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.  

Let the good times roll…

The race for the Labour leadership has begun. Not officially. No leadership challenge has been formally made. No election under rules has been set. And Sir Keir Starmer is still at the helm. But no one doubts that his days are numbered as Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham set out their stalls in preparation for the contest to come which will give one of them the keys to Number Ten.
Streeting is a Blairite who has nothing to offer working people apart from more of the same rubbish they got from Starmer. He wisely plays down the fact that he was a protégé of the disgraced Peter Mandelson while Andy Burnham plays up demands for social justice to fend off the Greens and woo back the Labour vote on the streets that until recently had traditionally backed Labour. The self-proclaimed “left” on the Labour back-benches – the sort who support the Socialist Campaign Group and other Bennite campaigns – is backing Burnham, largely to keep Streeting out. John McDonnell, a one-time ally of Jeremy Corbyn, says that the former Labour leader should be able to rejoin the party if Burnham becomes leader. But this has been ruled out by the Burnham camp.
But everything hinges on Burnham winning the Makerfield seat. If he fails – and the Faragists are going to put up a strong challenge – then all bets are off for both Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting.

Back in Brussels…

...all eyes are on the battle for Labour’s top job. Whoever gets it it’s a win-win for the Common Market. Streeting is opening calling for a return to the European Union. Burnham says nothing now that could play into Farage’s hand but only last year he told his supporters that “I want to rejoin the EU. I hope it happens in my lifetime…”. Whoever wins a second referendum looks inevitable. Rejoining the EU is now back on the agenda, and the Remainers are winning the argument given the pathetic leaders of the Brexit camp these days.
The Tories had a golden opportunity after Brexit to build an independent British economy freed from the fetters of the European Union. Johnson, Truss and Sunak squandered it in pursuit of the impossible dream of a free trade agreement with the United States – that was never on the cards in Washington. 
Lexit, the left case for leaving the European Union, never got off the ground. The public face of the Brexiteers is now that of Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch and the followers of Tommy Robinson that we see draped in Union Jacks at the anti-immigration rallies of the lunatic fringe.
But one only has to look at what’s happening in Europe today to see that rejoining the European Union will not solve the problems of working people. Communists need to make the case for staying out of the EU, trading freely with everyone throughout the world and building an independent economy needed to restore our public services in the 21st century.