There is a crisis of the traditional parties of the establishment in Britain. Their support is declining and they are unable to convince the electorate that they deserve their votes when all they offer is more hardship. The Tories are in an existential crisis and risk terminal decline but Labour has big problems too. In addition to Reform’s rise, other parties are eating into Labour’s vote from the centre-left. Yet the Labour leadership remains fixated on the challenge from the right, both validating the right’s narrative on immigration and driving left and liberal Labour voters into the arms of other parties. Having entered government with a stonking majority, Keir Starmer seems unable to gain the political initiative, relying instead on worn out neo-liberal policies. Of all Starmer’s policies those on international issues are the most dangerous for the working class as he drags us closer to war.

Labour and the Tories, the traditional parties of the political establishment, are beset by problems which they seem unable to address. They lack a sense of purpose, political acumen, talent and leadership. Above all they cannot resolve the contradictions of neo-liberalism which increasingly alienate them from the electorate - the central contradiction being that they expect people to vote for them while giving them nothing in return apart from declining living standards and decaying services. All the banal soundbites of the spin-doctors have worn thin. As Reform UK has a substantial lead in the opinion polls there is a real possibility that, come the general election, a new party will be the biggest in parliament for the first time in over 100 years, that is since Labour formed its first government in 1924.

Until relatively recently Britain seemed to buck the trend of the decline in traditional parties across Europe, with the Tories and Labour being returned regularly. Apart that is from the significant rise of nationalism in Scotland, where the voters had already found an alternative to Labour in the Scottish National Party (SNP). This should have been seen as a warning not to take party allegiances for granted, but it was not and now Labour is in crisis and the Tories seem in terminal decline.

The malaise of the Tory party is perhaps the most significant change as it seems less and less likely that it has a way back as Reform UK takes over its electoral territory. The Tories have been steadily shifting right, a move exacerbated by fear of Reform and its predecessors and a mistake which the current Labour government seems to be repeating. The dynamic within the Tories resulted in the elections of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss as party leaders, further alienating many potential voters. It is incredible that the party which was a by-word for stability and has been in and out of office for nearly two hundred years, running Britain on behalf of the ruling class, should decline so quickly and apparently irretrievably.

Current polling puts the Tories at around 15% with Reform UK the biggest party on 29%. Labour is on an almost equally dismal 17%. The Lib Dems are snapping at the heels of the Tories with 12% and the Greens now sitting on 10%. A low point for the Tories was the recent defection to Reform of Danny Kruger, a member of the shadow cabinet, who held influential posts as speech-writer to David Cameron and political adviser to Boris Johnson.

As in other countries where insurgent right-wing parties have come close to or, as with Georgia Meloni in Italy, have won power, the establishment has changed tack from opposing them to taming them to ensure that they follow an acceptable pro-capital agenda. We can see this beginning to happen with Reform too. Nigel Farage has been at increasing pains to distance himself from other right-wing forces like Tommy Robinson, albeit he will benefit from their demonstrations and flag-waving. So maybe it won’t matter too much to the ruling class if they can tame Reform, which as a bonus might be more adept than the Tories at winning working class votes.

Despite having a massive majority in Parliament and a completely ineffectual Tory opposition, Starmer is unable to gain political momentum, with even right-wing MPs rebelling over benefits cuts. At the mercy of his own lack of skills and without a coherent political perspective, Starmer was quickly captured by the New Labourites of yesteryear who then proceeded to try to apply their old (and ultimately failed) political recipes to today’s very different problems.

Politics has become more complex with the rise of the SNP and Reform UK, as well as some success for the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and independents, meaning that there is no longer a guaranteed electoral base for Labour. As the leadership of Labour concentrates on the threat of Reform, the Party is also losing votes to these other parties who are making their pitch to the centre and left. Fragmentation of votes to smaller parties will give centrist, liberal policies more rather than less clout as electoral pacts are cobbled together round the lowest common denominator, diluting further any class divide between the parties. Underlying all of this is the objective fact of the changed nature of the [LR1] working class, its reduced size and the decline in its communities and organisations.

Although Labour faced a difficult task in government, it has added to its woes by making unforced, major errors in a variety of areas. It quickly signalled that far from improving people’s living standards - the principal reason people had voted Labour - it would instead increase their hardships. It launched an attack on benefits and pensions, first abolishing the winter fuel allowance for older people not receiving pension credit. Bashing “scroungers” used to work quite well but the breadth of the attack, hitting the “deserving” as well as the “undeserving” meant that this political gambit failed to fly and even right wing MPs rebelled against cuts to Personal Independence Payments. A further dent to the government’s credibility were the partial U-turns that it was forced to make on these policies. Meanwhile working people are still under pressure with prices rising especially for basics like food and energy.

The second area where the government’s performance has been disastrous is over the question of migration. This is a complex and intractable problem which cannot be addressed by slogans about stopping the boats or by posing in front of Union Jacks. In fact, this knee-jerk response allows Reform and the right to continue to control the agenda and makes things worse rather than better, seeming to confirm they are correct in their views. By feeding the right-wing narrative, Starmer and those around him are, therefore, enabling the very people who are now set to deliver them electoral defeat. Even more dangerously they are helping the right not just to win disgruntled voters but also, since their ideas go unchallenged, to begin to win those voters for their politics, embedding nationalist and racist divide-and-rule ideology.

Government support for Israel as it conducts genocide in Gaza, as well as being abhorrent, has not gone down well, to say the least, with Labour voters and banning Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation is an authoritarian excess.

Another significant problem has been the poor quality of personnel in and around government. Advisors, civil servants and ministers have been reshuffled, so far to no avail. Along with the forced U-turns this also makes the government look weak. Starmer and others accepting freebies from rich backers revealed them to be shallow, entitled and deaf to how this would play out when others were being asked to make sacrifices. The worst example of poor judgment round personnel was the appointment of Peter Mandelson, a central New Labour figure, as ambassador to the United States.

This is not to say that there have not been some positives from the government, particularly in relation to workers’ rights and the increase in the minimum wage, which certainly would not have been achieved under Tory or Reform.

There is one area in which Starmer has, however, received plaudits in the establishment media and that is in upholding Britain's international interests and warmongering abroad. He has managed to be successfully supine to Donald Trump, and achieved a 10% tariff agreement. But there is nothing that appeases Trump. Although rewarded with a second state visit, Trump soon after delivered a kicking to the UK in his speech at the United Nations, claiming that it was being overrun by immigrants and Sharia law was set to be introduced in London. The establishment and Starmer will do anything to try to keep the US on side, but Trump’s excesses do not play well with the public.

In particular Starmer’s efforts to ensure that the war in Ukraine continues and ramping up arms spending have met with approval and overall the establishment is pleased with his continued support for Israel. Under pressure he has had to respond to Israel’s accelerating[LR1] genocide with some criticism and recognition of a Palestinian State although practical measures to attempt to halt Israel, such as an arms embargo, are lacking. The establishment will also be happy with this.

Though lauded by the ruling class, Starmer’s warmongering is, of all his anti-working class policies, the most damaging for the future of the British people as billions are poured into armaments while everything else falls apart and he drags us closer to war.

Few in Labour would be sad to see the back of Starmer, the only question for his right-wing opponents, who want a more effective leader, is how he can be got rid of and who to impose in his place[LR1] . The Deputy leadership election might prove to be a foretaste of a possible leadership challenge. Bridget Phillipson has the unenviable position of being Starmer’s candidate with a pitch for a united leadership. Meanwhile Lucy Powell, recently sacked by Starmer, has stood on a critical (if not radical) platform which might prove a winning formula, but because she is seen as proxy for Andy Burnham’s leadership aspirations, the right will want to keep her out and rally round Phillipson. Burnham was recently instrumental in setting up Mainstream to promote a broad centrist/centre-left alliance within the Labour Party, a challenge to the rightward direction under Starmer.

More of the current fare will not suffice if Labour is to retain power at the next election. But even if they want to do things differently, faced with the intransigent neo-liberalism of the British establishment, what Burnham or anyone else might actually achieve in government remains to be seen.

Within Labour the left has been weakened by expulsions and administrative measures such as excluding left candidates for elected office. Many have given up and left.

In this situation, great hope was placed in the foundation of a new political party led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zahra Sultana. Those who questioned the wisdom of setting up (yet another) new party of the left as an alternative to Labour were dismissed as a wave of optimism carried the project forward. Some 800,000 people, an impressive number, signed up to express an interest in it.

Yet even the most trenchant critic would not have foreseen the virtual collapse of the project before it was even born.

The predictable problems were all there from the inception. The outfit was provisionally named Your Party, which encapsulated part of the weakness. It was a project into which anyone could project their individual aspirations, somewhat removed from finding collective common cause. There was a slim founding statement, with much of the hard work and potential disagreements put off till a later date. And what would the class base of the new party be? The Trade Unions were scarcely mentioned and did not seem to be engaged. Would policies focus unequivocally on addressing working-class interests or be captive to middle-class concerns? This was an unresolved problem that bedevilled Corbyn’s period as leader of the Labour Party, particularly on the EU, and which contributed hugely to his ultimate downfall.

The founding process of Your Party, along with, it seems, deep differences among the leadership, failed to address any of the possible problems in setting up the party and instead seems to have made them worse. Critics pointed out the danger for any new party, as has happened with past efforts, of being overrun by hyper-active Trots and ultra-leftists. And this seems to be happening on a widespread basis. No structures or plans for structures were put in place, thus enabling self-appointed grouplets to take on the mantle of Your Party in localities - grouplets not representing the people who had signed up and who were often unaware that meetings were taking place in the name of Your Party.

Despite recent efforts to patch up the differences, it is difficult to see a way back for Your Party as a credible force after the bad blood at the top of the organisation and the chaos below.

Even if one believes that the move to found a new party was ill-advised, its implosion is also tragic and a betrayal of the hopes of the hundreds of thousands who saw a future left project taking shape. Many of them will retreat into demoralisation and disengage from politics. Rather than advancing the left, this debacle is a big setback.

To challenge Reform UK, it is important to deal with its actual policies and not just put labels on it. We have to understand where Reform supporters are coming from and that they are not a homogenous mass of racists. Blanket denunciations of them as “far-right”, “ultra-right” or “fascist” prevent us engaging with them to try to change their minds and may ultimately prove counter-productive, pushing alienated working class people closer to the right. What would be more effective would be exposing what Reform and other rightist groups actually stand for and, even more importantly, explaining what the alternative is.

It is clear that the fight is still going on within Labour as the vultures circle around Starmer. This gives the left opportunities to press for policies which would address the problems faced by the British people, such as wealth taxes, against privatisation and for further investment in the NHS, a drive to build social housing, investment in infrastructure such as transport, and for a peace dividend. Most Trade Unions, including the biggest, remain affiliated to Labour and provide another avenue to influence the Party in favour of the working class.

The campaign for peace and against the war drive and the billions that the government plans to spend on armaments is vital to our very survival. There are signs that the campaigns for “Welfare and Jobs not Warfare” are gaining traction. It was very welcome that the TUC reversed its position in support of increased arms spending at its recent Congress and is now in opposition to this.