The elephant in the room, however, is Corbynism and its impact on the left in general. Corbynism has caused immense harm to the social democratic cause, however it also rekindled a spark, particularly among the young, for a radical departure away from the current state-of-affairs. Reigniting the spark is the singular most important contribution Corbynism brought to the socialist cause, however it is the only good thing to come from it.

The working classes found Jeremy Corbyn a detestable, unpatriotic, and vain leader. They saw right through the millionaire property owner who dressed as 'working class grandpa' because that was the only thing he had closely resembling them. Voters saw him as an out of touch buffoon who supported asinine causes like the IRA and Hamas. He was weak and pathetic when Russia ordered an assassination on UK soil in Salisbury. Furthermore, he wanted the UK to unilaterally disarm its nuclear deterrent. Three months into his leadership his announcement of that policy made it clear that he was the overly idealistic leftist whose naïveité suggested he was as thick as pigshit. In many ways, Jeremy Corbyn is a personification of what's wrong with the left. It's no surprise that the 'left' loved him so much because he was the 'left' - useless, morally sanctimonious, and vile in his moral hypocrisy. He was an anathema to the working classes just like large parts of the modern left are.

The left must harness the energies of Corbynism while firmly separating itself from Corbyn himself and his legacy. The working classes will not vote for Corbyn Mk. II. When it became clear the left had abandoned the working classes both through the left, Corbynism, and Labour centrism, then it naturally moved in the other direction towards the political right. Only a long-term commitment of making the left attractable to the working classes and especially the economically deprived is the only way for the left to move forwards and combat the populist right.

The fact the far-right is attracting so many working class and deprived voters, both in the UK and France, tells the New Realist that the current left is failing in its offerings. Simply, the modern left fits the needs and wants of the middle classes more than it does the working classes and deprived. Polling data indicate a demographic shift for leftist parties exists.

Where does the Workers Party fit in? It certainly isn't appealing to the middle classes and explicitly calls itself a party for the working classes. It's the only party that is explicitly socialist in its manifesto. However, the Workers Party suffers from two major issues. First, many on the progressive left seriously dislike the WPGB to such an extent that it is obviously not going to unite the left behind it. In a parliamentary democracy, especially with FPTP, this is a hard limit on its appeal and consequently its likely success. Second, it has used far-right conspiracy dogwhistle tactics, e.g. referring to inclusive policies as "cultural engineering", trying to tap into the working classes. Using the tactics of the far-right only legitimises them which empowers the far-right and weakens the left. Why not just vote Reform if one of your main economic policies is there's (cf. income tax allowance), your social attitudes are like there's, and in which Reform has a much higher ceiling for support? The key is making the left appealing to the working classes once again, not encroaching the territory of the far-right.

"If liberty and equality are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost" - Aristotle

Voila, the left urgently needs a new platform advocating its cause. We call this party - the Social Democratic Workers Party of Great Britain (SDWP). A new social democratic social contract will be at the heart of this party. Politically, this is the symbolic move needed for a turn away from neoliberalism. Aspiration is the search of discovering something bigger than yourself - your family, your community, your class, your people, and your cause. Through the dedication and hard-work of the public, we will rebuild British society and polity so that it is founded upon the principle of mutuality. Through this, people's healthy aspirations which promote freedom, empowerment, and virtue creating a happy and caring society. The state's responsibility is facilitating and creating the conditions both materially, politically, and legally for this emergence of this new order. The people's responsibility is the exercising of their liberty in accordance with the principle of mutuality.

The Social Democratic Worker's Party will seek a debt jubilee as proposed by the likes of Steve Keen and Michael Hudson. Private debt repayments and the interest it bears severely weakens Britain's potential growth outpost. Land reform will also be implemented giving every citizen right to access land and share the benefits of countries prosperity which is captured as economic rent by private agents.

Some ways to introduce a modern debt Jubilee

The increasing income and wealth inequalities within countries is one of today’s great social concerns. This column describes how the tendency towards increasing indebtedness in much earlier societies was held in check by debt-cancellation Jubilees, and discusses ways to deal with today’s debt overhang and accompanying wealth inequalities. The funding of a modern Jubilee could come mostly, perhaps entirely, from a land/or property tax.

CEPRMichael Hudson

The SDWP will implement the Green Industrial Revolution acting as a pillar for a global zero-carbon economy and achieving Net Zero by 2050 at the latest. Cities and towns in the North will be re-industrialised promoting a more extensive and pragmatic green agenda than the Green Party. Britain will become a clean energy and green industrial superpower. British agriculture will be revolutionised creating huge room for reforestation and re-establishing the biodiversity that once made Britain great for nature lovers ensuring Britain is self-sufficient and supplying food abroad.

The SDWP will create local mutualist central banks assisting the creation of local socialist markets stimulating local effective demand. Workers will control the cultural institutions that shape their communities. Neoliberal "trickle-up" economics has taken these institutions away from then devastating working class communities. Creating a Green Socialist Single Market will be the chief foreign policy goal of the party in spreading socialism abroad and increasing Britain's prestige globally.

The left must up its game and be as ruthless with itself as Keir Starmer. If the left is sincere about making the world a better place, then there is no excuse for solipsism whatsoever. Lenin asked the question "What is to be done?" The New Realists asks the exact same question of the left so the transformation the UK and the world needs can happen. Human civilisation depends on it. The stakes couldn't be higher.

This article was originally published on the 3rd of July the day before the 2024 general election. The article has been revised since the relaunch of the New Realist. The substantial changes are advocacy for a debt jubilee and land reform as central components for the Social Democratic Workers Party platform. Other changes are minor.