Where are we going?

Labour looks set to win the next general election. If the vote was held now the fifteen to twenty points lead in the opinion polls would give Starmer a landslide victory of Blairite proportions. But the polls can be misleading.
    Sunak is undoubtedly in trouble. He’s failed to win back the so-called “middle Englanders” who abandoned the Tories when the economy nearly collapsed under Liz Truss. Sunak’s failed to appease the Tory bigots over the refugee crisis who are now turning to the “PopCons” – the ‘Popular Conservative’ Trussite faction in parliament or the Faragist Reform Party.
    Only time will tell whether the appeal of the “Popcons” or the “Reformers” will split the Tory vote. Sunak’s team hopes not. Some think they can still rally the Tory faithful. This, of course, may just be wishful thinking. But it’s interesting to note the air of caution coming from one of the leading Blairites this week.
    Peter Mandelson, a Blairite grandee, says people “are not pricing in sufficiently” the possibility of Labour failing to win a majority. Labour’s poll lead is “artificial” and “is going to contract”. A landslide is not a foregone conclusion and if Labour fails to maintain its current momentum, it is on course for “a somewhat more ambivalent result than than the opinion polls are currently suggesting”.
    That’s certainly true. Starmer has hounded out most of the Corbynistas that the party relied on to do the canvassing needed to get the Labour vote out while promising little or nothing to the millions of working people whose votes will decide the next election. Starmer & Co may well believe that crawling to big business, media barons and the Americans is the key to victory – but it means nothing to the workers who will only rally round Labour if there’s real reform on the agenda.
    We reject the “parliamentary road” and electoral politics. But the left social-democrats who call themselves “revolutionaries” aren’t the answer. They claim to be the alternative voice of the labour movement. But their slates will end up, as always, amongst the also-rans at election time. The same goes for George Galloway and his new “Workers Party of Britain”. Though he bucked the system in the past, returning to parliament on two occasions on his Respect platform, he achieved nothing.
    These posers call for social‑democratic reforms while campaigning against the only mass force capable of implementing reform, the Labour Party itself. The paltry results of all these parties reflect the futility of trying to compete with Labour in bourgeois elections.
    They foster the illusion that there is a left electoral alternative to Labour when the reality is that the only alternative — in the current situation — to a Conservative government is a Labour government. So they end up portraying Labour rather than the ruling class as the main enemy of the working class. Objectively they end up in the camp of the class enemy.
    A Labour government, with its links with the 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.
    We must demand that the Labour Party reflect the wishes of the millions of its affiliated union members, expressed through the unions’ democratic procedures. And the unions we must struggle to elect genuine working class leaderships, who are prepared to represent and fight for the membership.
    The Party must campaign for a democratic Labour Party controlled by its affiliates; a Labour Party whose policies reflect those of a democratic union movement would become a powerful instrument for progressive reforms that would strengthen organised labour and benefit the working class.
    Our Party’s strategy is the only way to fight for the communist alternative within the working class of England, Scotland and Wales. We want day‑to‑day reforms and they can only be achieved by the main reformist, social democratic party in Britain, the Labour Party. We want revolution and that can only be achieved through the leadership of the communist party.

The trail of a turncoat

None of us should be surprised at Keir Starmer these days. Crawling to the Americans. Pandering to Zelensky’s vanity in Kiev. Stating that Jeremy Corbyn will not be allowed to stand for re-election on the Labour ticket. The Labour leader is doing his best to prove to the ruling class that he will be a safe pair of hands when and if his party wins a majority in the House of Commons. And Labour members who don’t like it can simply push off.
    "The Labour Party has changed," Starmer says, "from a party of protest, to a party of public service...[Labour] will never again be a party captured by narrow interests... if you don't like that, the door is open, and you can leave". Over a hundred thousand already have. Many more will undoubtedly follow as Starmer and the ageing Blairite clique that backs him in Parliament prepare an election manifesto that is barely distinguishable from that of the Tories.
    In his quest for high office Starmer needed allies within the labour movement. He posed as a left-winger to jump on the gravy train and aligned himself with the Remainers when he was a member of Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet. But once he became leader – elected on false pledges of “continuity” – he speedily dumped them in favour of a neo-liberal agenda that doesn’t even pay lip-service to social justice.
    Of course we’ve seen all this before. Every Labour leader, apart from Jeremy Corbyn and Harold Wilson, has come from the Labour right. Ramsay MacDonald, who led Labour’s first government back in the 1920s, talked about socialism, albeit in the far distance future, while admitting that all his government could do was administer capitalism. These days Starmer never even mentions it.
    What we get is this sort of vacuous nonsense. “The Labour Party I lead is patriotic. It is a party of public service, not protest. It is a party of equality, justice and fairness; one that proudly puts the needs of working people above any fringe interest. It is a party that doesn’t just talk about change – it delivers it”.
    Ultimately social democracy can never solve the economic and social crisis facing working people because it basically upholds the system which has created those problems in the first place.
    But the “socialism” of Attlee, Wilson and Callaghan that was based on Keynesian economics – like Mussolini’s corporate state or Roosevelt’s “New Deal” delivered the welfare state, the NHS and the education system. Starmer offers nothing.

End Sanctions Now!

Chinese, Russian and Arab relief teams are working in Turkey and Syria. Humanitarian aid from the Third World is pouring in to earthquake stricken region. But aid from charities and agencies in the West is being hindered by the US sanctions regime against Syria.
    While the Americans and their NATO allies bleat on about the plight of the Ukrainians to justify the billions of dollars-worth of arms being sent to Kiev to fight the Russians they turn a blind eye to the suffering of people who need medical aid, foodstuff and children’s needs aid in quake-afflicted in Syria.
    Under pressure the Biden administration has temporarily lifted sanctions on aid to Syria for a total of 180 days largely for the benefit of the Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Syria which is under American occupation. And it’s unclear whether the new measures have lifted the sanctions blocking much needed financial assistance to Syria.
    The answer is, of course, to end the sanctions regime altogether to speed humanitarian aid to the hundreds of thousands left homeless and destitute in Syria and help in the massive reconstruction needed to restore life to the shattered region.