Labour: Dead men walking

The resignation of Keir Starmer is now just a formality. He has lost all his authority and credibility. He is now a squatter. He's done. Nobody wants him and nobody wants his party.

There was a time when this sort of thing would be a little be exciting and consequential. Everyone loves the intrigue of toppling a king and the jostling to replace him. But it now happens so often, it's about as exciting as taking your car to Kwik Fit for a new set of brake pads. It's not really money you want to spend, but will need doing eventually so you might as well do it before another big bill comes in.

As such, it's not really something we can get excited about. It's not as though we can hope for improvement, and even if any of the potential replacements showed any kind of promise, the job will soon rob them of their veneer of competence. Whatever freshness Burnham or Streeting might bring to the role will go stale within thirty days.

The issue here is that Labour has run its course, as a government and as a party. It cannot represent the majority working class in Britain because it doesn't identify with them on any level and doesn't even like them. In theory the party could revive its fortunes by listening to its traditional base, but would be torn down by its own activists if it did.

If you recall, the one time Starmer showed a little ankle with his "Island of strangers" speech, he had to walk it back within days. The party is held hostage to its lunatic fringes. It is caught between the dead ideology of Blairism and the malevolence of identity politics and socialism. To fully embrace either means certain death, so all it can do is tread water until it drowns. There are no lifelines here. The struggling swimmer is cramping up and nobody even wants to save them.

The party could and should do the decent thing here. Rather than subject Britain to another three years of rudderless procrastination, it should call a general election. But that means admitting failure and relinquishing power to people who will do what the electorate wants. And that, in their eyes is something that must be avoided at all costs. Fundamentally, the party now exists to obstruct the public will - and will do so by any means necessary. As such, Labour is an elected dictatorship. If Labour backbenchers had any decency whatsoever, they would resign their whip.

But, of course, decency doesn't come into it. We are ruled by a class of narcissistic, parasitic, talentless morons. Our only job as voters is to get rid of them at the first opportunity. We know this. They know this. Their extinction is now just a waiting game. Everything else is just a formality. All we can do is hope that the bond markets contain their excesses. That Reform doesn't especially present a solution to this malaise is another problem, but that's a problem for another day. The only priority for now is hammering Labour's coffin shut.

One thing the local elections did is cement Reform as the de facto anti-incumbent party. Their many shortcomings don't matter. Their one job is to hammer Labour and the Tories. If you look at Reform as a party in their own right, you will not see the makings of of a constructive government, but that's not what they are for. There's a broader sense that functioning government is too much to hope for, and a clear out is our only shot at refreshing the system.

That, of course, brings its own problems. You might recall when the SNP had a sudden Westminster influx comprised of novices, opportunists and crooks. I expect Reform will be the same, and similarly incapable. But that doesn't even matter at this point. It's already sunk as low as it can go. The chaos of amateurs isn't any worse that what we've had to endure.

For the last couple of years I'd studied Reform quite closely. I don't see the makings of a functioning government. Generic right wing populism and the politics of protest doesn't present any real long term answers. Their lack of preparedness will make it difficult to take on the establishment and the deep state and they will rapidly find themselves out of their depth, but the one function they could serve is to wreck things in such a way that they can never go back to how they were. It will be for future parties to bring some sort of order to it.

This is about as close as I come to endorsing Reform. I won't vote for them but I don't blame anyone who does. I hoped that an alternative would present itself, but that's a longer term hope now. I had high hopes for Restore on the basis of Lowe's critiques of Reform, but it turned out to be another populist slop party with similar definition problems, and a schizophrenic activist base that will tear it apart the moment there is any kind of ideological dilemma. Fringe parties seldom survive the factional infighting of their own supporters. As such, hopes of a new party are waning. It seems more likely that after two terms out of office, the Tory party might rediscover conservatism.

As such, the question is not what kind of government Reform will be, but what it makes space for when it inevitably fails. Reform certainly isn't a remedy to this protracted instability. A Farage premiership will last about as long as Starmer's did, and Reform without Farage is yet another rudderless rabble. It seems probably that Reform will split, with a large cohort defecting back to the Tories under new leadership, possibly even disintegrating entirely, seeing its hardcore support drift over to Restore, to establish a new era Ukippy party.

Essentially, political chaos is a the new normal for the foreseeable future. Reform will take power, install their friends and cronies, wreck everything they touch and fall apart. It's not optimal, but at the end of the day, wrecking everything is all that is required of it. For the rest, we just have to play it by ear. Something will turn up eventually.