If you are in the mood for a low farce, the endless repetition of 30 year old cliches or perhaps just looking for a cure for insomnia then I recommend watching the proceedings of the labour partry conference. If you hadn’t noticed that this was going then you can hardlybe blamed because it has less relevance the lives of 90% of the population than do the plot lines on day time soaps. Keir Starmer, a man who manages to pull of feat of being utterly repulsive and terminally boring at the same time, continues to assert in bland corporate speak that he will “give Britain its future back”. This is utterly nebulous garbage is what passes for policy commitments from Keir Starmer. He has been very careful since his elevation to the leadership in 2020 to avoid any real and firm policy commitments other than generic assertions. Behind these threadbare assertions though stand Starmers real commitments and that is to continue the Blair legacy. This legacy needs to be understood properly in terms of the role that Blair truly played in terms of being able to push through privatisations of public assets with the active assistance of the trade union leadership. The cannibalisation of the public sector is all part of the ongoing crisis of British capitalism which has to seek new areas of profitability by buying up the public sector and then securing a permanent stream of funding from the government to run these services even as they cut staffing, workers pay and the services provided to the public. Buying up a chunk of the public sector is great for parasitic British capitalism as it enables them to claim large amounts of money from state, run the service into the ground then step back from the contract when things turn sour. This is the reality of the much vaunted Blair “legacy” when it comes to the public sector. Blairs defenders will often try to redeem him but the truth is that he left the public sector mired in debt and ultimately providing less of a service to working class people. Starmers promises amount to a commitment to doing the same thing all over again. His promises to “solve” the NHS waiting list crisis is nothing more than a promise to further privatisation of the health service. Both Starmer and the repugnant homunculus Wesley Streeting (the shadow health secretary) have promised to “utilise” the private sector in getting waiting lists down. This is a commitment to divert funds to the private sector and away frorm the NHS. In short, the private health care sector will be subsidised at the expense of the public sector, Starmer will call this “saving the NHS” and the health service union leaders will applaud him for it. The theatre of the absurd in Liverpool this week is totally divorced from the reality of what Starmer will do in office. He will pose as some kind of reformer but in actual fact he will pursue the same priorities as Rishi Sunak will do, the priorities of British capitalism.