Week two of the election race

 It’s round two of the election campaign with Labour still streets ahead of the Tories in the opinion polls despite Sunak’s best efforts to defend his record on the TV “leaders” debate between Starmer and Sunak this week. Diane Abbott has turned the tables on the Starmerites and is now, once again, the official Labour candidate in Hackney. Nigel Farage has thrown his hat into the ring in Clacton to return to the helm of his Reform Party that one pollster puts only two points behind the Conservatives. The Liberal-Democrats and the Greens are buoyed at the response they’re getting in the seats they’re hoping to bag in July.
Meanwhile seven more Labour councillors resign over Starmer’s stand on Gaza and Jeremy Corbyn’s bid to hold his seat as an independent in Islington has kicked off with the open support of two local councillors who have resigned from the Labour Party to support his campaign. Corbyn told the media that he was not aligning himself with George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain but said he would give critical support to an incoming Labour government.
The Tories remain in the doldrums. The “Red Belters” who turned to the Tories over Brexit are now returning to the Labour fold while many others in the once deep-blue Home Counties are looking to Reform, the Lib-Dems and the Greens for change. But our first-past-the-post constituency system is a tough hurdle for all the minor parties to jump. Farage’s return to centre stage will certainly boost Reform’s chances of getting into Parliament. Whether they will remains to be seen.
Buoyed by the polls Farage is talking all sorts of nonsense about Canada where a similarly named party rose like a shooting star in the 1990s to eventually become the new Conservative Party of Canada that has 118 seats in the Canadian House of Commons. His real concern is however at the prospect of a Remainer revival under Labour. Starmer’s already talking about negotiating a new deal with Brussels that could pave the way to “associate” status or even the second referendum the Remainers want. There’s no serious Brexiteers on Starmer’s front-bench and few left in the Tory ranks these days.
The bourgeoisie may be divided over Europe but they have no problem with the debate around defence, education and the health service. It, afterall, reflects the divisions within the ruling class over how much, or indeed how little, they are prepared to pay to maintain social peace in the country. What they don’t want is a public discussion that strays beyond the bourgeois consensus in favour of NATO, Britain’s nuclear arsenal and Israel.
Our task as communists is to put peace and socialism top of the agenda on the street. To demand a halt to British arms supplies to Israel and Ukraine. To expand our trade and cultural links with People’s China, end the confrontation with the Russian Federation and support the efforts of the Global South to halt the imperialist arms race that is threatening world peace all over the world.

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.

Pay the Nurses, fund the NHS

Nurses are gearing up for a “summer of action” over pay following the Government’s derisory three per cent award that the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said amounts to a cut after inflation is taken into account. The RCN is organising demonstrations across the country and a consultative pay ballot in the run-up to its annual conference in September. Unison and the British Medical Association (BMA) are sounding out their members on future industrial action for higher pay.
    Whilst the Tories bleat that their award is higher than the initial one per cent they offered in March, it is still well short of the 12.5 per cent demand from nursing staff or the similar demands of the GMB and Unite, who also organise workers in the health sector.
    Prime Minister Boris Johnson came under attack this week after he tried to dodge being 'pinged' for self-isolation – a day after announcing that so-called vaccine passports would be required for entry to nightclubs, concerts and other large public events from September.
    Meanwhile the knives are out for Johnson following a Tory dip in the opinion polls, which his rivals say is down to Johnson’s incompetent handling of the lockdown lifting. The latest YouGov poll put the Tories down six points to 38 per cent last week, just four points over Labour, whilst the minor parties – the Liberal Democrats and the Greens – also gained three points at the expense of the Conservatives. On this basis a general election would produce a hung parliament dependent on the whims of the Scottish nationalists and Northern Ireland’s unionist parties.
    Some Tory backbenchers say that momentum is growing to ditch Johnson in favour of his Chancellor, Rishi Sunak. But this may be premature. Sunak is undoubtedly a very ambitious man – but he probably still needs a few more years in high office before reaching out for the premiership and he certainly needs to reach some sort of understanding with the Remainer grandees to secure a seamless succession.
    This should be a golden opportunity for Labour to regain lost ground by backing the health workers to the hilt. The Corbynistas have pledged full support. But all we’ve got from Sir Keir Starmer are some mealy-mouthed words about fair pay for nurses. Starmer said the three per cent offer was “not fair” – but he refuses to endorse the union claims or to say what he thinks would be “fair”.
    Millions of working people are eternally grateful for the dedication and sacrifice of the health service workers who are on the front-line in the battle against the coronavirus plague. Opinion polls show that most of them support the nurses’ demands. But far from heeding the voices on the street, Starmer would rather go down the road of the Blairites and Zionists to pursue pointless vendettas against tiny Trotskyist sects in the mistaken belief that this will give him some street-cred with northern workers and chalk-up some more brownie points with what is perceived to be the dominant wing of the ruling class.
    The entire labour movement needs to close ranks around the NHS workers’ pay campaign to force the Government to respond realistically to their just demands and to provide concrete solidarity if they are forced to take industrial action later in the year.

Labour needs new agenda

The Conservatives are firm favourites to win the Batley and Spen by-election on 1st July. This “Red Wall” West Yorkshire seat came up for grabs after Tracy Brabin, the sitting MP, stepped down after winning the West Yorkshire mayoral election in the local elections last month. The Tories, who are fielding Ryan Stephenson, the Chair of the West Yorkshire Conservatives who sits on Leeds council, are upbeat about their campaign. Although Labour fended off the Tory challenge at the last general election in 2019, the Tories are now odds-on to take the seat that’s been Labour’s since 1997.
    That’s perhaps not surprising given that the only apparent qualification that the new Labour candidate has is that she is the sister of Jo Cox, the former constituency MP who was murdered by a far-right extremist during the European Union (EU) campaign in 2016.
    Kim Leadbeater has obvious campaigning skills. She worked as an ambassador for the Jo Cox Foundation, which was established to campaign for issues her sister supported, and she was appointed MBE in the New Year's Honours for her work in tackling social isolation. Although she only joined Labour some weeks before her nomination, she has the support of the local Labour party as well as Andy Burnham, the ambitious Mayor of Greater Manchester, and Labour’s leader, Sir Keir Starmer. Whether that’s enough to see off the Tories in July is another matter altogether.
    Fourteen others have put their names down for the election, including the Liberal Democrats and the usual Loonies as well as the assorted also-rans that include the ‘Yorkshire Party’ and George Galloway, who is standing on his own ‘Workers’ Party of Britain’ ticket. Galloway has had spectacular by-election successes in the past; but those days have now long passed along with the Respect party he set up after he was kicked out of the Labour Party by the Blairites in 2003 for opposing the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq.
    It will a big blow to Kim Leadbeater if she loses the by-election. It will be an even bigger one for Sir Kier Starmer, who came under flak from his own Blairite allies after the shock Tory win in Hartlepool in May. Losing this seat could well be the last straw for Starmer.
    The Blairites are already preparing their alibis for defeat. The blame-game will begin with renewed calls to drive the remaining Corbynistas out of the Labour Party. It will rapidly be followed by a call for an electoral front with the Liberal Democrats and a final break with the trade union movement – as long as it doesn’t jeopardise the millions of pounds that the unions loyally pump into Labour’s coffers every year.
    But if Labour lose it will entirely be down to them and the man with whom they chose to replace Jeremy Corbyn in the first place. No-one knows what Starmer’s crew stands for these days, apart from supporting Israel and witch-hunting former Corbyn supporters who don’t toe the line. The only consistent policy they do have – support for the EU – is one they dare not declare publicly because it would be the kiss of death for their election chances on the street.
    The question is not who leads of the Labour Party – although clearly Starmer must go – but who sets the agenda for the party that claims to represent working people. We, as communists, have to fight for the demands of the unions for full employment and the restoration of the public sector, the health service and the welfare state. At the same time, we’ve got to ensure that the communist answer to the crisis is heard once again in factories, offices and streets throughout the land.

What a difference a day makes

 Or not in Dominic Cummings’ case. Last week Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser spent seven hours telling a parliamentary committee how bad his former chief was. He said government officials, including himself, had fallen “disastrously short of the standards that the public has a right to expect” and that the “government failed” over the coronavirus crisis. Health Secretary Matt Hancock should have been fired for lying, and that frontline workers and civil servants were "lions led by donkeys". As for Boris Johnson, "thousands" of people were better suited to run the country than him and that he was not a "fit and proper person" to get the UK through the pandemic.
    Some say Cummings still hopes to return to the corridors of power through the patronage of the Chancellor Rishi Sunak or his old mentor, Michael Gove. But who can trust him?
    This man was once seen as the éminence grise of the Johnson administration. Tories, with varying degrees of affection, called him “Dom”, “The Mekon” or “Rasputin”. Now it’s just “Judas” – the man who betrays his master in revenge for being sacked.
    Cummings may have thought his revelations would lead to a Cabinet crisis or even force the resignation of Hancock and Johnson. But he was wrong. Most Tories still think Boris Johnson walks on water. The utterly useless leader of the opposition, Sir Kier Starmer, has totally failed to exploit the situation in Labour’s favour whilst the Remainer grandees stand back to watch the Brexiteers fight amongst themselves for a change. It has done nothing to dent the Tory lead in the opinion polls.

Tories Ahead

 The Conservatives are seven points ahead of Labour in the opinion polls that also say that some 88 per cent of the public think that the Government has done a good job getting the public vaccinated as soon as possible.
    While Boris Johnson basks in the reflected glory of the NHS’s coronavirus vaccine roll-out the future looks bleak for Sir Keir Starmer and his diminishing band of supporters. The knives are already out amid speculation that Labour is going to get a hammering in the local and regional elections in two months’ time.
    `The Blairites backed Starmer to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn and drive the Corbynistas out of the party they tried to reform during Corbyn’s time at the top table. Now they’re having second thoughts.
    Some are openly saying that Starmer is a hopeless campaigner who is clearly unelectable. Others are staying their hand -- waiting to see what actually happens in the May polls before making any move to trigger another Labour leadership contest. But who’s going to lead them?
    Not the old has-beens on Labour’s back-benches who still think Labour’s fortunes can be restored by returning to the imaginary golden age of the Blair era. Nor the others who want to lure David Miliband back across the Atlantic to lead Labour when the time comes.
    They want Miliband. Whether he wants to give up his cushy number as head of the International Rescue Committee in New York in exchange is another matter. We’ll probably never know because there are plenty of other wannabe leaders in Labour’s ranks.
    Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, has got his hands full campaigning for re-election in May. But Andy Burnham, the ambitious Mayor of Greater Manchester, has set his sights on the leadership. He said as much last month while denying planning a coup to oust Starmer. Though ultimately a careerist who loyally served the Blair and Brown administrations, Burnham can also count on the support of some of the big guns in the union movement.
    One of them is Len McCluskey. The leader of Unite, the biggest union in the country, told us in October that “Andy Burnham has been doing a fantastic job in speaking up for and defending the people he has been elected to serve. Unite members will be forever grateful to him for fighting the corner of the low-waged and those in insecure employment, the vulnerable and the young, all of whom are paying the heaviest price of this dreadful virus”.
     Grateful or not Labour’s rank-and-file are not consulted over Starmer while the Corbynistas are left fighting a losing battle against the bureaucracy’s suspensions and expulsions.
     Rebecca Long-Bailey, Starmer's closest rival in last year's leadership contest, has been sidelined. Momentum, with its claimed 40,000 plus membership, is a broken reed.
     Nevertheless the New Communist Party’s electoral policy is still to vote Labour. It’s not because we think a Labour government can solve the problems of working people. We know that isn’t possible in a bourgeois “democracy”. Our policy exists because it is based on the concrete conditions that exist in Britain today.
    In our view a Labour government with its continuing links with the trade 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 to create a truly democratic Labour Party that will carry out the demands of organised labour when in office.

Blowing in the wind

Boris Johnson has clearly turned indecision into a fine art. He refuses to sack Priti Patel over the “bullying” scandal whilst at the same time letting his minions brief the media of his intention to downgrade her at the next Government reshuffle in the New Year. The Home Office scandal has already led to the resignation of the Government’s independent adviser, Sir Alex Allen, a retired civil service mandarin whose report concluded that Ms Patel's approach “amounted to behaviour that can be described as bullying”.
There’s no doubt that Priti Patel did breach ministerial standards. She’s got form on this. Three years ago a former aide received a £25,000 pay-out from the government after claiming she was bullied by Priti Patel who was then employment minister. In February, Sir Philip Rutnam, the Home Office's most senior official, resigned alleging that Ms Patel's conduct towards staff included “swearing, belittling people, making unreasonable and repeated demands”.
Far from being an exclusively fascist virtue bullying is, in fact, a vital part of capitalist culture. Until the late 1960s it was the basis of discipline at school from the teachers down to the prefects and their class-room toadies. It remains the principle behind order in the armed forces throughout the bourgeois world. In factories and offices it’s called “Management’s right to manage”, which can only be mitigated by strong union organisation.
Whilst Johnson needs as many friends as he can get at the top table as his Government faces an uncertain future now that Trump’s gone, the question of bullying goes right to the heart of the psyche of the ruling class.

counting the days

 What has Sir Keir Starmer achieved since he won the Labour leadership contest in April? Absolutely nothing apart from getting away with the continued persecution of former leader Jeremy Corbyn and encouraging a wave of Blairite purges in the constituencies.
    Starmer said he would continue along Corbyn’s path. He said he would fight austerity and “unify” the party. Instead, he’s taken the bogus “anti-Semitism” campaign to new ludicrous heights to drive the Corbynistas out of the Labour party.     His “ten pledge” programme has long been forgotten. The only “unity” Starmer wants is with the ageing Blairites who still sit in the House of Commons, and the only fight Starmer’s led is against Jeremy Corbyn and those who backed him when he was at the helm.
    Though the Johnson government is useless and incompetent it still tops Labour in the opinion polls and barring a miracle Labour looks set for disaster at the local and regional elections next year.
    How long can Starmer last as Labour’s leader? Whilst the answer is clearly for as long as the membership is prepared to put up with him, his days must surely be numbered.

America’s back

US President-elect Joe Biden tells the world that “America is back, ready to lead the world”, but sadly it never went away in the first place. Sure Trump talked about “America First” and made some token troop withdrawals in Afghanistan and the Middle East, but the great “deal-maker” achieved nothing on the international arena apart from strengthening the position of Zionist Israel in the Middle East.
    Nor can we expect much from Biden. The popular vote that swept Biden into the White House may develop into a mass movement to halt American aggression in the future. We’ll see. Hopefully the new Biden team will put aside old dreams of regime change and world domination and focus on tackling the coronavirus plague that is sweeping through America unchecked at the moment. We can well do without the leadership of US imperialism, Trump-style or otherwise.

An easy target

Boris Johnson was an easy target for Sir Keir Starmer this week. The Labour leader mocked him during Question Time when he said: “If the prime minister doesn’t understand the rules and his own council leaders are complaining about mixed messages, how does the prime minister expect the rest of the country to understand and follow the rules?”
     Johnson’s answer that: “actually, I think that the people of this country do understand and overwhelmingly do follow the rules” may be true. The problem is knowing what these new rules “actually” mean.
    This has been a week of mixed messages from the Johnson government that has ordered more local lock-downs as the country staggers into a second wave of the coronavirus plague. Badly briefed Ministers stumble trying to explain the re-introduction of emergency measures to deal with the crisis that health experts predicted would inevitably come in the autumn while Tory back-benchers grumble at “government by decree” and launch half-baked parliamentary revolts that fizzle out when Johnson waves his big stick.
    But the speculation on how long can Boris last continues in the bourgeois media. Last month the rumour spread that Johnson was going to stand down early next year on “health grounds”. Now some of the media gurus are saying Johnson should go because he’s useless, regardless of his health.
    A lot depends on the outcome of the US elections. Johnson has pinned his political future on a post-Brexit American trade deal that only Trump can deliver. We still have not been told the full terms of this “Treaty of Washington” that Johnson hopes will replace the Treaty of Rome that Britain tore up when it left the European Union last year. The Remainers tell us that this ‘free trade’ agreement will open the door to chlorinated chicken and let big American pharma corporations plunder the health service. It also seems that other clauses will prevent Britain from entering any free trade agreement with People’s China without American approval.
    Some of the Tory Brexiteers are, of course, all for it, Though China is the UK’s fifth largest trading partner they are not interested in expanding the British share of the Chinese market. They talk about the “Anglosphere” – the old imperialist dream of wielding the “English-speaking people” into a new economic and political bloc that would dominate the world.
The idea goes back to the early days of the 20th century when some members of the ruling class believed that they could curb German ambitions by wooing the Americans into their camp.
    The “Anglosphere” is, of course, a meaningless concept. It covers Australia, Canada and New Zealand. It excludes Ireland and South Africa but includes Israel. In fact the leading Israeli daily Haaretz tells us that Benjamin Netanyahu “would like nothing better than to nestle under the wings of a grand Anglo-Saxon alliance. He and several of his close associates are not only English-speaking, they view themselves as co-champions of capitalism and laissez-faire economies”.
    Needless to say the idea was never taken seriously in the United States. Winston Churchill, whose mother was a daughter of a wealthy American businessman, did believe in some sort of “union” with US imperialism. In the end, he had to settle for a “special relationship” within the NATO framework that included Franco-German imperialism.
Today Australia, Canada and New Zealand remain monarchies under the British Crown but London is no longer the hub of an empire that spanned the globe and support for British institutions goes little beyond sentiment for the “mother country” amongst the older population.
    Tories who repeat this “Anglosphere” nonsense are only doing it to justify the humiliating terms they will have to accept to get their trade deal with the Americans. They should wait for the outcome of the American elections. If Biden wins all bets are off.

Bye Bye Theresa May

None of us will shed a tear for the departure of Mrs May, who fell on her sword last week after failing for the umpteenth time to get support for her half-baked Brexit plan from her own Tory ranks. No-one will miss her.

When Mrs May took over from David Cameron in 2016 her followers claimed she would become another “Mrs Thatcher”. That didn’t happen. Now she has joined the ranks of past Tory politicians forced into early retirement over internal divisions within the Conservative Party over the European Union (EU).

Her withdrawal plan, which would have kept Britain in the EU in all but name, was doomed from the start as it outraged the die-hard Brexiteers in her own camp whilst failing to appease Remainers who don’t want us to leave the EU at all.

Whoever the Tories pick to succeed Theresa May as leader is a matter of complete indifference to working people. None of us will have any input into the selection process nor need we care who they choose to take her place. What we have must do is step up the demand for a general election now to ensure that whoever follows in her footsteps has only a limited time to do more harm to the working class.