Saturday 28th February, Lewes: an afternoon of participative discussion with Mark Perryman and a brilliant range of contributors to their new book The Starmer Symptom.

The Starmer Symptom navigates the seismic shift in British politics that Labour’s 2024 General Election landslide sparked: the Tories’ collapse, a record number of Lib-Dem MPs, the Reform UK breakthrough, the Green Party quadrupling their number of MPs, the success of pro-Gaza independents. Under the cover of Labour’s ‘landslide’, the traditional two-party system was brought to a crashing end and Keir Starmer’s government elected on a record low share of the vote.

Mark Perryman will seek to make sense of all this via an outline of ‘The Limits of Labourism’ his keynote chapter in The Starmer Symptom. The chapter combines, firstly, a historical account of Labourism from 1945’s ‘Now win the Peace’ to Keir Starmer’s one-word 2024 promise ‘Change’, with, secondly, an explanation of how the ideas of Antonio Gramsci and Stuart Hall help us understand Labourism today. This will be followed by an extended Q&A.

To complete the afternoon three of the book’s contributors add their very different perspectives in a closing roundtable.

Eunice Goes, author Social Democracy: A Short History argues that if Keir Starmer is not to disappoint, he has to find the ways and means to combine the pragmatic, the social democratic and the radical.

Joe Mulhall, Director of Research at the anti-fascist campaigning organisation Hope not Hate, details the resistible rise of Nigel Farage and Reform UK as part of a European and trans-Atlantic far right with a mass electoral base.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown columnist for the i Paper explores how Gaza and an increasingly hard line on immigration has sparked collapsing support for Labour from communities which for far too long it took for granted.

With the Lewes Labour pop-up bookshop, Keir Hardie Café and afters at the Lewes Arms.

Saturday 28 February 2pm to 5pm. All welcome, the only entry qualification an open mind.

Limited places, book here.

Presented by Lewes Area Labour Party branch association with Pluto Press.