What a difference a day makes…

...or not in the case of Sir Tony Blair whose comments on the current turmoil within the Labour Party were splashed all over the bourgeois press last week. Whatever he achieved in office –  Scottish and Welsh devolution, ending the conflict in northern Ireland and pushing through some minor social  reforms – was far eclipsed by his despicable role in supporting the American onslaught on Iraq which ended in invasion and the execution of the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein. The dreams of Anglo-American imperialism ended in the streets of Baghdad as the Iraqi resistance fought back to eventually free the country from imperialist occupation. Blair fell from grace soon after – leaving Downing Street to console himself with lucrative sinecures, non-jobs like his “peace-keeping” role in the Middle East, that were given to him by the Americans as a reward for his life-time of service to imperialism. 
To be fair Blair never pretends to be anything more than he is – a mouthpiece for what he thinks is the dominant trend within the ruling class. He has plenty to say but he’s got nothing to offer workers. Or as Jeremy Corbyn  put it “Tony Blair thinks the answer to this country’s problems is AI, welfare cuts and endless spending on war. Who benefits? Arms companies and tech billionaires. Once again, Blair is wrong. The answer is a redistribution of wealth and power and the relentless search for peace”.
Tony Blair, like Ramsay MacDonald and Sir Keir Starmer, divided and ultimately betrayed the Labour Party. But to paraphrase Orwell and say “all Labour leaders are rubbish, but some are more rubbisher than others” may be going too far.  Attlee, Wilson and Callaghan did have their moments – though this was largely due to the immense pressure at the time from the labour movement as a whole for social justice.
Tony Blair is a rich man who has also acquired a number of gongs along the way. These include the usual honours reserved for past Prime Ministers as well as the American Presidential Medal of Freedom and the more dubious Dan David Prize given by Tel Aviv University for Blair’s "exceptional leadership and steadfast determination in helping to engineer agreements and forge lasting solutions to areas in conflict".
None of this has, however, restored his political standing in Britain. The fame that Blair so longs for continues to elude him. His paean of praise for the sort of  American-style neo-con policies that have been embraced by both Democratic and Republican administrations in Washington throughout the 21st century may have been music for the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg in the Conservative party but it didn’t go down well with Keir Starmer or the two contenders for his job, Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham, and can only serve to remind them of how glad they were to see the back of him in 2007.  

A just decision

 The High Court has ruled the Palestine Action ban unlawful.Three judges led by Dame Victoria Sharp, president of the King’s Bench Division, concluded that the decision to ban the group was unlawful. However, the ban will remain temporarily in place to allow the government time to appeal.
On 5th July last year membership of or public support for the Palestine Action campaign became a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison. The pro-Palestinian direct action network was placed on the list of proscribed organisations, categorising it alongside internationally recognised ‘terrorist’ groups.
Over 2,700 people have been arrested since the ban took effect, most under section 13 of the Terrorism Act. More than 500 individuals, including members of the clergy, pensioners and military veterans, have been charged.
The court upheld the challenge on two of four grounds. Judges found that the proscription represented “a very significant interference” with the rights to freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, and association. They also ruled that the decision of the then Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, was inconsistent with her own stated policy.
Though Dame Victoria Sharp described Palestine Action as an organisation “that promotes its political cause through criminality and encouragement of criminality” she said that “the court considered that the proscription of Palestine Action was disproportionate. A very small number of Palestine Action’s activities amounted to acts of terrorism within the definition of section 1 of the 2000 Act.
“For these, and for Palestine Action’s other criminal activities, the general criminal law remains available. The nature and scale of Palestine Action’s activities falling within the definition of terrorism had not yet reached the level, scale, and persistence to warrant proscription” .
Or as Jeremy Corbyn put it: “we knew the proscription of Palestine Action was absurd and immoral. Now, we know it was unlawful too. Today’s ruling is a vindication for all those who had the courage to oppose genocide – and a day of shame for those in our government who enabled it”.
The judgement resolutely rebuffs the Starmer government’s attempts to criminalise political dissent and activism aimed at stopping material support for genocide. This is a historic ruling. For the first time an organisation banned under the Terrorism Act has successfully challenged its proscription in court.
Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori said this was a monumental victory.  “We were banned because Palestine Action’s disruption of Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, Elbit Systems, cost the corporation millions of pounds in profits and to lose out on multibillion-pound contracts.
“We’ve used the same tactics as direct action organisations throughout history, including anti-war groups Keir Starmer defended in court, and the government acknowledged in these legal proceedings that this ban was based on property damage, not violence against people. Banning Palestine Action was always about appeasing pro-Israel lobby groups and weapons manufacturers, and nothing to do with terrorism”.
The ruling, and the court victories of the previous weeks in the Filton cases, show that the Government’s actions were not only immoral but unlawful.
We call for the dropping of all charges against those who have been linked to this unlawful proscription and other cases of protest against British complicity in Israel’s genocide, including the organisers of the national marches for Palestine facing criminal charges. 
We call for the resignation of police commissioner Mark Rowley, as well as former Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and current Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. And above all, we call for the resignation of the head of the whole rotting edifice, Sir Keir Starmer. 

Goodbye Mandelson

Peter Mandelson has at last left the Labour Party. Brought down by the Epstein dossier, his reputation in tatters, his departure follows his earlier resignation as British ambassador in Washington and his more recent departure from the House of Lords.This week’s finale was an inevitable but grudging acceptance by Tony Blair’s chief henchman that his political career is over. No one cares.
No one is going to miss this venal schemer who wore his corruption as a badge of honour throughout the Blairite days when he was known as the “Prince of Darkness” by friend and foe alike.
His enemies, and they are legion, rejoice at his downfall. His “friends”, like Starmer who relied on Mandelson and the other ageing Blairites to keep him in office, now disown him. Mandelson was an icon for the right-wing social democrats that hounded Corbyn, Livingstone and thousands of others out of the Labour Party.
Now Starmer claims he didn’t know the extent of Mandelson’s dealings with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted brothel keeper who supplied young girls to prominent politicians and businessmen on both sides of the Atlantic and died in unusual circumstances in a New York jail in 2019. 
Starmer thinks he can weather the storm if he can hold on to Gorton & Denton in the by-election this month. But he’s got the Faragists and the Greens snapping at his heels while the Tories clamour for a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons to bring down his floundering government. Starmer, of course, must go. And the sooner the better. But who will replace him?
Starmer’s cohorts, who dominate the Parliamentary Labour Party, is in a dilemna. They argue that the only alternative to a Labour government is one led by Nigel Farage – who is certainly no friend of the labour movement. They liken the Corbynistas and the Greens to the “lunatic fringe” and still believe in Blair’s “New Labour” mantras of “new world order” capitalism and crawling to American imperialism – even though capitalism doesn’t work except for the immensely rich and the Americans neither need nor want their “special relationship” these days.
Their chosen successor, Wes Streeting, was a protege of the digraced Mandelson. And none of  the others in Starmer’s faction are capable of holding the highest office in the land.
Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham wait in the wings to pick up the pieces when Starmer inevitably goes. But though they can campaign on the street – unlike the totally useless Starmer – their outlook differs little from the general right-wing Labour milieu they came from in the first place. They pay lip-service to the trade union bureaucrats who run the TUC and most of the unions in the country. But that’s as far as it goes – and as far as it will ever go as long as the careerists and time-servers remain in charge. That’s where the struggle for socialism must begin anew – and it must start now...

Burnham’s move

The Labour bureaucracy’s decision to block Andy Burnham’s bid to return to Parliament comes as no surprise – least of all to the Mayor of Greater Manchester who has done little in recent months to mask his leadership ambitions. Burnham knows the score. His star  rose with the help of the right-wing blocs that have long held sway in the unions and the Labour Party – factions that are still loyal to Starmer and the ageing gang of washed-up Blairites that advise him.
Though some 50 Labour backbenchers and peers are calling on Labour’s NEC to reverse the Burnham ban they don’t have the power or influence to force it through. But the decision to bar Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham from contesting the Gorton & Denton by-election is a double-edged sword. It removes a potential challenger to Starmer or his chosen successor, Wes Streeting but at the same time it boosts the chances of the Faragists and the Greens – who are both making huge efforts to turf Labour out at the by-election in the Manchester constituency next month. And if Labour lose Starmer’s days are numbered.
Burnham will still be out of the running. He hasn’t got a seat in Parliament and he’s never going to get one as long as Starmer & Co are in charge,
Burnham’s hope however is that Starmer will fall on his sword if the Labour vote collapses in Gorton & Denton and the regional and local elections that will soon follow in the Spring. If the ‘Stop Streeting’ brigade can mount a successful challenge for the leadership – possibly through Angela Rayner – Burnham’s return to national politics and the high office he craves for is on the cards. The ‘King of the North’ has been checked. But he’s still in the game.
None of this, however, is of much benefit to the working class. At the end of the day there is little that really divides Starmer and Burnham. All we are seeing is a spat within right-wing social-democracy – a beauty contest between the third-rate bureaucrat who claims to lead us and a seasoned street-wise politician who knows how to woo the voters. 
Sadly the left response has been weak and divided. The Corbynistas are too busy locked in their own internal struggles to intervene. One of their prominente, Salma Yaqoob, is openly calling on her followers to support the Greens in the Gorton & Denton by-election.
Prominent Your Party member and former Respect party leader Salma Yaqoob has endorsed the Greens in the upcoming Gorton & Denton by-election. She is urging the left to “work together to support” the Greens who are now the bookies’ favourite to take the seat. 
Though essentially a liberal-bourgeois front the Greens like to pose as ‘eco-socialists’ when gunning for votes in traditional Labour areas. Zack Polanski, the Green leader, is a former Liberal-Democrat who has seen his platform grow on calls for a wealth tax, an end to arms sales to Israel, and the defence of immigrants, asylum seekers and civil liberties as a whole.
But this is still reformism – a rebrand of the left social-democracy we see time and time again within the European Union that the Greens much admire.
Though there is a time and place for a protest vote – and Starmer definitely must go – we must keep up the fight against the whole capitalist system in Britain and throughout the world.

Knives out for Starmer

Smears, rumours and gossip. From the mainstream media to the murky corners of the dark web it’s clear that concerted efforts are being made by some of the Labour prominenti to clear the decks for a challenge to Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership later in the year. Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are in the frame amid renewed speculation around Andy Burnham’s return to the parliamentary arena.
The knives are out on the Labour street. Many in the Westminster bubble say any one of those three could do a better job than Starmer. The truth is that practically anyone in the Labour Party as a whole would be better than Starmer – the man who led Labour to landslide victory at the general election last year and is now leading them to an equally colossal defeat if the opinion polls are anything to go by.
Starmer is a cynical politician whose lodestar is simply to follow what he believes is the dominant trend within the British ruling class. Not an easy thing to do at the best of times – let alone in these fraught times of end days capitalism.
But there is no dominant trend within the ruling class these days – neither on the European Union, Nato or, more importantly, on how to deal with the Trump administration.
Starmer’s European “reset” enraged the Brexiteers but won him no favours from the Remainers who say, with some justification, that these token gestures to Brussels do nothing to swell the demand for a second referendum on the European Union. His attempt to become a “leader” in Europe by rallying Franco-German imperialism to stave off the collapse of the Zelensky regime is an equally pointless gesture as the fate of Ukraine is going to be decided by Washington and Moscow – regardless of the “special relationship” that supposedly exists between Britain and the United States.
Gone are the delusions of grandeur of the British ruling class who believed that the American sphere of influence across the globe constitutes the “free world” and that Britain was the second-in-command in policing it. The days when British imperialism could play off the USA against the Europeans by acting as a trans-Atlantic “bridge” between American imperialism and that of France and Germany are long gone. 
The “special relationship” that Winston Churchill believed went beyond the terms of the NATO alliance largely existed only in the imagination of Tory leaders and right-wing Labour politicians. Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair liked to pose as partners of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton but at the end of the day it was always the Americans who called the shots. Boris Johnson talked about "a new special relationship"  and a trans-Atlantic free trade zone. But the ‘Treaty of Washington’ never saw the light of day and Trump’s latest thinking – a one-sided tariff agreement and the annexation of Canada – is totally unacceptable to the British ruling class.
In the corridors of power some believe Britain should simply sit it out. Put up with Trump until his term of office expires and hope for better times to come.  Others say time is not on their side – wary of the talk of a “new Yalta” in Washington and the Kremlin – a redivision of the world by the super-powers that would leave nothing but crumbs for Britain and the European Union.
A change may well be as good as a rest but Labour needs more than a cosmetic reshuffle of the top table to revive its flagging fortunes. Starmer, of course, has to go. But whoever takes his place will have to dump the old imperialist agenda if Labour is to have any hope of winning the next election.

Between a rock and a hard place

Keir Starmer’s off to Washington next week to win support for a European plan to send 30,000 British and European Union troops to Ukraine as “peacekeepers” if and when a truce is agreed to end the Ukraine war. Though this force would allegedly be there to guarantee Ukraine’s independence its real role would be to preserve the British and European Union’s economic interests in a post-war Ukraine that Donald Trump clearly sees as no more than an American protectorate.
The war-lobby that reflects the most venal and aggressive sections of the British ruling class has gone into top gear with Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrat worthies all urging Starmer to “stand up” to Donald Trump. The Atlanticists who used to hail American presidents as leaders of the “free world” have closed ranks with those who look to an alliance with Franco-German imperialism to bleat on about “betrayal”.
“It's time for Starmer to stand up for Britain and our allies in Europe” says Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey. Former Tory defence secretary Gavin Williamson says that “we cannot let fake news and a false narrative become accepted. That has to be rebuffed at every moment. And if that causes some people offence, well, that's their problem”. And Tony Blair’s former spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, calls Donald Trump a “pathological liar, a narcissist” who is “concerned only about himself, his wealth and his power” in the Independent last week.
None of this is likely to sway those now at the helm of US imperialism. The initiative to start high-level talks between the Russian and American foreign ministers  in Saudi Arabia was not the whim of The Donald or a tiny clique of American oligarchs but a decision that reflects the needs and demands of the wing of the American ruling class that wants to cut its losses in Ukraine to enable them to strengthen their grip over the Middle East in their bid to control the entire global energy market. 
In reality there never was a “free world” and the “special relationship” the British bourgeoisie upheld was largely a figment of their own imagination. They feign suprise at Trump’s moves to build detente with the Russian Federation but the Trump camp made no secret of this in the run-up to the US presidential election last year. The simple fact is that Starmer and the rest of the pack in Europe didn’t think Trump would win. 
As we’ve said before secret diplomacy is rarely the best pathway to peace. But both the Russian and American sides are clearly working towards a win-win agreement over Ukraine. If that ends the war with a peace settlement that recognises the rights of the Crimeans, southern Ukrainians and the people of the Donbas to live in the Russian Federation well and good. It will clearly benefit the Ukrainian and Russian people.

For a genuine working class party

Starmer & Zelensky - the unpopular front

Last month Ihe NCP and the RCPB (ML) held a seminar to look at the challenges facing the communist movement following Labour’s victory in the summer general election. Both parties believe this is a discussion that needs to be taken throughout the labour movement. At the seminar Ian Donovan spoke on behalf of the Consistent Democrats, a Trotskyist movement that takes it name from a famous phrase of Lenin’s, and has, over the years, supported a number of NCP initiatives including the International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity campaign. This is what Ian said:

Starmer’s Labour is the least popular new British government after 100 days in office than any in living memory. The Tory government it replaced was an absolute shambles, led initially by the public school right-wing populist Johnson, whose corruption and penchant for pathological lying were legendary. When he had to fall on his sword having been caught partying when the population at large was locked down during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-21, he was replaced by Liz Truss, the shortest-serving Prime Minister in British history, whose 2022 mini-budget with her Chancellor Kwarteng introduced massive, unfunded tax cuts for the very rich in such a way as to spook the capitalist market and cause a near-collapse of the British economy. When she was forced out after only 45 days, she was replaced by Rishi Sunak, the husband of an Indian IT heiress richer than the British monarch, who, like John Major at the end of his 1992-7 Tory premiership, struggled and juggled for nearly two years with multiple crises in a government that had obviously completely run out of steam. 
But after only 100 days in office, Starmer’s approval ratings dipped below those of Sunak, who is still caretaker Tory leader while they tear themselves apart trying to elect his successor!
A key starting point of this was the government’s refusal to abolish the Tories’ brutal two-child benefit cap, which condemns millions of working-class children to dire poverty and even homelessness. Popular hostility to Starmer’s government then exploded with his attack on poor and middling pensioners, subjecting their annual winter fuel payment, previously a universal payment, to draconian means testing so that 9 million pensioners, whose income is just above the threshold for pension credit, will have their winter fuel payments of around £300 taken away. They lost the vote at Labour Party conference on this, but of course the government does not take any notice of things like that – Starmer’s regime is implacably hostile to the trade unions.
 The new government abolished the Tories’ brutal scheme to deport refugees to Rwanda, but only because it was considered an expensive failure, not for any reason of principle.  In fact, Starmer has been off to Albania trying to arrange a cheaper replacement. The Blairite Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, ordered a massive series of immigration raids across the country in July, almost as soon as they took office. The anti-migrant, Islamophobic riots incited by far-right Zionist helpmates in August were seen as a ‘law and order’ problem, not a problem of racism, and the government had nothing to do with the mass mobilisations of socialists and anti-racists that stopped the wave of attempted pogroms. On the contrary, they instructed MPs and councillors not to go on anti-fascist demonstrations, and in some cases suspended those who did and were too outspoken against the far-right terrorists who were burning down mosques and refugee accommodation, and violently attacking people for having the ‘wrong’ colour skin. They have also been instructing the cops to harass anti-racists and Palestine protesters and arrest them often on phoney charges of supporting ‘terrorism’ (resistance to genocide)  and ‘anti-Semitism’ just as much as the Tory regime did.
Starmer and his neo-liberal clique are more worried about satisfying their Israel lobby donors and more general corporate sponsors than the working class, trade unions and oppressed minorities. This has manifested itself in the sleaze scandal, of Starmer and his ministers receiving gifts of luxury items from ‘donors’ who have nothing to do with the labour movement, which has discredited them the way similar scandals discredited the Tories. Though, like a classic bourgeois liberal party, which they aspire to project themselves as to the ruling class, they must make some gestures to the unions, they keep them as far away as possible from influencing policy. This has even upset Starmer’s most virulent supporter and apologist from the trade union bureaucracy, UNITE’s pro-Zionist semi-syndicalist Sharon Graham. Her leadership has actively sought to suppress political opposition to Starmer within the union, echoing the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt against militants within UNITE sympathetic to Jeremy Corbyn, and banning the showing of films about the witch-hunt within the union. But even she was not able to endorse Starmer’s General Election manifesto, and not does not endorse his tepid softening of some Tory anti-union attacks, as they do not remotely meet the concerns even of the union bureaucracy. 
Starmer’s government did not come to power on the back of a wave of working-class support and anger, and determination to sweep away the brutal Tories. Everyone with the slightest political consciousness in Britain knew Starmer as the political assassin of Jeremy Corbyn, whose main purpose was to smash the resurgent left that brought Corbyn to the labour leadership in 2015, and within a whisker of unseating Theresa May’s Tories in the 2017 General Election. In 2017 Corbyn’s Labour got 40% of the vote, nearly 13 million votes (12.87 million to be exact). In 2019, Corbyn’s Labour got 10.29 million votes, but a resurgent right-wing populist Tory party meant they got only 32.1% as a percentage. In 2024 Starmer got only 9.7 million votes, which amounted to a higher percentage, 33.6%, only because of a considerably lower turnout. This was not a class vote based on working-class enthusiasm for Labour, as was clearly the case in 2017. The vote was depressed because Starmer made it very clear (not that his war against the left did not already) that his government in power would just be another variant of anti-worker neoliberalism, fundamentally the same as the Tories, with only secondary differences. Thus, there was no principled basis for socialists to support Labour in the General Election in July.
Starmer’s government came to power 9 months into post-October 7th Israel’s Western-backed genocidal onslaught against the Palestinians, and in a developing crisis caused by the US/NATO slowly losing their Nazi-fuelled proxy war in Ukraine. It has proven utterly craven, supportive of these genocidal projects on a consistent basis, and as willing as the Tories to steal the remaining and threadbare social gains working class people depend upon to funnel the proceeds to Netanyahu and Zelensky.
Supporting Israel’s preservation as a transplanted settler-imperialist state in the Middle East is a strategic priority of imperialist capitalism in the early 21st Century. This is the reason that the pretence of so-called ‘international law’ has collapsed, and why there is such huge resistance from the ruling classes of the major Western powers to doing anything to hinder, let alone stop, the extermination of the people of Gaza and now the extension of similar monstrous crimes to Lebanon.  
The same goes for the proxy war against Russia over Ukraine and the seemingly distant, but gradually nearing prospect of a similar proxy conflict with China over Taiwan. All these militarist projects reflect the class interest of the imperialist bourgeoisie and the over-arching project of the bulk of them to preseve Israel and maintain the political cult of Zionism that helps to hold them together as a cohesive world-dominating class-cartel.  At the same time, they wage a parallel campaign for neo-liberal regime change and dismemberment of the anomalous bourgeois states of Russia and China, which embody elements of two social systems – capitalism and embryonic/invading socialism - in a unique manifestation of ‘combined and uneven development’. These giant former workers’ states are still too close to ‘Communism’ for the imperialists’ liking. 
Furthermore, they have put themselves at the head of a revolt by semi-colonial, oppressed countries around the world and thus threaten imperialist domination as it has existed since the late 19th  century. The aim of the proxy war and mooted extensions is to open them up fully to Western economic penetration and thus give the imperialists’ declining system a new lease of life. The converse possibility, of a defeat for NATO in Ukraine and possibly defeat of Israel by the Arab masses, opens up a horrendous scenario for the imperialists, where militarism and ‘sanctions’ (imperialist economic blackmail) no longer work, and the so-called ‘rules-based order’ (“we make the ‘rules’, you do as you are told”) ceases to function and hold any terror for oppressed countries around the world. The monopoly of world power of the Western imperialist countries, which lasted the whole of the 20th  Century and so far in the 21st century, is within sight of its own mortality.
So Starmer’s government represents the will of the bourgeoisie, pure and simple, and in no sense can be said to be even a deformed product of working-class resistance to capitalism and neoliberalism. The strategic task of Marxists is to build a party that can split the working-class base from Labour to a genuine working class party, one that has the potential to generate a revolutionary programme and lead a proletarian revolution as part of an international revolutionary movement. This is a key strategic task for Marxists in Britain, but it finds expression in different ways depending on the concrete political configurations that dominate in Labour at a given time. In the period of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, from 2015 to 2020, the correct tactic for Marxists was to join the Labour Party and actively get involved in the struggles of its subjectively pro-socialist left wing against the neo-liberal Blairites, who despite Corbyn’s election remained enormously powerful in their hold over the apparatus of the party. In the late 20-teens the Blairite and Zionist right-wing, the ‘friends of Israel’ etc, devoted huge amounts of energy to sabotaging Labour’s chances of achieving government, both through the smears of so-called ‘anti-Semitism’ against the left, and though manipulating the issue of Brexit to try to mobilise backward workers influenced by right-wing populism against Corbyn and the Labour Party.
It is now very clear that the ‘anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt was political preparation for the Labour Party to support the genocide in Gaza, which was always on the cards. Indeed, Starmer’s Labour has done so, quite openly, as when on Nick Ferrari’s LBC Radio show in October 2023 Starmer clearly endorsed the measure announced by the genocidal monster and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who denounced Gaza’s Palestinians as “human animals”, that Gaza was to be starved of fuel, energy food and even water. Starmer, when explicitly questioned by Ferrari about these measures, replies that “I do think that they [Israel] have the right to do this.” A clear endorsement of monstrous, genocidal actions that should lead to Starmer being charged as a political accomplice of genocide. 
More recently, under massive pressure of public opinion and the Palestine Solidarity movement, the Starmer regime has put an embargo on around 10 per cent of arms export licences to Israel. But Starmer’s Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, who is a prominent supporter of Labour Friends of Israel, made clear at a meeting of that body that they did so reluctantly, that this was the minimum that they could get away with doing, and that if he had his way and his hands were not tied by popular pressure, even these minimal measures would not have happened.
Likewise over Ukraine, the Starmer regime has made very clear its support for NATO’s proxy war against the people of the Donbas, and Russia itself, and its support for the massive arming of Ukraine’s dominated politically by followers of the Nazi leader Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, who since the far right, US-funded Maidan coup of 2014, have waged war against Russian-speaking Ukrainians and the people of Crimea, on a genocidal basis. They seek to crush the Russian-speaking population of the Donbass and openly use cluster bombs and depleted Uranium against them. They fire missiles at Crimea aimed to kill civilians and punish them for voting to rejoin Russia in 2014, as they do to the Donbas population that voted to join Russia in 2022. The Starmer regime has stated that it would like to allow Ukraine to use long-range Storm Shadow missiles against Russia, which has drawn warnings from Russia that such actions would be regarded as an existential threat and likely to provoke a nuclear response. Because of these statements from Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, the Biden administration backed off from such provocations, in fear of Russia’s evident military capacity. But Starmer’s government has made it clear that it abides by the US decision reluctantly – it would like to let Ukraine go ahead and attack Russia with long range missiles.
Over the past few years, since the beginning of the Special Military Operation in February 2022, the Starmer regime has threatened any Labour MP who dares to endorse even pacifist opposition to what the West is doing in Ukraine would be thrown out of the party.
The tactical task of Marxists confronted with Labour at this point is to try to cohere a genuine (not bourgeois), workers party in opposition to Labour, and to give it as much coherence as possible in that regard. That is the point of our activity in the Socialist Labour Network. That does not mean that we cease to regard Labour as a bourgeois workers party. Our strategic aim is to split it along class lines. But a workers’ party outside it could be a key means of doing so in a period like this when the bourgeois, imperialist pole has achieved unparalleled dominance. That may change, as it did from Blair/Brown via Miliband to Corbyn. If it does, which is not guaranteed, we would have to change our tactics. But at this time, for Marxists, these are the correct tactical positions to take.

A dangerous escalation

The Ukrainian raid into southern Russia last week was clearly monitored and probably even directed by the NATO military advisors embedded in the Ukrainian army. The main target was the Kursk nuclear power station that the Ukrainians hoped to seize and then swap for the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine that was liberated in 2022. Their secondary objective was to seize Russian land to swap for recent Russian gains in the Kharkov region of northern Ukraine.
Russian resistance has foiled the Ukrainians on both counts. Though the Ukrainians are still entrenched on Russian soil their advance on Kursk has been beaten back while any hopes for peace talks and a negotiated settlement to end the war have now been dashed as the Kremlin vows to fight to drive all the Ukrainians out of their lands and carry on fighting until Kiev accepts Russia’s terms to end the conflict. 
Though no one knows exactly why the lame-duck Biden administration sanctioned this Ukrainian sortie it is clearly linked to the American presidential election. The war lobby, the cross-party clique that represents the most venal and aggressive circles within the American ruling class, are always ready to cuff the Russians while Democrat bagmen may believe that a slap in the face to the Russians will boost Kamala Harris’ chances in November.
Whatever the motive it’s a dangerous gang. This sort of escalation brings NATO one step closer to a direct clash with the Russian army – a clash that could easily turn into a nuclear exchange in the heart of Europe.
The aim of the NATO alliance all along has been to force war on the Russian Federation, and now the whole world can see the terrible price which has been paid for a war which could so easily have been avoided. 
In the past the Russian Federation did everything possible to avoid a full-scale war in Ukraine. The Kremlin spent eight years supporting the Minsk process plan, involving simple autonomy for the then Donetsk and Lugansk Republics, while Ukraine, with NATO’s support, broke ceasefire after ceasefire and thousands of civilians in those republics died in constant Ukrainian attacks. When the Russians intervened to support the anti-fascist resistance and stop the persecution of the Russian-speaking minorities in the Donbas in 2022 they withdrew all their forces around the Ukrainian capital to negotiate a peace deal with the fascist regime only to be double-crossed at the last moment by the NATO powers who told the Zelensky regime to keep on fighting.
Sir Keir Starmer likes to pose as the equal of the Americans in the NATO alliance but in reality Britain is no better than the rest of the Western European pack that have been forced to accept the model of subservience imposed on Japan by US imperialism after its defeat in 1945.
Dependent on American protection to defend their own global interests they destroyed the Yugoslav federation and the Libyan Jamahuriya at Washington’s behest. They fan the flames of war in Ukraine and the Middle East and prolong the unhappy partition of many countries including Cyprus, Ireland, Kashmir and Korea. Fearful of the second coming of Donald Trump and uncertain of the loyalty of the Harris team all they can now do is watch as the drama of the race to the White House plays out.

One door opens…

None of us should be surprised at Sir Keir Starmer’s victory in the Labour Party leadership contest. The darling of the Blairites was backed to the hilt by the right-wing Labour factions that operate within the party and the trade union movement. But his convincing first-round victory over the supposed heir to the Corbyn mantle showed that his support went far beyond that of the Labour’s traditional right-wing constituency.

It’s also true that the number of abstentions outweighed those that actually voted for the ambitious lawyer turned politician who now leads the Labour Party. But the fact that Starmer bagged 275,780 votes in the poll – more than that of the two other hopefuls combined – shows that tens of thousands of Labour members who had previously backed Jeremy Corbyn had been swayed to vote for the “unity” candidate this time round.

Some are now, once again, calling for the establishment of a new socialist party to challenge Labour. None of them can explain why all previous attempts to do so have failed dismally. Others, ready to rebuild the left inside Labour, have not looked frankly at their own record over the last five years and are, therefore, doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

Although Corbyn’s campaigns sparked off a surge of support that has made the Labour Party one of the largest political parties in Europe, they failed to build a mass left social-democratic base within it. His core support in parliament went little beyond the old Bennite Socialist Campaign Group. The tens of thousands who rallied to Corbyn’s banner showed no interest in the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) that Corbyn led. Although there was some mass support for Momentum when it was founded, that rapidly evaporated when it became clear that it was just an ego-trip for a tiny clique that revolved around one of Corbyn’s useless advisers.

Starmer is a good communicator whose 10-point programme embraced much of Corbyn’s old agenda. This includes support for the common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water, as well as an end to outsourcing in the NHS, local government and justice system.

He also pledged to “work shoulder to shoulder with trade unions to stand up for working people, tackle insecure work and low pay and repeal the Trade Union Act,” although he’s avoided any commitment to reverse the tranche of anti-union laws passed by successive Tory governments since 1979 and to restore free collective bargaining in full.

Many can easily be forgiven for thinking that Starmer’s agenda is, indeed, a continuation of the Corbyn project. But it isn’t.

If Starmer talks about “common ownership” of the railways and the utilities it’s because it’s popular on the street and there’s now a bourgeois consensus in favour of restoring part of the old public sector. No-one is going to argue about more support for the health service these days whilst even some sections of the ruling class are resigned to accepting a modest increase in income tax at the highest levels.

Although we get the usual platitudes on climate change, peace and human rights, Starmer’s camp is totally committed to retaining the colossally expensive Trident nuclear missile system to maintain Britain’s bogus independent nuclear deterrent, which in practice is just an appendage of US imperialism’s nuclear arsenal.

Corbyn won the Labour leadership contest in 2015 with mass support. It showed Labour was still a potentially strong weapon for our class. That is not to confuse the Labour Party with a revolutionary party or imagine that we can gain a workers’ state through parliamentary elections.

A Labour government, with the yet unbroken links with the trade unions, offers the best option for the working class in the era of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. Our strategy is for working class unity, and our campaigns are focused on defeating the right-wing within the movement and strengthening the left and progressive forces within the Labour Party and the unions. We support those in the Labour Party fighting for left policies. It is part of our struggle for a democratic Labour Party.

Corbyn’s last bow

Jeremy Corbyn took part in his final Prime Minister’s Questions as Labour leader last week. Boris Johnson paid tribute to Corbyn’s “sincerity and determination to build a better society”, whilst the Labour leader warned the Prime Minister not to deliver his political obituary because he will not stop campaigning for social justice in the future.

 “My voice will not be stilled,” Corbyn said. “I will be around. I will be campaigning. I will be arguing and demanding justice for the people of this country and indeed the rest of the world.”

Whether that voice will still be heard on Labour’s front-bench largely depends on who will take his place. Corbyn says he’d like to be Shadow Foreign Secretary. That might be too much to swallow for Sir Keir Starmer, the bookies’ favourite to become the next Labour leader.

Of the three contenders, Starmer, a lawyer turned politician, is the darling of the Labour Remainers who, even now, still dream of reversing Brexit. Rebecca Long-Bailey poses as Corbyn’s successor whilst Lisa Nandy’s problem is that she is largely appealing to the same constituency within the Labour Party that Starmer has already sewn up.

Labour’s voice has, so far, been overshadowed by the coronavirus crisis. Although Labour and the unions have clearly been involved in informal discussions with the Government at a national level over the emergency, the new Labour leadership now needs to reflect the voice of organised labour on the street as well as parliament in the months to come.

Strange Times – New Times

The news that Russia is sending medical assistance to the USA reflects the nature of the coronavirus plague that has plunged the world into a health crisis not seen since the devastating Spanish Flu pandemic that swept the world shortly after the end of the First World War.

During the Cold War the USA and the satellite states that their lackeys called the “free world” exploited disease and famine in the Third World to trumpet the supposed superiority of the capitalist system. They sent their ‘aid’ to maintain neo-colonialist control of large parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America for the benefit of trans-national corporations of the imperialist heartlands.

In those days the US-led global imperialist bloc tried to stifle the national liberation movements that had broken the chains of the old European colonial systems after the Second World War. The imperialists spent billions on bogus aid projects to counter the Soviet Union and the resurgent communist movements that had come to power in eastern Europe and parts of the Third World, in propaganda campaigns to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the people the imperialists intended to oppress and plunder.

Although the wild dreams of the ‘Project for the New American Century’ and the ‘new world order’ that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union were shattered on the streets of Baghdad and the Syrian plains, the imperialists still think they can do what they like with impunity.

Trump and his cronies initially did little or nothing to tackle the coronavirus plague that has claimed thousands of American lives. They were only interested in exploiting the crisis to tighten the screws of their economic blockades of Democratic Korea, Cuba, Syria, Venezuela and the Islamic Republic of Iran. They even tried to stop their NATO allies accepting Chinese medical assistance. Now Trump, under public pressure to be seen doing something, is forced to accept Russian aid.

People’s China, Cuba and Vietnam have beaten back the virus, whilst Democratic Korea has no reported cases of infection due to the emergency measures taken by the people’s government to keep the virus out of the country. Whilst the USA descends into chaos, Chinese and Cuban medical teams are helping to combat the virus all over the world. If nothing else, this clearly demonstrates the superiority of the socialist system.