Tomorrow, Andy Burnham will become the next UK Prime Minister. He has set out his vision for his premiership, under the title ‘Manchesterism’. Much ink has already been spilled in scrutinising it. Our sister site, Steady State Manchester, carried this article following his speech at the city’s People’s History Museum. Steady State Manchester has been… Continue reading Andy Burnham’s ‘Manchesterism’, a degrowth perspective
What are the prospects for degrowth political campaigning in the UK after the July 2024 General Election? In a recent piece, based on an event, Steady State Manchester explores this question.
A new UK government was elected in July 2024 with a landslide for the Labour Party and a massive parliamentary majority.
Labour campaigned on the slogan of ‘Change’, an ’empty signifier’ if ever there was one. The resulting policy platform does of course contain some good things, for example, the Better Buses bill, the gradual renationalisation of the train operating companies, public sector pay settlements, ending the effective ban on new onshore wind generation and some moves on housing insulation, cancelling transportation to Rwanda, brownfield first. However, these have to be seen against other damaging changes: on planning, the likely privatisation of more of the NHS, austerity impacting on the weak as a result of arbitrary fiscal rules and “Treasury mind” economics, continued harsh treatment of migrants, and an overall, and vacuous, growthism, with the hope that both military spending and a building boom will catalyse it, despite the secular, global, winding down of the engine of capitalist profitability and hence accumulation,due, among other things, to increasing resource costs, and the lack of new labour and commodity markets to colonise.
Reality will catch up, so what hopes there are will turn to disappointment. As Keir Starmer says, “things are going to get worse”. He is right, but perhaps not in the way he thinks.
Login
