After the ball is over

 “Many the hopes that have vanished, after the ball” goes the old song – much like Keir Starmer’s pipe dreams about the Trump state visit this week. Two days have gone in a flash. Donald Trump’s been and gone. The Donald was treated to an unaccustomed right royal pageant at Windsor Castle which no doubt went down well with his MAGA constituency back home. Starmer however got nothing out of the visit – which was entirely predictable to everyone apart from the sycophants and flatterers that the Labour leader surrounds himself with these days.
They say Starmer and his clapped-out old Blairite advisers genuinely believed that the American president could be wooed by a red-carpet meeting with the King into cutting tariffs and making other trade concessions to the UK at any given time. Openly talking about Trump as if he was a gullible, vain old fool wasn’t such a good idea. Revealing your hand (and it was a very weak one) in advance to the mainstream media for all to see only compounded the folly. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. This, after all, the government that appointed Peter Mandelson ambassador to Washington in the first place... 

There may be trouble ahead

The public spat between Zarah Sultana and the other five MPs in the Independent Alliance doesn’t augur well for the new Corbynista party that still lacks a name. Though the rift is simply over who should manage the membership system and bank accounts of the new party it clearly reflects underlying differences between those who want a conventional left-social democratic party and Corbyn’s kitchen cabinet that seems to hanker after the sort of rally party like the old Gaullist movement in France or the mass movements of Ghana’s Nkrumah and Nasser in Egypt that were models for much of the Global South in the 1950s and 60s.
With support for Labour and the Conservatives crumbling Reform UK is waiting to pick up the pieces. The Faragists have deliberately stoked up the flames over asylum-seekers. They will have no qualms in using the racist rabble that we saw march through the streets of London last week to pave their way to power.
There’s clearly deep divisions within the corridors of power. Though the Tories have traditionally always been the chosen political instrument of the ruling class Brexit has gone badly wrong for them. Boris Johnson and Madame Truss burned their bridges with Franco-German imperialism and their pivot to American imperialism failed. Sunak and Starmer fared no better – unable to negotiate some sort of associate relationship with the European Union or deal successfully with the truculent Trump administration in the United States.
Though it has served them well in the past Labour will never replace the Tories as the governing party of the bourgeoisie as long as it retains its organic links with the trade union movement. But neither will Reform. Though many Tory activists have gone over to Farage members of the old guard are few and far between in the Reform camp. And as far as the ruling class is concerned Farage remains an outsider – even in the City of London where he made his money in the first place.
They’ve got to put one of their own back at the helm of the Conservative & Unionist party while at the same time maintaining the credibility of Labour to contain the Corbynistas in parliament and on the street. That cuts Starmer out as well. It’s a difficult equation. But
for us we simply have to defend the principled line of socialist advance throughout the labour and anti-war movement. So let’s face the music... 

Bad news on the doorstep…

Reform’s sweeping gains in this week’s regional elections were bad news for the Conservatives. Nigel Farage’s going round saying this is the beginning of the end for the Tories telling people “you’re witnessing the end of a party that’s been around since 1832, they are disappearing”. And while that may be a trifle optimistic there’s no doubt that the Faragist advance has plunged the Conservatives, and their lacklustre leader, into another crisis of confidence. But it wasn’t good for Labour either. Though the Tories were hammered in the local elections Reform also took one of Labour’s  safest seats in the country at the by-election in Runcorn & Helsby. Can any of us be surprised at this?
The Starmer government, led by the clapped-out old Blairites that run the Labour Party these days, differs little from the Conservatives they beat at the general election last year. The Starmer government’s decision to continue Tory austerity offers no real change to the millions of working people that once traditionally looked to Labour as the legitimate alternative to Tory rule. It’s no wonder that some of them are now turning to the Faragists who blame the asylum-seekers and immigrants for all our woes and whose only answer to the economic crisis that has plunged the country into the doldrums is to become an American protectorate and merge the British economy into that of the United States. 
Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, will doubtless come under fire from those who already covet her job. But the clamour for her departure is of no interest to working people who have no say in the matter one way or another.
For over a hundred years the Tory party has been the chosen political instrument of the ruling class. The capitalists, industrialists and land-owners who pull the strings, will not lightly change horses – least of all for Reform whose anti-European Union platform is anathema to the City of London.
Labour, on the other hand, was founded by the unions to give workers their own voice in Parliament. But the Parliamentary Party leadership has been dominated by the middle class intelligentsia since the days of Ramsay McDonald. Nevertheless the working class element within the party remained strong until the 1980s with figures like Nye Bevan and even Harold Wilson giving it credibility among the working class.
Though the Labour Party is dominated by the class‑collaborating right wing in the parliamentary party the possibility of their defeat exists as long as Labour retains its organisational links with the trade unions that fund it. The defeat of the right‑wing factions in most of the major unions in recent years demonstrates this possibility – though it has to be said that the bogus “broad left” factions that run the bureaucrats’ gravy train do very little for the rank and file these days.
In the unions we must struggle to elect genuine working-class leaderships who are prepared to represent and fight for the membership against the employers and against the right-wing within the movement. At the same time we must build the revolutionary party and campaign for revolutionary change. Social democracy remains social democracy whatever trend is dominant within it and, as we know, it has never led to socialism.
But for a start we must campaign for 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.

Freedom for Palestine – no to ethnic cleansing!

No one, apart from the Israelis, can take Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza seriously.The Zionists always denied that the true aim of the genocidal assault on Gaza has been the destruction of the Palestinian population, and denial of all of their rights including the right to self-determination. They lied. 
So did those lackeys of US imperialism in Britain and Europe that not only provided diplomatic cover for Israeli aggression but armed and funded the Zionist state in its drive to crush the Palestinian resistance.
Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the Labour Party who now heads the Independent Alliance bloc in Parliament has, however, taken the principled stand  holding Israel and those who are still sending arms to the regime rrsponsible for genocide in Palestine.
"The death toll in Gaza has already been updated to 61,709," Corbyn said. "The true scale of Israel's atrocities is only just emerging - and officials must face justice for every single life lost. So should those who continued to send weapons, knowing full well they were enabling genocide”.
Trump’s proposal is. of course, nothing new. It echoes plans that have been discussed by Israeli officials for many decades. Kicking out the Palestinians to turn the Gaza Strip into a millionaires playground may seem a good idea to the likes of Trump and Netanyahu but it is only a recipe for yet another war – and this time round, going on what Trump is saying, it will be American troops confronting the Arabs.
The Americans came unstuck in Iraq and the Israelis lost the Gaza war. Trump’s threats will not succeed in what the Zionist guns failed to achieve. Trump will not achieve what Biden could not do. 
Despite their vast resources, US imperialism and its Zionist lackeys have not broken the will of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people, who faced Zionist terror armed with American weapons for 15 months, will not bow to the empty threats of Donald Trump.

New Labour woes

This week a Scottish Labour MP  warned that the next government may be a “hard-line far-right effort” if Labour does not deliver “improved living standards”. Brian Leishman, who represents Alloa & Grangemouth, criticised his own party's government for not providing financial compensation to the ‘Waspi’ women who campaign against the way in which the state pension ages for men and women were equalised at the expense of many women.
Leishman was one of 10 Labour MPs who supported a Bill introduced by the SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn that would require ministers to publish measures to address the findings of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) report which recommended paying compensation to women born in the 1950s whose state pension age was raised so it would be equal with men.
Labour’s embrace of Tory austerity has led to further unpopularity on the street. And this week a new public opinion poll puts Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party ahead of Labour and the Conservatives. A YouGov survey puts Reform, at 25 per cent, narrowly ahead of Labour at 24 and the Tories on 21 per cent. The Liberal Democrats stand on 14 per cent, while the Greens are now at nine.
The Starmer government pleads poverty to justify means-testing the pensioners’ winter fuel benefit. It won’t pay compensation to the three million or so women born in the 1950s who were not properly informed about the state pension age increase. But it can find plenty to fuel the proxy war against Russia and pay for Trident and the rest of our so-called nuclear deterrent.  

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.