When Teresa May, Britain's new Tory Prime Minister, announced her programme after Brexit, she dropped a large part of the 2015 Tory Manifesto. (Which is another reason why there should be an early General Election.) Ex Chancellor of the Exchequer, Osborne, quietly announced that the government debt targets had been dropped and George's main economic policy, the 'long term plan', duly caught a cold and died. 'Austerity' has suddenly dissolved. May wants an 'industrial policy' (a swearword for the previous Tory Cabinet), workers on company boards and share holders to have binding rights to limit company manager's salaries. May is pointing to a post Brexit future via ideas from the early 20th century and Lloyd George!
The significance of all this for the future of the Labour Party goes right to the heart of its current struggle. And the first thing to understand is that the battle for Labour's leadership is a decisive class battle.
Following Brexit and the latest, large-scale contradictions erupting within globalisation, by no means has the Tory Party finished with its own changes in the turmoil of ruling class politics in the UK. Tory grandees are full of fear, wondering what they can base UK ruling class politics on when the City of London demands, as a first step, a major cut in its annual £67 billion tax payment, and the £1 trillion annual foreign investment figure shrivels. They also look over their shoulder at Farage's 4 million voters in the UK, and Trump's presidential prospects in the US, with further alarm. But what frightens them most in their particular world is what is happening in the Labour Party.
The Tory's specific evolution (and ruling class politics in general) depends, indeed at the moment essentially depends, on the reaction of the global and the UK working class movement, facing those same national and international convulsions. The major economic shifts and cracks post Brexit are certainly coming. But today the line of class conflict in Britain is most obvious in the country's political struggle. It is centred in the fight in the Labour Party.
Lenin's 'bourgeoise / workers party' was always an algebraic formula for the Labour Party. That is to say Lenin's description did not of itself provide a measure of the content and weight of the two different contradictory aspects of the party during Labour's development through its history. By the time of Blair's premiership the content of the second part of Labour's contradiction had little, if any, substance. It was then that the overall crisis of the Labour Party began in earnest, with its losses in Scotland and to UKIP (for without its contradictory character it could find no particular role in late capitalism's political spectrum.) As reality is always richer than a thousand theories, so Labour's empty halls marked 'workers' suddenly began to fill from a new layer of hundreds of thousands of active trade unionists and from the mass movements against war and austerity that had bedevilled first Blair and then Cameron.
Today Labour is a party where society's two major classes are contesting, over nothing less than the leadership of the working class, going into the next stormy period. And despite all the jokes and the trivia, Britain's rulers are terrified that a new, radical, working-class based party could be born.
As many have guessed but only suspected we now have the first ever generation to record lower lifetime earnings than their predecessors. Today’s 27 year olds (born in 1988) are earning the same amount that 27 year olds did a quarter of a century ago and have actually earned £8,000 less during their twenties than those in the preceding generation. (Stagnation Generation: the case for renewing the intergenerational contract. Resolution Foundation. 18 July 2016.) At the same time mass movements have been built and unions have fought back. A new working class in Britain is also 'becoming' itself, underpinned by the new brutal material conditions, but now focused ideologically by this process of the end of traditional social democracy in Britain, and the search for a new political leadership.
The economic factor, the relationship of labour power to the means of production, remains essential in the creation of the working class, but historically this has gone through many forms. Today the working class movement, the best unions, the mass campaigns, bring together a new working class experience summed up in action against war and austerity and now in a first stage but still critical battle over which class (the 'labour' representatives of a ruling class status quo or those who want a different society) should win the political leadership first of the whole of the working class and then of society.
Which brings us back to the new PM's dumping of her 2015 Tory manifesto.
On July 18 in Parliament Corbyn argued and voted against the £32 billion submarines that float Trident nukes. Another wave of Labour MPs were 'shocked' that their elected leader did not 'stick to official Labour Party policy.' And some did just argue the case to keep Britain's nukes. Every Labour MP was able to speak for their own opinion. But what wretches are these parliamentary tribunes of Labour's holy writ as they turned on Corbyn! And how revealing is the force of the policy argument in this Labour Party battle.
Teresa May unceremoniously dumped the Tory Manifesto and spelt out her new platform. Of course Labour Conferences are sovereign over Labour's policy but now the leadership battle has officially started in the party the hesitation over Corbyn's main proposals for post Brexit Britain must stop and his policies presented, front and centre. Millions of working class people in Britain have no idea, bar opposing nukes, why Corbyn's leadership struggle is so important to them. And, following Brexit, the submergence of Farage and the destruction of Johnston and Gove, means that working class people who might have been attracted to an anti-immigration political course and a new right wing in Britain, are in flux and open to bold arguments, unavailable in any official defense of a decaying and anti-working class EU during the referendum campaign, but available now.
The left and Corbyn need to nail exactly what no more austerity means, given that everybody is now forced to sit on that particular carpet. Now is the time to denounce the gap between the rich and poor by promising to implement a basic living standard for all citizens, with priority community regeneration plans in the most deprived areas, with across the board standards for housing to health, from employment to enjoyment. In this context it makes a huge difference to the argument that Britain should share labour and its future with anyone in the world who wants to, or who has to come to the UK. Finance needs regulation and control. National and regional investment banks focussed on key infrastructure projects and subject to popular accountability would begin the fight to 'bring down' the City. Some experts are already arguing for a legally fixed proportion of the nation's overall wealth, on a sliding scale according to need, for the health service. It is a principle that is open to a democratic consensus and and might be widened to all the key services.
One critical policy must be the total renovation of a decrepit, corrupt and remote political system; starting with elections, like the EU referendum, where every vote counts.
The new leadership of the Labour Party, based on its members and the best unions, have a chance to show what a new Britain would look like if they use the platform of Labour's leadership election in the outward, hopeful, inclusive and radical way they should. And if the result of this campaign results in winning the leadership of the Party, many, perhaps the bulk of Labour MPs may be lost to hopes of positions in a future National Government, but a new political expression of a new working class will have a national voice and be at the heart of mainstream politics as the crisis of the system unfolds.
Tuesday 19 July 2016
Wednesday 13 July 2016
The left - in Greece and Britain!
At first sight it might seem curious to compare Greece with Britain for all the obvious reasons. However both countries have the dubious honour in succession, despite the undecided elections in Spain and the bank crisis in Italy, of becoming the two weakest political links in the ongoing European crisis. Consequently there have been significant developments in Greece which reflect on the current British malaise and that are worth exploring.
A commanding feature of Greek social and political life has been the development of self-organising movements of enormous size and significance. What has now become 'Solidarity for All' started when militants from the city squares movement began to help the creation of practical, self-managed responses to austerity in health, education and food, in 2013 and 2014. By the end of 2014, 3 million people were participating in 'solidarity, not charity.' The Greek anti-fascist movement and the movement in defense of immigrant communities and refugees started well before this, in the 1990s. The movement to defend immigrants blossomed to become the centre of one of the greatest examples of humanity that Europe has seen in the incredible response created in Greece, where over 60% of its 10 million population have been involved in helping and supporting the recent flood of refugees into Europe.
The emergence of Syriza, a coalition of the largest parts of the left in Greece, rose independently of Greece's social movements to become the chosen expression of the Greek people's hostility to continued, relentless austerity. In practice Syriza floated above the rising wave of the movements, but maintained their distance and independence from them. They facilitated (and largely continue to allow) the work of the movements. For their part, Solidarity for All and the others were happy to keep their distance from Syriza and later the Syriza government, especially as they did not wish to substitute in any way for the necessary responsibilities of the state.
In January 2015 the Syriza leadership embarked on an attempt to split the EU leadership, ameliorate Greece's debt and restart economic growth. They had an ambitious domestic programme of defending pensions, restoring the minimum wage, bringing the 'unregistered' into the health service and blocking privatisation.
In July 2016 Syriza called a referendum on a new and draconian 'memorandum' as their efforts to divide the EU leadership failed. The Syriza leadership did not campaign for 'No' and were as surprised as the rest of Europe's leaders when the Greek people voted exactly that. Today Syriza implements the EU memorandum in the same way previous austerity measures were implemented and which caused the overthrow of past governments. They nevertheless won a second election in September 2015. The left split from Syriza, Popular Unity, scored under 3% of the vote and did not get one MP.
What has happened to the mass movements in Greece? Have they broken as Syriza failed - in its return to the status quo and worse in Greek politics?
Extraordinarily, the skeletons of Greece's mass movements have survived. More; the movement in defense of refugees has blossomed. Solidarity for All activists estimate that they are now involved with 250,000 people, of which 160,00 are refugees. The refugee movement is not countable, but organisers of the occupation of Hotel City Plaza in Athens, which now houses 112 women, 92 men and 185 children and feeds 900 per day, describe 10 similar initiatives across the city and hundreds across the country as well as thousands of day to day actions by the Greek people in general. In the inimitable way of Greek activist's clarity of political language, they demand 'Hosting' and not 'Holding' for refugees. The anti-fascist movement is now focused on the major trial of Golden Dawn leaders for murder, having helped fight out the Golden Dawn attempts to establish 'no go' areas for refugees and immigrants in parts of Athens and other cities.
However, and despite the continuing commitments, there are significant differences of view as might be expected on future political perspectives, both in and between the various Greek movements. The large scale, basic, political unity of the left has broken up. Inevitably there are many voices to be heard within Greece's popular left but three basic approaches can be identified.
On June 6, 2016 Parliament passed a law to include an extra 2 million into the health service - not including those without social security numbers. Among Solidarity for All, particularly among those who have the skills to volunteer in the clinics, this final implementation of the Syriza promise to bring 'all' into the national health system has given a certain credence to the much referred to but otherwise rarely visible 'Parallel Programme' of the government. The argument follows that the Syriza government has two programmes, one forced on it by the EU and the other that comes from its initial commitment to anti-austerity. More importantly the Syriza government is now legitimised by the September 2015 elections. It is therefore argued that the relations with the Syriza government remain completely independent but pressure on the implementation of the Parallel Programme is justified. The authority of the July 2015 referendum has thereby been superseded.
The second approach regards Syriza now as carrying out the programme of the right - which the traditional right in Greek politics could not get away with. This both renders the previous criticism of and rejection of the old right wing, including PASOK, as voided, which is deeply negative, and strongly suggests that their previous political line was the only alternative, thus bringing forward the day when the rejected, old, right wing political forces can return 'with a bang.' Such militants argue that the popular self-organised movements have to build up their strength and create the future political instruments needed by the Greek people. The implications are that the referendum was a defining moment when Greece should have repudiated the debt, refused the memorandum and created its own currency. Therefore the September elections were part of a potentially dangerous retreat.
Meanwhile Antarsya, the coalition of the far left, which garnered 49,000 votes in the September 2015 and no MPs, and which is prominent in the Anti-Fascist work through Anti Fascist Action and the Greek Communist Party with 5 MPs have, from the outset, characterised Syriza as a Social Democratic Party and remain hostile to the government and to parts of the social movement. Both organisations continue to compete to form new revolutionary parties as alternatives to the governmental parties and any kind of membership of the EU.
Are there lessons for the left in Britain in all this?
Brexit has concentrated the long-term political crisis in Britain. Until the full economic consequences of the current European and global slow-down become clear, Britain's political evolution will remain unstable. In the case of the Labour Party, its decline brought on by Blair et al has already sped up to the point of self destruction, which can only be halted by the transformation of the party though its new members, the support of militant unions and the Corbyn leadership.
In other words, any hope for Labour, as a mainstream party, rests in the movements of the left, the unions, the anti-war and the anti-austerity movements and its new membership, taking the party into their grasp and building a new base among the 60% of Britons who see themselves as working class.
This may be a minority action in the first instance. Labour right wing MPs may well settle more comfortably in a National government brought on by the coming keener winds of globalisation. But an initial consolidation of a left political current of a million and more is a tremendous prize, an enormous investment into an uncertain and unstable future.
In short, the movements in Britain must shape their political project, now, and not assume that their independence and mass activity will of itself produce the spontaneous conditions for another, different, more immaculate conception (as the Greek CP and Antarsya seem to imagine.)
The movements in Greece predated Syriza, a party that emerged out of their success but which had not been created by it. In Britain, the successful renovation of the Labour Party may only be at the very beginning of the concrete steps needed to get to a real mass party of the working class that can lead on the testing, the fight with and the removal of the current political and economic systems. But without this first step, taken now, Britain's political (and coming economic) crises, will promote a much more dangerous direction.
A commanding feature of Greek social and political life has been the development of self-organising movements of enormous size and significance. What has now become 'Solidarity for All' started when militants from the city squares movement began to help the creation of practical, self-managed responses to austerity in health, education and food, in 2013 and 2014. By the end of 2014, 3 million people were participating in 'solidarity, not charity.' The Greek anti-fascist movement and the movement in defense of immigrant communities and refugees started well before this, in the 1990s. The movement to defend immigrants blossomed to become the centre of one of the greatest examples of humanity that Europe has seen in the incredible response created in Greece, where over 60% of its 10 million population have been involved in helping and supporting the recent flood of refugees into Europe.
The emergence of Syriza, a coalition of the largest parts of the left in Greece, rose independently of Greece's social movements to become the chosen expression of the Greek people's hostility to continued, relentless austerity. In practice Syriza floated above the rising wave of the movements, but maintained their distance and independence from them. They facilitated (and largely continue to allow) the work of the movements. For their part, Solidarity for All and the others were happy to keep their distance from Syriza and later the Syriza government, especially as they did not wish to substitute in any way for the necessary responsibilities of the state.
In January 2015 the Syriza leadership embarked on an attempt to split the EU leadership, ameliorate Greece's debt and restart economic growth. They had an ambitious domestic programme of defending pensions, restoring the minimum wage, bringing the 'unregistered' into the health service and blocking privatisation.
In July 2016 Syriza called a referendum on a new and draconian 'memorandum' as their efforts to divide the EU leadership failed. The Syriza leadership did not campaign for 'No' and were as surprised as the rest of Europe's leaders when the Greek people voted exactly that. Today Syriza implements the EU memorandum in the same way previous austerity measures were implemented and which caused the overthrow of past governments. They nevertheless won a second election in September 2015. The left split from Syriza, Popular Unity, scored under 3% of the vote and did not get one MP.
What has happened to the mass movements in Greece? Have they broken as Syriza failed - in its return to the status quo and worse in Greek politics?
Extraordinarily, the skeletons of Greece's mass movements have survived. More; the movement in defense of refugees has blossomed. Solidarity for All activists estimate that they are now involved with 250,000 people, of which 160,00 are refugees. The refugee movement is not countable, but organisers of the occupation of Hotel City Plaza in Athens, which now houses 112 women, 92 men and 185 children and feeds 900 per day, describe 10 similar initiatives across the city and hundreds across the country as well as thousands of day to day actions by the Greek people in general. In the inimitable way of Greek activist's clarity of political language, they demand 'Hosting' and not 'Holding' for refugees. The anti-fascist movement is now focused on the major trial of Golden Dawn leaders for murder, having helped fight out the Golden Dawn attempts to establish 'no go' areas for refugees and immigrants in parts of Athens and other cities.
However, and despite the continuing commitments, there are significant differences of view as might be expected on future political perspectives, both in and between the various Greek movements. The large scale, basic, political unity of the left has broken up. Inevitably there are many voices to be heard within Greece's popular left but three basic approaches can be identified.
On June 6, 2016 Parliament passed a law to include an extra 2 million into the health service - not including those without social security numbers. Among Solidarity for All, particularly among those who have the skills to volunteer in the clinics, this final implementation of the Syriza promise to bring 'all' into the national health system has given a certain credence to the much referred to but otherwise rarely visible 'Parallel Programme' of the government. The argument follows that the Syriza government has two programmes, one forced on it by the EU and the other that comes from its initial commitment to anti-austerity. More importantly the Syriza government is now legitimised by the September 2015 elections. It is therefore argued that the relations with the Syriza government remain completely independent but pressure on the implementation of the Parallel Programme is justified. The authority of the July 2015 referendum has thereby been superseded.
The second approach regards Syriza now as carrying out the programme of the right - which the traditional right in Greek politics could not get away with. This both renders the previous criticism of and rejection of the old right wing, including PASOK, as voided, which is deeply negative, and strongly suggests that their previous political line was the only alternative, thus bringing forward the day when the rejected, old, right wing political forces can return 'with a bang.' Such militants argue that the popular self-organised movements have to build up their strength and create the future political instruments needed by the Greek people. The implications are that the referendum was a defining moment when Greece should have repudiated the debt, refused the memorandum and created its own currency. Therefore the September elections were part of a potentially dangerous retreat.
Meanwhile Antarsya, the coalition of the far left, which garnered 49,000 votes in the September 2015 and no MPs, and which is prominent in the Anti-Fascist work through Anti Fascist Action and the Greek Communist Party with 5 MPs have, from the outset, characterised Syriza as a Social Democratic Party and remain hostile to the government and to parts of the social movement. Both organisations continue to compete to form new revolutionary parties as alternatives to the governmental parties and any kind of membership of the EU.
Are there lessons for the left in Britain in all this?
Brexit has concentrated the long-term political crisis in Britain. Until the full economic consequences of the current European and global slow-down become clear, Britain's political evolution will remain unstable. In the case of the Labour Party, its decline brought on by Blair et al has already sped up to the point of self destruction, which can only be halted by the transformation of the party though its new members, the support of militant unions and the Corbyn leadership.
In other words, any hope for Labour, as a mainstream party, rests in the movements of the left, the unions, the anti-war and the anti-austerity movements and its new membership, taking the party into their grasp and building a new base among the 60% of Britons who see themselves as working class.
This may be a minority action in the first instance. Labour right wing MPs may well settle more comfortably in a National government brought on by the coming keener winds of globalisation. But an initial consolidation of a left political current of a million and more is a tremendous prize, an enormous investment into an uncertain and unstable future.
In short, the movements in Britain must shape their political project, now, and not assume that their independence and mass activity will of itself produce the spontaneous conditions for another, different, more immaculate conception (as the Greek CP and Antarsya seem to imagine.)
The movements in Greece predated Syriza, a party that emerged out of their success but which had not been created by it. In Britain, the successful renovation of the Labour Party may only be at the very beginning of the concrete steps needed to get to a real mass party of the working class that can lead on the testing, the fight with and the removal of the current political and economic systems. But without this first step, taken now, Britain's political (and coming economic) crises, will promote a much more dangerous direction.
Tuesday 12 July 2016
A critical moment in Britain's history
The Tories are trying to recompose themselves. The first political project of Johnson and Gove failed despite their Brexit victory - as they destroyed each other. This means that the potential social base that Brexit had crystalised across many of Britain's towns and villages, which included splitting the working class vote, has not yet been regrouped behind a reinvigorated Tory right wing. A potential anti-immigrant 'bloc vote' of millions for the Tories remains yet to be garnered. It is very early and the Brexit / EU / global crisis will do nothing but grow. However, we are yet to see any decisive development of a reborn new right in the UK of the sort emerging across Central Europe and the US, despite the predictable rise in racist attacks.
In fact Brexit has brought all the longstanding British political contradictions together, thereby producing a great crisis across Britain's traditional politics, which has not yet broken either to the right or to the left. The social base of the Tories remains, for the moment unfortified, and is more fragile than at any time since the Poll Tax. They have not yet created new bunkers in society. Teresa May's leadership will be tested to destruction very soon as the demand for an early General Election from all sides rises. Meanwhile right wing Labour is desperately trying to hang on to the party, with their string of failures over a decade of austerity and war now completely exposed, despite having lost the support of the bulk of the unions and the party membership. This is a completely novel situation for Labour historically speaking.
The current conditions cannot hold.
Teresa May thinks she can wave an early election away, with a majority of 12, a party full of gung ho Brexiteers seeking radical neo-con 'solutions' to the new crises of spending, of health and welfare costs, of the collapse of investment that is emerging and who lean towards their own Trump wall against immigration. Off planet Tory, but with tremendous potential leverage, millions are facing the consequences of the next round of the economic crisis, and the mass movements against austerity and against war have never been bolder. The battle between the Labour Party of most trade unionists, of hundreds of thousands of its members, of millions who need the NHS, pensions, a better standard of life on the one hand and on the other 172 Labour MPs, who mainly got their privileged existence courtesy of the Party that they now attack, is a fight to the finish.
None of these developments were caused by the referendum vote on EU membership. Globalisation, the expanding democratic deficit, (expressed most sharply in Scotland in the UK's case) the increasingly 'radical' market solutions adopted by the world's capitalist leadership, in the banks and on the battlefield, all of these, combined in a unique way in the British context to result in a chronic, festering and now acute political crisis that has blown away the legend of British political stability for good.
And a unique opportunity has opened for the left.
A political regroupment on the left is in sight. The precondition of a successful regroupment of the left in Britain is contained in the soil from which it grows. Albeit battered, the trade unions are fighting back and large sections of its activists are prepared for a final reckoning with Blair's assorted offspring.
Huge movements, progressing from the famous million strong anti Iraq war march at the height of Blair's reign, have been built against austerity and further wars. Together with the left unions and the bulk of Labour's new members, a powerful left current has emerged which is the well spring for the most significant challenge to Labour's right wing since the party was founded. It should be remembered that after Blair and UKIP and the SNP, Labour was in the Intensive Care Unit. The initiative by a large part of Britain's new left current to occupy Labour's empty house has inevitably brought on the wrath of 172 Labour MPs who desperately wish to reject Labour's transfusion and who want to remain a biddable tail on the end of a ghost dog. The isolation of these MPs in the wider movement means that is is possible to envisage the emergence of a new, mass socialist party.
But while union support is there and the fire power of the new mass movements is indispensable, this moment will not last long. The political flux of previous Labour voters who voted for Brexit against immigration is not an indefinite condition. The coming economic and social pressure will mean more and more savage 'solutions' emerging across Europe and elsewhere. Now is the hour, the day, the week, to start to resolve the political chaos and uncertainty across society (which will of course feedback favourably into the internal struggle in Labour.)
This means the new left movement, hopefully starting with the Corbyn leadership but surfacing wherever it can, has to lay down a concrete programme to deal with a society in a spin and a system that is cracking. Thinking and ideas must be raised to the level of the crystal-clear, concrete reality. A new socialist labour must speak out now, on
1. An early General Election. No Prime Ministers without votes. No new governments without democracy. No more unfair and useless votes for the people.
2. An NHS law for a guaranteed percentage of Government spending, increased automatically with increased use.
3. No austerity. Increased minimum wage. Ceiling on wealth through tax. 400,000 social homes a year
4. Zero tolerance of racism; freedom of movement for refugees; government support for services and growing communities
5. No more foreign wars; no more nukes
6. Britain's government's main priority - to help the majority of ordinary people.
In fact Brexit has brought all the longstanding British political contradictions together, thereby producing a great crisis across Britain's traditional politics, which has not yet broken either to the right or to the left. The social base of the Tories remains, for the moment unfortified, and is more fragile than at any time since the Poll Tax. They have not yet created new bunkers in society. Teresa May's leadership will be tested to destruction very soon as the demand for an early General Election from all sides rises. Meanwhile right wing Labour is desperately trying to hang on to the party, with their string of failures over a decade of austerity and war now completely exposed, despite having lost the support of the bulk of the unions and the party membership. This is a completely novel situation for Labour historically speaking.
The current conditions cannot hold.
Teresa May thinks she can wave an early election away, with a majority of 12, a party full of gung ho Brexiteers seeking radical neo-con 'solutions' to the new crises of spending, of health and welfare costs, of the collapse of investment that is emerging and who lean towards their own Trump wall against immigration. Off planet Tory, but with tremendous potential leverage, millions are facing the consequences of the next round of the economic crisis, and the mass movements against austerity and against war have never been bolder. The battle between the Labour Party of most trade unionists, of hundreds of thousands of its members, of millions who need the NHS, pensions, a better standard of life on the one hand and on the other 172 Labour MPs, who mainly got their privileged existence courtesy of the Party that they now attack, is a fight to the finish.
None of these developments were caused by the referendum vote on EU membership. Globalisation, the expanding democratic deficit, (expressed most sharply in Scotland in the UK's case) the increasingly 'radical' market solutions adopted by the world's capitalist leadership, in the banks and on the battlefield, all of these, combined in a unique way in the British context to result in a chronic, festering and now acute political crisis that has blown away the legend of British political stability for good.
And a unique opportunity has opened for the left.
A political regroupment on the left is in sight. The precondition of a successful regroupment of the left in Britain is contained in the soil from which it grows. Albeit battered, the trade unions are fighting back and large sections of its activists are prepared for a final reckoning with Blair's assorted offspring.
Huge movements, progressing from the famous million strong anti Iraq war march at the height of Blair's reign, have been built against austerity and further wars. Together with the left unions and the bulk of Labour's new members, a powerful left current has emerged which is the well spring for the most significant challenge to Labour's right wing since the party was founded. It should be remembered that after Blair and UKIP and the SNP, Labour was in the Intensive Care Unit. The initiative by a large part of Britain's new left current to occupy Labour's empty house has inevitably brought on the wrath of 172 Labour MPs who desperately wish to reject Labour's transfusion and who want to remain a biddable tail on the end of a ghost dog. The isolation of these MPs in the wider movement means that is is possible to envisage the emergence of a new, mass socialist party.
But while union support is there and the fire power of the new mass movements is indispensable, this moment will not last long. The political flux of previous Labour voters who voted for Brexit against immigration is not an indefinite condition. The coming economic and social pressure will mean more and more savage 'solutions' emerging across Europe and elsewhere. Now is the hour, the day, the week, to start to resolve the political chaos and uncertainty across society (which will of course feedback favourably into the internal struggle in Labour.)
This means the new left movement, hopefully starting with the Corbyn leadership but surfacing wherever it can, has to lay down a concrete programme to deal with a society in a spin and a system that is cracking. Thinking and ideas must be raised to the level of the crystal-clear, concrete reality. A new socialist labour must speak out now, on
1. An early General Election. No Prime Ministers without votes. No new governments without democracy. No more unfair and useless votes for the people.
2. An NHS law for a guaranteed percentage of Government spending, increased automatically with increased use.
3. No austerity. Increased minimum wage. Ceiling on wealth through tax. 400,000 social homes a year
4. Zero tolerance of racism; freedom of movement for refugees; government support for services and growing communities
5. No more foreign wars; no more nukes
6. Britain's government's main priority - to help the majority of ordinary people.
Tuesday 5 July 2016
Brexit's future
History has its own momentum and has just wiped out Brexit's front row. Brexit's main leader, Boris Johnston was nailed by his second in command Michael Gove, who promptly destroyed himself by his own breathtaking ambition. The 'brain' and the 'brawn' of Brexit having eaten each other, Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, the long term pilot of Brexit, has now resigned (for the third time) to spend time with the European Parliament!
The British political crisis, the end of Britain's long reputation for 'stability', suddenly sped up and rolled over Brexit's front line in the process. Now the UK is left with a bunch of second rate Tory politicians and 'would be' Prime minister and Cabinet ministers, scrambling to get to the top of the mouldering heap of a deeply wounded government and its uneasy MPs.
Although most of the Tory pack insist it is their intention to carry on governing until 2020, the first glance into Brexit's future would suggest that they are likely to be disappointed.
Brexit, economically speaking, has only just begun. During 2014/15 the UK recorded a total of 1,988 Foreign Direct Investment projects – 12% more than in the previous record-breaking year. And UK inward FDI Stock – the amount of foreign direct investment in the UK - is estimated to have passed the £1 trillion level in 2014. (UK Gov. May 2016.) This was of course considerably bolstered by very large amounts of foreign property purchases, especially in London. However, FDI is a life saver for the British economy. And virtually all economists predict a serious decline in foreign investment in the UK as a result of Brexit. Indeed, according to Bank of England figures it has dwindled, particularly in the property market, since the start of the referendum debate.
Meanwhile domestic investment, by both the government and private capital, has been a systemic problem since WW2 and remains so. As the Office of National Statistics have recently noted:
'...the proportion of total expenditure accounted for by spending on investment has fallen from an average of 13.5% in 2007, to an average of 10.9% during 2012 and to 10.4% in Q2 2013: the lowest level recorded since the 1950s. This compares with 14.1% in France, 16.7% in the United States and 17.9% in Canada. Across the G7, investment accounts for an average of 14.6% of Gross Final Expenditure.'
This means a job crisis.
The 10 - 12% reduction in the value of the £ means imports cost more (including all the 'outsourced' goods currently sold in Britain's shops.) This means the value of wages goes down and a standard of living crisis. The only way to reduce the impact of rising prices is to increase the already nerve wracking levels of domestic debt. Which the Bank of England has just assured can increase at will. This will mean a debt crisis.
Government taxes will fall. For example, currently the City of London is forced to pay a minimal £67 billion a year off its gargantuan profits. Brexit will mean the bleeding away of City wealth holders as financial services will now cost more to sell in the EU. This means the Brexiteers will need to make the City into another tax free zone to keep the world's wealthy and rely on the pickings, or make unprecedented cuts. They will probably do both.
All this could be foreseen if the UK had stayed in the EU - albeit erupting at a different tempo. Taking one (very large ) case, the City of London has been the tail wagging the UK's economic dog for decades and this unstable and unbalanced arrangement was bound to come to grief under the new pressures of the global crisis. Similarly Britain's mountainous domestic debt and the relentless meagerness of its domestic investment, are not sustainable, even in the short term. And the list goes on. As globalisation squeezes through the EU so Britain's series of economic weaknesses would have blown. Brexit has simply brought them all together and made them all blow at once.
This, in the context of the new, fragile, unanchored UK political institutions, means that political crises will rapidly follow any serious economic shake up. As some of the major economic consequences of both Brexit and the new cycle of western economic crises are underway, so a major watershed in the weak link of Britain will break, and break early. The calls for a new vote on Scottish independence will only get louder. The fight against austerity, war and racism can only get sharper. All this melee of politics and economics is therefore likely to produce a general election much earlier than 2020.
The Labour Party crisis has little to do with Brexit, but will certainly be caught up in its tangles. The sources of Labour's crisis are Blair, Scotland and a forty year retreat from even the most basic social democratic perspective. If Corbyn maintains his firm stand in defense of the Labour Party's growth and its membership's rights, he is likely to win any vote for a leader. He would then isolate the most right wing, rancorous and self seeking Labour MPs but not manage in a stroke to remove them. And the next stage of Labour's battle becomes how the right wing Labour MPs attach themselves to a national political purpose through which they might gain office and significance, while maintaining their base in the country.
This is not a puzzle without precedent. The last time there were major economic and political crises in the country, national governments were created to bring together 'the great and the good' (the rich and the powerful) to solve the nation's problems. One can easily imagine the new tyros of the anti-Corbyn League grasping at, or even proposing, the merging of Democratic? Labour with their Tory and Liberal counterparts in a government of national survival. Facing down such a charade, led by a solid Parliamentary, socialist group, backed by the mobilisation of millions in the country, is worth every moment of consternation and the beads of sweat that the Corbyn leadership is now experiencing.
Today, in Britain, big politics and economics are inextricably, moment by moment, bound together. Their intimacy, paradoxically means that the overblown weaknesses of British society are starting to pull apart, between the nations of Britain, inside, as well as between, the mainstream political parties, inside, as well as between, the main classes in society and, underpinning all, economically, where the fundamentals no longer stick together or stack up.
The British political crisis, the end of Britain's long reputation for 'stability', suddenly sped up and rolled over Brexit's front line in the process. Now the UK is left with a bunch of second rate Tory politicians and 'would be' Prime minister and Cabinet ministers, scrambling to get to the top of the mouldering heap of a deeply wounded government and its uneasy MPs.
Although most of the Tory pack insist it is their intention to carry on governing until 2020, the first glance into Brexit's future would suggest that they are likely to be disappointed.
Brexit, economically speaking, has only just begun. During 2014/15 the UK recorded a total of 1,988 Foreign Direct Investment projects – 12% more than in the previous record-breaking year. And UK inward FDI Stock – the amount of foreign direct investment in the UK - is estimated to have passed the £1 trillion level in 2014. (UK Gov. May 2016.) This was of course considerably bolstered by very large amounts of foreign property purchases, especially in London. However, FDI is a life saver for the British economy. And virtually all economists predict a serious decline in foreign investment in the UK as a result of Brexit. Indeed, according to Bank of England figures it has dwindled, particularly in the property market, since the start of the referendum debate.
Meanwhile domestic investment, by both the government and private capital, has been a systemic problem since WW2 and remains so. As the Office of National Statistics have recently noted:
'...the proportion of total expenditure accounted for by spending on investment has fallen from an average of 13.5% in 2007, to an average of 10.9% during 2012 and to 10.4% in Q2 2013: the lowest level recorded since the 1950s. This compares with 14.1% in France, 16.7% in the United States and 17.9% in Canada. Across the G7, investment accounts for an average of 14.6% of Gross Final Expenditure.'
This means a job crisis.
The 10 - 12% reduction in the value of the £ means imports cost more (including all the 'outsourced' goods currently sold in Britain's shops.) This means the value of wages goes down and a standard of living crisis. The only way to reduce the impact of rising prices is to increase the already nerve wracking levels of domestic debt. Which the Bank of England has just assured can increase at will. This will mean a debt crisis.
Government taxes will fall. For example, currently the City of London is forced to pay a minimal £67 billion a year off its gargantuan profits. Brexit will mean the bleeding away of City wealth holders as financial services will now cost more to sell in the EU. This means the Brexiteers will need to make the City into another tax free zone to keep the world's wealthy and rely on the pickings, or make unprecedented cuts. They will probably do both.
All this could be foreseen if the UK had stayed in the EU - albeit erupting at a different tempo. Taking one (very large ) case, the City of London has been the tail wagging the UK's economic dog for decades and this unstable and unbalanced arrangement was bound to come to grief under the new pressures of the global crisis. Similarly Britain's mountainous domestic debt and the relentless meagerness of its domestic investment, are not sustainable, even in the short term. And the list goes on. As globalisation squeezes through the EU so Britain's series of economic weaknesses would have blown. Brexit has simply brought them all together and made them all blow at once.
This, in the context of the new, fragile, unanchored UK political institutions, means that political crises will rapidly follow any serious economic shake up. As some of the major economic consequences of both Brexit and the new cycle of western economic crises are underway, so a major watershed in the weak link of Britain will break, and break early. The calls for a new vote on Scottish independence will only get louder. The fight against austerity, war and racism can only get sharper. All this melee of politics and economics is therefore likely to produce a general election much earlier than 2020.
The Labour Party crisis has little to do with Brexit, but will certainly be caught up in its tangles. The sources of Labour's crisis are Blair, Scotland and a forty year retreat from even the most basic social democratic perspective. If Corbyn maintains his firm stand in defense of the Labour Party's growth and its membership's rights, he is likely to win any vote for a leader. He would then isolate the most right wing, rancorous and self seeking Labour MPs but not manage in a stroke to remove them. And the next stage of Labour's battle becomes how the right wing Labour MPs attach themselves to a national political purpose through which they might gain office and significance, while maintaining their base in the country.
This is not a puzzle without precedent. The last time there were major economic and political crises in the country, national governments were created to bring together 'the great and the good' (the rich and the powerful) to solve the nation's problems. One can easily imagine the new tyros of the anti-Corbyn League grasping at, or even proposing, the merging of Democratic? Labour with their Tory and Liberal counterparts in a government of national survival. Facing down such a charade, led by a solid Parliamentary, socialist group, backed by the mobilisation of millions in the country, is worth every moment of consternation and the beads of sweat that the Corbyn leadership is now experiencing.
Today, in Britain, big politics and economics are inextricably, moment by moment, bound together. Their intimacy, paradoxically means that the overblown weaknesses of British society are starting to pull apart, between the nations of Britain, inside, as well as between, the mainstream political parties, inside, as well as between, the main classes in society and, underpinning all, economically, where the fundamentals no longer stick together or stack up.
Friday 1 July 2016
Brexit's political future
Brexit is not the prime cause of Britain's current political crisis. The roots of Britain's political crisis are to be found in some of the results of the annual British Social Attitudes Report (30 June 2016.) To the surprise of the researchers, their carefully demographically balanced, 4328 person survey, found that 60% described themselves as working class. Less surprising perhaps, 82% of those working class people said that the gap between Britain's social classes was 'very wide', which was the highest level choice offered in the survey.
The surprise of the researches is shown in their report that 47% of those describing themselves as working class were not in what the surveyors described as traditional working class occupations. They also reported that there had been 'a big rise in support for higher public spending' and that this support 'had risen to levels not seen since before the 2008 crash.' 93% of those surveyed thought that the NHS had spending problems and 32% (a rise from 19% in 2014) thought that the NHS funding problems were severe.
Why are these findings significant in Britain's political crisis? Because they give the lie to the much trumpeted, beloved by the media, 'common sense' of the new political era, described on one side as 'One Nation Conservatism' and all its various sub plots like 'property owning democracy' and Gove's current aim of a 'fair country' etc., And the other, they also sink without trace Blair's Labour 'Classless Society' and all of the associated tripe like 'a middle way' and 'the end of the working class.'
The point here is not that the survey wins an argument, or that yesterday's political leaders will now not yammer on with the same scripts. The argument is rooted in how types of social systems are created and defended, and will not go away as a result of a piece of research. The politicians have nothing else in their armoury than failed ideas, and that has been true for decades. No. The significance of the survey is that it gives people who wish to see it a glimpse of what is, and what has been for decades, a failing and failed society.
It is important to register the rise an opposition to immigration since 2012, as well as a reduction (by 14%) year on year in the now 50% in favour of more spending on the elderly. Equally, support for the unemployed is also reducing. And some of these trends of opinion were obvious in the recent Brexit referendum. But what is now sure is that there was a split in the working class vote over Brexit, rather than an essentially a largely majority working class vote for leaving the EU. The vote in most big cities, in Scotland and in inner London had already given a similar indication. However, the significant effect of the survey on Britain's political crisis, from its origins up to its latest manifestation, is that British capitalism has no set of economics, or mainstream politics, that can stop the enlarging of a working class, in all of its new forms, with a greater and greater experience and understanding that they are living in a society that is not organised in any way in their interests.
This is a tremendous achievement by the people who have to sell their labour.
Consider the economic and political line of march in Britain since the defeat of the Miner's strike in 1985 from the point of view of the working class as a whole. Destruction of half of trade unionism through wreckage of traditional industry and the most severe anti-union laws in Europe; council house sales to end social housing; the shredding of the Labour Party base as the Party is turned into Tories mark 2 and its leaders embark on a series of suicidal wars; the transformation of the contract between labour and capital breaking collective bargaining, from zero hours contracts to 'self' employment. These and other attacks were all resisted. But the tide seemed to go only in one direction. And the working class could only recognise itself though the small trade union movement, through bitter and often local defensive battles, through community action, latterly through the great movements first against war and then against austerity. And there was the relentless insistence of public 'common sense' that the class system was over. On the right this meant the watchword of 'opportunity for all', on the left, the debate was centered the 'politics of identity.'
But the reality of the modern politics and economics of capitalism went on producing its own pressure in the lives and in the minds of millions. Soon the fig leaf of Brexit as a means to open up progress for the majority of Britain's citizens will also fail. It was never a real alternative to those who hold wealth and power now. And although the British political class have jerked to the right, and although that current also finds an initial social base in a section of the working class via the route of immigration and racism, that social base can be challenged as it stands in contradiction to a new working class, A working class that has already moved beyond different types of jobs, or racial distinctions, to self-define both its own class in society and which has understood the fact that their own class is faring badly under capitalism.
While it would be ridiculous to minimise the struggles that have taken place in the past, it would be more absurd to underestimate those that will now take place between the classes in British society (which will include essential battles within the working class itself.) What is new is the change of direction. Britain's rulers have just thrown a desperate card in the pot. They hope to open a more vicious offensive against all other classes in society. They are a part of a global political movement that is going in the same direction. But the fact of the fight over Corbyn, inside mainstream politics, is an indication that working class politics is also rising up in society. Britain's political crisis has been simmering for decades. It has now broken open to the working class. What is new are the mass movements, from the Iraq anti-war march onward, that gave a new face and shape to Britain's new working class. What is new is that there is clearly a working class goal available to fight for - in this melee. Maintaining Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party is the main objective for the working class interest in the daily political storms to come. And that is a dramatic sign that the new working class is becoming a class for itself - for it has broken into what was, since the 1980s, almost entirely the province of the ruling class.
The surprise of the researches is shown in their report that 47% of those describing themselves as working class were not in what the surveyors described as traditional working class occupations. They also reported that there had been 'a big rise in support for higher public spending' and that this support 'had risen to levels not seen since before the 2008 crash.' 93% of those surveyed thought that the NHS had spending problems and 32% (a rise from 19% in 2014) thought that the NHS funding problems were severe.
Why are these findings significant in Britain's political crisis? Because they give the lie to the much trumpeted, beloved by the media, 'common sense' of the new political era, described on one side as 'One Nation Conservatism' and all its various sub plots like 'property owning democracy' and Gove's current aim of a 'fair country' etc., And the other, they also sink without trace Blair's Labour 'Classless Society' and all of the associated tripe like 'a middle way' and 'the end of the working class.'
The point here is not that the survey wins an argument, or that yesterday's political leaders will now not yammer on with the same scripts. The argument is rooted in how types of social systems are created and defended, and will not go away as a result of a piece of research. The politicians have nothing else in their armoury than failed ideas, and that has been true for decades. No. The significance of the survey is that it gives people who wish to see it a glimpse of what is, and what has been for decades, a failing and failed society.
It is important to register the rise an opposition to immigration since 2012, as well as a reduction (by 14%) year on year in the now 50% in favour of more spending on the elderly. Equally, support for the unemployed is also reducing. And some of these trends of opinion were obvious in the recent Brexit referendum. But what is now sure is that there was a split in the working class vote over Brexit, rather than an essentially a largely majority working class vote for leaving the EU. The vote in most big cities, in Scotland and in inner London had already given a similar indication. However, the significant effect of the survey on Britain's political crisis, from its origins up to its latest manifestation, is that British capitalism has no set of economics, or mainstream politics, that can stop the enlarging of a working class, in all of its new forms, with a greater and greater experience and understanding that they are living in a society that is not organised in any way in their interests.
This is a tremendous achievement by the people who have to sell their labour.
Consider the economic and political line of march in Britain since the defeat of the Miner's strike in 1985 from the point of view of the working class as a whole. Destruction of half of trade unionism through wreckage of traditional industry and the most severe anti-union laws in Europe; council house sales to end social housing; the shredding of the Labour Party base as the Party is turned into Tories mark 2 and its leaders embark on a series of suicidal wars; the transformation of the contract between labour and capital breaking collective bargaining, from zero hours contracts to 'self' employment. These and other attacks were all resisted. But the tide seemed to go only in one direction. And the working class could only recognise itself though the small trade union movement, through bitter and often local defensive battles, through community action, latterly through the great movements first against war and then against austerity. And there was the relentless insistence of public 'common sense' that the class system was over. On the right this meant the watchword of 'opportunity for all', on the left, the debate was centered the 'politics of identity.'
But the reality of the modern politics and economics of capitalism went on producing its own pressure in the lives and in the minds of millions. Soon the fig leaf of Brexit as a means to open up progress for the majority of Britain's citizens will also fail. It was never a real alternative to those who hold wealth and power now. And although the British political class have jerked to the right, and although that current also finds an initial social base in a section of the working class via the route of immigration and racism, that social base can be challenged as it stands in contradiction to a new working class, A working class that has already moved beyond different types of jobs, or racial distinctions, to self-define both its own class in society and which has understood the fact that their own class is faring badly under capitalism.
While it would be ridiculous to minimise the struggles that have taken place in the past, it would be more absurd to underestimate those that will now take place between the classes in British society (which will include essential battles within the working class itself.) What is new is the change of direction. Britain's rulers have just thrown a desperate card in the pot. They hope to open a more vicious offensive against all other classes in society. They are a part of a global political movement that is going in the same direction. But the fact of the fight over Corbyn, inside mainstream politics, is an indication that working class politics is also rising up in society. Britain's political crisis has been simmering for decades. It has now broken open to the working class. What is new are the mass movements, from the Iraq anti-war march onward, that gave a new face and shape to Britain's new working class. What is new is that there is clearly a working class goal available to fight for - in this melee. Maintaining Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party is the main objective for the working class interest in the daily political storms to come. And that is a dramatic sign that the new working class is becoming a class for itself - for it has broken into what was, since the 1980s, almost entirely the province of the ruling class.
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