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.
Tuesday, 12 July 2016
Tuesday, 5 July 2016
Brexit's future
History has its own momentum and has just wiped out Brexit's front row. Brexit's main leader, Boris Johnston was nailed by his second in command Michael Gove, who promptly destroyed himself by his own breathtaking ambition. The 'brain' and the 'brawn' of Brexit having eaten each other, Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, the long term pilot of Brexit, has now resigned (for the third time) to spend time with the European Parliament!
The British political crisis, the end of Britain's long reputation for 'stability', suddenly sped up and rolled over Brexit's front line in the process. Now the UK is left with a bunch of second rate Tory politicians and 'would be' Prime minister and Cabinet ministers, scrambling to get to the top of the mouldering heap of a deeply wounded government and its uneasy MPs.
Although most of the Tory pack insist it is their intention to carry on governing until 2020, the first glance into Brexit's future would suggest that they are likely to be disappointed.
Brexit, economically speaking, has only just begun. During 2014/15 the UK recorded a total of 1,988 Foreign Direct Investment projects – 12% more than in the previous record-breaking year. And UK inward FDI Stock – the amount of foreign direct investment in the UK - is estimated to have passed the £1 trillion level in 2014. (UK Gov. May 2016.) This was of course considerably bolstered by very large amounts of foreign property purchases, especially in London. However, FDI is a life saver for the British economy. And virtually all economists predict a serious decline in foreign investment in the UK as a result of Brexit. Indeed, according to Bank of England figures it has dwindled, particularly in the property market, since the start of the referendum debate.
Meanwhile domestic investment, by both the government and private capital, has been a systemic problem since WW2 and remains so. As the Office of National Statistics have recently noted:
'...the proportion of total expenditure accounted for by spending on investment has fallen from an average of 13.5% in 2007, to an average of 10.9% during 2012 and to 10.4% in Q2 2013: the lowest level recorded since the 1950s. This compares with 14.1% in France, 16.7% in the United States and 17.9% in Canada. Across the G7, investment accounts for an average of 14.6% of Gross Final Expenditure.'
This means a job crisis.
The 10 - 12% reduction in the value of the £ means imports cost more (including all the 'outsourced' goods currently sold in Britain's shops.) This means the value of wages goes down and a standard of living crisis. The only way to reduce the impact of rising prices is to increase the already nerve wracking levels of domestic debt. Which the Bank of England has just assured can increase at will. This will mean a debt crisis.
Government taxes will fall. For example, currently the City of London is forced to pay a minimal £67 billion a year off its gargantuan profits. Brexit will mean the bleeding away of City wealth holders as financial services will now cost more to sell in the EU. This means the Brexiteers will need to make the City into another tax free zone to keep the world's wealthy and rely on the pickings, or make unprecedented cuts. They will probably do both.
All this could be foreseen if the UK had stayed in the EU - albeit erupting at a different tempo. Taking one (very large ) case, the City of London has been the tail wagging the UK's economic dog for decades and this unstable and unbalanced arrangement was bound to come to grief under the new pressures of the global crisis. Similarly Britain's mountainous domestic debt and the relentless meagerness of its domestic investment, are not sustainable, even in the short term. And the list goes on. As globalisation squeezes through the EU so Britain's series of economic weaknesses would have blown. Brexit has simply brought them all together and made them all blow at once.
This, in the context of the new, fragile, unanchored UK political institutions, means that political crises will rapidly follow any serious economic shake up. As some of the major economic consequences of both Brexit and the new cycle of western economic crises are underway, so a major watershed in the weak link of Britain will break, and break early. The calls for a new vote on Scottish independence will only get louder. The fight against austerity, war and racism can only get sharper. All this melee of politics and economics is therefore likely to produce a general election much earlier than 2020.
The Labour Party crisis has little to do with Brexit, but will certainly be caught up in its tangles. The sources of Labour's crisis are Blair, Scotland and a forty year retreat from even the most basic social democratic perspective. If Corbyn maintains his firm stand in defense of the Labour Party's growth and its membership's rights, he is likely to win any vote for a leader. He would then isolate the most right wing, rancorous and self seeking Labour MPs but not manage in a stroke to remove them. And the next stage of Labour's battle becomes how the right wing Labour MPs attach themselves to a national political purpose through which they might gain office and significance, while maintaining their base in the country.
This is not a puzzle without precedent. The last time there were major economic and political crises in the country, national governments were created to bring together 'the great and the good' (the rich and the powerful) to solve the nation's problems. One can easily imagine the new tyros of the anti-Corbyn League grasping at, or even proposing, the merging of Democratic? Labour with their Tory and Liberal counterparts in a government of national survival. Facing down such a charade, led by a solid Parliamentary, socialist group, backed by the mobilisation of millions in the country, is worth every moment of consternation and the beads of sweat that the Corbyn leadership is now experiencing.
Today, in Britain, big politics and economics are inextricably, moment by moment, bound together. Their intimacy, paradoxically means that the overblown weaknesses of British society are starting to pull apart, between the nations of Britain, inside, as well as between, the mainstream political parties, inside, as well as between, the main classes in society and, underpinning all, economically, where the fundamentals no longer stick together or stack up.
The British political crisis, the end of Britain's long reputation for 'stability', suddenly sped up and rolled over Brexit's front line in the process. Now the UK is left with a bunch of second rate Tory politicians and 'would be' Prime minister and Cabinet ministers, scrambling to get to the top of the mouldering heap of a deeply wounded government and its uneasy MPs.
Although most of the Tory pack insist it is their intention to carry on governing until 2020, the first glance into Brexit's future would suggest that they are likely to be disappointed.
Brexit, economically speaking, has only just begun. During 2014/15 the UK recorded a total of 1,988 Foreign Direct Investment projects – 12% more than in the previous record-breaking year. And UK inward FDI Stock – the amount of foreign direct investment in the UK - is estimated to have passed the £1 trillion level in 2014. (UK Gov. May 2016.) This was of course considerably bolstered by very large amounts of foreign property purchases, especially in London. However, FDI is a life saver for the British economy. And virtually all economists predict a serious decline in foreign investment in the UK as a result of Brexit. Indeed, according to Bank of England figures it has dwindled, particularly in the property market, since the start of the referendum debate.
Meanwhile domestic investment, by both the government and private capital, has been a systemic problem since WW2 and remains so. As the Office of National Statistics have recently noted:
'...the proportion of total expenditure accounted for by spending on investment has fallen from an average of 13.5% in 2007, to an average of 10.9% during 2012 and to 10.4% in Q2 2013: the lowest level recorded since the 1950s. This compares with 14.1% in France, 16.7% in the United States and 17.9% in Canada. Across the G7, investment accounts for an average of 14.6% of Gross Final Expenditure.'
This means a job crisis.
The 10 - 12% reduction in the value of the £ means imports cost more (including all the 'outsourced' goods currently sold in Britain's shops.) This means the value of wages goes down and a standard of living crisis. The only way to reduce the impact of rising prices is to increase the already nerve wracking levels of domestic debt. Which the Bank of England has just assured can increase at will. This will mean a debt crisis.
Government taxes will fall. For example, currently the City of London is forced to pay a minimal £67 billion a year off its gargantuan profits. Brexit will mean the bleeding away of City wealth holders as financial services will now cost more to sell in the EU. This means the Brexiteers will need to make the City into another tax free zone to keep the world's wealthy and rely on the pickings, or make unprecedented cuts. They will probably do both.
All this could be foreseen if the UK had stayed in the EU - albeit erupting at a different tempo. Taking one (very large ) case, the City of London has been the tail wagging the UK's economic dog for decades and this unstable and unbalanced arrangement was bound to come to grief under the new pressures of the global crisis. Similarly Britain's mountainous domestic debt and the relentless meagerness of its domestic investment, are not sustainable, even in the short term. And the list goes on. As globalisation squeezes through the EU so Britain's series of economic weaknesses would have blown. Brexit has simply brought them all together and made them all blow at once.
This, in the context of the new, fragile, unanchored UK political institutions, means that political crises will rapidly follow any serious economic shake up. As some of the major economic consequences of both Brexit and the new cycle of western economic crises are underway, so a major watershed in the weak link of Britain will break, and break early. The calls for a new vote on Scottish independence will only get louder. The fight against austerity, war and racism can only get sharper. All this melee of politics and economics is therefore likely to produce a general election much earlier than 2020.
The Labour Party crisis has little to do with Brexit, but will certainly be caught up in its tangles. The sources of Labour's crisis are Blair, Scotland and a forty year retreat from even the most basic social democratic perspective. If Corbyn maintains his firm stand in defense of the Labour Party's growth and its membership's rights, he is likely to win any vote for a leader. He would then isolate the most right wing, rancorous and self seeking Labour MPs but not manage in a stroke to remove them. And the next stage of Labour's battle becomes how the right wing Labour MPs attach themselves to a national political purpose through which they might gain office and significance, while maintaining their base in the country.
This is not a puzzle without precedent. The last time there were major economic and political crises in the country, national governments were created to bring together 'the great and the good' (the rich and the powerful) to solve the nation's problems. One can easily imagine the new tyros of the anti-Corbyn League grasping at, or even proposing, the merging of Democratic? Labour with their Tory and Liberal counterparts in a government of national survival. Facing down such a charade, led by a solid Parliamentary, socialist group, backed by the mobilisation of millions in the country, is worth every moment of consternation and the beads of sweat that the Corbyn leadership is now experiencing.
Today, in Britain, big politics and economics are inextricably, moment by moment, bound together. Their intimacy, paradoxically means that the overblown weaknesses of British society are starting to pull apart, between the nations of Britain, inside, as well as between, the mainstream political parties, inside, as well as between, the main classes in society and, underpinning all, economically, where the fundamentals no longer stick together or stack up.
Friday, 1 July 2016
Brexit's political future
Brexit is not the prime cause of Britain's current political crisis. The roots of Britain's political crisis are to be found in some of the results of the annual British Social Attitudes Report (30 June 2016.) To the surprise of the researchers, their carefully demographically balanced, 4328 person survey, found that 60% described themselves as working class. Less surprising perhaps, 82% of those working class people said that the gap between Britain's social classes was 'very wide', which was the highest level choice offered in the survey.
The surprise of the researches is shown in their report that 47% of those describing themselves as working class were not in what the surveyors described as traditional working class occupations. They also reported that there had been 'a big rise in support for higher public spending' and that this support 'had risen to levels not seen since before the 2008 crash.' 93% of those surveyed thought that the NHS had spending problems and 32% (a rise from 19% in 2014) thought that the NHS funding problems were severe.
Why are these findings significant in Britain's political crisis? Because they give the lie to the much trumpeted, beloved by the media, 'common sense' of the new political era, described on one side as 'One Nation Conservatism' and all its various sub plots like 'property owning democracy' and Gove's current aim of a 'fair country' etc., And the other, they also sink without trace Blair's Labour 'Classless Society' and all of the associated tripe like 'a middle way' and 'the end of the working class.'
The point here is not that the survey wins an argument, or that yesterday's political leaders will now not yammer on with the same scripts. The argument is rooted in how types of social systems are created and defended, and will not go away as a result of a piece of research. The politicians have nothing else in their armoury than failed ideas, and that has been true for decades. No. The significance of the survey is that it gives people who wish to see it a glimpse of what is, and what has been for decades, a failing and failed society.
It is important to register the rise an opposition to immigration since 2012, as well as a reduction (by 14%) year on year in the now 50% in favour of more spending on the elderly. Equally, support for the unemployed is also reducing. And some of these trends of opinion were obvious in the recent Brexit referendum. But what is now sure is that there was a split in the working class vote over Brexit, rather than an essentially a largely majority working class vote for leaving the EU. The vote in most big cities, in Scotland and in inner London had already given a similar indication. However, the significant effect of the survey on Britain's political crisis, from its origins up to its latest manifestation, is that British capitalism has no set of economics, or mainstream politics, that can stop the enlarging of a working class, in all of its new forms, with a greater and greater experience and understanding that they are living in a society that is not organised in any way in their interests.
This is a tremendous achievement by the people who have to sell their labour.
Consider the economic and political line of march in Britain since the defeat of the Miner's strike in 1985 from the point of view of the working class as a whole. Destruction of half of trade unionism through wreckage of traditional industry and the most severe anti-union laws in Europe; council house sales to end social housing; the shredding of the Labour Party base as the Party is turned into Tories mark 2 and its leaders embark on a series of suicidal wars; the transformation of the contract between labour and capital breaking collective bargaining, from zero hours contracts to 'self' employment. These and other attacks were all resisted. But the tide seemed to go only in one direction. And the working class could only recognise itself though the small trade union movement, through bitter and often local defensive battles, through community action, latterly through the great movements first against war and then against austerity. And there was the relentless insistence of public 'common sense' that the class system was over. On the right this meant the watchword of 'opportunity for all', on the left, the debate was centered the 'politics of identity.'
But the reality of the modern politics and economics of capitalism went on producing its own pressure in the lives and in the minds of millions. Soon the fig leaf of Brexit as a means to open up progress for the majority of Britain's citizens will also fail. It was never a real alternative to those who hold wealth and power now. And although the British political class have jerked to the right, and although that current also finds an initial social base in a section of the working class via the route of immigration and racism, that social base can be challenged as it stands in contradiction to a new working class, A working class that has already moved beyond different types of jobs, or racial distinctions, to self-define both its own class in society and which has understood the fact that their own class is faring badly under capitalism.
While it would be ridiculous to minimise the struggles that have taken place in the past, it would be more absurd to underestimate those that will now take place between the classes in British society (which will include essential battles within the working class itself.) What is new is the change of direction. Britain's rulers have just thrown a desperate card in the pot. They hope to open a more vicious offensive against all other classes in society. They are a part of a global political movement that is going in the same direction. But the fact of the fight over Corbyn, inside mainstream politics, is an indication that working class politics is also rising up in society. Britain's political crisis has been simmering for decades. It has now broken open to the working class. What is new are the mass movements, from the Iraq anti-war march onward, that gave a new face and shape to Britain's new working class. What is new is that there is clearly a working class goal available to fight for - in this melee. Maintaining Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party is the main objective for the working class interest in the daily political storms to come. And that is a dramatic sign that the new working class is becoming a class for itself - for it has broken into what was, since the 1980s, almost entirely the province of the ruling class.
The surprise of the researches is shown in their report that 47% of those describing themselves as working class were not in what the surveyors described as traditional working class occupations. They also reported that there had been 'a big rise in support for higher public spending' and that this support 'had risen to levels not seen since before the 2008 crash.' 93% of those surveyed thought that the NHS had spending problems and 32% (a rise from 19% in 2014) thought that the NHS funding problems were severe.
Why are these findings significant in Britain's political crisis? Because they give the lie to the much trumpeted, beloved by the media, 'common sense' of the new political era, described on one side as 'One Nation Conservatism' and all its various sub plots like 'property owning democracy' and Gove's current aim of a 'fair country' etc., And the other, they also sink without trace Blair's Labour 'Classless Society' and all of the associated tripe like 'a middle way' and 'the end of the working class.'
The point here is not that the survey wins an argument, or that yesterday's political leaders will now not yammer on with the same scripts. The argument is rooted in how types of social systems are created and defended, and will not go away as a result of a piece of research. The politicians have nothing else in their armoury than failed ideas, and that has been true for decades. No. The significance of the survey is that it gives people who wish to see it a glimpse of what is, and what has been for decades, a failing and failed society.
It is important to register the rise an opposition to immigration since 2012, as well as a reduction (by 14%) year on year in the now 50% in favour of more spending on the elderly. Equally, support for the unemployed is also reducing. And some of these trends of opinion were obvious in the recent Brexit referendum. But what is now sure is that there was a split in the working class vote over Brexit, rather than an essentially a largely majority working class vote for leaving the EU. The vote in most big cities, in Scotland and in inner London had already given a similar indication. However, the significant effect of the survey on Britain's political crisis, from its origins up to its latest manifestation, is that British capitalism has no set of economics, or mainstream politics, that can stop the enlarging of a working class, in all of its new forms, with a greater and greater experience and understanding that they are living in a society that is not organised in any way in their interests.
This is a tremendous achievement by the people who have to sell their labour.
Consider the economic and political line of march in Britain since the defeat of the Miner's strike in 1985 from the point of view of the working class as a whole. Destruction of half of trade unionism through wreckage of traditional industry and the most severe anti-union laws in Europe; council house sales to end social housing; the shredding of the Labour Party base as the Party is turned into Tories mark 2 and its leaders embark on a series of suicidal wars; the transformation of the contract between labour and capital breaking collective bargaining, from zero hours contracts to 'self' employment. These and other attacks were all resisted. But the tide seemed to go only in one direction. And the working class could only recognise itself though the small trade union movement, through bitter and often local defensive battles, through community action, latterly through the great movements first against war and then against austerity. And there was the relentless insistence of public 'common sense' that the class system was over. On the right this meant the watchword of 'opportunity for all', on the left, the debate was centered the 'politics of identity.'
But the reality of the modern politics and economics of capitalism went on producing its own pressure in the lives and in the minds of millions. Soon the fig leaf of Brexit as a means to open up progress for the majority of Britain's citizens will also fail. It was never a real alternative to those who hold wealth and power now. And although the British political class have jerked to the right, and although that current also finds an initial social base in a section of the working class via the route of immigration and racism, that social base can be challenged as it stands in contradiction to a new working class, A working class that has already moved beyond different types of jobs, or racial distinctions, to self-define both its own class in society and which has understood the fact that their own class is faring badly under capitalism.
While it would be ridiculous to minimise the struggles that have taken place in the past, it would be more absurd to underestimate those that will now take place between the classes in British society (which will include essential battles within the working class itself.) What is new is the change of direction. Britain's rulers have just thrown a desperate card in the pot. They hope to open a more vicious offensive against all other classes in society. They are a part of a global political movement that is going in the same direction. But the fact of the fight over Corbyn, inside mainstream politics, is an indication that working class politics is also rising up in society. Britain's political crisis has been simmering for decades. It has now broken open to the working class. What is new are the mass movements, from the Iraq anti-war march onward, that gave a new face and shape to Britain's new working class. What is new is that there is clearly a working class goal available to fight for - in this melee. Maintaining Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party is the main objective for the working class interest in the daily political storms to come. And that is a dramatic sign that the new working class is becoming a class for itself - for it has broken into what was, since the 1980s, almost entirely the province of the ruling class.
Wednesday, 29 June 2016
Brexit and Labour's crisis
The paradox of political crises is that they are rarely resolved - unless they are broken through by the new. Efforts directed at simply re-establishing the status quo invariably fail. The existence of the original crisis does not itself create a new reality. It is only human interaction, with and inside the existing crisis that has that potential. The British Labour Party is exactly in that position today.
174 Labour MPs have voted 'no confidence' in Labour leader Corbyn. (40 voted in favour of Corbyn's leadership.) It is obvious that by this means the right wing of the Labour Party, concentrated in the parliamentary section of the party, was trying to lever Corbyn out, starting by trying to avoid a vote by the whole party on who should be its leader, but which the rebels have now to face. (This is a maneuver fraught with dangers as a big vote to keep Corbyn as Labour Party leader would mean that those Labour MPs who have struck their blows at his leadership instantly become a group identified as anti Labour Party as a whole.)
What is this division in Labour based on? The first thing to note it has little to do with Corbyn's efforts, or lack of them, on behalf of the 'remain' (in the EU) campaign - or his supposed inability to win elections - or his mild manners and 'poor show' in Parliament. (Attlee who led the country into full employment, the welfare state and the state ownership of basic industry was generally described as modest and shy. ('He has a lot to be modest about' scowled the post war election loser Churchill.) In fact Corbyn has presided over a couple of good results in by-elections; a great result for London Mayor and, according to polls, 'won' 63% of Labour voters to the 'remain' cause (much more than several of his most prominent opponents managed in their own constituencies.) This attack has been planned by Labour's right wing and started by Hilary Benn, in an organised, last ditch effort to remove Corbyn, as right wing Labour MPs realised that they might have to go into an early General Election as a result of Brexit. Their original timetable for their coup was premised on the time they had available given a 2020 election.
But Britain's political crisis exposes in detail the real dynamics of the Labour Party. Close to the time of Labour's foundation a minority of the international left analysed the British Labour Party as a 'bourgeois, workers' party; supported by the working class at its base; led, organised and politically operated by those who supported the system. The friction, contest and finally the battle between these two forces would, in the end they surmised, seal Labour's fate.
This original class character of the British Labour Party has moved on from the time of Lenin's considerations. Most recently, Blair's efforts destroyed the traditional loyalty of millions of working class people for 'their' party. And the removal of the famous Clause 4 of Labour's constitution, which called for the workers 'by hand or by brain' to have control over the means of production, duly replaced by liberal managerial drivel, marked the point where the British Labour Party had abandoned the seminal idea that it stood for a different sort of society than that which was offered by capitalism. Accordingly, the active base of the Labour Party shriveled and virtually died. This of course followed the halving of trade unionism as a result of a decade of terrible defeats.
Nevertheless, despite the SNP's victory in Scotland and despite UKIP's 3.6 million votes and despite taking the blame for the Banker's crisis, the Labour Party still mobilised 9 million votes in the 2015 general election. Among millions of blue and white collar and service workers and their families, Labour was still the choice made against UKIP, the Liberals and the Tories in England and Wales. Meanwhile an enormous anti-austerity movement had grown up and it rolled forward, dramatically confronting a weak Tory victory in 2015. Realizing that the political system must change to block austerity, tens of thousands of mainly young people and those disgusted by Blair's warmongering then flooded into the empty Labour committee rooms under the new rules to vote for the new leader. Naturally they wanted an anti-war and an anti-austerity Labour leader.
This almost entirely new base of membership of the party suddenly reproduced some of the internal conditions of the Labour Party at its origin. A new contradiction between the classes roared up, bottled for the moment inside the Labour Party. From a position of almost unassailable (if empty) domination of the party by a post socialist, rich-loving cabal, the Labour leadership found itself under siege from its own membership. The roots of the decaying post Blairite leadership in the British ruling class were always temporary and proved utterly fragile at a single assault from several hundred thousand young people who had walked through the Party's door. From the point after the 2015 election where they made a lot of sound and fury about the need to restore Blairism, those would-be leaders toppled, almost without a push, in the party leadership elections.
Now, this time perhaps as 'farce', Labour's right wing MPs, still scared of the future, still aching for a quiet turn back to the 1995 status quo, have launched an all out assault ... on the party membership! And the historic friction and ultimate class contradiction of Labour re-emerges, as the remnants of a bourgeois, worker's party fight out which sections of society should be represented by the Labour Party. But this time there is no 'Imperial preference' to pay off a vast labour bureaucracy and the aristocracy of labour, there is no Keynsian compromise to be made with globalisation, there is no forced 'consensus' between the wealthy and the rest on the requirement for a social wage. Therefore this has turned into a fight to the finish for Labour.
The British Labour Party has lost Scotland. Even the critical left that is (rightly) emerging in Scotland sees Scottish Labour as part of the problem. Large sections of Labour's traditional vote, especially in the North East and in Wales are on the cusp of losing the remnants of their loyalty to Labour. Part of the Labour right wing MP's enervation, even hysteria is spawned from the dawning realisation that Labour has little chance of forming a government in the foreseeable future - outside coalition - whatever they manage to do with Corbyn and the left. The truth of it is that 'traditional' Labour has run its course. It is done. That is the unbearable vision of the future, opened up by the current crisis that has terrified 174 Labour MPs, who, up to now, were full of ambition and their own sense of entitlement.
Time to create a new fact.
To create a new political fact it is necessary to see clearly the existing ones. No wonder Lenin described facts as revolutionary. First, the historic shift of the Scottish working class and intermediate layers of society away from the Labour Party and towards the SNP is unlikely to change back outside of an entirely new social convulsion. Certainly Brexit shows no signs of signaling such a convulsion among the Scots. On the contrary, it is taken as further underpinning the argument for independence. The Labour Party has lost at all three levels; the leadership, the membership and the social base of support, in Scotland.
In the North East, the East Midlands and in Wales a measure of the traditional Labour vote had already deserted to UKIP in the 2015 election. This was consolidated broadly in a nationalist and racist direction by the 'exit' vote in the EU referendum. Unlike the call for Independence in Scotland, the Johnson, Gove, Farage perspective does not constitute a general political project with a new version of society and remains very contestable especially in the very likely context of worse austerity, more rationing of services and no change in the gap between the rich and poor. But, so far, that contest has not been had and the consequences of denial of the current reality grow larger for the Labour Party as the 'return' to a fantasy British history festers.
If Labour's 174 anti-Corbyn MPs had an SDP to join (the party that emerged in the 1980s to defeat Labour led by Michael Foot and Tony Benn) they would join it. Even so their attack on Corbyn takes place despite their secret knowledge that the traditional Labour Party may never again be able to form a government (and therefore they will not get a government post and the ladder into the City of London etc., will not, after all, be let down for them and therefore Lord Mandelson and his hero Blair are to be the last of the golden Labour spiv generation accepted by Britain's real rulers who hold wealth and power.)
If these people nevertheless win Labour's husk and defeat their own new Party membership, they will not confront racism in the Welsh Valleys or in Sunderland; they will avoid it and then concede to it. They will not be able to open the door to a new left in Scotland, accepting the right of independence, making alliances with the SNP on Trident and austerity and driving that through in ways that expose the limits and concessions that the SNP leadership constantly make. Instead they will try to tackle the SNP from the right! Their vote will drop substantially from the 9 million that Labour scored in 2015. In the final analysis they will become a wing of a 'national government' to 'defend Britain' together with the new Tory Party right wing, either by a worked through agreement, de jure, or in day to day practice, de facto.
But it also has to be accepted that Labour's left, even should it win the present battle and isolate its new right, will not be able to form a new government autonomously. A new government from an early General Election is more than possible against the reeling Tories. A freed up left would be able to reach directly into some of the traditional Labour heartlands with a bold new emergency programme - completely unavailable to their opponents in the Party. However, the old certainties are over and Labour's left leadership, even were it to hold the 9 million, will still need to face some of its own MPs opposing its measures, it will need to build a government in alliance with the SNP and the Greens and Plaid Cymru on its radical programme. Old Labour, and its false unity, circa 1950s to 2007, is dead. Blair, Brown, Miliband and the current battle have made sure of that. In other words, a new type of working class based political formation is required in mainstream politics and Labour's left leadership can be in a position to begin that construction. Better smaller, but better.
This is the end for the Labour Party, as it has existed since 1900. The choice is how can its best elements, its membership against austerity, poverty, war and racism; its leaders who will fight for the disadvantaged; its voters in the past and in the present, can win out over those who would serve the system first. Of course it is better if all of the Labour Party can be won to challenge the failures past and the failures to come from a system that just doesn't work and has not worked for years for the majority. Unfortunately (and from its birth) that schism has run through Labour. Now it has broken wide open. It may well mean a smaller group of MPs and Labour leaders have to speak to the largest classes in society after this battle. But the words will be heard if they are clear and sure. No more austerity: New wealth taxes: End poverty: Protect the poor: Build our services and communities: No foreign war and no nukes: Get rid of racism: Houses for all; and, after the power of the referendum, let us continue with - Fair Votes. This would be how to build a potential new fact that can break through the crisis.
Saturday, 25 June 2016
Dangerous Times
These are dangerous times for the UK and the EU. Those who would be mainstream political leaders need to use their opportunity to speak to the mass of the UK population with care. The best example of a leader offering a way forward in the context of Britain's new right wing as it consolidates its weight and power in the UK, was Nicola Sturgeon. Whatever view might be held in the English and Welsh Labour movement about Scottish independence, the Scottish National Party leader and chief minister in the Scottish parliament was able to give a clear route out of the gathering mess in English and Welsh politics. Scotland needed to re-look at its own independence. She managed to create a message of hope in the confusion and defeat (for nearly two-thirds of Scottish voters) following the EU referendum. That is the approach that genuinely 'steadies the ship'. It reorganises the big political and economic perspectives in a tangible and positive way; for the people.
What 'walking dead' PM Cameron could offer in his speech outside number 10 was his best efforts on behalf of the country he loved (not reciprocated). He will stay on until September, he said, to 'steady the ship'. It was a lachrymose, self-pitying performance that will not alter one particle of the damage he has done. And the political tidal wave that he has unleashed, the re-composition of right-wing politics (and economics) in Britain, is unaltered as it surges forward, accepting one Eton boy's 'sacrifice' and promoting another on the crest of its wave.
The trembling uncertainty now manifest in Britain's so so solid political institutions, and the terrible cracks opened up among the population at large, (youth against the old, London against the North East Wales and the Midlands, Scotland against England etc., etc) are the context now for mainstream (indeed any) political leadership. And 'steadying the ship' by itself is not any sort of answer.
(It is worth noting that it is the pressure from the new and switching pro EU-exit voters, mainly from the working class, that is causing UKIP leader Farage such a headache. Should he bring his UKIP battalions with him inside the new Tory party, dissolve them into its organisation and seek a central leadership position himself? Or will the inevitable 'shilly shallying' of the globalista Tory elites (now already denying that they will reduce immigration) mean that the UKIP army needs to be kept intact on the lawn of the new Tory edifice as a permanent warning?)
Which brings us the leadership of the Labour Party. Bankers, confused leaders of the Civil Service, multi-nationals and Russian property owners want a steady ship. They want nothing else to happen for a good long while so they might make their self-serving arrangements to put their wealth and resources in the most accessible and lucrative places without further disturbance. But the mass of ordinary people are not seeking 'deep breaths' or 'time to calm down', especially those millions of previously Labour voters or those previously disenfranchised by the total unrepresentativeness of the main political parties. On the contrary; they want to see action - as a result of their decision.
It is a time for the new, left Labour leadership to make its mark and re frame the next stage of mass politics. Leaving the ship steadiers to their own business, what Corbyn should have made of his first post Brexit speech, which would have forced his testy MPs into line as well as directly speaking to the new layers in society now politically aroused, is the elaboration of two great proposals. First, Labour should lead the charge for a new General Election. No new PM without a new election. No more austerity. No more poverty. A minimum and a maximum income for all. Rebuild Britain. Save our services. Second, fair votes. Let all the peoples' votes always count and in all elections.
Defensive formulations and steadying the ship will not cut it either inside or outside the Labour Party. Not now. Instead the crisis must be faced, redefined and transformed. In great political moments, that have not yet lead to definitive victory or defeat, only the boldest actions carry the day.
Friday, 24 June 2016
Brexicated
There is a temptation to shout 'hurrah' when the establishment take an insurgent blow as brutal as the June 23 British vote for Brexit. Major corporations, huge banks and finance houses, a whole European and British political class, are stunned at the insouciant temerity of millions of poor people pissing on their lawn.
But history has used insurgency in many times and forms. London's Gordon Riots of 1780 were an early sign, but with a reactionary face, of what was to become a great radical, progressive and revolutionary wave, led in action by the 'sans culottes', across France in the 1780s and 90s. In 1966 Chairman Mao used millions of revolutionary minded youth, mobilized as a result of a faction struggle in the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, as he sought popular (and murderous) defenses against his critics. Alas mass commitment, even with an apparently democratic twist, does not in itself signify that the interests of working class people have been served, despite any emotional fall out gained from 'dissing' the fat cats. (And arguments from the left that rely on such notions are worthless.)
Nevertheless it is worth an initial look at the social voting patterns for Brexit across the UK to begin to root any political analysis of meaning of the vote in healthy ground.
First, the argument that a great northern and working class rebellion in England 'won' Brexit does not stand up. Sheffield (518k population) narrowly voted to leave the EU. But Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle etc., (1.75 million) voted to remain. The section of traditional Labour Party voters in the North of England who voted for Brexit, came mainly from smaller towns and were concentrated particularly strongly in the Northeast (but not Newcastle.) 58% of voters in the Northeast voted Brexit compared with the UK average of 52%. The working class vote in the North of England as a whole on EU membership was divided - and this is not news. UKIP scored high votes in a number of traditionally Labour constituencies in the Northeast in the 2015 election - particularly in the smaller towns. And it was the Northeast of England, along with the Welsh Valleys, that had their economic and social structure most destroyed, without any reconstruction by any government, as a result of the defeat of the Miners in the 1980s and 90s.
In other parts of the UK working class reaction to Brexit was also divided, but with majorities for staying in the EU. This was apparent from the vote in the poorer boroughs of London, Cardiff, Bristol, etc. In Scotland the 'remain' vote was victorious in every part of the country. And a (still) profoundly working class city and its environs, Glasgow, voted 2 to 1 to remain in the EU.
Significantly young people who voted were 72% more likely to vote to stay in the EU and those from 25 to 49 years voted in their majority for 'remain'. (UGov poll 23 June.) It is difficult to believe that these millions of younger voters are any sort of a part of the establishment!
To draw out some provisional conclusions from this initial survey; the result of the EU referendum is not fundamentally a class uprising against the status quo. We are not seeing the alienated poor intent on damaging the economic and political system of Britain and of the EU. In some of the most shattered and shredded regions of England and Wales, poisoned by Thatcher and then hung out to dry by the UK rulers' universal embrace of globalisation, we see a negative, often an anti-immigrant and racist reaction to any opportunity afforded to make a mark on the history of the country. But in areas with similar social and economic conditions, where working class people, abandoned by Labour's Blairism and then austerity, built new leaderships and new perspectives that offered a different route forward, the vote was to 'remain'.
Scotland's working class grasped new perspectives, the prospect of creating a new country, as the traditional Labour Party abandoned them. No such possibility applied in the Northeast or the Midlands and it is the relentless, one sided loyalty to Welsh Labour that has turned the Welsh Valleys into the opposite of their progressive past as Plaid Cymru was unable to break even that tenuous link. In Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein assured a majority for staying in the EU.
Elsewhere, traditional 'middle England' played its normal arcane role, totting up its hurts since the end of Empire, and spitting them back at the Tory party leaders that had become too metropolitan.
Undoubtedly the EU troubles and the ongoing British political crisis (see many previous blogs) will both heighten as a result of Britain's unexpected turn from orthodoxy. But it must be remembered that the referendum was never about who should hold power or wealth either internationally or in Britain. Both 'sides' argued for deepening globalisation. Indeed, the exiteers were most vociferous in their desire to roll back all the European 'restraints' on employers. In that they have begun to construct the British version of Hungary and Poland's new right wing regimes and are a UK echo of Trump's fight for power in the US. All these new leaderships (plus the Austrian and the French and Dutch far right) use opposition to the EU as a fig leaf for their deep commitment to the destruction of labour and of immigrant rights; two of the major social forces, along with youth, that can challenge globalisation from a non-nationalist standpoint.
Before the Brexit result, the opening out of the crisis of the Tory Party was the main consequence of the EU debate in Britain. Today, 24 April, the main aspect of the British political crisis is with the Labour Party, more precisely with Corbyn's leadership of it. Besides the loss of 25 Scottish MPs and the renewal of the prospects of another Scottish referendum, Corbyn has now inherited the further consolidation of a right wing oriented social base in a large section of what were traditional Labour voters. It is of course absurd to blame Corbyn for these developments, for not campaigning hard enough for the wretched EU. The break up of Labour's base starts even earlier than Blair. And defending the EU 'remain' vote as anything other than a means of stopping yet another Bullendon Boy from grabbing the leadership of the Tories under a new and more right wing banner, was never going to raise much enthusiasm. In other words, the referendum had to be used by Corbyn and Labour for something else.
Now Corbyn faces an early execution; another signal that the course of events in the UK, mirroring as they do the political developments in the rest of the West, is now flowing away from the promise and initiative of the left in the UK that flourished from 2012 to 2015. In reality the Corbyn leadership was never going to be able to 'win over' the bulk of the parliamentary Labour Party. He stood and stands for the working class interest above all and they do not. A schism was and remains inevitable in the old Labour Party although tactical astuteness is a critical factor in its emergence and conclusion. Corbyn was always fighting to lead Labour and to lead Labour into a general election. That continues to be the best context in which to marginalise the sections of Labour that will break from Corbyn's management. The direct and unambiguous call for an early general election by the Labour leadership is now indispensable. This will drive the mainstream political momentum back to the left taking the initiative from the right. A new (rightist) Tory PM has no mandate. A new economic world has to be built in Britain as the City of London prepares to set sail for pastures new (in Frankfurt or Paris unless Boris agrees that the City can be a tax free haven like Hong Kong or Singapore.) Scotland will have another referendum. All this requires an election asap and dramatic new politics and policies to bridge the gap between rich and poor and build a new society.
Out of that (and only out of that) will emerge the prospects of a new Labour Party with a significant number of MPs, that can lead the battle with the Tories and begin to make the alliances needed to build a genuine left in Britain
Next: Prospects for EU.
But history has used insurgency in many times and forms. London's Gordon Riots of 1780 were an early sign, but with a reactionary face, of what was to become a great radical, progressive and revolutionary wave, led in action by the 'sans culottes', across France in the 1780s and 90s. In 1966 Chairman Mao used millions of revolutionary minded youth, mobilized as a result of a faction struggle in the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, as he sought popular (and murderous) defenses against his critics. Alas mass commitment, even with an apparently democratic twist, does not in itself signify that the interests of working class people have been served, despite any emotional fall out gained from 'dissing' the fat cats. (And arguments from the left that rely on such notions are worthless.)
Nevertheless it is worth an initial look at the social voting patterns for Brexit across the UK to begin to root any political analysis of meaning of the vote in healthy ground.
First, the argument that a great northern and working class rebellion in England 'won' Brexit does not stand up. Sheffield (518k population) narrowly voted to leave the EU. But Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle etc., (1.75 million) voted to remain. The section of traditional Labour Party voters in the North of England who voted for Brexit, came mainly from smaller towns and were concentrated particularly strongly in the Northeast (but not Newcastle.) 58% of voters in the Northeast voted Brexit compared with the UK average of 52%. The working class vote in the North of England as a whole on EU membership was divided - and this is not news. UKIP scored high votes in a number of traditionally Labour constituencies in the Northeast in the 2015 election - particularly in the smaller towns. And it was the Northeast of England, along with the Welsh Valleys, that had their economic and social structure most destroyed, without any reconstruction by any government, as a result of the defeat of the Miners in the 1980s and 90s.
In other parts of the UK working class reaction to Brexit was also divided, but with majorities for staying in the EU. This was apparent from the vote in the poorer boroughs of London, Cardiff, Bristol, etc. In Scotland the 'remain' vote was victorious in every part of the country. And a (still) profoundly working class city and its environs, Glasgow, voted 2 to 1 to remain in the EU.
Significantly young people who voted were 72% more likely to vote to stay in the EU and those from 25 to 49 years voted in their majority for 'remain'. (UGov poll 23 June.) It is difficult to believe that these millions of younger voters are any sort of a part of the establishment!
To draw out some provisional conclusions from this initial survey; the result of the EU referendum is not fundamentally a class uprising against the status quo. We are not seeing the alienated poor intent on damaging the economic and political system of Britain and of the EU. In some of the most shattered and shredded regions of England and Wales, poisoned by Thatcher and then hung out to dry by the UK rulers' universal embrace of globalisation, we see a negative, often an anti-immigrant and racist reaction to any opportunity afforded to make a mark on the history of the country. But in areas with similar social and economic conditions, where working class people, abandoned by Labour's Blairism and then austerity, built new leaderships and new perspectives that offered a different route forward, the vote was to 'remain'.
Scotland's working class grasped new perspectives, the prospect of creating a new country, as the traditional Labour Party abandoned them. No such possibility applied in the Northeast or the Midlands and it is the relentless, one sided loyalty to Welsh Labour that has turned the Welsh Valleys into the opposite of their progressive past as Plaid Cymru was unable to break even that tenuous link. In Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein assured a majority for staying in the EU.
Elsewhere, traditional 'middle England' played its normal arcane role, totting up its hurts since the end of Empire, and spitting them back at the Tory party leaders that had become too metropolitan.
Undoubtedly the EU troubles and the ongoing British political crisis (see many previous blogs) will both heighten as a result of Britain's unexpected turn from orthodoxy. But it must be remembered that the referendum was never about who should hold power or wealth either internationally or in Britain. Both 'sides' argued for deepening globalisation. Indeed, the exiteers were most vociferous in their desire to roll back all the European 'restraints' on employers. In that they have begun to construct the British version of Hungary and Poland's new right wing regimes and are a UK echo of Trump's fight for power in the US. All these new leaderships (plus the Austrian and the French and Dutch far right) use opposition to the EU as a fig leaf for their deep commitment to the destruction of labour and of immigrant rights; two of the major social forces, along with youth, that can challenge globalisation from a non-nationalist standpoint.
Before the Brexit result, the opening out of the crisis of the Tory Party was the main consequence of the EU debate in Britain. Today, 24 April, the main aspect of the British political crisis is with the Labour Party, more precisely with Corbyn's leadership of it. Besides the loss of 25 Scottish MPs and the renewal of the prospects of another Scottish referendum, Corbyn has now inherited the further consolidation of a right wing oriented social base in a large section of what were traditional Labour voters. It is of course absurd to blame Corbyn for these developments, for not campaigning hard enough for the wretched EU. The break up of Labour's base starts even earlier than Blair. And defending the EU 'remain' vote as anything other than a means of stopping yet another Bullendon Boy from grabbing the leadership of the Tories under a new and more right wing banner, was never going to raise much enthusiasm. In other words, the referendum had to be used by Corbyn and Labour for something else.
Now Corbyn faces an early execution; another signal that the course of events in the UK, mirroring as they do the political developments in the rest of the West, is now flowing away from the promise and initiative of the left in the UK that flourished from 2012 to 2015. In reality the Corbyn leadership was never going to be able to 'win over' the bulk of the parliamentary Labour Party. He stood and stands for the working class interest above all and they do not. A schism was and remains inevitable in the old Labour Party although tactical astuteness is a critical factor in its emergence and conclusion. Corbyn was always fighting to lead Labour and to lead Labour into a general election. That continues to be the best context in which to marginalise the sections of Labour that will break from Corbyn's management. The direct and unambiguous call for an early general election by the Labour leadership is now indispensable. This will drive the mainstream political momentum back to the left taking the initiative from the right. A new (rightist) Tory PM has no mandate. A new economic world has to be built in Britain as the City of London prepares to set sail for pastures new (in Frankfurt or Paris unless Boris agrees that the City can be a tax free haven like Hong Kong or Singapore.) Scotland will have another referendum. All this requires an election asap and dramatic new politics and policies to bridge the gap between rich and poor and build a new society.
Out of that (and only out of that) will emerge the prospects of a new Labour Party with a significant number of MPs, that can lead the battle with the Tories and begin to make the alliances needed to build a genuine left in Britain
Next: Prospects for EU.
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