New parties, old parties

 It looks like the UK is getting a new political party. And I can see why people came up with that. In the olden days, you would have Labour and the Tories and there would be a clear difference between them. Since Labour has been elected into power for the first time in many years, we have had to conclude that the difference is now small.

I expected Labour to make changes. Get rid of the two child benefit cap, get rid of the laws that make almost any protest illegal, that sort of things. But what they did was leave these things in place, and instead push through reductions in benefits for disabled people. What is that about? Since when is Labour the party of wringing out the poor and kowtowing to the rich? 

It is not, of course, as if Labour and the Tories are the only parties in town. There still are the Lib Dems and the Greens. But I could imagine that someone like Zarah Sultana thinks the Lib Dems are not left-wing enough, and maybe she thinks the Greens think too much about the planet and not enough about humans (even though they, of course, depend entirely on the planet). I don't know! Speculating here.

I do think that Labour has sort of lost it credibility now. But I don't think that credibility is necessarily lost forever. Parties are not static. And I don't know what the effect would be of a new party. In a way it could split the left vote, but what leftie is going to vote Labour these days? Still; few new parties get out of the starting blocks properly, and even fewer manage to last for years.  But I can only wish this new party the best.

I thought it was striking that this happened in the week in which I found out that Dutch Labour as I knew it doesn't exist anymore. In the last election, they formed a so-called list combination with a Green party (‘GreenLeft’). And when early in the week I was having dinner with Jaco and Marjan I asked them if they knew if they would do the same thing for the upcoming elections. And they told me they had actually decided to merge! So in a way, neither of these parties still exists. I was a bit ashamed that I had missed that, but it turned out that it had happened really recently.

Logo of the combined parties

 

I really wish this new party all the best as well! And I think their future looks a lot more rosy than that of the new British party. After all, they are just a combination of two dyed-in-the-wool parties for whom the autumn elections are most certainly not going to be their first rodeo.

Time will tell how this all pans out. What will the situation be by the end of the year? How will the newly merged party have done in the elections? Will Starmer still be Prime Minister? Will the new British party be gaining momentum, or will it already have fizzled out? Will the Labour back benches have managed to bring the front benches back into line? It is anybody's guess!