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.
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