HP sauce

No by-election can be held these days without a flurry of independent candidates to liven up an often predictable race to the House of Commons. There’s the usual posse of self-proclaimed “revolutionaries” who believe that their forlorn efforts will somehow advance the cause of socialism. There’s the remnants of the racist and fascist movements that tried to kick their way to power back in the 1970s and a whole host of cranks seeking a platform for all sorts of bizarre opinions.  And finally there are those who capture the moment to rally dissident opinion that sometimes goes far beyond the usual protest vote. 
The legendary Screaming Lord Sutch first hit the headlines in the early 1960s. He continued until his sad death in 1999. Martin Bell – the “man in the white suit” actually took a seat from the Tories in 1997 on an anti-corruption ticket and sat in the House of Commons until 2001. And George Galloway, the maverick Labour MP, repeatedly bucked the system over the years to win seats against the mainstream parties. Now we have Count Binface.
Count Binface is the street persona of Jon Harvey, a stand-up comedian who has been a familiar face at by-elections since 2017. Binface upholds the rights of every citizen to stand in elections and gets a protest vote that many left groups would envy these days. This week he excelled himself winning 26.8 per cent of the vote in the Clacton by-election (9,455 votes) that was held by Nigel Farage who bagged 22,239 votes (63.34 per cent). Labour said this was “no victory for Nigel Farage” and “shows he likely has so much to hide”.
Though there was never any doubt about the outcome the result was a clear humiliation for the Faragists. The campaign revolved around the unanswered questions about the five million pounds donation given to the Reform UK leader and the antics of a man wearing tights with a bucket over his face who claims to be an “intergalactic space warrior” from the Planet Sigma IX.
Farage’s attempt to avoid Parliamentary scrutiny of his dodgy undeclared gifts and donations by triggering a by-election have turned into a farce and he knows it. The fact that over a quarter of those who voted chose the Count says it all.
The mainstream parties had boycotted the poll in protest. Binface, however, was joined by 33 other novelty candidates in the race. Many of them turned up for the count – unlike Farage who says he’d been advised not to by the police due to “a credible threat against him” – a claim the Essex police categorically deny.
The enquiry begins again now Farage is back in Parliament. If Farage is found to have breached MPs' rules, the Standards Commissioner could impose penalties that could lead to yet another by-election in Clacton. The Tories will now have to think deeply about their next move. Farage is a skilful manipulator. He will be difficult to beat, Though Clacton is part of the Conservative heartlands in Essex they may have to look for a high-profile maverick of their own to take on Nigel Farage.

Tories in disarray

There’s gloom and doom in the Tory ranks following the defection of Robert Jenrick to the Faragist camp. Jenrick defected to Reform UK last week after Tory leader Kemi Badenoch sacked him from the shadow cabinet saying she had “irrefutable evidence” that here shadow justice secretary was plotting to jump ship in most damaging way. She was speedily proved right.
Not that it will do her any good. Deeply mistrusted by the Establishment her lack-lustre leadership has failed to heal the divisions over Brexit amongst her own ranks or stem the drift to Reform amongst the old guard. Many believe the Tories will be hammered at the local and regional elections this year with  mass Tory abstentions and dissidents swinging to Reform, the Lib-Dems and the Greens.
Jenrick was the back-bench Tories favourite to challenge Badenoch. But it was a gamble he clearly wasn’t going to risk taking. A careerist, and indeed a Remainer when David Cameron was in charge, Jenrick now poses as a ranting Faragist Brexiteer to prolong his political career in Parliament.
Workers have no interest in who leads Reform or the Conservative & Unionist Party. What we are concerned about is building the resistance to war, austerity and racism.  
The history of humanity is a history of exploitation and class struggle. For century after century working people – the slaves, the peasants, the artisans – dreamt of justice and equality. But in the modern era with the rise of the working class and the development of scientific socialism it is now possible not only to dream of a better world but also to concretely build it.
The imperialists think that their guns will ensure that they can ignore the will of the people for as long as they like. But they were proved wrong in the 20th century and they will be proved wrong today. The days when people listened to the rich men, who told us that the greatest virtue of humanity was the possession of the largest amount of money, are over.
Great mass movements are again sweeping the continents. The masses are demanding social justice, democratic rights and an end to exploitation. It’s capitalism that’s finished – not us. 
Everywhere we look in the capitalist world we see unemployment, homelessness, poverty, drug abuse and crime. The symptoms of industrial decline, inflationary pressures, stock market volatility and economic stagnation. This is capitalism. And working people are being made to carry the burden of its failure.
Socialism can end all this. Only through socialism can the will of the masses, the overwhelming majority of the people, be carried out. Only socialism and mass democracy – not the sham democracy of the bourgeoisie or the myths of the social democrats – end the class system and free working people from their slavery. Socialism must be put back on the workers’ agenda.

In the bleak mid-winter…

And it certainly will be for the millions struggling to cope in freezing temperatures with astronomical heating bills grossly inflated by the imperialist sanctions on the Russians who were one of the main suppliers of liquified natural gas to Europe before the war in Ukraine erupted this year. It won’t, however, be so bad for the rich who’ll still be rocking around the Christmas tree snorting coke and drinking themselves silly over the festive season while the rest of us are told to make the best of it, accept “the price of liberty” and blame it all on the unions, and of course, Vladimir Putin.
    Celebrating the winter solstice is a tradition that goes back thousands of years – from the Stone Age hunter-gatherers whose lives revolved around the seasons to the Roman Saturnalia when masters served their slaves in orgies of feasting and drinking in a festival in which all the rules of society could be temporarily broken.
    Though some of these traditions linger on in today’s orgy of consumer delight we are still supposedly celebrating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the man who told his followers that it was “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”. But do any of the rich believe it?
    The great and the good will make their annual obeisance to the Prince of Peace, whom they claim to worship, on his supposed birthday while ignoring his teachings for the rest of the year. The Pharisees in the Established Church will churn out the usual platitudes about the “poor and needy” while ignoring the words of their Master who drove the money-changers out of the Temple and told his followers to “go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven”. And hundreds of thousands of people across England, Scotland and Wales will remain homeless – stuck in B&Bs, sleeping in cars and sheds or tents in the street. The festive clichés of the politicians and the princes of the church are meaningless to them.
    These people tell us this is the “season of goodwill”, but little of it will be shown to the poor and down-trodden – let alone the unions locked in bitter pay struggles over the Christmas period. A wave of strikes is sweeping the country. That’s why the Tories are squealing and bleating on about new laws to ban strikes to force people to accept pittance pay.
    The miserable efforts of the bourgeois media to demonise union leaders as “wreckers” who are “holding the nation to ransom” and “trying to destroy Christmas” have not worked this time round. Public support for the nurses, posties, teachers and railway workers is growing. On the street the craven Starmer leadership faces renewed demands to stand with the striking workers while some media gurus have broken ranks to argue for a realistic response to the unions’ demands to end this new winter of discontent and give the Tories a fighting chance at the next general election.
    Communists must naturally support all efforts to strengthen working-class organisations and bring them together and build support for all the strikes over the festive season. Now the workers are talking in the only language the employers understand. We must do all that we can to speed the day to victory.

Robbing the poor to pay the rich

Jittery markets. A sinking pound. Labour streets ahead in the opinion polls. Just three weeks in and Liz Truss has already set her stamp on Downing Street with a mini-budget that has even enraged the faithful in the Home Counties. A handful of Tory back-benchers sending in letters calling for her resignation to their 1922 Committee.
    Starmer thinks his time has come while Rishi Sunak waits in the wings pondering his next move.
    The Daily Mail calls it a ‘True Blue’ budget as indeed it is. Robbing the poor to help the rich is what the Tories are all about though they usually try to cloak their bourgeois greed with the Union Jack and the sort of pious platitudes Sir Keir Starmer thinks will propel him back into the corridors of power.
    In New York last week Truss said she was prepared to be unpopular at home to take the “difficult decisions” needed to secure economic growth. She’s certainly deeply unpopular and few outside her immediate circle believe that the “difficult decisions” announced by the new Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, will do anything to secure economic growth.
    The International Monetary Fund was not amused. It said “We understand that the sizeable fiscal package announced aims at helping families and businesses deal with the energy shock and at boosting growth via tax cuts and supply measures.
    “However, given elevated inflation pressures in many countries, including the UK, we do not recommend large and untargeted fiscal packages at this juncture, as it is important that fiscal policy does not work at cross purposes to monetary policy. Furthermore, the nature of the UK measures will likely increase inequality.”
    While Labour opens up a 17 point lead over the Conservatives in the opinion polls Starmer struts the stage at Labour’s conference in Liverpool to pose as a new Messiah destined to take the country "out of this endless cycle of crisis" through a mediocre package of reforms (like neighbourhood policing and free breakfast clubs in primary schools) that the Blairites believe is enough, along with singing the national anthem, to win back the working-class vote in the northern ‘Red Wall’ and sweep them back to power.
    Blair, of course, rode on the wave of an economic boom and the support of the traditional right-wing blocs that controlled many major unions in his day. Starmer, bereft of any allies in the union movement, has to deal with the global capitalist slump that began with the housing market crash in 2007. His only answer is the usual half-baked Keynesian solutions favoured by the American Democratic Party and Europe’s diminishing band of social-democrats intended to cushion the blows of the austerity regime and do little or nothing to end the poverty crisis in the imperialist heartlands.
    Jeremy Corbyn may be finished. But others are waiting in the wings ready to take Starmer’s place. Andy Burham, the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester, is said to be thinking about using the grass-roots Enough is Enough campaign as a platform for his greater ambitions – to get back into the House of Commons to secure a place in a future Starmer government and secure his place to challenge Sir Keir when the time comes.

The nine lives of Boris Johnson

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

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.