Lindsey German on Labour policy, sexual exploitation and state oppression

Another week, another crisis. The gruesome double act of Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer are this time facing a brewing economic storm as Britain fares particularly badly in the international market sale of government bonds. This pushes up the cost of government borrowing – meaning that Reeves is now faced with borrowing more to fund spending or making vicious cuts to public services. She has already made clear that the limits on government borrowing are ‘non-negotiable’ so that means she will look to cuts.

According to the Telegraph, her choice will be to further attack payments for the disabled – many of whom also have physical and mental health issues – forcing them to have to work even though they should not have to. The latest ‘tough choice’ underlines the extent to which Labour’s savings are nearly always at the expense of working class people.

Her reaction to the crisis is just to carry on repeating that the economy will grow and that when this happens we will all be better off. But none of this adds up. There is much talk of stagflation – a stagnant economy but with rising inflation – and her policies have led to widespread opposition from all sides. Employers are screaming about increased National Insurance payments, which the big companies will try to pass on in increased prices. The farmers are building a conservative movement against inheritance tax, which will boost the far right. Working class people’s incomes are under attack, and public services are on the floor.

Rachel Reeves often gives the impression that the economy will grow just because there’s a Labour government. This week should surely see the end of that particular stupidity, but there is no sign she or Starmer understand what is going on or are capable of dealing with it.

They obviously did not expect it to go this way. Starmer succeeded in purging the left from any effective role in Labour. He assumed that his acceptance of right-wing values on migration, the military and foreign policy would protect him from the right, and refused to openly attack Reform UK during the election as he thought it would mainly harm the Tories.

But now Trump is heading for the White House, closely advised by Elon Musk who has made very direct interventions in British politics over the past weeks and has his sights firmly set on Starmer. No level of sycophancy to Trump or loyal pronouncements from the bumptious buffoon David Lammy, is going to protect them from far-right attack, or will allow them to maintain the fiction that Britain has a ‘special relationship’ with the US which matters.

I can think of few British governments in my lifetime less able to deal with the economic and political storm heading its way. This is particularly dangerous given that the oligarchs are directly intervening in politics and that they are boosting the far right everywhere. Here in Britain Musk’s main line of attack has been about the supposed Asian ‘grooming gangs’, fuelling levels of Islamophobia. Trump and Musk are feting the far right across Europe – from the German AfD (with its strong echoes of the Nazis and talk of remigration) to Italy’s fascist prime minister Georgia Meloni.

The challenge for the left is to defeat the fascists and far right, both by opposing their racism but also by challenging the priorities of decaying neoliberal capital. It means a big fight against the new Labour austerity which tries to make us pay.

Sexual abuse of children: an issue too important for scapegoating

Misusing the issue of child sexual abuse for political gain is despicable – but the far right are on a roll. So a few thoughts on what we are actually talking about. The number of child sexual assaults carried out by groups is very small, and grooming gangs within that make up an even smaller proportion. According to the Financial Times in a recent article:

In 2023, there were 4,428 reported offline sexual offences carried out by groups, according to official data for England and Wales published in November, the first time a detailed breakdown has been made available. These accounted for 3.7 per cent of all child sexual abuse crimes.  Of these offences, grooming gangs — organised networks of criminals who target children — accounted for 17 per cent, or 717 crimes.

Far more assaults by groups are carried out within the family, or by groups of young people against others. And the total of number of child sexual abuse and exploitation crimes was 115,489. So this is a very important but very small part of the overall abuse. Why does it gain such publicity? It is hard to see any reason other than racism against Asians: otherwise why not challenge the terrible secrets within the ‘respectable’ family; or the levels of abuse in the Church of England and Catholic Church; or the BBC’s stars like Jimmy Savile or Rolf Harris, who continued their abuse for so long; or the widespread abuse in boarding schools and other institutions?

The tolerance and collusion with child sexual exploitation is one of the open secrets of a world where children are on the one hand treated as the property of their families, but on the other hand are seen as sexualised beings. It has little to do with so called ‘political correctness’ – why would police forces with high levels of institutional racism suddenly adopt sensitivity over accusing Pakistani men? Much more likely is that it displays a lack of care from the very institutions supposed to care for the vulnerable in society, such as the police and local government, and a set of stereotypical attitudes about young working-class girls.

Everyone who carries out these attacks commits a terrible crime against very vulnerable girls (and often boys). But this attempt to scapegoat and racialise the issue only creates a more dangerous situation.

We will march

The Metropolitan police has banned a demonstration over Palestine outside the BBC next Saturday 18 January on the grounds that it is the Jewish Sabbath and the assembly point is near a synagogue. This is an effective ban on demonstrating at the BBC over the issue any Saturday. The BBC’s record of censorship and double standards is well known and it is an important symbolic place to protest. The ban is being dressed up as allowing freedom of worship for Jewish people, but there is absolutely no question of any demonstrator preventing that freedom. The Met also talk about the cumulative effect of the demos – even though this route has only been taken twice in 16 months. They never of course talk about the cumulative effect of the bombing of Gaza and its impact on protest.  

The march organisers are resisting this ban which we see as a major and far-reaching attack on our civil liberties and we have said we will be marching next Saturday. A very large number of MPs, celebrities and movement figures have added their names to our letter protesting, because they can see this is a democratic outrage. Please join us and spread the word – #WeWillMarch

This week: A lot of organising to mobilise for Saturday against the ban. I’m reading Homeland by Fernando Aramburo about the Basque country and family divisions during the ETA campaigns. Not unconnected, I caught up with the Kneecap film over the weekend, which was very good.