Lindsey German on the end of Tory rule, Palestine on the ballot and Labour’s castle built on sand

First the good news. It was a real pleasure to witness the departure of some particularly vile Tories: Grant Shapps, Jacob Rees Mogg, Liam Fox, Liz Truss, Johnny Mercer, all were cast out by the electorate from supposedly safe seats. So too was key shadow cabinet fixer Jonathan Ashworth who was beaten by Shokat Adam on a pro-Palestine platform. Four Labour MPs in total were toppled by Palestine candidates. In Birmingham and East London several others came close.

And many of the left independents did very well. Leanne Mohamad in Ilford North came within a few hundred votes of beating the odious Wes Streeting, who wants more private involvement in the NHS. Andrew Feinstein came second to Keir Starmer with close to 20% of the vote. And my comrade Michael Lavalette again took 20% of the vote and reduced the Labour MP’s majority in Preston on a principled socialist ‘Palestine plus’ campaign.

The Greens also made a breakthrough to go from one to four seats in parliament and clearly gained many disaffected Labour votes. In my own constituency, Hackney South and Shoreditch, sitting right-wing Labour MP Meg Hillier saw a loss of 14% of her vote mainly to the Greens.

Big moment of the night for many of us was Jeremy Corbyn’s win in Islington North, despite the best efforts of Starmer and an assortment of Labour right wingers from Margaret Hodge to Tom Watson. Corbyn’s win was a rebuttal of Starmer’s attacks. It was also a class vote: it was centred in the council estates, and Labour posters were most in evidence in the big posh houses. 

There’s much to like about the election experience therefore – we’ve said goodbye to 14 years of Tory rule, the Tories are in total disarray, and the left outside Labour did better than it has for a considerable time.

Yet none of this can disguise the lack of enthusiasm for Starmer from the electorate or the real reasons for his success. Starmer won two thirds of the parliamentary seats with only just over a third of the total vote. It was Tory collapse rather than positive endorsement for Labour which won the vote. And despite the denunciations of Corbyn five years ago, he received a lower number of votes than Labour got in 2019 or 2017.

The Tory debacle was accelerated by the rise of Reform, which took sizeable chunks of the Tory vote. Indeed, had there not been a split right-wing vote, it might well have been that Labour would have lost the election. In many seats the combined Tory and Reform vote exceeded that of Labour. And in a number of Labour seats, Reform came a good second, especially in the North East.

Labour therefore is potentially under pressure both from left and right in future contests. Labour and its media allies try to ignore the left challenge, while talking up the need to appease the right. Farage has 4 MPs and will constantly put pressure on Labour, demanding tougher measures on immigration. He will also try to do deals with the Tory rump and its new leader, likely to be a right winger such as Kemi Badenoch.

The right-wing narrative will only help Reform to grow, and Starmer’s failure to deliver will lead to disappointment. We only have to look at France to see the dangers of the far right and fascist growth. But we also see a polarisation to the left, and the election results bear this out.

The left has an urgent series of tasks. We need to fight the policies and priorities of Farage and those like Tommy Robinson who will take heart from his success. We also need to build socialist left organisation on a much bigger scale to present an alternative to the right. And we need to centre our organising not in planning for the next election but in the struggle to change the world.

The Palestine movement has had a huge impact on British politics – and is even being acknowledged after the event by Labour which cannot ignore the evidence that the issue has lost it many votes. We need to demand straight away that Starmer demands a ceasefire, stops arming Israel and supports the international rulings on Netanyahu’s war crimes. We also need to take the movement much more deeply into the trade unions.

There is so much more to campaign on – housing, the NHS, poverty, climate, war and peace – and all need mass movements which can come together to challenge the neoliberal priorities which will be the hallmark of Starmer’s government, and which can lay the basis for mass socialist organisation.  It starts with the Gaza demo today, and the fight against Tommy Robinson on July 27^th.

Lindsey German will be speaking along with Gary Younge, Stephen Kapos, Ghada Karmi and more at Counterfire’s Revolution! event on Sunday 21 July at SOAS. Book now.