Labour on a radical program shocks Britain

[CyM]

Let's start by watching just how much of a crater this election has left in the place of Blairism and the politics of austerity:

https://twitter.com/i/live/861732137824788481
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4jNO_UCDHc

[GiantMonkeyMan]

Holy shit. I know Corbyn is just milquetoast social democracy but he's been pinned as this 'marxist' or 'socialist' or whatever. So I'm happy to see this awkward hung parliament that we're going to get. A justification for the left, somewhat, and a complete fuck up for the right wing.

[The Intransigent Faction]

How much of an influence was Corbyn's raising of the issue of police cuts? That's not much of a basis for optimism. The overall rejection of "austerity", though, is positive. So is the rather awkward position Blairites are put in by the results.

The absolute decimation of UKIP is awesome. What do you make of UKIP voters switching to Labour?

[CyM]

How much of an influence was Corbyn's raising of the issue of police cuts? That's not much of a basis for optimism. The overall rejection of "austerity", though, is positive. So is the rather awkward position Blairites are put in by the results.

The absolute decimation of UKIP is awesome. What do you make of UKIP voters switching to Labour?
I think the police cuts thing only played a defensive role. They tried to turn the terror attacks against him and use the blood for political gain. It backfired in a way that tied into his anti-austerity message. No one should pretend this signifies a victory for patriotic security talk, remember the scandal of his speech declaring the war on terror dead.

It was a historic speech, and chimed with 3/4 of the public, in spite of attempts by the media to call it terror apologism.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

The absolute decimation of UKIP is awesome. What do you make of UKIP voters switching to Labour?
In interacting with people who voted UKIP, whilst it certainly might be true of some of them, it would have been wrong to immediately label them as 'racists' or whatever. A lot of kippers were just pissed at the establishment parties and the established relationship with Brussels etc so they saw it somewhat as a protest vote. I remember going to a demonstration outside the building hosting ATOS, the company that the government were using to assess disability and a UKIP supporter in a wheelchair showed up. I legitimately think that if in 2009/10ish there had been the right sort of socialist movement to capture that frustration, we would have seen the implosion of Labour and a sort of Podemos/Syriza grow out of it instead of the growth of UKIP. Not saying that UKIP was full of budding commies but rather that it was full of frustrated people and that frustration was directed towards negative formations instead of positive.

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/06/09/ukel-j09.html


British general election delivers seismic political shock

By Chris Marsden and Julie Hyland

9 June 2017

Britain has a hung parliament after Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May’s decision to call a snap general election backfired.

May will form a government but only in coalition with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland.

With one seat to declare, the Conservatives hold 318, down from 331 and not enough to form a majority. Labour has 261 (up from 232), Scottish National Party 35, Liberal Democrats 12, DUP 10, Sinn Fein 7, and six Others.

May’s argument for calling the snap election two years ahead of schedule was to secure a large majority to strengthen her position in negotiations with the European Union. These talks over the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU are set to begin in just ten days. But the Tories have lost their slim 17-seat majority. A coalition with the DUP just takes them over 322 seats required.

May’s strategy rested on winning the support of former UK Independent Party voters, and the constant media assertion that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was unelectable. When May first announced the poll, she was predicted to be on course for as much as a 150-seat majority and even on polling day, all the media were projecting a Tory win of between 50 to 120 seats. Instead, around half the UKIP vote went to Labour, while there was a surge of support for Corbyn amongst youth and in urban areas.

The undeclared seat is the prosperous London borough of Kensington, where there have been numerous recounts, amid reports that there are just 40 votes between Labour and the Tories. The Conservative stronghold was considered unassailable. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson also saw his majority halved in Uxbridge.

Though the election result in part reflected concern over May’s hard Brexit strategy, the overwhelming issue was hostility to Tory austerity measures.

Labour is committed to Brexit but has said it will not sign a deal that involves leaving the Single European Market. It had also pledged to abolish tuition fees—currently at £9,000 per annum and rising.

London, which voted heavily to Remain in the Brexit referendum last year, saw the Tories lose five seats, three to Labour and two to the Liberal Democrats. Labour now holds 48 of the capital’s 73 seats.

The vote amongst those aged under 25 was 72 percent compared with just 43 percent in 2015—with record numbers signing up to vote for the first time, many of them students. This included more than 600,000 people registering on the final day before registrations closed, of which two-thirds were aged between 18 and 34.

The Tories one saving grace was in Scotland, thanks to the sharp fall in the vote for the Scottish National Party (SNP), which saw its massive majority slashed from 56 seats to 35. The main reason for this collapse was SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon’s threat to hold a second referendum on Scottish independence at the end of Brexit negotiations.

This produced the Tories best result in Scotland since 1983, winning 13 seats, including those of former SNP leader Alex Salmond and current deputy leader Angus Robertson. Labour also won seven seats, up from its disastrous one seat hold in Edinburgh South in 2015 where its majority increased by 15,000.

Tory hopes that it would even overturn Labour in Wales were dashed as Labour took its highest share of the vote for 20 years, with 28 out of 40 seats.

The alternative parliamentary arithmetic of a Progressive Alliance or a working relationship involving Labour, the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party’s one MP, does not appear possible at this point as it is still below the 322 seat threshold. That would only change if Sinn Fein decided to take its seats, but this has been ruled out by a party that refuses to recognise Westminster rule.

A DUP source said, “We want there to be a government. We have worked well with May. The alternative is intolerable. For as long as Corbyn leads Labour, we will ensure there’s a Tory PM.”

This still leaves May in an impossible situation.

Although it supported a Leave vote in the EU referendum and is feigning a hard line against Sinn Fein, the DUP supports a soft Brexit that excludes Britain leaving the Single Market and opposes the restoration of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic in the south. It also opposes large swathes of Tory social cuts, which will impact heavily on the North’s deprived population.

May herself is one of the political walking dead. Her reputation is in ruins and large sections of her party are baying for blood. Though it appears the Tories have ruled out an immediate leadership challenge, May’s days are numbered.

Hanging over everything is the beginning of Brexit negotiations. May will now head these as the lame duck leader of a government that is the very opposite of “secure and stable.” EU Commissioner Gunther Oettinger said that talks may have to be delayed, although this can only be done at the request of the UK and would need to be supported by all 27 member states and the European Parliament. Speaking to German radio, he said, “We need a government that can act. With a weak negotiating partner, there’s the danger that the negotiations will turn out badly for both sides... I expect more uncertainty now.”

Big business is furious with the election outcome. The pound immediately fell by 2 percent and banking shares by 4 percent. Carolyn Fairbairn, CBI Director-General, said, “This is a serious moment for the UK economy... Politicians must act responsibly, putting the interests of the country first and showing the world that the UK remains a safe destination for business.”

Politically the big winner in the election is Corbyn, whose promises of social reform successfully channelled anti-Tory sentiment back behind Labour. This was despite the two terror attacks in Manchester and London, and the incessant right-wing media campaign that Corbyn was a threat to national security and a friend of terrorists.

Many workers and young people will be celebrating the result, despite the fact that Labour lost. They will be called on to support Corbyn as he positions himself as a responsible opposition to the government and Labour as the focus of a possible political realignment in the event of a second general election having to be called.

This would be a grave error. Even as the election campaign was underway, and despite his social rhetoric, Corbyn had abandoned many of his supposed political principles—as evidenced in his manifesto’s support for NATO, immigration controls, Trident and the European Single Market.

He has called once again for party unity with the Blairites and will likely include them once again in his shadow cabinet.

Corbyn’s refusal to wage a struggle against the right-wing is the real measure of his political role. Moreover, any attempt to form an agreement with the Liberal Democrats, SNP and others will inevitably be accompanied by a further shift to the right.

Numerous political experiences—above all, that of the Syriza government in Greece—provide a warning. The working class can only rely on its independent political action and social strength to oppose austerity and war. Everything depends on the systematic development of the class struggle in opposition to the incessant demands that workers and youth tie their fate to the personality of Corbyn and the right-wing, pro-business and pro-war party that he heads.

Copyright © 1998-2017 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/06/10/pers-j10.html


Britain’s general election: A new stage in the class struggle

10 June 2017

Britain’s snap general election delivered a major political blow to Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative government. The outcome was the product of an outpouring of anti-Tory sentiment among millions of workers and youth and anger over the devastating consequences of endless austerity, the relentless decline in wages, cuts in welfare benefits and the destruction of essential social services.

This produced the surge in support for the Labour Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, which saw Labour’s vote share increase by 10 percent and come within two percent of the Tories’ 42 percent total. Among the younger generations, two thirds of those aged 18–24 voted Labour and more than half of those aged 25–34.

For the media, the result came as an enormous shock. To the extent that their universal predictions of a Tory landslide were not raw political propaganda, the outcome demonstrated just how far the well-heeled, cosseted, six-figure salaried commentariat are removed from the experiences and concerns of the broad mass of the population.

The election was another major indication of the ongoing political radicalisation of workers all over the world. Corbyn’s gains show that had Bernie Sanders been the Democratic presidential candidate, he, not Donald Trump, would be in the White House.

There is, of course, a degree of satisfaction and even euphoria among workers and youth at May’s humiliation. This is understandable, but what is needed in the aftermath of June 8 is sober analysis and a clear political perspective. After all, the Tories are still in power and, despite their political crisis, are working to create the necessary political shifts to impose their austerity agenda and plans for escalated warfare in Iraq and Syria.

The greatest political danger is to identify the radicalisation of the masses with its initial and undeserving political beneficiaries such as Corbyn and the Labour Party.

A lesson can be drawn from the warning made in 1967 by the Socialist Labour League, then the British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), to the then-French section, the Internationalist Communist Organisation (OCI). The OCI was moving in a pronounced centrist direction, under conditions of the beginning of a major political shift in the working class that was soon to take on revolutionary dimensions.

The SLL cautioned the OCI:

There is always a danger at such a stage of development that a revolutionary party responds to the situation in the working class not in a revolutionary way, but by adaptation to the level of struggle to which the workers are restricted by their own experience under the old leaderships, i.e., to the inevitable initial confusion. Such revisions of the fight for the independent party and the Transitional Programme are usually dressed up in the disguise of getting closer to the working class, unity with all those in struggle, not posing ultimatums, abandoning dogmatism, etc.

The OCI ignored these warnings, broke with the ICFI and went on to play a critical role in building up the Socialist Party (PS) as the French capitalist class’ main “left” party of government.

To those now inclined to accept the portrayal of Corbyn by the British Socialist Party, Socialist Workers Party and other pseudo-left groups as the natural leader of the working class, we say: Remember Alexis Tsipras and Syriza.

The pseudo-left groups claim that Corbyn’s victory has transformed the Labour Party. This is a lie.

Throughout the almost two years since he took leadership of the party, Corbyn has blocked any struggle to expel the right wing. Instead, he went into the election on a manifesto that incorporates all of the Blairites’ essential demands—from support for NATO and Trident nuclear weapons to a commitment to “fiscal responsibility” and Britain’s retention of membership of the European Single Market.

As a result, he now heads an expanded Parliamentary Labour Party drawn from the same fetid pool of coup plotters and saboteurs that sought his removal—and who will no doubt be included in his shadow cabinet.

Even as the election was proceeding, Corbyn was shifting ever further to the right. His response to the terrorist atrocities in Manchester and London was to abandon his earlier critique linking the terror threat to the UK’s regime-change wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria and to instead chastise May for cutting police numbers and pledge extra funding for the army and secret services.

The process of politically molding Corbyn will only accelerate in the aftermath of the snap election.

Speculation is rife as to whether May’s proposed working arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party will blow up in her face, whether she can survive at all, and how early a new election will have to be called. With May’s “hard Brexit” strategy in ruins, no less than the Financial Times made a direct pitch to Corbyn, declaring that it “is surely time to press the pause button on a ‘hard’ Brexit,” and calling for “cross-party support for the closest possible relationship with the EU...”

If it proves impossible to achieve these goals through the Tory Party, then a second general election may be held fairly quickly. There will already be discussions in ruling circles about whether Corbyn could provide the necessary mechanism for implementing such a major policy shift thanks to the popular support he enjoys.

The Labour Party has more than a century of experience in utilising the rhetoric of its “left wing” as a means of disciplining the working class and ensuring its subordination to the party and its allies in the trade union bureaucracy.

Today, some among the Blairites sense a new political opportunity to do the same with Corbyn. Before Thursday’s result, the co-architect of New Labour, Peter Mandelson, said that he was working every day for Corbyn’s removal. Now he declares that Corbyn has earned his right to lead the party, but will have to become more “ecumenical” and ditch policies that prevent the formation of the broader coalition urged by the Financial Times.

Corbyn, the apostle of party unity, will not offer much resistance and he will be supported by the pseudo-left groups. During the election, they all backed Corbyn and urged a vote for all Labour candidates, making a point of including the right wing. In the election’s aftermath, the same position holds, with Left Unity urging “all those in the Labour Party—including the Parliamentary Labour Party—that have not previously supported Corbyn’s leadership and policies to recognise the reality and get on board.”

No line will not be crossed.

Should Corbyn begin the process of forming a coalition or a “confidence and supply” agreement with the Liberal Democrats, Scottish National Party and others, this too will be justified as the “progressive alliance” needed to get Labour into office. This was prefigured in Greece, where the “left” endorsed Syriza’s coalition with the right-wing, anti-immigrant Independent Greeks right up to Syriza’s betrayal of the anti-austerity struggle.

The working class is moving to the left, towards revolution. However, its consciousness remains reformist. The task of the SEP is not to adapt to the existing level of consciousness, but to bring it into alignment with the revolutionary tasks made necessary by the escalating crisis of British and world capitalism.

This means opposing all efforts to subordinate the development of the class struggle to the parliamentary fortunes of the Labour Party.

What is needed is the development of an independent struggle by the working class against social inequality and war through the building of a new Marxist political leadership.

Chris Marsden and Julie Hyland

Copyright © 1998-2017 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved