In July 1794, a coup took place in Revolutionary France, ousting the radical Jacobins in favour of a moderate conservative regime. This period, known as the Thermidorian Reaction, created weaknesses in the democratic process that ultimately led to the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and the end of radical rule in France. I believe we have seen UK Labour enter its own Thermidorian period as a reaction to Corbyn’s project of a leftist Labour Party.

The Big Three: Bureaucratisation, moderation, and stratification

The culture, norms, and practices of senior party officials cement themselves within what should be a democratic political organisation, entrenching that ruling stratum of party functionaries such as the now embattled Prime Minister Keir Starmer. This manifests in the UK Labour Party’s fundamental divide between the ruling clique of Blairites under Starmer and the wider membership. This tendency appears through a long and continuous process of bureaucratisation, moderation, and stratification.

Bureaucratisation manifests in a layer of full- and part-time officials within political and industrial institutions. Although not a bad thing in isolation, having an entrenched position within, say, an electorate office, gives the individual a tendency toward moderation, and free time in the workday to secure political power — often at the behest of the MP. Any form of friction or disunity is seen as something to be avoided at all costs, which creates cautious behaviour averse to radicalism.

The same can be said with party functionaries. Once again, not inherently bad, however the entrenched interest of party factions to maintain an authentic party democracy is secondary to factional interests that breed a culture of moderation and deradicalisation. This arises naturally from the self-preserving career interests of a given faction or MP; and a flow on of the culture, norms, practices, and behaviours of a distinct class onto an organic organisation. A rift has opened between Party Office and 10 Downing Street, and the backbench MPs and wider party membership; the latter of which is currently experiencing a mass exodus.

Moderation occurs in instances where there is little to no opposition to what the Parliamentary Labour Party deems a suitable stance, abandoning any notion of being an independent and democratic body. Recent instances of this include the two-child benefit gap and other large cuts to welfare, with little to no opposition from leadership because the institutions they act at the behest of see any opposition as undesirable. Only through external pressure from the wider community, backbench Labour MPs, and trade unions did we see actual pro-worker policy as was seen under Corbyn.

The process of stratification is slow and often harmless at first. For like-minded members of any grouping within a political organisation, working together and cooperating to achieve common objectives is tantamount. This process intensifies and self-replicates, naturally creating a divide within the organisation, which splits into multiple groups or “strata” with their own institutional knowledge and norms.

Today we see a divide between a far more moderately inclined leadership, and often democratic socialist and social democratic base of members and backbenchers. There is a powerful upper stratum; faction lieutenants and numbers people able to dictate debate and decision-making, which now consists largely of Blairite figures. They are dedicated to deradicalisation and the weakening of any Corbynite opposition that could be seen as a return to socialism.

This can be demonstrated by the “Trot-busting” which took place within UK Labour’s bureaucratic structure. It was a systematic effort internally to prevent any people “Left of Gordon Brown” from joining or entering party political life. This was the mission of Blairite MPs who sought to completely undermine and destroy UK Labour’s prospects of winning the 2017 general election, for their grouping’s selfish political gain.

Of course, these tendencies manifest from a distinct ruling stratum of paid officials threatened by the mass party democracy which could have been swept away under a wave of new fresh and socialist members. Unfortunately, that was not the case, and the plotters prevailed in being able to oust Corbyn after his 2019 election loss. They replaced him with Sir Keir Starmer — a firm return to Blairite Centrism.

The hegemonic ruling ideology

As Gramsci observed, all political organisations require a distinct base of support. For UK Labour, it was a coalition of cosmopolitan middle-class voters and mostly deindustrialised working-class communities, all acting in their social and economic self-interest. However, we see a divide between this base and the party leadership. Often MPs are far more right-wing than the constituencies they represent, and party functionaries even more so.

Under their leadership there is no serious academic pursuit towards leftism, and no critical analysis. Nor is there passion for a complete transformation of our economic and political system. Instead, they place an almost zealot-like belief in the state being the final stage of political development. These corporatist tendencies and belief in a form of capitalism with a state centred approach are not a form of leftism. It’s liberal welfarism at best, and neo-corporatism at worst. Both paths lead to a dead end, as seen from the way Keir Starmer has gone about his prime ministership — his technocratic, centrist agenda have brought ruin upon himself, his movement, and the people of Great Britain.

“Liberal welfarism” relates to a core belief in state power and the state’s role in maintaining an apparatus of coercive power which enforces and entrenches capitalist hegemony over social and economic life. These beliefs are held under the pretext of political “equality”, free of any class-based analysis of how private property is inherently undemocratic and breeds great economic and social unrest. It sits atop the fundamental contradictions of the antagonistic relationship between capital and labour, eased over by the occasional concession or handout by the state toward labour as a way of mediating class conflict and enforcing capitalist hegemony.

For many, holding onto liberal welfarism serves to further cement their positions as professional functionaries within the political class, in an act of rational self-preservation As a member of said class, and who has actively played a role in the propagation of this culture in low-level political bureaucracy, I often question whether others in my position reflect upon their role. I do believe there is room for critical self-reflection, and for being able to break the hegemonic cultural and political tendencies I have described here.

The people within ruling strata will advocate for a strong, formal cooperation between the state, capital, and labour. This has historically been labelled “corporatism” — organising these forces into formalised interest groups (corporations), and managing class conflict through state-meditated bargains, leading to weak independence of trade-unions and encouraging class collaboration. An example is the USDAW, a Labour Party-affiliated union that relies on the party structure to elect MPs which advocate for their bargaining interests. Considering the current state of the union movement, as similarly dire to that of the Labour Party as it is, the state has conclusively weakened union power.

Corporatism as an ideology perceives trade-unionism as means to an end, be it complete submission to the party/state in the “national interest” and/or a mechanism of worker deradicalisation. Historically UK Labour under the reign of Tony Blair refused to reverse major 1980s Thatcher-era restrictions; entrenching the political agenda of marketisation, privatisation, and financialisaton of the British economy.

The notion of a union’s right to due process and industrial autonomy has become secondary to the Labour leadership’s obsession with “fiscal stability” and avoiding “wage-push inflation” — narratives designed to appease a hostile right-wing media. Under PM Keir Starmer, the state’s need for macroeconomic self-preservation now supersedes the independence of the trade unions.

A damning precedent has been set by retaining the 2016 Trade Union Act’s restrictive ballot thresholds and imposing strict fiscal rules which bypass negotiations. Now, the state can now effectively “neutralise” a union without needing any legal finding of wrongdoing. What stops a Labour government from using emergency Minimum Service Level variations or compulsory arbitration to effectively put a union like the NEU or ASLEF into state-mandated silence whenever their industrial action threatens the Chancellor’s “Growth Mission”? Effectively, nothing.

This eerily harkens back to Benito Mussolini’s mantra of “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state!”

This should be a sobering tale for all those who fight and strive for economic, social, and political advancement through reformist means. Do not let an upper stratum emerge that will undermine the movement built by the unions to fight the inequalities brought on by institutions of ruling class power. Do not let those institutions and tendencies infiltrate and cripple the movement. Keep the red flag flying, comrades.