David Lammy is asking BBC bosses to draw up tens of millions of pounds’ worth of cuts to the World Service as part of the spending review, as the fallout continues from Keir Starmer’s decision to slash the aid budget.
Supporters of the service say the cuts are likely to damage the UK’s international reputation and undermine the fight against global disinformation, given Donald Trump’s attempts to remove funding from the Voice of America (VOA), the US equivalent.
As a non-brit, I really don’t understand. I thought Labour was supposed to be slight left. Why are they running a Donald Trump Lite government? Cutting aid, cutting services, scapegoating refugees, weird AI moonshoots… Didn’t people reject these policies from the Conservatives when they elected Labour? Why didn’t the Brits just keep the Conservatives if all this is going to happen anyway?
Labour, Democrats, Liberals (Canada), Labour (Australia) etc. They are all parties of the neoliberal elite. They may fly rainbow flags and occasionally add small welfare, but they ultimately answer to corporate doners.
They are center right at best, but they did lie (especially Kier in his leadership campaign) about their intentions. One of the first move they made was to cut the financial help given to elderly people to prevent them from freezing to death in the winter. They are technocrats without a vision.
Oh, and they killed the genuinely left wing alternative that came before them (in Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership).
Here’s a documentary on their purge of the left for anyone interested:
The Labour Files
At this point, I reckon they’re about where the pre-Thatcher Conservatives were. The actual Conservatives are now further right than they used to be too but don’t seem to realise it, and every time they try to design policies they end up confused that what they’ve come up with looks like fascism (to everyone else if not also to them).
If I had the wherewithal, I’d start up a Socialist party, because it’s clear now that parties only ever shift right and there’s a gap at the left end of the spectrum.