tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60931142754696286732024-03-06T02:20:23.067+00:00Luna17twitter.com/luna17activistluna17http://www.blogger.com/profile/03754650933188634442noreply@blogger.comBlogger1378125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093114275469628673.post-57506858220536720672017-04-15T23:56:00.001+01:002017-04-15T23:56:17.077+01:00Corbyn's Labour: resigned to failure? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A new poll puts the Tories <strong><em><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-s-conservatives-are-21-points-ahead-of-labour-in-a-new-poll-a7685271.html" target="_blank">21% ahead of Labour</a></em></strong>. 46% vs 25% is a staggering gap between the two big parties. There's no denying that - for anyone on the left - the poll is awful. <br />
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Let's put it in perspective and think things through a bit. <br />
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Such a huge gap is likely to be a one-off, but gaps of around 15% are a pattern. That will perhaps continue for a little while. It's not yet clear, though, that such awful polling is matched in real elections. Local council elections on 4 May will clarify that one. <br />
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The Tories are still benefiting from Theresa May replacing David Cameron, and from Ukip's decline (this latest poll has Ukip on just 9%). May's mixture of populist nationalistic discourse and rhetoric suggesting a gentler approach to austerity, combined with her shrewd political positioning around Brexit, has given the Tories a fresh lease of life. That can probably work - reasonably well at least - for a while, but it's safe to assume that the rhetoric will increasingly clash with reality. <br />
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It isn't credible for anyone to claim that such poor Labour polling is an inevitable consequence of Corbyn's leadership. After all, between March and June last year the gap was typically just 3 or 4 percentage points. <br />
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Things changed after the double whammy of last summer's failed anti-Corbyn coup (by his parliamentary colleagues) and the Tories' rejuvenation under May. The relentless attacks on Corbyn have done great damage. It should be obvious that a deeply divided party is not an attractive proposition to voters. <br />
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It's also unlikely that Corbyn's left-ish policies are to blame. There is plenty of evidence that many Labour policies - especially those associated with Corbyn's more left-wing stance - are popular. This includes <em><strong><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-s-policy-blitz-poll-supported-by-majority-of-british-public-a7685016.html" target="_blank">the latest raft of policies</a></strong></em>. This would suggest that something else is going wrong for Labour, e.g. the policies are not yet getting through properly to millions of people, they aren't seen as adding up to a coherent 'narrative' etc. <br />
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The argument from some quarters is that what's needed is a new leader. But Corbyn <em>was</em> faring much better until last June, as reflected in polling on parties' projected vote shares and also on the party leaders' approval ratings. Many popular policies are associated with his leadership. However, it's undoubtedly true that his personal ratings are currently very poor. <br />
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The problem, though, is that none of the critics have any alternative to offer. There are not currently any credible candidates on the left (this could change) and a more right-wing leader would herald a shift rightwards in policy, even if their supporters claimed otherwise. For anyone on the left, maintaining Corbyn as leader is - for now - therefore bound up with defending any sort of left-wing advance in the Labour Party. In the current climate the leadership question is fundamentally political, not personal. <br />
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The idea - also popular in some circles - that a shift rightwards is precisely what's needed is undermined by international comparisons. Look - most obviously - at the awful ratings for the Socialist Party in France. There is little reason to believe that a leader from the Right of the Labour Party, with a more 'moderate' policy platform, would be faring any better than Corbyn-led Labour is faring. <br />
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So, what next? It is very likely that the polling gap will - to some extent - close over the next 3 years. It's unlikely - when you think about longer-term trends and patterns (eg the Tories last got above 38% in a general election in 1992), the problems that almost certainly lie ahead for the government etc - that the Tories would actually win a thumping huge victory in a general election. <br />
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In addition, it's likely that a left-ish Labour Party would increase its support in the course of fighting a general election campaign. See the effect on left-wing candidate Melenchon's support since the presidential campaign got underway in France. Labour would likely increase its support as a result of the mass exposure that comes from a campaign, if (and it's a big if) it goes to the polls with bold, left-wing policies. It also has the advantages of more money and more members, largely as a result of Corbyn's two successful bids for the leadership. <br />
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These are no grounds for complacency. We may well see the gap closing, but not enough to stop another Tory majority in 2020. But some perspective is helpful. It's certainly an over-reaction when commentators claim that Labour can write off any chance of winning even in 2025. That kind of blinkered short-term impressionism hugely underestimates how much things can change, especially in times as volatile as our own . <br />
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Labour is more likely to close that gap if there's more of the popular left-ish policies that we've seen announced recently, such as a £10 an hour minimum wage and free school meals for all primary-school children. This needs to be reinforced by a relentless focus over time on promoting those policies. <br />
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It will also help if there's a reasonable degree of at least appearing united, with less of the sabotage and undermining from the Right. The left leadership has a lot of control of the first two points; it has little control, at least directly, over that last one. <br />
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Such a path for Labour is more likely to become reality if there's a broader groundswell of pressure in a leftwards direction. That's partly about the internal Labour Party conflicts - from candidate selections to conference votes to the NEC composition - but in very large part it's about how the struggle evolves beyond those intra-Labour debates. <br />
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The extent to which Brexit becomes a hugely contested process, with the left making waves, isn't just down to Corbyn and his closest allies. The NHS and school cuts are the two most obviously explosive issues. These could become real battlegrounds where we see May overstretching herself and facing mass opposition. If mass movements are built and sustained around these issues - and potentially others - it will have an effect in the sphere of electoral politics. <br />
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This will be amplified if we move to large-scale strike action. And that's especially so if pay becomes an area of generalised opposition across the public sector (a genuine possiblity, though far from inevitable). That's more likely to happen if we see inflation rise, and if there are other economic problems, but it depends partly on what we as a movement choose to do. <br />
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What's clear is that the prospects for the project of shifting Labour to the left - and such a party winning widespread public consent - will depend partly on Labour's left leadership charting a bold way ahead, but also on the growth of extra-parliamentary opposition. We need to rise to new levels of combativity, co-ordination and coherence in fighting the Tories across a range of issues - in parliament, in the workplaces and on the streets.<br />
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I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started Neil Selwyn’s provocatively-titled <em>Is Technology Good for Education?</em> Perhaps it would be a boldly contrarian attempt to answer the question in the negative. That is a proposition I would be unlikely to sympathise with, as it seems self-evident that there are many positive educational uses of technology and the potential for this to be developed further. <br />
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Knowing it to be written by an academic - Selwyn is a professor of education in Australia - there was also the anxiety, familiar to many of us who are classroom teachers, that it would prove to be overly abstract and disconnected from many of the realities of working in education.<br />
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As it turns out the book is indeed willing to challenge orthodoxies – incisively and thoughtfully - but it is mercifully free of shallow contrarianism. Its short answer to the question is ‘yes and no – it’s complicated’, with a concerted effort to move beyond polarised stances towards the issues. <br />
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Selwyn subjects a series of claims about the value and effectiveness of technology for educational purposes to scrutiny, highlighting the positive effects and outlining points of agreement before explaining the problems. A spirit of questioning scepticism pervades the whole endeavour. As to my fears about the academic nature of the work, this clear and accessible book is in fact simultaneously a very general critique and a useful framework for approaching practical issues around technology in educational settings.<br />
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The twin starting points are the dramatic rise of digital technology’s place in education (which itself is an expression of a broader social phenomenon) and the arguments, claims and sometimes outright myths that have accompanied this rise. The author sets himself the task of interrogating the major claims made by politicians, corporate marketing departments and sometimes educationalists, comparing them to reality and probing the forces behind the changes we genuinely do see taking place in education.<br />
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He strips away the hype – the field of ed-tech is as awash with grand claims as much as other fields of technological change – to take a sober look at what changes technology are bringing about and, equally, what remains the same. He probes the substance beyond the excitable spin.<br />
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Selwyn writes about a range of educational settings, outlining how digital technology has become an integral part of life in schools, colleges and universities (largely in the developed world), and also surveying the rapid rise of online alternatives to formal education, for example the MOOCs (massive open online courses) that allow some people to pursue further study without attending an institution. <br />
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One of Selwyn’s repeated concerns is to examine who actually benefits from recent developments, rather than taking claims at face value. The issue of MOOCs is a good example: he cites research indicating that those who are already well-educated are far more likely to access such courses than those with lower levels of formal education. This brings into question the fashionable idea that such courses are egalitarian or democratising, bringing education to those who otherwise wouldn’t access it.<br />
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The main body of the book is a series of chapters probing four major types of claim made for ed-tech, namely that it: makes education more democratic and inclusive; personalises learning for individuals; enables education to become more ‘calculable’ (measurement and tracking of all sorts of data); commercialises education. <br />
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A recurring question is: who benefits? It is important to search out the agendas underpinning many of the changes being promoted and identify who gains from them. Whose interests are being served, and whose interests are being ignored?<br />
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Unsurprisingly, it turns out that a great deal of this field is driven by corporations (the educational technology sector is now huge business and the book contains some eye opening statistics to illustrate this). This doesn’t mean that every proposed innovation is inherently worthless. It does, however, prompt the need for critical attention towards who gains, who loses, and whether corporate values are necessarily aligned with what is best for education and for those whom education is meant to serve.<br />
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Selwyn is particularly astute about the ways in which much ed-tech rhetoric (and often practice) dovetails with the contemporary neoliberal mantras of choice, competition and the aspirational individual in a supposedly meritocratic world. This is a much-needed reminder that we should be thinking seriously about the values of education – what we want it to achieve, who and what it is for – and examining critically how they match (or don’t match) many of the innovations advocated by business interests.<br />
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It is easy to assume that ‘personalised learning’ is a virtuous thing. It must be better, surely, if education is tailored towards individuals and their particular needs, interests and aspirations. There is much to be said for that, but in various ways the reality is more complicated. For example, as Selwyn puts it, ‘if we are all immersed in our personalised learning journeys, what implications might this have for education as a supportive, social and shared endeavour?’ (p.77).<br />
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The notion of ‘personalised learning’ rubs up, in tension, against more collective and mutually supportive aspects of the educational process. This is also a trend that is bound up with viewing education in terms of ‘product’ – measurable, pre-defined, isolated – which reflects larger social trends. And it raises difficult questions about how we make education more equitable, as the old, established inequalities tend to be reproduced when the values of the ‘free market’ reign.<br />
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Although largely a work of critique, <em>Is Technology Good for Education?</em> concludes with a chapter that presents the author’s constructive proposals for making things better: for maximising the potential of new technological developments, and aligning them with what is best for the pursuit of education and a more equal, just society. This involves moving beyond a narrow concept of ‘effectiveness’ by thinking seriously about what kind of education is desirable, what values and aims we ought to pursue, and how that is part of striving for a better society. It is a political, not exclusively educational, vision, as it must inevitably be: educational practices are part of society and education will always be politically contested.<br />
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Selwyn’s particular proposals are shaped by a humane commitment to broadening and deepening the experience of education (it’s much more than a saleable product in the market, and it’s a profoundly social and critical endeavour); a vigorous defence of public education, and in some ways a plea for its extension; and the vision of making education, like society as a whole, more egalitarian. His book is a valuable contribution to thinking about the realities of contemporary education and how we might plot a way forward.<br />
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This review first appeared at <em><strong><a href="http://www.counterfire.org/articles/book-reviews/18795-is-technology-good-for-education" target="_blank">Counterfire</a></strong></em>. <br />
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<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php" name="fb_share" type="button">Share</a><script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script>luna17http://www.blogger.com/profile/03754650933188634442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093114275469628673.post-21807090449766912312017-01-01T01:55:00.001+00:002017-01-01T01:55:21.282+00:00Political predictions for 2017 <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Yes, it's that time again. As I've done for the last few years, I'm risking embarrassment by making a series of political predictions for the year ahead. The focus is on British politics and the usual caveats apply: these are intended as accurate predictions, not aspirations or wishes; they are not to be taken too seriously; and you are very welcome to disagree! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As usual, I'm simply outlining the predictions without any particular explanation. I am aware that if one or two of these prove to be wrong, several others are likely to be knocked out of kilter too. That's what happened in 2016 as a result of <b><i><a href="http://luna17activist.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/2016-unpredictable-year.html" target="_blank">wrongly predicting that the EU referendum</a></i></b> would result in a vote to remain (that, in turn, had something of a domino effect). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">1. There will be no early general election. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">2. Article 50 will be triggered in the second half of the year. Freedom of movement will be the source of continued political debate, with sharp divisions on the issue in the Labour Party helping the Tories push through new proposed restrictions on immigration. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">3. Boris Johnson will be demoted from the role of foreign secretary. Michael Gove will return to the Cabinet (unlike Nicky Morgan and Iain Duncan Smith). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">4. Health and education will be important political battlegrounds, but the Tories will quietly climb down on the whole issue of grammar schools. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">5. Labour will go a long way to closing the polling gap with the Tories within a few months, establishing a pattern of being around 6% behind the governing party in polls of voting share (compared to recent polls indicating Tory leads of 13% or 14% over Labour). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">6. Jeremy Corbyn will continue as Labour leader, with no further leadership elections, and party membership will stabilise between 600,000 and 700,000 members. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">7. Labour will retain its Copeland seat in Cumbria, winning the by-election with a lead of at least 5% over the Tory challenger. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">8. Len McCluskey will be re-elected general secretary of Unite by a comfortable margin - over right-wing candidate Gerard Coyne - on a turnout of between 15% and 20%. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">9. Ukip will continue to do fairly badly in polls - it has suffered a significant decline over the last two years - showing no signs of revival under Paul Nuttall (who will continue as leader throughout 2017). Douglas Carswell will continue to be a Ukip MP, but he will also continue to function as maverick independent, and Arron Banks will distance himself from the party. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">10. The Lib Dems will continue to languish in the polls and show little sign of revival. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">11. The SNP will continue its slight tilt to the right, tending to emphasise its credentials as a respectable party of Scottish capitalism. There will still, however, be no revival for Scottish Labour whatsoever. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">12. There will be a modest but important increase in the prevalence of strikes, with the wave of December 2016 strikes proving something of a harbinger, resulting in a number of good settlements for striking workers (if not outright victories). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">13. The Green Party will continue the pivot the right which has characterised it since Corbyn's ascendancy to the Labour leadership, and even more markedly since the EU referendum campaign. The party's right wing (or liberal wing) will flourish, while its left wing will be marginalised. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">14. Momentum will continue to be plagued by factional in-fighting in the early part of 2017, but settling down after that, and will play a modest role in the prospects of the Labour left; many left-wingers in the party will bypass it and instead focus directly on the party's own structures and activities (though the Right will often continue to defeat the Left at constituency level due to greater activist numbers, rootedness and organisation). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">15. There will be no growth in the British far right - whether in its electoral or street-fighting versions - and it will continue to be largely irrelevant and marginal.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">For the last few years I have published my political predictions on New Year's Day. The focus of my 2016 predictions was entirely on British politics, with the exception of my prediction for the US presidential election (which I regarded as too big to ignore).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is always half-serious and half a bit of fun. In as much as it should be taken seriously, it's as an opportunity to take stock of current trends in politics. It is only possible to make predictions for the year ahead if you think about what is already happening and try to identify the most significant elements. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I've just looked back at my New Year's Day 2016 predictions to evaluate how the year has actually turned out compared to my predictions. As you might expect, many of my predictions proved to be wide of the mark! </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Here's a run-down of all 15 predictions and how things actually turned out. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">1. Labour's Sadiq Khan will very narrowly win May's election for London Mayor, defeating Tory candidate Zac Goldsmith by a tiny margin. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The reality: Correct result, but I underestimated the margin of victory for Labour. If you also consider point 3 below the intriguing thing is that Labour has in fact had a better 2016 electorally than I predicted. However, my prediction on opinion polling (see below) was seriously over-optimistic for Labour. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">2. The SNP will win an even bigger majority at Holyrood than it possesses already, going from 69 seats won in 2011 to 75 in May's elections to the Scottish Parliament. Scottish Labour will fail to make any recovery from its polling lows. New left-wing formation RISE will fail to win any regional list seats, but the Green Party will win six regional list seats. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The reality: I slightly mis-judged how well the SNP would do in May, though I was right to forecast a year of continued dominance of Scottish politics by the party (and also right to forecast a wretched year for Scottish Labour, disappointment for Rise and some cause for cheer by Scottish Greens). </i><br /><br />3. Labour will lose around 120 of the 1200 seats it is defending in May's local council elections. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><br /></i></span><i>The reality: Labour actually did better than that. It's worth recalling, by the way, that many mainstream commentators forecast losses of around 500 seats when making their predictions for 2016. </i></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">4. Jeremy Corbyn will survive a fresh wave of internal Party attacks in May, continuing to be Labour leader throughout 2016. He will be assisted by Labour victory in the election for London mayor, compensating for less heartening news in the Scottish and local elections. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The reality: Corbyn is indeed still leader and he did indeed survive the predicted attacks (and my assessment of the impact of May's elections was essentially correct). What this misses, though, is the fact that a second leadership election took place. This was triggered by the Leave victory in the EU referendum... </i></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">5. The EU referendum will be held in the autumn and the IN campaign will win, with over 55% of the vote share. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The reality: The big example of a wrong prediction - and the one that shapes almost everything else I got wrong. It's a reminder of what rapid change there's been during 2016 that at the start of the year we didn't even know for sure that there would be a referendum this year. </i></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">6. Labour Party membership will stabilise at around 400,000 members. Labour will make a little progress in opinion polling, being almost level with the Tories on vote share by the end of 2016.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>The reality: a very contradictory result here, as I underestimated the membership surge but considerably overestimated how Labour would be doing in the polls (although I was basically correct if you just look at the first few months of 2016 - it was the referendum and its aftershocks that opened up a big Tory polling lead). Again: these are all knock-on effects, directly or indirectly, of the referendum result - a great moment of rupture. </em></span><br />
<em></em><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">7. The Lib Dems will fail to make any recovery in its polling or electoral fortunes, continuing to be the irrelevant footnote to British politics that it has been since last May's Westminster wipeout. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>The reality: Correct prediction.</em> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">8. The Green Party of England and Wales will struggle to appear politically relevant, its right wing will become stronger, and the party will fare badly in London's elections in May. There will be a small decline in its membership.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><em></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>The reality: Correct prediction.</em> </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />9. Ukip's slow decline will continue, with the divisions between leader Nigel Farage and sole MP Douglas Carswell becoming so acute that the latter leaves Ukip altogether before the EU referendum takes place. Funding will dry up almost entirely and membership will fall slightly. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>The reality: Broadly correct, but wrong on the specific detail concerning Carswell (though the wider point, i.e. predicting toxic in-fighting in Ukip, was proved in style).</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">10. Jeremy Corbyn will undertake a minor reshuffle of his shadow cabinet in January. It won't involve changes quite as drastic as widely predicted. Hilary Benn, Maria Eagle and Michael Dugher will be removed from the shadow cabinet, though Angela Eagle will remain, and Rosie Winterton will be removed as Chief Whip.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>The reality: the attempted coup in June re-shaped the composition of the shadow cabinet, something I obviously didn't predict.</em></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span> </div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">11. Momentum will establish itself as a significant grouping for the Labour left, but will struggle to find a meaningful cause to galvanise left-wing party members into action, while being overly focused on internal party matters and repeatedly subjected to attacks in the media. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>The reality: Correct. I'll basically repeat this prediction for 2017 (and the same goes for points 7 and 8 above).</em> </span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">12. By the end of 2016 George Osborne will emerge as clear frontrunner in the race to be next Tory leader, ahead of Boris Johnson and Theresa May. Osborne will gain from the fact that there</span><span style="background-color: white;"> will be no fresh economic crisis, either in Britain or in any other major economy, despite underlying problems. Inflation in Britain will remain low and there will be a slight fall in unemployment. </span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>The reality: as already mentioned, the EU referendum result led to unforeseen upheavals. The shifts in personnel on the Tory front bench have been greater than anticipated. The fall of Cameron and Osborne was an especially cheering aspect of the year. </em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><em></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">13. The Chilcot report will be published in the autumn and be damning about Tony Blair and other senior government figures of the time.</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><em>The reality: It was published a little earlier than I anticipated, but I was right to anticipate a damning report (a rather controversial view 12 months ago, when many people on the left were forecasting a hollow establishment stitch-up). Another of the best pieces of news in 2016 and a victory for campaigners. </em></span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">14. Junior doctors will take strike action and win their dispute with the government, though there will otherwise be no significant national strike action by public sector unions on pay, pensions or any other issue. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>The reality: I was half-right and half-wrong. Sadly, the wrong way round to what I'd like! The junior doctors failed to win and there has been little in the way of significant national strike action (the current strike wave is a hopeful sign, but is not of the type I was referring to here).</em></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">15. Hillary Clinton will be selected as the Democratic nominee for US president. Donald Trump will be selected as the Republican nominee. Clinton will go on to comfortably defeat Trump in November's election, winning around 55% of the vote share. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>The reality: Clinton did indeed win the popular vote, but not by such a healthy margin - and the electoral college balance led to Trump's victory. This is the other major upset of the year along with the EU referendum result.</em> </span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>What overall conclusions can be drawn here?</strong></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>There are a number of political trends that were discernible 12 months ago - and where I got things largely, if not entirely, right.</div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
I'm thinking of things like Lib Dem stagnation, the Greens' modest rightwards shift, the SNP's hegemony of Scottish politics, Ukip's modest but unmistakable decline, the continuance of low levels of strike action (by historic standards), Momentum's contradictory mix of strengths and weaknesses, the marginalisation of the radical left, and the Labour Party's combination of left-wing leadership, success in its metropolitan heartlands and right-wing PLP hostility. <br />
<br />
All of these were my forecasts a year ago. Sure enough, that's how things have turned out.</div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
But the big upset was the EU referendum. That doesn't just make my specific prediction on the referendum result wrong. </div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
It was the decisive factor in shaping several other erroneous forecasts: failing to predict a second Labour leadership election and also the further rise in Labour Party membership or the fall in Labour's poll ratings (both of which were consequences of the coup and leadership election), and of course failing to predict the replacement of Cameron and Osborne by May and Hammond. </div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
The referendum result can therefore be seen as a moment of rupture and crisis - a turning point. It had contradictory consequences, and will continue to do so. Yet the list above is also surely a reminder that many trends and tendencies pre-date the referendum, and have been little affected by it.<br />
<br />
This exercise is also a reminder that - for all the doom and gloom in some quarters - 2016 has turned out not that differently to expected: a lot of continuity, with changes both of a positive and negative nature. Obviously any assessment depends on your perspective: a Leave-supporting activist on the radical left (like me) naturally sees things differently to a pro-EU, anti-Corbyn, centre-left liberal (for whom 2016 has indeed been a very bad year). </div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333;">
I will be recklessly making predictions again on New Year's Day 2017. </div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php" name="fb_share" type="button">Share</a><script src="https://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script>luna17http://www.blogger.com/profile/03754650933188634442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093114275469628673.post-64243476468004886622016-12-22T23:46:00.000+00:002016-12-22T23:46:06.846+00:00The labour movement and the migration debate <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbzTLwZlBn7StsGvVD-VZjEikCzIjGqEKaXagphH2px21i10UEFyw6H3cmrKzRx6RVaNEmsuI1wW1phyafiC-sL76f2bApAnRRSObo4saYd2UtyDQP_l2QTemF8ZertxSgiqfRbBAezw/s1600/GettyImages-585041270-e1476204730604.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbzTLwZlBn7StsGvVD-VZjEikCzIjGqEKaXagphH2px21i10UEFyw6H3cmrKzRx6RVaNEmsuI1wW1phyafiC-sL76f2bApAnRRSObo4saYd2UtyDQP_l2QTemF8ZertxSgiqfRbBAezw/s320/GettyImages-585041270-e1476204730604.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Andy
Burnham's <em><strong><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/16/take-back-control-immigration-debate-labour" target="_blank">recent call for increased immigration controls</a></strong></em> was a harbinger of
what we can expect from politicians on the Labour Party's right wing in 2017.
His article was as cogently and persuasively expressed a piece as you will ever
get from someone arguing for restrictions on freedom of movement, using left
wing and pro-working class rhetoric. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Burnham predictably treated the Leave vote in
this summer's referendum on EU membership as the basis for a 'rethink' on freedom
of movement. However, his targets and conclusions are wrong. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jeremy
Corbyn, Diane Abbott and John McDonnell have all put forward much better views.
They acknowledge there is exploitation of migrant labour (and yes, they say,
this is part of pushing down pay and conditions for all workers). But we won't
deal with that by restricting migration. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Migrants themselves
are not responsible for pushing down wages or cutting public services. It is
governments and employers using immigration as an excuse to pursue a race to
the bottom or make cuts. We need to deal
with the exploitation and also enhance workers' rights, increase the living
wage, invest in jobs, and so on. In the process of putting forward such demands
and policies we can challenge the prevalent scapegoating and redirect attention
to the real causes of poverty, inequality and social injustice.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As these
leading Labour figures recognise, a solid and persuasive response to the migration
debate requires more than just the reiteration of anti-racist positions on
migrants' rights, freedom of movement etc (vital as that is!). It's also
necessary to articulate a positive economic alternative to failed Tory
austerity, resonating with millions of people's concerns and needs.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Labour is in
a mess on this issue because for every good utterance by the aforementioned
leading figures there is an undermining intervention from someone like Burnham
or Stephen Kinnock. Most people don't have a clue where Labour stands and the
party looks divided and directionless (because it is). Lots of people enthused
by Corbyn - many of whom have joined the Labour Party - are disoriented and
anxious as a result.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There is a
closely related debate in the trade union movement. This reflects the logic of Labour
electoralism (among a layer of Labour-affiliated union officials), but also the
limits of trade union consciousness (seeing things in narrow economic terms,
trying to reflect the mixed consciousness of union members etc). <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Unite general
secretary Len McCluskey may have been mis-represented to some extent by the
Guardian, but <strong><em><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/len-mccluskey/i-am-standing-on-my-recor_b_13659322.html" target="_blank">his real views</a></em></strong> are nonetheless
ambiguous, offering too much ground to those characterising immigration as a
threat. Such fudge offers no way forward.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The section
of McCluskey's piece to do with immigration was a mess because he was fudging
the issue and desperately trying to appeal to conflicting tendencies at the
same time. He is a sincere anti-racist who wants to resist the scapegoating of
migrants, but he's also highly vulnerable to the pressures of both Labour
electoralism (which dictate 'you must abandon freedom of movement to appeal to
voters') and being general secretary of a large trade union whose members have
very diverse views.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Such a
confused and contradictory stance satisfies nobody and achieves nothing. He
needs political clarity and consistency, sticking to a position of defending
freedom of movement on clear anti-racist, class-based and internationalist
grounds.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The left can
chart a way forward, but it requires a principled, coherent approach. It starts
with acceptance of the referendum result (irrespective of how you voted), as
anything else would be a great boost to the hard Right, and a sharp focus on
what kind of Brexit we have. This is a deeply contested process, with the
Tories weak and incoherent, presenting the left with opportunities as well as
dangers.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It requires a
principled anti-racist politics that defends migrants' rights and freedom of
movement, challenges exploitation of migrant workers, and confronts the
exclusion of people from beyond Fortress Europe. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This
anti-racism can be combined with the championing of a positive alternative
around jobs, public services, pay and housing. The labour movement - both the
Labour Party and a more combative trade union movement - has to offer real
material change, using the rupture of Brexit as an opportunity to promote a
rupture with several years of Tory austerity and decades of neoliberal
policies.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php" name="fb_share" type="button">Share</a><script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script>luna17http://www.blogger.com/profile/03754650933188634442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093114275469628673.post-26177739591517205762016-10-15T21:47:00.001+01:002016-10-15T21:47:27.806+01:00From Iraq to Syria: a checklist for pro-war commentators <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBUOPwbAle4QCSmuaRpxY0O083q6lsbWSVp6xkB4tB4-GPjWNmiNbBXhL_7zrEe7hg1mT1jl5Wq9-x-0re78QsyvB3I_oJWF7nv-WxPWUaa5BxhZ8T381UmIcjuKYfGVN4CoJyPhrutA/s1600/stop-war.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBUOPwbAle4QCSmuaRpxY0O083q6lsbWSVp6xkB4tB4-GPjWNmiNbBXhL_7zrEe7hg1mT1jl5Wq9-x-0re78QsyvB3I_oJWF7nv-WxPWUaa5BxhZ8T381UmIcjuKYfGVN4CoJyPhrutA/s320/stop-war.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hands up if you agree with Nick Cohen </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It's been a week for banging the drums of war and attacking the anti-war movement in the British media. So, what can we expect from Nick Cohen - that most reliable of pro-Western intervention commentators - in his Observer column tomorrow? Here is a list of his favourite motifs. <br />
<br />
1) Claim the contemporary Left has nothing in common with what the Left was like when he was a lad<br />
<br />
2) Brand the British Left, including Jeremy Corbyn, as 'anti-West' <br />
<br />
3) Denounce prominent anti-war figures for appearing on Iranian television <br />
<br />
4) Accuse the anti-war movement of supporting Russia (without a scrap of evidence)<br />
<br />
5) Reaffirm his caricature of opponents of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 as Saddam apologists, while forgetting to mention how disastrous the whole thing was<br />
<br />
6) Describe the anti-war movement as supportive of both Assad and Hezbollah (again without any concern for evidence)<br />
<br />
7) Say that the problem in Syria is that there hasn't been <em>enough</em> Western bombing<br />
<br />
8) Imply that antisemitism is one of the motivations for the British Left's political positions <br />
<br />
9) Suggest the British Left is basically the same as the nationalist far right <br />
<br />
10) Attack the US left for being just as bad as Corbyn.<br />
<br />
Actually, I've already read the column online and he does all of them. Another weekend, <strong><em><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/15/syria-aleppo-jeremy-corbyn-far-left" target="_blank">another piece of regurgitated rubbish from Nick Cohen</a></em></strong>. <br />
<br />
Yes, it's Groundhog Day for anyone reading the Iraq War's most tenacious cheerleader. Cohen is one of that select band of pro-Iraq war commentators who still hasn't shown even a hint of contrition after propagandising for such a disastrous war. No humility, no apologies, no lessons learned. <br />
<br />
It is strange, too, that this beacon of humanitarian concern for the victims of aggressive imperialism has nothing to say about <strong><em><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/15/libya-coup-attempt-as-tripoli-militias-seek-to-topple-un-backed-government" target="_blank">the latest chaotic developments in Libya</a></em></strong>, or the <em><strong><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/15/us-bombed-yemen-middle-east-conflict" target="_blank">fresh miseries Saudi Arabia and the US are inflicting on Yemen</a></strong></em>, or indeed the disturbing new revelations of <strong><em><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/hillary-clinton-wikileaks-email-isis-saudi-arabia-qatar-us-allies-funding-barack-obama-knew-all-a7362071.html" target="_blank">US knowledge about Saudi and Qatari arming of Isis jihadists</a></em></strong>. What conveniently selective vision he has. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php" name="fb_share" type="button">Share</a><script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script>luna17http://www.blogger.com/profile/03754650933188634442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093114275469628673.post-16423915092665945182016-10-15T20:58:00.002+01:002016-10-15T20:58:50.568+01:00Words not deeds: why won't Stop the War's critics take to the streets? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI8vlI5Rnmxx-k9ZDbxui1R2phfzvSIQlvpMU3KPzv2cl3mGvRWjewJ7TJZzKK_iYo5KZIa3j9ZqOiUUzBzJwzIX0hzetPVUg3dnv1CVFuAQUb6xRcsYOz0AOFBSIKgs0tLD_xytKMpg/s1600/Boris-Johnson-russian-embassy-720611.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI8vlI5Rnmxx-k9ZDbxui1R2phfzvSIQlvpMU3KPzv2cl3mGvRWjewJ7TJZzKK_iYo5KZIa3j9ZqOiUUzBzJwzIX0hzetPVUg3dnv1CVFuAQUb6xRcsYOz0AOFBSIKgs0tLD_xytKMpg/s320/Boris-Johnson-russian-embassy-720611.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Another day passes without those who apparently want to protest at the Russian Embassy actually calling a protest outside the Russian Embassy. <br />
<br />
It was on Tuesday that British foreign secretary Boris Johnson <strong><em><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37628774" target="_blank">berated the Stop the War Coalition</a></em></strong> - a coalition dedicated to opposing British foreign policy - for not doing what the British foreign secretary would like it to do. A flurry of commentary, echoing Johnson's rhetoric, has predictably followed in the British press. <br />
<br />
Protests <em>are</em> what they want, right? So why don't they call a protest? Why do they instead pour scorn on Stop the War Coalition for <em>not</em> calling such a protest?<br />
<br />
If an organisation is not pursuing the aims you would like it to, stop bleating about it and do something yourself. Launch a campaign. Call a protest.<br />
<br />
So, why aren't they? Why are the <strong><em><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/14/stop-the-war-syria-target-russia-aleppo" target="_blank">Freedlands of this world</a></em></strong> whinging repetitively about other people not doing what they want, instead of actually doing something themselves?<br />
<br />
Three reasons:<br />
<br />
1) They know that such a protest would in fact lend support to the drive to escalated Western intervention in Syria. They can claim it wouldn't - as Jonathan Freedland does - but deep down they know better than that.<br />
<br />
The context is inter-imperialist conflict over Syria. Therefore a protest at the Russian Embassy in London would become useful propaganda for US/UK military intervention.<br />
<br />
2) They are not actually interested in doing anything useful. Their interest is instead in smearing anti-war voices. It's the age-old trick of painting anti-war activists as in league with the enemy (in this case Russia).<br />
<br />
The aim is to get lodged in public consciousness the idea that Stop the War and Jeremy Corbyn are essentially apologists for a foreign regime, and thus not sufficiently patriotic to shape <em>British</em> foreign policy. And of course it's the threat of Britain's second party of government (Labour) adopting a foreign policy that's independent of US imperialism that really terrifies them.<br />
<br />
3) They know they would be branded hypocrites. Many of these people were supporters of previous interventions. Even those who opposed the invasion of Iraq are likely to have supported the disastrous interventions in Afghanistan or Libya (or both). Many of them backed the vote for bombing Syria last December.<br />
<br />
Stop the War has repeatedly called it right, while these people have got it wrong. In opposing a further escalation of foreign intervention in Syria, Stop the War is again getting it right. More bombing is no solution for the besieged and suffering people in Aleppo. <br />
<br />
<em>This is a slightly edited version of an article first published on <strong><a href="http://www.counterfire.org/" target="_blank">Counterfire</a></strong>. </em><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php" name="fb_share" type="button">Share</a><script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script>luna17http://www.blogger.com/profile/03754650933188634442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093114275469628673.post-91910158133751426302016-10-10T00:54:00.004+01:002016-10-10T01:00:53.258+01:00What strategy for Jeremy Corbyn? <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4RbgEfTwAYjiOf4Ws796SnABJoVgPZP5sHW-1oVjJLiEtSqz1z1UZDdYF7vzqsWqwysvqVXuWCIzH7aXLAHAXtTQuxfaNrgwVUkimVx69rbqysrlwok5sGy03TUJBG369eij-U-CIdg/s1600/jeremy+demo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4RbgEfTwAYjiOf4Ws796SnABJoVgPZP5sHW-1oVjJLiEtSqz1z1UZDdYF7vzqsWqwysvqVXuWCIzH7aXLAHAXtTQuxfaNrgwVUkimVx69rbqysrlwok5sGy03TUJBG369eij-U-CIdg/s320/jeremy+demo.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pic: Guy Smallman </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I wrote this article a couple of days before Jeremy Corbyn's re-election as leader of the Labour Party. It was published on <em><strong><a href="http://www.counterfire.org/articles/opinion/18514-what-strategy-for-jeremy-corbyn-s-leadership" target="_blank">Counterfire </a></strong></em>at the time, but I didn't get around to re-posting it here. <br />
<br />
As it's still entirely relevant, however, I thought I'd re-blog it here (without any alterations). You may wish to compare it to developments we have seen over the last two weeks or so. <br />
<br />
----<br />
<br />
It looks very likely that Jeremy Corbyn will be re-elected leader of the Labour Party. Despite the constant media vilification, the exclusion of over 100,000 members from the ballot, and the further purging of many Corbyn-backing members, the left-wing incumbent is still expected to be announced the winner on Saturday.<br />
<br />
The leadership election only happened because of the actions of Labour MPs. 172 of them - by far the majority - voted 'no confidence' in their leader at the end of June. This was accompanied by 65 front bench resignations, including 20 shadow cabinet members.<br />
<br />
<strong>From failed coup to leadership election</strong><br />
<br />
The purpose of the coup was to force Corbyn to resign. He stood his ground. Hence the leadership challenge from Owen Smith, forcing an election that most party members didn't want (and, if the latest reports are to be believed, even Owen Smith didn’t want).<br />
<br />
These events have provided a powerful illustration of the fundamental source of conflict in today's Labour Party. A left-leaning membership - with newer members particularly likely to support Corbyn - is massively at odds with a parliamentary party dominated by the right wing. The political gulf between Corbyn and the majority of Labour MPs is huge: they are in fact closer, politically, to the Tories.<br />
<br />
Similar right-wingers dominate the Labour Party apparatus too. This right-wing bloc inside the parliamentary group and the apparatus is closely connected to a sympathetic media and other elements of the British establishment. Smith was the fall guy: he agreed to have his name put forward, and he contested the leadership with superficially left-ish rhetoric. But the real movers and shakers are firmly on Labour’s right wing. They have already kept their distance from Smith – after Saturday they will conveniently forget he ever existed.<br />
<br />
All of this creates tremendous uncertainty about what happens next. The divisions run so deep that the very existence of a single, unitary Labour Party is seriously in doubt. Many MPs are determined to block Corbyn and reverse the left's considerable advances over the last year. A breakaway is an option, but its prospects would be poor.<br />
<br />
The hostile MPs have already resorted to a range of anti-democratic manoeuvres, together with constant undermining of their leader. There is every reason to believe this will continue – and it could even escalate.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>Which way for Labour?</strong><br />
<br />
It is in this context that a debate is taking place about how Jeremy Corbyn, and those around him on the Labour left, should build on the expected success in winning the leadership for a second time. Put crudely: should Corbyn's team focus on conciliation and bridge-building ('unity at all costs'), wooing the recalcitrant MPs with policy compromises and shadow cabinet positions, or should the left assert itself and appeal to Corbyn's second mandate as the basis for a serious shift leftwards in the Labour Party?<br />
<br />
<a href="https://medium.com/@OwenJones84/a-strategy-for-jeremy-corbyns-leadership-to-succeed-9ffe4c27149b#.a4fxcuevk">A lengthy new piece by Owen Jones</a> is the most detailed and cogent expression of the first view, but it is merely one example of the current thinking among a layer of Labour-aligned commentators and activists (seemingly also amongst a layer of senior union officials too). Three major strands to this debate can be discerned: Should the front bench be recomposed on a broad basis? Should there be major policy compromises with the right wing? Should there be a conciliatory approach to the party bureaucracy?<br />
<br />
The 'unity at all costs' perspective essentially says the following: many of the MPs who previously resigned should be actively encouraged to re-join Labour's front bench team. There should be compromises on contentious issues, especially in the field of foreign policy, and a stress on lowest common denominator points of broad agreement.<br />
<br />
The apparatus, meanwhile, should perhaps be tinkered with, but largely left unchanged (this last point has taken concrete form with deputy leader Tom Watson’s cynical manoeuvres in this week’s national executive meeting, designed to put fresh obstacles in Corbyn’s way).<br />
<br />
The alternative case from much of the left - inside and outside the Labour Party - begins by recognising that the bulk of the PLP is resolutely opposed to what Corbyn stands for on political grounds. The hostility is not – contrary to some claims – primarily about ‘leadership’ or ‘competence’ or ‘media strategy’. These lines of attack on Corbyn are proxies for opposition to his politics. With this is mind, the focus should be on further advancing principled left-wing politics rather than obsessing over which anti-Corbyn MPs can be wooed into re-joining the shadow cabinet.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>The ‘broad church’ strategy</strong><br />
<br />
The fact is that the previous attempt to have a shadow cabinet encompassing the full political range of the PLP ended in failure. Jones, for one, urges a repeat of this effort, but fails to explain why it should prove any more successful than last time. The Commons debate on bombing Syria was a particularly stark illustration. There was a farcical situation when the Leader of the Opposition opened Labour’s contribution to the debate with an anti-war speech, but the shadow foreign secretary closed it with a pro-war speech that drew enthusiastic cheers from the Tory benches.<br />
<br />
If Labour is to provide any sort of meaningful or coherent opposition to the government, there must be no return to such a paralysing mess. The current, broadly left-wing, shadow cabinet is fairly politically cohesive and contains figures – like shadow health secretary Diane Abbott and shadow education secretary Angela Rayner – who can offer a serious challenge to the Tories (unlike their deeply underwhelming predecessors, Heidi Alexander and Lucy Powell respectively).<br />
<br />
Of course it’s true that there will be a thin layer of MPs – among those who resigned in June – who can plausibly be part of a Labour front bench promoting Corbyn’s left-wing policies. But these are in the minority – and the emphasis should be on them showing remorse for their behaviour, not on the left pleading with them.<br />
<br />
But it is fanciful to imagine that most of those hostile MPs can be brought into the tent without them pulling it down from the inside. For example, Jones makes a rather bizarre case for accepting the very right-wing MP Wes Streeting – who earned his stripes in the National Union of Students bureaucracy, spent a year working for Blairite group Progress after graduating from Cambridge, backed Liz Kendall for leader last summer and stoked the attacks on Corbyn over spurious claims of antisemitism.<br />
<br />
Such a broad church is unsustainable. If we have learnt anything from the conflicts inside the Labour Party over the last twelve months, it is surely that.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>Irreconcilable political differences</strong><br />
<br />
The question of front bench personnel is closely tied to the question of compromises on policy. It’s true that the 172 MPs who voted ‘no confidence’ in Corbyn are not a homogeneous bloc. Most of them, however, are hostile to Corbyn’s politics and want substantial policy concessions. The pressure for this will be relentless. It would be naïve to think that there is a high level of agreement, across the PLP, on most domestic political questions.<br />
<br />
The area where the differences run deepest, though, is undoubtedly foreign policy. It would be disastrous for Corbyn to capitulate to his right-wing critics in a bid for ‘unity’. The recent parliamentary committee report damning David Cameron for the disastrous military intervention in Libya is yet another vindication for Corbyn and the left.<br />
<br />
Foreign policy is a field where Corbyn is stronger than the likes of Jones are prepared to concede. His critics should be instructed to get behind a genuinely refreshing and serious approach to international relations that represents a sharp break from the ‘New Labour’ past. Labour’s leader has been proven right again and again. That provides a credible basis on which to build.<br />
<br />
As well as sticking with broadly left-wing personnel and pursuing a coherent and credible left-wing political vision, the Corbyn leadership will need to initiate thoroughgoing democratisation of the Labour Party. Having lost the political argument, the right wing is seeking to use every bureaucratic method at its disposal to weaken and ultimately crush the current left-wing leadership. Tom Watson’s tactics at this week’s Labour NEC meeting indicate that this will continue.<br />
<br />
It is clear, therefore, that the left leadership of the Labour Party is at a crossroads. It can pursue compromise after compromise, thus demoralising supporters and weakening opposition to the Tories. Or it can treat the re-election of Corbyn, and the mandate it will bring, as a bridgehead towards far-reaching political transformation. <br />
<br />
Either way there will be conflict, but the latter approach allows the left to shape the debate and emerge stronger.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQX5Xff_atzSABAbuOCYp1F21icnPcfdHUVpbt0K_4dbKTayXrOtFDSjedJMhRCDlR2ro70IzCI8l9NIxLHF2L9EDSqXBC7M_fjD-osCloG8UPaMkCPgcwtkf46KOVVvTWqbQlx28DmQ/s1600/smith_imperialism.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQX5Xff_atzSABAbuOCYp1F21icnPcfdHUVpbt0K_4dbKTayXrOtFDSjedJMhRCDlR2ro70IzCI8l9NIxLHF2L9EDSqXBC7M_fjD-osCloG8UPaMkCPgcwtkf46KOVVvTWqbQlx28DmQ/s320/smith_imperialism.jpg" width="202" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A review of John Smith, <em><strong>Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation and Capitalism's Final Crisis</strong></em> (Monthly Review Press, 2016). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Over the last forty years, global capitalism has increasingly been shaped by the core tenets of neoliberalism. The neoliberal counter-revolution emerged as a response to the return of economic crisis in the 1970s, and to the power of working class and anti-colonial movements in the 1960s and 1970s. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It was geared towards the interests of wealthy and corporate elites, at the expense of the vast majority of working class and oppressed people worldwide. The divisions between the 1% and the 99% have become ever more acute, with the most extraordinary and ostentatious wealth for a tiny elite alongside hardship, insecurity and poverty for many people.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Cuts, privatisation, deregulation, trade liberalisation and outsourcing were all components of a wider political offensive. Consequently, exploitation has intensified, inequality has grown, and democracy has been hollowed out. This involved a massive effort to defeat trade-union opposition and break the resistance and organisations of the working class. Though largely successful in those terms, this capitalist offensive has fuelled economic crisis, social polarisation and a political backlash that takes various forms.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The rise of neoliberalism happened at the same time as capitalism expanded, and entrenched itself in new territories, becoming a truly dominant global system. The end of the Cold War gave particular impetus to the neoliberal mantras of free trade and globalisation, so that neoliberal policymaking has – with concerted pressure from supra-national institutions dominated by the interests of big capital in the Global North – become globally hegemonic. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This dominance was captured by Margaret Thatcher’s line, ‘there is no alternative’ in the 1980s and, a little later, by Francis Fukuyama’s proclamation of ‘the end of history’, suggesting that the upheavals of 1989-91 marked a final and conclusive victory for Western-style capitalism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The capitalist crisis which unfolded from 2007/08 illustrated the failures of neoliberalism to resolve the deeper, long-term problems inherent in the system. Indeed, key elements of neoliberalism - like the growth of a deregulated finance sector and the increasing dependence on outsourcing - were vital factors in sharpening, deepening and prolonging that crisis. John Smith dubs this ‘capitalism’s final crisis’, both because he argues there is no plausible exit from the crisis (within the confines of capitalism) and because of the ecological dimension of capitalist crisis, which threatens the planet’s future.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Smith’s book, which compresses many years of research into a little over three hundred pages, is, first and foremost, an account of contemporary global capitalism in the wake of decades of neoliberalism. A British-based Marxist and activist, Smith has previously published very little (this is his first book) but he draws on his own extensive PhD research and on an even longer period of researching, and thinking about, the main issues. It contains a formidable array of evidence, with an assured grasp of the economic data, to support the main arguments.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Smith eloquently conveys the huge extent to which capitalism has changed as a result of neoliberal trends. The book is genuinely global in its focus, examining the main global trends and documenting the impact of a Western-dominated (and grossly unequal) system on the poorer parts of the world. It is also a savage indictment of the phenomena he describes, graphically revealing the human misery associated with the appalling working conditions - poverty pay, long hours, unsafe conditions and insecurity - dominating the lives of millions of working-class people.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Smith also develops a particular argument about global exploitation and inequality. He demonstrates with a wealth of data that the whole system has increasingly come to depend on the ‘super exploitation’ of impoverished workers in the ‘developing world’. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This exploitation generates massive surplus value for corporations based in the more developed global North. He provocatively argues that even many Marxist writers have underestimated the scale and significance of such ‘super exploitation’ for the global system, failing to give proper attention to the role of outsourcing in capitalist profitability. He offers a wealth of evidence that outsourcing, which involves corporations moving their operations to poorer countries with cheap labour to maximise profits, has grown enormously, and that neoliberal capitalism depends upon it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It follows that not only has the working class grown globally, but also that the working class in the poorer nations has become more integral to the fortunes of global capitalism, and, therefore, more integral to the prospects for working-class struggle and emancipation. Neoliberalism’s restructuring of capitalism and recomposition of the global working class consequently has implications for anti-capitalist resistance and the challenge of re-building working-class strength. The book’s focus is largely on working-class people as the objects of social and economic transformation, but Smith clearly sees those victims of exploitation and neoliberal upheaval as the agents of social change too.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is a very wide-ranging and ambitious book, but the opening chapter on the global commodity proves to be a shrewd entrance point to an exploration of several interrelated themes. The fact that today’s mass commodities rest upon super exploitation in the South – hidden from consumers’ view – is Smith’s starting point. He writes, in some detail, about three exemplary global commodities in twenty-first-century capitalism: the T-shirt, the Apple iPhone, and coffee.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Smith exposes the highly exploitative, and at times horrific, working conditions behind these commodities, for example the extremely low-paid work in dangerous conditions undertaken by mainly young, female workers in the garments sweatshops of Bangladesh. It is demonstrated beyond doubt that powerful corporations based in the North, especially the US, are the beneficiaries of this exploitation, and are responsible for the terrible conditions endured by workers. The relationship between capitalism in the ‘core countries’ and the labour done by these workers is carefully unpicked.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This vivid sketching of key commodities – chosen as exemplars, not for any exceptional reasons – brings to life what could threaten to be rather dry, economic material, humanising the economic processes under discussion. It is supported, later in the book, by analysis of labour conditions in the Global South: a very revealing interrogation of the everyday working conditions of vast numbers of workers, and how those conditions feed the profits of major corporations. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The massive increase in female workers - and their integration into the market and the acute nature of their exploitation – is an especially important element of this transformation in the working class. Smith is also astute about the role of migrant labour in contemporary capitalism, exploring how wealthier states (and their business elites) profit from migrant workers at the same time as using immigration controls to police the boundaries between the Global North and the Global South, which helps sustain inequalities.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">One of Smith’s main arguments is that outsourcing is at the heart of corporate globalisation. Furthermore, he suggests that this has too often been overlooked as an absolutely central part of neoliberalism. When viewed as a global phenomenon, he argues, it becomes obvious that outsourcing has been integral to capital’s exploitation of labour in the neoliberal era. Corporations based in the North have increasingly focused on cheap Southern labour – sometimes on a huge scale – to address problems of profitability and to remain competitive.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">As Smith writes:</span><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Ultra-low wages are not the only factor attracting profit-hungry Western firms to newly industrializing countries … they are also attracted by the flexibility of the workers, the absence of independent unions, the relative ease with which they can be forced to submit to working days as long as those described by Marx and Engels in mid-nineteenth-century England, and the intensity with which they can work’ (p.24).</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> The example of Apple (and other electronic) products, which depend on a vast complex of workplaces in Shenzhen, China, and massive levels of exploitation of those who work there, is offered as a powerful case study. This kind of outsourcing is at the core of the ‘imperialism’ of the book’s title: it perpetuates a systematically unequal relationship of super-exploitation of Southern workers by Northern-based capital. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Globalisation is revealed as a process of domination, not some mutually beneficial exchange, or spur to development in newly industrial countries, as the apostles of neoliberalism like to claim. Neoliberal globalisation is in reality imperialism without colonies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The relationship between the Global North and the Global South is fundamental to twenty-first-century imperialism. At a theoretical level, one of Smith’s main concerns is to demonstrate the continuing relevance of the concept of imperialism, as developed by Lenin and others a century ago, and the ways in which our world continues to be structured in uneven and unequal ways by the richest and most economically advanced states. The book is therefore, among other things, a useful contribution to a Marxist understanding of what it means to talk about imperialism today.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Finally, Smith argues convincingly that the roots of the capitalist crisis since 2007/08 are in global production. He bases his analysis of the crisis in ‘the two principal measures that allowed the imperialist economies to escape, for a while, the crises of the 1970s – the enormous expansion of debt and the epochal global shift of production to low-wage countries’ (p.280). These therapies became pathologies for the system. He explains why nothing, within the constraints of capitalism, can now be done to ‘prevent a protracted, calamitous global depression’ (p.313).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This doesn’t mean that book is gloomy or fatalistic. Quite the opposite: it points to the enormous potential for fresh revolts by a greatly expanded, and exploited, working class. As the author concludes:</span><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">‘The southward shift of the working class, the reinforcement of the working class in imperialist countries through migration from oppressed nations, and the influx of women into wage labour in all countries means that the working class now much more closely resembles the face of humanity, greatly strengthening its chances of prevailing in coming battles’ (p.314).</span></blockquote>
<br />
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php" name="fb_share" type="button">Share</a><script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script>luna17http://www.blogger.com/profile/03754650933188634442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093114275469628673.post-2028982444197969212016-08-16T02:12:00.000+01:002016-08-16T02:12:18.374+01:00Jeremy Corbyn and the myth of the eighties revival <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_jCvCqubTqZQwyZ4re6GoYXATFEJ7cpXBQpYbRRDHPc-17EUZdgSRL95NPsyMGVNEGFRVrqNuuMPyqhq8ideH2dyh2Vk9cf8VWLzJ7QJbAoOb4QZuMyBP2xvM9aymyBKWIk2BY-c67A/s1600/benn+and+corbyn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_jCvCqubTqZQwyZ4re6GoYXATFEJ7cpXBQpYbRRDHPc-17EUZdgSRL95NPsyMGVNEGFRVrqNuuMPyqhq8ideH2dyh2Vk9cf8VWLzJ7QJbAoOb4QZuMyBP2xvM9aymyBKWIk2BY-c67A/s320/benn+and+corbyn.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It has become a predictable and tedious mantra of the Labour
Right, and its legions of media commentators, that Jeremy Corbyn's rise to the
leadership of the Labour Party - and the support he continues to receive from a
growing membership - is a return to the 1980s. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In particular it is the 1980-83
period that MPs and columnists have in mind, suggesting that current
developments are a re-run of Michael Foot's leadership and the rise of Bennism
during the early years of Margaret Thatcher's Tory governments.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is meant, of course, in an entirely pejorative sense. That
era is safely classified as a disastrous one to which Labour cannot possibly
return, climaxing in the catastrophe of the 1983 general election. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is tempting to dismiss such analogies as irrelevant
nonsense. But the arguments do need to be refuted. It also makes sense, more
generally, to return to that era as a means of understanding the Labour Party's
evolution and as a guide to making sense of Labour's opportunities and
challenges today. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Refuting
the myths</span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="line-height: 107%;"><i><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/commentisfree/2016/aug/15/the-parallels-between-jeremy-corbyn-and-michael-foot-are-almost-all-false" target="_blank">Paul Mason's article</a></i></b><span style="line-height: 107%;"> refuting the alleged parallels between
Jeremy Corbyn and Michael Foot is therefore timely and welcome. He correctly
points out that the Labour left's boom was at the same time as a broader
right-wing shift in British politics, a time when Thatcherism (though very far
from universally popular) was relatively strong. Although he doesn't mention
it, the rightwards-moving split which led to the founding of the Social
Democratic Party (SDP) and a good electoral showing for the SDP-Liberal
Alliance in 1983 was another manifestation of this.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The situation today is quite different. As Mason notes,
neoliberalism is discredited. There is a crisis of the neoliberal political
centre and, while right-wing forces can capitalise on that, it is clearly an
opening for the left. The current surge in Labour membership is not something
seen in the early 1980s and it indicates a wider enthusiasm for an alternative
to a politically bankrupt status quo. It's worth adding, too, that there is
greater sympathy for the left among the trade unions - whether at the level of
leadership or grassroots - than was witnessed during the Bennism years. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In fact the left has been more successful recently than in the
early 1980s. Foot was, as Mason remarks, a compromise candidate not a triumph
for the left. His time as leader was characterised by vacillation, incoherence
and lurches between left and right (for example, he expressed ardent support
for the Falklands War, seeking to outflank Thatcher in belligerent jingoism). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The more left-wing current around Tony Benn garnered a lot of
success, mainly among grassroots members, but was ultimately unsuccessful: Benn
may have lost only extremely narrowly to right-winger Denis Healey in the 1981
deputy leadership race, but it was a defeat nonetheless. This time around, the
left has actually won a leadership election - comfortably - and now looks set
to do so again. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the Foot era the Labour left appeared to be faring well
but it was short-lived, had shallow roots, and the longer-term trajectory was
very much to the right. The poor result in 1983 was widely interpreted as
showing the folly of left-wing policies; the conclusion was that Labour needed
to adapt itself to Thatcherism. Neil Kinnock came from a left-wing background
and used this credibilty to co-opt a 'soft left' layer which had previously
backed Benn, but his entire period as leader was a slow march to the right. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With every election defeat - 1987 then 1992 - the proponents
of this rightwards shift were strengthened, and the left became ever more
marginalised (symbolised by a dismal vote for Benn in the 1988 leadership
election). Big defeats for the organised working class - above all the Miners'
Strike of 1984-85 - reinforced the power of the right wing, in both the Labour
Party and the union movement. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The massive anti-poll tax movement threatened to tip the
balance the other way, yet it found only a faint echo in the upper echelons of
the Labour Party. Also, the eastern European revolutions and collapse of the
Soviet Union were utilised to argue that socialism was finished, neoliberalism
was triumphant, and there was no alternative. Tony Blair's election as Labour
leader in 1994 took the process even further. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Paul Mason's article recognises that 'Corbynism' has emerged
in very different circumstances to Bennism and must be understood in that
context: it is a vibrant and hopeful response to discredited neoliberal
policies which have eroded the post-war settlement of public services and a
strong welfare state, accentuated inequality and hollowed out democracy. It is
not even slightly an exercise in nostalgia or an irrational psychological spasm
(as the likes of Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland are fond of arguing),
but a materially grounded and entirely reasonable response to changed
realities. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the article also raises some questions and difficulties
that really need thinking through. There are three in particular.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Political
and industrial struggles</span></b></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Firstly, Mason's assessment of the relationship between
political struggle and industrial struggle in the 1980s is problematic. He
writes: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'The leftism we carried with us into the Winter Gardens in
1980 had its origins in the syndicalism of ordinary workers in the 1970s. To
the shop stewards I met in the years between Benn’s 1980 speech and the miners’
strike, Labour politics were a sideshow. The unions had achieved control of
many workplaces and – it seemed – could go on calling the shots. In the year Benn
made his electrifying speech, the steelworkers’ union had just won a
double-digit pay rise in an all-out strike.'<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This exaggerates the strength of the unions at that time. The
bigger story of the steelworkers in that period was that they lost - and there
were consequently mass closures of steel works. The even bigger picture was one
of rising unemployment and an assault on manufacturing, combined with a major
Tory and employer offensive against the unions which scored many successes.
There were major strikes throughout the decade, but most were defeats and this
eroded workers' confidence and strengthened the grip of a conservative union
bureaucracy. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The 'political upturn' of Bennism was, then, to a certain
extent shaped by the downturn in industrial struggle by the unions. There was a
substantial element of people looking to Labour, and a stronger Labour left, as
compensation for the weaknesses on the industrial front. But the deeper
direction of travel was to the right precisely because of the big picture of
repeated defeats of workers' struggles against a backdrop of unemployment and
insecurity. Any shift to the left inside the Labour Party was therefore likely
to be short-lived. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The other major factor driving the Labour left's resurgence
was the bitter experience of the Labour governments of 1974-79, led by Harold
Wilson then Jim Callaghan, which had caused massive disillusionment. This
period was in fact the birth pangs of neoliberalism: Labour politicians were in
office but not in power, obliged by the return of capitalist economic crisis
and the demands of international capitalism to repeatedly inflict public
spending cuts and wage freezes on their own supporters. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One response to this experience was a shift to the left,
embodied by a politician - Tony Benn - who had learnt from his own experience
of ministerial office how powerful the obstacles to even mild social
protections (never mind positive reforms) could be. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Workplace
and social issues</span></b></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This question of the relevance of industrial struggle leads on
to a second problem with Mason's arguments. He writes: 'Today, work is much
less central to the left project, and for a variety of reasons. It is
precarious, hard to organise. Also, the things the left wants to achieve have
become more social, less industrial. There is, on the left, an implicit
understanding of political philosopher Toni Negri’s claim: that the “factory”
is now the whole of society,and the subject of change is everybody – especially
the networked youth.'<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is wrong at both ends. Mason is underestimating the
significance of 'social' struggles' in the past, while underestimating the
significance of work-related issues and struggles today. It is true that
workers' struggles dominated the 1970s, but they were never the whole picture. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the 1970s and early 1980s there was a range of other
struggles from rent strikes and housing campaigns to the women's liberation
movement and large demonstrations defending abortion rights, from the Anti Nazi
League and black community struggles to the Right to Work Campaign's marches
against unemployment, from the Anti Apartheid Movement's resurgence after the
Soweto Uprising in 1976 to CND's mass protests in the early 1980s. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If we look at the history of the British labour movement there
have often been links between economic, work-based struggles and wider
political or social movements. Chartism united democratic demands and economic
grievances. The mass protests of the Irish and unemployed, and in defence of
free speech, in the 1880s fed into the explosive wave of militant workers'
struggles known as the New Unionism. The Great Unrest of 1911-14 was
simultaneous with suffragettes' protests and turmoil over Ireland. Rent strikes
accompanied the workers' strikes of Red Clydeside during World War One and in
its aftermath. And so on. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But it's also wrong to dismiss the politics of work in 2016.
Many of Corbyn's most resonant and appealing policies are to do with the world
of work, whether it is pledging to repeal the Trade Union Act and other
anti-union legislation, ending poverty pay and zero hours contracts, investing
in job creation, the promise of a National Investment Bank, or many other
policies and ideas the Labour leader has talked about recently. The world of
work is in fact at the centre of his political alternative. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This political vision encompasses policies - like funded
childcare - that directly link the 'work' world with the 'social' world. It
would be a mistake to separate and juxtapose 'work' and 'social', just as it's
a mistake to downplay the importance of people's conditions and experiences of
work. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As for workers' struggles, it is true that we have had 25
years of historically low levels of strike action. The emphasis on electoral politics
by so much of the left is explained partly by the long-term weaknesses in the
unions. But if the breakthroughs associated with Corbyn are to be sustained -
never mind built on - then this will have to change. The hopeful green shoots
we've seen this year - junior doctors, national teachers' strike, railway
strikes and so on - will have to bloom into something bigger. Electoral
politics alone will not suffice. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many of Mason's 'networked youth' are workers - and others
will become workers in time. They will be stronger if organised collectively in
combative trade unions. The strengths of social movements and the tremendous
enthusiasm around Corbyn need to be used to fuel more powerful union
organisation and a renewal of workplace resistance. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Parliamentary
and extra-parliamentary opposition </span></b></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thirdly, there is Mason's claim: 'This generation, by
contrast, understands that the most revolutionary thing you can do to
neoliberalism is to put a party in government that dismantles it.' <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This contains an important ingredient of truth. The ambition
and political generalisation involved in seeking to transform Labour into a
left-wing party and get it into government represents, in some ways, an
advance. Over the last year there has been a lifting of the left's sights
generally - a sense of actually shaping mainstream political debate and being a
relevant force to be reckoned with. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But this raising of the stakes brings big, important issues to
the fore and gives them an acute practical relevance they haven't had for
generations. The question of the limits of electing a government opposed to
neoliberalism is one such issue. Mason makes this revealing comment: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'The rule of law is stronger now. Everybody involved in the
Bennite movement sensed that Britain’s legal institutions were so weak, its
police, security services and judiciary so politicised, its constitution so
malleable, that the scenario in Chris Mullin’s novel A Very British Coup was
not paranoia. Today, though the secret state is large, it is under much stronger
legislative control. Should a leftwing Labour party come to power – either on
its own or in coalition with left nationalists – it is likely to be able to
govern relatively free of politicised sabotage from the state.'<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This demonstrates admirable optimism of the will, but lacks
the necessary complement of pessimism of the intellect. It seems rather naive
to assume that the secret security state no longer has the potential power it
used to possess. It is certainly wrong to suggest that other elements of the
state are less 'politicised' than three decades ago - all the evidence surely
runs against that assertion. And that's before we get on to the role of the
media or the power of finance, big business and their institutions, both at
national and international levels. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The power of both the state and of corporations remains huge.
It won't be broken simply by electing a Corbyn-led government. Whether we’re
talking about this side of such a government or after its formation, there is
an undeniable need for mass extra-parliamentary mobilisation. This is a vital
counterweight to the power of the nation state, media, transnational
institutions, the City of London and big business.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Labour Party’s membership surge and leftwards shift in the
grassroots, with a left-wing leader, are very important and hopeful
breakthroughs. But it would be a grave error to reduce the movement to the
Labour Party, or to put all our eggs in the electoral basket. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Corbyn’s initial success, in being elected party leader, was
fuelled by the protest movements of the last 15 years (above all the anti-war
and anti-austerity movements) and Corbyn’s strong association with those
movements and with numerous workplace disputes. Last June’s huge national
demonstration, organised by the People’s Assembly, was one key catalyst in
Corbyn’s rise to the leadership. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As Corbyn himself repeatedly insists, this is about a movement
of people not simply the role of a solitary leader. That movement is not
confined to members of the Labour Party and its activities cannot be confined
to internal Labour Party struggles and electioneering. In the last 12 months
there have been numerous campaigns, protest movements and strikes: from
protests against bombing Syria to the Convoy to Calais in solidarity with
refugees, from the fresh wave of Black Lives Matter protests to strikes by
junior doctors, teachers and railway workers. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The impact of these campaigns and strikes is amplified by
having a left-wing Labour leadership. Sometimes this is explicit, for example
when Jeremy Corbyn voiced support for County Durham’s teaching assistants,
overwhelmingly women workers campaigning for fair pay, or when Corbyn and John
McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, have popped up at picket lines for the junior
doctors. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Equally importantly, such extra parliamentary struggles
strengthen the left inside Labour. The protests against bombing Syria,
February’s national Scrap Trident demonstration and the strikes are all
examples of this. There will be many more to come. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="line-height: 107%;">Transforming
society</span></b><span style="line-height: 107%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If we are going to achieve real social change – against the
might of the British political class, the establishment and the state – we need
to make advances on all fronts, and bring them together in a concerted
offensive. In particular, the breakthroughs in the Labour Party not only
require sustaining but need to be used as a lever to promote a more combative
labour movement. Ultimately, there must be a willingness to confront our
powerful enemies and not be limited by the constraints of parliament. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This broad perspective draws attention to something else.
Revolutionary socialists have been much derided lately, with a red scare about
‘Trotskyists’ by Labour’s right wing. Some on the Labour left have sadly echoed
the derision towards socialists outside the Labour Party (even Mason lapses
into this, with his concluding reference to ‘re-enactment groups from
20th-century Marxism’). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But one of the most important lessons of history is that
revolutionary socialists – with a general anti-capitalist perspective and a
deep commitment to extra-parliamentary forms of struggle – have a crucial role
to play. It is the radical left that has a formidable record of initiating and
shaping a great many different struggles on the streets and in the workplaces.
It has always had a larger strategic vision than the internal battles of the
Labour Party and winning votes, with a relentless focus on self-activity and
mass mobilisation. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This radical left also has a political vision that goes beyond
the limits of parliament and of reforming a crisis-ridden system. In the
current period, this can underpin an independent left-wing politics that is
impervious to the huge pressures of holding the Labour Party together, of
appeasing right-wingers and of narrow, ‘centre ground’-chasing electoralism. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Such independent politics also require independent organisation, with
anti-capitalist activists grouped together and operating independently of
Labour. These elements are as necessary as they ever were. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<br />
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php" name="fb_share" type="button">Share</a><script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script>luna17http://www.blogger.com/profile/03754650933188634442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093114275469628673.post-66273641360464913472016-07-28T16:54:00.000+01:002016-07-28T16:54:37.388+01:00Keep Corbyn by keeping it radical <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitP2Bq7WQEbE6VmpTTjfV86nUjh4hrHZ1rnynGE56_kM_wQeSg78ljOZsJ8sGzwRKp3bwn8Ei0o9X6LhuTUVEKXmPn9yTO5MlrTiOBu9wXgzf7lTxd6hQLQWnou0Qd-wcmgx0WkaXCKw/s1600/article-P-c2011fa2-8fc7-4dca-8d4c-3f95133c5692-3sAQzKF8Bff8ca57aded31dbb2f2-569_634x356+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitP2Bq7WQEbE6VmpTTjfV86nUjh4hrHZ1rnynGE56_kM_wQeSg78ljOZsJ8sGzwRKp3bwn8Ei0o9X6LhuTUVEKXmPn9yTO5MlrTiOBu9wXgzf7lTxd6hQLQWnou0Qd-wcmgx0WkaXCKw/s320/article-P-c2011fa2-8fc7-4dca-8d4c-3f95133c5692-3sAQzKF8Bff8ca57aded31dbb2f2-569_634x356+%25282%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I think Jeremy Corbyn will win the Labour leadership election, but it isn't inevitable. In some ways it's a tougher challenge than last summer,
when Corbyn was first elected. If Owen Smith is going to win it will be due to
the wider political climate, a series of tactics by his campaign, and perhaps a
few weaknesses on the part of Corbyn’s campaign.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>Owen Smith's path to victory</strong> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Here's how I think that ‘worst case scenario’ of a defeat for Corbyn could
plausibly happen. Constant media vilification of Corbyn, especially the
allegations of abuse and intimidation by his supporters, could go some way to
persuading some Labour Party members that it's just not worth holding on to
him. They may largely agree with the current leader, but if this is what the
media will continuously do to Labour if Corbyn continues in post then it's just
not worth it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is reinforced by the constant mantra of insisting that
Corbyn is unelectable. All the evidence is that Labour would do the same or
worse in polls with Smith as leader, but poor polling for Labour (which we're
seeing now) is still likely to help the challenger not the incumbent. All
Labour members care about being electable. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Notice, too, that Smith (while largely stealing Corbyn's
policies) has differentiated himself on immigration. This plays to the idea
that on some issues Labour needs to get more in tune with existing public
opinion to be electable. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Smith's adoption of many of Corbyn's policies may be
unconvincing (and has been greeted with mockery) but this, too, could boost his
challenge. He knows what he's doing. There's a layer of voters in this
leadership election who could be persuaded that a Smith leadership would retain
most of the Corbyn policies they like while being more media-friendly and
plausibly prime ministerial. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If these policy pledges are the carrot, then the threat from
most MPs of refusing to work with Corbyn is the stick. It is a powerful weapon:
the 'no confidence' vote by MPs was overwhelming and the resignations by front
benchers were sweeping, so everyone voting in this election knows that a vote
for Corbyn will sustain the war between the leadership (backed by much of the
membership) and the bulk of the PLP. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A desire to avoid that - and instead have a fully staffed
and relatively cohesive front bench, with a leader who commands most MPs'
support - could prevail. Labour is a parliamentary party: there is always a
strong pull towards what works best in the logic of parliamentary realpolitik. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Finally, Smith's vow to fight for a second referendum on EU
membership is a shrewd move. Most Labour members who support, or are inclined
to support, Corbyn voted to remain in the EU. Smith is cynically seeking to
exploit this in his favour. Corbyn - having been obliged to campaign for a
remain position despite many of his own instincts – risks getting trapped in a
rather weak position on this issue. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Also remember that Smith is the single challenger to Corbyn,
whereas last time there were three candidates on the right. The Labour Right
has become better organised and seems to have recruited many people to the £25
supporters’ scheme. It is also very well-funded, which will mean sustained and
serious campaigning between now and September. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I don't think all of this will be enough to get Smith over
the finishing line. But it could be. Even if it isn't enough for victory, we could
see the challenger getting a large minority - over 40% - of votes, therefore
emboldening the majority of the PLP. It would be a serious mistake for Corbyn
supporters to complacently assume that he will be re-elected comfortably. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong><span style="font-family: inherit;">How can Corbyn guarantee victory?<o:p></o:p></span></strong></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Firstly, Corbyn's campaign needs to be relentless in
promoting clear priority policies that can galvanise support and offer a bold
alternative to a failed political status quo. This is what made the difference
last summer - and it needs to be done again. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There is little political traction in complaining - however
justifiably - about the behaviour of MPs or the party bureaucracy's dubious
manoeuvres. The campaign will be won on politics. It needs to be
outward-looking, political and concrete in offering alternative policies. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Secondly, the policy platform needs to be more bold and
radical. If Smith can merrily steal most of Corbyn's 'softer' policies then
simply repeating those policies will be insufficient. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This also reflects how the political landscape has shifted
recently. Osborne's last major act as chancellor was to drop the fiscal targets
that had served as a mantra for the government since 2010. Theresa May and her
ministers are discussing economic stimulus, not simply obsessing over cuts. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The ground has shifted. Corbyn and McDonnell now need to
decisively articulate bold policies for large-scale public investment in jobs,
infrastructure, housing and public services. It means foregrounding such things
as a national investment bank, public control of public assets (energy,
transport etc), a massive house-building programme and investment in creating
climate-friendly jobs. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The combination of the austerity project's obvious
exhaustion and the vote to leave the EU has opened up a new set of
possibilities. If Corbyn is going to unite working class people who voted Leave
with those who voted Remain it will be on the basis of a version of Brexit that
benefits the vast majority of people. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Putting forward ambitious, and joined-up, policies on jobs,
housing and services is essential for undercutting the attempts to use the
issue of immigration as a battering ram against the left. These economic
policies need to be accompanied by a clear and unequivocal defence of migrants
and their rights. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This need for radicalism also implies that there should be
no compromise on those issues - like Trident renewal and freedom of movement -
where some on the Labour left are advocating making concessions. Opposing
Trident is the correct position for several reasons, one of which is that scrapping
the hugely expensive programme would liberate funds for socially useful
investment. The defence of migration is not so controversial when coupled with
pledges of large-scale public investment - a working class politics that can
undercut the racism and scapegoating. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Thirdly, there has to be a focus on public mobilisation -
marches, protests, rallies - nationwide to galvanise support for Corbyn. The
campaign can't be treated as merely an internal party battle. There's much more
at stake than that. And once Corbyn has won re-election, there will be the
broader challenges of resisting sustained attacks from not only Labour’s right
wing but from the British state and ruling class, and of winning mass popular
support for the politics represented by Corbyn.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Also, conducting the campaign purely on that ground is beneficial
to Smith when we consider the balance of political forces inside the PLP and
the powerful pull of parliamentary realpolitik inside the Labour Party.
Corbyn's campaign needs to be treated, and pitched, as a political movement not
simply a leadership campaign. There needs to be an appeal to the whole labour
movement and an emphasis on active mobilisation, not simply casting a vote in
the leadership election. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is important for winning Corbyn's re-election. But it's
even more important in laying the groundwork for life after the leadership
election. It is through mass protest movements, re-building trade union
strength and workers' resistance that we will win victories, re-shape politics and
raise the prospect of a serious left-wing challenge to the neoliberal status
quo. The pro-Corbyn mobilisations can be a springboard for further collective
action, and a boost to anti-austerity, anti-war and anti-racist movements, not
simply a tool for Corbyn's re-election. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>Building a stronger left</strong> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The establishment pressure on Corbyn's leadership is so
enormous that a sustained movement is needed in response. But it's more than
that: popular mobilisations can build a left that is powerful in the field of
extra-parliamentary struggle - strikes, direct action, protests - as well as
Labour Party politics. This, in turn, acts as a constant pull to the left on
the Labour Party, in which the conservative PLP (and the wider pressures of
electoral politics) acts as a constant pull to the right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There's a constant danger that activism becomes trapped in
the structures and routines of the Labour Party, and is limited to
electioneering. Labour leftwingers need to work with a range of people to build
independent, broad-based movements of resistance, and to strengthen the trade
unions (which organise millions of people beyond Labour's ranks). <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Labour Party has mushroomed into a party of over half a
million members. There are mass rallies taking place to support Corbyn.
Nonetheless, there are many, many people outside Labour's ranks who will be
involved in political activity through anti-cuts demonstrations, refugee
solidarity work, housing campaigns, anti-racist protests, strikes by teachers,
junior doctors and others, and many other campaigns and mobilisations. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">The left as a whole will be stronger if it connects with
these people, and treats such movements as the basis for developing a more
influential left. This cannot be a left that is restricted to electoral
politics, but one that links bold political demands with taking action on the
streets and in the workplaces. This is the best way forward for anyone wanting
an effective left-wing Labour Party, but also for the even larger and more
important project of building a combative working class movement that can
re-shape society.</span> <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php" name="fb_share" type="button">Share</a><script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script>luna17http://www.blogger.com/profile/03754650933188634442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093114275469628673.post-27075634605237362042016-07-27T01:39:00.001+01:002016-07-27T01:39:40.066+01:00Corbyn vs the establishment: what's at stake <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpfuv25Oca16iYvuf_uBhG6Ij7Pog35WWmPCmKOa8d2E1RMlWmhPV_AECaLzqfgq-08vjorFjeC5GFJqgz-Y1inFxSWNAikSoUXrWHtSl7jzSOxwRExGfc1T8DF9y0rvmmNjS212f2Yg/s1600/Cm7Uq02WgAETUfL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpfuv25Oca16iYvuf_uBhG6Ij7Pog35WWmPCmKOa8d2E1RMlWmhPV_AECaLzqfgq-08vjorFjeC5GFJqgz-Y1inFxSWNAikSoUXrWHtSl7jzSOxwRExGfc1T8DF9y0rvmmNjS212f2Yg/s320/Cm7Uq02WgAETUfL.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jeremy Corbyn at the Durham Miners' Gala 2016</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At the time of writing, there is a genuine possibility that
a court ruling (due tomorrow) will declare that Jeremy Corbyn must seek MPs'
and MEPs' nominations to be a leadership candidate. And it's perfectly possible
that the Labour Party's bureaucracy - desperate to defeat Corbyn - will defer
to the legal judgement and act accordingly.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If that happens it will generate, immediately, a massive
crisis in the Labour Party, and very quickly some sort of split. After all, it
is almost certain that Corbyn will not be able to get the required nominations:
MPs who nominated him to 'broaden the debate' last summer are unlikely to repeat
their mistake, and the determination of many MPs to remove Corbyn has grown. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The
idea that a single wealthy party donor – one who despises the democratic will
of members – could use the courts to overturn the elected leader’s right to an
automatic place on the ballot would generate tremendous shock and anger. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is more likely, though, that this bid will fail and the
leadership election contested by Corbyn and Owen Smith will proceed. But the
fact that this can even be a possibility reveals the extreme desperation of
Labour's establishment to eliminate Corbyn, their willingness to trample over
democracy and fair play, and their common interest with the British state in
wishing to defeat the left. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A
concerted assault on the left<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A vital part of the background to the current turmoil is that
most MPs assumed that the double whammy they engineered - of most MPs voting no
confidence combined with dozens of front bench resignations - would force
Corbyn out. In normal circumstances, a much lower 'no confidence' vote - and a
much lower number of resignations - would be sufficient. </span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But these are not normal circumstances. Corbyn has the
backing of a huge number of party members and supporters. The entire future of
the Labour Party is at stake – a stark fact that is grasped by those on both
sides. So Corbyn stayed - and surprised MPs, who see everything through the
prism of pragmatic parliamentary politics, in the process.</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The subsequent attacks on Corbyn, and on party democracy,
have been less aimed at delivering a knockout punch (although the NEC meeting,
where some hoped to keep Corbyn off the ballot paper, was such an attempt), and
more about a war of attrition: constantly wearing down and demoralising Corbyn,
those around him, and his supporters. </span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The absurd anti-democratic procedures
-<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>from retrospectively removing large
numbers of members from the leadership electoral roll, to hiking up the
supporters' fee from £3 to £25, to generating a climate of suspicion about
supposedly thuggish Corbyn supporters - are partly about rigging the election,
but are more profoundly geared towards this war of attrition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Their hope is that a large layer of Labour members will
conclude that - for all their sympathies with Corbyn and his politics - it just
isn't worth it. Perhaps they will decide that it’s more important to have a
functioning official Opposition and to hold the Labour Party together. The idea
is that many of those with a vote in the leadership election will look at the
scale and depth of opposition to Corbyn among his own parliamentary colleagues
and conclude, very reluctantly, that a Smith victory is necessary if there's
going to a fully-staffed front bench Opposition, with the backing of most MPs. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Corbyn
vs Smith<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is widely assumed, especially on the left, that Jeremy Corbyn
will win. I think that's likely, but I don't regard it as certain. And if he
does win there's still a danger that it won't be with a commanding majority. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Labour Party members, affiliated members and registered
supporters will be voting at home, in isolation, prey to all the pressures of
relentless media vilification of Corbyn. Smith's campaign appears to be
well-funded and able to use professional operations to largely compensate for a
relative lack of activist enthusiasm (and the inability to replicate Corbyn's
mass rallies). All of this can make a difference and we should not
underestimate it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The pitching of Smith as 'soft left' and the constant
barrage of smears against the left (for alleged abuse, intimidation etc) both
need to be viewed in this context. Nobody seriously believes that Smith is at
all left wing, just like nobody really believes the fantastical and baseless
claims of abuse and intimidation. The point here is not to actually convince
people that something is true. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The point is to disorientate and demoralise. It is to
generate confusion and to make the whole leadership contest seem unpleasant and
hostile, therefore encouraging people to simply keep out (or keep their
distance from supporting Corbyn). It all creates a general sense of chaos and
crisis in the Labour Party, which benefits Corbyn's right-wing opponents who
style themselves as beacons of stability and a professional approach to
politics. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One line of attack is the advocacy of ‘Corbynism without
Corbyn’. It is not being suggested that someone from within the Corbynite ranks
- like John McDonnell or Diane Abbott - takes over. Perish the thought! The
whole point here is that someone who doesn't support Corbyn should replace him.
That betrays what it's really about: ditching Corbyn's politics along with the
man. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Owen Smith, Angela Eagle and Hilary Benn are not creatures
of the 'soft left'. They're firmly on Labour's right wing. They are closer to
the Tories than they are to Corbyn and the left, accepting the dominant
assumptions of neoliberal politics (held up as an unarguable 'centre ground' of
politics, regardless of whether public opinion accords with it). <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">British politics isn't split, first and foremost, between
Tories and Labour. The split goes down Labour's middle, with the majority of
its MPs oriented on establishment politics and the ideological and policy
assumptions that go with it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There is something of a precedent here. In the mid-1980s
there was talk of 'Bennism without Benn'. It reflected the left's retreat, and
the right's ascendancy, after Tony Benn was very narrowly defeated in the 1981
deputy leadership contest. What it really meant was re-orienting Benn's
supporters to a shift rightwards under Neil Kinnock. Labour's long march to the
right - under Kinnock then later Blair and Brown - gathered pace. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A wider
political crisis<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One argument doing the rounds is that the big Corbyn rallies
are a kind of irrelevant bubble, reflecting nothing about wider society. He is
merely preaching to the converted - a small minority - while ignoring everyone
else. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I don't find that plausible. This isn't like the early
1980s, when Bennism was largely at odds with a rightwards shift in the working
class and in society at large. The tremendous enthusiasm for Corbyn is the main
political expression of developments in society that affect many millions of
people. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There are different aspects to that wider political crisis,
but fundamentally it's about widespread disaffection with several years of
austerity policies and decades of neoliberalism, and (crucially) the long-term
shift in the Labour Party towards the neoliberal centre. </span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There is a huge
backlash against the dominant elements in the Parliamentary Labour Party
because of their complicity in privatisation, cuts, war and scapegoating, first
in office and later in extremely meek opposition. The Chilcot report reminded
us of the single greatest reason why Tony Blair’s reputation turned to dust,
but Iraq was always a lightning rod for a wider set of discontents and
disappointments. This is no bubble. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Media commentators and Labour right-wingers are keen to
point to polling which suggests that Labour is consistently several points
behind the Tories. This is meant to prove Corbyn's unelectability. Yet the
miracle is that the gap isn't bigger. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">According to conventional political logic, a socialist
leading Labour should have led to a collapse in its poll ratings. Combine this
with the fact that Corbyn can't get together a full opposition front bench, as
he's so isolated inside the PLP, and there's an impression among the public of
massive disunity and conflict inside the Labour Party, it's astonishing that
Labour's vote is holding up. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It partly reflects the historic resilience of Labour’s vote
(in contrast, for example, to the Lib Dems, whose vote share fluctuates far
more). But it surely also suggests that – despite massive media hostility and
the deep splits in the PLP – Corbyn speaks to (and for) a real constituency of
mass support.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We should also treat such polling with caution. Actual
election results - whether May's local elections or various Westminster or
council by-elections - have provided grounds for tentative hope. There are also
a number of unknowns that could potentially strengthen Labour in a real general
election. Turnout is one. The existence of a mass membership party, capable of
delivering the political message in communities everywhere, is another. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is not to mention the Tories currently gaining from the
novelty of a new prime minister and shadow cabinet. It is likely the Tories
will face considerable difficulties ahead, especially if current indications of
economic problems turn into a long-term trend. Austerity has considerably less
popular legitimacy than a year ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Nothing
to offer<o:p></o:p></span></span></b><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The right wing of the Labour Party now has <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>nothing to offer. It has no coherent
alternative policy offer and no new ideas. A strand of politics that had a
certain amount of popular resonance – if never as authentically popular as
newspaper columnists liked to proclaim - in the mid-1990s is much less
persuasive now. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Owen Smith's campaign is caught between promising
(unconvincingly) Continuity Corbynism and differentiating itself from Corbyn's
leadership by meekly echoing Tory policies and rhetoric, for example on immigration
and Trident. As much as possible, the campaign avoids politics altogether -
focusing instead on vague insinuations about Corbyn supporters being guilty of
intimidation and on blandly asserting that Corbyn is unelectable. No mention is
made, naturally, of the MPs' own role in damaging Labour's electoral standing
through its ceaseless plotting and undermining. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There is polling evidence to suggest that a Smith-led Labour
Party would do nothing – at least nothing positive – for the party’s vote
share. International comparisons are not favourable to the advocates of a
rightwards turn either: in many European countries, the traditional parties of
the centre left are in crisis precisely due to their role in administering or
supporting cuts, privatisation and other neoliberal orthodoxies. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A split now seems very likely, though the time frame and
balance of forces (who emerges stronger?) are very unpredictable. If Corbyn
prevails in the leadership election, many MPs will be speculating about forming
a breakaway parliamentary bloc - one that could, given the scale of opposition
to the party's left leadership, be much larger than the SDP split which
unfolded between 1981 and 1983. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It would no doubt attract some wealthy donors and much
sympathetic media commentary, but such a bloc would lack a mass grassroots
party behind it, have almost no trade union support, and (unlike the SDP in the
1983 election), struggle to gain votes. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One possibility is to continue sullenly grumbling on the
backbenches, sniping at the leadership and undermining it in whatever ways are
available. But this would probably just defer the inevitable split. The issue
of deselection after the 2018 boundary changes would certainly come to the
fore. It is unlikely that party members would tolerate recalcitrant MPs who
they feel are not reflecting and representing their views. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Everything
in flux<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The long term is therefore unpredictable. The important
thing at present is to rise to a number of urgent challenges and use the coming
weeks and months to shape the left’s prospects. The first thing to grasp is
that the unpredictability, flux and rapid pace of political upheaval means that
a 2020 perspective – where all practical questions are shaped by the assumption
of a general election in 2020 – is no good. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It may well be that there is no election for nearly four
years, but making such an assumption would be foolish. However, even if there
is no early election the focus on 2020 is damaging, as it encourages a focus on
desperately seeking to patch up differences and maintain the unity of the
Labour Party, with a view to fighting a general election on that basis. It
allows concessions to Labour’s right wing, which threatens to disrupt and
damage the momentum behind Corbyn’s left wing political vision. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is also, in principle, right for socialists to call for
an early general election and for the downfall of the current Tory government
after such upheavals as the Leave victory in the EU referendum and the changes
in personnel at the centre of government. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The other key point to grasp is that the defence of Corbyn’s
leadership is integral to the prospects for left-wing politics in Britain
today. This recognition is important for all socialists, whether in the Labour
Party or not. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">His position as Labour leader has enabled socialist
arguments, so long marginalised, a place in mainstream debate. The growth in
Labour membership, the campaigning for Corbyn’s re-election and the many public
rallies and protests defending him all point to a very welcome renaissance of
the left. This is about much more than one man – it’s a question of
strengthening the impact of the movements against austerity, racism and war,
and of developing a more influential left-wing pole in British politics.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The
challenges for socialists<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">With these points in mind, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suggest there are three key things to keep
to the fore when building support for Jeremy Corbyn. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Firstly, the movement around Corbyn is at its most effective
when it is radical and uncompromising. Politically this means holding firm to
principled positions on issues like immigration and Trident. Some prominent
supporters of Corbyn have wrongly given ground on such issues, but this only
strengthens the Right as well as being wrong politically. It is far more
persuasive to put forward coherent and consistent left-wing policies than to
tack and turn according to whether or not you imagine something will be
popular. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Secondly, it makes a big difference if the movement
supporting Corbyn clearly and publicly articulates left-wing arguments and
policies – reaching out to millions of people in doing so - rather than getting
stuck in arguments about internal party democracy, allegations of abusive
behaviour or the dubious issue of ‘electability’. All of these need to be
addressed, but in developing a mass campaign the focus needs to be on political
alternatives. The leadership campaign is an opportunity to champion the
left-wing ideas that inspired so much hope and enthusiasm last summer. This is
where we on the left are at our strongest. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Finally,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>it’s also
important to have a sharp focus on popular mobilisation – like protests and
rallies - not merely treating this as an internal Labour Party battle. It’s
bigger than that. Such mobilisations facilitate mass participation in the
Corbyn campaign. They also provide a link between the campaign and broader
grassroots social movements, feeding a two-way relationship between Labour’s
left-wing leadership and the role of popular movements. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Ultimately, the social change we on the left want to see
will come, above all, through mass activity in protest movements and trade
unions, not simply (or even primarily) through the field of parliamentary
politics. A victory for Corbyn will embolden the movements. It will, for
example, give encouragement and hope to everyone building the national
anti-austerity demonstration outside Tory Conference on 2 October, to teachers
and junior doctors contemplating strike action in the autumn, and to
anti-racists campaigning against Islamophobia or in defence of migrant rights
or refugees. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkYeSqt51qBjc04UQnAXbilj6t9vRLyxy__9hmtv7NxVEXWqAuLJLpvJx1VqmXxt4uakqElpQXoj1zKHwmoHm0ma9KuxDLtr0TO7ES23lhAvA4PW8XfJcxuoC9EhiT4ZJ8Xdp2FHR8Ww/s1600/house-of-lords_3484053a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkYeSqt51qBjc04UQnAXbilj6t9vRLyxy__9hmtv7NxVEXWqAuLJLpvJx1VqmXxt4uakqElpQXoj1zKHwmoHm0ma9KuxDLtr0TO7ES23lhAvA4PW8XfJcxuoC9EhiT4ZJ8Xdp2FHR8Ww/s320/house-of-lords_3484053a.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Some people have expressed surprise at my decision to support retaining the House of Lords in the forthcoming referendum on its future. Scrapping this unelected chamber has, after all, long been the dominant position on the left, especially the radical left. <br />
<br />
But such people, who remain dogmatically committed to what is now an obsolete position, are making a serious mistake by thinking <em>politically </em>when what we need is some sound <em>tactical</em> thinking. So here are my tactical reasons for urging a vote to keep the House of Lords:<br />
<br />
1) The House of Lords provides some protection against the worst ravages of a Tory government. It opposed cuts to tax credits, for example. It opposed a number of elements of the Trade Union Bill. Do you really want the Tories to have free rein with nothing to moderate their worst excesses? <br />
<br />
2) Better the devil you know. If David Cameron loses the referendum, he will surely be forced to resign. Boris Johnson is likely to take over and he is worse than Cameron. So let's hold our noses and vote the same way as Cameron and Osborne - to keep the House of Lords - and avoid tilting the balance of forces in British politics further to the right. And imagine how awful Johnson would be if there wasn't even the House of Lords to restrain him! <br />
<br />
3) Some on the left say the House of Lords is undemocratic so we must scrap it. Well, of course it's undemocratic, but so are lots of other things. We have a weak democratic system generally - what's the point of getting rid of just one element of that while leaving everything else the same? <br />
<br />
4) We should aim to reform the Lords, not abandon our whole parliamentary system to a Tory majority government. This reform project may be tough, but I believe Another Westminster is Possible. Obviously I'm going to remain extremely vague about how the House of Lords might be reformed - given its lack of democratic accountability - but where there's a will there's a way. <br />
<br />
5) Whatever its faults, the House of Lords is one of the things that - through its stability, continuity and air of social harmony - has guaranteed that there has been no civil war on these islands since the 17th century (try not to think about Ireland here). <br />
<br />
6) It is true that in the 1970s almost the entire Left opposed the House of Lords. But it's different now. We've had the triumph of Thatcherism and the unions are much, much weaker than 40 years ago. We can't rely on the unions to fight the Tories. The thin shelter of an elite, undemocratic institution is better than nothing. <br />
<br />
7) Let's be honest: it's fairly harmless, isn't it? It's not like the House of Lords was responsible for skewing a transnational currency system to the benefit of the richer nations, imposing savage cuts on poorer nations, smashing an elected left-wing government or allowing thousands of refugees to drown in the Mediterranean. Now if people on the left argued for retaining an institution that had done all those things, it really would be daft! <br />
<br />
8) Some left-wing critics say that the House of Lords demanding that workers in Scotland do a 6-day week until they drop dead is a reason to scrap it. Well, they would say that, wouldn't they? <br />
<br />
In summary: let's not be tied to outdated shibboleths and instead think tactically. Vote to keep the House of Lords - Another Westminster is Possible, especially if we keep things exactly as they are. <br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipnRXrbtxJQVUcci9RP_NlYD8fCFh7TIiVm3SSb3Yavgt01VJPtGQNYwpCTBvmRNGou9rmnihfS8geJnIIb6QxeYuAa_s5C5_xXzT0LmXxZU8WKiNCC-CEbfOdq6oBAUq2xu9dQrYK0w/s1600/SOS_fb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="147" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipnRXrbtxJQVUcci9RP_NlYD8fCFh7TIiVm3SSb3Yavgt01VJPtGQNYwpCTBvmRNGou9rmnihfS8geJnIIb6QxeYuAa_s5C5_xXzT0LmXxZU8WKiNCC-CEbfOdq6oBAUq2xu9dQrYK0w/s400/SOS_fb.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
A number of campaigners and educators - in partnership with the Martin Luther King Peace Committee - are organising a conference, to be held at Newcastle University on Saturday 18 June, titled 'Spirit of Soweto: racism and rebellion 40 years on'. <br />
<br />
I am one of the organisers and it is supported by Newcastle Stop the War, North East People's Assembly, Newcastle Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Newcastle's Multilingual Library, Stand up to Racism (North East), Newcastle Unites and Unite Against Fascism (North East).<br />
<br />
The conference is designed to mark the 40th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising, which involved tens of thousands of black South African school students (in Soweto and beyond) protesting against racist apartheid policies in schools. This rebellion was greeted with large-scale massacres by <span class="text_exposed_show">state authorities. </span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show"></span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show">It is universally seen as having been a turning point in the struggle to end apartheid, both through opposition inside the country and through the efforts of the global boycott and solidarity movement. The precise anniversary of the uprising starting is 16 June, so the conference takes place on the nearest Saturday. </span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show"></span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show">One aim of the conference is to rediscover the history of what happened in Soweto in 1976 and examine its significance for the direction and success of the anti-apartheid movement. Furthermore, this will be used as a springboard for discussing a range of issues relating to racism (and non-violent resistance to it) more widely. </span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show"></span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show">The event will specifically make links between history and the present day, learning and taking inspiration from South Africa four decades ago to nourish anti-racist and international solidarity movements in 2016.<br /><br />Further details including speakers will be announced over the next few weeks, but the timetable is already available. The o</span>pening plenary session ('Soweto Uprising: a turning point in the struggle to end apartheid') focuses on the history, while the closing plenary ('Racism and rebellion today') brings things up to date: Islamophobia, immigration, the refugee crisis, and so on. <br />
<br />
In between these sessions there will be several workshop options:<br />
- The Soweto Uprising and the international solidarity movement<br />
- Promoting peace, equality and anti-racism in schools<br />
- Spirit of Soweto: poetry and music for social change<br />
- Freedom City: when Martin Luther King came to Newcastle <br />
- Apartheid in South Africa and Israel: boycott movements and justice <br />
- Prevent agenda: Islamophobia in schools?<br />
<div class="text_exposed_show">
<br />
The event starts at 11am and concludes at 5pm. Tickets must be bought in advance and are available through the <em><strong><a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/spirit-of-soweto-soweto40-tickets-25291384211" target="_blank">Spirit of Soweto Eventbrite page</a></strong></em>. <br />
<br />
There will also be a special poetry night in Tyneside on Thursday 16 June, celebrating the anniversary, with details to follow. </div>
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-LXEpnbvn234MGdwRh4sM0ww7AFvUdXaSmuufbS5LgfiRMCpumznJ-iM5vIPS65rpSGIRoIaLT1BYBHhyphenhyphen5CD6dsfRQxiS6xYNGaCNy5cYafk4rej1QRZybG33CZtsdKj9ZFuOp7YtCw/s1600/corbyn+votes.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-LXEpnbvn234MGdwRh4sM0ww7AFvUdXaSmuufbS5LgfiRMCpumznJ-iM5vIPS65rpSGIRoIaLT1BYBHhyphenhyphen5CD6dsfRQxiS6xYNGaCNy5cYafk4rej1QRZybG33CZtsdKj9ZFuOp7YtCw/s320/corbyn+votes.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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A few months ago, when political commentators looked ahead to 2016, there was a widespread prediction that Labour would suffer substantial losses in the council elections. Would it be 200 seats lost? Perhaps a little less, perhaps even more? </div>
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After all, these elections would be for seats previously contested in 2012, a mid-term peak for Ed Miliband, and it was assumed that Corbyn must be electorally unpopular. Yet Corbyn and Labour have defied the critics. The journalists and pundits have been left floundering, desperately trying to make the facts fit their narrative. </div>
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<strong>Local elections</strong> </div>
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There have been no significant losses for Labour in the council elections. This is all the more remarkable when you consider the manufactured media storm about allegations of antisemitism. <br /><br />It is now clear that the media circus made no difference to Labour's vote. This must be exasperating for the small minority of hardline right-wing 'Bitterite' Labour MPs who hoped that poor results would trigger a challenge for the leadership, or at least gravely destabilise Corbyn's leadership. <br /><br />Labour's vote has been sustained despite the widespread perception of the party as deeply divided, which is normally an electoral liability. It helps that the Tories are also divided, especially over the EU referendum. A section of the Parliamentary Labour Party has been determined to undermine - and in the longer term oust - Jeremy Corbyn as leader. But having made electability the central issue of contention, they have an unenviable task now it's become clear that a Corbyn-led Labour can do well at the ballot box. <br /><br />In fact Labour's position was an improvement on the general election, while the Tories suffered. Critics of Corbyn say that it isn't enough: Labour should, they argue, be steaming ahead, and the current performance is insufficient to win at the next general election. But after just eight months in post (amidst very public internal divisions), and with four years to go until the next general election, it is clear that Corbyn is very much on the right track.<br /><br /><strong>London </strong><br /><br />Zak Goldsmith's campaign for London mayor was perhaps the most racist election campaign by a mainstream political party in the UK for decades. It failed. Sadiq Khan was elected, returning the mayoralty to Labour after eight years with Tory Boris Johnson in the role. </div>
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Khan is reportedly the first Muslim mayor of a major city in western Europe. London is a multicultural city and a mainly working class city (though one with extraordinary inequality). Whatever the weaknesses of Khan himself, his victory is a welcome riposte to racists and an important breakthrough for Labour. </div>
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</div>
<div dir="ltr">
It marks the rejection of a grubby campaign, orchestrated from the top with the involvement of Tory central office and David Cameron's approval. It attempted to link Labour's candidate, by virtue of being a Muslim, to terrorism, painting him (and Corbyn) as a threat to security, even exploiting the memory of the London bombings in July 2005 for political advantage. </div>
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</div>
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The Tories, in the final couple of weeks of the campaign, attempted to turn the London elections into a referendum on Jeremy Corbyn. The fact that Labour made a couple of gains on the London Assembly as well as winning the biggest prize suggests that's not the winning tactic that many inside the Westminster bubble assume it will be. </div>
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</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<strong>Scotland</strong><br /><br />Labour's bad news came in Scotland. Corbyn's leadership has made no impact there. The decline of Scottish Labour has deep roots and appears to be irreversible.<br /><br />Every election in Scotland - whether for Westminster, Holyrood or local government - now takes place through the prism of the independence debate. The campaign for independence, the referendum itself and its aftermath have transformed Scottish politics. For many voters, Labour is defined first and foremost as a pro-Union party.<br /><br />Labour is now being squeezed by both the SNP (pro-independence and broadly social democratic) and the Tories (anti-independence and right-wing). There is a diminishing social base underpinning Labour in Scotland. Note, for example, how the SNP now commands much higher levels of support than Labour across much of Glasgow, historically a Labour heartland. <br /><br />Scottish Labour's disastrous fate is a legacy of the New Labour years - during which support for the SNP grew - accentuated by the impact of campaigning with the Tories to preserve the Union. Scottish politics has for some years established its own distinct trajectory; it would be naive for anyone to think that a leftwards shift in the UK-wide Labour Party will make much difference (especially when Scottish Labour has failed to shift with it). <br /><br />The SNP's (very narrow) failure to secure a majority in the Scottish Parliament was a surprise, though it remains the dominant party of Scottish politics, just as it was last May when 56 out of Scotland's 59 Westminster seats were won by the SNP. In a number of constituencies where the party was in second place, it looks like many pro-Union voters have voted tactically for whichever party was likely to block the SNP from winning the seat. <div dir="ltr">
</div>
<div dir="ltr">
It was also held back somewhat by political timidity, failing to generate the kind of enthusiasm witnessed last spring when - for the general election - the party focused heavily on being an anti-austerity, anti-Trident antidote to a moribund Westminster mainstream. Having failed to win an outright majority, the SNP will now rely on support from the pro-independence Scottish Greens, who had a good election night (winning 6 regional list seats). <br /><br />There has been some media hype about the Tories overtaking Labour in Scotland. This is indeed a historic shift, but it is largely due to Labour's collapse and not an endorsement of the Tories. The Tory vote share is only a source of excitement for the Tories because it has, for some time, done so catastrophically badly in Scotland. There seems to be a hardening polarisation linked to the question of independence, with many pro-Union voters rallying to the Tories. <br /> </div>
</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<strong>What next?</strong></div>
<div dir="ltr">
</div>
<div dir="ltr">
Jeremy Corbyn and the left are undoubtedly strengthened by the results. This is particularly reassuring after a difficult couple of weeks due to the media hysteria about antisemitism allegations, which have been handled by the Labour Party in a manner that has emboldened both Labour's right wing and the Tories. </div>
<div dir="ltr">
</div>
<div dir="ltr">
The 'electability' question has not been entirely settled and there is a long way to go to forming a government in 2020. But the omens are reasonably good and the results are widely acknowledged to be a move in the right direction, even if much of the media (and the Bitterite MPs) are reluctant to accept this. Speculation about a 'coup' against Corbyn has quickly receded. His position is, probably for some time, fairly secure. </div>
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</div>
<div dir="ltr">
Nonetheless, the left-wing leadership of the Labour Party is fragile in many ways. There will still be great pressure to compromise from the right, with some associated with the left joining in the calls for compromise too. Such compromise would generate disillusionment among those enthused by Corbyn's rise and the alternative he espouses. It would increasingly demobilise Corbyn's own supporters. </div>
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</div>
<div dir="ltr">
The recent, highly successful, Jeremy Corbyn 4 Prime Minister events gave a sense of the continuing appetite for what Corbyn represents. There is a wide layer of people who will campaign around left-wing demands and policies, not just electorally but through campaigns and movements, if Corbyn, McDonnell and the left provide a lead. </div>
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</div>
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This year has already seen big demonstrations against austerity, Trident and racism, and nationwide protests and rallies in solidarity with the striking junior doctors. Those movements need to be sustained and strengthened. Their impact is magnified when leading Labour figures participate in them. At the same time, the efforts of Corbyn and his allies to permanently shift Labour to the left are emboldened when large numbers of people take to the streets and demonstrate. </div>
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</div>
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This week has also seen Tory U-turns or partial U-turns on accepting child refugees, negotiating with junior doctors and forced academies. They are weak - and cracking under pressure from both a left-led Labour Party and the wider protest movements and trade union movement. The EU referendum and the emerging scandal over spending on their general election campaigns in some seats threaten to deepen their crisis. </div>
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</div>
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The Tories' greatest asset is the 'Bitterites', who repeatedly take the focus away from what the Tories are doing and undermine Corbyn's opposition to Tory attacks. Corbyn and allies need to get tougher with them and effectively marginalise them. The Tories' greatest threat comes from an alliance of Labour's left leadership and the movements on the streets. This alliance needs to become more powerful than ever. </div>
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<br /> </div>
<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLkhwpzPXZfny3Z3ADbxE1-PBOPdcvcg4IhZKK6l2St20xBpvMcufSK_oA9mOr2Umo6E1UweBd1R5A5uG5BdlAhRaKIpCOpykqab7vzqG7_7iH5Wo5iKcqMJBo67RlrlJB7vPw_pHxvQ/s1600/lenjeremy.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLkhwpzPXZfny3Z3ADbxE1-PBOPdcvcg4IhZKK6l2St20xBpvMcufSK_oA9mOr2Umo6E1UweBd1R5A5uG5BdlAhRaKIpCOpykqab7vzqG7_7iH5Wo5iKcqMJBo67RlrlJB7vPw_pHxvQ/s400/lenjeremy.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Unite leader Len McCluskey; Jeremy Corbyn. Pic: The Guardian</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In 1975 the vast bulk of the Left - Labour and otherwise - backed leaving the EEC. <br />
<br />
Now we have the horrors of the assault on Greek democracy, enforced austerity and Fortress Europe. Yet the majority of the Left, broadly defined, wants to stick with the EU in the forthcoming referendum. <br />
<br />
What happened between 1975 and today to explain this extraordinary situation? <br /> <br />
<strong>The past</strong> <br />
<br />
From roughly 1983 onwards, both the Labour Party and the trade unions shifted rightwards. Neil Kinnock succeeded Michael Foot as Labour leader and embarked on the long journey to the right. The Bennite surge of the early 1980s - not the machinations of the party's hard Right and its subsequent split to form the Social Democratic Party - was blamed for the 1983 general election defeat. <br />
<br />
The defeat of the great Miners' Strike in 1985 weakened the left and strengthened the right-wing arguments about the impossibility of achieving change through class struggle. Trends already in place - in both the Labour Party and the unions - were accelerated. The 'new realism' of a right-wing union bureaucracy preached moderation and conciliation with the bosses. <br />
<br />
This dovetailed with Labour's growing acceptance of Tory policies. Increasingly, Margaret Thatcher was seen as invincible. She would later remark that New Labour was her greatest achievement. <br />
<br />
In 1988, then European Commission President Jacques Delors spoke to the TUC Congress. He presented a 'social compromise' model that claimed the Commission was a protector of workers' rights and conditions at the same time as advocating free markets. It was disingenuous, but it had at least a grain of truth and it preyed on the pessimism and passivity of the 'new realists'. <br />
<br />
Unions previously hostile to a European capitalist project were largely persuaded. Much of the Labour 'soft left' also made its peace. <br />
<br />
Never mind that the mass anti-poll tax movement shattered the myth of Thatcher's invincibility and showed that popular struggle could win. The embrace of 'Europe' continued. Three key things explain this. <br />
<br />
Firstly, the 1992 election defeat strengthened Labour's general shift to the right and led to Blairism. Secondly, indsutrial struggle remained at low levels: since 1991 there hasn't been a single year in which official strike figures topped two million days lost. 'Europe' could seem like a modest substitute for winning through trade union struggle. <br />
<br />
Thirdly, the civil strife inside the Tory Party - during the Major Years (1990-97) - encouraged the idea that criticism of the EU, as it formally became during those years, was the preserve of the xenophobic Right. <br />
<br />
Many left wing Labour figures continued to oppose the EU, from the Maastricht Treaty during John Major's premiership to the thoroughly neoliberal Lisbon Treaty ratified when Gordon Brown was in Number Ten. Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn were foremost among them - combining opposition to neoliberal elite co-operation with advocacy of genuine internationalism and unwavering anti-racism. <br />
<br />
<strong>The present</strong> <br />
<br />
One thing about the EU referendum debate - in labour movement circles - is that the position people adopt has implications for specific issues and what we do about them.<br />
<br />
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the highly controversial US-EU deal that will enable corporate power enormous sway over public services, is currently the supreme example. We have pro-EU trade unions like Unite limiting themselves to merely trying to get exemption for the NHS. If you're campaigning to stay in the EU, it would be rather contradictory and incovenient to also campaign against TTIP<span class="text_exposed_hide">.</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_hide"></span><span class="text_exposed_show"> </span><br />
<div class="text_exposed_show">
This would prompt the obvious question: if TTIP is so bad, why don't you want to leave the EU and thus ensure we're not part of it, while also weakening the chances of the deal going through for everyone else? Why not strike a powerful blow against the corporate takeover of public assets? <br />
<br />
On social media and in online discussions, I see some socialists and trade unionists people arguing the following sequence of points: <br />
<br />a) the EU is more worker-friendly and amenable than this Tory government<br /> b) the Tories will get even worse after Brexit because power will shift to Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Iain Duncan Smith<br /> c) we should therefore regard anything on offer from the EU - including TTIP - as less worse than what we will get after Brexit. <br />
<br />
This is weak politics and completely demobilising. The only logical conclusion is to keep quiet about TTIP and don't make a fuss: settle for merely trying to make the NHS exempt. <br />
<br />
Instead of independent left-wing politics, we end up with trade unions and elements of the left choosing between two right-wing blocs. What they're choosing is basically the status quo option, but actually worse than that because things are moving in a reactionary direction (with TTIP specifically, but the wider EU project too). <br />
<br />
These pro-Remain arguments in the labour movement are making it harder to actually campaign and mobilise on a number of issues. There's a serious danger this will continue to be the case after the referendum. The Trade Union Bill is another example: if you believe the EU is a protector of workers' rights, then resources that should be deployed for stopping the Bill instead get diverted into providing a vaguely 'left' gloss for the Remain camp. <br />
<br />
The various movements - against austerity, racism, war, climate change etc - will continue to unite people regardless of their views on the EU. But those movements can be politically sharper if we have a clear-eyed view of the ugly reality of the EU, ditch the disabling illusions in it, and mobilise around demands that constitute a real alternative.<br />
<br />
<strong>The future</strong> <br />
<br />
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_571cdeb81a76c3290846493">
How does the EU referendum intersect with the prospects for a Corbyn-led left-wing Labour government in 2020? <br />
<br />
There's an odd paradox here. One of the biggest left-wing arguments for leaving the EU is precisely the fact that continued UK membership will prove a major barrier - in 2020 and beyond - to any positive reforms Corbyn wants to introduce. Yet most Corbyn supporters inside the Labour Party and the trade union movement are supporting remaining inside the EU, with the perspective of 'reforming' it.<br />
<span class="text_exposed_show"> </span><br />
<div class="text_exposed_show">
Anyone who doubts that the EU will be a barrier to social change enacted by a future left-wing government should consider the fate of Greece. It's not merely a question of this or that directive, e.g. whether or not the EU makes it impossible to renationalise the rail. Greece shows how the EU simply won't tolerate any challenge to the austerity consensus and the rule of finance capital. <br />
<br />
No, the UK won't be different - because we're bigger, or because we're not part of the Eurozone. These things might make some difference to the nature of the confrontation, but there will undoubtedly be a big confrontation between any left-wing government (together with trade unions and protest movements backing it) and the EU. <br />
<br />
It's also clear - following Barack Obama's visit to London and Hillary Clinton's latest pro-EU remarks - that continued UK membership of the EU is an integral component of American strategy for this continent. It's one part of the UK continuing to be a subservient American vassal. <br />
<br />
Obama and Clinton both see the EU (and particularly UK membership of it) as closely linked to Nato. These are the two insitutions that the US administration sees as crucial to there being a Europe that is helpful - and to an extent subservient - to US interests. Both institutions have been expanding; both types of expansion are beneficial to the US. <br />
<br />
The US political establishment sees Britain's voice inside the EU as a loyally pro-American one. It therefore fervently supports a Remain vote on 23 June. It makes sense for anyone who wants to weaken US influence - and the US/UK 'special relationship' - to vote Leave in the referendum.<br />
<br />
Getting out of the EU certainly doesn't guarantee an independent foreign policy - especially when a hardline neocon like Michael Gove is a prominent pro-Leave Tory - but it opens up greater political space for a future Corbyn-led government. <br />
<br />
Leaving the EU will stengthen the prospects for any future Labour government. To see things purely in terms of two current variants of Toryism - one embodied by Cameron and Osborne, the other by Johnson and Gove - is appallingly myopic. There is much more to play for than that.<br />
<br />
Now more than ever, it is clear that the EU is an enemy of working class people across the continent and also of millions of people fleeing the capitalist system's many miseries - extreme poverty, war and persecution - outside Europe. Now more than ever, the labour movement has good reason to rally opposition to the EU and advocate Exit. <br />
<br />
If we are serious about re-shaping the future in a left-wing direction, this becomes abundantly clear. <br />
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4dGPIPq8ztD2rbfv9TsMoRQJ9-edPRXxREGwT4HbL1hOyPG4qCQX7aA_2Ce0R2nv6aPJmHS08k1r0j3nv78h_abbf2WMZB_StqjpZ3IjoW7_M4cDhFjD83NlGV6kZ1Hr11yFtJ8X0fA/s1600/eu-fortress-lg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4dGPIPq8ztD2rbfv9TsMoRQJ9-edPRXxREGwT4HbL1hOyPG4qCQX7aA_2Ce0R2nv6aPJmHS08k1r0j3nv78h_abbf2WMZB_StqjpZ3IjoW7_M4cDhFjD83NlGV6kZ1Hr11yFtJ8X0fA/s320/eu-fortress-lg.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The EU referendum has generated a lot of debate on the British Left,
with a range of perspectives on the EU itself and on whether socialists
should advocate a vote to leave it in the 23 June referendum. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I've been a little surprised by the extent to which many left-wingers have rallied behind a Remain position. It seemed to me that
two big developments last year - the smashing of Greece's government-level
resistance to austerity and the EU's appalling response to the refugee crisis -
had created a new understanding, especially among left-wingers, of the reality
of the EU today. However, this hasn't generally translated into advocating a
Leave stance in the referendum this year. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">It's especially notable, too, when you recall that David
Cameron's renegotiation deal was entirely reactionary. This might have been
expected to push a layer of undecided left-wingers into backing a Leave
position. But it evidently didn't do so on any serious scale. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">One reason is that the full force of the official
labour movement - TUC, a number of big unions, 90% of the Parliamentary Labour
Party and even the left-wing Jeremy Corbyn/John McDonnell leadership - has
rallied behind staying in the EU. This has naturally impacted on many grassroots
activists and socialists. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Another element is the appeal of the idea that the
alternative would somehow be even worse. The spectre of Nigel Farage, Michael
Gove and Boris Johnson seemingly intimidates people into (critically) accepting
the status quo as a Lesser Evil.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>Different stances on the Left<o:p></o:p></strong></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I've perhaps never known an issue - in over 20 years as a socialist
activist - where there's been such division between the overwhelming
majority of the revolutionary/radical left and the overwhelming majority of the
organised reformist left (though I sense that many people with left-wing ideas, but not part of any organisation or party, are unsure about the left Remain position or even reject it outright). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Most independent socialist organisations strongly back a left Leave
position, while the considerable ranks of parliamentary left reformism - Labour left,
Green left and SNP left - are mostly supporting a Remain position (including some - <em><strong><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35743994" target="_blank">Corbyn among them</a></strong></em> - who are privately very sceptical). <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In a way it shouldn't be too surprising. It's in the nature
of parliamentary reformism to look for... well, parliamentary reformist
solutions. And that means looking to the EU - or at least a reformed EU - as a
progressive force. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">It doesn't seem to matter that the EU is so hopelessly
beyond reform, and there are no serious democratic means for reforming it. The
illusion still holds. I'd have expected more of the old attitude of Tony
Benn, though, among some contemporary left Labour activists. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Benn had a degree of faith in Westminster, but was utterly
scornful of Brussels: he grasped the profoundly undemocratic nature of the EU,
and understood that it was driven by elite big business and finance interests.
Yet there seems to be little of this attitude about, partly no doubt because we currently have a Tory government and the EU is seen (rightly or wrongly) as at least a partial moderating influence on it. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The radical, or anti-capitalist, left has been implacably
opposed to the EU and now advocates a Leave vote for obvious reasons. The EU is
thoroughly neoliberal and synonymous with austerity; it is undemocratic and, as
seen especially in Greece, anti-democratic; and its 'Fortress Europe' policy is
vicious, racist and anathema to many of the left's core values. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Our recognition of the limits of parliamentary reformism and
our emphasis on mass working class struggle means that reforming the EU holds
no appeal for us - especially when regarding the ways in which it is even less accountable and amenable than national governments - and we articulate an entirely different vision of
international co-operation and solidarity. It is through action - movements,
strikes and left-wing political parties - not elite institutions that change
can be effected. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>Different strands of the pro-Remain Left<o:p></o:p></strong></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">But it would be a mistake to see left-wing pro-Remain opinion
as a monolithic bloc. There are in fact 3 distinct, if overlapping, 'left-wing'
pro-Remain positions. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The first is that of advocating the EU as currently
constituted. This is the dominant position at the level of the broad Left. It involves
presenting the EU as <em><strong><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/eu-referendum-tucs-frances-o-grady-warns-that-workers-rights-are-being-forgotten-in-brexit-debate-a6897801.html" target="_blank">a beacon of progressive workers' rights and social protections</a></strong></em>, together with freedom of movement, while downplaying all the ugly,
brutal stuff (inflicting massive cuts on Greece, fences and razor wire, bodies
sinking to the bottom of the Aegean and Mediterranean). <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The second position is that of the <em><strong><a href="http://www.anothereurope.org/" target="_blank">EU reformers</a></strong></em> - 'yes, the
EU may be awful, but let's work on changing it'. Corbyn's public position is a
mixture of these two positions - playing up the alleged existing achievements
while also clearly pushing for something better. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nobody who advocates this
reform position ever explains the mechanisms they envisage for reform. That's
because there aren't any. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The third - and ostensibly most radical - position is one of
rejection of the current EU, sober realism about the hopelessness of reforming
it... but we should still vote to stay in because the alternative is even
worse: really right-wing Tories taking over, success for Ukip, a carnival of
racist reaction, and migrants deported. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This last position strikes me as unnecessarily fatalistic.
It rests on a quite erroneous assessment of the current balance of political
forces that underestimates the significance of Corbyn's rise and the leftwards
shift involved, while rather exaggerating the significance of Ukip (a party
that has already declined somewhat) and neglecting the depth of the splits and
crisis in Tory ranks. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">It also ignores the reality that the referendum campaign
simply hasn't been dominated by immigration or racist motifs. While the
official debate may be shaped by the Right, in its different incarnations, we
are not seeing the carnival of reaction some feared. This is particularly so
because other political developments - Osborne's budget, steel crisis, Panama
Papers - have been awful for the Tories. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Yet the logic of the campaign has pulled growing numbers on
the Left into advocating the supposed benefits of the existing EU. This is
predictable. It's hardly convincing or persuasive to say "The EU is
rubbish and always will be rubbish, but you should vote for it because Farage
is horrible". <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">So we see more and more people talking up the EU as a
socially progressive entity. This means evading reality - and it threatens to
blunt necessary opposition on particular issues like refugees. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>Myths and misconceptions</strong> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">One thing that hasn't really changed during the campaign is
the widespread lack of information about the EU. All sorts of myths persist.
Most people on the Left - just like the wider population - know relatively
little about the EU's constituent institutions, its history, the wider picture
of what the EU does (even on the left, the debate here is remarkably
parochial), etc. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">One persistent misconception is that the European Parliament
has significant power. It doesn't. The unelected Commission and the European
Central Bank are more influential. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The parliament is (inevitably for something covering 28
states) extremely remote: my native north-east England elects just 3 of its
MEPs, whereas we have 29 MPs in Westminster, and very few people can name their
MEPs. Turnout in elections tends to be low because it is so remote and makes so
little difference to people's lives. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It is dominated by large political blocs and - unlike in
Westminster elections - there is a total separation between electing individual
representatives and the formation of a government. In a general election,
people know they have a chance to kick out a government. While technically just
electing an individual constituency MP, we are also effectively electing a
government. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But this doesn't happen at European level - where the Commission,
the nearest equivalent to a government, is impervious to what happens in
European elections. That is a massive democratic weakness. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The lack of awareness of the reality of the parliament, and
more widely how the EU actually functions, is one aspect of the difficulties in
actually conducting an informed debate. The more you learn, the more you
realise how indefensible the EU is for anyone who is committed to democracy and
cares about economic and social justice. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>Obama and TTIP</strong> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I've already alluded to how the bigger picture - in all
sorts of way - is so often ignored in much left-ish discussion of the EU. There
is frequently a narrow vision focused on the Johnson/Gove/Duncan Smith axis and
the phantom menace of Farage. The referendum comes to be seen as a threat from
the Right to make things even worse in British society by exiting the EU. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There are so many problems with that perspective. But let's
- by way of illustration - consider <em><strong><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/22/cameron-could-not-have-asked-for-more-from-obamas-brexit-warning" target="_blank">Barack Obama's visit to London this week</a></strong></em>.
The US president strongly advocated a Remain vote and specifically indicated
that the UK won't be part of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
(TTIP) in the event of Brexit (this is meant to be A Bad Thing that scares us
into sticking with the status quo). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Nick Clegg - who you may dimly recall was once Lib Dem
leader and deputy prime minister - <em><strong><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-nick-clegg-warns-brexit-will-leave-britain-with-no-empire-no-union-and-no-special-a6993371.html" target="_blank">commented that Brexit will be a bad thing</a></strong></em>
for our 'empire', the Union and the 'special relationship' (with the US). For
any socialist, that is surely a succinct list of three very good reasons to
vote to leave the EU. Yet there's a substantial layer of socialists who appear
to regard such big geopolitical realities as less important than giving Boris
Johnson and Nigel Farage a bloody nose. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Despite Obama's warning on TTIP, some on the left are
determined to insist that leaving the EU will actually make no difference to
whether TTIP - and its corporate raiding of public assets - happens to us. This
is simply wrong. Whatever uncertainties there may be about the consequences of
Brexit, we know that the UK can't be part of TTIP if outside the EU. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then we invariably get the suggestion that a post-Cameron
Tory leadership would actually negotiate something even worse for us. This is
highly speculative and ignores the chronic problems faced by the Tories. In any
case, shouldn't such decisions be in the remit of elected national parliaments
not the EU? Wouldn't it be better for the activist left - and for the potential
of mass campaigning and mobilisation - if such things were brought into the
national democratic realm? <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>Another world is possible</strong> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The issue of TTIP illustrates so much of what's going on in
the broad left-wing debate about this referendum. It's a reminder of the
reality of the EU as a deeply neoliberal institution<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- and an elite club for the transnational
capitalist class and its politicians - that rides roughshod over any semblance
of democracy. It has been made abundantly clear that Brexit will constitute a
big setback for TTIP, yet there are layers of this country's left that don't
wish to take that opportunity, instead insisting that we must stay in so we can
change it. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">We need a bigger, bolder vision on the left: one that
recognises the EU for what it is, and advocates a Leave stance on that basis,
but that also affirms a powerful vision of genuine international, anti-racist
and anti-neoliberal solidarity in opposition to the EU and our own government.
Should there ever be a Corbyn-led Labour government, the EU will emphatically
be a barrier not a friend. No amount of rhetoric about 'reform' will alter
that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The EU is a constraint on the people of Europe ending
austerity. It is a constraint (to put it very mildly) on <em><strong><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/when-we-mourn-the-passing-of-prince-but-not-500-migrants-we-have-to-ask-have-we-lost-all-sense-of-a6997581.html" target="_blank">free movement into Europe</a></strong></em> by the people of the Global South. And it is a constraint on anything
democratic and popular that may fall foul of the capitalist class. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">For these
reasons, we should be getting out of the EU and raising the banner of something
better. In a debate dominated by the Right on both 'sides', we sorely need a
clear and coherent Left Leave alternative.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<br />
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<script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script><br />luna17http://www.blogger.com/profile/03754650933188634442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093114275469628673.post-70026777025669080942016-04-15T21:03:00.000+01:002016-04-24T10:55:13.643+01:00DEBUNKED: 12 left-wing reasons for remaining in the EU <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9lvW4GE3xcIoMMcG0oGsTT3U-5DIkcgRWW_f0FGibAgioCnZheQIn7ofpzurzdPTicRGi33uZ5zGvXuxL0-XB6pZNC6fSlFbMBQmnFVe-8c8zXxrXVEo1Sbcok5x5xUkniWBaznUzTA/s1600/Tinkering-645911.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9lvW4GE3xcIoMMcG0oGsTT3U-5DIkcgRWW_f0FGibAgioCnZheQIn7ofpzurzdPTicRGi33uZ5zGvXuxL0-XB6pZNC6fSlFbMBQmnFVe-8c8zXxrXVEo1Sbcok5x5xUkniWBaznUzTA/s320/Tinkering-645911.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">In recent
weeks I have encountered a variety of reasons, from fellow socialists, for
staying in the European Union and voting Remain in the 23 June referendum. Here
I outline the most common reasons and offer my own responses.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">1. The EU has given us workers'
rights and social protections. Leaving the EU will mean we lose those. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is
overwhelmingly a combination of trade unions and domestic governments (mainly
Labour) that have delivered those modest protections. It is through collective
working class struggle that we can defend (and extend) them. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Such
protections are in any case meagre, and they cannot be revoked by the Tories
without a struggle because EU laws are subsequently incorporated into domestic
UK law. The EU is overwhelmingly dedicated to the interests of finance and
business, not to support for the trade unions. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Tories
can happily push through their draconian attacks in the Trade Union Bill within
the framework of the EU. If anything will stop them, it will be trade union
resistance. The TUC's preoccupation with campaigning to stay in the EU has
actually somewhat demobilised opposition to the Bill. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">2. We need the EU to protect human
rights - the Tories will shred our rights otherwise. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The European
Court of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights have nothing
at all to do with the EU. They are completely unaffected by this referendum.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">3. This is a referendum on migration
and to vote Leave is effectively to oppose immigration into the UK. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">No it isn't.
The referendum's outcome will make no direct difference to migration laws and
rights. The battles over migrants' rights are already happening and will
continue after 23 June, whatever the result, with quite different dividing
lines to those we are seeing on the EU referendum. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">While many
right-wing Leave supporters are motivated partly by hostility to immigration,
left-wing opponents of the EU are implacable anti-racists who stand up for
freedom of movement and migrants' rights. And the mainstream pro-EU camp is
hardly friendly to migrants’ rights, with David Cameron negotiating away as
many such rights as possible to secure a deal with the European Commission
before launching the referendum. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Polling has
shown that immigration is a major issue influencing how people will vote, but
that it's way behind the economy in importance. This is certainly not a
referendum on immigration and the debate is not dominated by that issue, as
some on the left feared. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">4. Brexit will lead to migrants being
deported in huge numbers from the UK.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">No it won't.
No section of the British ruling class, or of the Tory government, wants that.
Cheap migrant labour is good news for many employers. For the Tories - for
every strand of the Tory Party, whether pro-EU or anti-EU - this economic
imperative is combined with the need for racist scapegoating. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Also, such
large-scale deportations would be highly contentious and enormously difficult
in practice. And they would raise the difficult question of why British
emigrants should be allowed to remain in the EU countries they have moved to. In
any case, the direction of political travel inside the EU is clearly to start
resurrecting border controls, so the EU provides no long-term guarantees of
freedom of movement. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">5. Brexit will lead to a carnival of
racist reaction. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The same was
said of the referendum campaign. But it hasn't happened and it clearly isn't
going to happen. This referendum is taking place in the context of important
political upheavals that are largely beneficial to the left, following the rise
of Jeremy Corbyn to Labour's leadership. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">News
headlines in recent weeks have concerned George Osborne's disastrous budget,
Iain Duncan Smith's resignation, the crisis in the steel industry and the toxic
fallout from the Panama Papers. The Tories' divisions have - pleasingly -
deepened. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There is no
need for such miserablism and fatalism on the left, especially given that the
most immediate result of a Leave victory in June will likely be the prime
minister's resignation (not to mention a defeat for everyone from Barack Obama
to the European Central Bank, from the IMF to the bulk of the City of London). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">6. The EU is at least some sort of
shelter against a Tory government. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">No it isn't.
And no it won't be. This is the same EU that smashed the Greek left-wing
government's attempts to defy austerity. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Tories
are not some uniquely awful right-wing government. There are many right-wing
governments in the EU, the 'centre-left' governments are little better, and the
EU itself is deeply conservative and has neoliberal commitments embedded deeply
in it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Also, why
should we cling to an utterly undemocratic edifice? If a Corbyn-led Labour
Party should be elected in 2020 - or earlier, given the Tories' crisis - the EU
will be a severe barrier to attempts to deliver positive reforms. We can’t be
trapped by the fatalistic short-termism of assuming we face a vicious
right-wing government.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">7. We may avoid TTIP, but a Tory
government led by Eurosceptics would simply negotiate an even worse deal with
the US.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Let them try
it! Such efforts would be subject to the British parliamentary process - not
merely the remote and obscure world of Brussels politics - and therefore also
to mass popular opposition. Such big decisions about trade deals - about powerful
corporations grabbing, and profiting from, our public assets and services -
should be subject to democracy. This is a fundamental principle for the left. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We should
also be clear that TTIP is not going to be defeated inside the EU's structures.
The European parliament has very weak powers on this, as on everything else. It
is a highly secretive matter for the unelected European Commission (whose trade
commissioner notoriously declared that she doesn't take her mandate from the
people). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">8. If Cameron and Osborne are forced
out, they will simply be replaced by even worse Tories. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Tories
are split and in crisis. It's getting, if anything, worse for them. This
mounting crisis is for a number of reasons, Europe merely one among them.
Broadly speaking, this crisis is a boost for the left, the labour movement and
the working class. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A defeat for
Cameron in the referendum will make things even worse for the Tories - and will
scupper any remaining chance (already slim) of Osborne replacing him. Whoever
does take over will do so in deeply unfavourable conditions, presiding over a
divided party. That will shape their prospects. Bring it on! <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">9. The EU may be awful, but it can be
reformed. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">No it can't.
It is not democratic and there are no mechanisms for reforming it. It is deeply
bureaucratic and has many commitments to neoliberal mantras enshrined in it,
via a series of treaties and rulings. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It would, in
any case, require genuinely left-wing governments coming to office across the
EU - pretty much simultaneously - to make such reform an even slightly viable
proposition. There is no indication of this being remotely likely to happen. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">10. The EU may be flawed, but it
still functions as a forum for much-needed international co-operation on issues
from climate change to tackling tax evasion. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">No it
doesn't. This claim featured in Jeremy Corbyn's speech this week, but there's
scant evidence to support it. The EU has had extraordinarily little impact on
these particular fields. It has not even slightly restrained capitalism from
destroying our climate - any more than it's restrained the super-rich from
robbing their national treasuries (and thus the people) by putting their money
where it can't be taxed. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It has,
however, been a useful forum for strengthening transnational corporations and
powerful corporate interests. Brussels is a hive of well-funded corporate
lobbying. It's really no surprise that the Confederation of British Industry is
so overwhelmingly behind the Remain campaign - or that the IMF this week
declared strongly for the UK staying in the EU. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">11. The EU may not be working well,
but we need it for any prospective international co-operation. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Should we
also argue for the maintenance of the IMF, WTO, World Bank and Nato? No serious
socialist wants to sustain those institutions. The left wants to dismantle them
because they are institutions of the capitalist and ruling class elites. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The same
applies to the EU, which was founded and developed to advance business
interests, has pushed for neoliberal policies of cuts, deregulation and
privatisation for over 20 years and has overseen the barbarism of 'Fortress
Europe'. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Real
internationalism comes from below. It advances through joint struggles of working
class and oppressed people. It doesn't rely - even slightly - on remote and
elite institutions. The European Central Bank is one of the EU's institutional
bodies. Anyone who thinks it can be a friend of the working class has not been
paying attention. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">12. It is better to be a 'European' -
whatever the EU's limits - than a 'Little Englander'.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It's better
to be an internationalist - with a truly global perspective and truly global
solidarity - than either of them. Our vision should not be limited by the (ever
more repressive) borders of Europe, with black and brown bodies from outside
Europe drowning – in their thousands – in the sea. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We can make common cause
with American fast food workers and Egyptian revolutionaries, with Palestinian
activists and Brazilian pro-democracy demonstrators, regardless of whether
their countries are in the EU. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There is
nothing inherently progressive about Europeanism. Proud 'Europeanism' is
entirely compatible with the most vile forms of racism - and indeed it often
is, as much of the European far right articulates the alleged superiority of 'European
civilisation' over the predominantly Muslim, supposedly backward and dangerous,
Other. International solidarity is in no way aided by the pieties of being
proud Europeans.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">This is not
a vote on whether we want to be ‘part of Europe’. It is a vote on an
institution: the European Union. It’s an institution that has done far more
harm than good. We should get out of it, both for the sake of the great
majority of people here and to weaken the EU as a whole. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php" name="fb_share" type="button">Share</a><script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script>luna17http://www.blogger.com/profile/03754650933188634442noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093114275469628673.post-60470228820800974142016-04-14T22:23:00.002+01:002016-04-21T21:05:16.621+01:00Tories in crisis, EU in crisis - vote to Leave <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_S42JSGjSyWZZmc2YLiHpd9OAbynMzpx1ynVDpfkXf7uwiA0OEYLtbOaynrcUaN6pJnAiK6afgC4t5EdcNM0qADfEATKrv1sGD22nBcJR7jEQ51es7AmV4EjoC5mT9bnQvvt7q58fhA/s1600/osborne+cameron.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_S42JSGjSyWZZmc2YLiHpd9OAbynMzpx1ynVDpfkXf7uwiA0OEYLtbOaynrcUaN6pJnAiK6afgC4t5EdcNM0qADfEATKrv1sGD22nBcJR7jEQ51es7AmV4EjoC5mT9bnQvvt7q58fhA/s320/osborne+cameron.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On Thursday 23 June 2016, there will be a referendum on
UK membership of the European Union. Millions of voters will have a
straightforward In/Out choice. Most polls have indicated a victory for those
seeking to remain in the EU, though some have given a tiny lead for leaving the
EU. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is the first such referendum since 1975, when those
wishing to retain British membership of what was then called the Common Market
- which Britain had joined just two years earlier - won around two thirds of
the votes. The Labour left, led by the likes of Tony Benn, was opposed to the
Common Market and played a very major role in the Leave campaign. Tory
Eurosceptics were fairly marginal, while racist arguments barely registered. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In 2016, the mainstream EU debate is dominated by the
Tories and involves two competing right-wing blocs. Labour is almost entirely
united in wanting to remain in the EU, a position also supported overwhelmingly
by Lib Dems, Greens and the SNP.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The EU has been through a process of progressive enlargement,
now consisting of 28 countries with a combined population of 510 million
people. No country has ever left the EU. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If Brexit is the outcome of June's
referendum, it will have profound repercussions for the EU as well as deepening
the existing crisis of Britain's Tory government. Tory MPs are split down the
middle and it is likely David Cameron would be forced to resign as prime
minister in the event of a defeat for Remain campaigners. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong></strong></span></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>Divided Tories<o:p></o:p></strong></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Cameron made a pre-election promise to hold a referendum
by 2017. Since winning the May 2015 general election, he has been obliged to
deliver on his promise. He had originally wanted to placate Tory Eurosceptics
and stem the rise of hard-right party UKIP. He would rather get the referendum
out of the way, hoping to re-unite Tories after a Remain victory - but this is
likely to prove wishful thinking, with divisions persisting whatever the
referendum result.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Pressures within the Tory Party obliged Cameron to take
the remarkable, and highly risky, step of allowing a free vote, even for
cabinet members (giving them permission to campaign on either side in the
months before the vote). Several cabinet members are Leave supporters. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Division
over the EU has intersected with other tensions to generate an ongoing Tory
crisis, highlighted by Iain Duncan Smith's dramatic resignation as work and
pensions secretary and the furious speculation about the political future of
George Osborne, the beleaguered chancellor of the exchequer. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Cameron renegotiated the terms of UK membership of the EU
in early 2016. There was little substance to the deal, but it was wholly
reactionary; designed to win over a layer of Eurosceptics, it involved attacks
on migrants' rights and benefits. This undoubtedly failed - with around half of
Tory MPs backing the Leave position - and it means the nature of British EU
membership is even more draconian than before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Tory party is traditionally the loyal party of the
British ruling class. But there is a contradiction: the British ruling class is
overwhelmingly pro-EU, correctly recognising that it serves the interests of
broad swathes of British capitalism, while the Tory Party is profoundly split
on the issue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>A ruling class project</strong> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The EU and its forerunners have always been an elite
capitalist project, backed by the great majority of the wealthy and powerful.
From the 1950s onwards it became apparent that the UK couldn't rely on the old
empire - or the Commonwealth after the post-war wave of decolonisation - for
trade and business. Closer economic ties within Europe, especially with Germany
and France, were deemed good for business. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The dominant idea was that this should be combined with a
close trading and business relationship with the US - and of course an
exploitative relationship with the 'developing world', especially former
colonies. This was considered a crucial element in sustaining British standing
in the world. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Since the 1990s the EU has been explicitly committed to
the neoliberal doctrines pioneered by Margaret Thatcher in 1980s Britain. The
Maastricht Treaty of 1993 enshrined these in EU law, a process continued ever
since (including the Lisbon Treaty of 2009). The UK has been in the vanguard of
pushing neoliberalism - privatisation, deregulation, cuts - at European level. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Tory divisions over EU integration have continuously
flared since the early 1990s. Many Thatcherites perceived the EU as a barrier
to full-blooded neoliberal transformation. It epitomised, for them, a soft
'social compromise' model, a view encouraged by EU Commission President Jacques
Delors' speech to the TUC in 1988, which was characterised by (largely
illusory) promises of social protections. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There have also long been genuine differences of emphasis
inside the ruling class over international alliances, reflected in some Tory
politicians advocating a looser approach to Europe. Such politicians often
emphasise the relationship with the US as an alternative focus, or perhaps
stronger links with 'emerging markets' like China. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>EU in crisis</strong> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This long-running conflict inside the Tory Party is now
being played out against the background of a deepening crisis of the EU itself.
There are three strands to the crisis. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Firstly there has been a set of tensions resulting from
economic crisis, since the Crash of 2008, accentuated by imbalances in the
Eurozone. The PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain) - which tend to
be characterised as the 'periphery' in contrast to the 'core' (led by Germany)
- have suffered especially harshly. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The crisis of the Eurozone has been the
basis for deep austerity programmes which have reduced working class living
standards. The EU has played an important part in all this, trampling over
democracy when necessary. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Secondly, there is the destruction of Greece's left-wing
government. The capitulation of the Syriza-led administration to the dictates
of European capitalism - with the EU in the vanguard of the attacks on the
Greek people and their elected government - represented the defeat of an
important attempt to break from austerity. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This created a crisis of legitimacy
for the EU, leading to disgust at its anti-democratic savagery from many people
across the continent. It exposed any rhetoric about 'a family of nations', or
ideas about the EU being socially progressive, as a sick joke. The reality of
the EU was laid bare. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Thirdly, there is the refugee crisis. The EU's racist
'Fortress Europe' policy has led to thousands of desperate people drowning in
the Mediterranean in recent years. Fences are now going up in parts of Europe,
as countries squabble over how many (or how few) refugees they are willing to
offer sanctuary to. Strains between nations have intensified and racist
populism has increasingly been deployed by EU governments. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Vicious authoritarianism is the new normal. There is a
ramping up of domestic repression at the same time as efforts to keep refugees
out of Europe, despite the fact that a confederation of over 500 million people
could certainly absorb the numbers seeking refuge. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>Brexit threat</strong> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The threat of Brexit is now another problem for the EU.
The withdrawal of such a major nation state will significantly weaken the whole
project. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The dominant pro-EU elements in the British political elite and ruling
class are engaged in Project Fear to avert that outcome. In this, they are
strongly supported by European elites and indeed also the US administration -
Barack Obama has warned that Brexit would damage the US-European relationship,
which is to some extent mediated through the UK. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For Cameron and his allies, EU membership remains a vital
element in sustaining the UK's economic, political and military standing in the
world. It is similar in this respect to Nato membership, Trident renewal,
participation in air strikes on Syria and the unity of the British state (as
opposed to Scottish independence). All of these things are, in their eyes, aspects
of British prestige and global standing. It was no surprise, for example, when
a list of former armed forces chiefs signed a letter urging voters to choose to
remain in the EU.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Much of the opposition to the European Union comes from
the political Right – both from one half of the Tory Party and from the
Tories-in-exile found in Ukip. But - as should be obvious from the sketch of
the political context above - there are also sound reasons for the left to
advocate leaving (and consequently weakening) the EU. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The EU is a profoundly undemocratic set of institutions
dominated by an unelected Commission, with a very weak and remote parliament.
It has for over two decades been central to the pushing of neoliberal policies
across the continent and, since 2008, has spearheaded often devastating cuts.
The EU and its constituent governments are key drivers of racist scapegoating. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For these reasons, socialists should vote to leave the EU
on 23 June. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><strong>A time of flux</strong> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Labour Party continues to be dominated by pro-EU thinking, despite
the leftwards shift represented by Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership (and Corbyn’s own
reservations on this issue), though there is little enthusiasm for meekly
echoing Tory arguments and allying with Cameron. This has made it impossible to
build a mass, broad-based campaign for a leave vote, on a left-wing basis, but
it is still essential to communicate the facts and arguments. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At the time of writing, there is a mounting – and
seemingly intractable – crisis for the Tories. George Osborne’s budget was a disaster
and was swiftly followed by Iain Duncan Smith’s resignation from the cabinet
and a major climbdown on cuts to disability benefits. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The tide of public
opinion has turned against austerity and the government’s proposals for forced
academy conversion have generated a fierce backlash from teachers, parents and
others. The crisis in the steel industry, with 40,000 jobs at risk, damaged the
Tories and the Panama Papers’ revelations have hit the prime minister
personally. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Tories are in trouble – and it will get worse for
them if the referendum delivers a vote to leave the EU. Labour, led by Jeremy Corbyn
and John McDonnell, is now providing real opposition on many issues, while
protest movements challenge the Tories on the streets and the junior doctors’
strikes threaten to herald a revival of collective workplace resistance to
government attacks. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The referendum takes place in a time of extraordinary flux
in both British and European politics. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php" name="fb_share" type="button">Share</a><script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script>luna17http://www.blogger.com/profile/03754650933188634442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093114275469628673.post-78896567362120730552016-03-20T19:26:00.002+00:002016-03-20T19:33:19.288+00:00Tories in a mess - we can bring this government down <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I write this at the end of an awful week for the Tories: their worst week, by some distance, since they formed a majority government as a result of last May's general election. <br />
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It bears comparison to the <em><strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_Kingdom_budget" target="_blank">'omnishambles' budget of 2012</a></strong></em>, when a tax cut for the richest was widely contrasted with regressive changes for millions of ordinary people, leading to a drop in the Tories' poll position that they didn't reverse until autumn 2014. As on that occasion, chancellor George Osborne is at the heart of things.<br />
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<strong>The fall of Iain Duncan Smith</strong> <br />
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Iain Duncan Smith's resignation from the cabinet was the stand-out development of the week and the biggest piece of fallout (so far) from a badly mis-judged budget. Of course he hasn't suddenly discovered a conscience after nearly six years as a Work and Pensions Secretary making vicious cuts to social security. <br />
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But his resignation does reflect genuine tensions among the Tories over how far they can go in making cuts. Many cabinet ministers resent how far they are pushed by the Treasury to make cuts in their own departments, while nonetheless agreeing with the larger austerity project. This resignation came as a surprise, but it was perhaps just a matter of time before a cabinet minister stood down as a result of these tensions. <br />
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One interpretation of the resignation is that Duncan Smith has entirely cynically, and cleverly, stood down so he can damage the 'Remain' campaign in the EU referendum. This is to credit him with <strong><em><a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/welfare/2016/03/think-iain-duncan-smiths-resignation-masterstroke-sadly-hes-not-clever" target="_blank">too much control over events</a></em></strong>. </div>
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No: he is stumbling around, as are others, and (while the referendum is part of the backdrop) this is primarily about tensions over the cuts. Remember, too, that this is a party with only a tiny Commons majority, split deeply over the EU, operating a time when the popular legitimacy of austerity is falling.<br />
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The resignation's impact has been amplified by the manner of Duncan Smith's departure. He clearly wanted to inflict damage on Osborne as he made for the exit, with a <em><strong><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35848891" target="_blank">resignation letter</a></strong></em> that was polite and flattering in places but quietly devastating in others. There are echoes of <em><strong><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2015/oct/10/geoffrey-howe-resignation-speech-margaret-thatcher-downfall-video" target="_blank">Geoffrey Howe's resignation speech</a></strong></em> which triggered the downfall of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister in 1990. On that occasion it emerged that a <em><strong><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/8127533/The-moment-a-dead-sheep-fatally-wounded-our-warrior-queen-Margaret-Thatcher.html" target="_blank">'dead sheep'</a></strong></em> could be savaging after all. It now seems a 'quiet man' can cause more damage than anyone had imagined.<br />
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The immediate trigger for the resignation was the cuts to disability benefits announced in the budget - or perhaps it was the widespread political and public backlash to them which swiftly followed. Less widely reported than Duncan Smith's resignation, but also significant, was the revelation on Friday that the Treasury would not in fact proceed with these cuts. </div>
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A <strong><em><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/disability-benefit-cuts-pip-budget-george-osborne-government-u-turn-tory-backbench-rebellion-a6939306.html" target="_blank">U-turn in just 48 hours</a></em></strong> is remarkable, influenced no doubt by polling which suggested <em><strong><a href="http://samedifference1.com/2016/03/18/series-of-polls-finds-that-the-public-overwhelmingly-oppose-planned-pip-cuts/" target="_blank">massive public opposition</a></strong></em>. It created an impression that the budget was swiftly unravelling, and made Osborne look weak and unable to impose his will. Another under-reported development this week was the <strong><em><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/mar/16/trade-union-crackdown-lords-defeat-labour-party-funding" target="_blank">House of Lords rejecting three major planks of the Tory Trade Union Bill</a></em></strong> - a setback for the draconian anti-union attacks.</div>
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<strong>A wider crisis</strong> </div>
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Overall the budget has <em><strong><a href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/03/18/least-fair-budget-omnishambles/" target="_blank">proved relatively unpopular</a></strong></em>. This isn't simply due to the content of the budget itself. It is in large part due to <strong><em><a href="https://medium.com/mosquito-ridge/scratch-one-tory-1efdada64080#.xt2b9zipb" target="_blank">the role of the official Opposition</a></em></strong> in putting across the kind of strong opposition unknown during the Miliband years. In particular it was significant that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell targeted the cuts affecting disabled people, making these cuts a central issue of contention.</div>
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This instance of excellent judgement by Corbyn and McDonnell is one reason why it has been a very good week for Labour - and particularly the Labour left - not merely a bad week for the Tories. Another reason is the <em><strong><a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/03/polls-show-whats-always-been-true-labour-can-win-jeremy-corbyn" target="_blank">series of three opinion polls</a></strong></em> - between 12 March and 17 March - which all showed Labour making gains of up to 4% (compared to the pollsters' previous surveys) and the Tories dropping by up to 4%. One poll - by YouGov - even put Labour one point ahead of the Tories. While polls should be treated with caution, this is significant progress compared with the entire period since Corbyn's election as leader last September.<br />
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It looks like three factors lie behind the Tories' polling woes. One is the deep splits over the EU, with roughly half of Tory MPs on each side of the referendum debate. A divided party doesn't look strong to voters. </div>
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Secondly, there's the repeated recent warnings about the state of the economy. Osborne's reputation for good economic management (hard to believe on the left, but this is a common public perception) has taken some serious knocks. </div>
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Finally, there is evidence that the public mood is shifting against cuts - a process that may prove to be accelerated by this week's budget. <strong><em><a href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/03/16/cuts-approval-budget/" target="_blank">Polling has found that on three separate measures</a></em></strong> - whether cuts are considered necessary, whether they're good for the economy, and fairness - support has fallen over the last few months. </div>
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<strong>It's getting worse for the Tories</strong> <br />
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This is therefore serious for the Tories, and not some passing turbulence. As <em><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/jonlansman/status/711522041422352384" target="_blank">Jon Lansman</a></strong></em>, a leading light in Labour left grouping Momentum, puts it: 'Three things are increasingly likely: Osborne's dead in the water, Cameron's next, and there'll only be one leadership election this year.' </div>
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Corbyn was astute in <em><strong><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/now-iain-duncan-smith-has-done-the-honourable-thing-its-time-for-osborne-to-resign-a6942606.html" target="_blank">responding to Duncan Smith's resignation by calling for Osborne to go</a></strong></em>. Lansman's last point, too, is crucial: there has been much excitable media chatter about (all too real) divisions inside the Parliamentary Labour Party, but the focus is now shifting to the splits among the Tories.<br />
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Osborne has long been regarded as the frontrunner to succeed Cameron as Tory leader. The Tory establishment is now panicking as it looks like their favourite son is extremely fallible. The speculation about when Cameron will go, who will stand for leader and who will subsequently win a leadership election all adds to the sense of the Tories as divided, squabbling and incoherent. This is tied up with the divisions over the EU referendum. </div>
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Polls on the EU referendum are volatile, but it does look genuinely possible that it will lead to Brexit. That would deepen the Tory crisis still further and it's hard to see Cameron surviving it as party leader and prime minister. </div>
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More pessimistic elements of the left had predicted a 'carnival of reaction' in the run up to the 23 June referendum, fearing a debate entirely dominated by racist scapegoating. Instead we are getting an unravelling Tory party. The Tories will continue to be weak and divided for the next 3 months; after that, whatever the referendum outcome, the tensions will hardly be resolved. </div>
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The other stand-out element of the budget was the announcement of 'forced academies', with all schools expected to become academies in the next few years. I have already responded to this - <em><strong><a href="http://www.counterfire.org/articles/opinion/18231-academies-stop-the-tory-assault-on-our-schools" target="_blank">Stop the Tory assault on our schools</a></strong></em> - and will merely add that it has triggered an almighty backlash. Two separate online petitions condemning the announcement have already reached 100,000 names, or are very close to doing so. NUT associations nationwide have called protests for this Wednesday. </div>
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<strong>Labour and the movements</strong> </div>
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All of this is a disaster for the Blairite vultures seeking to destabilise Corbyn's leadership. The Tory crisis, Labour's polling bounce, the fall in support for cuts, the anti-academies backlash - all this strengthens the left (around Corbyn and McDonnell) relative to the right inside the Labour Party. They are still hoping for poor Labour results in May's elections, as an excuse to launch an attack on the leadership, but that is looking less and less likely. </div>
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Corbyn and McDonnell have, as noted, played an important part in the events of this week. Corbyn's leadership victory was <em><strong><a href="http://www.counterfire.org/articles/analysis/17968-the-end-of-blairism-jeremy-corbyn-the-labour-party-and-the-left" target="_blank">on the back of a popular upsurge</a></strong></em> and fuelled by protest movements. He continues to take strength from popular support way beyond the largely hostile PLP - from Labour members and from activists in the wider movements (as seen in the big turnouts for <em><strong><a href="http://www.jc4pmtour.com/" target="_blank">the recent JC4PM tour</a></strong></em>). Sustaining this momentum is crucial to exploit the weaknesses on the Tory side, and to further marginalise the Labour Right. </div>
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It is significant that party leaders have aligned themselves closely with the wider anti-Tory opposition: for example, Corbyn will speak at NUT Conference on Friday, while McDonnell has recently been pictured on junior doctors' picket lines and addressing disabled anti-cuts protesters. The moderate shadow education secretary Lucy Powell will speak at Wednesday's NUT rally in London. </div>
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So, we are certainly not spectators to all this. Tens of thousands <em><strong><a href="http://www.counterfire.org/news/18207-the-biggest-anti-nuclear-march-in-a-generation" target="_blank">marched against Trident replacement</a></strong></em> just three weeks ago. This weekend there was <strong><em><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/london-stand-up-to-racism-rally_uk_56ed69dae4b0cc1ede8c24eb" target="_blank">another big turnout</a></em></strong>, this time for a 'refugees welcome here' demonstration. The junior doctors are already pledged to further strikes and there is talk of escalation. The People's Assembly's <strong><em><a href="http://www.thepeoplesassembly.org.uk/5_reasons_to_demonstrate_on_16_april?recruiter_id=10195" target="_blank">March for Health, Homes, Jobs and Education on 16 April</a></em></strong> is a focal point for anti-cuts campaigners. </div>
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Through mass mobilisations and solidarity with the junior doctors' strikes - the <em><strong><a href="http://www.counterfire.org/articles/analysis/18210-this-is-serious-what-you-can-do-now-to-support-the-junior-doctors" target="_blank">most important union struggle for years</a></strong></em> - aligned with a combative, left-wing Labour leadership, we can drive the Tories deeper into crisis and raise the possibility of this government's collapse. </div>
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<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php" name="fb_share" type="button">Share</a><script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script>luna17http://www.blogger.com/profile/03754650933188634442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093114275469628673.post-58957204338785918252016-03-16T19:30:00.000+00:002016-03-16T19:34:28.732+00:00Academies: stop the Tory assault on our schools <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw3AmHD4T5srpcO5CIc0jh2SR2hkw7bqy8CZJ69YKiql6K5Mdq45pt55eaDQoOjxUT7fA4PvPazZ8HVz8j4Q0Iui3ojcnMsIqRudXPlYljbz2Tsg6caW_0Bx1uB0Rk3nSr-cYjQVfM7A/s1600/nut+DEMO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw3AmHD4T5srpcO5CIc0jh2SR2hkw7bqy8CZJ69YKiql6K5Mdq45pt55eaDQoOjxUT7fA4PvPazZ8HVz8j4Q0Iui3ojcnMsIqRudXPlYljbz2Tsg6caW_0Bx1uB0Rk3nSr-cYjQVfM7A/s320/nut+DEMO.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In one sense it is a shock that George Osborne has used
his budget to announce plans for turning every state school into an academy.
This wasn't part of the predictions. But in another sense it is to be expected:
this has been the direction of travel for a long time. Labour introduced the
academies programme and the Tories -<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>first in coalition, now with a Commons majority - have accelerated
academy conversion. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Control of what happens in schools has never been more
centralised than it is in 2016. That's after years of academy conversions, a
process that is supposed to be about local autonomy - cutting bureaucracy and
putting teachers in charge of schools.</span> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yet we see heavy interference from the Department for
Education in all matters relating to curriculum and assessment. Recently we
even had Nick Gibb, schools minister, intervening directly in a controversy
over when year 2 children can, and cannot, use exclamation marks! Ofsted is
used as a tool of compliance in schools; high-stakes testing, performance
management and performance related pay all play their part, too, in enforcing
narrow, rigid orthodoxies. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The whole academies programme has always had scope for
allowing private business into the public sphere of schooling, enabling them to
profit from education. This is wrong in principle and, if the government is
allowed to pursue forced academisation, we will no doubt see numerous examples
of unscrupulous characters profiting from the further carving up of our schools
system. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It also doesn’t work on the government’s own declared
terms of raising standards. There is damning evidence that <strong><em><a href="http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2016/03/forcing-schools-to-become-academies-will-mean-more-inadequate-schools-and-worse-results" target="_blank">academies are in fact more likely to remain stuck in Ofsted's 'inadequate' category</a></em></strong>, for
example. </span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But
this has never been about improving schools or raising standards. It is a
highly political attack on state education and many of the values and practices
that have long been embedded in it, as well as a means of opening up public
services to those seeking private profit. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Tories have tried cajoling schools into converting
for years. They have tried threats and bribery. Much of this effort has paid
off, but many headteachers, governors and school staff have remained resistant
- often supported by parents who simply want a good school for their children
and don't (quite reasonably) see how the chimera of being an academy will make
the slightest possible difference. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Insisting that every school becomes an academy can only
make things worse. Increased central control is combined with the illusion of
autonomy, more competition between schools, and greater fragmentation. The
government trumpets multi-academy chains as a way for schools to work together.
What's wrong with a local education authority? Other policies and trends - like
league tables, the continuance of Ofsted and competition over school admissions
- cut directly against the co-operative ethos and discourage schools from
supporting each other. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What's needed, instead, is quite simple. We need a good
local school for every child, with schools working together co-operatively,
publicly accountable, and supported constructively by all possible means. There
are examples of local authorities, or other networks of (non-academy) schools,
that illustrate how schools can share successful practices, co-operate, and
learn from each other. It doesn’t help, however, that local government has been
devastated by cuts for the several years. We need increased funding for local
education authorities so they can properly support schools. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">To resist - and stop - the Tories' fresh assault we will
need organisation, unity and dedication. Previously they have got away with it
largely because there has been no nationally co-ordinated programme of academy
conversion. The Tories are taking a risk here, triggering potential for a
generalised response. The teaching unions need to work together to make that
potential a reality. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Labour has consistently been weak on this issue. That
hasn't changed substantially since Jeremy Corbyn's leadership election victory:
Lucy Powell, shadow education secretary, has had little to say about anything
at all, including academies. Thankfully Labour's initial response to the latest
development is one of clear opposition, but the party will need sustained
pressure to make it a priority, and to join with unions and campaign groups in
building real opposition. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The key to success for teaching unions will be combining
cross-union cooperation with building a broader coalition involving parents and
the wider community. This is not simply, or even primarily, an issue affecting
teachers, but one with an impact on the education which current and future
generations have access to. The stakes are high - the fight is on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-spacerun: yes;">This is cross-posted at <em><strong><a href="http://www.counterfire.org/" target="_blank">Counterfire</a></strong></em>. </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php" name="fb_share" type="button">Share</a><script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script>luna17http://www.blogger.com/profile/03754650933188634442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093114275469628673.post-22763652312648937082016-03-16T19:17:00.001+00:002016-03-16T19:17:33.495+00:00Trotsky vs Baldwin: is 'gradualness' the British way? <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeUgQRvslE1OgHbNC8vKLSXjalKxBn1v5bohGjmpCIdo-7n4-dJBkDGKPE6m30IBYDbaUP43ORlfQ2jzN625FAzATlp0kg9XvYWJ75Jb2yCymEVsZZ42ZdsFzCRiRaHLEZuK7BnHemow/s1600/Sylvia-Pankhurst-being-arrested.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="345" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeUgQRvslE1OgHbNC8vKLSXjalKxBn1v5bohGjmpCIdo-7n4-dJBkDGKPE6m30IBYDbaUP43ORlfQ2jzN625FAzATlp0kg9XvYWJ75Jb2yCymEVsZZ42ZdsFzCRiRaHLEZuK7BnHemow/s400/Sylvia-Pankhurst-being-arrested.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The suffragettes: one of those inconvenient truths for Baldwin</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Here's my brief introduction to Counterfire's re-posting of <em><strong><a href="http://www.counterfire.org/theory/18230-key-texts-trotsky-on-gradualness" target="_blank">a classic Trotsky article from 1925</a></strong></em>:<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Leon Trotsky was one of the leaders of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and, for several years afterwards, a leading figure in the socialist government of Russia's new workers' state. He was also a prominent voice in the international communist movement that mushroomed after 1917, writing about a wide range of international topics. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Analysis and action went together: he commented on major political developments with a view to influencing socialists in the countries he was writing about, hoping to influence the strategy and tactics they would pursue.<br /> <br /> Britain had been shaken by strike waves and demonstrations after the end of World War One. In 1919 the country came closer to a revolutionary situation than at any other time in the 20th century. There was a period of fluctuating, sometimes dramatic, class struggle until the defeat of the General Strike in 1926.<br /> <br /> This was part of a wider European upsurge that involved a number of countries, most significantly Germany, experiencing revolutionary upheavals. This wider upsurge was also the context for the growth of Communist Parties and for intense debates in the labour movement, which involved large reformist parties (like Britain's Labour Party) as well as the newer Communist Parties. In Britain the Communist Party was launched in 1920 and played a dynamic role in working class movements for the next several years, though it didn't have more than a few thousand activists.<br /> <br /> Trotksy's published writings on Britain in the 1920s include the 1925 article re-published below. He begins by mocking the then Tory prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, who was a huge figure in interwar British politics, and responds to Baldwin's dismissal of socialist ideas. Baldwin had returned to 10 Downing Street after the collapse of the first ever (but short-lived) Labour government in the previous year. At the time of Baldwin's speech - to which Trotsky was responding - there was consequently a fair amount of confidence and bounce in Tory ranks, but also an anxiety that stemmed both from several years of working class resistance and the spectre of communism emanating from Russia.<br /> <br /> Trotsky moves on to the substance of his article. This is partly to do with the nature of how modern capitalist societies develop, and especially the way that wars and economic crises are engendered by them. But it also concerns something much more hopeful: if capitalism makes war and crisis inevitable, it also makes resistance - and indeed revolution - inevitable. And Britain - for all its fabled 'gradualness' - is not immune to that.<br /> <br /> Trotsky documents how Britain's history is not the story of peaceful, gradual progress that Baldwin espoused, but a history of war, conquest, conflict and class struggle. He is especially scathing about the acutely violent record of British colonialism. He also notes how the English Revolution of the 1640s had been a vital motor of historical progress in Britain, a fact obscured by Tory fantasies of timelessness and social peace.<br /> <br /> Trotsky goes on to sketch a radical, and truly bracing, alternative popular history of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which highlights the impact of wider international changes (especially the French Revolution) and the role of popular movements and workers' struggles. In this historical framework, Trotsky reasserts Marx's central idea that history is driven forward by class struggle and that hope lies in the self-emancipation of the working class. This, he shows us, is as relevant to supposedly 'gradual' and 'peaceful' Britain as to anywhere.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_b-scEu0FUmHBbJW6WDJHpXYQUrrJczzswgR9i2xYUMpxVXWdIJr6Bm1nW-IEvT9lRC96rknKFEOvcg0WScfwpshvfAiajwuldynggTlvwcis4pjXuCW_Wjk8usl6vcJDTBu6eOaVgA/s1600/corbyn+pic.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_b-scEu0FUmHBbJW6WDJHpXYQUrrJczzswgR9i2xYUMpxVXWdIJr6Bm1nW-IEvT9lRC96rknKFEOvcg0WScfwpshvfAiajwuldynggTlvwcis4pjXuCW_Wjk8usl6vcJDTBu6eOaVgA/s320/corbyn+pic.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The last week in British politics has perfectly captured the contradictions of a Corbyn-led Labour Party. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">We are currently seeing real breakthroughs opened up by the left turn in the Labour Party's leadership, but also the ongoing obstacles to radically transforming Labour politics. The hostility of scores of Labour MPs to Jeremy Corbyn's left-wing politics remains a huge problem, generating constant pressure for compromise.</span> <br />
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Corbyn's speech to the Fabian Society on Saturday was well-received, earning praise even from those who are sceptical about his leadership. It outlined a set of economic and social policies that marked a clean break from Ed Miliband's painfully moderate approach. There were no surprises - it was all in line with Corbyn's platform in the leadership election - but it did indicate that the Labour leader is determined to push through his domestic agenda: rail renationalisation, increasing the minimum wage, capping bosses' pay, creating a lifelong education service, delivering universal childcare, and so on. <br />
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There is also a sense of individual policies being framed by a broader commitment to equality. Labour's own internal review of why it lost the May 2015 general election - overseen by Margaret Beckett - was this week leaked to the press. It apparently notes the lack of a coherent political outlook, despite some appealing individual policies, in the run up to last May's election. This is hardly news to many of us, but it underscores the need for Corbyn to present a coherent worldview not merely a disparate collection of policies. <br />
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A <em><strong><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/09/jeremy-corbyn-on-middle-britain-labour-beating-the-tories" target="_blank">recent newspaper column by Corbyn </a></strong></em>did an excellent job of outlining a coherent agenda, built around what he termed 'three pillars': economic policy focused on investment and reducing inequality, ground-up democratisation, and an independent foreign policy geared towards peace. The speech to the Fabians can be seen as providing some flesh on those bones, but that doesn't mean that shifting Labour policy leftwards is straightforward. <br />
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<strong>War and weapons </strong><br />
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It's in the field of foreign policy that more rightwards-leaning elements of the Labour Party have been most hostile, at times virulent, towards the new leader and the direction he is mapping out for the party. Corbyn felt obliged to grant a 'free vote' on bombing Syria, such was the resistance to an anti-war position inside the Parliamentary Labour Party. This decision was regrettable - as it undoubtedly weakened parliamentary opposition to David Cameron's plans - but primary responsibility for it lies with those elements of the PLP that remain dedicated to an interventionist foreign policy (the kind of foreign policy that drove so many members out of the Labour Party around the war in Iraq).<br />
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The other major issue where divisions inside Labour run deep is Trident replacement. This is a foreign policy issue, but also closely connected the battle of ideas around austerity: campaigners repeatedly point out that the vast sums required for sustaining Britain's nuclear capability could instead be devoted to public services and job creation. Scrapping Trident is a key alternative to austerity - and this explains why the People's Assembly Against Austerity is backing CND's national demonstration, calling for abolition of Trident replacement, on 27 February. <br />
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Two leaders of major trade unions - the GMB's Paul Kenny and Unite's Len McCluskey - have both made interventions designed to undermine Corbyn's anti-Trident position. Their arguments are based entirely on an appeal to protect jobs in the defence industry, despite Corbyn making it clear that he wants public investment to guarantee new jobs for the workers who would be affected, ensuring they do socially useful and climate-friendly jobs instead of producing weapons of mass destruction. <br />
<br />
Kenny and McCluskey betray a lack of political imagination or foresight, sticking unthinkingly to a narrow sectional agenda. But this issue is far from resolved inside those unions, especially in Unite (where anti-Trident arguments have a strong base of support). There is potential for anti-Trident campaigning to win widespread support in the labour movement. The national demonstration will be the first test of this. <br />
<br />
<strong>Striking back </strong><br />
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Trident isn't the only way that the relationship between Labour and trade unions has hit the headlines this week. Strike action by junior doctors on Tuesday had a huge media and public impact, offering hope for anyone wanting a wider defence of the NHS and an increase in resistance by public sector unions. <br />
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But the response from Labour was mixed. Left-wing shadow chancellor John McDonnell - Corbyn's closest ally and a reliable friend of striking unions - turned up on a picket line. Yet this generated controversy because Heidi Alexander, shadow health secretary, had insisted the party took a neutral stance on the strike action. <br />
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Labour has historically never supported strikes. This might seem surprising, but the Labour Party was founded on the separation between parliamentary politics (Labour Party business) and workplace-based resistance (leave it to the unions). The party's failure to publicly support Tuesday's strike - despite polls suggesting it was popular - indicated the continuing limitations in spite of Corbyn and McDonnell's place at the helm. This doesn't mean nothing has changed - it was noteworthy that Alexander addressed last Saturday's London rally for student nurses - but support for strikes remains a contentious subject.<br />
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Nonetheless, Corbyn is definitely pushing for Labour to have a very different approach to trade unions, and strikes in particular, to the rather guilty, shamefaced embarrassment associated with previous leaders Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband, none of whom championed the restoration of workers' rights removed by Margaret Thatcher's governments in the 1980s. <br />
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Corbyn, by contrast, told viewers of the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday morning that he wants radical changes to legislation on strikes, saying: “Sympathy action is legal in most other countries. It should also be legal here.” This is combined with strong opposition to the Trade Union Bill which the Tories are currently trying to force through parliament. <br />
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That Bill is, in turn, a key component of a far-reaching Tory strategy for weakening democracy and especially undermining Labour and the unions. The strategy also includes proposed boundary changes, alterations to voter registration, cuts to funding for research by the Opposition, and a ban on local councils taking action to practically support human rights elsewhere in the world (primarily a response to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement in solidarity with Palestine). It is to Corbyn's credit that he recognises this bigger picture and opposes the various measures in full. <strong></strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>Beyond Westminster </strong><br />
<br />
The examples of the junior doctors and Trident illustrate a couple of important points about Labour and the challenges for defeating Tory policies. One important point is that these (and other) causes now have a degree of support in mainstream politics that until recently was unimaginable. Having a left-wing Leader of the Opposition and shadow chancellor - and now an anti-Trident, anti-air strikes shadow defence secretary - makes a difference. <br />
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The second point is that Labour alone cannot be relied on to fight for what we need, whether that's junior doctors' pay and conditions or the scrapping of Trident. There is a constant struggle inside Labour between left and right, with two parties effectively co-existing (one which is strong in the PLP, one whose power is based in a combination of the leadership and the grassroots).<br />
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The left is more likely to prevail in these battles when there are powerful movements outside the realm of parliamentary politics, and involving many thousands of people beyond the Labour Party. Around the Syria vote, we saw how campaigning led by Stop the War Coalition could combine with an anti-war Labour leadership to deliver a substantial body of votes against air strikes (and increase the pressure on the government). <br />
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The 27 February national demonstration will be a decisive moment for everyone seeking to end Britain's ludicrous and wasteful addiction to nuclear weapons - and a chance to articulate alternatives to both austerity and war. With a Commons vote on Trident replacement expected this year - and perhaps as early as spring - the demonstration, combined with lobbying of MPs, will be very important. <br />
<br />
The junior doctors will be emboldened if Labour politicians voice their support, especially if left-wing arguments linking their specific dispute with a broader fight for the NHS are at the fore, but victory will ultimately depend on their collective resolve - through the British Medical Association - to persist with the strike action, marches and rallies needed to force a Tory climbdown. It will also help if other health unions step up their practical support, and if close links are pursued with other groups involved in disputes (like the student nurses campaigning to keep bursaries). Similarly, the Trade Union Bill is a winnable battle for its opponents, but only if there is serious, sustained and co-ordinated action by unions complementing Labour's opposition at Westminster.<br />
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Finally, this week saw the People's Assembly's announcement of a national demonstration 'for health, homes, jobs and education' in London on 16 April. This can be a rallying point for everyone wanting to resist the Tories, pulling together disparate issues and the different strands of resistance. In the immediate run up to May's Scottish, Welsh, London and local elections, it is very timely for making maximum political impact. It will also have the by-product of demonstrating support for Corbyn's drive to make Labour a consistently anti-austerity party. <br />
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This was originally published on <strong><em><a href="http://www.counterfire.org/articles/analysis/18144-corbyn-and-the-contradictions-of-labour" target="_blank">Counterfire</a></em></strong>. <br />
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<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php" name="fb_share" type="button">Share</a><script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script>luna17http://www.blogger.com/profile/03754650933188634442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093114275469628673.post-3728397364470626682016-01-01T00:56:00.000+00:002016-12-20T13:47:18.652+00:00My predictions for 2016 <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCP0QGE468StcqNpK4WU0JtGLccpIPPQhyDLdGtLiEmVL_yMKmBB8pK7rTXykq0464R5BIGLxJSVxlPtJ9MmEDgblHbygGkWOjR27v2BYFZrmkk3D1s7aj7VE6ui9wbHSa3mrhYiGe2g/s1600/goldmsith-khan-653x458.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCP0QGE468StcqNpK4WU0JtGLccpIPPQhyDLdGtLiEmVL_yMKmBB8pK7rTXykq0464R5BIGLxJSVxlPtJ9MmEDgblHbygGkWOjR27v2BYFZrmkk3D1s7aj7VE6ui9wbHSa3mrhYiGe2g/s320/goldmsith-khan-653x458.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Goldsmith vs Khan: who will be next mayor of London? </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It's time for my annual predictions for politics in the year ahead. I've published a set of predictions on New Year's Day for the last few years. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">As usual, this is intended as an attempt at accurate forecasting, rather than being a wish list for what I'd like to happen. I have opted this year to focus almost entirely on British politics, as it is what I follow closely and feel well-placed to comment on. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is of course an exercise that risks embarrassment at a later date: a quick glance at <b><i><a href="http://luna17activist.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/my-predictions-for-2015.html" target="_blank">last year's predictions</a></i></b> will indicate the potential for getting things badly wrong. But, with the recklessness of such an exercise in mind, here goes...</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">1. Labour's Sadiq Khan will very narrowly win May's election for London Mayor, defeating Tory candidate Zac Goldsmith by a tiny margin. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">2. The SNP will win an even bigger majority at Holyrood than it possesses already, going from 69 seats won in 2011 to 75 in May's elections to the Scottish Parliament. Scottish Labour will fail to make any recovery from its polling lows. New left-wing formation RISE will fail to win any regional list seats, but the Green Party will win six regional list seats. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">3. </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Labour will lose around 120 of the 1200 seats it is defending in May's local council elections. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">4. Jeremy Corbyn will survive a fresh wave of internal Party attacks in May, continuing to be Labour leader throughout 2016. He will be assisted by Labour victory in the election for London mayor, compensating for less heartening news in the Scottish and local elections. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">5. The EU referendum will be held in the autumn and the IN campaign will win, with over 55% of the vote share. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">6. Labour Party membership will stabilise at around 400,000 members. Labour will make a little progress in opinion polling, being almost level with the Tories on vote share by the end of 2016. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">7. The Lib Dems will fail to make any recovery in its polling or electoral fortunes, continuing to be the irrelevant footnote to British politics that it has been since last May's Westminster wipeout. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">8. The Green Party of England and Wales will struggle to appear politically relevant, its right wing will become stronger, and the party will fare badly in London's elections in May. There will be a small decline in its membership.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">9. Ukip's slow decline will continue, with the divisions between leader Nigel Farage and sole MP Douglas Carswell becoming so acute that the latter leaves Ukip altogether before the EU referendum takes place. Funding will dry up almost entirely and membership will fall slightly. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">10. Jeremy Corbyn will undertake a minor reshuffle of his shadow cabinet in January. It won't involve changes quite as drastic as widely predicted. Hilary Benn, Maria Eagle and Michael Dugher will be removed from the shadow cabinet, though Angela Eagle will remain, and Rosie Winterton will be removed as Chief Whip.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">11. Momentum will establish itself as a significant grouping for the Labour left, but will struggle to find a meaningful cause to galvanise left-wing party members into action, while being overly focused on internal party matters and repeatedly subjected to attacks in the media. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">12. By the end of 2016 George Osborne will emerge as clear frontrunner in the race to be next Tory leader, ahead of Boris Johnson and Theresa May. Osborne will gain from the fact that there</span><span style="background-color: white;"> will be no fresh economic crisis, either in Britain or in any other major economy, despite underlying problems. Inflation in Britain will remain low and there will be a slight fall in unemployment. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="background-color: white;">13. The Chilcot report will be published in the autumn and be damning about Tony Blair and other senior government figures of the time.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">14. Junior doctors will take strike action and win their dispute with the government, though t</span>here will otherwise be no significant national strike action by public sector unions on pay, pensions or any other issue. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">15. Hillary Clinton will be selected as the Democratic nominee for US president. Donald Trump will be selected as the Republican nominee. Clinton will go on to comfortably defeat Trump in November's election, winning around 55% of the vote share. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php" name="fb_share" type="button">Share</a><script src="https://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script>luna17http://www.blogger.com/profile/03754650933188634442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093114275469628673.post-19850240470379284592015-12-31T19:38:00.000+00:002015-12-31T19:38:10.629+00:008 important trends in British politics <div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21.3px;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP-uBLpcOH62-Q_0rqJiD1LNME3HStdqF45G4NrV9HMvceCTBk8SJCMIaurRNHh-fd_RwKa_EvOSexP28IA0hyphenhyphena-zPzpRkP7DWnZuESBZ-ThepctWPSQndIooepsMSfVXcM_7pe0LLcA/s1600/CameronOsbourne_2338022b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP-uBLpcOH62-Q_0rqJiD1LNME3HStdqF45G4NrV9HMvceCTBk8SJCMIaurRNHh-fd_RwKa_EvOSexP28IA0hyphenhyphena-zPzpRkP7DWnZuESBZ-ThepctWPSQndIooepsMSfVXcM_7pe0LLcA/s320/CameronOsbourne_2338022b.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="line-height: 21.3px;">The end of one year, and the start of another, is a good time for reflection. So I thought I'd step back from the day-to-day churn of British politics and think about the underlying trends we have seen illuminated in 2015. </span><br />
<span style="line-height: 21.3px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 21.3px;">It is easy to miss many of these due to a focus on the everyday or short-term, or because of the news media's habit of exaggerating some things while overlooking others. </span></div>
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What, then, are the big current trends in British politics that we can discern from events in 2015? In no particular order...</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21.3px;"><b>1. The Tories are steady but going nowhere. </b></span><br />
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<div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21.3px;">
There was a lot of exaggeration in the responses to the Tories' general election victory. The fact that nearly everyone had forecast a hung parliament meant that a tiny Tory majority appeared to be a spectacular triumph, rather than a very narrow win helped by the electoral system. The long-term trend for the Tories has been one of decline: compare its vote share from anywhere between the 1950s and 1992 with its results since 1997 and this is clear. It is also reflected in falling membership. </div>
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<div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21.3px;">
It is unlikely that the Tories will ever again reach 40% in a UK-wide general election (if Scotland gains independence, it might be a different matter). There is no particular reason to believe that the Tories will improve on its 2015 vote share. They can form a majority government on no more than 37% of the votes - as we've seen - and the likely boundary changes means this will certainly be possible in future. But I don't see how the Tory Party can restore the dominance it had in the 1980s (conversely, I don't see any reason to predict a significant <i>fall </i>in its support).<br />
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<b>2. The Lib Dems have collapsed. </b><br />
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The Lib Dems and its predecessor parties have historically had a small core voting base. But at times this has been boosted as a result of careful positioning - or opportunism - allowing the party to pick up votes from those disaffected with other parties. The 2010 election was a peak in this respect, with the Lib Dems benefiting from widespread disillusionment with 13 years of Labour government (but also the fact that the Tories had not entirely 'detoxified' after the experiences of the 1980s and 1990s). </div>
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Being the junior partner in a Tory-led coalition for five years led to collapse and only 8 Lib Dem MPs were elected in May. There are no indications of any Lib Dem revival, not any reason to expect one as the party has no obvious purpose. It has returned to being a party that derives votes largely from a core base of mainly middle class and centre-ground voters, polling below 10%. </div>
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<b>3. The SNP dominates Scottish politics.</b><br />
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The SNP landslide in May - taking 56 out of 59 Scottish seats at Westminster - was a genuine political earthquake. There is every reason to expect another SNP landslide in May's Holyrood elections, with the party forecast to increase its majority in the devolved Scottish parliament still further. </div>
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This has been a long-term process and the independence referendum accelerated Scottish Labour's decline and the SNP's ascendancy. Many people on the Labour left simply don't grasp how much Scottish politics has been transformed, and naively think that Labour can win back lost support. This involves under-estimating how discredited Labour has become, how strong the SNP's support base now is, and how important the questions of independence and (more immediately) home rule, or increased powers, are for left-leaning Scottish voters. </div>
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<b>4. Ukip is past its peak, while the far right is defunct.</b><br />
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I've been saying this for over a year: Ukip has already reached its peak. It took roughly one in eight votes nationally in May and there's simply no reason to expect it to improve on this in future local or general elections. It has a fairly settled voter base and is incapable of getting people elected in first-past-the-post elections. The fact that its sole MP, Douglas Carswell, is in open conflict with party leader Nigel Farage gives a strong sense of the problems it faces. Whatever happens in the EU referendum, it is likely to damage Ukip: once it's taken place, Ukip's core aim has been removed from the political landscape. </div>
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The rise of Ukip is one reason, of course, why the traditional far right is absolutely nowhere. Dedicated anti-fascist campaigning also played its part, as did the far right's propensity (especially when under pressure and suffering defeats) for in-fighting. The British National Party imploded a little while ago and has not been replaced. </div>
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<b>5. Labour is shifting leftwards. </b><br />
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For those of us on the left, the most important - and hopeful- trend is what's happening in the Labour Party. This is one that has taken everyone by surprise: 2015 has been a real game-changer for Labour. It was widely assumed that general election defeat would be followed by a consensus around moving Labour somewhat to the right. Jeremy Corbyn's huge popular success in the leadership race, galvanising a mushrooming of Labour Party membership and a renaissance for the left, changed everything.<br />
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What we are seeing is the widespread disaffection with a hollowed-out social democracy finding expression - in a unique way - through the established, and largely discredited, social democratic party itself. This results from a combination of factors and has led to a fierce conflict within the Labour Party. How this plays out is not yet settled, but Corbyn and the left do have some distinct advantages. The 'moderates' in the Parliamentary Labour Party are reconciling themselves to it being near-impossible to challenge Corbyn's position. </div>
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<b>6. The Green Surge is a fading memory. </b><br />
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The Green Surge began in summer 2014 and continued until the general election in May 2015. There was a huge increase in membership combined with a small tilt leftwards in its profile and composition. This demonstrated - together with the SNP's triumphs - that Labour can indeed leak votes to its left, and suggested there is significant electoral space for a party positioned (in however ambiguous and tricky a manner) to the left of the neoliberal mainstream. </div>
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Corbyn's rise to the Labour leadership has changed all that. Apparently, there has been little direct effect on Green Party membership. But there's no doubt that the whole dynamic underpinning the Green Surge - disillusionment with a rightwards-leaning Labour Party sending people to the Greens - has simply gone. This will surely be reflected, in the next year or two, in membership figures, the composition of the party and the votes it receives, most likely starting with disappointing votes in London and local council elections in May. </div>
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<b>7. The independent left is marginalised electorally. </b><br />
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While Labour's left turn may have damaged the Greens' prospects, it has wiped out any chance of explicitly socialist organisations like TUSC or Left Unity making any progress (assuming Corbyn continues as Labour leader). These outfits were already achieving miserable results in elections - and that was before a socialist was elected to lead the Labour Party. </div>
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I also expect the new Scottish left formation RISE to do badly in May's Holyrood elections, though I wish them well. I'm not sure there is space for something new - resting on a relatively small layer of activists, with no existing profile - when the field is already crowded with SNP, Labour and Greens. I hope to be proved wrong - we will see. </div>
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<b>8. Strikes remain a rarity, but unions and movements are important political players.<span style="line-height: 21.3px;"> </span></b><br />
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<span style="line-height: 21.3px;">Since the early 1990s there hasn't been a single year when more than two million strike days have been recorded - a sustained period of low trade union combativity like never before. This is a crucial and highly significant long-term trend for the left to register. It continues to be a major weakness on our side - and the effects of the historic defeat of the unions can be seen, for example, in the downwards trend in real-terms pay for the last seven years. </span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 21.3px;">Nonetheless, trade unions and protest movements alike have played an influential role in recent years. Street protest has been, for many years and across a wide range of issues, a central part of opposition to government policies. This year, the People's Assembly's national demonstration in June was a particular high point, while Stop the War Coalition has repeatedly made the news, especially around the Commons vote to bomb Syria. It will again play an important role in 2016 around the issue of Trident replacement as well as Syria. The connection between protest movements and Corbyn's rise to the Labour leadership has in some ways amplified the impact campaigners can make. </span></div>
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