Can Corbyn ever win?

'One Labour leaflet shouted: "Babies will die." Even that shroud waving could not win the seat (in the recent bi-election in Copeland). Grim wags in the (Labour) party ranks are now darkly remarking that folk in Copeland would rather let new-borns die than endorse Corbyn Labour' (sic). This (unedited?) comment appeared in the British Observer 26 February. It was part of a veritable storm in both the mainstream and the digital media denouncing Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party. It followed anti-Corbyn speeches by Blair, by his lapdog Peter Mandelson, by Gerard Coyne, the right wing Labour candidate for General Secretary in the UK's biggest Union, Unite, and Dave Prentice the head of Unison, Britain's second largest union, who added his view that Labour was sliding into irrelevance.

Consider the European and US shift to the right among a large section (but not yet a majority) of the electorate. Note the poisonous legacy in Britain of Blair's opening of the NHS to private business, his government's sickening involvement in the US's oil-lust wars and the crusading policy of 'regime change'. Leave aside the catastrophe for Labour in Scotland. Corbyn played no role (except criticism) in any of these howling errors. The British Labour Party was dieing in front of the world well before its members decided on a new course and voted for Corbyn. Corbyn was the membership's answer to the collapse of traditional Labour. (Just as the massive swing to the right with its emphasis on immigration controls has temporarily 'saved' the British Tory Party.)

Has this trend to political polarisation in the West run its course now? Can Labour trade union officials turn back to the good old days when getting in a Labour Government, any old sort of Labour Government, even a Labour Government indistinguishable to the Tories which upheld Thatcher's anti-union laws, was the sole political goal for the working class? The reality is that the political crisis now raging away in the West, has only just begun.  As the 2017 dates fall for the elections in Europe (and the Constitutional referendum in Turkey) so the the political establishment's failure will become more and more apparent and the desperate calls from pundits and politicians for a return to the past, less and less heard.

Another leading title in the same Observer stated 'Vast losses at RBS (the world's erstwhile leading Bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland) are a legacy of a failed system.' Will Hutton, a social democratic economist in the UK argued that 'We need a new capitalism that will stop firms thinking in the short term.' RBS had added £58 billion to its losses since the collapse in 2008. Hutton asked us 'What system could permit a business horror story with such near calamitous results,' He went on to point out that British big business seemed to be particularly venal. But the answer does not lie with a 'Corbyn type philosophy,' for socialist transformation, which apparently few share. No. Instead we must put our trust in Big Innovation's Purposeful Company Task Force - and its new report. (Co-chair W. Hutton.) It says it all in there! The report proves that companies which put their purpose before profit out perform companies that do not! 'Simples.'

Alas for Hutton, in the first place corporate corruption is more global and less simply British than he might understand. Amongst others the good old City of London ensures that it is so. Second, the underlying motor of capitalism is profit, to which end it has thoroughly reorganised the world and humanity in a succession of convulsions. Hutton and his followers made more sense when huge organisations of the working class in the West still existed and could still fight the relentless drive of big Capital. It is simply absurd to imagine that a Report, (however well chaired) will do better than the efforts of millions in direct and indirect struggle and self sacrifice for their rights and a half decent way of life.

So now we have the bleats for the self reform of capitalism (Hutton praises British PM May for doing some publishing of her own on corporate governance and industrial strategy) combined with the roars that Corbyn must go in order that the Labour Party can collapse into more suitable hands. The left on the other hand is shaking itself out of the argument about what to do with the EU referendum results and at last trying to create some new facts in the political maelstrom.

The first of these is the march to defend the National Health Service, currently being run down by the government (no doubt trying to prepare the British public for the private onslaught on health in Trump's coming free trade deal.) On Saturday 4 March at 12, led by the Peoples Assembly and Unite, a huge demonstration will assemble in Tavistock Square, near Euston Station, to defend and support the NHS. (Note that the successful Save Lewisham Hospital campaigners will be meeting at nearby Russell Square.) The NHS dominates even immigration as the main concern of British people and it is becoming, exclusively, the lefts's territory and will remain so should the left's campaign move this initial action into a great, active, continuing, movement.

The second is the wide-ranging front, again with the Peoples assembly at its head, to bloc Trump's visit to Britain. After Bush junior, Trump is widely loathed in Britain, and opposition to his arrival brings together Muslim organisations and Unions, LGBT activists with churches, North and South, Scotland, England and Wales. It potentially builds a new political 'common sense' between the big cities and rural towns.

If these two developments become big new facts in British political life, especially if they are underpinned with the gathering emergence of a new social contract that dumps their Lordships and adopts fair votes, sets a constant percentage of GDP for Health and welfare spending, de-escalates war and nukes, then Corbyn has something practical to stand on (rather than the fantasy of the good will of most Labour MPs.) The old Labour Party may be in its deathrows, but new movements that pinpoint the key aspects of Britain's crisis, at home and abroad, can, as the experience in this political period shows, build something new from the ashes. Transformation does not emerge from a rescue of the old, but rather the coming to grips with the new.