1. The British Guardian newspaper has recently conducted a poll revealing support for Labour's new possible leaders. In the poll of 1059 Labour members, taking into account the possible stages of the election, they strongly backed (Sir) Keir Starmer, shadow Brexit secretary, against all other potential candidates.
Starmer (as with a couple of other candidates) has so far been careful not to distance himself from Corbyn's 2019 Manifesto. The large membership of the Labour Party was, until now at least, mainly Corbyn supporters. Ken Livingston has promoted Starmer's candidature. Nevertheless Starmer voted twice against Corbyn as leader and, at one stage, walked out of the shadow cabinet in order to force the Party to propose a new referendum as part of its Brexit policy. He will not be carrying on with any sort of 'Corbynism'.
2. Labour as a whole lost in 2019 but Labour's left has also had a resounding defeat however delicate Starmer's footsteps fall. And the Guardian poll is a very shaky and very early prediction. More significant is the real meaning of the distribution of the votes during the 2019 General Election. Labour polled 10 million and the Tories polled 14 million (a shade higher than ex PM May's vote in 2017.) The data also shows that 18 to 24 year olds would have put 544 Labour MPs into Parliament and 4 Conservatives. The Lib Dems, despite their support for the EU, were basically irrelevant for this group. From 24 to 49, voters would have put 310 Labour MPs as against 240 Tories into Parliament - again, because of the Corbyn program and despite the significant desire that sector had to remain in the EU. The Lib Dems were more successful here. (If only 65 year olds and older voted then Labour gets 35 MPs and the Tories 575.)
3. Labour membership still runs into the hundreds of thousands. And 10 million voted Labour. Most important Labour is still the overwhelmingly dominant mass party of young people. Yet the serious debate in Labour and across Labour voters in general about 'what really went wrong' has yet to be opened up. Most Labour leader contenders (including Starmer) are determined that the MPs should lead and control any real discussion about Labour's future. It is to be through the leadership candidates' votes that any realistic debate will be heard. Starmer's efforts, if he decides to stand, will be just another attempt to close down debate among party members and Labour supporters. 'Let's reunite the whole Labour Party' he will headline, while meaning let's unify Labour's MPs by not opening any real debate among the party: by not opening the most important political debate today in Britain.
4. Aside from the pantomime leadership election, what will happen to Labour?
The answer is discovered through a study raised by wider question. What will happen now to British politics in general - and to British society?
At the end of 2019 the Hansard Society published surprising research which showed that 37% of Britons believed 'the system' needed 'a great deal' of change - 10% more than the previous highest record, in 2010, when MPs were setting up austerity and fiddling about in their expenses scandal. This is how the Economist Magazine 'Predictions for 2020' put it;
'Britain saw relatively few public protests between the arrival of democracy in 1918 and the referendum in 2016. Now it sees marches almost every week. The same could happen with political violence, the relative lack of which made Britain such a peaceful place.'
Although the Economist's correspondent has failed to notice the defeat of the Heath government via the trade union movement in the 1970s and Thatcher's fall after the Poll Tax riots, Boris is not going face any sort of a calm future. Big changes, mass actions and reactions are going much faster than the second half of the 20th Century. There are now many more blocks to any sort of smooth progress in Britain's politics. All of the coming swerves and crashes will also shift society. Britain's fragility is greater now than any time since the World Wars. Britain's society has been captured by its uncertain and incoherent politics. The fate of Labour will only be determined by its political capacity to mark out and lead the shift in society best suited to the working class and its allies.
5. We already know that this year a 'no deal' with the EU may still be possible. A huge political struggle, in society, outside Parliament, could follow at the end of 2020. But there are many other, even more drastic obstacles for the rulers of Britain. Another new British politics that could smash up its society was first hinted in September 2019 when a (small) majority of voters in Northern Ireland stated they were in favour of Irish unity. So far, Britain's mass media have been promoting the coming battle between Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon over Scottish independence. But seeing no further than the 'right' of Westminster, eg Boris's 'right', to refuse another referendum in Scotland, Westminster believes the problem is solved. However the significance of Sturgeon's demand, that the Scottish Parliament should have its own right to decide whether to hold another referendum, starts to break down Westminster's domination. Again politics goes outside Westminster. The point is that another part of the UK already has its own right to independence. If the SNP win a solid victory in the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood in 2021, it is inconceivable that Scots will not demand, and act on their 'right', to vote for their future - just as the Northern Irish can.
2020 in Britain will not only face the next EU treaty and the national question, it will face Trump's election and his drastic measures to prove that 'America is great' again. Trump will do literally anything to defend his slogan, including short term measures that accelerate the West's weakening economy. Britain is exactly in the wrong place in relation to a major economic decline across the globe. Already Boris intends to drop EU law that defends workers' rights. Already the courts have smashed the biggest majority vote for action ever polled by Postal workers. Already Boris has backed one of the worst railway companies that reneged on its deal with Britain's most militant union, the RMT. Already Boris publicises plans to withdraw the right to strike by transport workers.
So far nurses in Northern Ireland, Postal workers, Railway workers, Amazon workers, etc, etc have begun a fightback. Outside Parliament.
6. This is the picture that faces Labour as it now stands. If the 2020 EU Boris deal (or no deal) becomes toxic for Labour, another Labour break is inevitable and not just among Labour's MPs. It is one thing to support Corbyn despite your favourable view of EU membership. It is entirely different when a mini pro-Blair leader tries to concoct a new Labour 'solution' as Boris pushes through his anti-working class objectives in his new deal with the EU.
But the crisis of Scotland's independence is still worse for Labour's MPs. Corbyn's leadership did not resolve the Scottish question in the Labour Party or among its supporters - although a shift had begun. The obvious answer would be to accept the right of the Scottish people to decide their own future and for Labour to actively seek an alliance with the Scottish government on shared core issues.
Labour too will have to face mass action outside Parliament and the probability of economic downturn. Will the debate about Labour's defeat raise the need for the Party to join the battle of workers and their organisations, given a debate that is focussed on the next leader and 'business as usual.' Again Labour finds itself in a two part turmoil.
7. The developing future for British capitalism is being created out of these and other crises. The shape of Britain's social and economic future is emerging out of the leadership of the the most right-wing government since Thatcher. The critical centre of that future is the new structure that needs to be built to maintain and to gain globally accumulating wealth. The EU cliche, now a year old, of Britain's future as 'Singapore on Thames', a global tax haven, has already become more mature and refined. The latest version of the new Britain is emerging as part of the 'Anglosphere', America, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, (as opposed to the Sinosphere; China and its mongrel puppies.) The Anglosphere countries are now all heady market players, they spy together on everybody else (it's called 'five eyes'!) France, Germany and Japan are out of the Anglosphere clique. Its shared intention is the consolidation and control of the non-Chinese world's wealth. And Britain's City of London hopes to become the pearl in the Anglosphere's crown - a prized centre to challenge China's future. And the British people? The successful ones will service this prize and the rest of us will serve the servers.
There will be no real avenue in Britain for the next five years, opening to a new society based on a new green revolution. Work is going to be more tied to service. Work will be more and more unregulated. State health, education and welfare will be more and more polluted by the market. The crown jewels will remain in London.
8. Against this future the Labour Party has so failed to show its alternative - or even, so far, set up the debate required, as the petty-leadership epithets begin to fly, providing substitutes for real discussion and action. There are two fundamentals that the Labour Party must face to survive and have any chance to lead society. First, part of Labour's failure in 2019, including by the leadership of Labour's left, was its virtual silence about where Britain's wealth truly was (including its tax havens in the great corporations and in Britain's islands in the sun) and how they might be taken back to Britain's people. Second, Britain's Parliament no longer serves any real democracy, let alone the needs of society as a whole.
Labour should focus its hundreds of thousands of members, its ten million voters and society's young people on an attack against the billionaires and their wealth. That is the prime question for Britain's society. It is the core of the future. And it will be fought successfully only in mass action as, even in the West, the current unsuccessful democracies fail to provide any platform for that crucial step.
Second, the form that the failure of Britain's democracy takes is that it does not represent the overwhelming majority of the people. Simply look at the proportions of votes for any UK government. Meanwhile the House of Lords keeps expanding. Voting is completely unfair in the bit of Parliament that people can vote for. Two of the four countries that make up Britain are moving to independence because they are not represented. A growing percentage of the population, enough to win a British Parliament's government, regard the 'system' as unsuccessful. To really win an alternative to Boris's crew, Labour needs to attack the current Parliamentary system in favour of a democracy that distributes power to people, not where a quarter of the electorate gives the little bits away that are on offer every five years.
9. What should be done (and what are the new Labour leadership likely to do?)
There are some crises to come that will be shared by Labour and Johnson's Tories. But, as in the case of Scotland, and Northern Ireland, the new Labour leadership is likely to flow in entirely the wrong direction. Then there are other crises which are truly Labour's own. The defeat of the Corbyn left is now beginning to swing back to Blair's love of the 'centre ground'; the 'Tory light' version of the 1990s and early 2000's. The reason why Blair succeeded for 10 years was he replaced the non-functioning Tory Party - which had become no use to either of Britain's two main classes. It eventually failed because it was a version of the Tories. It failed a working class that was dealing with its retreats and defeats across the board. It failed through its half-baked nonsense of the unity of the market (read a collection of Dell-boys sharks) and the UK's public institutions. It failed because the classes (not just in Britain) were polarising without any interest from the Labour leadership, between poverty and wealth. It will not be able to be reconstituted. The polarisation has happened. Any future Labour potential support will not feed from its dismal history. Boris's success proves that.
And what therefore should be done? The defeat of Corbyn is not replaceable or reversible. The new leadership of the Labour Party will buttress the current state of society and offer a traditional Tory-lite project. (This is already emerged as would-be Labour leadership candidates start comparing their version of English patriotism with Boris's! No contest.)
What should be done? What has to be done? The membership, the Labour voters and the youth have to be coalesced in a mass-action political current that fights the new Tory government. The two key headlines; 'No rich and no poor! We need Real Democracy.' They would build a Labour faction, 'Real Labour', that organises independently of most Labour MPs and what will be all of its shadow cabinet. They would draw strength and experiences from the battle in France, the new Italian squares movement, the anti-fascist movement in the US. They would continue to fight at Labour's conference. And if necessary, they would form an independent organisation.
Tailending the Parliamentary Labour leadership's direction; compromising the battle that has to be had to shift the wealth in Britain, will begin to turn the Corbyn defeat into the defeat of Labour's members, their voters (who stood by Corbyn and the shaky 2019 Manifesto) and most of all, millions of young people. 'Real Labour' has to be critical of the 2019 faults but bold and most of all practically active in their answers. The first demand that 'Real Labour' should make from Labour's would-be leaders is that Britain's undemocratic Parliament, dominated by a mini Trump, must be brought down and replaced as soon as possible.
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