Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
Starmer’s performative pledges and Witchfinder General Mason
Is Paul Mason’s excitement over Starmerism based in reality? NICK WRIGHT has doubts

NOT content with perpetually reinventing himself, pundit Paul Mason now wants to reinvent the left.

The actually existing left is, in Mason’s words “…directionless, leaderless, riven into competing projects, with no guiding philosophy and — therefore completely incapable of achieving its favoured objective: Gramscian ‘hegemony’ within Britain’s progressive social majority.”

Note the careful phrasing which establishes the limits of left-wing ambition as within a “progressive social majority.”

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
The Great Money Trick cartoon by Andy Vine and (right) author Robert Tressel in 1908
Eyes Wright / 26 August 2026
26 August 2026

Renewed illusions in social democratic reformism are sprouting as a result of Andy Burnham’s rhetoric, but material conditions are already intruding into the debate, argues NICK WRIGHT

A massive gathers in Hyde Park, London, for a meeting during the General Strike, May 1926
History / 1 January 2026
1 January 2026

BEN CHACKO says in different ways, the centenary of the General Strike and that of Fidel Castro’s birth point to priority tasks for the British left in the coming year

Prime Minister Keir Starmer (centre) Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn (left), walk with Edwin Poots, Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly (right), as they arrive at Parliament Buildings, Stormont, July 8, 2024
Features / 13 October 2025
13 October 2025

Giving a personal insight into the Labour Party conference, Sinn Fein MP CHRIS HAZZARD slams the lack of mention of the North of Ireland and the need to take the next steps in the journey from peace to Irish unity