Chaotic scenes in Parliament

The chaotic scenes in Parliament that followed the Speaker’s decision to take the Labour amendment to a Scottish National Party demand for an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza certainly staved off the Labour revolt Keir Starmer was most desperate to avoid. Whether Sir Lindsay Hoyle’s handling of the motion on the Gaza crisis was a breach of the arcane rules and conventions of the House of Commons is a matter that only MPs can judge. Over fifty of them already have done so – signing a motion of no confidence in Sir Lindsay Hoyle, whose position is now seriously in question.
The Labour amendment calling for an “immediate humanitarian cease-fire” was clearly intended to move closer to the worthless platitudes of Joe Biden and his minions who drivel on about striving to end the bloodshed and talk about a “two-state solution” to meet some of the Palestinian demands while vetoing every cease-fire call at the United Nations and rushing weapons to Israel to help them continue the mass slaughter of civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Boycott the Zionist state

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign is a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality. BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.
Israel is occupying and colonising Palestinian land, discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel and denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes. Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the BDS call urges action to pressure Israel to comply with international law.
BDS is now a vibrant global movement made up of unions, academic associations, churches and grass-roots movements across the world. Since its launch in 2005, BDS is having a major impact and is effectively challenging international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.
The tragedy of the Palestinian Arabs began when British imperialism first occupied their land in 1918 and encouraged Zionist immigration through the Balfour declaration. British imperialism sought to create a community of Zionist settlers who would prolong their occupation of Palestine indefinitely. The Zionists helped British colonialism crush the Palestine Revolt in 1936. But after the Second World War the Zionists seized the opportunity to push for a separate state of their own. In 1948 the British colonial mandate ended and the State of Israel was proclaimed. On that day the first Arab-Israeli war began. It has never ended.
The first war led to the expulsion of a million Palestinian Arabs from their homes by the Zionist regime. Those refugees and their descendants have never given up their right to return to their land. And this is the heart of the crisis in the Middle East that has led to five full-scale wars and continuing simmering conflicts.
Israel is an American protectorate. It is economically and politically entirely dependent on American imperialism and successive Israeli governments have existed to serve the needs of American imperialism in the region. Those needs are to weaken and divide the Arabs to ensure that the big oil corporations can continue their exploitation and plunder of Arab oil until it eventually runs out.
While licking the boots of the Americans is second nature to Labour leaders Starmer is mindful of the mass support for the Palestinians on the street that threatens to undermine the Labour vote, and not just amongst the Muslim community. That’s why the protests that have swamped the capital time and time again over the past few months must continue until the Israelis are forced to cease-fire and end the bloodshed. That’s why the campaigns across the country supporting the Palestinians and calling for a boycott of the Zionist state must continue until the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs are restored. 

The thin red line

The Sunak government has wisely dismissed General Sanders recent call for a “citizen army” for war with Russia, which in his mind has already begun in Ukraine. "This war is not merely about the black soil of the Donbas, nor the re-establishment of a Russian empire” the worthy general says. “It's about defeating our system and way of life politically, psychologically, and symbolically. How we respond as the pre-war generation will reverberate through history. Ukrainian bravery is buying time, for now”.
Downing Street says the “British military has a proud tradition of being a voluntary force. There are no plans to change that" adding that "hypothetical scenarios" about potential future conflicts were "not helpful".
The grandees are well aware of the outcome of such a war in which there would be no winners and very few, if any, survivors. They know how deeply unpopular a return to conscription would be with the teenagers who would be the first to be called up for what was called “national service” until it was abolished in 1960. The same goes for the senior officers who shudder at the thought of injecting the youth culture of today into the armed forces.
General Sanders, the Chief of the General Staff, is a scion of the ruling class who’s spent his entire life in the army. He knows all this. He knew he’d get no takers when he made his controversial comments at the International Armoured Vehicles Conference (IAVC) in London last week. His speech isn’t the beginning of a new campaign to take us back to the “good old days” but part of the efforts by the most venal and aggressive sections of the British ruling class to serve US imperialism ND maintain and increase British defence expenditure. 
The United States is the only country that’s used nuclear weapons against a civilian population and since World War II they have threatened to nuke other countries including those that don't possess nuclear weapons. Britain is a major arms supplier and its troops are deployed in a growing number of war zones and areas made unstable as a result of imperialist intervention and aggression. 
In 2008 the Americans removed their nuclear missiles from the UK after judging that the supposed threat from Moscow had diminished. Now they’re coming back.
Now US navy secretary Carlos Del Toro calls on the UK to "reassess" the size of its armed forces given "the threats that exist today” and the Americans are using the “Russian threat” to create new bases on our soil for their weapons of mass destruction. According to the Telegraph the US plans to place  B61-12 gravity bombs, three times as strong as the Hiroshima device, at the RAF Lakenheath air base in Suffolk.
In the corridors of power those who do the bidding of the United States argue that this is the only way to protect the British imperialist interest across the globe. They call it the “special relationship” though the only thing that is special about the Atlantic alliance is that the Americans speak our language. General Sanders, however, speaks theirs.

 

Fanning the flames

The shameful decision of the Sunak government to send the RAF in to bomb Yemen in support of American offensive against the defiant Arab republic has done nothing for the merchant shipping the imperialists claim to be protecting. The Houthi government that controls most of the country have stepped up their blockade that’s closed the Red Sea to all Israeli shipping. And the US campaign, ludicrously called “Operation Prosperity Guardian” has now put the Red Sea off limits to British and American vessels as well.
    Though crawling to the Americans is second nature to Conservative and Labour leaders it’s a different ball game in Europe. Franco-German imperialism wants to sit this one out and the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrel says that the bloc has no intention to send warships to the US naval mission in the Red Sea.
    “This bloc does not intend to escalate the conflict with the Yemeni army, we must do everything possible to ensure freedom of navigation, but at the same time avoid escalation,” Borrel said.
    The EU wants to distance itself from Anglo-American aggression to guarantee the continued supply of oil and gas from Qatar and the other oil kingdoms of the Persian Gulf which supply most of the continent with its energy needs these days. Qatar, which has long supported the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, has warned that the escalation of the crisis in the Red Sea could force shipping to take a much longer and more expensive diversion via South Africa that would seriously impact on LNG cargoes to Europe.
    It will also affect the delivery of supplies from the Far East to Europe. Tesla has announced that due to the auto parts flow disruption caused by transportation delays, it will stop its production in its Gigafactory in Berlin. Volvo, the now Chinese-owned car manufacturer. Has suspended production at its plant in Ghent, Belgium, due to delays in parts deliveries.
    The Houthi leaders have repeatedly said that their objective is to stop the slaughter in Gaza. Their blockade will end when the Israelis cease-fire. One call to Tel Aviv from the White House would do the trick, If the Biden administration had any sense it would do it now.

Preparing for Power?

The Tory government is on its last legs. Playing the race card over the refugee crisis has done nothing to boost their flagging fortunes. The pundits say Sunak will go for an autumn general election. The opinion polls put Labour streets ahead of the Tories. The media tell us Labour is preparing for power and Starmer is already writing the next King’s Speech. But what is Labour preparing us for?
    Absolutely nothing if anything the Labour leadership say is anything to go by these days. No national mass housing plans. No renationalisation of the railways or the energy and water utilities. No major increase in public investment in education or the health service, Doing whatever the Americans want – well that goes without saying.
    It difficult to see where Labour actually differs from the Conservatives on most issues – and this is what Starmer wants. Starmer’s spent most of his time knifing Corbyn in the back and driving out the former Labour leader’s supporters out of the party. The Labour leader clearly thinks this is the key to victory at the next general election.
    But a manifesto that consists entirely of vacuous platitudes will do nothing to mobilise working people to vote Labour – and if Labour can’t get their vote out then the Tories will win by default.

Stop the Israeli war on Gaza

 

Hospitals stormed. Innocent women and children are being slaughtered. Thousands upon thousands of Palestinian Arabs have been made homeless. This is Gaza today as Israeli missiles rain down on the beleaguered Palestinian enclave and Zionist troops pour into Gaza spreading death and destruction in their wake.
    On the streets of London and in the capitals of all the other imperialist heartlands millions upon millions are joining in the world-wide demand for an immediate and unconditional end to the fighting. But in Washington Joe Biden turns his back on demands to end the war being waged by America’s most loyal puppet in the Middle East. In London the craven Sunak government does the same and sadly so does Sir Keir Starmer, who is determined to outdo the Tories in crawling to imperialism.
    But more and more Labour members are refusing to toe the imperialist line. It began with breakaway councillors in mainly Muslim areas. It rapidly spread to Scottish Labour and the regional leaders of London, Manchester. Now 56 Labour MPs have taken the principled stand to defy the Starmer clique in Parliament this week.
    They rejected Starmer’s meaningless call for “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting which Biden and Netanyahu support simply to buy time for the Israeli army to finish the slaughter. They supported a Scottish nationalist call for an immediate cease-fire. And ten Labour front-benchers, including eight shadow minsters, left their jobs to vote with the SNP.
    The SNP motion called for an end to the "collective punishment of the Palestinian people" and urged "all parties to agree to an immediate ceasefire". It was defeated by 125 votes to 294, with the 56 Labour rebels joining the other opposition parties to demand a ceasefire, against the Conservatives who opposed it.
    Outside protesters gathered to call for a ceasefire and justice for the Palestinians. Every week the protests get bigger. Last weekend around a million people marched through London to demand and end to Israeli aggression. Let make it even bigger next Saturday...

Sunak shuffles his pack

The Prime Minister reshuffled his pack on Monday. Suella Braverman is out. David Cameron is in while Sunak played musical chairs with the Cabinet to create a new ministerial team which he clearly hopes will reverse the Tories flagging fortunes in time for the general election next year. Sacking Suella Braverman was the easy part. Bringing Cameron back from the political wilderness is more problematic.
    Braverman may have been an icon for the Neanderthal wing of Tory party but amongst the public at large few will miss her. But even fewer missed Cameron when he resigned after losing the Brexit referendum.
    Some, however will be pleased. The Remainers were delighted at the news that one of their own is now in charge of the Foreign Office. They clearly hope that Sunak will encourage more of the pro-European old guard to return to the fold. Whether it will have the same effect on the electorate remains to be seen.
    Labour is still streets ahead of the Tories in the opinion polls with a 27 point lead over the Conservatives that would give them a victory of landslide proportions if repeated at a general election.
    Still, as Harold Wilson famously said a week is a long time in politics. The veteran Labour leader won four elections in the 1960s and 70s. Wilson was the master of come-backs. Sunak is not. But neither is Sir Keir Starmer…

For a democratic Labour party

Summer is known as the silly season by the press because the long parliamentary recess means they have to fill their columns with even more rubbish to make up the difference. This is a good time for bourgeois political leaders to shuffle their packs while the backstabbers make their play in the corridors of power. And it always ends with the spectacularly tedious "conference season" starting with the TUC and followed by equally boring Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative bashes that we've all grown to know and love down the years.
    This time round we’ve seen Rishi Sunak replace Ben Wallace with Grant Shapps in Defence – though Sunak had little choice as Wallace was going anyway after he failed to get the top job in NATO – while Sir Keir Starmer continues to purge the ranks of his Shadow Cabinet to make room for more Blairites eager for high office when Labour wins the next election.
    Some Corbynistas are rallying around the call to “Stop Starmer” from a campaign backed by two former Labour MPs, George Galloway and Chris Williamson, along with veteran Liverpool campaigner Audrey White who was kicked out of the Labour Party last year after she confronted Starmer in a cafe to challenge his right-wing policies and the ongoing purge of supporters of his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn.
    Former Labour campaigner Crispin Flintoff, a stand-up comic who raised more than £150,000 for Labour before he too was kicked out, says “Keir Starmer is a danger to our democracy. He will say or do anything in pursuit of power. He is the most untrustworthy political leader this country has seen …the media hasn’t shown the reality of Starmer. But people who’ve been members of the Labour Party know what he’s really like. He stabbed the previous Labour leader in the back, he has broken all the pledges he has ever made, and he is carrying out a McCarthyite witch-hunt of the party — the biggest political purge of recent times...Starmer’s campaign to get into No 10 is the most cynical attempt to manipulate public opinion ever undertaken. We cannot allow him to get power because then it will be too late”.
    Whether Starmer is the most untrustworthy politician this country has ever seen is a matter of opinion – there’s been plenty of other Tory and Labour leaders over the years who would fit that bill. What is a fact, however, is that the only way Starmer is going to be stopped from getting into Downing Street is to vote Conservative at the next general election.
    Though Labour was founded by the trade unions to give the working class its own voice within Parliament, the Parliamentary Party leadership has been dominated by the middle class intelligentsia since the days of Ramsay McDonald.
    But the enemy of the working class is the ruling class not the Labour Party. Labour still maintains its links with the unions and the co‑operative movement and as long as that continues it remains 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. Day‑to‑day demands for reform, progressive taxation, state welfare and a public sector dedicated to meet the people’s needs are winnable under capitalism, particularly in a rich country like Britain today.
    We don’t want to waste time on futile efforts to build social-democratic platforms to rival Labour at election time. We need to break with the “broad left” factions in the unions that do little apart from elevating their leaders on to the gravy train of the bureaucrats who line their own pockets at the members’ expense. We do need a democratic rank-and-file movement within the unions committed to peace and socialism. It can be done!

No grounds for complacency

Last week’s local elections were bad news for the Tories. The Conservatives lost control of more than 40 councils in the poll which Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer says has set them "on course for a Labour majority at the next general election".
    It was certainly good for Labour but there’s no grounds for complacency. Labour ended up nine per cent ahead of the Tories picking up more than 500 seats and winning control of 22 more councils on the night. But the swing is nothing like the astronomical levels recorded by the pollsters at the beginning of the year and though the Conservatives lost over a thousand council seats nearly half of them went to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.
    Though there’s still a year or more to go until the next general election if nothing changes a nine per cent swing will not be enough to give Labour an overall majority in the House of Commons. Starmer says Labour isn’t interested in cutting a deal with the Liberal-Democrats or the nationalists but this hasn’t stopped speculation in Westminster and in the bourgeois media about a coalition to avoid a hung parliament.
    The Liberal Democrats did join hands with the Tories to form a coalition under David Cameron. But it ended in tears at the 2015 general election with loss of 48 seats in the House of Commons, leaving them with only eight MPs. Nevertheless the Lib-Dems would still like to be king-makers if Starmer won’t play ball, Rishi Sunak might have no choice.
    Though local elections generally reflect national issues local issues sometimes benefit campaigns like the Canvey Island Independence Party that increased their share of seats on their local council. But unlike the Scottish or Welsh nationalists the only “independence” they want is that of their old Canvey district council in Essex.
    Needless to say the left posers who call themselves part of an imaginary “revolutionary left” were well down with the also-rans in this election. The reality is that these “alternative left” parties are rejected time and again by the same working class their programmes claim to advance. There isn’t even a remote possibility of any of them taking office as the rhetoric and wild promises of these parties do not reflect reality.
    The glittering display of pomp and circumstance for the coronation of King Charles at Westminster Abbey may have thrilled the royal fans and the gaping tourists who delight in these spectacles but it did nothing to change the lives of the millions of working people trying to cope with the cost of living crisis.
    In ancient days the slaves were kept quiet with free food and entertainment in the arenas and circuses whose ruins can still be seen across what was once the Roman Empire. When the going was good even the barons and their feudal church would provided feast days, religious holidays and sports for the peasants who tilled the land that kept the lords in clover. But the workers get nothing from the capitalists.
    The incompetence, greed and indifference towards the unemployed and the homeless sums up all that is rotten within the British ruling class.
    We don’t want the ‘austerity-lite’ of Starmer & Co. We don’t want a mealy-mouthed compromise with the worthless Liberal-Democrats that the liberal bourgeois pundits who pose as friends of the working class are now advocating. What we want is an end to austerity and the restoration of trade union rights. Saving the NHS, capping rents and building cheap council homes, raising wages, getting rid of the need for foodbanks, saving our schools, restoring the right to independence for the disabled, restoring proper care for the elderly and restoring legal aid to bring justice for all – restoring the public sector, cutting the defence budget and taxing the rich to make them pay for the crisis of their own creation will pay for all of this and more.
    Getting rid of capitalism and replacing it with socialism is the ultimate objective of working people. Getting rid of austerity and replacing it with social justice must be the immediate objective of the working class.

Zelensky in Wonderland

The British government rolled out the red carpet for Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday who addressed Parliament, held talks with Sunak and had an audience with King Charles that was a Ukrainian PR dream. The British government promised to supply the Ukrainians with more heavy weapons and provide more training facilities for their fighter pilots in Britain so that Ukraine can achieve a "decisive military victory on the battlefield this year". Well, that’s what Sunak says. But what does it all mean?
    Very little it seems given the parlous state of the British armed forces these days. A few Challenger tanks are hardly likely to change the balance of forces on the Donbas front as the entire Ukrainian army fights to stave off the advance of what is still only a Russian expeditionary force.
    Sunak, like Boris Johnson before him, may like to pose as a world leader and the greatest friend of Ukraine in Western Europe. But at the end of the day the only power that counts in NATO is the United States and Zelensky’s fortunes, and indeed his fate, will be decided by the amount of military assistance Washington gives him.
    The Americans call all the shots in Kiev and they’ve backed Zelensky to the hilt so far. Whether they will in the future depends on Biden’s long-term war aims – and those can still only be guessed at.
    Russia’s war aims have always been public. The Russians are fighting to defend the Crimeans and the people of the Donbas whose republics have chosen to join the Russian Federation. Russia is fighting to defend the anti-fascist Ukrainians whose parties have all been banned in Ukraine and whose leaders are either languishing in some Ukrainian dungeon or living in exile in Moscow.
    The Ukraine conflict has, however, exposed the limitations of American power. Imperialist sanctions have not brought down the Putin government. The Russian army has not been defeated (all its withdrawals in Ukraine were voluntary and for tactical reasons). Sweden and Finland have not joined NATO – largely due to the Turkish veto.
    US imperialism has, of course, achieved some of its objectives. It has ensured the survival of their puppet Ukrainian regime. It has sunk, in more than one sense, the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline that the Americans feared would make Germany dependent on Russian natural gas and made Western Europe dependent on much dearer American supplies. It has restored American hegemony over all their European allies – with the help of their willing tools in France, Germany and the United Kingdom.
    Biden is, after-all, just a figurehead for the American deep state – what we would call the “Establishment” – that reflects the entire spectrum of bourgeois opinion. Their internal discussions – the rows between the “hawks” and the “doves” and the speculation of retired generals and diplomats – reflect the divisions within the American ruling class.
    So the Americans may have enough now to call it a day. Some believe that speculation in the mainstream US media about a “partition” of Ukraine that would meet most of Russia’s demands reflects genuine divisions within America’s ruling circles. Others think it’s merely disinformation designed to wrong-foot the Kremlin before their spring offensive. That certainly seems to be the view of most Russian commentators.
    None of this need trouble Sunak because he wasn’t in the loop in the first place. At the end of the day, like all British post-war leaders, he will just have to do as he’s told.