It is easy to spell out the obvious flaws in modern, mainly western, democracy. Huge state institutions are much more powerful than any parliaments, and behind them are the class of people who own most of the world's wealth, land and property. Naturally these people spend their lives defending their dominion in society and preparing its future inheritance. In Mexico, chunks of the armed state are bought by the rich to kill opponents that challenge the status quo. In Britain most of the social crime carried out by the rich, and the more deadly of the state's interventions, tend to happen at points of crisis (Ireland after WW1 and the 1970s and 80's, the 1984/5 Miners Strike, the theft of state property under Thatcher, the general corruption of MPs etc). But the needs of the rich and powerful in Britain are constantly promoted through society, via select public schools, the 'City', the unelected House of Lords, the clubs, the Caribbean and other islands and, of course, the Tory Party.
Although these general features regarding power and wealth are brutally true, they are, nevertheless, remote abstractions for most people most of the time. Daily life for the vast majority, who are without wealth and power, is tricky, worrying, immediate, practical and, often painful. Much thought and effort is required simply to survive. Struggle against social unfairness, when it happens, often starts at a very local level, is family based and specific. As it expands, and workplaces and housing estates mobilise in collective action, the eruption is often inspiring and society is gifted with crucial, eye-opening moments. Such events often win reforms against the wishes of the rich and powerful, and the state. Collective actions are always dangerous precisely for that reason. Large demonstrations and more direct action that challenges 'the system' are immense steps out of the 'norms' of daily life and proportionately more powerful still. They can create new 'norms' and a fresh 'common sense' across the whole of society. For example the anti Iraq war march did not stop that war but it ended Prime Minister Blair's fortunes.
So when millions of people in Britain voted in higher numbers in the Brexit referendum than in decades of General Elections, it was novel, exceptional, and it was to be decisive and sovereign in respect of its results. All this looked as though 'the system' had at last provided some real democracy for the ordinary people. The fresh and untainted referendum was certainly counterposed by swathes of the public to the earlier years in politics where 'the system' had only provided two main political parties that were 'both the same', which was followed by the discovery that a lot of identikit MPs stole large chunks of money for themselves. The mass parties were declining in membership and committed to the same policies and Parliament was in any case just a honey pot. The referendum looked like a complete break from all this.
Except it wasn't
Despite all the discoveries of false claims and dodgy money surrounding Britain's referendum the potential loss of its meaning and power is acutely painful in society as thousands of canvassers in England's local elections are discovering - from both ends of the argument. Those who voted to leave feel that their decision is being overturned by wretched politicians. Those that voted to remain feel that people who voted to leave were cheated and led on by wretched politicians. But in reality it was the offer of Brexit that was the real lie. Staying in the EU solves nothing for the increasingly desperate lives of millions of people whose living standards are continuing to fall, whose lack of housing and welfare is getting worse in Britain. But leaving the EU under the Tories means getting exactly the same, maybe worse - if the Tory right get their way!
This blog has argued before that the 'leaver's' vote should be upheld. But this is not an argument that 'leavers' should have the benefit of 'democracy', which many do argue, from both the left of British politics and from the right (including previous 'remainers'). Tory PM Cameron did not launch his referendum as a democratic gift to the people. He made his decision because he wanted to unify the Tory Party and solidify his own post. The big corporations and Capital want to stay in the EU and, like Cameron, their 'choice' is not about democracy either. It is entirely calculated to the nearest Euro and has nothing to do with the real needs of either the British or of the European people as a whole. The reason to leave the EU, simply put, is that it would be easier for a Corbyn government to carry out its program - having to fight against the EU's rules. That's why leaving the EU is better than remaining in the EU, and that will remain to be the case until and unless political conditions dramatically shift away from the prospect of a Labour government in a big turn to the right.
EU exit is easier for a Labour government, but it is still not decisive. What is decisive in Britain now is the unification of working class people around the possibility of what is a real and fundamental change. The serious, genuinely democratic choice now is building the votes necessary for an opening offered by Labour's proposed reforms that can drive inroads against the system that now rules Britain. Corbyn provides a real context that is democratically worth a real vote. Brexit via Cameron and now May has no real context on its own that would allow the Brexit vote to have any real content. Their empty Brexit is the ultimate abstraction. The rulers would fill its shell with whatever pleased them. Brexit on its own, whether 'yes' or 'no', is the opposite of real democracy. It does not win the vast majority anything. It does not defend the people or provide any of the real choices if it is not tied to a Corbyn led government.
If Brexit is not it, have there been any concrete, practical examples of a real democratic fight, even in a class society, which has been forced from British political system in recent times?
Yes. The 2014 Scottish referendum, which was dug out from the British government, reorganised itself into the opposite of a symbolic enterprise. It became, over the months and with the mobilisations of millions in debate and discussion, a great argument about what sort of society should be built if there were to be the chance of changing the whole Scottish nation. It was a referendum tied to an exciting context. Rich and moving, creating real fear across Britain's establishment, it had the chance of breaking up Britain into countries that would lose their echoes of Empire and create medium sized nations focused on the needs of their people. The Scottish referendum became a model of democratic decision making, despite the immense ruling class pressure.
In the end, the weight of Britain's economic heft stalled a future Scotland (and a future united Ireland, and the possible countries of England and Wales.) All who had participated knew that a possible moment of history had been lost. The British ruling class had prevailed, in part because many of the traditional Scottish Labour Party institutions had feared divisions between the working class of Scotland and the rest of Britain. This was a classic failure to understand that the international unity of the working class is not created by the arrangements desired by the capitalist order. Many on the left make the same mistake when arguing about staying in the EU. And now of course traditional Labour has diminished to a smidgen. The leading strength they once held for decades in Scotland has faded away.
'Democracy' is often used in the West as a useful abstraction, as a 'good thing', as a promise. And inevitably across the West, as the mass of the people have lived with the reality of 'democracy' that is actually offered to them, 'democracy' has become a totally passive, even marginal activity. That can include responding to a particular state's so-called 'democracy' by voting for prank Presidents or supporting playful if bitter mockery as responses to the empty promise of modern 'democracy.'.
What this proves is that the modern structure of democracy has now reached the point where it is merely a facade. Paradoxically, the bitter Brexit battle displays this most vividly. Democracy needs to be recreated, in action, by the mass of the people who need to make decisions and who must have change. In that way democracy becomes real. At the present it is just another poisonous trick which people can become desperate to destroy thus creating the real potential of long term disaster.
Sunday, 21 April 2019
Thursday, 18 April 2019
Brexit's future - from All Fools to Halloween.
The logic of Brexit's present journey through spring and summer is obvious. But the continuing rage against the 'Brexit saboteurs' and the calls for various mini-Churchill substitutes for Teresa May as Prime Minister, in the Tory Party, in the newspapers and on-line, makes it worth spelling out just what the real possibilities in the next six months are.
The obstacle, which has meant that no Brexit 'deal' with the EU can get any sort of majority among the parties in Parliament, along with the failure of every possible arrangement of the MPs, might only be dissolved in one of four ways. Those four options are familiar but, not surprisingly, two of them also begin to expose the real nature of Britain's democracy.
First (and the worst) is that the chance there will be a long reflection among MPs who will then 'compromise' sufficiently so that a clear majority on Brexit emerges. Some MPs already believe the notion that Easter holidays and the evolution into a languid summer will chill hot-headedness and allow MPs to compromise and vote for PM May's 'deal. Others believe that the Labour Party will make a deal (as amended) with May's Tory supporters.
The second possibility would be the expansion of the plot marked 'the removal of Prime Minister May.' Her departure would pave the way for the unification of the Tories and their little helpers, the DUP. Thirdly, more time must mean that a trend towards a new referendum becomes more likely because the pressure from the public is increasingly leaning that way. And the fourth, the most unlikely and, apparently' the most irrelevant move, according to the mainstream media, the Labour Party's call for for a General Election would succeed and a Labour government would carry out its programme for Brexit.
Going through these ideas using simple logic, there is no reason why extending 2 years by another 7 months would substantially change MPs opinions. The big majority of MPs have worked and thought, both long and hard, as to what their interests are and where they lie, in the past, today and tomorrow.
Equally, the removal of May as leader of the Tory Party does not effect the number of votes in Parliament. Getting rid of May would look like something serious was being done. It would re-scramble the Cabinet. It would also dump any deal that the Labour Party might have foolishly agreed with May. But the numbers are still remorseless. It was not just May's original deal that has been shot down. A Labour influenced deal would entirely regroup the Tories and the DUP against it. A new Tory PM's main purpose would be the destruction of Labour's leadership as his or her's priority - even before Brexit.
The only two remaining routes to break the Brexit block in Parliament, a new referendum or a General Election, are different. Both measures change the face of Parliament. One alters it by the decision of the people's vote and the other, more substantially and cogently, by altering the MPs who are currently in Parliament. And it is the examination of these two potentially successful approaches to remove the Brexit block which lays bare something of Britain's hidden democracy.
Both such initiatives would shake up the now rigid numbers in Parliament. In the case of a new referendum, it would not change MPs but pressurise them, depending on the result. The consequence would be to re-align Parliament on the Brexit issue, according to the size of the vote in the country. The Brexit block would thereby be 'solved.' Hurrah.
But of course it wouldn't. Which now opens up the question of what is British 'democracy'?
It has been decades, three quarters of a century, since the British Parliament has really been able to decide on any major issues of wealth and power in Britain. For British MPs to determine deep questions for the country is extremely rare. The centres of great wealth decide issues of power in the UK. Indeed, the 'free' market', and its autonomy from democratic decision making, is the utterly ludicrous definition of a society in the West, and is offered as a principle of the Western, including the British, democratic system! The acceptance, indeed promotion, of a 'free' market is just one of the extraordinary contradictions the confronts genuine democratic decision making. And yet it is lauded as democracy's finest hour. Membership of the EU internationally reinforces, but does not create, the virtually total independence of Britain's wealth from Britain's democracy.
Why then has Britain and its people been mobilised primarily, and so passionately, around Brexit? Yes, Britain's large scale rulers loath Brexit and savour the reinforcement of the EU. So Brexit has symbolically been represented to the people as the reason for failure of that ruling class to maintain the living standards, the welfare and the social structure that makes life bearable for many. And yes; right wing political forces, from the right of the Tory Party outwards, nail the EU as the cause and centre of the failure of Britain - deliberately. First because a layer of revanchist capital in Britain smells low tax and big money. Second because the single minded focus on the EU, on Brexit, helps distort the reality of a City of London-led social and economic system that is breaking up its past, at least for the population that has to live with it. To that degree Brexit is a simple but gigantic diversion.
It should be understood that the effect of another referendum on Brexit will simply reinforce this diversion from real democracy. Deciding that the decisive issue is membership of the EU is, equally, the avoidance of the real, main source of Britain's malaise. More worryingly, the serious division of Britain's working class will remain and possibly deepen as the decision of the poorest sectors of society are rejected. The final 'success' of the EU option would, under current conditions, strengthen the poisonous class-collaboration in society so desired by ex Blairites etc. Because the Brexit 'solution' has, partially successfully, defined the resistance of the failure of the British economic and political system from the point of view of a large movement of people, a roll-back of of the 2016 referendum would be taken as a defeat by a large section of the British working class. In the narrow and deliberate context created for the British people, one that covers up the real necessities of democracy to change the system that they are forced to live in, a new referendum will simply deepen the fog and make change harder.
That is why the only effective way to remove the Brexit block in Parliament is a General Election. Why? Because the possible success of a Labour government opens the potential of winning, in practise, a different platform, a new 'common sense' over the Brexit block. If and when millions vote for a new government with a broad reform program, Brexit can find its proper place as one aspect of the need for change; a need for change primarily centred in British institutions with their global reach, which the EU reinforces, but does not define or create.
The obstacle, which has meant that no Brexit 'deal' with the EU can get any sort of majority among the parties in Parliament, along with the failure of every possible arrangement of the MPs, might only be dissolved in one of four ways. Those four options are familiar but, not surprisingly, two of them also begin to expose the real nature of Britain's democracy.
First (and the worst) is that the chance there will be a long reflection among MPs who will then 'compromise' sufficiently so that a clear majority on Brexit emerges. Some MPs already believe the notion that Easter holidays and the evolution into a languid summer will chill hot-headedness and allow MPs to compromise and vote for PM May's 'deal. Others believe that the Labour Party will make a deal (as amended) with May's Tory supporters.
The second possibility would be the expansion of the plot marked 'the removal of Prime Minister May.' Her departure would pave the way for the unification of the Tories and their little helpers, the DUP. Thirdly, more time must mean that a trend towards a new referendum becomes more likely because the pressure from the public is increasingly leaning that way. And the fourth, the most unlikely and, apparently' the most irrelevant move, according to the mainstream media, the Labour Party's call for for a General Election would succeed and a Labour government would carry out its programme for Brexit.
Going through these ideas using simple logic, there is no reason why extending 2 years by another 7 months would substantially change MPs opinions. The big majority of MPs have worked and thought, both long and hard, as to what their interests are and where they lie, in the past, today and tomorrow.
Equally, the removal of May as leader of the Tory Party does not effect the number of votes in Parliament. Getting rid of May would look like something serious was being done. It would re-scramble the Cabinet. It would also dump any deal that the Labour Party might have foolishly agreed with May. But the numbers are still remorseless. It was not just May's original deal that has been shot down. A Labour influenced deal would entirely regroup the Tories and the DUP against it. A new Tory PM's main purpose would be the destruction of Labour's leadership as his or her's priority - even before Brexit.
The only two remaining routes to break the Brexit block in Parliament, a new referendum or a General Election, are different. Both measures change the face of Parliament. One alters it by the decision of the people's vote and the other, more substantially and cogently, by altering the MPs who are currently in Parliament. And it is the examination of these two potentially successful approaches to remove the Brexit block which lays bare something of Britain's hidden democracy.
Both such initiatives would shake up the now rigid numbers in Parliament. In the case of a new referendum, it would not change MPs but pressurise them, depending on the result. The consequence would be to re-align Parliament on the Brexit issue, according to the size of the vote in the country. The Brexit block would thereby be 'solved.' Hurrah.
But of course it wouldn't. Which now opens up the question of what is British 'democracy'?
It has been decades, three quarters of a century, since the British Parliament has really been able to decide on any major issues of wealth and power in Britain. For British MPs to determine deep questions for the country is extremely rare. The centres of great wealth decide issues of power in the UK. Indeed, the 'free' market', and its autonomy from democratic decision making, is the utterly ludicrous definition of a society in the West, and is offered as a principle of the Western, including the British, democratic system! The acceptance, indeed promotion, of a 'free' market is just one of the extraordinary contradictions the confronts genuine democratic decision making. And yet it is lauded as democracy's finest hour. Membership of the EU internationally reinforces, but does not create, the virtually total independence of Britain's wealth from Britain's democracy.
Why then has Britain and its people been mobilised primarily, and so passionately, around Brexit? Yes, Britain's large scale rulers loath Brexit and savour the reinforcement of the EU. So Brexit has symbolically been represented to the people as the reason for failure of that ruling class to maintain the living standards, the welfare and the social structure that makes life bearable for many. And yes; right wing political forces, from the right of the Tory Party outwards, nail the EU as the cause and centre of the failure of Britain - deliberately. First because a layer of revanchist capital in Britain smells low tax and big money. Second because the single minded focus on the EU, on Brexit, helps distort the reality of a City of London-led social and economic system that is breaking up its past, at least for the population that has to live with it. To that degree Brexit is a simple but gigantic diversion.
It should be understood that the effect of another referendum on Brexit will simply reinforce this diversion from real democracy. Deciding that the decisive issue is membership of the EU is, equally, the avoidance of the real, main source of Britain's malaise. More worryingly, the serious division of Britain's working class will remain and possibly deepen as the decision of the poorest sectors of society are rejected. The final 'success' of the EU option would, under current conditions, strengthen the poisonous class-collaboration in society so desired by ex Blairites etc. Because the Brexit 'solution' has, partially successfully, defined the resistance of the failure of the British economic and political system from the point of view of a large movement of people, a roll-back of of the 2016 referendum would be taken as a defeat by a large section of the British working class. In the narrow and deliberate context created for the British people, one that covers up the real necessities of democracy to change the system that they are forced to live in, a new referendum will simply deepen the fog and make change harder.
That is why the only effective way to remove the Brexit block in Parliament is a General Election. Why? Because the possible success of a Labour government opens the potential of winning, in practise, a different platform, a new 'common sense' over the Brexit block. If and when millions vote for a new government with a broad reform program, Brexit can find its proper place as one aspect of the need for change; a need for change primarily centred in British institutions with their global reach, which the EU reinforces, but does not define or create.
Thursday, 4 April 2019
Stopping the Brexit madness?
Yesterday (April 3) the British Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, the leading figure in the British Cabinet after the Prime Minister, said a new referendum vote over Brexit would be
'A perfectly credible proposition.'
A leading figure from the Democratic Unionist Party, which provides key votes to the Tory Party government in Britain's hung Parliament, suggested a Customs Union with the EU could be
'a staging post' in getting to Brexit.
Both of these 'opinions' are direct reversals of the Tory Government's positions on Brexit 24 hours earlier. They demonstrate chaos.
The video of 'the Paras' shooting Corbyn's poster demonstrates at least one preparation to 'resolve' this chaos.
Meanwhile PM Teresa May has invited the leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn to another round of discussions to see if the Labour Party MP's can be persuaded to carry out her policy on Brexit - as her own party will not.
The fact is that there is no real government in Britain now. The PM has already announced her suicide (but has not spelt out the date yet.) Tory Cabinet ministers are providing their own manifestos as their party falls more deeply into its different Brexit factions. Paradoxically, while many Labour MPs and shadow Cabinet would-be ministers would get rid of Corbyn and McDonnell in a trice (if the vast Labour Party membership let them) Corbyn now 'leads' the British Parliament over Brexit.
How long this particular shake of the Brexit kaleidoscope will continue is not predictable but it is unlikely to be long while. There is a social and political core here that will soon determine the shape of Britain's politics in the next years. Whether or not basic truths and their related opportunities are grasped by socialists inside and outside of Parliament is, however, yet to be seen.
What are these key messages?
(1) Brexit is not the most important issue in British politics. On the contrary, a huge part of working class people in Britain (and in Europe) are moving against their traditional rulers because their lives are getting worse and the political and economic systems don't work for them. Brexit will not answer that problem in Britain.
It is true that the main international obstacle (the US will come larger and second) to a radical Labour government is the EU rules against state reform of the economy. And stopping the EU's legal powers now would be sensible from a socialist perspective. But preventing a new right leadership in Britain, based on a Trump tax break and a Singapore tax haven, would be more critical. Brexit could become a route to popular misery. Brexit could still go either way as neither of the main social classes have the political momentum.
(2) Despite lots of studies that imply Brexit is a working class based revolt, and despite the fact that big Capital in the British and European ruling class promoted the EU, Brexit is not the critical determination in the evolving class struggle between the main social classes.
The Brexit vote in Britain took place after the immediate rise of a new, mass right wing party and movement. That meant the British working class were severely split. In Scotland, in most of the big cities, virtually universally among black, asian and other minority heritage working class people and among the youth, the vote was 'no' to Brexit. Why? Because of a reaction to Britain's right wing surge. The middle and upper classes were for the status quo and many working class leavers (including Corbyn) opposed the EU for anti-capitalist reasons, but it cannot be denied that the British working class was split.
Today, while a dangerous rise in fascism is emerging, the previous major right wing surge has been forced to retreat. It is wise therefore to use the opportunity today to deny the domination of the EU's legal, globalist menu and Labour's three-part policy, with a second referendum as a last resort, is sensible. But it is wiser still to unify all sections of the working class people on a platform that changes Britain. Brexit is not at all the centre of that program.
But, in reality, doesn't Brexit swallow everything before it? Surely everything depends on yes or no to Brexit? You can't change reality, can you?
You can. You must.
The decisive step to open out a radical dynamo to Britain's politics and economics, today, now, albeit in the maelstrom of Brexit, is to get a Corbyn led Labour government. It is that way round.
This is not at all a view that a Corbyn led government will be able or willing to solve the battles to come. Nor is it any pretension that such a government would be able to 'solve' the national issue in Scotland, or Ireland, or the City of London for that matter. But such a government will at least start from some of the key realities of Britain's society. From there, everything becomes possible. From there is the the potential of the mobilisation of the people behind the defence of the real issues which they need to change. And without that step society, including any Brexit, will make a serious shift to the right.
'A perfectly credible proposition.'
A leading figure from the Democratic Unionist Party, which provides key votes to the Tory Party government in Britain's hung Parliament, suggested a Customs Union with the EU could be
'a staging post' in getting to Brexit.
Both of these 'opinions' are direct reversals of the Tory Government's positions on Brexit 24 hours earlier. They demonstrate chaos.
The video of 'the Paras' shooting Corbyn's poster demonstrates at least one preparation to 'resolve' this chaos.
Meanwhile PM Teresa May has invited the leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn to another round of discussions to see if the Labour Party MP's can be persuaded to carry out her policy on Brexit - as her own party will not.
The fact is that there is no real government in Britain now. The PM has already announced her suicide (but has not spelt out the date yet.) Tory Cabinet ministers are providing their own manifestos as their party falls more deeply into its different Brexit factions. Paradoxically, while many Labour MPs and shadow Cabinet would-be ministers would get rid of Corbyn and McDonnell in a trice (if the vast Labour Party membership let them) Corbyn now 'leads' the British Parliament over Brexit.
How long this particular shake of the Brexit kaleidoscope will continue is not predictable but it is unlikely to be long while. There is a social and political core here that will soon determine the shape of Britain's politics in the next years. Whether or not basic truths and their related opportunities are grasped by socialists inside and outside of Parliament is, however, yet to be seen.
What are these key messages?
(1) Brexit is not the most important issue in British politics. On the contrary, a huge part of working class people in Britain (and in Europe) are moving against their traditional rulers because their lives are getting worse and the political and economic systems don't work for them. Brexit will not answer that problem in Britain.
It is true that the main international obstacle (the US will come larger and second) to a radical Labour government is the EU rules against state reform of the economy. And stopping the EU's legal powers now would be sensible from a socialist perspective. But preventing a new right leadership in Britain, based on a Trump tax break and a Singapore tax haven, would be more critical. Brexit could become a route to popular misery. Brexit could still go either way as neither of the main social classes have the political momentum.
(2) Despite lots of studies that imply Brexit is a working class based revolt, and despite the fact that big Capital in the British and European ruling class promoted the EU, Brexit is not the critical determination in the evolving class struggle between the main social classes.
The Brexit vote in Britain took place after the immediate rise of a new, mass right wing party and movement. That meant the British working class were severely split. In Scotland, in most of the big cities, virtually universally among black, asian and other minority heritage working class people and among the youth, the vote was 'no' to Brexit. Why? Because of a reaction to Britain's right wing surge. The middle and upper classes were for the status quo and many working class leavers (including Corbyn) opposed the EU for anti-capitalist reasons, but it cannot be denied that the British working class was split.
Today, while a dangerous rise in fascism is emerging, the previous major right wing surge has been forced to retreat. It is wise therefore to use the opportunity today to deny the domination of the EU's legal, globalist menu and Labour's three-part policy, with a second referendum as a last resort, is sensible. But it is wiser still to unify all sections of the working class people on a platform that changes Britain. Brexit is not at all the centre of that program.
But, in reality, doesn't Brexit swallow everything before it? Surely everything depends on yes or no to Brexit? You can't change reality, can you?
You can. You must.
The decisive step to open out a radical dynamo to Britain's politics and economics, today, now, albeit in the maelstrom of Brexit, is to get a Corbyn led Labour government. It is that way round.
This is not at all a view that a Corbyn led government will be able or willing to solve the battles to come. Nor is it any pretension that such a government would be able to 'solve' the national issue in Scotland, or Ireland, or the City of London for that matter. But such a government will at least start from some of the key realities of Britain's society. From there, everything becomes possible. From there is the the potential of the mobilisation of the people behind the defence of the real issues which they need to change. And without that step society, including any Brexit, will make a serious shift to the right.
Thursday, 28 March 2019
Why Parliament is not working.
Lots of commentators are trying to explain the increasing chaos in Britain's political leadership. From university professors with their historical analogies on Radio 4, to the screaming expressions of the id to be found in social media - and everything in between - Britain's political crisis is showing the nation in a new and unparallelled light.
At least two of the more serious 'analyses' so far are worth some examination.
David Runciman (see London Review of Books, January 2019) describes Parliament as 'incapable.' In his view Parliament is an institution that is structurally unable to manage Brexit because Brexit must inevitably boil down to a compromise. The British Parliament is, by definition, confrontational. The implication of this view is that the British Parliament needs to reform itself, via a more European style voting system, into coalition-based governments. The British Parliament as it stands is simply heightening the Brexit divisions in its own chambers and in society.
Many others have focused on the apparent decline of Britain's mainstream political parties. Despite the huge expansion of the membership of the British Labour Party, it is argued that both of the main British parties are no longer rooted in separate social classes that originally defined them. Instead they are becoming backward looking anachronisms, unable to deal with the new society of the 21st century.
Looking at the strong points of these arguments it is certainly true for example that the reform of Britain's Gilbert and Sullivan style Parliament is long overdue. And it is also right that all of Britain's political parties are, from different angles, in serious trouble. But Britain's political crisis is not, essentially, a Parliamentary problem. It cannot be solved, not by Parliament however reformed, and not on its own.
The British 'problem' starts from the dramatic shift of Western capitalism from the end of the 1970s. This is something that has not been addressed at all in the British Parliament. And therefore, for millions, Brexit was simply the accessible opportunity to act as a representation of resistance to globalisation and the concomitant decline of working class living standards. Why? Because a powerful chunk of the Tory Party and its membership went awol and broke from their traditional defence of the evolving, internationalist, finance-led ruling class. Instead they settled on its most backward and rightist elements, among other things because racism could be weaponised against a radicalising Labour Party. All that opened up the anger of Britain's working classes and mobilised an unprecedented vote for Brexit (in its course sadly splitting the labour movement.)
The British Parliament has not seriously dealt with the matters of wealth and power since 1948. The role of Parliament (whatever government) has become narrower and narrower over decades. Occasionally (most significantly in the stop the war march against Labour PM Blair) critical issues and mass actions have produced reflections in Parliament. Today, the British Parliament is drenched by Brexit because the ruling class party has split away from the main parts of the ruling class, and because Brexit has become the imitation for austerity, insecurity, decline and marginality.
Consequently Parliament appears to be the centre of the cauldron. The fury of large sections of Britain's working class appears to be over Brexit. And the efforts of the main political parties (despite the heroic attempts to turn the issues to poverty and wealth, to welfare or decline by Corbyn and others) appears to be what sort of Brexit should Britain have. That is the point of Corbyn's continual call for a General Election. It is to get to the essence of the conditions of the working class, today, in Britain. Corbyn hopes and argues for a General Election that will force out the substantial, critical, realities from behind the Brexit shenanigans and reunite a class on the basis of radical change.
The battle that is on the horizon; resisting and defeating a coalition of big business, of a large part of (suddenly united) right wing parliamentarians, of EU rules on government intervention, of Labour MPs and ex Labour MPs that support globalisation, will put Brexit in to its real place. It will also demonstrate why mass action and a mass movement with the European peoples' support, will be the real engine room for political reform of any note. The failure to take on this battle will not just send Parliament back to sleep. It will build modern fascism, because only the steel fist can force the working class into greater and greater sacrifice.
At least two of the more serious 'analyses' so far are worth some examination.
David Runciman (see London Review of Books, January 2019) describes Parliament as 'incapable.' In his view Parliament is an institution that is structurally unable to manage Brexit because Brexit must inevitably boil down to a compromise. The British Parliament is, by definition, confrontational. The implication of this view is that the British Parliament needs to reform itself, via a more European style voting system, into coalition-based governments. The British Parliament as it stands is simply heightening the Brexit divisions in its own chambers and in society.
Many others have focused on the apparent decline of Britain's mainstream political parties. Despite the huge expansion of the membership of the British Labour Party, it is argued that both of the main British parties are no longer rooted in separate social classes that originally defined them. Instead they are becoming backward looking anachronisms, unable to deal with the new society of the 21st century.
Looking at the strong points of these arguments it is certainly true for example that the reform of Britain's Gilbert and Sullivan style Parliament is long overdue. And it is also right that all of Britain's political parties are, from different angles, in serious trouble. But Britain's political crisis is not, essentially, a Parliamentary problem. It cannot be solved, not by Parliament however reformed, and not on its own.
The British 'problem' starts from the dramatic shift of Western capitalism from the end of the 1970s. This is something that has not been addressed at all in the British Parliament. And therefore, for millions, Brexit was simply the accessible opportunity to act as a representation of resistance to globalisation and the concomitant decline of working class living standards. Why? Because a powerful chunk of the Tory Party and its membership went awol and broke from their traditional defence of the evolving, internationalist, finance-led ruling class. Instead they settled on its most backward and rightist elements, among other things because racism could be weaponised against a radicalising Labour Party. All that opened up the anger of Britain's working classes and mobilised an unprecedented vote for Brexit (in its course sadly splitting the labour movement.)
The British Parliament has not seriously dealt with the matters of wealth and power since 1948. The role of Parliament (whatever government) has become narrower and narrower over decades. Occasionally (most significantly in the stop the war march against Labour PM Blair) critical issues and mass actions have produced reflections in Parliament. Today, the British Parliament is drenched by Brexit because the ruling class party has split away from the main parts of the ruling class, and because Brexit has become the imitation for austerity, insecurity, decline and marginality.
Consequently Parliament appears to be the centre of the cauldron. The fury of large sections of Britain's working class appears to be over Brexit. And the efforts of the main political parties (despite the heroic attempts to turn the issues to poverty and wealth, to welfare or decline by Corbyn and others) appears to be what sort of Brexit should Britain have. That is the point of Corbyn's continual call for a General Election. It is to get to the essence of the conditions of the working class, today, in Britain. Corbyn hopes and argues for a General Election that will force out the substantial, critical, realities from behind the Brexit shenanigans and reunite a class on the basis of radical change.
The battle that is on the horizon; resisting and defeating a coalition of big business, of a large part of (suddenly united) right wing parliamentarians, of EU rules on government intervention, of Labour MPs and ex Labour MPs that support globalisation, will put Brexit in to its real place. It will also demonstrate why mass action and a mass movement with the European peoples' support, will be the real engine room for political reform of any note. The failure to take on this battle will not just send Parliament back to sleep. It will build modern fascism, because only the steel fist can force the working class into greater and greater sacrifice.
Friday, 8 March 2019
The West, nationality and the Jewish people
Britain's political chaos is not unique. Britain's crisis has its own character that dissolves any shreds of the idea that it remains the world's most politically stable country. But Britain's political woes share, with the rest of the West, the general impact of the end of post WW2 styles of regimes. Many governments in the West are more different in their character than at any time since the early 1950s.
Alteration is an obvious feature of the ex Soviet European countries. New change is less immediately obvious in some other European countries because they have been built on a foundation of uncertainty since 1945. (See Spain and Franco; Greece and the Colonels and now the EU; Portugal and its revolution; Italy, with its long-term failure of centralisation and now its vulnerable borders.) Such historic malfunctions can mask the West's new shift in those particular countries. The new crisis of the West is more obvious in what are often called the most 'successful' Western countries; Germany, France, Britain, Sweden the Netherlands and, of course, the US. While all sorts of catch-all phrases bubble up from the modern media's hysteria - the rise of populism, the clash of civilisations, the revival of the nation, the revolt of the 'left behind' etc., - the substance of the West's series of political shocks lies in the decline of its global domination and the reorganisation of the capitalist system. That has meant a drastic decline in living standards for 700 million people.
This shock has started to cause more than a tremor in what used to be understood as political certainties.
For example, the Economist magazine recently featured an article about the current French situation.
'The level of publicly expressed loathing harks back to the 1930s' was the bi-line of a piece that shuddered with alarm at the emergence of a new 'peoples fascism' and an end of the steady political 'centre'. This has been a mainstream political theme in the French media in the last 3 years. And French cultural concerns regularly reflect the break up of the standard political parties in France as a critical weakness.
Part of the political responses made by the Macron regime to all this, (his party is without any deep social base or historic baselines) smells more of fear, desperation and a return to backward myths than radical and responsive policy.
Poorly thought out efforts were made to smooth over France's 'mood' last July when the French National Assembly, under Macron's control, unanimously voted to remove the word 'race' from the French constitution. A similar, drastic error occurred on February 21st 2019, when Macron, trying to tarnish the 'Yellow Vests' movement as a whole, said there was a 'resurgence of anti-Semitism unseen since World War II,' which he continued is not only happening in France but in 'all of Europe and most Western democracies.' Macron then explosively added that 'anti-Zionism is one of the modern forms of anti-semitism.'
First, an ostensibly anti-racist measure designed to deny the existence of race in the definition of what constitutes French citizens - to 'prove' the 'egalite' of all of the French nation - turned (of course) into its exact opposite. Anti-racists and feminists exploded. In theory the French constitution explains who it is that constitutes the nation. In France, theoretically, the nation is anybody who lives in the nation's boundary. But the removal of the 'race' clause from the constitution is so important because different classes, and races, and sexes, are all critical in and for the social system that the world, including the French world, lives under. Their absence as specific groups in the definition of the 'Nation' is, in effect, a denial of the reality of their distinct existence and therefore of their oppression. Shared nationality does not of itself solve that oppression. On the contrary, it assumes equality due to its 'Frenchness', and thereby denies it in a capitalist, social and economic reality, in the handling of the police, the courts, employment, housing, in the main engine room of society and of life.
The French National Assembly therefore took a step backward several centuries to defend France from the struggles fighting for progress and real equality.
Second, attacks on Jewish people and their institutions across Europe have been rising steadily. While still far behind the waves of official and unofficial racist attacks against Muslims in general, North Africans, Syrians, Turks and Roma, the Jewish diaspora across Europe felt relatively settled and secure after the defeat of Fascism in 1945, yet they are now under fire again. Like the people of West Indian heritage in Britain, (in their case dramatically attacked by the British Home Office) they have suddenly found themselves once more at risk and once more in the front line of racism.
The British Prime Minister, Teresa May (who led the Home Office offensive against Britain's Caribbean citizens) and President Macron, who is redefining the character of his nation and laying down stupid laws, are typical of the new set of European (and US) leaders, out of their depth and full of Canute like efforts to roll back the tide. In effect their (and others) efforts are actually stoking fascist responses. In the case of May and Trump, deliberately legitimising them to provide new political levers.
Which brings us to Macron (and various British Labour MP's) versions of Zionism.
Macron's description and his consequent defence of Zionism maybe stoked as much by ignorance as cynicism. In British politics, the national focus of anti-semitic hostility centres on Corbyn's Labour Party and is largely political. Corbyn's Labour Party is one of the least hostile institutions to the Jewish people in Britain. Inevitably, and in order to try and show the Jewish population in Britain as a whole that Labour is and remains hostile to anti-semitism, the left leadership of the party have not opened theoretical debates about Zionism but have (correctly) admonished those who have wildly responded to attacks from some Labour MPs who called Labour institutionally anti-semitic. But not because they accepted the term applied to Labour.
The working definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance on 26 May 2016 says this: 'Anti-semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.'
Examples of anti-semitism offered by the IHRA include: 'Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.'
For the purpose of fighting against Labour's left leadership's criticism of Israel's policies some Labour MPs have coalesced direct support for Jewish self determination with Zionism. Macron has underlined this idea in his speech on February 21st. But this is another step backwards and does not defend the Jewish people from anti-semitism.
The creation of Israel was a defensive act of self-determination led by Jewish Zionists - and by many non Zionist Jews. It was a product of a successful struggle against British Imperialism and the defeat of the goals of European fascism. It was also turned into an act of war against the indigenous people, mainly the 700,000 Palestinians, whose families now live in militarily-controlled, despotic, slum-settlements.
The US 'nation' was created, in part, by the destruction and military control of American Indians and their dominated settlements. In more modern times Turkey was created in part by the genocide of Armenians and the permanent war against the Kurds, and the South African Boors denied nationality to black South Africans in their own country. Yet it is absurd and futile to try and re-run History.
Despite the crimes against the Palestinians, the Kurds, the American Indians, the South Africans and many others, the nations created by their imperialist histories and now by their new victors cannot and will not be dissolved in any act of super-morality or simply as a result of local wars. But despite the new military and economic realities of such nations, they can still be transformed - as the South African experience partly shows. The accommodation of all the races and peoples who were either once established or are now newly established on what has now become a 'new' nation, is the only political and social answer. The example of the 'two-nation' 'solution' in Israel/Palestine is an utterly catastrophic example of the alternative.
Of course all of the nations mentioned, and including some of the the most modern nations emerging today, have tried to establish myths designed to prevent any progressive measures in the direction of a shared-state that might help resolve, in part or in whole, the accommodation of local races and peoples into the new nations on a completely equal basis. In South Africa the black population has begun to overturn what was the previously lawful white supremacy. But another example of a retrograde step is the recent law in Israel, defined enthusiastically by its supporters as a pro-Zionist law. The Bill, pushed through by the right-wing and religious coalition in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, defines Israel as a nation-state only of the Jewish people. The measure sets 'the development of Jewish settlements nationwide as a national priority' and downgrades the status of Arabic from an official language to one with 'special status'. It is even a step behind the 1794 French Constitution in that it no longer even supports the formal equality of all who live in the boundaries of Israel.
These are some of the errors created when Zionism is conflated with, or even defined as the only way to express the right of the Jewish people to self-determination. Even those whose radicalism stops at the door of the 18th century French Constitution must realise the contradiction here. And while the existence of a State of Israel as such does not, in and of itself, prevent a multi-racial, religious and political population and citizenry, a single state that combined Arabs and Jews as its equal citizenry, its current law confirms exactly the opposite. It, and the whole idea that the Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Arabs should not seek a common state must be challenged, headed up by the Jewish and Arab people themselves.
Returning to a the need for a successful fight against the new anti-semitism in Britain and Europe, the widest possible defence, including every right of the Jewish people to defend themselves, is vital. But that also implies the widest possible alliance, which cannot be cut back by refusing the support of non-Zionists, or those who criticise the direction of the state of Israel. Otherwise we will confuse, limit and and distort the resistance to fascism and racism.
Most European and US political leadership are faltering with, or actually helping create, a succession of crises across the West. Included in those failures are the stimulation of racism and of virulent anti-semitism. Meanwhile those agents, like the left of the Labour Party and its supporters, who would be on the first line of any fight against racism and anti-semitism, find themselves attacked for the opposite. More and more, the most elementary and accepted expectations established in the second half of the 20th century in the West, regarding social welfare, education, health, economic and personal security, are breaking up. Replacing these traditional 'certainties' are wild schemes promoted by over-ambitious or covertous political leaders who turn the piddling epithets of the blindest media into the wisdom of ages. The answer to this imploding world of the super rich is to rise to the defence of those who need a new society and are able to build it.
Alteration is an obvious feature of the ex Soviet European countries. New change is less immediately obvious in some other European countries because they have been built on a foundation of uncertainty since 1945. (See Spain and Franco; Greece and the Colonels and now the EU; Portugal and its revolution; Italy, with its long-term failure of centralisation and now its vulnerable borders.) Such historic malfunctions can mask the West's new shift in those particular countries. The new crisis of the West is more obvious in what are often called the most 'successful' Western countries; Germany, France, Britain, Sweden the Netherlands and, of course, the US. While all sorts of catch-all phrases bubble up from the modern media's hysteria - the rise of populism, the clash of civilisations, the revival of the nation, the revolt of the 'left behind' etc., - the substance of the West's series of political shocks lies in the decline of its global domination and the reorganisation of the capitalist system. That has meant a drastic decline in living standards for 700 million people.
This shock has started to cause more than a tremor in what used to be understood as political certainties.
For example, the Economist magazine recently featured an article about the current French situation.
'The level of publicly expressed loathing harks back to the 1930s' was the bi-line of a piece that shuddered with alarm at the emergence of a new 'peoples fascism' and an end of the steady political 'centre'. This has been a mainstream political theme in the French media in the last 3 years. And French cultural concerns regularly reflect the break up of the standard political parties in France as a critical weakness.
Part of the political responses made by the Macron regime to all this, (his party is without any deep social base or historic baselines) smells more of fear, desperation and a return to backward myths than radical and responsive policy.
Poorly thought out efforts were made to smooth over France's 'mood' last July when the French National Assembly, under Macron's control, unanimously voted to remove the word 'race' from the French constitution. A similar, drastic error occurred on February 21st 2019, when Macron, trying to tarnish the 'Yellow Vests' movement as a whole, said there was a 'resurgence of anti-Semitism unseen since World War II,' which he continued is not only happening in France but in 'all of Europe and most Western democracies.' Macron then explosively added that 'anti-Zionism is one of the modern forms of anti-semitism.'
First, an ostensibly anti-racist measure designed to deny the existence of race in the definition of what constitutes French citizens - to 'prove' the 'egalite' of all of the French nation - turned (of course) into its exact opposite. Anti-racists and feminists exploded. In theory the French constitution explains who it is that constitutes the nation. In France, theoretically, the nation is anybody who lives in the nation's boundary. But the removal of the 'race' clause from the constitution is so important because different classes, and races, and sexes, are all critical in and for the social system that the world, including the French world, lives under. Their absence as specific groups in the definition of the 'Nation' is, in effect, a denial of the reality of their distinct existence and therefore of their oppression. Shared nationality does not of itself solve that oppression. On the contrary, it assumes equality due to its 'Frenchness', and thereby denies it in a capitalist, social and economic reality, in the handling of the police, the courts, employment, housing, in the main engine room of society and of life.
The French National Assembly therefore took a step backward several centuries to defend France from the struggles fighting for progress and real equality.
Second, attacks on Jewish people and their institutions across Europe have been rising steadily. While still far behind the waves of official and unofficial racist attacks against Muslims in general, North Africans, Syrians, Turks and Roma, the Jewish diaspora across Europe felt relatively settled and secure after the defeat of Fascism in 1945, yet they are now under fire again. Like the people of West Indian heritage in Britain, (in their case dramatically attacked by the British Home Office) they have suddenly found themselves once more at risk and once more in the front line of racism.
The British Prime Minister, Teresa May (who led the Home Office offensive against Britain's Caribbean citizens) and President Macron, who is redefining the character of his nation and laying down stupid laws, are typical of the new set of European (and US) leaders, out of their depth and full of Canute like efforts to roll back the tide. In effect their (and others) efforts are actually stoking fascist responses. In the case of May and Trump, deliberately legitimising them to provide new political levers.
Which brings us to Macron (and various British Labour MP's) versions of Zionism.
Macron's description and his consequent defence of Zionism maybe stoked as much by ignorance as cynicism. In British politics, the national focus of anti-semitic hostility centres on Corbyn's Labour Party and is largely political. Corbyn's Labour Party is one of the least hostile institutions to the Jewish people in Britain. Inevitably, and in order to try and show the Jewish population in Britain as a whole that Labour is and remains hostile to anti-semitism, the left leadership of the party have not opened theoretical debates about Zionism but have (correctly) admonished those who have wildly responded to attacks from some Labour MPs who called Labour institutionally anti-semitic. But not because they accepted the term applied to Labour.
The working definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance on 26 May 2016 says this: 'Anti-semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.'
Examples of anti-semitism offered by the IHRA include: 'Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.'
For the purpose of fighting against Labour's left leadership's criticism of Israel's policies some Labour MPs have coalesced direct support for Jewish self determination with Zionism. Macron has underlined this idea in his speech on February 21st. But this is another step backwards and does not defend the Jewish people from anti-semitism.
The creation of Israel was a defensive act of self-determination led by Jewish Zionists - and by many non Zionist Jews. It was a product of a successful struggle against British Imperialism and the defeat of the goals of European fascism. It was also turned into an act of war against the indigenous people, mainly the 700,000 Palestinians, whose families now live in militarily-controlled, despotic, slum-settlements.
The US 'nation' was created, in part, by the destruction and military control of American Indians and their dominated settlements. In more modern times Turkey was created in part by the genocide of Armenians and the permanent war against the Kurds, and the South African Boors denied nationality to black South Africans in their own country. Yet it is absurd and futile to try and re-run History.
Despite the crimes against the Palestinians, the Kurds, the American Indians, the South Africans and many others, the nations created by their imperialist histories and now by their new victors cannot and will not be dissolved in any act of super-morality or simply as a result of local wars. But despite the new military and economic realities of such nations, they can still be transformed - as the South African experience partly shows. The accommodation of all the races and peoples who were either once established or are now newly established on what has now become a 'new' nation, is the only political and social answer. The example of the 'two-nation' 'solution' in Israel/Palestine is an utterly catastrophic example of the alternative.
Of course all of the nations mentioned, and including some of the the most modern nations emerging today, have tried to establish myths designed to prevent any progressive measures in the direction of a shared-state that might help resolve, in part or in whole, the accommodation of local races and peoples into the new nations on a completely equal basis. In South Africa the black population has begun to overturn what was the previously lawful white supremacy. But another example of a retrograde step is the recent law in Israel, defined enthusiastically by its supporters as a pro-Zionist law. The Bill, pushed through by the right-wing and religious coalition in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, defines Israel as a nation-state only of the Jewish people. The measure sets 'the development of Jewish settlements nationwide as a national priority' and downgrades the status of Arabic from an official language to one with 'special status'. It is even a step behind the 1794 French Constitution in that it no longer even supports the formal equality of all who live in the boundaries of Israel.
These are some of the errors created when Zionism is conflated with, or even defined as the only way to express the right of the Jewish people to self-determination. Even those whose radicalism stops at the door of the 18th century French Constitution must realise the contradiction here. And while the existence of a State of Israel as such does not, in and of itself, prevent a multi-racial, religious and political population and citizenry, a single state that combined Arabs and Jews as its equal citizenry, its current law confirms exactly the opposite. It, and the whole idea that the Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Arabs should not seek a common state must be challenged, headed up by the Jewish and Arab people themselves.
Returning to a the need for a successful fight against the new anti-semitism in Britain and Europe, the widest possible defence, including every right of the Jewish people to defend themselves, is vital. But that also implies the widest possible alliance, which cannot be cut back by refusing the support of non-Zionists, or those who criticise the direction of the state of Israel. Otherwise we will confuse, limit and and distort the resistance to fascism and racism.
Most European and US political leadership are faltering with, or actually helping create, a succession of crises across the West. Included in those failures are the stimulation of racism and of virulent anti-semitism. Meanwhile those agents, like the left of the Labour Party and its supporters, who would be on the first line of any fight against racism and anti-semitism, find themselves attacked for the opposite. More and more, the most elementary and accepted expectations established in the second half of the 20th century in the West, regarding social welfare, education, health, economic and personal security, are breaking up. Replacing these traditional 'certainties' are wild schemes promoted by over-ambitious or covertous political leaders who turn the piddling epithets of the blindest media into the wisdom of ages. The answer to this imploding world of the super rich is to rise to the defence of those who need a new society and are able to build it.
Friday, 1 March 2019
Labour's Brexit future.
Labour's resolution.
Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the British Labour Party, has started to implement the final part of the Labour Party's Conference resolution over Brexit. After challenging the Tory Government and its allies to call a General Election and after presenting Labour's alternative Brexit plan to Parliament, in the end both proposals were rejected by a majority of MPs. In that event the unanimous 2018 Labour Conference resolution called for opening up, once again, of a vote by the people, where 'all options would be on the table.' There follows the relevant and final section of the Labour Resolution;
'Should Parliament vote down a Tory Brexit deal or the talks end in no-deal, Conference believes this would constitute a loss of confidence in the Government. In these circumstances, the best outcome for the country is an immediate General Election that can sweep the Tories from power.
If we cannot get a general election Labour must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote. If the Government is confident in negotiating a deal that working people, our economy and communities will benefit from they should not be afraid to put that deal to the public.
This should be the first step in a Europe-wide struggle for levelling-up of living standards, rights and services and democratisation of European institutions Labour will form a radical government; taxing the rich to fund better public services, expanding common ownership, abolishing anti-union laws and engaging in massive public investment.'
What are the basics here?
Over the past two years this blog has made three arguments about the Labour Party, the working class movement and Brexit. The first argument was that the Brexit referendum was forced on us but was in practice a diversion from the critical measures that were needed to end austerity and transform Britain in 2016. (The dominance in society given to Brexit was created by a struggle in the Tory Party, led by a Tory Grandee who thought he could secure his party and divert the emergence of a credible Labour left, which was focussing on austerity and social change.) The second argument was that the 2016 referendum was led in practice by a new right in Britain, promoted by populist racism and which had a background endorsement in the more piratical section of capitalism who wanted a British national tax haven. Therefore, the second argument went, the referendum vote (without any illusions about the nature of the EU) should be against Brexit as, at that stage, its main product would be to build a new hard-right movement inside and outside Parliament. The third argument, largely based on the rise of a radical Labour Party and the hesitation and limits of the new right in 2017, was that a second referendum, if it took place, would increase EU power to curtail a Labour government's most radical policies and therefore should be rejected. All three arguments put the Brexit referendum as such as subordinate to the different stages and levels of the successes of the working class and the left in (and outside) the Labour Party as well as a possible breakthrough into government.
Notwithstanding the support for Brexit in working class areas in England and Wales (but not in Scotland or the main cities) and accepting the clear, opposite view of British big capital, to remain in the EU, it remains critical to understand that Brexit as it stands today is still working as a diversion. Whether to support or oppose Brexit therefore has to be subordinate to the wider interests of the working class of Britain, Europe and the world. For example, leaving the EU would be at its most significant if it was clearly demonstrated that it stood against specific and vitally important, radical, reforms in Britain. But in the case of a wholesale eruption in Europe against the EU political system a new alternative European alliance would be essential. The whole world is dominated by big Capital. Ultimately it is a tactical and political choice when and if a particular battle is immediate or delayed.
The reality is of course that Brexit is forced onto Britain and its social classes in the here and now. Brexit choices, however so far distorted, wrongly focussed and even reactionary, cannot be avoided and must be re-made.
Labour's choice now.
The radical, extra-Labour left, and even parts of the Labour left itself, found themselves, up to Summer 2017, mainly marginal in their attempts at progressive approaches when either supporting EU membership or going for Brexit. In both cases they had very little influence among the mass of supporters of the EU or of Brexit - especially in England and Wales. In both cases more significant political forces and ideas dominated the mainstream debate in wider society. This was not an accident. Just as the choice to have a referendum on the EU was not an accident either.
The actual terms of the debate over the EU up to 2017 were obvious from the ex Prime Minister Cameron's get-go and were virtually entirely developed from the right and from the Blairite 'middle way'. Britain was invited to accept a globalist, continental future or accept the full return of traditional British chauvinism. Cameron and leading advisors were more than aware of the rise of the left in the Labour Party and indeed Labour was never really able to break into that argument. Until, that is, when the Labour left in 2017 nearly broke through to government. And then Brexit became different, very concrete and open. The EU could and would try to block Labour's new policies. After 2017 a real issue, not a diversion, began to surface in society. Would there be a radical Labour government? What were the obstacles to such a government?
The main obstacles now against a radical Labour government include both the national and the super-national capitalist class in Britain, the Tories, the mainstream media, a large bloc of Labour MPs and Chuka Umunna with his the mini-Macrons. And the EU is the main, immediate, international block to a radical Labour government. Which brings us back to the Labour Party's 2018 Brexit resolution.
Democratic choices?
There is a lot of incoherent jumble surrounding the 'democracy of Brexit.' (And sadly a lot of the left have got involved with it.) Does the debated and discussed 'democracy' of the Labour Conference stump the speculative referendum vote in 2016? (Was that a 'false' vote anyway?) Does a new vote contradict 2016 or simply extend it, now that we know what Brexit means in reality? Will the pro Brexit voters of 2016 never 'forgive' Labour if they promote a new referendum?
A future blog will discuss the real, substantial nature of modern, British democracy. What is crucial here and now is that the real character of the EU has emerged from out of the Tory, chauvinist and racist soup which previously defined the EU. The EU will be the main, immediate, international block to the last part of Labour's Conference resolution. The measures that Labour says it will carry out, including the 'democratisation of European institutions...' require breaking with the current EU (but also opening out the intention to move to a real international democracy of Europe's working class people and their organisations.)
Some rightwing Labour MPs etc., will insist on presenting Labour's last part of its Conference resolution as a 'remove Brexit' referendum. Others will insist that Labour back the overturn of the 2016 referendum as a defence of the international Blairite program. The left wing core of the Labour leadership will fail utterly if they allow that to happen. Given that both the Prime Minister May's 'deal' was massively rejected as well as Labour's 'deal' by Parliament, if Labour need to follow their Conference policy then both 'deals' should now be offered the people for a vote, with their relevant motivations. That upholds the legitimacy of the first vote and carries out the last part of Labour's Conference resolution in that it moves on the Brexit process (which Parliament cannot do without a new election) by explaining the goals of the future of the different prospective 'deals.'
In other words Labour should not offer a peoples' vote designed to to reverse the referendum of 2016 - not while it has a chance to establish a radical government. But it can ask the people which Brexit it wants - with a proper argument about the most important reasons.
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