Tag Archives: General election

The Irish general election (2 of 2) – what lies beneath

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When five political commentators were asked for the main moment of the election campaign, they all mentioned the TikTok Taoiseach’s snubbing of a disability care worker when he was on one of his many walkabouts.  It “cut through” to the public, as the saying goes, and probably did lower the Fine Gael vote a little.  However, in the grand scheme of things all it demonstrated was the irrelevance of the campaign, which has been described as a non-event.  Unlike recent general elections in many other countries, the incumbents were returned to office, providing evidence of political stability that does not exist elsewhere.  This stability rests on uncertain foundations.

The election was called following a large give-away budget of tax reductions and increased state spending, followed by a campaign where everyone promised even more tax cuts and increased spending.  This included the previous austerity-merchants in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Halfway during the campaign, when Sinn Fein joined the club, Fine Gael launched hypocritical denunciations that it was about to break the “state piggy bank”.

On the surface, the only difference between the governing parties and the different varieties of opposition was how much they would spend. People before Profit claimed that their clothes were being stolen by everyone, at least for the election, while media commentators claimed that the widespread consensus on increased state intervention showed what an essentially leftwing country Ireland was.  Since PbP argues that such intervention is an expression of socialist politics these claims would be right – if PbP was also right, which it’s not.  The view of politics as a spectrum from left to right implies no fundamental difference between the government and opposition but only shades or degrees of difference.

If this didn’t provide the grounds for major change, and the existing alignment of party support made it unlikely, the most important reasons for continuity are the foundations of the state itself and the economic success that has satisfied a significant part of the population, if only on the grounds that it could be a lot worse and recently was.  The ‘left’ appeared as wanting to share the gains more equally.  Unfortunately, those seeking equality inside the Irish state have to reckon on the giant inequality outside on which it would have to be based and which determines it.

The largesse of recent budgets, and the promises of more during the election, rest on the existence of the Irish state as a tax haven where many US multinationals have decided to park their revenue for tax purposes alongside some of their real activities.  Over half of the burgeoning corporate tax receipts come from just ten companies, with the income taxes of their employees also significant.  Trump has threatened tariffs on the EU, which threatens the massive export by US pharmaceutical firms to the US, and has promised to reduce corporate taxes, which also reduces the attractiveness of the Irish state to multinational investment.  It is not so long since the shock of the Celtic Tiger crash, so very few will not be aware of the vulnerability of economic success and the finances of the state.

This vulnerability was ignored in recent budgets and election promises while the electorate is blamed for seeking short term gains that are all the political class can truthfully promise.  Failure to invest in infrastructure has weakened the state’s long term growth with the major shortfalls ranging wide, across housing, health, transport, childcare and other infrastructure such as energy and water.  This has led to calls for increased state expenditure as the existing policy of throwing money to incentivise private capital has fallen short even while the money thrown at it has mushroomed.  Bike sheds in Leinster House costing €336,000, and a new children’s hospital that had an estimated cost of €650m in 2015, but costed at €2.2 billion at the start of the year – apparently the most expensive in the world – are both examples of the results of a mixture of a booming capitalist economy and state incompetence.

The consequences are an electorate that wants change but doesn’t want or can’t conceive of anything fundamental changing.  Government and opposition differ on degree but avoid the thought of challenging the constraints their lack of an alternative binds them to.  Trump is only one of them; Irish subservience to the US has already destroyed all the blarney about Irish support for the Palestinian people.  Gestures like recognition of a corrupt Palestinian state are nauseating hypocrisy beside the secret calls to the Zionist state promising lack of real action; selling Israeli war bonds to finance genocide by the Irish central bank, and the three wise monkeys of the three government parties ignoring the use of Irish airspace to facilitate the supply of weapons employed in the genocide.

The Irish state is not in control of its destiny and its population is aware of its vulnerability.  For a left that bases itself on the capacity of the state this is a problem; involving not just the incompetence, the bottleneck constraints on real resources, and the international subservience to Western imperialism.  The fundamental problem is in seeing the state as the answer.  Were the Irish state stronger, it would have joined NATO and more directly involved itself in the war in Ukraine; it would have intensified its support to US multinationals, and perhaps been a bit better at building bike sheds and a children’s hospital.  

Parts of the left seems to think the current Irish state can oppose NATO, oppose war and perhaps tax US multinationals a bit more.  It is, however, currently on the road to effective NATO membership; is more or less unopposed in its support for Ukraine in its proxy war; and already taxes multinationals on a vastly greater scale than almost any other country I can think of. 

The left doesn’t have an alternative ‘model’ because its alternative isn’t socialist, but simply development of the state’s existing role, presided over by some sort of inchoate left government, the major distinguishing characteristic of which is that it doesn’t include Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.  This is so anaemic a strategy it avoids all the above reasons why it has minority support.

The terms in which this is popularly understood do not go in the direction of a socialist programme because of the generally low level of class consciousness, but a genuinely socialist path requires rejection of the current statist approach of ‘the left’.  That this too is currently very far away reflects not only the very low level of class consciousness but also how the forces that are responsible for this have also debased the left itself, especially the part that thinks itself really socialist.  Instead, we have the stupidities arising from the commonality of increased state intervention among all the parties repeatedly declared to be proof that Ireland is a left wing country.

These constraints explain the difficulty in creation of a left alternative to a Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael government; the fragmentation of the left and its Oliver Twist policies of simply asking for more.  There are numerous permutations possible before any purported left government would arise, with Sinn Fein, Independents, Social Democrats, Labour Party, and others all willing to go into office with either (or both) of them.  About the least likely is a ‘left’ government (in any meaningful sense) that excludes them and is composed of Sinn Fein – the austerity party in the North – and the Labour Party and Social Democrats whose whole rationale (as the good bourgeois parties that they are) is to get into office – they don’t see the purpose of being involved in politics if you don’t.

All the calls for a ‘left’ government free of the two uglies is based on the same bourgeois conceptions.  Even if only on the grounds of the Chinese proverb – to be careful what you wish for, the failure in the election to achieve such a government is not grounds for mourning, even if the result invites it.

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The Irish general election (1 of 2) – As you were

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A continuation of the status quo is the result of the general election in the Irish state, with the two main capitalist parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, gaining 42.7% of the first preference vote.  Falling just short of the 88 seats needed for a majority there are enough independents, who are FF and FG in everything but name, to prop them up.  The only surprise is that Fianna Fáil topped the poll, the same party written off following it presiding over State bankruptcy and Troika vassalage after the crash in 2008.

Their main opposition, Sinn Fein, gained 19% and is more than willing to go into a coalition but ‘the left’ by which it might form an alternative one is too small and fragmented, and FF or FG will only consider it as a partner if they have to, and they don’t, so this route to government participation is also closed off to it.  It has pulled its familiar trick, practised to perfection in the North, of claiming victory, which is only possible if you accept the disastrous previous local and European results as the benchmark. At one point, in the summer of 2022, an opinion poll put it on 36% but in the election its vote fell by 5.5% on the previous general election.  Beyond the various figures, it will be staying in opposition, which is not at all where it wants to be.

The third leg of the existing government – the Green Party – collapsed from 12 to only 1 seat, that of its leader who now has no followers in the Dáil. Its previous participation in office led to its complete wipe out in 2011, following its collaboration in the bail-out of the banks and imposition of austerity.  Like its fellow Green parties across Europe, its ‘left’ alternative credentials are to be taken seriously only by the terminally naïve.

On what is called ‘the left’, two parties did reasonably well in terms of their expectations.  The vestal Social Democrats gained seats and 4.8% of the vote, while the shop-worn Labour Party staged its own return from near-death by gaining seats and a 4.7% share.  They too have no justifiable route into government since FF and FG don’t need them that much and they would have little leverage on policy. They know they would likely suffer the fate of the Greens for their inevitable disappointing of the hopes of their supporters, busting the illusion that they are in some way ‘an alternative’.   The unsullied Social Democrats are relative latecomers, which will be their major USP until they see their next career move as being junior ministers, while the problem with the Labour Party is that having nine lives as a junior partner in government has required suffering the same number of deaths. It could nevertheless still be a hard habit to break but this time probably just deferred.

The People before Profit – Solidarity alliance will continue to get state-funding with 2.8% of the vote, an increase of 0.2% but with a loss of two seats from 5 to 3.  The core objective of being part of a left-alternative government to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael might be said to have been destroyed except that it never existed in the first place. Neither formally nor informally was it advanced and ‘failed’ not only because of the continuing success of the main capitalist parties, even if much reduced by historical standards, but also by the weakness and incoherence of what PbP-Sol thinks of as ‘the left’.  To its credit the Solidarity section of the alliance is less inclined to consider Sinn Fein as left but either way, the perspective of a left alternative government as a realistic alternative to the various permutations of the current bourgeois groupings has been exposed again.  State funding, speeches in the Dáil and political social-work by TDs and would-be TDs are not only not a socialist alternative but not even a credible means of achieving the PbP-Sol reformist project.

On the right, the Catholic Aontú party made an advance with two seats and 3.9% of the vote while the Independent Ireland grouping won 4 seats and 3.6%.  Beyond these more openly right-wing groups, a couple of independents made ground with anti-immigrant politics and the far-right also stood candidates in a coordinated attempt tom unite by not standing against each other.  None were elected but what was noteworthy was their presence.  They have not yet congealed into a movement with a leader and have been stymied by the absorption of the anti-immigrant message by the main bourgeois parties and independents to varying degrees.

The result then is a return to government in some form of the existing main capitalist parties and the continued exclusion of the fragmented opposition, which was always the most likely outcome and partly accounts for the reduced turnout –down from 62.9% in the 2020 election to 59.7%.  The lowest in the history of the state. Almost as many didn’t vote as will have supported the two parties dominating the government. Some commentators, and the opposition, have attempted to explain that there are bubbling undercurrents waiting to have their effect but it is better to start explaining the apparent stability before explaining that something very different is really going on.

Forward to part 2

The Northern elections point in only one direction Or do they?

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There are three take-aways from the Westminster election in the North of Ireland.

First, Sinn Fein continued to make progress, defending its existing eight seats, including securing bigger majorities in a number of constituencies, and making gains in others that promise two more in the future.  It sealed its position as the biggest party in the Westminster elections, to rank alongside earlier local and Assembly successes, although small comfort for its failure in the local and European elections in the South a month ago.

Second, the Alliance Party, as the main face of ‘others’ in the North – neither Orange nor Green, Unionist or Nationalist – lost one seat and gained another, so stood still with a small drop in the share of the vote of 1.8% on the 2019 election.  The ‘Alliance surge’ has stopped surging.  At 15% of the vote it does not come anywhere near marginalising the sectarian division and the basic conflict over the existence of the Northern state.

Thirdly, and most dramatically, the  DUP lost three of its eight seats, very neatly lost another in East Derry and saw a dramatic fall in its majority in East Antrim.  It lost from all directions: from the Alliance Party, Ulster Unionist Party and the uber-unionist TUV.  In the case of the last, the defeat of Ian Paisley junior brought a smile to most faces in spite of the identity of the victor, such is the likeability of the loser.  Even some of his colleagues were reported not to be too displeased. The only real bright spot was securing the seat of its new leader in East Belfast.  A fall in the share of the vote of 8.5%, or a proportionate fall of 28%, is a disaster.

So what does it all mean?

Some nationalist commentary repeated familiar lines about ‘the writing on the wall’ and ‘the arrow pointing in one direction’ into the ‘inevitable future’ (Brian Feeney in The Irish News) – all references to the writing pointing to a future united Ireland.  Unfortunately it’s not so simple, even for the biggest party.  It won 27% of the vote, and when you factor in the lowest turnout for a Westminster election in the history of the North of 57.47%, we can readily see that 15.5% of the electorate does not a revolution make.

Over 42.5% found no reason to vote, which undoubtedly reflects a number of things, including apathy in constituencies in which a nationalist candidate hasn’t a chance, but even in the 2022 Assembly election, with a more proportionate system, Sinn Fein got 29% in a 63% turnout, or 18% of eligible voters.  In this election the pro-united Ireland vote was just over 40%.  If this is the writing on the wall, the wall is far away, the arrow points to a very long road, and the inevitability of a united Ireland is not quite the same as that of “death and taxes.”

Sinn Fein continues to advance in the North without any justification deriving from its now long record in office at Stormont.  The latest reincarnation of devolution managed to set a budget for departments without agreeing what they were going to spend it on – what were its priorities?  It spent plenty of time passing motion after motion lauding all sorts of good things with zero commitment to doing anything about them, while utterly failing to account for the public services it has been responsible for.  These, such as the health service, have fallen into a crisis worse than anywhere in the rest of the UK. 

For Alliance, its still second order existence testifies to the inability of the status quo to satisfy Northern nationalists or provide evidence that Unionists really are as confident that the state is as British as Finchley.  Its existence at all, however, is held to define what is necessary to change this status, which is not simple growth of Irish nationalism.  Convincing the ‘others’ of a united Ireland is argued as the key task for nationalism, which must include current Alliance supporters.

In this, Sinn Fein is not succeeding, in fact it doesn’t realise it isn’t even trying.  It continually berates other nationalist parties, especially in the South, for not joining ‘the conversation’ on a united Ireland, and calls out the necessity of planning for it; as if talking about it brings it any closer never mind making it inevitable.  It’s like being lifted by the cops who want to have a conversation with you – where you do all the talking.  Where are Sinn Fein’s plans?

The biggest issue however, that has signalled a step to a united Ireland, has been Brexit, and it is this that has done to the DUP what it did to the Tories in Britain.  While the victory of the TUV was most obviously a result of the failure of the DUP to prevent ‘the Irish Sea border’ that resulted from Brexit, it also lost because it lied about its deal with the British government that would supposedly make it disappear.

The Alliance victory in Lagan Valley was partly due to the constituency MP Jeffrey Donaldson being sent for trail on sex-offence charges, but this copper-fastened a prior loss of personal credibility as author and prime advocate for the deal.  With the Brexit disaster in the background every credible opposition to the DUP looked that bit more attractive and its most vocal supporters, such as Ian Paisley and Sammy Wilson, suffered.

The local political commentator Newton Emerson noted that the DUP losses in very different directions made it difficult for the DUP to know where to pivot.  This dilemma exposes the real demoralisation within unionism that sought to strengthen partition by supporting the UK leaving Europe but found itself inside a part of Ireland less aligned with the  sovereign power.  There is no mileage in continuing to fight it, so they won’t follow the TUV in doing so, but this means that it remains exposed to this more rabid unionism with only the old age of its leader Jim Allister as the pathetic hope of future redemption.  

It can keep quiet about the whole thing and hope it disappears as an issue but there are at least three problems with this.  First, its opponents will remind people, people will remember DUP stupidity themselves, and much as Keir Starmer might try to ignore it and think he can evade its worst effects, it’s not going away and neither are its effects.

A bit like the election in Britain, a thoroughly boring campaign had some more noteworthy results.  The stasis, if not stagnation, in politics within the North continues but events elsewhere are not so stable and have their effect.

UK elections – who needs a majority?

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The Labour majority of over 170 seats with only 34% of the vote is the lowest-ever winning share.  With around one third of the vote it gained two thirds of the seats. The turnout of around 60% was a drop from 67% in 2019 and the second lowest since 1918, meaning around 80 per cent of those eligible to vote didn’t vote for Starmer, whose personal rating is a net minus of 6.  Even in his own constituency his vote fell dramatically, by 15.6%.

His victory is due to the Conservatives having their worst ever result.  Polling indicated that 48% of those intending to vote for Labour were going to do so mainly to get rid of the Tories.  Had the Reform Party not existed, and its reactionary support voted Conservative, it would have beaten Labour by around 38% to 34%.  Yet for receiving 14% of the vote Reform got around 1% of the seats.

From this, two things are obvious: the British electoral system is a fraud with scant claims to democratic legitimacy and Starmer’s Government has the same lack of popular foundation.  The bourgeois media can’t ignore all this completely but can be expected to move quickly on.  One only has to recall that Starmer’s Labour received less votes than the supposedly disastrous Jeremy Corbyn in 2019 and 2017 to appreciate the treatment the media would dish out to the lack of legitimacy Starmer’s result would be accorded had Corbyn still been leader. In 2024 Starmer’s Labour won 9.7m votes with 33.8% of the vote while in 2019, in Labour’s supposedly worst result ever, Corbyn’s party won 10.2m votes with a share of 32.1%.  In 2017 Corbyn’s Labour won over 3 million votes more than Starmer did today – 12.9m as against 9.7m.

It is estimated that a quarter of 2019 conservative voters switched to Reform while the Liberal Democrats achieved their best ever result by surfing the wave of getting the Tories out by targeting their seats in the south and south-west of England.  Labour also benefited by the collapse of the SNP vote in Scotland following 17 years of failed SNP rule and the scandals that have engulfed the leadership of the party.

The short-sighted and primitive call from some on the left who simply called for the Tories to be kicked out has been exposed for the worse than useless advice that it so obviously was.  Everybody was out to get the Tories , and the election revolved around their losing it rather than Labour winning.  As we have seen – the Labour vote went down.

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The Labour slogan was the vapid and vacuous one-word ‘Change’.  The bourgeois commentariat has welcomed it as a change from the incompetence, chaos and instability of fourteen years of Tory rule and a return to the previous, apparently boring politics.

True to their superficial appreciation of events, or at least as they recycle them for the consumption of the population, this ignores the commitment of Starmer to essentially continue with Tory policies.  This includes a commitment to ‘growth’, to retention of the commitment to reducing the debt over five years; minimal increase in taxation; resolution of the problems of the NHS; commitment to increased defence spending, and a promise not to reverse Brexit in his lifetime.  He has also committed to come down hard on immigration and to do so more effectively than the Tories.

How growth can be achieved without investment (increased borrowing and therefore increased debt); without a larger workforce (while reducing immigration), and without expanding either the domestic market (through pay increases Starmer has vowed to oppose) or the export market (while never rejoining the EU), is left unexplained.  It all looks exactly like the situation created by the Tories but without smug incompetence of Cameron, the wooden hopelessness of Theresa May, the performative chaos of Johnson, ideological blinkers of Truss, and the MBA qualification in cluelessness of Sunak.  All Starmer brings personally is his own brand of dislikeability and penchant for lying on the scale of Boris Johnson.

Normally a new right wing government with a mandate would be able to wield their electoral victory as a weapon against workers, through restricting public sector pay, reducing public services and welfare, and increasing taxation.  Given Starmer’s short but filled-to-the-brim history of U-turns, it would not be a surprise to see him attempt to impose austerity on public sector pay, reduce the scope of state services such as the NHS, increase taxation, take yet more reactionary measures to be seen to reduce immigration, and attempt unsuccessfully to get something meaningful from the EU in terms of better market access.  None of this will lead to significant additional growth.

Brexit is an issue that will not go away even if all the parties try to ignore it as they did in the election; just as the proxy war against the biggest nuclear arms power in the world was also ignored.  The previous election that promised that Brexit would get done resulted in it not getting done, thus not addressing all the problems created.  The lack of strong support for Starmer’s government will matter when he is called upon to do so.

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Starmer managed to maintain the support of most of Labour’s voters while pivoting to the right, to win over disenchanted Tories and others simply wanting rid of them without caring particularly over who replaced them. This having been achieved, there is no reason for any of them to offer his Government any continuing support.  Even his claim to introduce integrity into government after years of Tory sleaze looks like previous broken promises given his huge catalogue of gifts and the sponsorship of his party and colleagues by private corporate interests.

His support for Brexit will anger the majority of Labour members and supporters who oppose it and who will see more and more evidence of why they are right to do so.  A harder line on immigration will do nothing to improve growth, will antagonise some supporters and will legitimise those on the right, including the Reform party, which is in second place in almost 100 constituencies, the majority of which are held by Labour.  Reform has already demonstrated that its rabid xenophobia is more convincing and attractive to reactionaries than that of the Tories, and this will apply to Starmer’s reactionary nationalism.  Pursuing the same policies will engender the same problems that brought down the Tories and the same vulnerability to right wing competitors, who will always be able to out-bid its reactionary solutions.

The Liberal Democrats did not increase its share of the vote but had its best result because it targeted Tory seats.  An anti-Brexit policy could protect those gains while targeting Labour supporters opposed to Brexit and Starmer’s continuing demonstration of its failure.  The Green Party also increased its vote and became a more credible alternative, even if its gains in two Conservative seats demonstrates its essentially petty bourgeois character and opposition to any sort of socialism.

Unfortunately, the pro-Palestine candidates elected are not a coherent left alternative while fortunately the false and fraudulent alternative represented by George Galloway was defeated.  The battle for the socialist movement is not through creation of yet another electoral alternative but assisting in the working class resisting the policies of Starmer’s government and defending its interests.  Only by working class resistance and a movement created out of it could an electoral vehicle be constructed as a subsidiary part of the movement.

The Conservative Party has lost many of its most rabid pro-Brexiteers and will always come second in competition with Reform on the basis of opposition to the EU.  Just as with the Labour Party, sooner or later being a bourgeois party will mean having to represent its interests, which means reversing Brexit.  This applies to the Liberal Democrats as well so that a party realignment to achieve this will have to take place.

Only the rabid reactionary nature of the Reform membership can hobble its further development or blow it up. There is no point in the traditional conservative section of the Tory party seeking any sort of accommodation with it, yet there is no point in the reactionary petty bourgeois sections of the Conservative Party and the Reform Party remaining separate.

The results of the election; the economic challenges facing the new government and resistance to it; and the proliferation and confusion of party supports, all point to a political realignment.  A real socialist alternative cannot be declared or created out of the organisations that exist but likewise can only come to the fore as a result of developments in the class struggle, arising as a result of working class opposition to the the new government and its attempt to carry through the failed policies of the Tory government that has just been humiliated.  A cause for some optimism. 

French elections: when Left unity is not such a good idea

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The second round of the French parliamentary elections on Sunday will determine whether the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) of Marine Le Pen will be able to win enough seats to form a majority government or perhaps do so in coalition with others.  Stopping this has become the priority for the French left, which has united in a New Popular Front, recalling that of the original in the 1930s.  It consists of La France Insoumise (LFI) led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Socialist Party (PS), the French Communist Party (PCF), Greens and the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA).

To secure the defeat of RN, third placed candidates of the NPF have pulled out in favour of Emmanuel Macron’s bloc of supporters.  Left unity against the far-right has thus also meant arms-length unity with the discredited Macron Presidency.  While this alliance has placed opposition to RN as the key issue, his defeat has been the stand-out message of the results.

The growth of the Rassemblement National and vote for the New Popular Front demonstrates that the people have given their verdict on Macron’s increasingly arrogant, unpopular and discredited Presidency.  By withdrawing in his favour the NPF has accepted fundamental agreement with him, or rather, agreement on fundamentals.  The unity achieved means that this encompasses almost all the left, from the utterly discredited Socialist Party to the New Anti-capitalist Party, which proves that its anti-capitalism is purely rhetorical, never mind socialist.

The Left has once again chosen what it considers the lesser evil on the basis that parliamentary elections are the litmus test of politics: that which will ultimately determine your political stance.  When the choice has to be made, this Left has decided that there is no such thing as an independent working class politics separate and opposed to all varieties of capitalist political movements.  The lesser evil is indeed evil, one that the Left has embraced just as the majority of the French people have rejected it.  Marine Le Pen can now argue that only she is implacably opposed to what the majority has also decisively rejected.

Support for the discredited ‘Republicans’ of Macron’s Ensemble is justified by the threat of the far right and the idea that liberal bourgeois politicians are principled and reliable defenders of bourgeois democracy.  This means that the Left has embraced the primacy of defence of this democracy, with its dependence on the power of the capitalist state; the influence of money and capital over political decision making; the exclusion of any sort of economic or social democracy; and the acceptance of the capitalist system, with all its inequality, oppression and violence.

Were the Left seeking to protect the limited democratic rights allowed by this democracy, that permit the working class to more freely organise, it would have understood that the weapons required to defeat the far-right lie not simply or mainly in parliamentary elections, but in the organisation and political mobilisation of the workers’ movement.  Such a political mobilisation of the working class is opposed by its ‘republican’ allies.  If, or when, the choice comes down to a militant working class or the far right these republican defenders of ‘democracy’ will ally with the far right against it.

The Left’s political opportunism, the surrender of political principle for short term advantage, in this case the possible defeat of far-right Rassemblement National, will not make up for its subordination to the republican friends of capitalist democracy and the exposure of the feebleness of its opposition to the discredited and unpopular Macron Presidency.  The policy of short term gain fails to recall the observation that the long term for the opportunist is just a long series of short terms.  Lesser evil follows lesser evil . . .

The New Popular Front naturally forms its alliance on the basis of supporting the French imperialist contribution to the war in Ukraine, the provision of weapons to Ukraine and of French troops within the war zone – calling them “peacekeepers” changes nothing.  Its programme fails to denounce the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, and of course fails to call on French workers to stop the delivery of arms to the Israeli state.  As we have said, the political mobilisation of the working class movement is not part of its policy.  If it were Macron and Ensemble would be repudiating its assistance. The NPA project of an alliance with bourgeois democracy requires a bourgeois programme.

There is nothing very much new in this New Popular Front, the Left in France has been supporting the lesser evil for a long time, each time delivering another iteration; a lesser evil groundhog day, or déjà vu all over again, as it may be put.  Starting with the 2002 Presidential election run-off between right-wing candidate Jacques Chirac and the neo-fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen, the Left responded by endorsing Chirac as a defender of democracy against Le Pen. It was such a success we are here again with the Left defending the establishment while the far right adopts the mantle of opposition.

That this policy is a clear failure should by now be obvious, but that would be to mistake the purpose of the policy, which is not to promote independent working class politics but to maintain bourgeois democracy and to be the Republic’s loyal opposition.  Such a policy puts this left in opposition to the working class and makes it prey to the contradictions of capitalism, which currently involve imperialist war in Ukraine, genocide in Gaza, the militarisation of France and the bill for it to be paid by its workers.

The New Popular Front is unwilling to challenge capitalism, supports imperialist war, restricts itself to vacuous moralising when faced with genocide and will shatter itself when the bill is forced upon French workers.  The logic of its position is to join the discredited bourgeois forces inside a government, which would bolster the credentials of Rassemblement National and demoralise its own supporters, as some of its constituent parts have already done.  It will no doubt go down singing its lack of regret as it repeats the failed policy of the 1930s original.

The Fall of the Red Wall

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What do you do when you are leader of a Party and the vast majority of your members support a policy that you oppose?  Well, you can’t very well allow them to control the party can you?  So you can’t ensure it operates democratically.

What do you do when the majority of your voters also support that policy?  Well, you dissemble, confuse, appear to sit on the fence and declare neutrality.

In the case of the membership you first prevent them getting their way by stopping them voting on it at conference.  The next year you so manage the policy that is voted on that you can effectively continue to push your own, while of course appearing to do something different and pretending that the members got what they wanted.

But since the new policy does not make much sense the party membership are still not happy and come back to the next conference in the next year and vote again on what they want – and this time they win!  So what do you do now?  This time your friends say to the membership – ‘You Lost’ – and they start singing your name at the conference.  And it’s a victory!

For the rest?  Well, for them it’s then like being at a party where people start singing, and you don’t feel like joining in, but you’re made to feel your spoiling it for everyone, and spoiling the fun, if you don’t join in.  You really don’t want to be a party-pooper so you’re invited to suck it up.  After all, this leader has had it tough.

He’s been accused of all sorts of things that were so ridiculous that your first response might have been to ignore it. But the slander and smearing goes on and on and you want to have a square-go at the traitors inside the Party who are telling these outrageous lies, but the leader can’t trust you, so you’re not allowed.  Remember, the leader can’t very well allow you to control the party.  It’s a ‘broad church’, and just like in church it’s your job to listen to the preacher and then go out and do God’s work.

But this goes on and on, so the leader says he’ll do something about it and these terrible things will be stopped, and again and again you hear the same record.  Some people wonder why he’s saying the same thing about how bad it is, yet he’s saying it again. Why is he having to say it again?  Surely it’s been sorted?  He’s told to apologise and effectively he does, but if this happens again and again why is he apologising and nothing is changing?

Then I hear on the radio that the new manifesto is going to empower people, and I think to myself – WTF, really?  The only thing you have had the power to lead to ’empowerment’ is the membership of the Party you lead, and you’ve stood in the way of it.  Instead you’ve allowed all these reactionary shits to accuse you of nonsensical crimes.  The last time I viewed such a nightmare I was reading ‘The Trial’ by Franz Kafka, and it didn’t end well.  And this one doesn’t look like it will either.

In the election you’re facing a compulsive liar, whose own supporters don’t even trust.  They don’t believe him, but they do agree with him, and they are going to support him. But many people have gotten fed up with you.  You’re supposed to be different – he is what he is.  You are not what you have claimed to be. You’re supposed to be a conviction politician, who embodies honesty and sincerity and many people can see that you haven’t embodied either.

The dam that that held your so-called ‘red wall’ has just sprung two leaks and the first one is the enormous one. Just like a dam that you have seen in the films, your wall of support doesn’t break open only at this point, and other fractures appear in the edifice, and water spurts out of every one of them, everywhere – a hundred and one different cracks appear and it seems as if there are lots of reasons why this wall is going to fall.  When it falls it might seem difficult to say which one is responsible for the whole thing collapsing.  Lots of people look for more and more deep reasons for the collapse, the better to demonstrate their appreciation of the enormity of the collapse. But really the one big crack was vital in creating the rest.

There is a particular risk in immediately seeking the most profound reason for what has happened, although it’s not inevitably wrong and does not invalidate the attempt, but it does involve a risk.  It’s the risk that the explanation becomes so deep and meaningful that it can convey the impression that nothing could have been done about it.  We could never have won, the pressure against the wall of the dam was just too strong.

And this can lead to feeling sorry for the leader, who has been up against it all this time.  And I would feel this way too except I, like millions of others, is soaking wet and praying I’m not going to drown further down the line.  You can feel sorry for the leader if you want, my attitude involves rather more colourful expressions of emotion.

The historic defeat of the Labour Party was the result of a swing to the Tories of just 1.2 per cent and a swing away from Labour of 7.9 per cent.  The Tories won it because Labour lost it.

It lost it primarily because it lost voters loyalty on the big question that mattered – Brexit.  The machinations around it infected everything else Corbyn did, just like the real Brexit will determine so much else in the real world; limiting what good is possible and spurring on everything nasty, cruel and reactionary.

Sky called it the Brexit election, the Labour Party complained that it wasn’t, but now the Party leaders admit it was – a bit late to recognise the obvious.  The Political Studies Association reported polls asking about the issue ‘that will help you decide your vote’ and it was Health – 47% and the Economy – 35%; only 7% said Europe.

But that was in 2016.  In 2019 63% said Europe, while Health was 43% and the Economy 9%.

I could get even more annoyed now because I really dislike stupidity, especially in those who have no business being stupid.  But it wasn’t really stupidity – the reactionary position on Brexit and all its calamitous concomitants, such as suppressing Party democracy, is a sort of politics: ‘socialism from above’ is the kindest way of describing it even though there is no such sort of socialism.   It’s why it might be better to describe it as ‘state socialism’, or much more accurately, better to call it social-democracy and Stalinism.  (In this respect what was also worrying was the impression given by many socialists that the radical aspects of a social democratic programme was really socialism.). But to get back to the point.

What we saw was the nationalist politics of Brexit devour its misguided children, exemplified by Denis Skinner losing his seat to someone better able than him to embody the reactionary logic of Brexit. Unfortunately, these people brought down the rest, the majority, who have always known that Brexit had to be opposed.

If we want to look at the weaknesses of British social democracy we could do worse that start here – the narrow nationalism of the British left going back to Tony Benn or even further to Manny Shinwell and Aneurin Bevan.  Their opposition to ‘Europe’ resting on the Sterling Area and the Commonwealth, a bogus commitment to internationalism that rested entirely on the relics of Empire.

These weaknesses have been imbued by the radical left supporters of Brexit who think using one less letter and replacing one other makes a difference.  These people share the same conception of socialism – state ownership and a national state to implement and defend it from foreigners.  Entirely disappeared from consciousness is that we should be uniting with ‘foreign’ workers against our own state and theirs.  In fact, for a socialist, no worker is foreign, foreign to us is the nationalism that seeks to divide us.  Just like the Shinwell’s of old they condemn the narrowness and racism of Europe for not embracing the world while sailing on a boat that doesn’t leave the shores of Dungeness.

Labour lost 2,585,564 votes from 2017 to this election but the media narrative of the working class deserting Labour over its failure to support Brexit is a continuation of the distortions and lies that has been their staple.  Early estimates claim that over 1.1 million of this reduced vote was Labour Remainers voting for other remain Parties while perhaps 250,000 Labour Leave voters also transferred their vote to these Remain parties.

Antipathy and opposition to the figure of Jeremy Corbyn also seems to have played a major role but this is a combination of very different things that became important precisely because one person could be the focus of all of them.  For more than one reason the leadership is to blame – making Corbyn the sort of Presidential figure to the exclusion of other leaders in the campaign is probably the least important.

Anti-Corbyn hostility combined the opposition of Labour leavers; those prey to the calumny of the mass media; the failure to openly explain and discuss massive policy proposals dumped on the electorate at the last minute giving rise to some cynicism, and most of all duplicity over Brexit and apparent failure to take a position.  What price the one-day conference to discuss the Party’s Brexit policy now?

We need to stop talking about the Corbyn project in the Labour Party because clearly that project didn’t include opposing Brexit and didn’t include empowering the membership, which remain vital to any future progress.

One take on the election had a wonderful quote, ‘Disappointment is a trifle.  Disappointment is a luxury we cannot afford. The dilemma is simple but imperative. Whether to submit to mere fortune or to understand and take action.’  Perhaps not enough for the politically uninvolved but a good enough starter for the rest of us.

The struggle remains to fight Brexit, which hasn’t ceased to be the reactionary threat to the working class it has always been.  ‘Get Brexit Done’ is another lie to join everything else associated with that project.  Lies are ultimately useless because sooner or later they collide with reality.  The issue is who pays for them.  If there is one saving grace from the result it is escaping the embarrassment of an attempted Corbyn Brexit.  The Tory Brexit will fail its supporters and Labour must fight it and all of its consequences, including the disillusionment that its ‘success’ will provoke.

The second is to demand and fight for a democratic Labour Party. The mass membership has proved to be right, even if only negatively, and it must be confident in saying so.  The debate about responsibility for the defeat is not a distraction from fighting the Tories but an indispensable requirement.  Get it wrong, or lose it, and that fight will be hamstrung.  What to do depends on what is accepted as what went wrong, and there must be no truck with those who want to deal with defeat by following those who either led it or caused it.  We don’t want to tack right in pursuit of nationalists and racists and we don’t want another Corbyn who didn’t know how to fight either.

 

How the Many struck back against the Few

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It’s only when you consider the situation on 18 April that you can truly appreciate the dramatic advance taken by the British working class during the general election.  Theresa May called the election when the Tories had a poll lead of over 20 percentage points and when her personal approval ratings were even higher.

It followed a Brexit referendum that had unleashed a wave of xenophobia and racism which the Tory Party planned to milk in order to crush and overwhelm any opposition.  We would then face Brexit negotiations where every rebuttal of Tory Brexit delusions would be used as an opportunity to whip up anti-foreigner rhetoric that would cement Tory hegemony.

Now that strategy lies in tatters, that project is in chaos and the initiative lies not with Brexit reaction but with a left-wing counter-offensive.  Far from being the impregnable leader and worthy inheritor of the mantle of the “Iron Lady”, May has rather quickly become a figure of fun.  In the campaign “Strong and Stable” came to be considered as the first words of a child – repeated endlessly in all the most out of place circumstances.  Maybot became the battery-driven toy that bangs into the wall and continues to bang into it because it cannot know any better.

Instead of the Tories’ Brexit hero, one Tory MP has described her thus – “We all fucking hate her. But there is nothing we can do. She has totally fucked us.”

The most important point of this little articulation of Tory comradeship is the bit where he says “but there is nothing we can do.”  Labour is now ahead in the polls and the Tories are terrified of another election that they simply can’t go into with Maybot in charge.

So how did all this happen?  First, it’s necessary to accept that the Tories huge lead in the polls was not a mirage, even if it may not have been so commanding as it appeared.  The polls were correct to show a narrowing of the Tory lead as the campaign went on and while some were ultimately more accurate than others, all showed an initial huge lead that in previous general elections would have meant a certain Tory victory.

The answer lies in understanding that Jeremy Cobyn’s success shows the correctness of the Marxist conception of politics, even if this was proven by a non-Marxist party.  In contrast, the media pundits have been floundering and cruelly exposed, not that you would have noticed it.  With a brass neck a blow-torch couldn’t mark they simultaneously expressed shock at the result and know-it-all opinion pieces on how they got it wrong.  As the saying goes: opinions are like assholes – everyone’s got one, although it’s not everyone who expels such quantities of shite.

Even after the vote I came across this from the ‘Financial Times’ lead journalist covering the election.  When speaking of a possible Tory-DUP coalition he writes – “But all coalitions, formal or otherwise, require horse trading and compromise – something May is not naturally suited to. Her trademark skill is to decide on a policy position and stick it to.”  Bias becomes so ingrained it becomes an unthinking habit that kicks in when the world is not as you believe it is and you are unable to process the meaning of events.  Thus you end up with nonsense like this.

Now the media is attempting to undermine Corbyn by giving space to those Blairites and soft left figures in the Party who got it so spectacularly wrong but now claim that having won the left vote he now needs to tack to the centre.  While some of these people just denigrate his achievements others offer praise only to bury him later.  Meanwhile the media want to know is he going to give these losers prominent posts in the party now that their plans for another coup or for setting up a rival organisation are blown out of the water.

The election showed the impact of media bias and the effect of the relaxation of such bias that general elections allow. Election coverage means less filtered access to the policies and personalities of the parties so while Corbyn soared, Maybot tanked.  That the bias continued during the campaign also confirmed the limits of mainstream media spin.  It remains a barrier but one that can be overcome.

More importantly the elections showed the importance to politics of political programme, political leadership and mass mobilisation of workers.

For the first time in decades, and the first time ever for many younger voters, there actually appeared to be a difference in the policies being proposed by the different parties.  There can be no denying the impact and importance of the Labour manifesto; it became a reference point that exposed the vacuity of the Tory ‘alternative’ and its policies became the content of the campaign day after day.

It became the meat in the sandwich of the slogan ‘for the many not the few’.  It set out exactly what the Party’s policies were, which people could consider and make up their mind about, and made for something positive that they could read about or hear presented in television debates.  Presented properly it shone like a beacon set against inane Tory slogans and an empty Tory manifesto whose few policies that grabbed the headlines were either ditched quickly (sort of, like the dementia tax), were unpopular and divisive (grammar schools) or evoked a WTF reaction (foxhunting).

That the policies were presented properly was because of the Corbyn leadership.  He dominated the Labour campaign for the right reason, that he personified these policies and the principles that they were intended to proclaim.  As people got used to him his presentation became both better and less important as people didn’t expect slick presentation à la David Cameron and concentrated on what he said rather than on how he said it.

Early opposition by the most incorrigible Blairites more or less dissolved as the instinct for self-preservation kicked in and the BBC etc. realised it would not be possible to give equal coverage to the policies presented by the Conservative Party and the uselessness of Jeremy Corbyn as presented by the majority of the parliamentary Labour Party.

Only near the end of the campaign did more and more talking heads acknowledge the staying power of Corbyn and his attraction for many young people, and older Labour voters who had previously given up on Labour due to its Tory-lite policies.  Most of all, they were forced to acknowledge the massive enthusiasm his campaign had generated even when they covered two men and a dog ‘rallies’ by Maybot and ignored rallies of ten thousand held by Labour.  Despite paper talk that Labour candidates would fight local campaigns while claiming Corbyn was ‘nuthin to do with me guv’, it more and more became clear that a vote for the Labour Party was a vote for Corbyn and more and more an endorsement of his leadership of the Party.

Finally, the generation of a mass campaign, whose most prominent features were the Corbyn rallies, had an effect way beyond the large numbers attending.  Speaking in Scotland made the Scottish Labour Party relevant and his rally in Gateshead is reported to have rippled right across the North-East of England.  The rallies were designed not to be photo-ops for the TV but were genuine engagements with voters.

‘For the many not the few’ became more than a slogan but became reality in the infectious participation of working class people in the rallies and meetings.  Reports surfaced of Labour party activity in towns and villages that had not seen Labour Party activity before.  The participation of the young, the participation of working class families that don’t normally attend political events, and the extension of the Party to parts of the country not previously reached all demonstrated that this was a mass phenomenon.  And it was this mass sentiment that appeared in TV audiences that led Tory papers to accuse the broadcasters of bias in audience selection.

So, if these are the factors that led to the massive increase in the Labour vote not seen since 1945, it is obvious how further steps forward must now be taken.

Mass participation in the labour movement cannot depend on elections but must involve activity to build the movement and build the Labour Party, including a youth wing.  This includes union organisation, campaign groups and tenants and residents’ associations.   In one way the Corbyn movement has been lucky that one failed challenge to his leadership and then a general election have provided the opportunity to build upon his initial election. The real prospect of another election soon will provide another opportunity but relying on such events is not enough and the movement in and around the Labour Party has the chance to set the agenda and push through victories through building a permanent mass movement.

Political leadership of this movement is also a continuing process of political campaigning and democratic organisation.  Above all, the potential for the right and ‘soft’ left of the Party to usurp control of the party arising from any, even  minor, setback should be removed by a campaign to democratise the Party and the labour movement as a whole.  A truce with the right on the basis that the Labour Party is ‘a broad church’ should not come to mean tolerance of machine politics, undemocratic practices and rules, and open attempts at sabotage.

Finally, the most important question is one of politics.  Less than a week before the end of the election campaign the media suddenly woke up to the fact that the Brexit election had ignored Brexit.  But as the old adage goes – you can ignore Brexit but Brexit will not ignore you. The complexities of Brexit have been a foreign country for the mainstream media from the beginning and the issue is presented more and more as one resolved by opposition to the best trade deal possible on the grounds that the primary objective is limitation of immigration.

This is not the ground on which a working-class alternative can be built and it is not the common ground of those who voted Labour in the election. The implicit blaming of social ills on foreigners facilitates the explicit blame expressed in xenophobia and racism.  The identification of outsiders as those to blame for ‘our’ problems becomes the need to identify and suppress those inside who are ‘agents’ of these outsiders because they won’t blame immigrants for poor public services and won’t scapegoat immigrant labour for local capitalist exploitation.  It leads to paper headlines such as “Crush the Saboteurs”. If curbing immigration is part of a solution then it provides excuses for Tories, Blairites and racists to excuse their support for austerity.  Most importantly it undermines the unity of working people that is needed to take us forward.

The challenge to the Labour Party political leadership is to demonstrate that its policies are incompatible with racism and anti-immigrant scapegoating, is incompatible with an isolated country cut off from potential allies in the rest of Europe and is incompatible with the harm to be caused, being caused right now, by leaving the EU.

Just as during the election, this will mean confronting and largely bypassing the Tory media and mobilising Party members to convince uncertain supporters ,or even those opposed, that the social-democratic programme put forward by Corbyn that they support cannot be enacted in a Brexit Britain.

The election has opened up opportunities for British workers, but they must seize them like they grasped the election.  When Marx was asked what his idea of happiness was, he said “to fight’.  And that is what we must continue to do.

 

 

 

Question Time

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I’ve just finished watching Question Time and the performances of Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn.  I can’t remember the last time I watched it and I haven’t a clue when the next time will be after having watched this one.

The expectations of May were so low she exceeded them – damned by faint praise I think it’s called.  Not quite so robotic but incapable of smiling without facial contortions that reveal she is anything but genuine in any emotion she shows; itself revealing she is anything but genuine in anything she says.  As time went on her answers became less credible and her performance less impressive.  Tonight, she was helped by a relatively healthy dose of predominantly old reactionaries in the audience.

Six weeks ago I wrote a post that said that “the election will truly have revealed the bankruptcy of the bourgeois electoral process if May can keep her mouth shut about what Brexit actually entails”.  Tonight, for the umpteenth time, she did exactly that.  Asked what a bad deal was like, that made no deal more attractive, she said nothing.

But I got it wrong – she has hardly said anything about anything and performing a U-turn on what she has said. Her strategy has been to pretend that Jeremy Corbyn is such a disaster that she looks good.  Unfortunately for her, the media has been forced to give Corbyn greater opportunity to present both himself and his policies without distortion; the political classes and its media have therefore been shocked to find that millions of people actually like him and like his policies even more.  Not only that, but the BBC has been unable to continue to report on Corbyn through has-been Blairites claiming that he’s a disaster; mainly because the Mandelson’s of this world and Blair himself no longer matter now that people have a real decision to make.

The claim that Theresa May should be Prime Minister because she is Theresa May has therefore worn out rather quickly.  What she has been forced to rely upon is Brexit and the right-wing swing in British politics that Brexit has represented and accelerated.  Reactionary nostrums against immigration, foreigners, the EU – because they’re foreigners –  the peculiar virtuousness of the British as the counterpoint to aggressive foreigners; all this has been presented with her own unique dead as a robot delivery, in a reactionary nationalist stew that relies on prejudice and ignorance to fill in the gaps where a coherent narrative should be.

It has to be said, that in this she has been assisted no end by the cluelessness of the British media.  Like its treatment of Corbyn, this is not simply due to establishment prejudice and conscious antipathy to socialist ideas.  It is also due to its own ignorance of the clusterfuck that Brexit will entail.  Despite all the dramatic changes in world politics over the last few years, the British chattering classes simply cannot conceive of Britain not being the country that it now is with its rather prominent role in the world.

So, it is when Theresa May is pushed into a corner about Brexit and she comes out with ‘we are not afraid to walk away with no deal – no deal is better than a bad deal’, that total incomprehension switches on.  The next question is perfectly obvious – so what happens when there is no deal?  Paxman and all the rest can go no further than this response because they simply cannot conceive that no deal means the cutting off of Britain from the rules and regulations, the trade deals and agreements with other countries that allow Britain to trade and exchange with the rest of the world.  From being allowed to fly over other countries airspace to landing at their airports to being credited with having safe food and medicines, all these collapse with no deal.

The absence of such mutual recognition threatens the UK being thrown off the proverbial cliff with no rubbish about this also being the fate of the EU – none of this “the UK and EU will both lose”, because one will indeed lose but it won’t find itself isolated.  The threat of no deal always assumes unthinkable that there will really be no deal, but actually assumes that the EU will offer concessions after being threatened and cough up a better compromise.

The virus that has engulfed the Tory Party is not simply a Tory pathogen but is one that resides in British society as a whole.  Especially the privately educated journalist profession that is parasitical on the Westminster village and the privately educated politicians who went to the same schools the journalists went to twenty or thirty years before them.

I had naively assumed that May and Corbyn would be asked the same question at the same time and would take turns in answering; instead it was a programme of two halves.  It was hard not to conclude that May left the first half pleased that she managed not to have parroted ‘strong and stable’ – yet another U-turn, which of course was yesterday’s inane drivel.

So, if May exceed expectations only by not being so crass, so robotic and so contorted, she nevertheless remained unimpressive.  She is a very limited politician who has looked even worse than these limitations might normally have revealed by moving decisively outside her comfort zone, where lies being Prime Minister and leading her country at a decisive turning point in its history.  What a pity she sells herself on her supposed unique innate ability to do just this.

If Jeremy Corbyn slightly disappointed it is only because (1) he has performed so well so far and (2) I’m a Marxist who believes there is such a stronger case for socialism than he can make.  Partly his weaknesses are those of his party and his very incomplete transformation of that party and its programme, but partly it is due to the limitations of his own politics.

During the questioning he was put on the back foot most when he refused to answer directly whether he would press the nuclear button if Britain itself was under nuclear attack.  At one point this looked like it might get quite frenzied – testament to a number of reactionaries in the audience who seemed to be fully paid up members of the fan club devoted to the film ‘Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’.

It took one young woman to make the point that there was something wrong with so many people demanding the murder of millions of people.  Presumably these reactionaries would have been satisfied with an answer something like this – ok, we’re about to be vapourised by a nuclear attack but don’t get angry that I might not press the button because I’m going to kill millions of people as well, people who, just like you, had no hand in this attack and who don’t deserve to die.  Oh, and another thing, don’t worry, our missiles will hit the intended target and not go off in the wrong direction like one did recently.  Such is the degenerate politics of the Tory party and the diseased prejudices of its die-hard support.  There can be no doubt the nasty party is back.

In general the audience showed greater sympathy with Jeremy Corbyn and those in sympathy showed more enthusiasm.  I am reminded of the reaction of football players scoring a goal for my football team – they smile and cheer – expressing joy at scoring; while when those of their erstwhile rivals score they almost invariably snarl and gesticulate as if venting a deeply pent-up rage.  The supporters of Jeremy Corbyn applauded declarations of hope and promises of a better society while the Tory supporters acclaimed declarations of ‘toughness’ and meanness.  You know when you’re on the right side when the warmest of human emotions best expresses your political views.

When I wrote that “the election will truly have revealed the bankruptcy of the bourgeois electoral process if May can keep her mouth shut about what Brexit actually entails”, I also continued – “and Corbyn can maintain that he will defend workers’ rights without threatening Brexit.”  The major weakness of the whole Labour campaign is the same as that of the Tories – the claim that there can be a good Brexit.  For the Tories this has a massive plus side – the opportunity to burn workers’ rights and slash taxation for big business.  For workers Brexit has no up-side.

Brexit will entail economic dislocation and deep attacks on working people.  Victory for Jeremy Corbyn would see him inherit a policy that will do nothing to assist his social-democratic programme – he cannot decisively reverse inequality and improve the standard of living of British workers while leaving the EU.  Not because the EU is so wonderful but because exiting it is to step back from the current level of economic development and invites an alternative model that the Tories have correctly identified as an off-shore dumping ground of low corporate taxes, de-regulation and super-exploitation.  In such an environment taxes for workers will rise, wages will fall and welfare and other public services will shrivel while inequality will increase.

A Corbyn Government, if it was to attempt to increase living standards, increase public services and reduce inequality would also have to prevent the damage that Brexit would inflict.  It would also have to fight the xenophobic demands that immigration be strangled.  While much attention has focused on the damage to living standards arising from reductions in trade, reductions in immigration will have just the same effects, if not worse.

If young people do not come out to vote, as the pundits claim they might not do, and they are the key to a Labour victory as the pundits also claim, then the Tories will be leading us into Brexit and straight towards their deregulated ‘free-market’ utopia within a few days.  One commentator has called it a new ‘charge of the light-brigade’ and he is right.

Either way, it will be the task of socialists and everyone roused during the election to continue to mobilise and organise the enormous energy and enthusiasm evoked by the promise of a different society.  Already, the threat of a return to Blairite control of the Labour Party should be buried.  Corbyn must remain leader and the process of creating a mass, active Labour party truly representative of its members and supporters should be the task of everyone who considers themselves left.  The elections will signal the end of the Brexit phoney war and there will likely be no dress rehearsal allowed for building a workers’ campaign to ensure we win the real one.

 

Unity all round after the election

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Speculation continues about the formation of a new Government and that Fianna Fail and Fine Gael will collaborate to ensure that it will be more or less stable for however long.  It would be a disturbing thing for many if the ship of State were to sail too long without what is considered to be the captain.  The Left repeats that there are no differences between the two parties and that they should unite, making it easier to present the opposition as the Left.   In doing so they remind me of regular sermons from Catholic and Protestant Churches in the North that its politicians should get over their differences, to which the latter’s reply should be – “ok, you go first.”

It is not that the Left are wrong, they are correct.  The historian Diarmaid Ferriter quoted Seán O’Faoláin in 1945 saying that “Irish politics today are not politics; our two main parties are indistinguishable not because their political ideas are alike but because neither has any political idea at all – warriors of destiny and race of the Gaels – silly romantic titles that confess a complete intellectual vacancy as far as the reality of political ideas are concerned.”

This is something of an exaggeration – he’s wrong to say that the two parties’ ideas are not the same.  There are no ideological differences between them and this is only partly due to their respective ignorant assumptions that they don’t have any ideology in the first place; they do, and it’s called nationalism, which is very good at hiding and accommodating reactionary ideological views, often under the cover of left wing opinions.

But the long dominance of the two parties, with meagre ideological convictions to motivate them and stunted political ideas, rests on a population reared on a similar basis.  Of course the parties have gone a long way to create the lack of political development in the population but both have deeper roots borne out of the country’s lack of economic and social development for much of its history and the resulting political weakness of its working class.  This in turn has resulted in a politically weak labour movement.  An examination of this was written some time ago and I don’t intend to repeat it here.

The point is that the two civil war parties are both creations and creators of the population that supports them and that they have governed.  The rebound of Fianna Fail despite its calamitous performance as the previous Government only arises because of its continuing deep roots in society, roots that give it a permanence, which while not invariable and everlasting, nevertheless gives it a strength that can sustain major blows.  This reflects the nature of class society in Ireland and the social structure that grants endurance to the Fianna Fail clientelist machine and its nationalist ideology.

The Left would normally be built on similar permanent features of class society such as trade unions and other political movements but these are themselves politically weak and do not involve the majority of the members in regular joint activity.  This only takes place among union members when at work and mainly in their role as employees and not as trade unionists.  The roots of the union movement have particularly atrophied, as with social partnership there is little need for shop-floor or office activism when the relationship between low and high level reps and management and State sorts out everything important.  The Left has grown but mainly in localities through electoralism, not in the unions and not through rebuilding an active labour movement.  Ephemeral campaigns are no substitute for the permanent structures on which the right wing parties are based.

One mechanism that lies wholly within the Left’s power to build is a real political party; as we noted at the start the fragments could unite and stop throwing stones at Fianna Fail and Fine Gael while still in the greenhouse.  An obvious lesson of the elections, which shouldn’t need an election to be discovered, is the need for unity.

Unfortunately the AAA/PbP grouping showcases a left that comes together for the purposes of elections while tolerating and defending disunity outside them on the basis of tactics in campaigns and dogmatic political traditions and theories that they often don’t even adhere to.  The AAA/PbP is not only based on unity but also on a split within the previous United Left Alliance.

So even attempting unity is a major task that threatens the component parts because they may lose control.  But any attempt to maintain control would only frustrate the potential, the creation of which a united party is meant to release.  The point would be lost.

As I have said before, the capacity of the component organisations in a united working class party to contain large numbers of workers is very much open to doubt and in my view could only be successful if their dogmatic and undemocratic culture was dissolved, shattered or whatever simile is best applied to the process that would see it disappear.

Part of this ought also to include rejection of ideological assumptions that rest on unquestioned parroting of political views that should burn in the mouths of anyone claiming to be Marxist.  The day before the election I was listening to Today FM and Richard Boyd Barrett of People before Profit telling listeners that even those not on the Left regard the AAA/PbP as “good for the Dail”, as if it were ever any job of Marxists to be good for the institutions of the capitalist state.

Here was me thinking their duty was to expose the hollowness and pretence of capitalist democracy, not to pretty it up and sell it better than its real owners.

A further example was provided by an ‘Irish Times’ interview with the retiring (as a TD only) Joe Higgins of the Anti-Austerity Alliance, who stated his faith in statist ‘socialism’ by saying that the solution to the financial crisis in 2008 was to take the banks into (democratic) public ownership, which was more or less what was done with their effective nationalisation, but which also meant taking ownership of their unpayable debts.  The idea that the socialist answer is working class, cooperative ownership was not mentioned.

No wonder so many commentators have felt able to allege that Fianna Fail “stole the left’s clothes”; a reflection of the grubby character of the clothes rather than the daring of Fianna Fail.  A promise by the latter to legislate for workers’ rights to ownership of their place of work would really have been a bold and brave step, one the Left itself hasn’t contemplated.

A left that claims to be Marxist believes that it can and has held out against the world wide right wing trend of the last decades and the even longer period of absence of revolutionary circumstances in the most advanced capitalist countries.   Of course it has not and had it done so it would, ironically, disprove Marxism, which believes that social consciousness is determined by social being, including political consciousness being conditioned by material economic, social and political circumstances.   Not simply by ideological fealty to a particular set of theories.

It would be strange if, this being the case, small and weak political formations were not subject to such forces and extraordinary if there were no examples of its effects.  Once again, ironically, the disparagement of the need for ideological debate is one such example.

While the divisions on the right are built upon denial of common ideological views that are actually there, the divisions on the Left are due to presumed ideological divisions that aren’t.  This presumption helps prevent the required political debate necessary to develop the politics of the Left beyond reformist politics that facilitate allegations of theft.

Back to part 1

The 2016 election – a victory for social democracy?

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27/2/2016. General Election 2016 - Counting of Votes. Scenes from the counting of votes for the Dublin West Constituency, at the Phibblestown Communmity Hall Count Centre in Blanchardstown, Dublin. Photo shows Anti Austerity Alliance candidate Ruth Coppinger after winning a seat in her constituency. Photo:RollingNews.ie

27/2/2016. General Election 2016 – Counting of Votes. Scenes from the counting of votes for the Dublin West Constituency, at the Phibblestown Communmity Hall Count Centre in Blanchardstown, Dublin. Photo shows Anti Austerity Alliance candidate Ruth Coppinger after winning a seat in her constituency. Photo:RollingNews.ie

The 2016 general election has been hailed as delivering a ‘sensational’ result, although this is disputed, and has led to some difficulty in forming a new Government.  Apparently only one party, Fine Gael, wants to be part of one, partly as a result of the horrendous results for the governing parties in the last two contests.

In this election the two Governing parties, holding a record majority, lost heavily: the Fine Gael vote fell from 36.1% to 25.5%, while the Labour Party was decimated, losing more than three quarter of its seats, its vote falling from 19.5% to 6.6%.  The biggest apparent gainers were Fianna Fail mainly because of a striking reversal of fortune, increasing its vote from 17.5% in 2011 to over 24.3%, and Sinn Fein, which increased its vote from 9.9% to over 13.8%.  This performance however will be seen as disappointing, coming nowhere near the 20% it recorded in polls beforehand.

The governing parties stood in the election on the basis that their painful austerity medicine had worked and that there was now a remarkable recovery, the fruits of which would allow tax cuts and improvement in public services.  And the truth is that there has indeed been a recovery; new austerity measures have generally ceased and for some people incomes are rising, either through getting a job or pay increases.

Unfortunately for the Governing parties their arrogant declarations of success rankled with a population fully appreciative of the slenderness of the improvement, which for some has been non-existent, while the more they declared the scale of the success the more it appeared to contrast with the experience of the majority.  The Government claimed credit for the improvement but it was a long time coming and the Irish people are aware enough of the vulnerability of their economic circumstances not to be inclined to credit the Government with creating it or of letting the possibility of a new recession escape their minds.

Above all, the accumulated austerity measures inflicted by the Government have not at all been reversed, the huge cuts and tax increases of the last seven or more years are still being felt, the price is still being paid, and smug and arrogant claims of achievement angered a population weary of austerity and aware of too recent and continuing attacks, including water charges.

Fine Gael won the previous election on the back of the then Government’s perceived responsibility for a disastrous economic collapse, a promise that its policy would be different and that the existing ‘no bondholder left behind’ approach would be challenged.  Labour campaigned on the grounds that there was a choice between Labour’s way and Frankfurt’s way.  Of course these promises were hollow and no coherent policy alternative was put forward, a more politically aware population would have understood this, but the immediate task was to punish the egregious Fianna Fail and a Fine Gael/Labour coalition has been its historic alternative. What this meant, as one commentator has put it, was that in that election they took the least radical option for change, just as they have almost done so again, while in between they voted to accept austerity in the 2012 EU referendum.

So the 2016 election has been hailed as a vote against austerity and an Irish reflection of the forces that have produced Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, Jeremy Corbyn in Britain and Bernie Sanders in the US.

But the vote in 2011 was also in part a vote against austerity, although driven mainly by the desire for revenge through a massive vote against Fianna Fail, which rocked that traditional hegemonic party of the Irish State and led many to wonder whether it was finished.  It has now had something of a comeback in yet another anti-austerity election.  In the 2011 election the Labour Party did extremely well on an anti-austerity ticket, at one point believing it might end up the largest party.  So what exactly is the nature of a ‘new’ anti-austerity vote that sees the bounce-back of Fianna Fail and the continued development of Fianna Fail nua in the shape of Sinn Fein?

The general election has been characterised by some as a demand for social democracy, an anti-austerity alternative, that was reflected in Fianna Fail’s emphasis on the fruits of the recovery being spent on public services and not on tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the rich.  The claimed new consciousness is also supposed to be reflected in the increased vote for Sinn Fein, which emphasised that it was in favour of a ‘fair’ recovery in which the better off paid most, and in the showing of new formations such as the Social Democrats, which did moderately well arguing that US tax levels were not compatible with a European standard of public services.

There is therefore a case to be made that the election was a vote against austerity, a vote for some sort of social democracy and even a move towards a more conventional right/left political division, now that the more or less identical Fine Gael and Fianna Fail parties together have declined to just under half the vote.  There is also an obvious case to be made that this is a reflection in Ireland of a wider international phenomenon.  But it is more an Irish reflection of this phenomenon rather than a reflection of the phenomenon in Ireland.

So we have an initial clear problem that the recovery in the vote for Fianna Fail is evidence of the move towards social democracy while its savaging in 2011 was also such an example.   We have a move to a left/right divide while the historically largest civil war party made a strong recovery.

This does not invalidate the argument but simply demonstrates its limitations and the weakness of the shift.  But that a shift is taking place is nevertheless still the case.  The long term decline of the civil war parties continues, as recently as 1997 they received 78% of the vote and in 2011 73%.  The 2016 vote was a vote against austerity, but not yet a vote for an alternative, at least not a real alternative because neither Fianna Fail nor Sinn Fein are a real alternative and neither are the majority of right wing independents coming, as they say, from the Fianna Fail or Fine Gael gene pool.

The social democratic tone of the likes of Fianna Fail reflects more an improved economy and not any more basic shift in economic policy.  Fianna Fail is still widely blamed for sharing a large degree of responsibility for the economic crisis while Sinn Fein voted to bail out the bankers and bondholders.  Fianna Fail has a long history of populist rhetoric and actions, which may be called social democratic in a broad sense, but which has been successfully employed to prevent the development of a left/right divide in Irish politics.  Without such a divide we have simply had a right/right division.

The case for a growing right/left split rests partly on the policy proposals of Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein, and their success, and partly on the pressure on Fine Gael and Fianna Fail to collaborate in order to allow creation of a new Government.  There are no credible alternatives as the forces of ‘the left’ are too disparate and divided.  Some informed commentary is that Fianna Fail will not allow such an alliance to happen partly to frustrate the development of such a divide, which would threaten its traditional role and base inside the working class.

The argument for the development of a left/right demarcation however mainly rests on the rise of Sinn Fein, understood broadly as a ‘left’ party, and the fortunes of the Social Democrats and some left independents.  It also rests on the progress of the genuine left, most visibly in the shape of the Anti Austerity Alliance/People before Profit (AAA/PbP) alliance, the creation of the Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party.

But Sinn Fein is not, it must be repeated again and again, a genuine left party.  Have a look at austerity in the North if you find this hard to accept. Only by the most expansive definition can it be considered left wing, which might be useful as some sort of catch-all description in some circumstances but is misleading when it comes to any analysis.

Having a predominantly working class support does not make a working class party; Fianna Fail has had the largest support of any party within the working class for many decades until relatively recently.  A working class party is one that not only is supported by the working class or part of it, but is composed of workers, is organised from within its ranks and in some way represents its separate interests to a greater or lesser degree.

So what constitutes ‘the left’ and how has it performed in this election?  One commentator has argued that, if we include one third of the large number of independents elected, the left has hardly increased, amounting to about a third now compared to 35% in the outgoing Dail, although the composition of this left may be said to be more ‘left wing’.  A second analysis defines Labour, Sinn Fein and United Left Alliance as the left in 2011, together receiving 31.5%, while Labour, Sinn Fein, AAA/PbP and Social Democrats are defined as left for the purposes of the 2016 election, receiving 27%.  Another perspective groups the AAA/PbP and explicitly left independents together to arrive at a total of 141,890 votes, not very different from the Labour Party’s 140,898 – which is supposed to have had disastrous election.  A narrower definition could take the TDs from the United left Alliance that went into the 2011 election and compare their performance in 2016 (while including the gains of the AAA/PbP) and arrive at a total of over 5%.

None of these show any dramatically increased vote for the left, however defined, and are certainly more convincing than some comments from the AAA/PbP, who have not unnaturally looked firstly at their own results.  Richard Boyd Barrett has been quoted as stating that “we went from being newly formed to almost 4 per cent.”

However one delineates the left it is clear that the only consistent social democratic alternative offered has come from the AAA/PbP and the candidates who used to belong to the United Left Alliance and perhaps a handful of others.

There has therefore been no qualitative radicalisation but instead a longer irregular evolution of rejection of the traditional right wing parties but without an embrace of any consistently thought out alternative.  This is therefore expressed in illusions in parties which peddle familiar solutions that may appear to a greater or lesser degree to be social democratic.  When we see these include the Labour Party, Sinn Fein and even Fianna Fail what we don’t see is any sort of consistent social democracy.

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