{"id":2647,"date":"2024-07-09T18:57:30","date_gmt":"2024-07-09T19:57:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malvinartley.com\/blog.malvinartley.com\/?p=2647"},"modified":"2024-07-09T18:57:30","modified_gmt":"2024-07-09T19:57:30","slug":"the-2024-british-general-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malvinartley.com\/blog.malvinartley.com\/2024\/07\/09\/the-2024-british-general-election\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2024 British general election"},"content":{"rendered":"

The British elections, like July 4, 2024 have come and gone. We are told the result was a landslide victory for the Labour Party, while the conservatives lost BIGLY, as Trump would say. But upon further examination, we see the real factors that caused Labour\u2019s landslide, as it was called, were voter apathy and populist nationalism. The big losers in the British general election were the British general public. It is an old story, which we will cover here. For more, read on\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Before we start, note who is missing from the lede picture. It is significant, to be explained later here. He and his Party are mentioned in due course.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, just to be clear, it is not so much that Labour won the election, but instead that the Tories lost. The two main parties are indistinguishable now in terms of policy \u2013 a uniparty, or as George Galloway (more on him in a bit) calls them, the two cheeks of the same backside, from which much effluent exits. Because of that, and seeing as much, the British public largely stayed home. They voted by not voting. It\u2019s like a refrain from the rock opera Tommy<\/em><\/a><\/span> \u2013 \u201cWe forsake you, gonna rape you. Let\u2019s forget you better still.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The two major parties no longer have \u2018the music\u2019. (I\u2019ve always been a big fan of British rock.) The bottom line here is the British public has forsaken Labour and the Conservatives (Tories). The people who did vote for either of them did so either because they didn\u2019t know better, didn\u2019t realize they were only voting for the British establishment, thought somehow they were \u2018voting strategically\u2019 \u2013 which never works, by the way \u2013 or somehow thought voting one way or the other was for \u2018the lesser of two evils\u2019 (always a favorite in elections.) If the latter, one still winds up with \u2018evil\u2019 in place. In essence the conservative forces (small \u2018c\u2019) won the election as a result of the British protest vote, which was not to vote.<\/span><\/p>\n

What do we really see in the election result, then? The so-called landslide victory for the Labour Party was a net gain of just under 2% of the vote share, the lowest result in years, and this on a voter turnout of a scant 35%. Essentially, Labour\u2019s \u2018landslide\u2019 came with a whopping 20% of the British public\u2019s support, yet they now control a 174-seat simple majority and a total of 411 seats out of 650 total seats \u2013 with public support at roughly 20%, again. Parliament is supposed to represent their constituents. Something is very wrong with the picture of this electoral outcome. And Starmer is the \u2018selected\u2019 leader of the Party, making him the new British PM \u2013 so much for representative democracy. Meet the new boss. He’s the same as the old boss. The public didn\u2019t vote for Starmer. The ones who did vote voted for the Party.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the other side, the conservatives lost their seats largely to the old Brexit party, now known as Reform UK. The other factor that played a big role were the small parties who ran, chief among them Reform UK. A simple graph tells the tale, below (bigger<\/a><\/span>):<\/span><\/p>\n

\"https:\/\/www.moonofalabama.org\/18i\/ukelection-s.jpg\"<\/span><\/p>\n

As we can see on the graph the loss of the Conservative seats fairly well equaled the number of vote share gained by the Reform UK party. Reform UK is a right wing neoliberal\/populist\/nationalist party. These were the people who brought Brexit to the UK, with all its attendant problems. Brexit brought back control, all right \u2013 to the oligarchs and neoliberals in the UK. It brought back deregulation, which is a favorite conservative trope. Brexit also brought the UK closer to Washington, enhancing the so-called special relationship. Reform UK represents the biggest rise in vote share for this election. If Labour had \u2018won\u2019 in a landslide the vote share would reflect that, but instead we see a paltry 1.6% gain. The Lib Dems did even worse than Labour in terms of increasing vote share, yet somehow they now have 71 seats in Parliament, making them the 3rd<\/sup>-largest bloc in Parliament. The rundown on the election<\/a><\/span> is as follows::<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSmaller parties performed well in the election, in part due to anti-Conservative tactical voting, and the combined Labour and Conservative vote share of 57.4 per cent was the lowest since the 1918 general election. The Liberal Democrats, led by Ed Davey, made the most significant gains by winning a total of seventy-two seats. This was the party’s best-ever result, and made it the third-largest party in the Commons, a status it had previously held but lost at the 2015 general election. Reform UK achieved the third-highest vote share and won five seats, and the Green Party of England and Wales won four seats; both parties achieved their best parliamentary results in history, winning more than one seat for the first time. In Wales, Plaid Cymru won four seats. In Scotland, the Scottish National Party was reduced from forty-eight seats to nine, and lost its status as the third-largest party in the Commons.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

There are other factors at work here, though, about which it helps to be clear. Firstly, Labour has moved far to the right in its policies since the ouster of Jeremy Corbyn by Starmer<\/a><\/span> and the right wing within Labour. That is another story<\/a><\/span>, with false charges of anti-Semitism used to oust him from the Labour Party. But Corbyn did manage to retain his seat in Parliament, almost making him \u2018Father of the Parliament\u2019<\/a><\/span>. He ran as an independent, soundly trouncing the Labour candidate<\/a><\/span> in Islington. Thus, Galloway\u2019s assessment of the two parties being the two cheeks of the same backside<\/a><\/span> is essentially correct.<\/span><\/p>\n

Next, there are two wars on \u2013 Israel and Ukraine \u2013 which both Labour and Tories champion, but which the British public want to end. The Zionist project which is Israel was created by the British elites<\/a><\/span> and in that they are fighting their hardest to see it survive, while the world at large wants to see Zionism disappear. Starmer has a Jewish wife, and a rather \u2018colorful\u2019 history<\/a><\/span> with Israeli and British secret services<\/a><\/span>. As to his wife, we know very little about her views on the current conflict, but we certainly know his<\/a>.<\/span> Galloway\u2019s Workers\u2019 Party was the only one standing for election that opposes support for Israel and instead supports the Palestinian cause. The British elites also have long had an irrational and ill-founded hatred of Russia<\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thirdly, the UK is one of the bastions of neoliberal capitalism. The Iron Lady was the instigator of that in its current iteration of capitalism in Britain, turning the UK away from manufacturing and into a rentier economy. It has resulted in one of the greatest thefts in history, outlined in an article released on the day of the election<\/a><\/span> (must read). One of Thatcher\u2019s favorite names was TINA (There Is No Alternative, meaning to neoliberalism\/free-market capitalism). She was once asked<\/a><\/span> after her premiership what she thought was her greatest achievement. Her answer was, \u201cTony Blair and New Labour. We forced our opponents to change their minds.\u201d Once again, meet the new boss…<\/span><\/p>\n

The Clinton\/Blair years were known for their so-called \u2018third way economics\u2019 and market globalism<\/span><\/a> \u2013 turbo-charged globalization and neoliberalism. Western industrial capacity was gutted in favor of \u2018service industries\u2019 and financialization. The Western powers followed suit and became rentier-based economies. The Western public has suffered, with the wide wealth gap and increasing poverty now a feature instead of an anomaly. I worked in industry in those Clinton\/Blair years and watched as the bread-and-butter industries of my sole-trader business disappeared overseas.<\/span><\/p>\n

The picture at the moment for the average British citizen indeed looks bleak, but this election perhaps marks the swinging of the political pendulum back in favor of the British public. From the must-read linked article, above, on election day:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026Decades of betrayal of their (the Conservatives) patriotic voter base has brought them to a point of absolute fatigue. The Thatcher-Blair-Cameron neoliberal consensus which has governed Britain for almost half a century now has transitioned the country from a proud and cohesive nation into a postnational economic zone, increasingly subservient to American finance capital and in a state of terminal decline. The prospects of reversing these trends is bleak, especially if political power shifts to a political Left equally committed to diversity and the repression of patriotic sentiment. But leaving the Conservative party in the dustbin of history may be a start to what remains of the English, Scottish and Welsh nations reasserting themselves<\/strong>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The points just addressed give a background to why this election turned the way it did. Hidden behind those points is the memory of Britain\u2019s imperial legacy and the British establishment\u2019s fight to protect its offshore tax havens and rentier economy, which favors the upper classes, but which is gutting the middle and lower classes. Hence we see such a hyperbolic reaction in the Murdoch-controlled media whenever a hint of socialism raises its head and why socialist and anti-Zionist candidates never seem to make any gains in British elections. That brings us to George Galloway, the man missing from the lede picture.<\/span><\/p>\n

What can we say about Galloway? People either love him or loathe him. He is like the grain of grit in the oyster shell, which irritates the oyster, but which goes to the creation of a pearl. He and Corbyn are the bad-cop-good-cop to the British true left, resp. Galloway represented the single biggest threat to the present British system \u2013 the overturning of the Thatcher-Blair-Cameron neoliberal consensus. The conservative press and the establishment trolls were dancing in the streets when Galloway lost his seat in Rochdale.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not a single Workers Party candidate won a seat in Parliament. Yet, in spite of the media blackout on the Workers Party, Galloway being mercilessly smeared in social media as a racist and homophobe, and not being granted a single interview in the national press, he lost Rochdale by only just over a thousand votes to Labour. There was a last minute Labour blitz in Rochdale that the Workers Party couldn\u2019t counter. It is often thus with a new political party<\/a><\/span>. Galloway may be down<\/a><\/span>, but the Workers Party is not out \u2013 not by a long shot<\/a><\/span>. There is strong support for socialism among the British public. A seed has been planted by the Workers Party. We\u2019ll see if it grows.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, if you really want to know why Galloway lost his seat, a picture speaks volumes:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Image\"<\/span><\/p>\n

The British establishment<\/em> has breathed a sigh of relief, but we might question for how long. For the British public, on the other hand, Israel is on the nose because of the genocide in Gaza. The establishment sidelined Galloway and blamed it on Israel, whereas the truth is they wanted Galloway out of Parliament and socialism far away from Parliament as well. <\/span><\/p>\n

So what does the astrology for the UK say about the graph above and the election in general? The chart with transits and directions is below (bigger<\/a><\/span>):<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Neptune rules plebiscites and elections, and in the chart we see that there was a particular direction to natal Neptune, activated by a transit by Mars. To get an idea of what this means we first need to look at the natal placement of Neptune. The Moon trines Neptune natally, showing the unique sensitivity of the British public, an appreciation of nature and a love of beauty in all forms. However, the midpoint structure on the 45\u00b0 modulus shows Neptune at the Mercury\/Moon midpoint, giving us the following:<\/span><\/p>\n