The want of any strategic vision of Britain's Prime Minister Teresa May, is obvious. But her dismal Parliamentary tactics are working away. They are designed to maintain her role as the UK's most important politician regardless of cost. The results of this dogged daily heave to victory may be grim for her but they are potentially destructive and dangerous for most of the people in the country that she aches to lead.
The danger for most Britons does not lie in any sensible step away from the EU. In reality the EU leadership would happily join the barrage that big Capital will launch in the event of a Corbyn government. Indeed, the EU would provide the key laws designed (among others by Margaret Thatcher) that 'prove' Corbyn's program is illegal!
But, as a matter of fact, should Britain remain in the EU, the current upheaval against austerity across the European Continent, despite the rise of the right, already reduces the power of Europe's traditional political and economic rulers. A Corbyn government (whether 'out' or 'in') would still find significant allies for its direction of travel across the EU and beyond. But it would need to start from the repudiation, not just opposition, of key EU statutes.
The real danger for most people in Britain now lies in the eruption of a wild, blinkered, madness created by the Tory Party right, as they haul and grab their way to the abundant riches promised by a European Singapore. This certainly does start from a 'no deal' Brexit.
This is the direction that the Tories and their government will travel (however May footles around with her blown-out plan). Why? For two reasons. First the biggest single economic force in Britain is centred in the City - of London. Inevitably that will be prime mover for Britain's new attempt to 'open itself to the whole world'. It is the only engine in the British economy available to to make the 'deals' which Messrs Trade Minister Fox et al slaver over. Second, May and her wretched plan have no coherent or strategic content. It was dissolved in Parliament where it is now allowed to be resurrected out of the ancient murk of Britain's tottering democracy, but it will be crushed definitively by the real world of international Capitalism - if the Tory government survives. And in its place will come the real objective, currently being prepared by the Tory right-wing.
Coming out of the EU successfully - from the point of view of ordinary British people - has to start from the end of the Tory government and the creation of a government that will lead the drive against austerity and the wealth and power of the City.
Tuesday, 22 January 2019
Thursday, 17 January 2019
Brexit tricks
The collapse of the British PM May's Brexit plan (on the 15th of January her proposed deal was crushed by a big majority of MPs led by the Labour Party) is now being replaced by May's biggest trick so far.
The Prime Minister told Parliament that she would consult with the leaders of the other Parties in Parliament and with leading MPs in order to get a consensus for a new deal. Accordingly, various addled Party leaders duly tramped up to Number 10. 'At last' they said, May is consulting with us!' They all told PM May their very interesting versions of an ideal Brexit and, in the case of the ancient, but media loving leader of the Liberal Democrats, his proposal for another referendum. May of course knew all this stuff months ago and is not interested in any of it. Apparently she said very little to her excited 'consultees', nodded a lot, added the odd question and then sent them all away to get their 5 minute interviews on the TV channels explaining how important it was for them to talk to the PM.
Simultaneously Labour's leader, Corbyn refused to meet May unless she dumped the wild schemes of her Party's right wing, to leave the EU without a deal (and open the world's largest tax haven.) Despite the howl of indignation of the nations' mainstream media against Corbyn's 'bad show' he was the only leader in Parliament with the wit and wisdom to refuse May's farcical invite. Naturally May is not dumping the 'no deal' Brexit because her plan depends on the 'No Deal' maniacs levering the rest of her MPs into support for what? Why, it is version 2 of the 'dead and buried' January 15 deal - but now decorated for the DUP. (The 10 DUPers are the only people in Parliament that she will give any decorations to because they give her a majority in Parliament and they also prevent any scary General Elections where she might disappear!)
And, surprise after surprise; Parliament have now been told that there will be no vote on the January 15 mark 2 proposed deal - until January 29. Time ticks away. May hopes to terrify her brave Tory rebels into supporters. And if January 29 is not close enough to the March deadline, she hopes to do the same again to get through February etc.
May is a narrow thinker and utterly self-absorbed. But she is heroic (and crafty) in her self-defence. She does not present this cause in terms of the future of Britain and its depressed, angry and sold-out people. Instead she is determined to rule this particular bit of history in her name. Except Labour leader Corbyn has exposed her shenanigans. His clear thinking is the best platform for more action in Parliament (and, who knows, in May's normally terrified Cabinet) to block this latest manoeuvre and push open the potential for the changes, including in Brexit, that might end up defending ordinary peoples' lives.
The Prime Minister told Parliament that she would consult with the leaders of the other Parties in Parliament and with leading MPs in order to get a consensus for a new deal. Accordingly, various addled Party leaders duly tramped up to Number 10. 'At last' they said, May is consulting with us!' They all told PM May their very interesting versions of an ideal Brexit and, in the case of the ancient, but media loving leader of the Liberal Democrats, his proposal for another referendum. May of course knew all this stuff months ago and is not interested in any of it. Apparently she said very little to her excited 'consultees', nodded a lot, added the odd question and then sent them all away to get their 5 minute interviews on the TV channels explaining how important it was for them to talk to the PM.
Simultaneously Labour's leader, Corbyn refused to meet May unless she dumped the wild schemes of her Party's right wing, to leave the EU without a deal (and open the world's largest tax haven.) Despite the howl of indignation of the nations' mainstream media against Corbyn's 'bad show' he was the only leader in Parliament with the wit and wisdom to refuse May's farcical invite. Naturally May is not dumping the 'no deal' Brexit because her plan depends on the 'No Deal' maniacs levering the rest of her MPs into support for what? Why, it is version 2 of the 'dead and buried' January 15 deal - but now decorated for the DUP. (The 10 DUPers are the only people in Parliament that she will give any decorations to because they give her a majority in Parliament and they also prevent any scary General Elections where she might disappear!)
And, surprise after surprise; Parliament have now been told that there will be no vote on the January 15 mark 2 proposed deal - until January 29. Time ticks away. May hopes to terrify her brave Tory rebels into supporters. And if January 29 is not close enough to the March deadline, she hopes to do the same again to get through February etc.
May is a narrow thinker and utterly self-absorbed. But she is heroic (and crafty) in her self-defence. She does not present this cause in terms of the future of Britain and its depressed, angry and sold-out people. Instead she is determined to rule this particular bit of history in her name. Except Labour leader Corbyn has exposed her shenanigans. His clear thinking is the best platform for more action in Parliament (and, who knows, in May's normally terrified Cabinet) to block this latest manoeuvre and push open the potential for the changes, including in Brexit, that might end up defending ordinary peoples' lives.
Wednesday, 9 January 2019
Britain's Brexit troubles.
When US President Trump walked across the G20 podium, ignoring the host Argentina's President Mauricio Macri, he was heard demanding to someone in the wings to -
'Get me out of here!'
Trump likes to populate his own podiums and carefully constructs his 'love-in' audiences. The UK Prime Minister, Teresa May is the opposite. She is uncertain on her Party's podiums and frightened of her closest allies. Teresa May, is secretive and suspicious. The pressures of Brexit have sharpened, even exposed, many characteristics of of Britain's leading politicians. PM May is revealed by her haunting ambitions to remain PM at all costs - regardless of the loss of dignity, the hostility of her party members and her lack of any strategic imagination, she keeps running only on her sense of her own significance. She is of course a product of the dire condition of her party that has itself vacated from its traditional role in its historic defence of Britain's ruling class.
PM May, despite her dogged self-defence, will be seen as a minor, unresolved and uncertain figure in Britain's political history. Unlike Thatcher for example, May has no vision or perspective for the future of British capitalism, let alone British society. Even her would-be pithy sayings have collapsed spectacularly, virtually almost as soon as she had (endlessly) related them. A 'strong and stable government' was washed away by an election that she called, and which has created the most incoherent government in living memory. 'Brexit is Brexit' has turned into 101 versions of Brexit without any deal that protects the majority of British working class people. 'No deal is better than a bad deal' has been entirely reversed by her own proposal of a very bad deal indeed. That same 'deal' destroys her prediction that 'nothing is agreed until everything is agreed'. Instead May proposes that the UK pays the EU and follows its rules while nothing substantial has been agreed at all.
Could it get worse? It does. May's one talent of keeping-on, keeping-on and the fear of all of the factions of the Tory Party of a General Election, is the increasingly sterile basis of her utterly uncertain command. PM May would literally allow anything rather than accept a Corbyn-led Labour government. She reminded us all of the real danger of the 'dark forces' represented by Messrs Corbyn and McDonnell, Labour's main leaders, even as she was defending herself from being shot down by her own party!
The leadership crisis in Britain's mainstream politics also extends to the Labour Party (which is riven by class contradictions as well as its factional differences.) This has two key aspects. One large, group of Labour MPs give first priority to a new EU referendum, based on the general mainstream view that the UK economy will do less well in all versions of Brexit so far, compared with remaining in the EU. Others, closer to Corbyn, still argue that a General Election is the first priority. Labour's strategy, as voted at their conference, agreed with this priority and placed support for a possible 'Peoples Vote' as a last resort. The millions outside the Labour Party, looking for answers to the Tories' crisis, accurately see Labour's two different proposals not as a logical extension but rather as a confusion of alternatives. And they are right.
It is a simple truth that the most radical parts of the new Labour Party's 2017 Manifesto run against EU laws and rules. Yet it is the strongest weapon in Labour's armoury. It would be the means by which Labour could win an election - at least in respect of the big majorities in society who are angry at inequalities, private mismanagement of public services, the running down of community police, schools and the destruction and theft of public wealth.
Labour's uneasy Labour Party conference 'alliance' between MPs that want to remain in the EU, as much as anything else because it would be a block Labour's manifesto measures, and those that demand an election to open the possibility of a new sort of economy, cannot hold. The 'alliance' is already preventing Labour from directly and powerfully winning the hearts and minds of an increasingly puzzled and demoralised population which sees the Tories collapsing and Labour apparently dithering.
Of course Britain's political crisis is a crisis of the mainstream parties. It was always inevitable as social forces erupt. But Britain's two main parties have different destinies in which the Brexit battle is only a part. Eventually, perhaps later than sooner, the new Tories will coagulate around the mission of a regrouped ruling class, in or out of the EU. A Labour Party and government however will face a class war against its proposals - a war which will require the removal of the EU's rules either inside or out, and Labour's implementation of its projects and its divisions will see its MPs falling on either side of the sharpest line of all - the division between classes.
The responsibility of the new Labour leadership is to explain, now, to the people, that their essential reforms will require overturning the whole status quo - which includes breaking Brussel's main economic rules and the traditional direction beloved by the bulk of Labour MPs.
'Get me out of here!'
Trump likes to populate his own podiums and carefully constructs his 'love-in' audiences. The UK Prime Minister, Teresa May is the opposite. She is uncertain on her Party's podiums and frightened of her closest allies. Teresa May, is secretive and suspicious. The pressures of Brexit have sharpened, even exposed, many characteristics of of Britain's leading politicians. PM May is revealed by her haunting ambitions to remain PM at all costs - regardless of the loss of dignity, the hostility of her party members and her lack of any strategic imagination, she keeps running only on her sense of her own significance. She is of course a product of the dire condition of her party that has itself vacated from its traditional role in its historic defence of Britain's ruling class.
PM May, despite her dogged self-defence, will be seen as a minor, unresolved and uncertain figure in Britain's political history. Unlike Thatcher for example, May has no vision or perspective for the future of British capitalism, let alone British society. Even her would-be pithy sayings have collapsed spectacularly, virtually almost as soon as she had (endlessly) related them. A 'strong and stable government' was washed away by an election that she called, and which has created the most incoherent government in living memory. 'Brexit is Brexit' has turned into 101 versions of Brexit without any deal that protects the majority of British working class people. 'No deal is better than a bad deal' has been entirely reversed by her own proposal of a very bad deal indeed. That same 'deal' destroys her prediction that 'nothing is agreed until everything is agreed'. Instead May proposes that the UK pays the EU and follows its rules while nothing substantial has been agreed at all.
Could it get worse? It does. May's one talent of keeping-on, keeping-on and the fear of all of the factions of the Tory Party of a General Election, is the increasingly sterile basis of her utterly uncertain command. PM May would literally allow anything rather than accept a Corbyn-led Labour government. She reminded us all of the real danger of the 'dark forces' represented by Messrs Corbyn and McDonnell, Labour's main leaders, even as she was defending herself from being shot down by her own party!
The leadership crisis in Britain's mainstream politics also extends to the Labour Party (which is riven by class contradictions as well as its factional differences.) This has two key aspects. One large, group of Labour MPs give first priority to a new EU referendum, based on the general mainstream view that the UK economy will do less well in all versions of Brexit so far, compared with remaining in the EU. Others, closer to Corbyn, still argue that a General Election is the first priority. Labour's strategy, as voted at their conference, agreed with this priority and placed support for a possible 'Peoples Vote' as a last resort. The millions outside the Labour Party, looking for answers to the Tories' crisis, accurately see Labour's two different proposals not as a logical extension but rather as a confusion of alternatives. And they are right.
It is a simple truth that the most radical parts of the new Labour Party's 2017 Manifesto run against EU laws and rules. Yet it is the strongest weapon in Labour's armoury. It would be the means by which Labour could win an election - at least in respect of the big majorities in society who are angry at inequalities, private mismanagement of public services, the running down of community police, schools and the destruction and theft of public wealth.
Labour's uneasy Labour Party conference 'alliance' between MPs that want to remain in the EU, as much as anything else because it would be a block Labour's manifesto measures, and those that demand an election to open the possibility of a new sort of economy, cannot hold. The 'alliance' is already preventing Labour from directly and powerfully winning the hearts and minds of an increasingly puzzled and demoralised population which sees the Tories collapsing and Labour apparently dithering.
Of course Britain's political crisis is a crisis of the mainstream parties. It was always inevitable as social forces erupt. But Britain's two main parties have different destinies in which the Brexit battle is only a part. Eventually, perhaps later than sooner, the new Tories will coagulate around the mission of a regrouped ruling class, in or out of the EU. A Labour Party and government however will face a class war against its proposals - a war which will require the removal of the EU's rules either inside or out, and Labour's implementation of its projects and its divisions will see its MPs falling on either side of the sharpest line of all - the division between classes.
The responsibility of the new Labour leadership is to explain, now, to the people, that their essential reforms will require overturning the whole status quo - which includes breaking Brussel's main economic rules and the traditional direction beloved by the bulk of Labour MPs.
Friday, 2 November 2018
What modern fascism means in the West.
Any discussion about modern day western Fascism begins with 'Europe's Faultlines' by Liz Fekete (Verso 2018). The book is a study of the growth and characteristics of the far-right in Europe. It places modern Fascism at the centre of the refugee crisis and fascism's growing osmosis with parts of the European state machines, as well as describing the evolution of a group of political leaders, now in the mainstream, that are promoting so-called nationalist 'solutions'.
In the early 20th century, following the devastation of WW1, the Russian Revolution and the economic and political weakness of many European states, the rise of Fascism was primarily supported by big Capital in Germany, Spain and Italy as a necessary means of destroying indigenous 'Bolshevism'. Yet there is no such a general threat imminent in any western country today. It therefore follows that there is a need to analyse the function of the modern far right - not simply to study its new ideology or its emotional structure - but in its relation to the main classes of society and their dynamics.
The root and growth of today's western fascism lies in the decades of increasing globalisation with its particular point of crisis in the international financial collapse of 2008. Globalisation of capitalism is not new. The Dutch East India company of 1637, with an (adjusted) wealth of $7 trillion, had the same wealth as the combined 20 top companies have today. Capitalism has not broken new frontiers in that regard. But it is modern Imperialism that has changed from its 19th and early 20th century economic structure. (Its military interventions still count for most of the world's wars.) Imperialism was previously based economically on the extraction of raw materials, and first the slavery and then the bonded labour needed to export it to the West. But paradoxically, because of traditional Imperialism's weakness and failure following the Russian revolution, the failures of war after war and the effects of WW2, indigenous development of infrastructure and access to labour, primarily in China and also, by echo, in India - has now provided the new giants of capitalism with vast new markets and much cheaper labour than had been available to them in the West. In the 19th and early 20th century traditional imperialism provided several western countries a significant margin of wealth that could be conceded in the case of the most threatening, even revolutionary, demands of their own working classes. Today's globalisation has increasingly destroyed that margin in most western countries.
This provides the context for the new right in Europe and the USA. (It also suggests the origin of the new band of nationalist 'heroes' who now rule in Russia, Indonesia, Turkey and Brazil.)
What is new about today's great corporations is not their size, nor their wealth, nor their new technology but rather that they have managed to fight their way out of the post WW2 stalemate the western states and their working classes reluctantly accepted, post-1945. Indeed some of the most recent companies have made a merit out of their decision not to pay taxes to nation states (so the greatest carriers of the world's wealth are not allowing these states any concession to popular welfare, education or health - even if those states think they face revolt if they don't.) Instead, the great corporations denounce the power of 'states' as the proper means of human governance. Initially such ideas were presented as an almost theological version of human existence by Steve Jobs et al. The brutal reality became the virtual stop of any financial redistribution in society from the most wealthy. What started as a 'super-democratic' ideology for the world has turned into a day-to-day economic war against the majority.
Today western Fascism and racism are not expanding, nor are they backed by any large corporations, as a result of any generally understood anti-capitalist threat.
The collapse of the previous, limited, agreement between corporations and (the larger, western) states in respect of social welfare has created austerity for the millions. Inevitably, especially in the absence of any powerful, mainstream political alternatives, this fact has begun to engineer a struggle between those millions. There we have it. Modern, western fascism's goal is to energise and enhance the battle between modern working class people, especially among the vast layers of small businesses, the self employed etc etc., as they scrabble for diminishing income, health, pensions and homes. The huge units of production out of which the old labour movement was born, are few and far between. They will remain critical given the collective answers they create when it comes to the battle to win basic resources. But a majority of working class people in the modern private sector in the West are more vulnerable than ever, at least initially, to a competitive version of work and life.
Fascists and racists offer their own explanation, not of the means to end capitalist globalisation, but of the potential day to day race to win security. In their 'theory' human beings are sorted into greater and lesser 'persons' whose claims for basic rights are more or less valid accordingly. So the answer to the state reducing services, diminishing income, increasing want is not collective endeavour to overturn it - but rationing. Rationing on the basis of those who 'deserve' and those who don't. Practically, the fascists and racists help open up the cracks, the alarms, the insecurity in society in order to create their version of top class citizens - as opposed to the rest. And the fascists in particular then go on to organise the state's 'police-of-want.' As the state is constantly shorn of its resources, so its direct domination becomes more physical and so begins the Fascist led para-police and their 'citizen' armies.
These are the current ideas and forces building the new Fascism and racism in the West.
But the transformation of the western working class condition is not, as a whole host of western academics and analysts have been shocked to discover, the same as its dissolution. On the contrary, the working class movement in the West is developing rapidly (most particularly at this moment in the UK and the US) where mass political trends are emerging that challenge an alternative to the effects of globalisation, among women workers across nations against Google's management; against UBER - again across nations. Women also lead in the fight for equal pay, supported by men, in Glasgow through to Hollywood. At the same time and in core industries like Rail in France and Britain, bitter battles continue to be fought, not just for income but against the toll of privatisation.
Under these and other assaults, the fragility of the international corporations begins to show. Their apparent 'detachment' from specific nation states (and the cross-globe Nirvana that they have created for their top executives) can't deal with a social class that challenges its behaviour in particular countries or across them. Indeed, the new capitalist giants have reduced in the West the social power of the very states that were built to maintain their dominance. Meanwhile, as the new, class battles begin, it is more and more clear that the current state machines are unable to parley the finance needed from capitalism's new avant-guard, even to prevent the radicalisation caused by wholesale poverty. On the contrary, strong state 'solutions' are required. It follows that the majority will need to clear out these failing states and organise their own state powers to deal directly and fruitfully with the world's great, poisonous, monopolies and their epic wealth.
In the early 20th century, following the devastation of WW1, the Russian Revolution and the economic and political weakness of many European states, the rise of Fascism was primarily supported by big Capital in Germany, Spain and Italy as a necessary means of destroying indigenous 'Bolshevism'. Yet there is no such a general threat imminent in any western country today. It therefore follows that there is a need to analyse the function of the modern far right - not simply to study its new ideology or its emotional structure - but in its relation to the main classes of society and their dynamics.
The root and growth of today's western fascism lies in the decades of increasing globalisation with its particular point of crisis in the international financial collapse of 2008. Globalisation of capitalism is not new. The Dutch East India company of 1637, with an (adjusted) wealth of $7 trillion, had the same wealth as the combined 20 top companies have today. Capitalism has not broken new frontiers in that regard. But it is modern Imperialism that has changed from its 19th and early 20th century economic structure. (Its military interventions still count for most of the world's wars.) Imperialism was previously based economically on the extraction of raw materials, and first the slavery and then the bonded labour needed to export it to the West. But paradoxically, because of traditional Imperialism's weakness and failure following the Russian revolution, the failures of war after war and the effects of WW2, indigenous development of infrastructure and access to labour, primarily in China and also, by echo, in India - has now provided the new giants of capitalism with vast new markets and much cheaper labour than had been available to them in the West. In the 19th and early 20th century traditional imperialism provided several western countries a significant margin of wealth that could be conceded in the case of the most threatening, even revolutionary, demands of their own working classes. Today's globalisation has increasingly destroyed that margin in most western countries.
This provides the context for the new right in Europe and the USA. (It also suggests the origin of the new band of nationalist 'heroes' who now rule in Russia, Indonesia, Turkey and Brazil.)
What is new about today's great corporations is not their size, nor their wealth, nor their new technology but rather that they have managed to fight their way out of the post WW2 stalemate the western states and their working classes reluctantly accepted, post-1945. Indeed some of the most recent companies have made a merit out of their decision not to pay taxes to nation states (so the greatest carriers of the world's wealth are not allowing these states any concession to popular welfare, education or health - even if those states think they face revolt if they don't.) Instead, the great corporations denounce the power of 'states' as the proper means of human governance. Initially such ideas were presented as an almost theological version of human existence by Steve Jobs et al. The brutal reality became the virtual stop of any financial redistribution in society from the most wealthy. What started as a 'super-democratic' ideology for the world has turned into a day-to-day economic war against the majority.
Today western Fascism and racism are not expanding, nor are they backed by any large corporations, as a result of any generally understood anti-capitalist threat.
The collapse of the previous, limited, agreement between corporations and (the larger, western) states in respect of social welfare has created austerity for the millions. Inevitably, especially in the absence of any powerful, mainstream political alternatives, this fact has begun to engineer a struggle between those millions. There we have it. Modern, western fascism's goal is to energise and enhance the battle between modern working class people, especially among the vast layers of small businesses, the self employed etc etc., as they scrabble for diminishing income, health, pensions and homes. The huge units of production out of which the old labour movement was born, are few and far between. They will remain critical given the collective answers they create when it comes to the battle to win basic resources. But a majority of working class people in the modern private sector in the West are more vulnerable than ever, at least initially, to a competitive version of work and life.
Fascists and racists offer their own explanation, not of the means to end capitalist globalisation, but of the potential day to day race to win security. In their 'theory' human beings are sorted into greater and lesser 'persons' whose claims for basic rights are more or less valid accordingly. So the answer to the state reducing services, diminishing income, increasing want is not collective endeavour to overturn it - but rationing. Rationing on the basis of those who 'deserve' and those who don't. Practically, the fascists and racists help open up the cracks, the alarms, the insecurity in society in order to create their version of top class citizens - as opposed to the rest. And the fascists in particular then go on to organise the state's 'police-of-want.' As the state is constantly shorn of its resources, so its direct domination becomes more physical and so begins the Fascist led para-police and their 'citizen' armies.
These are the current ideas and forces building the new Fascism and racism in the West.
But the transformation of the western working class condition is not, as a whole host of western academics and analysts have been shocked to discover, the same as its dissolution. On the contrary, the working class movement in the West is developing rapidly (most particularly at this moment in the UK and the US) where mass political trends are emerging that challenge an alternative to the effects of globalisation, among women workers across nations against Google's management; against UBER - again across nations. Women also lead in the fight for equal pay, supported by men, in Glasgow through to Hollywood. At the same time and in core industries like Rail in France and Britain, bitter battles continue to be fought, not just for income but against the toll of privatisation.
Under these and other assaults, the fragility of the international corporations begins to show. Their apparent 'detachment' from specific nation states (and the cross-globe Nirvana that they have created for their top executives) can't deal with a social class that challenges its behaviour in particular countries or across them. Indeed, the new capitalist giants have reduced in the West the social power of the very states that were built to maintain their dominance. Meanwhile, as the new, class battles begin, it is more and more clear that the current state machines are unable to parley the finance needed from capitalism's new avant-guard, even to prevent the radicalisation caused by wholesale poverty. On the contrary, strong state 'solutions' are required. It follows that the majority will need to clear out these failing states and organise their own state powers to deal directly and fruitfully with the world's great, poisonous, monopolies and their epic wealth.
Sunday, 21 October 2018
The fight for control in Britain
The half-a-million plus demonstration (see BBC October 20) for another 'Peoples' Vote' on Britain's Brexit deal was symbolically led by young people. But behind the symbols, and seeking a pivotal position, is the rapidly evolving creation of a new political leadership. This has spread from major capitalist enterprises, via various ex Prime Ministers, via the Labour London Mayor, via the would-be 'new-party' Labour MPs, via the Scottish National Party and is now propped up by various left trends and liberal strands that imagine they can reform the EU.
Another campaign force is also organising. The Peoples' Assembly is mounting an 'End Broken Britain' campaign around the country. It aims to attach their anti-austerity message wherever possible to the growing number of strikes, other industrial actions and the needful anti-racist and anti-fascist activity. The Peoples' Assembly, in alliance with allies in the unions, among youth and with the base of the Labour Party, might also offer a different path, a united means of breaking out of the crisis.
What crisis?
We are witnessing the accelerating crash of the once, historically revered, stable, British Parliament. Steering the sinking ship is a Tory Party and a Tory leader that are carrying forward more cuts and which are factionally incapable of delivering any sort of pro-people Brexit. The only consistent theme in their mess and muddle is the desperate hope of Tory Prime Minister May that she can somehow hang on. But what she cannot do is win a majority vote in Parliament. In other words, it is the forces within British society at large that have to move now to resolve both of these crises. Any solutions to Britain's deepening poverty (except for the rich) and winning a Brexit that defends the majority, are currently unavailable from Britain's benighted Parliament.
Technically Parliamentary governments are now tied to a 4 year cycle. In reality, Britain's Parliament and its Tory Government are vulnerable on all fronts and could be toppled in an hour. Remember the set-in-stone Thatcher premiership was dumped following the main Poll Tax riots. Pressure from Northern Ireland's (utterly reactionary) Democratic Unionist Party, to vote against the coming budget - or any of its key measures, would be enough to stop the right of government to raise taxes or to use them. May's Tory Party is weakened by its detachment from Britain's ruling class support for the EU (with the partial exception of some key elements in the City of London financial district.) It is weakened by its constant battle for party leadership. And it is desperately weakened by the rise of the Corbyn (and the end of what May called her 'shared values' with the old Labour Party.)
The Tory/Parliament paralysis means that the different classes in society are now having to find the means to resolve the crisis. As the British (not to mention the Western) crisis is profound and deep, albeit coming to very important point of change, such changes open new prospects rather than find instant solutions. The overturn of the current government will be just a start. But it is an essential step to a different type of future in Britain.
What to do?
The Poll Tax rebellion of 1988 - 1991 came out of villages and cities. Old political certainties were dumped as Tory voters right down to self-defined Leninists decided to act to stop a Tory government's 'step too far.' The key here is the broadest possible unity in society of all those who need to fight against the government. And that means bringing together all those who hate austerity AND all those who believe that the Tory's approach to Brexit is against the interest of the people. The current government is producing a tragedy on both of these fronts.
The right-wing Labour MPs who want to re-run the EU referendum, will demand the October 20 demonstration as their property, insisting that a new, opposite referendum to 2017, is the critical issue. In reality they seek a 'new' (old) Labour Party, designed to tune into ruling class interests, sharing May's 'values'. But many of the thousands who marched (and the millions who sympathised) are still to be won - still open to a new type of internationalism, not one defined by the corrupt, corporate creatures that run the EU, AND they still also seek a real and abiding end to austerity.
This is the chance for the Peoples' Assembly. Can it bring this decisive moment together? Can it appeal to the youth who want, overwhelmingly, to vote for Corbyn's Labour and who also seek a deep defence of internationalism, poisoned so far by the Tory Brexit? Can it speak to people across Britain whose lives have been poisoned by poverty, a constant reduction of services and politics that have relentlessly failed them?
A start
This new unity will not be a product of propaganda. The start is action to pull down the Tory government. That is what will immediately focuses the collective attention of leavers, remainers, the youth and the pensioners. That is the alliance that has to be created in Britain. An alliance that denies the ex Prime Ministers, the billionaires and the reconditioned Blairites their moment in the setting sun. Instead bringing the forces together in society that have the resolution to build a socially supportive and hopeful country based on an entirely different internationalism.
Another campaign force is also organising. The Peoples' Assembly is mounting an 'End Broken Britain' campaign around the country. It aims to attach their anti-austerity message wherever possible to the growing number of strikes, other industrial actions and the needful anti-racist and anti-fascist activity. The Peoples' Assembly, in alliance with allies in the unions, among youth and with the base of the Labour Party, might also offer a different path, a united means of breaking out of the crisis.
What crisis?
We are witnessing the accelerating crash of the once, historically revered, stable, British Parliament. Steering the sinking ship is a Tory Party and a Tory leader that are carrying forward more cuts and which are factionally incapable of delivering any sort of pro-people Brexit. The only consistent theme in their mess and muddle is the desperate hope of Tory Prime Minister May that she can somehow hang on. But what she cannot do is win a majority vote in Parliament. In other words, it is the forces within British society at large that have to move now to resolve both of these crises. Any solutions to Britain's deepening poverty (except for the rich) and winning a Brexit that defends the majority, are currently unavailable from Britain's benighted Parliament.
Technically Parliamentary governments are now tied to a 4 year cycle. In reality, Britain's Parliament and its Tory Government are vulnerable on all fronts and could be toppled in an hour. Remember the set-in-stone Thatcher premiership was dumped following the main Poll Tax riots. Pressure from Northern Ireland's (utterly reactionary) Democratic Unionist Party, to vote against the coming budget - or any of its key measures, would be enough to stop the right of government to raise taxes or to use them. May's Tory Party is weakened by its detachment from Britain's ruling class support for the EU (with the partial exception of some key elements in the City of London financial district.) It is weakened by its constant battle for party leadership. And it is desperately weakened by the rise of the Corbyn (and the end of what May called her 'shared values' with the old Labour Party.)
The Tory/Parliament paralysis means that the different classes in society are now having to find the means to resolve the crisis. As the British (not to mention the Western) crisis is profound and deep, albeit coming to very important point of change, such changes open new prospects rather than find instant solutions. The overturn of the current government will be just a start. But it is an essential step to a different type of future in Britain.
What to do?
The Poll Tax rebellion of 1988 - 1991 came out of villages and cities. Old political certainties were dumped as Tory voters right down to self-defined Leninists decided to act to stop a Tory government's 'step too far.' The key here is the broadest possible unity in society of all those who need to fight against the government. And that means bringing together all those who hate austerity AND all those who believe that the Tory's approach to Brexit is against the interest of the people. The current government is producing a tragedy on both of these fronts.
The right-wing Labour MPs who want to re-run the EU referendum, will demand the October 20 demonstration as their property, insisting that a new, opposite referendum to 2017, is the critical issue. In reality they seek a 'new' (old) Labour Party, designed to tune into ruling class interests, sharing May's 'values'. But many of the thousands who marched (and the millions who sympathised) are still to be won - still open to a new type of internationalism, not one defined by the corrupt, corporate creatures that run the EU, AND they still also seek a real and abiding end to austerity.
This is the chance for the Peoples' Assembly. Can it bring this decisive moment together? Can it appeal to the youth who want, overwhelmingly, to vote for Corbyn's Labour and who also seek a deep defence of internationalism, poisoned so far by the Tory Brexit? Can it speak to people across Britain whose lives have been poisoned by poverty, a constant reduction of services and politics that have relentlessly failed them?
A start
This new unity will not be a product of propaganda. The start is action to pull down the Tory government. That is what will immediately focuses the collective attention of leavers, remainers, the youth and the pensioners. That is the alliance that has to be created in Britain. An alliance that denies the ex Prime Ministers, the billionaires and the reconditioned Blairites their moment in the setting sun. Instead bringing the forces together in society that have the resolution to build a socially supportive and hopeful country based on an entirely different internationalism.
Sunday, 14 October 2018
A critical moment for Britain
The British Prime Minister, Teresa May, shuffles towards her Brexit deal with the EU (see Blog 28 September. 'The British Prime Minister May will probably agree some half-baked plan from Brussels that supposedly will continue to be discussed after next March.')
Among a series of concessions, May will accept the EU Customs Union - which allows the EU control of all of Britain's trade matters - on a 'temporary basis.' Tory cabinet members are turning themselves in knots trying to define 'temporary' without suggesting a definite ending. But, in the end, everything is temporary. A predictable upheaval in the Tory Party both inside and outside Parliament is now underway (again.) We have apparently reached 44 letters against May, handed over to the ridiculous Tory 1922 Committee, and only 4 more are required for her to have to face election for the leadership of the Party. But May's future is not the key question.
The critical issue for British politics, now, is what is going to happen to the Labour Party.
The British newspaper 'The Independent' published a story on the internet (Sunday 14 October) that, if true, will begin the real destruction of the Labour Party. Here is a selection of quotes from its news.
'Multiple Labour MPs have told the Independent they are prepared to support the Brexit agreement Teresa May hopes to bring back from Brussels, boosting the PM's chances of forcing it through parliament.' ... 'even if, as expected, Jeremy Corbyn orders his party to oppose it.' ... 'at least 15 could rebel against Mr Corbyn ... enough to tip the balance on the Commons in favour of the deal.'
Gareth Snell, MP for Stoke Central, Ruth Smeeth MP, from Stoke North and Carolyn Flint, MP for Don Valley are all mentioned in the article as holding these views. Other Labour MPs, the Independent continues, are considering abstention.
The Labour Party as a whole, together with its membership, its union affiliates and its MPs, has taken a position at its September conference. Conference voted to reject any Brexit deal without the 6 conditions the Party sees as essential for the well being and rights of the majority of people in Britain. In the (up to now likely) event of the defeat of May's dismal plan in Parliament, Labour would force a General Election against austerity. If the Tories decided to hang on to prevent a General Election, Labour would then call for a new Peoples' vote, with 'all options on the table'.
If a group of Labour MPs vote for May's EU deal they are breaking from their Party's decision, they are supporting an anti-working class 'deal' with the EU and they are ensuring the continuation of a vicious, pro-austerity government. Why? Because they put their continued presence in Parliament before the desperate need to put an end to the destruction of millions of peoples lives and future. But that goes without saying. More accurately, they will be definitively attacking the working class base of the Labour Party at the precise moment when its potential in society is opening out.
The Labour leadership across Parliament and the unions have systematically sought to bring any working class rebellion back into the system's fold, across the entire history of the Labour Party. What is different today is that the new, working-class base of Labour have broken into Labour's traditional leadership and begun a new movement that potentially challenges capitalism. This is a major political advance in British society. If/when Labour MPs vote for the May's poisonous mess with the EU, they will reverse that process, maintain an austerity government, further dividing the working class on Brexit, sewing nationalist seeds of disorientation as a result - and likely usher in a new radical right wing under Boris Johnston.
The fundamental class division between the the historical base of Labour support and its traditional leadership will then explode. The upheaval will take the form of the Parliamentary disassociation of Labour MPs from the Party's leadership and its new base - create the inherent inability of establishing a Labour government in that context - and thereby dissolve Labour's current formation.
What, as some socialists in the past have asked, is to be done?
The current base and the current leadership of the Labour Party must not be sucked back into the Parliamentary melee that will boil and bluster away in Parliament following the May deal and its Labour defenders. On the contrary; the new and critical Labour forces must sharpen their political edge by rallying the working class - in and across society. Whatever happens, the austerity government must fall. And that means it must be torn down by any and by all means necessary. Leavers and remainers, trade unionists and 'casual' workers, north and south have to be brought together, to regroup, bring down the government and stop the right wing chaos created by the new Tories. Success (or otherwise) will now have to come from society, not from Parliament.
Among a series of concessions, May will accept the EU Customs Union - which allows the EU control of all of Britain's trade matters - on a 'temporary basis.' Tory cabinet members are turning themselves in knots trying to define 'temporary' without suggesting a definite ending. But, in the end, everything is temporary. A predictable upheaval in the Tory Party both inside and outside Parliament is now underway (again.) We have apparently reached 44 letters against May, handed over to the ridiculous Tory 1922 Committee, and only 4 more are required for her to have to face election for the leadership of the Party. But May's future is not the key question.
The critical issue for British politics, now, is what is going to happen to the Labour Party.
The British newspaper 'The Independent' published a story on the internet (Sunday 14 October) that, if true, will begin the real destruction of the Labour Party. Here is a selection of quotes from its news.
'Multiple Labour MPs have told the Independent they are prepared to support the Brexit agreement Teresa May hopes to bring back from Brussels, boosting the PM's chances of forcing it through parliament.' ... 'even if, as expected, Jeremy Corbyn orders his party to oppose it.' ... 'at least 15 could rebel against Mr Corbyn ... enough to tip the balance on the Commons in favour of the deal.'
Gareth Snell, MP for Stoke Central, Ruth Smeeth MP, from Stoke North and Carolyn Flint, MP for Don Valley are all mentioned in the article as holding these views. Other Labour MPs, the Independent continues, are considering abstention.
The Labour Party as a whole, together with its membership, its union affiliates and its MPs, has taken a position at its September conference. Conference voted to reject any Brexit deal without the 6 conditions the Party sees as essential for the well being and rights of the majority of people in Britain. In the (up to now likely) event of the defeat of May's dismal plan in Parliament, Labour would force a General Election against austerity. If the Tories decided to hang on to prevent a General Election, Labour would then call for a new Peoples' vote, with 'all options on the table'.
If a group of Labour MPs vote for May's EU deal they are breaking from their Party's decision, they are supporting an anti-working class 'deal' with the EU and they are ensuring the continuation of a vicious, pro-austerity government. Why? Because they put their continued presence in Parliament before the desperate need to put an end to the destruction of millions of peoples lives and future. But that goes without saying. More accurately, they will be definitively attacking the working class base of the Labour Party at the precise moment when its potential in society is opening out.
The Labour leadership across Parliament and the unions have systematically sought to bring any working class rebellion back into the system's fold, across the entire history of the Labour Party. What is different today is that the new, working-class base of Labour have broken into Labour's traditional leadership and begun a new movement that potentially challenges capitalism. This is a major political advance in British society. If/when Labour MPs vote for the May's poisonous mess with the EU, they will reverse that process, maintain an austerity government, further dividing the working class on Brexit, sewing nationalist seeds of disorientation as a result - and likely usher in a new radical right wing under Boris Johnston.
The fundamental class division between the the historical base of Labour support and its traditional leadership will then explode. The upheaval will take the form of the Parliamentary disassociation of Labour MPs from the Party's leadership and its new base - create the inherent inability of establishing a Labour government in that context - and thereby dissolve Labour's current formation.
What, as some socialists in the past have asked, is to be done?
The current base and the current leadership of the Labour Party must not be sucked back into the Parliamentary melee that will boil and bluster away in Parliament following the May deal and its Labour defenders. On the contrary; the new and critical Labour forces must sharpen their political edge by rallying the working class - in and across society. Whatever happens, the austerity government must fall. And that means it must be torn down by any and by all means necessary. Leavers and remainers, trade unionists and 'casual' workers, north and south have to be brought together, to regroup, bring down the government and stop the right wing chaos created by the new Tories. Success (or otherwise) will now have to come from society, not from Parliament.
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