Is a Corbyn government possible?

(This blog is exclusive. It is not a section of the on-going series on Revolution. The fourth part is shortly to be published.)

The significance of the intensity and length of the 'anti-semitic' charge against Labour in general and its leader Corbyn in particular suggests the obvious point that should Corbyn's Labour win a General election and come into government it would face the greatest and most venomous hostility of any previous British government in the modern age.

This fact alone gives pause for thought regarding suggestions from some of the left that a Corbyn led government, perhaps parallel to Syriza, is actually seeking a new settlement with the country's ruling classes via a meek Brexit and some economic reform! Indeed Corbyn's 2017 Manifesto is a a temperate document. It is not as radical as Attlee's 1945 program. But, despite the nod in a reformist direction offered by Britain's Church of England's Arch Bishop, an ex oil executive, Britain's (remaining) ruling class do not sense that the relation of social forces in society requires even the most gentle reform. On the contrary. They are opposed to Corbyn's Labour Party in order to prevent the current shift to the left in the working class becoming, in anyway, dominant. Indeed, rather than accept a Corbyn government they are doing their best to destroy the Labour Party - at least as a Parliamentary and thereby as a governmental, force. They are much more frightened that a Corbyn government would, whether officially recommended or not, build up a new social tidal-wave, and that is of greater concern than the prospect of big British Capital missing out on a half-baked Labour Brexit. For now.

The attacks on Corbyn's Labour confirm two other realities.

First is the direct appeal to Jewish and now to Black voters not to vote for Corbyn's Labour Party. The 'anti-semitic' row is not an internal battle. The self-styled leaders of the campaign are speaking as far as possible to millions of voters who are a large part of Labour's political base in the country. Their message could not be clearer. Don't vote for the Labour Party led by Corbyn. The (Labour) MP Chuka Umunna has tried to extend the anti-semitic insult to a Labour Party that in his words has become 'institutionally racist.' Umunna hoped this was an abuse designed to move another, much larger, section of the traditional Labour constituency among people of colour.  (Consequently his clever little move has bounced back at him and Umunna has had to scrabble around with letters to his constituents claiming that he has no intention whatsoever of supporting an alternative party to Labour. Apparently he is entirely dedicated to stay with an institutionally racist party.)

Second is the difference between the arguments in the two main parties as we go to an impeding General Election.

The gung-ho Tory Brexiteers held a recent meeting to explain their approach to the Irish conundrum. They were at pains to avoid ex Foreign Secretary Boris Johnston's assault on Prime Minister Teresa May. They insisted that they were not (yet) for a change of Tory leadership. Of course the battle will come over leadership if/when Parliament fails to vote for any Brexit 'solution' - or a General Election is called because that has already become clear. But despite the historic implications of removing Britain from the EU (or fudging it) the fight in the Tory Party is not a class struggle. It is a faction fight within a class about the general interests of that class: whether to turn the UK into the biggest (capitalist) tax haven in the world or join the EU bloc in the (capitalist) fight with the US and Asia.

The fight in the Labour Party is a class struggle. (Albeit by proxy.)  A hundred serious Labour MPs want to break, even from Corbyn's relatively timid Manifesto. Further; if elected they will form their own party in Parliament against Corbyn's Labour and join together with others that seek to defend their version of liberal capitalism and its associated restraints on the working class and their services.

Is a Corbyn government possible? Yes. But the crisis of government is only just beginning. If it wins (as the polls still show it should) Labour (unlike the Tories) will split in Parliament - albeit with the split keeping away from a definite alternative party in the country - for the moment.  A Corbyn Labour government will then depend on two factors. The movement of the working class and its allies across the country mobilising around the the critical requirements that society needs. Unlike President Obama, the mobilisation of the people comes first, not just before, but most importantly after, a formal government takes office. If Corbyn's Labour wins then it is the people who will achieve and force their democratic victory on Parliament. Parliament will have to follow the action of the people in its stalemate.

There will of course be more elections, more crises as Britain's ruling class deepens their already long term investment strike and begins to fiddle around with the new Alt Right as a political 'solution' for 'stability'. And then second aspect emerges in its full and urgent course. It will be nothing less than the building of a new (Labour?) Party  - and a new political system. A system that is willing and able to decide and act on whether decaying and failing capitalism is to be our future rather than a system that takes the economics of the country for granted.

Corbyn's charisma

The greatest Labour leader in the history of the British Labour Party was Clement Attlee. He carried through a transformative program immediately after WW2 - in the face of huge war debts - the worst housing crisis in the biggest cities until now - the need to reconstruct most of UK industry into peacetime production - the threat of vast unemployment because of the returning military forces -  and the overthrow of large parts of what had been Britain's lucrative Empire, as the international anti-colonial movement rose in revolt.

When an advisor told him that Attlee had a modest quality which voters liked, Churchill, the British war leader, busting out with charisma in 1945, said this about Attlee -:
'He has much to be modest about!' Churchill went on to score a deep and dramatic loss in the post war election.

Attlee was modest because millions of returning soldiers and sailors and millions who had fought the war at home were modest, ordinary people, people who had suffered through the 1930's economic crises, but they had just helped to win the greatest war in history. In a modest way, as Tory grandee Boothby said.
'If we do not give them reform then they will give us revolution!'

The modest, ordinary people had lived their dramatic lives with Churchill for 4 years, just getting on with their difficult lives. They understood ruling class charisma. They were sick of it.

The modern British mainstream and much of the digital media screams that Corbyn has no charisma. The self-styled 'bloody woman' Tory leader Teresa May claims the legacy of Thatcher, Elizabeth 1st and Boudica. Why? Because she wants to turn the coming June 8 General Election into a patriotic movement against the EU. It is as ludicrous as that. For the last 7 years Tory governments have driven Britain through austerity. As a result the health service, the NHS, is on its knees, the long term  destruction of labour rights has meant a decline in wages and general living standards to pre-2008 levels, even the police are in trouble and serious crime, declining in the West for decades, has risen sharply.  Only the very rich are better off. May is already adding cuts to pensions and education. And that is before the full Tory Election Manifesto is published

Corbyn is a modest politician after a political lifetime on the margins of the Labour Party. He proposes that Labour should reverse austerity, the NHS and education should be refunded, including reviving student grants, that public energy companies be set up, that pensions remain protected, that taxes on big companies and the incomes of the rich go up to 2005, and general European, levels. It is a modest plan. But will Corbyn have the charisma to fight the war with the EU? That is what the Tories, a huge swathe of the all parts of the media, and a lot of Labour's MPs are reducing the 2017 general election to.

Behind this fatuous posturing over the 'Brexit war', is the alarming prospect of a 'fire-sale' of Britain's social infrastructure, the uberisation of most employment, and the emergence of a new (very old) vision of how the West should 'adapt' to the unstoppable forces of globalisation.