About 20 to 30% of British people consistently support Britain's Prime Minister, Boris Johnston, when he calls for an exit from the EU at the end of October - with or without a deal. Opinion polls generally flutter between these two figures. For example a recent poll (21 August) by 'YouGov' headlines the 'news' that voters are now 'neck and neck' when it comes to their belief that Boris will leave the EU at the end of October. ('Neck and neck' turns out to be 39% of voters now think Brexit will happen in October versus 40%, who still doubt it.) But another poll on the same day from Kantar points out that only 23% of Britons preferred leaving the EU without a deal and 'more than half' of the poll's respondents' backed a second referendum on any Brexit agreement.
What's happened in Johnson's premiership so far is that he has patched together a social and political bloc, which is a relatively small minority in Britain as a whole, but is now leading the whole of British society.
Politically, Johnston's bloc is composed of three fifths of the Tory Party membership, more than 60% of potential Tory voters, virtually all of the potential Farage's Brexit Party voters and a third to two thirds of Tory MPs. This political force is, ultimately, a reaction to globalisation and it is suspicious of, and even hostile to the majority of the traditional British ruling class - in respect of its detachment from a nationalist, British type, capitalism.
The social construction of Johnson's bloc combines a small but vibrant, nationalist, streak of the ruling class, the upper classes, many on them based on land, and the lower middle classes - created by Thatcher - mainly to be found in Southern England. But the greatest part of Johnson's social potential is to be found in the large minority of the working class in Britain, especially among those who experienced the destruction of their work in the Midlands and parts of the North of England, and who express the damage of their lives and welfare primarily in terms of rising immigration. And if Johnson is the captain on the bridge sailing this new social combination through society, the boiler room includes a core of new fascists (who, inevitably as history has it, Captain Johnson sincerely believes he will 'get rid of' - in 'due course'.)
The majority of the working class in Britain, including lower middle class professionals and state workers, especially in the main cities and among youth, oppose Johnson. They either reject the Tory version of Brexit but still decline the EU because of its big business substance or they support remaining in the EU for what seems to them to be the best of two bad worlds. (The false understanding that there is a great wave of positive support for the EU that is now propelling the Lib Dems, will prove an empty shell if unity against Johnson, across Brexit, could be achieved.) But this huge social layer, a majority in society, does not yet see how to build common ground. They do not assemble yet around the only alternative to Johnson, which is Corbyn. Partly that is because the hierarchy of Britain's ruling class, and the politicians like Blair etc., repulse both 'leavers' and 'remainers' who seek progressive change. And partly that the Corbyn Labour Party is itself riven by internal battles.
But Boris Johnson is not really interested in Brexit. His goals are much more far-reaching. The longer term aims of Johnson, and he hopes his bloc, are to defend the capitalist system at all costs (now in danger from the growing anger of the western working classes.) He accepts, for the time being, that defining the crisis as one of confronting the 'international acceptance' of mass immigration (a la Germany) is useful. But all of the different pieces of the current Johnson bloc have far greater political ambitions than Brexit. And those ambitions, designed by Johnson as a return to Churchilian domination (nurtured by the embrace of the US) will produce a deeper social crisis and sprout a more corrupt and poisonous core in British society.
So, what is to be done?
The reason why another, majority bloc, both socially and politically, cannot win the leadership of society in Britain, is that there is no systematic mass mobilisation against austerity as partly achieved by the French gilets jaunes initiative - but there is a ferocious class war inside the Labour Party!
Labour leader Corbyn has taken a principled position, based entirely on the Labour Conference decisions, and supported by the membership of the largest political party in Europe, to place Brexit subordinate to the conditions and the future of the British working class. The conference respected the 2016 vote for leaving the EU. But it also respected the millions against that decision. What happened then is the most grotesque offensive against Corbyn in particular and against the Labour Party in general, that has ever been seen in the history of the Labour Party. Here is why.
Corbyn and the 2017 election were not as radical as the 1945 Attlee success against the Tories and Churchill. But what Corbyn and the 2017 Labour manifesto meant was the partial but dangerous reversal of the the economics and politics of the West over the previous thirty years. This was the opposite to a world that had just defeated fascism. Syriza in Greece had defeated themselves. The big new left parties in Spain, in Italy, in France and in Germany made progress, but were and are nowhere are near government. Corbyn's new radical Labour Party came within twelve wretched Northern Ireland reactionaries away from government. But, in the absence of large scale mass movements and a step into government, that moment changed.
The subsequent offensive against Corbyn's leadership and Corbyn's party now means that here, there and everywhere - in the Labour Party and especially among Labour MPs, there is a constant battle to destroy the Labour leadership. An example is the flippant and ridiculous response to Corbyn's completely appropriate proposal that the leader of the opposition in Parliament should form a temporary government via a General Election to call together all those opposed to Johnson's insane 'no deal' initiative. Political flotsam and gypsum among the Tories and the Liberals, who defined themselves as opposed to 'no deal', were prepared to risk everything to refuse contact with Corbyn! They were able to do this because many Labour MPs made it possible to reject Corbyn.
What has to be done is decisive now. The battle for Labour has to be fought, front and centre. Starting from the Labour Conference in September, those MPs that refuse conference decisions, or state such an intention, have to be expelled. The split of the Labour Party in Parliament now needs to be an offensive and not a defensive act. Even if this means losing a Parliamentary majority, even if it means only 200 MPs at the beginning who are willing and able to campaign for socialism, this is now the only way to create a group in Parliament that are ready for the fight. Because even if Corbyn's Labour Party, as it is today, was able to form a new government, Labour's rightwing would bring it down and propel it into a much worse position for the remains of the radical wing of the Labour Party (and for tens of millions who now have to fight the new right in Britain.)
The large bulk of the Labour Party's members will support direct measures against those opposed to Labour's Manifesto. And once there is a Parliamentary Party that is tied to the membership's politics, the reformed Labour Party can help build a mass movement for change, in society as well as in Parliament. It is that new platform that opens the possibility of a new social and political bloc against Johnson and his reactionary future. It can help create another, different bloc in society. A bloc that understands the disaster of Johnson, the danger of racism and fascism and the possibility of an entirely different economy and politics. A majority bloc that wants a new type of future and that will fight both inside and outside Parliament to get it.
As has been seen most recently in capitalist countries, in Hungary, Poland, in Turkey and in Egypt and Syria; in Brazil and Russia; in the hints in France, the latest moves in Italy and the monstrous political crisis in the US; - the coalition called the nation of Britain is facing the same strain produced by globalisation - the result of the ultimate freedom of Capital. The political answer in all the countries mentioned is to focus on making the enemy of the people all those from another world and making home into a state policing, deep repression. Its the only mechanism which 'saves' capital from its own, vast contradictions. Temporarily. And, with the Trump's 'help' it is the core of Johnson's political project.
Now it is Britain's turn. Now the effects of globalisation will have to be fought in the different countries of Britain. Starting from a relatively small, but a coherent, mass socialist party, with a hundred or more MPs and millions of supporters, whose core is the overthrow of austerity and the defence of mass action by those prepared to act against the economics and the politics of the old and failing ways - that is the battle that has to happen. That is the opening, now, to a different genuinely democratic future.
That's where Britain is today, unresolved, on the brink. And that's where it will be tomorrow.
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