The road to Brussels

The Remainers are on the march. The newly ennobled Lord Cameron is back in the saddle as No 3 in the Sunak government and while his first overseas visits were predictably to Ukraine and Israel, his major task is to rebuild economic and diplomatic bridges with the European Union.
    Rishi Sunak has made it clear that he’s not going to do anything to rock the Brexit boat in the run-up to the next election. But the return of David Cameron to the Foreign Office is more than a sop to the Remainers in his ranks. It’s a victory for those sections of the ruling class that want Britain back in the UK and it can only help build their block in Parliament. The Scottish nationalists and the Liberal-Democrats are long-time Returners. So are most Labour MPs. The next strep for the Remainers is to move for the return of the prominenti kicked out by Boris Johnson in 2019 when they tried to stop the no-deal Brexit. This will then, they hope, create enough cross-party support for a second-referendum in the near future regardless of who’s in power at the time.
    The Tory Brexiteers are rudderless. Their self-appointed parliamentary leader was Boris Johnson – now seen for the fool he always was. Their real leader was, of course, Nigel Farage who has abandoned politics for the more lucrative shores of reality TV. Johnson reduced the Eurosceptic argument to a crude choice between the Treaty of Rome and a Treaty of Washington which was a figment of his imagination. Now all these Brexiteers have got left is planes to Rwanda, racism and anti-immigrant hysteria.
    But the European Union isn’t a benevolent society. It’s a fraud, an institution designed solely for the benefit of the oppressors and exploiters. What few benefits the EU has brought, such as increased trade and open borders, could all have been achieved through separate agreements and treaties.
Johnson had a golden opportunity to make Brexit work. He squandered it with all this nonsense about a deal with Donald Trump that was never going to happen. But it still can work if the UK takes Brexit seriously and open its doors to free trade with China and the rest of the world.

The Covid enquiry

The nonsense about “herd immunity”; the callous and incompetent response to the pandemic that led to many avoidable deaths amongst the frail and the elderly and the indifference of a Prime Minister who most of them time seemingly let Dominic Cummings, his Rasputin-like aide, steer the ship of state. It’s all coming out in the Covid inquiry. None of this should surprise us. Johnson’s despicable conduct, and that of his henchmen showed how totally unfit all of them were for high office.
    Johnson counts for nothing in the political arena now. Crawling to the Trump crowd in the United States and grand-standing amongst the Ukrainians is all that Johnson’s got left these days. Johnson is fortunately gone. Sunak will, hopefully soon follow.
    Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, may have jumped the gun when she claimed the UK could be on the path to rejoining the European Union last week. But she clearly reflects the thinking of the European old guard that want to see Britain speedily returning to the European fold.

All smoke and mirrors

Quite why the Foreign Office has chosen to leak details of secret talks with the Russians at this time remains a mystery to the bourgeois media that unquestioningly published the story earlier in the week.
These sort of clandestine talks were, of course, the norm during the Cold War.  Hot lines and secret diplomatic exchanges via go-betweens in neutral countries remained open during the height of the imperialist confrontation with the Soviet Union. Vital links for spy deals, prisoner swaps and back-door channels to avoid misunderstandings that could rapidly escalate into a nuclear war that neither side could win. But if we are to believe the Foreign Office the only matters raised with the Russians at a number of covert meetings around the world were on routine issues of grain supplies and nuclear safety. These are issues that could usually be dealt with at ambassador level. They certainly would not normally justify covert liaisons in all sorts of places like New York and Vienna.
The Foreign Office is at pains to stress that at no point has the UK sought to enter peace talks around finding a diplomatic end to the conflict. If so what was the point of all these cloak-and-dagger meetings?
We can only guess at what was on the agenda but one thing’s for sure, and that is that the British envoys were acting as errand boys for the Americans. Though the Americans have been quite open about their own talks with the Russians they like to use trusted allies, like Britain and Japan, to raise issues without compromising their own position  in advance of any future direct negotiations.
Though Boris Johnson liked to pose as the man who persuaded  the Ukrainians to go for total war and break off peace negotiations with the Russians last year everybody knows that Johnson was only doing the bidding of Joe Biden and the American war-lobby which has used the conflict to tighten their grip over all their European allies.
Ukraine is essentially a protectorate of US imperialism. A vassal state that fights with NATO’s guns and lives on imperialist aid only keeps up the fight because the war is still in the American interest. 
No-one, beyond the chosen few in America’s ruling circles, knows what Biden’s war aims are but he’s clearly has got most of what he wanted when the war US imperialism provoked broke out in February 2022. NATO has taken over the once neutral states of Scandinavia. Russian gas and oil exports to Europe have been cut and US imperialism is now supreme in the UK and the European Union. It has come at a price that has largely been paid in blood by the hapless Ukrainians. But it has also cost the American tax-payers plenty in billions of dollars-worth of military supplies that can never be repaid. Now that bill is coming under scrutiny in the run-up to the next US presidential election.
Donald Trump is on the come-back trail claiming he could stop the Ukraine war in a day by talking directly to Putin. On the other hand the Democrats, still unsure on whether Biden is capable of fighting the next election, want to concentrate on their domestic reform platform which they believe will secure them a second term in office. They need a cease-fire to stop this becoming a campaign issue. But only time will tell whether the Biden administration is now ready to seriously talk about ending the war.

 

A Windsor Knot

Rishi Sunak may not have achieved much during his tenure in No 10 over the past five months. But the “Windsor Agreement” that resolved the long-standing dispute over Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit relations with the European Union was no mean achievement for the Tory leader who had to ride rough-shod over the protests from his Unionist allies in the north of Ireland and amongst his own back-benchers.
    The agreement was given a diplomatic and highly symbolic blessing by King Charles and Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, over tea at Windsor Castle last week. But the donkey work was done by Sunak’s team, who together with their Irish and Brussels counterparts, managed to settle the dispute over the movement of goods between the European Single Market and the United Kingdom to the satisfaction of all the players with the exception of the northern Irish bigots and Boris Johnson.
    Johnson, who clearly hoped to exploit the issue to pave the way for his political come-back, predictably says he cannot support this new Brexit deal. The Democratic Unionists are equally sceptical claiming the new agreement may undermine Northern Ireland’s status as part of the United Kingdom. But Sinn Féin Vice-President Michelle O'Neill said "I rarely find myself agreeing with a British prime minister but access to both markets has to be grabbed with both hands".
    The Irish government, the rest of the European Union and the majority on both sides of the House of Commons have welcomed the Windsor Framework. More importantly, as far as the British ruling class is concerned, so has the White House.
    The Remainers are, naturally, hoping that this will create a new and favourable climate to greater co-operation with the European Union. Regardless of who wins the next general election they’re working in their think-tanks and their less than secret conferences for some sort of associate status with the EU that would create the climate for a second referendum and a return to full membership of the Brussels club.
    They say Brexit isn’t working but that’s not true. There have been problems but these were almost entirely due to the short-sighted policy of the Johnson government that placed all its bets on replacing the Treaty of Rome with a “Treaty of Washington” that would create a colossal trans-Atlantic free trade area. It was a pipe-dream that depended entirely on Donald Trump getting re-elected. And we all know what happened next.
    What Johnson should have done – and what Sunak should do now is to reach free trade agreements with our other major trading partners – like China – and ending the sanctions regime against Russia which had pushed energy prices to breaking point. There is an alternative to slavishly imposing sanctions at the behest of the Americans. Sunak could pursue an independent economic policy to revive the ailing British economy. We could return to the “golden era” of trade with China that existed when David Cameron was at the helm. We could access cheap gas from Russia if we stopped supporting the American sanctions regime.
    But Sunak won’t. Neither will Starmer. The bourgeois consensus that all the leaders of the mainstream parties reflect is that British imperialism’s future can only be guaranteed by American might – and that can only be secured by doing America’s bidding.
    It may work for them but it doesn’t work for us. Socialism is the only answer to the crisis and we have to put it back on the working class agenda now!

Times change but nothing changes

No one should be surprised at Boris Johnson’s last days at the helm. He was, after-all, utterly useless as Prime Minister. While he had plenty of time for his lavish wedding anniversary bash he failed to turn up to emergency COBRA meetings over the heatwave. He’s done nothing to help people facing the sky-rocketing energy bills and he spends his final days in office lording it in Slovenia and Greece while the cost of living crisis worsens and the country bakes in a heat-wave not seen since the 1970s.
    Johnson is incapable of seeing himself as others see him. In Downing Street he was surrounded by hand-picked people lesser than himself that pandered to his vanity.
    When BoJo grudgingly threw in the towel in July his followers said this wasn’t the end of the story. Some said Boris, as they still called him, would rise again like a phoenix from the flames to lead the Conservatives in time for the next election. Others said he should be either appointed Secretary-General of NATO when the job comes up for grabs next year or at least be made the UK’s special emissary to the Ukraine by whoever succeeds him as Prime Minister when he finally goes in September.
    Now Johnson’s become a political pariah. He’s jeered by crowds as he arrives for the Platinum Thanksgiving service in St Paul’s Cathedral. He’s booed and heckled by British holidaymakers on his trip to the Greek coastal town of Nea Makri, one of them shouting "Get back to work you fat ponce!"
    Enoch Powell, the maverick Tory MP, once said that “all political careers end in failure” – a comment that certainly summed up his own career as he played and lost in the House of Commons in the 1960s. Powell played the racist card in a bid for Tory leadership but ended up as a sidelined Ulster Unionist MP in Northern Ireland. And while his own political life ended in failure Powell’s law is clearly not the universal rule in Parliament.
    Past Prime Ministers, with the obvious exception of Tony Blair, are still held in high esteem by their respective parties. Some like Winston Churchill, Harold Wilson and Edward Heath, retired to the back-benches. Others like James Callaghan, had second lives as elder statesmen in the House of Lords. And nowadays John Major, Gordon Brown, Mrs May and even David Cameron can walk the streets without risking the wrath an angry mob.
    The abuse Johnson is getting reflects the anger on the street over the crisis we’re in now. The ruling class want to focus that anger away from themselves. They’ll blame Johnson.
    The blame game starts with Johnson’s duplicity and incompetence and ends with some nonsense about the nature of the global economy. They’ll tell us things will get better in the hands of whoever takes his place who will inevitably be one of their own or one of their place-men like Sir Keir Starmer.
    This is their agenda. We, on the other hand, have to put the communist answer to the crisis back on ours.
    Changing the tillerman changes nothing, Changing the system through the social ownership of the means of production is the only alternative.

Bye Bye Boris

Boris Johnson thought the world was his oyster back in 2019 when he first set foot in Downing Street as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative & Unionist Party. He said he was going to deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat Jeremy Corbyn – but although he did beat Labour and carry out the wish of the people to leave the European Union, he never united his own party let alone the country he led for the last three years.
    An incorrigible liar, he was surrounded by hand-picked people lesser than himself who proved incapable of dealing with the crises that beset his Government from the start. Tens of thousands died when Johnson took his lead from Donald Trump and embraced the crackpot theory of ‘herd immunity’ during the Covid pandemic. He only came to his senses after mass pressure from his own grass-roots supporters to do something forced him to impose the draconian lock-downs that held the plague in check until the vaccine breakthrough in 2021.
    Whilst the Johnson team used subsidies and “furlough” money to stave-off mass unemployment and economic collapse during the coronavirus crisis, it returned to its true-blue colours this year with draconian energy bill hikes and proposed new anti-union laws to curb the already limited right to take industrial action.
    The Tory rank-and-file could put up with his cronyism and scandalous private life as long as it kept the Corbynistas in their place. But they’re not so happy when the value of their property and their juicy pensions are threatened. Inflation has risen for the ninth month in a row; it now stands at 9.4 per cent.
    At recent by-elections some flocked to the Liberal Democrats in their droves. Others supported the long-standing moves to dump Johnson that have nothing to do with his disreputable private life nor his endless deceptions.
    Like all vain men, Boris Johnson was incapable of seeing himself as others see him. BoJo, as he liked to be called, certainly got Brexit done. But what did he do afterwards?
    Johnson put all his eggs in one basket, hoping that a Trump re-election would lead to a new trans-Atlantic free trade agreement – a Treaty of Washington to replace the Treaty of Rome, which would be paid for by selling off the NHS to American interests. It didn’t happen and Johnson had no fall-back position.
    A few paltry trade deals with friendly members of the British Commonwealth but no real exploitation of the freedom that was on the table when Britain finally left the European Union. Instead of broadening our trade with People’s China, Johnson slavishly followed Trump in restricting Chinese investment in the UK. The ‘golden age’ of trade with China is over and it may not come again.
    ‘Britain’s Trump’ imagined that he was the second Churchill, posing with Zelensky and other third-rate Eastern European politicians, and making empty threats to Putin from the safety of his armchair in Downing Street.
    The reality was that Putin never took any notice of anything Johnson said. Nor, more importantly for British imperialism, did the leaders of Franco-German imperialism let alone Joe Biden in Washington.
    Whoever takes over from Johnson will have to immediately try to restore the bridge with Europe and the ‘special relationship’ with the USA. Upholding the Northern Ireland Protocol that Johnson signed up to in the first place would be the best place to start.

Boris tries to dodge the flak

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is taking an unusual interest in foreign affairs at present. This is partly because he needs an excuse to get out of the country as often as possible to avoid awkward questions and attacks from his opponents.
    These opponents are not the ineffective ‘Opposition’ from the spineless Opposition front-bench team headed, rather than lead, by Sir Keir Starmer, but from Johnson’s own parliamentarians.
    The fact that the Tories have lost two recent by-elections will only have strengthened this particular opposition, with even the most loyal Johnson supporters fearful of losing their seats. As both by-elections were caused by sex scandals it was almost inevitable that the Tories would lose these seats, even Tiverton where a 24,000 majority was overturned. But a Liberal revival is, of course one of these traditional signs of the coming of summer that do not herald any great positive change. Losing the much more marginal Wakefield was probably less of a surprise than was the winning of that traditional Labour seat at the last General Election.
    Jonson being replaced by another Tory, who will be a Remainer, or later by a right-wing Labour government led by Starmer, will not be much or even any improvement.
    More positive opposition is to be found in the upsurge of industrial action. One small example of these struggles is that of the striking parking enforcement officers in the south London borough of Wandsworth who are striking to not just to secure pay parity with those in other councils but for their jobs to be brought back in house, which would ensure that parking fines are reinvested locally rather than used to pay dividends. If successful, this action will benefit all local people and not just the enforcement officers.
    Train strikes have dominated recent headlines. It is noteworthy that despite the disruption they cause and repeated attacks by the right-wing media against RMT, public opinion, admitted by the same right-wing media, is on the side of the striking railway workers.
    As a small stop press: it is pleasing to note that David Lammy, who was criticised in our trade union news for refusing to support the Heathrow Airport British Airways strikers, has backtracked. He claims that he was misled into thinking the workers were fighting for a pay rise rather than the reversal of a previous reduction – but this change of heart might be due to his local party rebelling and him being forced to think again. It is perhaps telling that Starmer has taken no action against those MPs, including a few front-benchers, who defied his instructions not to visit RMT picket lines.
    Industrial militancy is stepping up in the most unexpected places. The British Medical Association, which is the main trade union for medical doctors, has launched a campaign to secure a 30 per cent pay rise.
    This figure is not absurd. Dr Emma Runswick, in her speech urging support for the figure, mentioned a long list of recent inflation busting rises: “All around us workers are coming together in trade unions and winning big, last month bin men in Manchester 22 per cent; Gatwick airport workers won a 21 per cent pay increase two weeks ago; and in March cleaners and porters at Croydon hospital won a 24 per cent pay rise.”
    It is not just those in the medical profession who should carefully heed her closing words: “Those workers got together and used a key tool that trade unions have – the ability to collectively organise, collectively negotiate and collectively withdraw our labour… vote for this motion and I’ll see you on the picket lines.”

Anything goes with Boris

Back in the good old days the sun never set on the British Empire that brought trade and justice to the four corners of the world. Though this was all nonsense the ruling class always paid lip-service to the bogus bourgeois morality that they invented to keep workers in their place and repeatedly broke behind closed doors and away from the prurient eyes of the popular press.
    At school we were taught that Britons were universally respected because an Englishman’s word was his bond – and this, amongst other things, is why we went to war with Germany to defend “plucky little Belgium” in 1914. If you were caught out you did the “decent thing” and resigned to avoid a scandal. If you lied in Parliament you walked.
    These days it seems that anything goes with the Johnson government unilaterally tearing up the EU Withdrawal Agreement to appease the bigots in Northern Ireland and the hard-line Brexiteers on the Tory back-benches while ready to send Third World asylum seekers to camps in central Africa – a move which many believe is in breach of the UK’s international obligations to refugees.
    The deportations to Rwanda, branded by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) as unlawful, have been put on hold following an intervention by the European Court of Human Rights. This was supported by the Stand Up To Racism movement that said, “It’s hugely welcome that nobody has been deported to Rwanda tonight. Solidarity with all those who protested. But we know this is not the end and the struggle goes on against all racist deportations and state racism.”
    The Government claim their plan is aimed at deterring the cross-Channel trafficking gangs that exploit the plight of desperate asylum seekers. But it’s clearly one law for people from the Third World and another for the Ukrainians now being welcomed with open arms by the Government that stoked up the flames of war that forced them to flee in the first place.
    Rwanda already houses some 130,000 refugees mainly from other African countries, They have welcomed the deal which will give them £120 million upfront for housing and integrating the asylum-seekers. More will follow as the numbers rise. They say conditions in the camps in rural areas are good and that the refugees will be well-treated. That may well be so. But it’s a one-way road for the refugees who would never be able to come back to Britain whatever the outcome of their application for political asylum. If they are successful they would be allowed to live in Rwanda. If not they will be deported to some unknown destination.
    Johnson clearly hopes that this dog-whistle racism will revive his party’s flagging fortunes and help him stave off new challenges to his leadership from Tory dissidents. We must prove him wrong.
    The New Communist Party recognises the need for any sovereign state to set an immigration policy in accordance with its resources. But we firmly oppose any immigration policy that discriminates, either directly or indirectly, on the basis of race, creed, colour or gender.
    We call for the repeal of the Immigration and Asylum Acts of the 1990s, passed by both Tory and Labour governments, which make it very difficult for many genuine asylum seekers to establish their claims.
    Asylum seekers must be treated humanely and their claims dealt with swiftly. While this process takes place they must be given decent accommodation and welfare benefits to survive. No asylum seekers should be locked up unless there is good reason, with evidence, to believe they are criminals and no child asylum seeker should ever be locked up.

Talking about Jerusalem

The sectarian violence in Jerusalem that has enraged the Arab and Muslim world is a warning to the world about the consequences of allowing Israel to maintain its illegal and brutal occupation of the West Bank.
    The Zionist mob that swarmed through the Muslim quarter of Arab East Jerusalem last week chanting “Death to Arabs” was a deliberate incitement to violence. Under the protection of Israeli riot police and security forces they deliberately goaded the Palestinian Arabs as they gloated over their victory in June 1967.
    The Zionist settlers and their political sponsors in Tel Aviv want to drive the Palestinians out of the homes and land they hope to steal – as they did when around a million Palestinians were forced to flee by Zionist gunmen during the first Arab-Israeli war. They talk about the 1967 “Six-Day War” and think they are invincible but some clearly have short memories. They sang a different song when Hezbollah missiles rained down on Haifa and northern Israel in 2006.
    Wherever there is oppression there is always resistance. There can be no peace in the Middle East until the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs are restored.

Poor Old BoJo

It seems that Boris Johnson’s luck has finally run out if this week’s vote of no confidence is anything to go by. Though Johnson won the Tory 1922 Committee ballot it was by such a narrow margin that it is difficult to see how he can long remain leader of the Conservative Party.
    Though always good at advancing himself Johnson’s performance when Mayor of London and Foreign Secretary showed that he was never fit for the highest office in the land. Johnson’s only asset was his ability to get the Tory vote out when needed. He did it to beat Ken Livingstone for the London Mayoralty and he did it again at a national level to “get Brexit done” in 2019. Had he heeded his advisers and curbed his irresponsible personal behaviour he would have been remembered as the politician who tore up the Treaty of Rome. Now he will recalled, if at all, as the man who spent a fortune lavishly redecorating Downing Street and partied during the Covid lockdown – much like Nero, to use one of Boris’ classical examples, who supposedly fiddled while Rome burned.
    Anyone else could have seen this coming and changed course. but not Johnson, which all goes to show that going to Eton and reading Classics at Balliol College, Oxford is not a measure of intelligence at all.

Pay the Tube workers

The RMT transport union showed it meant business when it shut down London’s underground network on Monday following the breakdown of talks with Management on jobs and pensions last week.
    Six hundred workers jobs could go if London Underground gets its way. So far Management has shown no interest in constructive talks to settle the dispute. It’s time for the Mayor of London to intervene. Sadiq Khan has the authority to raise taxes. Just four banks made a profit of £34 billion last year and are set to pay out over £4 billion in bonuses to London traders. A windfall tax on those profits would more than adequately fund London’s transport network. The Mayor should meet and heed the union to keep the Underground network running in the future.

Measure for Measure

Summer may have begun this week, but it seems that the silly season, which usual starts in August, is already upon us. Boris Johnson tells us he’s going to restore the old Imperial measurements, which were discarded in the 1980s to conform with the norms of the European Union, and that he’s going to build a new European bloc consisting of the Baltic States, Poland and Ukraine to stake out British imperialism’s interest in eastern Europe.
    The return to yards and gallons, in tandem with the current metric system, will certainly be a boon to the older generation who still can’t make head or tail out of metrication, but it will be a matter of indifference to the generations brought up under the new system and it will make no difference to the price of anything sold on the high street.
    On the other hand, Johnson’s proposed British-led bloc – based on Russophobia, neo-liberalism and a loathing of the Brussels’ bureaucracy – offers little or nothing to the proposed members already in the EU and nothing at all to the Ukrainian regime that wants to be a full member of the European club. Nobody takes the idea seriously, least of all the proposed members of this alternative European union. The ‘BoJo bloc’, like the return to feet and miles, has clearly been floated by the Downing Street team to distract the public from the continuing Partygate scandal that threatens to bring down the Johnson premiership.
    The number of Tory backbenchers calling on Johnson to stand down or face a confidence vote is apparently growing, although it still falls short of the 54 needed by the Tory 1922 Committee to trigger a vote on the Prime Minister’s future. A far greater number of Conservative MPs would be needed to dump Johnson. Half of them, in fact, would have to vote to oust him for the motion to pass.
    Whether the rebels can muster the 178 or so members to take that decisive step remains to be seen. Many think that the grandees will stay their hand to see what happens at the two by-elections this month. If the Tories lose both – Labour is expected to win one, the Lib-Dems the other – then Johnson’s in big trouble. If it’s bad news for the Tories, the Remainers may make their move. But then again, maybe not.
    The Remainers, who are the driving force behind the move to topple Johnson, don’t have an agreed candidate to replace him. Jeremy Hunt is a front runner but there are others who also fancy their chances if Boris goes.
    Sadly Labour is saddled with a lame-duck leader whose only achievement has been to kick Jeremy Corbyn out of the Parliamentary Party and drive hundreds of thousands of Corbyn’s supporters out of the party over the last two years.
    While the Tories fight amongst themselves, the time is ripe for the labour movement to seek out another leader to replace Starmer to face whoever takes Johnson’s place at the next general election.
    At the same time, communists must continue to struggle to put the communist answer to the capitalist crisis back on the working-class agenda whilst building solidarity with the people of the Donbas fighting, with their Russian allies, for their freedom, and fighting for peace and socialism all over the world.

This time is different

It is difficult to evince any enthusiasm for local elections. Though councils run key local services and administer huge budgets on behalf of central government the independent power they once has long gone. Few beyond the parish pump activists of the main political parties and local cranks take any interest in local politics. On the street hardly anyone knows who their local councillors are or, indeed, who’s standing in these elections. This is why few can be bothered to vote on the day. But this time round is different and the results could end the political careers of Boris Johnson and Sir Keir Starmer.
    Though local polls are only important to those whose livelihoods depend on who runs the town hall they are barometers of public opinion. If the Tories lose badly throughout the country Johnson is toast. If Labour fail to make spectacular gains so is Starmer.
    Johnson may well be the first to go. Deceiving parliament over “Partygate” scandal may well be trivial compared to Tony Blair’s lies about the “weapons of mass destruction” used to justify British support for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. But it is still a serious breach of bourgeois parliamentary norms that the Remainers will use to get rid of the man who took Britain out of the European Union.
    Johnson failed to make the most of Brexit. His dream of a Trans-Atlantic free trade area and the “Anglosphere” he thought would be built around it died when Donald Trump lost the US presidential election in 2020. Far from seeking to broaden trade with People’s China he did Biden’s bidding and turned his back on them and now we pay the price in lost jobs and lost opportunities.
    Meanwhile the usual suspects, including Rory Stewart and Tony Blair, are gathering around the camp fire to set up a cross-party “centre” bloc that seeks to build a new broad coalition that puts “hope, decency, integrity and the common good at the heart of our politics”. They’re calling it the “Britain Project” but it’s actually the “Brussels Project” and its clearly a new throw by the Remainers to pave the way for a return to the European Union.
    At the same time over a thousand pro-EU campaigners have written to Starmer urging him to rethink his stance on Brexit in a new Remainer drive to turn Labour into an EU front.
    The letter was organised by “Grassroots for Europe”, an umbrella movement set up in 2018 to kickstart a new campaign in support of the Treaty of Rome.
    In Parliament unrest is growing amongst Labour’s backbenchers who expect the worst in the May polls and say Starmer, who is a hopeless campaigner, must go before the next general election.
    Some are openly touting for Barry Gardiner, the Brent MP who was in Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet and served as a junior minister under Blair and Brown. Gardiner’s last bid for the Labour leadership collapsed in 2020 when he failed to get the 22 Labour MP and MEP nominations needed to get on the ballot paper.
    Gardiner’s supporters say he’d be the ideal stop-gap to restore “unity” in Labour’s ranks following the Starmer purge which some say has lost them some 200,000 members. Others, like Angela Rayner, would obviously disagree.

The nine lives of Boris Johnson

Some say that politicians, like cats, have nine lives. If that’s true Boris Johnson must be near his limit as he resists calls to quit after becoming first sitting prime minister to be punished for breaking law.
    This week Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak were given fixed penalty notices after the police found they breached Covid laws by attending a 56th birthday party for the prime minister in the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street on 19th June 2020, when indoor social gatherings were strictly banned.
    In the great scale of things breaking the Covid lockdown rules pales into insignificance when compared with Tony Blair’s lies about “weapons of mass destruction” he used to justify British support for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Lying in the House of Commons is still, however, a serious breach of bourgeois parliamentary norms and being caught out usually leads to resignation.
    Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer tells us the fines show that Johnson and Sunak had lied repeatedly about the Partygate scandal, dishonouring both their offices and the sacrifices of the British people. "They have to go" Starmer says – but he shouldn’t hold his breath waiting.
    Johnson is certainly on his way out but he’s still not dead meat. One Tory MP has called on the Prime Minister to step down. Nigel Mills, who represents Amber Valley in Derbyshire, says Johnson’s position is now untenable.
    “I think people are rightly angry that at a time when they were observing the very strictest of the rules people who were making the rules didn’t have the decency to observe them…that’s the nub of it,” Mills said.
    The maverick Tory back-bencher told BBC Radio Derby: “In all conscience I don’t think a prime minister can survive or should survive breaking the rules he put in place and he was on the TV every few nights reminding us all that we should observe…we have to have higher standards than that of people at the top. He has been fined, I don’t think his position is tenable, in my view.”
    But in the Johnson camp the Prime Minister’s supporters argue that with a major war in eastern Europe now is not the time to replace a leader – even one as fatally flawed as Boris Johnson. But this is a really shallow argument. Stomping around Western Europe to do the bidding of the White House is an easy act for most of his ministers, with the possible exception of Liz Truss, to follow. Nor will it be too much effort to face-off the electoral challenge from the totally useless Labour leader who barely registers on the campaign trail.
    Johnson’s real ace is that Rishi Sunak is in the same Partygate boat as him. One can’t go without the other. Sunak’s got enough on his plate trying to ride out the storm over his wife’s dubious tax status and he knows that any move to oust Johnson now can only scupper his own chance, perhaps his only chance, to become leader of the Conservative & Unionist Party.

Johnson’s Easter Message

Spring is in the air and with it come soaring energy bills, tax hikes and rising inflation. This is the reality of Tory Britain under Boris Johnson.
    In the past, Labour leaders would be hammering the Government for crucifying the weak and the poor. These days we have to make do with the usual platitudes about “windfall” taxes and “energy rationing” from Starmer & Co. There’s no talk about re-nationalising the energy industry let alone restoring the old public sector and welfare state that Labour maintained until 1979.
    Rather than trying to mobilise the workers to defend the living standards of the millions Labour claims to represent, Starmer spends his time drumming more Corbynistas out of the party and supporting pro-NATO marches in the mistaken belief that this will win the people of a ‘middle England’ that only exists in the imagination of his Blairite minders.
    Rather than listening to the millions of workers in the affiliated unions that keep the Labour show on the road, Starmer prefers to heed the advice of his media gurus who conjure up childish and ineffectual campaign slogans because they believe working people are as stupid as themselves.
    Many Labour supporters, including those from the traditional right-wing of the party, rightly say that Starmer is a useless campaigner who will have to go when he loses the next general election. Under current rules that’s not due until 2025. We can’t wait that long. Starmer must go now!

Nothing new under the sun

The bourgeois lie-machine always goes into top gear in times of conflict. When Germany invaded Belgium in 1914, we were fed all sorts of stories about the bestial invaders who routinely raped nuns and used babies for bayonet practice whilst being told to take comfort in the support of the Supreme Being whose heavenly hosts intervened to stave off a British rout at the Battle of Mons. We’re now being told much the same thing about the Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
    This week the former Archbishop of Canterbury joined in the chorus. Like the Pharisees of old, Rowan Williams has denounced the Russian Orthodox Church for not condemning the Kremlin’s intervention in Ukraine.
    The Anglican churchman says there is a strong case for expelling the Russian Orthodox Church from the World Council of Churches. “When a Church is actively supporting a war of aggression, failing to condemn nakedly obvious breaches of any kind of ethical conduct in wartime, then other Churches do have the right to raise the question,” the retired cleric said. “I am still waiting for any senior member of the Orthodox hierarchy to say that the slaughter of the innocent is condemned unequivocally by all forms of Christianity.”
    When the chips are down the ruling class can always count on the Church of England. Even though Jesus, their supposed Master and the Prince of Peace, was a pacifist who called on his followers to turn the other cheek and forgive their enemies, the Anglicans never have any problem in supporting “just wars” when it suits them. They’re clearly not so happy when others do the same.

For a just peace in Ukraine

The conflict in Ukraine has rightly heightened fears of escalation that could take Europe and possibly the world to the brink of nuclear war. But the cause of peace is not helped by those in the anti-war movement who blame the Russians for the crisis, ignore the legitimate demands of the people of the Donbas and fail to recognise that this war began in 2014 when the legitimate Ukrainian government was overthrown by fascist gangs supported by Anglo-American and Franco-German imperialism.
    The hidden hand is always at work amongst the fake left within the peace and anti-war movement who essentially argue that peace is only attainable on imperialist terms. We saw this time and time again over Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Palestine, and now we’re seeing it over Ukraine. Others, like Jeremy Corbyn, recognise the dangers of a nuclear conflict and understand that NATO’s aggressive expansion over the last 30 years has played a role in sparking the current conflict. But they still call for an unconditional Russian withdrawal from Ukraine – which is also the demand of US imperialism and its lackeys.
    The communist stand must be for a just peace in Ukraine – for a neutral and de-Nazified Ukraine that recognises the independence of the Donbas republics, Crimea’s decision to join the Russian Federation and equal rights for all the people of the regions of the Ukraine.


What a difference a day makes…

…and a week is a long time in politics – as a former Labour prime minister, the now largely forgotten Harold Wilson, once put it years ago.
    A few weeks ago the ‘Partygate’ crisis could have brought Boris Johnson down. Now it has been forgotten – drowned in an avalanche of anti-Russian hysteria in the bourgeois media in support of imperialist sanctions that has led to a Welsh orchestra dropping music by Tchaikovsky from a concert because of the Ukraine war, the possible collapse of Chelsea football club and even the dumping of the Meerkats from a long-standing ad campaign for British financial services.
    The Ukraine crisis has certainly given Johnson a new lease of life as he potters around eastern Europe pretending to be Winston Churchill and crawls to the House of Saud to get them to boost oil production to put a lid on the now soaring price of oil on the spot market.
    Labour still has a fourpoint lead over the Tories in the opinion polls, but the Tory supporters will now close ranks around Johnson at the local elections in spring whilst Labour flounders under the moribund leadership of Sir Keir Starmer.
    The Conservatives certainly have nothing to fear from Starmer, who has little or nothing to offer the workers his party claims to represent and spends most of his time rooting out what’s left of the Corbynistas in the Labour rather than campaigning to end the austerity regime that can only get worse in the post-Covid climate. The Tories now clearly believe they can maintain or even extend their hold on local government at the council elections in May. Whether this will benefit Johnson personally is another matter.
Johnson is a constant source of embarrassment to Tory campaign managers who never know what the next indiscretion may bring. The Remainers want him out to clear the way for a new campaign to re-establish good relations with the European Union, and he remains an obstacle to restoring the ‘special relationship’ with US imperialism that leading members of the ruling class believe is essential to preserve their interests across the globe. Johnson will go but only, it seems, when the grandees are good and ready for it.

Their crisis – we pay

Some Colombians say their civil war has gone on for so long that most of the fighters now have no idea what started it in the first place. That’s perhaps not surprising, given that it began in 1957. Boris Johnson, however, has no such excuse.
    Johnson’s brief premiership has been marked by a seemingly endless round of scandals. No-one can remember when they began or indeed what they are all about as the reasons all seem to blur as time goes by. Now we’re all awaiting the final stab in the back that will trigger the leadership contest that could end his political career once and for all.
    When it comes the knives will sadly be wielded by Tory backbenchers and not by Sir Keir Starmer, the supposed leader of the Opposition who until recently seemed to prefer hounding out Corbynistas from his ranks rather than rallying Labour’s supporters to challenge the austerity regime of the Johnson government.
    Although some unions are supporting the protests that will take place at the Cost of Living Crisis – We Can’t Pay demonstrations organised by the People’s Assembly Against Austerity this weekend, the whole weight of the labour movement needs to be mobilised around the campaign if it’s to have any effect on the Government.

Israel is an apartheid state

For once, Amnesty International has got it right. Amnesty has published a 280-page report detailing “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity”, for which ​​“Israeli authorities must be held accountable”.
    The report, compiled over more than four years, analysed decades of legislation and policy that it said proved Palestinians were treated as an inferior racial group. “Israel has established and maintained an institutionalised regime of oppression and domination of the Palestinian population for the benefit of Jewish Israelis – a system of apartheid – wherever it has exercised control over Palestinians’ lives since 1948,” Amnesty said.
    “The USA, the European Union and its member states and the UK, but also those states that are in the process of strengthening their ties – such as some Arab and African states… must recognise that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid and other international crimes,” reads the report.
    Amnesty called on those actors to “use all political and diplomatic tools to ensure Israeli authorities implement the recommendations outlined in this report and review any co-operation and activities with Israel to ensure that these do not contribute to maintaining the system of apartheid”.
    It says that the UN Security Council must “impose targeted sanctions against Israeli officials implicated” and demands an arms embargo on Israel. Amnesty also called for the perpetrators of apartheid to be “brought to justice” through the International Criminal Court.
    The Palestinian BDS National Committee, the broadest Palestinian civil society coalition, has warmly welcomed the Amnesty report condemning Israel’s apartheid regime.
    Amnesty’s rigorously researched report outlines a brutal and intentional system of fragmentation, dispossession, segregation and oppression against the Palestinians Arabs in historic Palestine and around the world as refugees. This system, Amnesty concludes, meets the definition of apartheid under both the Rome Statute and the UN’s Apartheid Convention.
    Like the proverbial stopped clock that’s right twice a day, this human rights organisation that long served imperialism’s interests during the Cold War has finally got it right over Israel.

Johnson in Wonderland

Boris Johnson didn’t amount to much when he was Foreign Minister in Theresa May’s government. His seemingly trivial approach to international diplomacy led the Russians to compare him unflatteringly with his famous Victorian counterpart, calling him Britain’s “New Palmerston”. Few took him seriously and it is even said that President Sisi of Egypt walked out of a meeting with Johnson simply because the conversation did not get beyond the usual pleasantries.
    So we shouldn’t be surprise to see BoJo posing as a great statesman in Kiev in a desperate attempt to show his usefulness to the Biden administration and divert domestic attention away from the ‘partygate’ scandal. But Johnson has, not surprisingly, failed to shake off the pack of Tory back-benchers baying for his blood or attract the attention of Vladimir Putin or the man in the White House Johnson is so keen to impress.
    Johnson knows that the real reason that so many Tories are turning on him is because they believe they will never be able to restore the ‘special relationship’ that many of them think is vital for the survival of British imperialism as long as he remains at the helm.
    Johnson may think that posing as US imperialism’s chief henchman à la Blair is the way to get back into Biden’s good books. But BoJo, who is still remembered as “Britain’s Trump” in Biden’s circles, needs to do much more than this to restore Britain’s standing with the current President of the USA. Rather than wasting his time talking to a nonentity like Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, Johnson would be better off working to improve relations with Ireland by ending the impasse with the European Union over northern Ireland’s Irish Sea ‘border’. But that is something Johnson clearly cannot do.

The long and winding road

Sad to see that Ken Livingstone, who was hounded out of the Labour Party by the Blairites and Zionists, has applied to join the Greens instead. Some will argue that there was nowhere else for him to go. Others that the Greens are indeed a genuinely left alternative to Labour.
    Meanwhile, reports that Jeremy Corbyn is planning to form a new party – reports almost entirely coming from the Starmer camp that want him out anyway – have fired calls from the usual suspects for the establishment of yet another left social-democratic alternative to Labour. But, needless to say, this will go nowhere without the support of the trade union movement and the unions are simply not interested.
    Past efforts have dismally failed. Arthur Scargill, the militant miners’ leader, did his best with his Socialist Labour Party (SLP) whilst even the RMT’s money wasn’t enough to get their Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) off the ground.
    There’s no point even in standing communist candidates. It is literally divisive. The old Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) abandoned the revolutionary road when it adopted the {British Road to Socialism}. Other left electoral platforms such as Respect, the SLP and TUSC all essentially express the same theory.
    The parliamentary election system in Britain is essentially a two-party system. At this stage the main working-class demands are for social reforms, and we believe that they are best carried out by reformist parties such as the Labour Party. We see the main struggle being within that party and the trade unions, and as long as Labour retains its organic links with the trade unions our policies are unlikely to change. Lenin himself said, at the time of Ramsay MacDonald in the early 1920s, that the British Labour Party was a very strange party, unlike any other social democratic party in Europe. The ‘strangeness’ is that Labour gets nearly all its members and funding from the trade unions. This is still the case.

Boris flails around

One could almost feel sorry for the Prime Minister as he flails around trying to fend off the charges from the jeering opposition benches because in the great scale of things Boris Johnson’s “partygate” lies pale into insignificance compared to Tony Blair’s duplicity over the invasion of Iraq. Blair was, in comparison, let off lightly by the Parliamentary Labour Party that let him quiet slink off to make a living on the American lecture trail and pose as a peace envoy for an imaginary UN Palestinian peace plan called the “road map” or some nonsense.
    BoJo repeatedly dismissed Labour calls to resign during heated exchanges in the House of Commons this week with one Labour MP calling him a “liar” to his face and Sir Keir Starmer saying Johnson had had “shown nothing but contempt for the decency, honesty and respect that define this country”. But it’s not Labour Johnson has to worry about – it’s the backstabbers in his own party that will bring him down sooner or later.
    There’s no shortage of wannabees waiting to take his place and the only reason that they haven’t so far moved for a motion of no confidence is that some would rather wait till after the local elections before showing their hand.
    Starmer & Co have been walking on stilts in recent days. Buoyed by the recent surge of support in the opinion polls they claim this is all down to Starmer’s embrace of Blairism and his purge of the Corbynistas. Though Labour has lost tens of thousands of members – some say up between 150,000 to 200,000 have left since Starmer took over this is seen as a “victory” for the Blairites who are rejoicing at the departure of a troublesome band of left social-democrats whose support for Jeremy Corbyn briefly derailed their “New Labour” project.
    They think that their current lead in the polls will translate into a real swing at election time that will sweep them back into government give them all the juicy perks that high office brings. But there’s no guarantee of that.
    What is certain is that a new Conservative leader will galvanise the Tories into mobilising their core vote at the next general election. Labour, on the other hand, will remain weak and divided as long as Starmer is at the helm.
    Starmer is a weak and uninspiring leader. He is clearly incapable of leading Labour to victory. He can’t even mobilise his own party let alone the working class it claims to represent. But the Labour’s problem isn’t to do with personalities. It’s policies that count. Who’s going to swayed by a Labour programme that differs little from those currently espoused by the Conservatives. Certainly not “middle England” or the mythical “hard-working families” that Starmer’s advisers from adland tell us are the keys to electoral success.
    Corbyn’s victory showed that the Labour Party is still a potentially strong weapon for our class and has vindicated our long held electoral position.The surge of support for Labour during the Corbyn era showed that workers could, albeit briefly, reclaim the party they founded and built from the agents and minions of the ruling class who have dominated its highest levels for decades.
What we need and what we must campaign for is a truly democratic Labour Party –a democratic Labour Party controlled by its affiliates; a Labour Party whose policies reflected those of a democratic union movement would become a powerful instrument for progressive reforms that would strengthen organised labour and benefit the working class. It’s a tall order but it can be done. The alternative is more Johnsons and more Starmers.

Deck the halls…

The decorations are up, the Christmas lights are on and the costumed Santas are ho, ho hoing back in the grottos of departmental stores up and down the country. But the shadow of the plague once again hovers over the land as we don on our masks and queue for booster jabs, waiting for the almost inevitable fourth lockdown in the New Year.
    They tell us that this is the season of goodwill. Boris Johnson, for one, will certainly hope so now that the knives are out for him as he’s no longer of any further use to the ruling class.
    The back-stabbers include the grandees he purged in the run-up to the Brexit election of 2019 as well as those who see the scandal-ridden Tory leader as a political liability and the obstacle to restoring the “special relationship” that they believed once existed between British and American imperialism.
    The Prime Minister, who has always believed in his ability to talk his way out of any embarrassing situation, is clearly in deep trouble. Johnson crawls to the Americans over Assange and nukes to Australia, but he cannot see that unless he honours the agreement with the Irish government and the rest of the European Union that he signed up to in the first place he’s never going to get into Biden’s good books.
    Johnson may not want to rock the boat with his Ulster Unionist allies but others, including many in his own ranks, are not prepared to accept an endless Ulster veto on British foreign policy – particularly now their votes are no longer needed to maintain the Conservative majority in the House of Commons.
    We are, supposedly, celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity. And as usual, the great and the good will make their annual obeisance to the Nazarene, whom they claim to worship, but whose teachings they ignore for the other 364 days of the year.
    We’ll get more drivel from the clergy, who reserve their most pious platitudes for the supposed birthday of the ‘Prince of Peace’ on 25th December. But like the Pharisees, whom they pretend to scorn, these charlatans ignore the teachings of their Master who drove the money-changers out of the Temple and said “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”.
    But the days when people listened to the rich men who told us that the greatest virtue of humanity was the possession of the largest amount of money are over.
    Nothing demonstrates the superiority of the socialist system over capitalism more than the response to the Covid crisis over the last two years. Democratic Korea has kept COVID‑19 completely out of the country. The people’s governments in China, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam have successfully beaten back the plague whilst hundreds of thousands die and many, many more are struck down by the coronavirus plague in the imperialist heartlands of Western Europe and North America.
    The ruling class maintains that capitalism is the only game in town. And it is – but only for themselves. Capitalism, in the final analysis, is simply a system designed to perpetuate the rule of the landowners, industrialists and capitalists to ensure that a tiny handful of parasites can live the lives of Roman emperors on the backs of the millions upon millions of working people.
    There is only one solution to the capitalist crisis and that is socialism. Let’s make that our resolution for the New Year. Speed the day!

Interesting Times

Soaring energy prices; fears of a new winter lockdown as the new Omicron Covid variant spreads through Britain and almost daily reports in the mainstream media of the hypocrisy and sleaze that surrounds the Johnson administration. It’s not surprising that the Tory vote crashed at the Old Bexley & Sidcup by-election last week.
    Though the Tories held this true blue bastion in the commuter belt of south-east London the Conservative majority was slashed from almost 19,000 to just 4,478 votes. Reform UK, the successor to Nigel Farage’s old UKIP party bagged 6.6 per cent of the poll and there was even a 7.4 per cent swing to Labour – though some say this was largely due to the fact that Sir Keir Starmer had not shown his face during the campaign.
    Now we’re told of a Christmas party at Downing Street last year, despite gatherings being forbidden under Covid rules at the time and that while Afghan servants of British imperialism were left stranded at Kabul airport when the Taliban took over Boris Johnson personally intervened to ensure that dogs and cats of a British-run animal rescue charity were safely evacuated out of the country.
    All of this is coming from sections of the bourgeois media that, until recently, were praising Johnson to the hilt. And what this shows is while Johnson may well have a plan to deal with another Covid upsurge others clearly have an alternative “Plan B” to push him aside before the next election.
    It’s not just the Tories Remainers – though they’ve clearly got a lot of old scores to settle with Johnson – its the others in the corridors of power who increasingly see Johnson as anh electoral embarrassment as well as a barrier to restoring the “special relationship” with US imperialism.
    Labour should be having a field day over this crisis of confidence within the ranks of the ruling class but all Starmer seems interested is in hounding out what’s left of the Corbynistas inside the Labour Party he claims to lead.
    Anger at his incompetent and useless leadership has now spread throughout the labour movement as a whole. Sharon Graham, the new leader of Unite, has already told Starmer & Co that they can expect no more than the affiliation fees from her union in the future and the demand to cut financial support to Labour is growing in other unions as well.

Grovelling to the White House

In the past crawling to the Americans was almost compulsory for Tory and Labour leaders who would drone on and on about “partnership” and the “special relationship” to justify British imperialism’s slavish support of American power throughout the world. But Johnson has taken it to a new level in a bid to restore his government’s credibility in the White House.
    Last week British envoys joined the Americans in a diplomatic offensive in Kiev to try and push their Nato allies into supporting more sanctions against Russia to prop up the Ukrainian puppet regime. Now they’ve joined hands with the Americans and Israel to support the continued Zionist occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights, which were captured during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
    The resolution reaffirmed that settlement construction and any other Israeli activities constitute a change in the demographic nature of the occupied Syrian Golan. It called on Israel to resume peace talks and withdraw from the occupied Syrian Golan in accordance with the border lines of 4th June1967.
    At the UN General Assembly members overwhelmingly affirmed Syria’s sovereignty at a session last week in vote carried by 94 with 69 abstentions
    Israel was supported by just seven other states : the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, and three tiny Pacific island states – the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau – that are little more than American protectorates.

Beware the Ides of March

That was the warning Julius Caesar foolishly ignored on his way to the forum during the last days of the old Roman republic. Caesar thought he was favoured by the gods. Boris Johnson has no such excuse.
    Johnson’s shambolic performance at the CBI’s annual conference this week was clearly the last straw for a growing band of Tory MPs who want Johnson out before the next election.
    The knives are out for Boris and there’s no shortage of those willing to take his place. Jeremy Hunt wants another crack at the Tory leadership and the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, does little to mask his ambitions. Even Liz Truss, the newly promoted foreign minister, is said to be interested in entering the race, if and when it happens.
    And that can could come early in the New Year, with some MPs already calling for the Prime Minister to step down following his failure to put the lid on the sleaze scandals that have rocked the Johnson administration in recent weeks.
    Around a dozen dissident MPs have submitted letters of no confidence to the chair of the powerful 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers. This is still well short of the 15 per cent needed to trigger a leadership challenge, but that could easily change if the crisis of confidence in the Johnson government gains momentum amongst the voters in the Tory shires and the heartlands of suburbia that the Tories rely on to keep them in office.
    The leadership of the Conservative & Unionist Party means nothing to workers who have no say in choosing who should be the parliamentary representative of the dominant section of the British ruling class. The future of the Tory party is matter of complete indifference to us. It’s the future of the labour movement that counts.

High speed derailment

The RMT rail union has denounced the scrapping of the eastern leg of the HS2 high-speed rail line, which the union says essentially tears up the Government’s levelling up agenda and its own climate change commitments. The Johnson government’s U-turn on key rail projects is a “great northern rail betrayal”. It’s a view also shared by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who said Labour was committed to the full HS2 proposals and Northern Powerhouse rail.
    What we really need is a genuinely integrated transport system that can only come through public ownership. The re-nationalisation of British Airways and the bus and rail companies would enable future governments build an eco-friendly, integrated transport system across Britain. But it would require immense investment that can only come from the coffers of the state.
    “Our climate and communities cannot afford false political choices between different rail projects when what we need is all these projects to go ahead and a historic mass investment in our railways that gets people out of cars and onto trains and public transport. But instead we get more Tory austerity, cut backs and attacks on rail workers’ jobs and rail services,” the RMT says. “Public transport investment pays for itself through the economic benefits it brings and it’s time the government took a proper long-term approach that reflects that fact.”

Boris is in trouble

Boris Johnson’s in trouble. Getting nowhere with Brussels over northern Ireland; under fire in the North Country for scrapping the HS2 Leeds extension; swamped with sleaze stories largely from his own camp – even the useless Keir Starmer is getting the better of him at Question Time in the Commons. No wonder Labour’s in the lead – the first for nearly a year – in the opinion polls.
    The Prime Minister’s woes are, of course, largely of his own making. He surrounds himself with people lesser than himself and then expects them to resolve problems that even he can’t resolve. His only asset has been a proven ability to get the Tory vote out when needed over Brexit and at the last general election.
    Brexit was, undeniably, a remarkable achievement for the Tory leader who had to drive the grandees out of his own party during the post-referendum battles that brought down David Cameron and Mrs May. Victory, however, came at a high price. The grandees have never forgiven him for his churlish behaviour nor have they abandoned their dreams of returning to the European Union. But the grandees aren’t the only ones.
    Johnson staked everything on a Trump victory in the American elections. “Britain’s Trump” believed that would lead to a “Treaty of Washington” that would create and Anglo-American free trade arena that would replace the Treaty of Rome. But it didn’t happen and it’s clearly not going to happen under Biden.
    The dispute with Brussels over the status of northern Ireland has only made things worse. The Northern Ireland Protocol that governs the post-Brexit customs and immigration issues and trade between the Irish Republic, Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom was meant to resolve the problem. Now the Government, under pressure from the Ulster Unionist parties, is threatening to suspend the deal outright.
    But many in the Tory camp fear that any unilateral move on northern Ireland will only add to their woes. They know that the American Democrats are mindful of the voting power of the Kennedy clan and the rest of the American-Irish lobby which includes Biden himself. And the Americans have made it clear that they’ll support the Irish government if it comes to an Anglo-Irish trade war.
    With no fall-back position Johnson’s been left floundering outside Biden’s international circle. “Global Britain” remains a dream despite hosting two major international summits in the UK over the past year and nobody now seriously talks about a “special relationship” with the United States.
    Some Tories clearly believe that taking Johnson out of the equation will renew the trans-Atlantic bonds they believe are essential for the survival of British imperialism. Others don’t want to rock the boat until after the next election. But for us the future of the Conservative & Unionist Party is matter of complete indifference. It’s the future of the labour movement that counts.
    These days all that Starmer & Co have to offer is the old Blairite claim that they are a tad more liberal than the Tories on social issues. But the choice for working people cannot be simply reduced to which major party is worse than the other. The choice clearly has to be for a Labour Party that reflects the demands of the street and not the differences between certain elements within the ruling class on how to best exploit those they oppress. Sadly the future doesn’t bode well with Starmer at the helm of the Labour Party.
    Labour must return to its core policies to keep its core voters. The “Welfare State” and the public sector must be restored and higher rate income tax raised to 1979 levels to help pay for it. The labour movement has the power to change the leadership and the direction of the Labour Party. That change is needed more than ever now.