Sunak is undoubtedly in trouble. He’s failed to win back the so-called “middle Englanders” who abandoned the Tories when the economy nearly collapsed under Liz Truss. Sunak’s failed to appease the Tory bigots over the refugee crisis who are now turning to the “PopCons” – the ‘Popular Conservative’ Trussite faction in parliament or the Faragist Reform Party.
Only time will tell whether the appeal of the “Popcons” or the “Reformers” will split the Tory vote. Sunak’s team hopes not. Some think they can still rally the Tory faithful. This, of course, may just be wishful thinking. But it’s interesting to note the air of caution coming from one of the leading Blairites this week.
Peter Mandelson, a Blairite grandee, says people “are not pricing in sufficiently” the possibility of Labour failing to win a majority. Labour’s poll lead is “artificial” and “is going to contract”. A landslide is not a foregone conclusion and if Labour fails to maintain its current momentum, it is on course for “a somewhat more ambivalent result than than the opinion polls are currently suggesting”.
That’s certainly true. Starmer has hounded out most of the Corbynistas that the party relied on to do the canvassing needed to get the Labour vote out while promising little or nothing to the millions of working people whose votes will decide the next election. Starmer & Co may well believe that crawling to big business, media barons and the Americans is the key to victory – but it means nothing to the workers who will only rally round Labour if there’s real reform on the agenda.
We reject the “parliamentary road” and electoral politics. But the left social-democrats who call themselves “revolutionaries” aren’t the answer. They claim to be the alternative voice of the labour movement. But their slates will end up, as always, amongst the also-rans at election time. The same goes for George Galloway and his new “Workers Party of Britain”. Though he bucked the system in the past, returning to parliament on two occasions on his Respect platform, he achieved nothing.
These posers call for social‑democratic reforms while campaigning against the only mass force capable of implementing reform, the Labour Party itself. The paltry results of all these parties reflect the futility of trying to compete with Labour in bourgeois elections.
They foster the illusion that there is a left electoral alternative to Labour when the reality is that the only alternative — in the current situation — to a Conservative government is a Labour government. So they end up portraying Labour rather than the ruling class as the main enemy of the working class. Objectively they end up in the camp of the class enemy.
A Labour government, with its links with the unions and the co‑operative movement, offers the best option for the working class in the era of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. Our strategy is for working class unity and our campaigns are focused on defeating the right‑wing within the movement and strengthening the left and progressive forces within the Labour Party and the unions.
We must demand that the Labour Party reflect the wishes of the millions of its affiliated union members, expressed through the unions’ democratic procedures. And the unions we must struggle to elect genuine working class leaderships, who are prepared to represent and fight for the membership.
The Party must campaign for a democratic Labour Party controlled by its affiliates; a Labour Party whose policies reflect those of a democratic union movement would become a powerful instrument for progressive reforms that would strengthen organised labour and benefit the working class.
Our Party’s strategy is the only way to fight for the communist alternative within the working class of England, Scotland and Wales. We want day‑to‑day reforms and they can only be achieved by the main reformist, social democratic party in Britain, the Labour Party. We want revolution and that can only be achieved through the leadership of the communist party.
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