Since 2017, the political right has successfully regrouped around a new hegemonic project which links public disillusionment with democracy to a nativist nationalist agenda. Its objective is pretty clear: to prevent any threat to finance, real estate or extractive capital emerging in response to the looming climate crisis and the demands of young people for jobs and homes. There is little question that the fight for these things and for democratic renewal will be central to left struggle for the decade to come. But before considering the implications of this new hegemonic project, it is important to understand the structural and institutional context that has allowed it to emerge so quickly.
This is the concluding article of a series on Labour’s December 2019 election defeat. In this final contribution, I will consider the strategic implications not just of Labour’s defeat, but of the Tory victory. I will look at the structural conditions that made that result so likely, and how the left might go forward from here.
A Pro-Tory System
It is normal for Labour supporters, members and activists to perceive the media as heavily biased against them. If they are sufficiently knowledgeable, then they will usually understand that the entire electoral system is similar slanted. What’s striking, however, is that they usually seem to imagine that somehow every part of the country’s political ecology – from Plaid Cymru to the ‘Daily Mail’ – consists of a general conspiracy against Labour. What this perspective misses is that these systems are not simply anti-Labour. What they are primarily is pro-Tory: and anti-everyone else (including, for example, Plaid).
