Nonetheless, we have to be prepared for the capacity of the working class to ‘hope against hope’.
While millions will vote for Labour simply because it is the only available weapon to defeat the Tories, others will cling to the illusion that Starmer is pretending to be more right-wing than he really is in order to win the election.
It is inevitable that in the early days of a Starmer-led government many will desperately want to believe that Labour is going to markedly improve their lives or at least be ‘better than the other lot’.
And even Starmer will be compelled to offer a few crumbs in order to feed that hope.
He has, for example, pledged to repeal the minimum service legislation, which will undoubtedly be the main justification given by trade union leaders for pleading with their members to support Labour.
An incoming Labour government may also be able to offer improved deals to try and settle some continuing pay disputes, which may be made marginally easier if falling inflation gives slightly more ‘fiscal headroom’.
However, they will not be able to solve the huge problems facing public services and public sector workers.
They will not move to immediately nationalise the railways, as the RMT demands, for example – waiting instead for the TOC franchises to individually expire – but that is a precondition for fully meeting railway workers’ demands.
Far from a programme of nationalisation, they are already clearly signalling further privatisation, especially in the NHS.
In general, we can say that while there will be some hopes in an incoming Labour-led government, they will be far shallower than any previous Labour administration taking over after a period of Tory rule, and they will be shattered by the reality of Starmer in power.
Of course, that does not mean that we can exclude – in the face of economic crisis and mass pressure – a Starmer-led government being forced to take measures to intervene in the economy, which they currently consider unthinkable.
After all, Johnson’s Tory government’s Covid state intervention packages were bigger than the amounts pledged in Corbyn’s 2019 manifesto.
However, if Starmer is forced into such measures by events, it will be to prop up capitalism, not to defend the interests of the working class and will only whet the appetite of ever-growing sections of workers for more decisive measures.
