2021: The year we failed to rebuild
2020 was one of the most eventful years of my life, as every aspect of my existence was turned on its head. By contrast, 2021 was a diminishing returns sequel. A lot of the plot was repeated, but in a tired and boring way.
At the end of 2021, we haven’t moved much from where we were a year ago. A new Covid-19 variant is causing a surge in cases, further restrictions look imminent and the NHS is under massive strain. At least the government didn’t screw up the vaccine role out and we got to have some fun over the summer.
Politically, it appears that very little has changed either. The Tories still have a stranglehold on power that isn’t letting up anytime soon. Labour are still nowhere close to an electoral breakthrough, even after the Tories have spent another year presiding over chaos, mass death, and scandal after scandal.
Johnson’s goose is cooked
One thing that has changed is that Boris Johnson is no longer sitting pretty in Downing Street. He will most likely finish out the year in Number 10, but it looks unlikely he will be living there next Christmas.
A succession of scandals has meant that, finally, both his party and the public have turned against him. The rank hypocrisy at the heart of Tory rule has been exposed to the nation. Whilst we were all dutifully staying in, and not attending our loved ones’ funerals, Number 10 was enjoying Christmas parties or cheese and wine in the garden.
Johnson is a serial liar and has long been the slipperiest person in British politics. Journalists, campaigners and opposition politicians have tried to hold him accountable for his actions, but he always greases his way out of actual consequences for the things he says and does. Now, this particular greased-up goose appears to be cooked. We have finally found a line of moral reprehensibility that the public (and Tory voters) do care that he crosses.
No thanks to Labour
Johnson appears to have lost his election-winning mojo and the Lib Dems have taken a safe Tory seat in North Shropshire. How long can a party, where a lot of people despise Johnson, keep him around now that he is a drag on their electoral performance and not a boost? Well, Boris, if it isn’t the consequences of your own actions.
None of Johnson’s newfound unpopularity is due to the opposition. In a year where Covid deaths have soared, inflation looks set to spiral and the government is beset by scandal, the Labour Party has taken this opportunity to do nothing.
We’ve had the first full year of Keir Starmer’s leadership and it has been so full of nothing that it’s hardly worth writing about. The only thing that Starmer has shown any effectiveness in doing is organising against the left of his own party. Other than that, Labour lost the by-election in Hartlepool and even I, someone who follows politics closely, cannot tell you what Labour stands for.
What does Labour stand for?
Under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Labour stood for socialism, the end of neoliberalism and a politics based on using the government to help address the country’s deep structural issues, from inequality to the environment. When Corbyn left, there was a lot of noise about how the serious grown-ups were back and the grubby socialists with their wild, unworkable ideas about reducing inequality and helping poor people were gone. Now, after a year of the grown-ups being back in charge, we can see that their clever plan to win back power was to do nothing. Well, I am impressed. Never has so much noise been made by so many about so little. It’s truly remarkable.
Starmer himself has broken many of the pledges that allowed him to win last year’s Labour leadership contest by a large margin. We were reassured that he was Ed Miliband, but with a little more polish, and many Labour members were happy with that. Mentioning patriotism 69 times in every communication wasn’t what we had in mind. Whatever the thinking behind Starmer’s lack of action, it doesn’t appear to be working. At the end of another terrible year for the government, the way forward for Labour doesn’t appear to be any clearer.
Democrats and reality against Republicans
Across the pond, we see a bigger and louder version of the same problem. Joe Biden was the great hope of the left a year ago. The Democrats offered a model of moderation, avoiding divisive social issues and focusing on competence and the economy as a way to beat populism. One year later, the great hope appears to be more of a damp squib. The Democrats’ Build Back Better program looks unlikely to pass Congress and Biden has not bridged America’s political divide.
The strategy of compromise to produce change has led to compromises on the plans for change and ultimately a compromise on nothing. America is as rabid as ever, and over a year on from the 2020 election, a staggering number of Americans still believe the complete bullshit that Donald Trump actually won. Even to the point of invading the Capitol building earlier this year and killing five people. If the Dems can’t win with reality on their side, then there really is no hope for them.
Meanwhile, China wants to invade Taiwan, Russia wants to invade Ukraine, Ethiopia is invading itself, the sea is trying to invade the land and Omicron wants to invade my body. If we really are planning on using Covid-19 as a chance to build a better society we had better get going on that. Because everyone with authority is at best doing nothing and at worst making everything, well, worse.
The dominance of the right
Globally the left appears in dire straits. The Danish Labour Party won an election by offering radical left-wing economic policies (yay) but also, er, rallying against refugees. I would be worried that Starmer would get some bad ideas from this, but that would require him to express an opinion. The right has seized the initiative by blustering about many voters’ problems with the neoliberal economic order. By promising to ‘level up’ or take on Wall Street, many former left-wing voters have switched to the right. 2021 was not the year they came home.
It has to be said that much of this switching has been caused by fears (stoked by the right) of immigration, trans people and young lefties with dangerous, radical ideas like treating people fairly and not dying in one of those tornadoes made of fire they now have in Australia. If you’re voting for Johnson or Trump because you hate trans people having the freedom to be themselves, or refugees looking for a place to call home, then you have no right to call yourself left-wing no matter who you voted for in the past, what union you’re in, or whether you hate people who went to Eton as much as the next person.
A dangerously radical platform
It’s easy to say that the left should run away from the debates that turn boomers the colour of Abbot Ale at their mere mention, in the hope of winning these boomers’ votes to do something as yet undefined about all the terrible things happening in the world. That plan isn’t going well in Britain or America, and it also involves shafting the young, ethnic minorities and everyone whose ideas about sexuality are more complex than whatever passed for sex education in 1963. That’s not a left I want to be a part of.
We can see where the Tories’ levelling up agenda has got us. The Northern leg of HS2 has been scrapped. So, the plan to level up the North is to build trains in the South. Remember, you can’t trust the Tories to sort out regional or any other kind of inequality. The left could be making hay from all this. Labour can rebalance the economy and make sure that women and people of colour don’t have to fear the police, all whilst not having illegal parties when people are dying. That shouldn’t be a dangerously radical platform. That should be common sense.
Time is running out
There was a part of the year where it looked like the pandemic was over and we might get some normality back. Now, that seems like a beautiful dream that we had to wake up from and smell the omicron-flavoured cheese. The sense of politics returning to normal was short-lived and everything, politics included, seems to be back where it was at the start of the year.
In 2021 we failed to rebuild or make anything better for the world. Now we are 20% through the crucial decade to avert the looming environmental disaster, and the best we have to show for it is a lukewarm commitment from COP26 this year. The left needs to get serious about the change we can and should offer the world. The established organs of Labour and the Democrats aren’t going to do it, so we have to do it ourselves. And do it now. Time is running out.
