Blair’s last election


New Labour celebrations after its election win were muted and
short-lived.
Within hours, MPs and commentators were calling for prime minister,
Tony Blair, to resign.
His government’s prosecution of the war in Iraq, and attacks on
public services and civil liberties have turned the tide against his
neo-liberal government.
 PETER TAAFFE analyses the result and political developments in
Britain.
This article is from the forthcoming issue of Socialism
Today

THE NEW LABOUR government of Tony Blair has been returned in the
general election for a ‘record’ third Labour term. Margaret Thatcher
also won three elections but is now so discredited that even Tory leader
Michael Howard distanced himself from her regime early in the campaign.

 The outcome of this contest is hardly a ringing endorsement of
the ‘New Labour project’, as the government’s majority collapsed
from 166 to 66, with its percentage of the popular vote, 36%, the lowest
of any governing party in history: the most unpopular party to form a
government since the 1832 Reform Act.

Despite this, Blair claimed that he has a mandate to govern, which is
not borne out by the facts. For the first time, a majority government in
Britain has been elected by fewer people than those who could not be
bothered to vote: 36% voted for New Labour, while 39% of the electorate
did not make it to the polling station.

Only 21% of the 44 million electorate supported New Labour –
another record in British electoral history. This is worse, for
instance, than Harold Wilson’s Labour government of 1974, which scored
39% of the vote and 28% of the electorate.

The Tories, on the other hand, flat-lined, gaining seats but, with
32.3% of the vote, this is just a 0.6% increase on their disastrous
showing in 2001. Howard says he is going to resign and already has
"something of the goodnight about him". (Andrew Rawnsley,
Observer)

In the popular vote, Labour scored roughly 9.5 million to the 8.75
million for the Tories. Support for the Tories slumped amongst women,
for instance, with only 27% supporting the Tories, compared to even 33%
in 2001. The only age group in which the Conservatives led was amongst
the over-65s, with 42% of them voting for the Tories.

Nevertheless, in London we saw a swing from Labour to the Tories of
roughly 3%, with eleven seats captured from Labour. This probably
reflects the disgruntlement of Londoners on a whole series of issues,
from dissatisfaction at the high cost of living, even compared to other
parts of the country, the stress arising from the dilapidated transport
system, opposition to the war, and support which the Tories garnered in
their dirty campaign of vilification against immigrants.

As a by-product of the ‘nasty party’s’ anti-immigrant campaign,
the British National Party recorded its best vote, an average of 4.3% in
a general election. In parts of London, such as Barking in East London,
it achieved its highest share of the vote in a parliamentary election,
16.9%, beating the Liberal Democrats into third place, and losing out to
the second-placed Tories by just 27 votes. In neighbouring Dagenham, it
notched up 9%.

Respect

ON THE LEFT, the Respect party of George Galloway, successful in
Tower Hamlets in ousting the Blairite apologist, Oona King, won an
average of 6.9% of the vote in what John Curtis in The Independent, in a
one-sided way, described as: "The best performance by a far-left
party in British electoral history".

If this were the case, it would be a cause for celebration for all of
those on the left looking for an alternative to discredited New Labour
and the fake radicalism of the Liberal Democrats. Unfortunately, despite
the success of Respect, it is too narrowly based, gaining support from
Muslims – many, if not mostly, workers outraged at Blair’s support
for the war – but not from other non-Muslim sections of the working
class, even in Tower Hamlets itself, where George Galloway was elected.

After his election, George Galloway was quoted in The Guardian as
promising that he "would step down for a Bengali" after one
term as an MP. Why not for a socialist or a good working-class fighter
and, if the best candidate is a Bengali worker, who now have a sizeable
presence in the constituency, all well and good?

Was Oona King a better fighter for the workers of Tower Hamlets
because she happened to be black? Is David Lammy, the black Blairite MP
for Tottenham, a champion of the working class, black or white, in his
area or generally? To merely pose this question shows how wrong and
short sighted it is to choose fighters for the left and socialism mainly
on an ethnic basis.

Some of the most oppressed sections of the working class come from
the ethnic communities and it is the responsibility of socialists to
reach them and win them to our ideas. But given the current character of
many working-class areas, especially but not exclusively in London, with
ethnic divisions and tensions, it is crucial that this should be done
with care.

By concentrating on just one community, even if it is the most
alienated and persecuted, as is undoubtedly the case with Muslims and
Asians generally, runs the risk of separating oneself from other
decisive sections of the working class. With its almost total
concentration on Muslim areas in this election – and with a programme
that was not clearly socialist – Respect has unfortunately made that
mistake in the run-up to and during the election. Hopefully, George
Galloway and Respect will learn the lessons of this campaign.

If it remains narrowly focused on one section of the working class it
will not be able to reach out to embrace even those leftward-moving
workers looking to establish the foundations of a new, genuine, mass
party of the working class.

The Socialist Party, in an alliance with the Socialist Greens –
blatantly and shamefully denied any publicity both in the national and
local media – conducted a spirited campaign which touched important
sections of the working class and young people, even where they were not
convinced to vote for us at this stage, and established a foothold in a
number of important constituencies.

A ‘presidential’ election

MOST SIGNIFICANTLY, THE Iraq war probably accounted for the majority
of the 1.1 million votes lost by Labour between 2001 and this election.

There was an element of a class split in this, with many of those
working-class people voting Labour, while disagreeing with Blair on the
war, motivated on more ‘bread-and-butter’ issues and particularly
fearful of any return of the dreaded Tories, while a layer of radical
middle-class people were indignant and voted against Blair, precisely
because of the war.

The relentless pounding away on the theme of ‘don’t allow Howard
in by the backdoor’ – which begs the question of who left the
backdoor open in the first place – had an effect on certain sections
of the working class and others who, otherwise, would have been prepared
to desert Labour and look for a more radical option. There is no longer
a stable core vote for Labour, as New Labour imagined.

The older generation, steeped in the tradition of what the Labour
Party once was, at bottom a working-class party, and with painful
memories of the Tories, still turned out to ‘stop the Tories’. The
new generation, which has experienced ‘Labour’ through Blairism, is
searching for more radical alternatives.

In reality, as even the tabloid press has commented, none of the
establishment parties "can be completely happy" (Daily
Mirror). One Labour MP commented to Andrew Grice of The Independent:
"The worrying thing is that people don’t want any of us".
This is the essence of Britain’s 2005 general election. For the three
main establishment parties – New Labour, Liberals and the Tories –
it was a ‘non-ideological’ contest between different management
teams for control of ‘Great Britain plc’.

The differences between the parties were minimal, highlighted by the
fact that the tax proposals – a subject of heated ‘debate’ –
amounted to a £4 billion difference between the spending plans of
Labour and the Tories, a "piffling amount", according to a
Financial Times correspondent, and amounting to about 1% of total public
expenditure.

All pretence of collective leadership during the campaign was brushed
aside by the leaders of all the parties as the election became a contest
between virtual ‘presidential’ candidates. This was personified by
Blair who adopted a more ‘humble’ posture but, even after his
electoral setback, the day after the election in Downing Street, still
uttered the phrase: "I, we, the government…" A 1930s German
semi-dictator, Von Schleicher, once stated: "First comes me, then
comes my horse, then comes parliament".

This aspect of Blair’s regime, increasingly an ‘elected
dictatorship’, was evident in his personal decision, without real
debate and agreement from the cabinet, to back Bush’s war in Iraq , as
was also his government’s assault on democratic rights and civil
liberties.

It was this which helped to motivate the assault on Blair personally,
both before and during the election, by an array of bourgeois
commentators, such as the founder of The Independent newspaper, Andreas
Whittam Smith. There is undoubtedly an element of Watergate in the way
that Blair personally took the decision to support the invasion of Iraq
and then drove it through in the teeth of mass opposition.

 When the US president, Richard Nixon, carried on the Vietnam
war, after having promised that he would end it when he was elected in
1968, decisive sections of the American ruling class moved to impeach
him over the Watergate break-in which forced his resignation. The
revelations of the Attorney General’s contradictory ‘advice’ on
the ‘illegality’ of the Iraq war highlighted how out of control
Blair was from his cabinet and from parliament which, in theory,
controls the government, as well as from the mass of the British people.

When a government displays such tendencies it sets the alarm bells
ringing around the strategists of capitalism. They fear that Blair,
having blundered into one war, could drag them into an even worse
foreign adventure, if that could be imagined, than the disaster in Iraq.
All of this, of course, threatens ‘democratic’ government.

Yet the possessing classes can quite easily reconcile themselves to
this government maintaining Thatcher’s vicious and undemocratic
anti-union laws, but if it threatens to endanger their position it will
get short shrift. After the Suez adventure in 1956, the then Tory prime
minister, Anthony Eden, was widely discredited and was compelled to
resign on the grounds of ‘ill health’. The Iraq war was Blair’s
Suez, part-payment for this crime being made in the election, with the
rest to be paid later when his usefulness to big business and capitalism
is finished.

FT backs New Labour

NOTWITHSTANDING THE WAR, the majority of capitalists – reflected in
the stance of the media – were prepared to extend their support to
Blair in this election.

Not just the ‘dirty digger’, Rupert Murdoch, through the columns
of The Sun, but the august Times, the Economist (reluctantly –
"No Alternative (Alas)") and, most importantly, the Financial
Times, weighed in behind Blair and New Labour.

The reasons for the Financial Times’ support are revealing:

"The very vigour of the debate about things that do not matter
much underlines the extent of cross-party consensus about things that
do. The economy and business are at the epicentre of this new
alignment.

It shows that Britain has moved well beyond the old left-right
disagreements about the economy, profit and the role of the market.
All the main parties support the policy framework behind the sustained
growth and stability of the past decade. Indeed, both the
Conservatives and Labour had a hand in creating it.

In other words, Britain no longer has a ‘business party’ and an
‘anti-business party’. Try as some might to point up the
ideological distance between the parties, in fact, the gap between
Michael Howard’s Conservative and Tony Blair’s Labour Party is
smaller than the one at the last US presidential election between
Republicans and Democrats". (3 May)

This brutal assessment by the organ of finance capital on the class
character of New Labour, ‘unremittingly’ a big-business party, is in
sharp contrast to the forlorn hankering of sections of the Labour ‘left’
for Labour to return to its roots as a working-class party at its base.

This was highlighted in the election by the sad sight of Tony Benn
explaining in The Guardian that, in desperation, New Labour spin doctors
had drafted him to convince wavering people to continue to support New
Labour. He asserted that this was an indication that Labour "was
beginning to change" and heralded its return to its socialist
roots. Similar claims have been made by left MPs returned in this
election.

It is true that the cutting back of Blair’s majority in the Commons
opens up greater scope for Commons rebellions on, for instance, the
issue of identity cards. There is speculation, for instance, that if in
the last parliament there had been a left-wing ‘wedge’ similar to
that which has been returned to the Commons now, then issues like
foundation hospitals and tuition fees would have been defeated.

This leaves out of the account the fact that not just the Blairites
but the alleged ‘Brownites’ eventually came to heel and supported
the government over these measures. Gordon Brown, who was the real ‘victor’
in this election and is undoubtedly Blair’s replacement as prime
minister after he is forced to resign – the timing of which is the
only uncertain factor in the equation – supported Blair and Blairism
on all decisive issues. Indeed, without the support of Brown, Blair may
have suffered an even more serious setback in this election.

It is, however, stretching credulity to argue that if Blair had gone
before the election, Labour would have lost no seats, as Labour MP Frank
Dobson said. Brown, in the process of propping up Blair, has sullied his
‘radical’ credentials. As Blair floundered over his support for the
war, Brown rode in behind him and declared that he would have supported
the invasion. He has been as ‘unremitting’ in the pursuit of New
Labour on, for instance, privatisation, the Private Finance Initiative (PFI)
and support for the ‘market’. His radicalism amounts merely to
verbally seducing the left, occasionally, by showing ‘a little bit of
his left ankle’.

What’s left?

MOREOVER, THE PERFORMANCE of ‘left’ MPs in the election campaign
does not indicate a firmness of intention or character when confronting
right-wing New Labour.

For instance, Neil Gerrard, erstwhile left MP for Walthamstow,
astonished teachers in a debate in his constituency involving the
Socialist Party candidate where he came out in favour of New Labour
projects such as PFI, specifically for a local hospital, Whipps Cross,
and the setting up of educational ‘academies’, one of which had been
previously defeated in a successful campaign involving the Socialist
Party.

Left-wing MP, Jeremy Corbyn, in his local election manifesto, praised
the government for investment in his area and singled out Patricia
Hewitt for praise. Tell that to the Rover workers who were made
redundant while she stood aside like Pontius Pilate and did nothing!

In the election campaign itself the mistake of those, like Tony Benn
and other left MPs who still cling to the party, was illustrated in the
defection of Brian Sedgemore to the Liberals, one of their number
previously in the Campaign Group of MPs and under-secretary to Tony Benn
in the Labour government of 1974-79. This was a move towards the right,
but one conditioned by the failure of left MPs and of trade union
leaders, some of them in the ‘awkward squad’, who offer no
alternative and still cling to New Labour. Before and during the
election, the trade union leaders continued to pour their members’
money into the coffers of New Labour.

One such union is the Transport and General Workers’ Union, led by
Tony Woodley, who was anything but ‘awkward’ in relation to New
Labour during the Rover crisis, which meant he let down his own members.
Blair unbelievably declared at the height of the crisis that
"nothing could be done".

Yet the Heath government of 1972, a Tory government, in a similar
crisis with Rolls Royce, nationalised the company in 24 hours. It is a
measure of the capitalist character of this government, to the right of
the Heath government of the 1970s, that it would not entertain for a
moment such a ‘confiscatory’ conception. It was left to Dave Nellist,
the candidate for the Socialist Party in Coventry North-East, to call
for the workers of Rover to storm the plant and occupy it. Even Mark
Seddon, on the Tribunite left of the Labour Party, suggested that the
Rover workers should consider an occupation and ‘work to rule’, as
did the Upper Clyde workers when their shipyards were threatened with
closure in the early 1970s.

Tony Woodley, subsequently, in an article in The Guardian, proposed
partial state ownership of important industries that were facing
closure. This was only after the Rover workers had reluctantly
acquiesced to the closure and, under the direction of their leaders,
looked towards increased redundancy payments.

The closure of this industry is a metaphor of what has happened to
British capitalism as a whole under the stewardship of both Labour and
Tory governments. One million jobs in manufacturing industry have been
lost in the last ten years as the short-sighted and greedy British
capitalists have relocated abroad, to China, Eastern Europe, etc, and
the government has done nothing about this.

Those displaced from industry in the past have sometimes found
re-employment, but on the basis of drastically reduced wages in McJobs,
with worse wages and conditions. This is the fate awaiting the Rover
workers on the basis of diseased British capitalism.

Little wonder that the now retired leader of the UCS workers, Jimmy
Reid, in a letter to The Guardian, wrote:

"The demise of the last British owned mass production car
company happened on their [New Labour’s] watch; in the middle of an
election in which New Labour boasts it has put an end to slumps. The
word went out. Hush it up. Get it off the front pages. And union
leaders duly obliged. Shame on them". (18 April)

Britain’s low-wage economy

ALL THIS HAS taken place at a time of Brown’s alleged economic
fireworks, when the Iron Chancellor has supposedly ironed out all the
contradictions of capitalism, eliminating booms and slumps. In reality,
Britain’s ‘spectacular’ economic development under Brown and Blair
is a chimera.

From 1996-2003, gross domestic product per person grew by 2.4% a
year, the same average rate as from 1982-96. It is true that the growth
of the economy, both under Brown and the previous Tory chancellor,
Kenneth Clarke, has not been as volatile as in previous periods.
However, this is largely due to the 1990s boom which, in turn, has been
sustained by a combination of neo-liberal policies involving attacks on
the share of the wealth created by the working class, as well as low
interest rates.

This, in turn, has fuelled a consumer boom which is now coming to an
end, as indicated by the worst sales in the retail sector for 13 years
in April. Moreover, Britain’s performance only looks reasonable in
comparison to the disastrous economic stagnation of France, Italy and,
on the domestic front, Germany as well.

Even in output per hour, when Britain is compared, France is 25%
higher, the US is 16% higher, and Germany 8% higher. The reason for this
lower productivity is

"less capital invested per worker, businesses are less
innovative and workers are less skilled". (The Economist)

An additional factor, perhaps the most important in the case of
Britain, is the driving down of wages. This is now a low-wage economy,
which has been achieved by weakening the trade unions. The chronic
underinvestment arising from this is reflected in the trade deficit,
which was £3.3 billion in February. It has oscillated around this
figure for a considerable period of time, but diminished slightly,
recently, largely because imports dropped by 1.5%. This, however,
probably indicates a contraction of consumer spending which has been the
main engine of growth in the British economy under Brown.

On top of this is that it is "clear beyond doubt" (The
Independent) that the housing market has begun to stall badly. House
prices, according to the Halifax Bank, did not rise at all in April.
When a similar situation occurred in Holland – not a collapse in house
prices but a stagnation – this ushered in a serious economic crisis
from which Holland is still blighted and which has led to a wholesale
assault on the wages, conditions, etc, of workers in the Netherlands.

Answering his economic critics, Brown has claimed that economic
growth will reach 3-3.5% this year. But this is highly problematical,
given the developments in the world economy where the unsustainable twin
deficits of the US, together with the rise of protectionism and the
stagnation in the housing market in the US as well, could precipitate a
serious recession which would have world ramifications.

The US Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan is attempting a slow ‘deflation’
of the economy by small incremental increases of interest rates over a
period. This is bound to dissuade US consumers from continuing to
borrow, which will reinforce the already recessionary trends in the
economy. The extent to which the rest of the world is dependent on the
US consumer to buy their exports is indicated by the fact that the trade
deficit in the US is running at roughly £32 billion a month.

Gordon Brown’s management

THE SAME DILEMMAS confronting the US, on a smaller scale, exercise
Brown in his ‘management’ of the British economy. The pound is
overvalued, hitting British exports and contributing to the yawning
trade deficit, which will be compounded if Brown is compelled to engage
in another ‘hike’ in UK interest rates.

This would attract ‘hot money’ from the global speculators, but
drive up the value of the pound even more. At the same time, inflation
is on the rise, raising the spectre for Britain of a return to the ‘stagflation’
– a stagnant economy and rising prices – of the 1960s and 1970s. It
is not an accident that capitalist commentators drew a comparison with
the election and that of 1992. That was ‘an election to lose’, as
subsequent events, particularly ‘Black Wednesday’, demonstrated.

Economic nemesis could confront this government in the
not-too-distant future. Brown, it seems, regularly jokes that
"there are two kinds of chancellor: those who fail and those who
get out in time". The refusal of Blair to quickly cede power to
Brown, which is draining away from Blair in any case, could result, as
noted by William Keegan, economics correspondent of the Observer and
keen Brownite, in Brown’s popularity being severely undermined even
before he takes over the ‘poisoned chalice’, the prime ministership,
from Blair.

The fate, however, of the luminaries of New Labour is secondary to
the impact the deterioration of British capitalism, which they have done
little or nothing to arrest, means for the fate of millions of
working-class people in Britain.

The collapse of manufacturing industry has continued apace, as we
have seen, but so also has the retooling of Britain’s shrunken
industrial base, which has atrophied under New Labour as under the
Tories. For instance, Britain’s spending on research and development,
at 1.9% of gross domestic product (GDP), seriously lags behind that of
France, Germany, Japan and the US.

The parasitic character of modern capitalism, including British
capitalism, is shown with its concentration on the ‘casino’ aspect
of speculation in currencies – the colossal financial pyramid of hedge
funds, for instance – and in tax swindles carried out by the rich and
stashed away in secret accounts. This, in turn, means that the
historical role of capitalism in developing the productive forces, its
only real historical justification, has been abandoned.

This shift of wealth and resources from the poor to the rich was the
‘best-kept secret’ of this recent election. Only the Liberal
Democrats half-heartedly proposed a ten pence increase to 50p in the
pound for those earning over £100,000. They are now, after the
election, preparing to drop this.

This proposal was treated with scorn by Blair and Brown, and yet the
‘tax avoidance’ measures of the rich are one of the greatest acts of
robbery ever carried out by the ruling class in Britain. Firstly, high
income taxes of 83% were reduced to 40% and corporation tax from 52% to
30%. This has not prevented massive frauds undertaken by an army of
accountancy firms salting away the loot of the rich in offshore islands.

A staggering $11.5 trillion dollars (£6 trillion) of the world’s
money is hidden in this fashion in Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.
If taxed, this loot could raise global revenues of £255 billion a year
which, if used properly, as even the London Evening Standard concedes,
"would help to alleviate poverty in Africa and developing
countries". Britain alone is losing an estimated £100 billion of
tax revenue annually, which again the Standard concedes "means
ordinary people are paying much more than they need be".

Company profits have roughly doubled every eight years, but the taxes
of the rich certainly have not. Inland Revenue statistics show that the
UK income tax take of £48.8 billion for 1989-90 rose to £123.7 billion
for 2004-05, while for the same period – after taking account of
record company profits – the take from corporations rose only from
£21.5 billion to £32.4 billion, which did not even keep pace with
inflation.

The total corporate share of tax in the UK has dropped from 11.5% in
1997-98 to 7.7% in 2003-04 – under the Blair/Brown management of
British capitalism – which is less than 2.5% of Britain’s GDP, the
lowest ever. Since 1997, the richest 1,000 people have seen their wealth
increase from £99 billion to £250 billion. According to the Standard,
"More than 65,000 rich individuals live in Britain but pay little
or no tax". The capitalist accountancy firms have coined it in this
situation and, particularly, from privatisation of state assets: "PFI
alone has yielded more than £500 million in fees for big accountancy
practices".

Classes on collision course

THIS HAS CONTRIBUTED to the maintenance, and deepening even, of the
stark class chasm, notwithstanding the blandishments of New Labour that
it was overcoming this divide. For instance, the difference in life
expectancy between the poorest and most affluent parts of the country
has grown to eleven years and is now more pronounced than in Victorian
times, according to researchers quoted in The Independent.

During the election campaign a report appeared that demonstrated that
‘social mobility’ – the movement of the working class into higher
education and higher income jobs – has virtually stagnated under New
Labour and is way behind the trends in other capitalist economies.

Three million children live in families who are poor, some of them
extremely so. Only the Socialist Party and other forces on the left
attempted to articulate the demands of this forgotten section of the
population. This was one of the main reasons why a huge 39% of the
population abstained once more from the ‘political process’. The
turnout was boosted by a mere 2% compared to the 2001 election.

This was probably due to the massive increase in postal voting, from
two million in 2001 to six million in this election, accompanied by many
examples of fraud. Also many students, crippled by tuition fees, others
outraged by the Iraq war, and deprived and suffering sections of the
population, who abstained in the 2001 election, were motivated to vote
in opposition to Blair this time. The scandal of postal voting
contributed to the disengagement from the ‘political process’ of
millions, as did the absence of canvassing by New Labour – they were
hardly able to show their face on the doorstep – and the virtually
complete ‘media election’ conducted by the three capitalist parties.

The main reason, however, there was not a complete rout for Blair and
Brown was the relatively ‘benign’ economic situation, with
unemployment at a 28-year low, at least officially. True, millions can
only get by now through longer hours because of low wages. But, as yet,
the bottom has not completely fallen out of the British economy. This
can all change, long before New Labour is forced to go back for a ‘mandate’.

At the same time, Blair’s promise, as well as Brown, to pursue an
"unremittingly New Labour" agenda means further clashes with
the trade unions and the working class. This does not necessarily
require the government to go back for approval from parliament. ‘Primary
legislation’ has already been passed on privatisation, PFI, etc.
Ministers can just use parliamentary ‘instruments’ to carry out
their programme. Therefore, the lefts’ claim that they can hold the
whip hand in the new parliament is not the case. It will take more than
parliamentary and verbal posturing to stop the Blairite neo-liberal
onslaught on the rights and conditions of the working class.

The pensions battle – postponed by the semi-retreat of New Labour
just before the election – will be renewed with vigour. The
appointment of ‘hard man’ David Blunkett is likely to have an
incendiary effect on public-sector workers, in particular, who face a
drastic extension of their working lives. Local government workers could
be compelled to take industrial action very soon if the government
proceeds with its plans on pensions.

Nurses at their conference during the election also warned of
industrial action if they were attacked on the pension front. The issue
of low pay will be resurrected now that the election is out of the way.
The crisis in housing, particularly in the major conurbations and
cities, can also become a burning issue. House repossessions increased
by 35% in the last year.

The determination of the government to pursue the establishment of
‘academies’ can also provoke a big movement of resistance, as was
the case before the election. And then there is the case of council tax,
which is now almost as unpopular as the poll tax was. This will be
compounded by the revaluation of property which will mean further
burdens on the working class.

Therefore, if one takes the likely stormy economic scenario, together
with the determination of New Labour to pursue its neo-liberal agenda,
this means that the relative tranquillity of the two New Labour
governments can be shattered in the coming period.

As Marxists have always pointed out, elections are only a moment, a
snapshot of reality. This election was more of a moment than the
previous two. They do not alter the underlying processes which, in
Britain, are leading to a big collision between the classes. This will
be decisive in shaping the political outlook of the working class, in
particular, and its reflection in the change in the political scenario.

Proportional representation

BLAIR’S SUPPORT FOR the Iraq war and the low turnout in the
election have brought the issue of proportional representation back onto
the agenda.

After years of advocating strong centralising governments, some
capitalist commentators have become latter-day converts to ‘weak
government’, which they argue can constrain ‘over-mighty’ leaders
like Blair. The Liberal Democrats are keen advocates for the obvious
reason that they will probably gain. With its huge parliamentary
majority, the New Labour government rejected a deal with the Liberals on
this issue in 1997. Most Tories, it seems, also remain opposed. But if
they continue to stagnate electorally then even they could change their
position.

Socialism Today supports the introduction of proportional
representation, but in its most democratic form which would allow the
representation of small parties, as in the elections to the Scottish
Parliament, with the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP). A switch to the
Alternate Vote System, with the stipulation that parties can only be
elected if, through transfers, they are elected with a high percentage
of votes, is inherently undemocratic and should be opposed.

Both the Labour Party and the Tories face post-election turmoil.
Because of their shrunken base – their memberships are either old
(Tories) or demoralised (New Labour) – this will be concentrated at
the top. Howard, backed by most of the Tory tops and toffs, has had a
little taste of rank-and-file ‘democracy’ and now wishes to dispense
with it.

The decision on the new leader should now be taken by MPs, they say.
Michael Heseltine is magnanimous and states that the ‘members’ can
be ‘consulted’, as long as the MPs have the final say. This has a
certain logic because, after all, the essence of capitalist democracy is
that the people can say what they like so long as big business decides.
Therefore, why not apply the same rules to the traditional capitalist
party!

Blair, on the other hand, faces insistent demands that he should go
sooner rather than later. He is clearly a ‘lame duck’ prime minister
who threatens to become a ‘dead duck’. Brown will, however, ride to
his rescue as he did in the election campaign. As Benjamin Franklin
said: "We must indeed all hang together or, most assuredly, we
shall all hang separately".

Brown does not want to take over a party riven with divisions, or
with the left and others claiming that they forced Blair out. It is not
certain that this time he will be able to prop up Blair, particularly if
big economic and social events develop. Blair will attempt to stay for
18 months, until after a European referendum, if it ever takes place. If
the French reject the European referendum, all bets are off.

New workers’ party

UP TO NOW, a decisive step towards a new mass workers’ party has
not taken place in Britain, apart from in Scotland with the formation of
the SSP which, because of internal conflict on secondary issues,
unfortunately, went back electorally in this election.

The task of forming a new mass party, or at least the beginnings of
such a party, is more difficult because of the differences and the sizes
of the population, amongst other things, in Scotland compared to England
and Wales. But it is not an accident that in Germany, for instance, the
first faltering steps towards a new party, the Electoral Alternative –
Work and Social Justice (WASG), albeit not specifically socialist, has
been established in advance of Britain. Yet here the issue has been
under discussion for a much longer time.

There are both objective and subjective reasons for the delay in
Britain in establishing a new party compared to Germany or, for that
matter, the formation of Rifondazione Comunista (RC) in Italy at the
beginning of the 1990s.

 There is a different economic scenario. Germany is experiencing
a much more profound economic crisis, with features of what took place
in Britain under Thatcherism but, this time, pursued by ‘Schröderism’,
by the SPD Chancellor of the Red-Green coalition in Germany. At the same
time, the official left, both within the Labour Party and the trade
unions, has lacked the political perspective, and the decisiveness which
would go with this, to step outside the shell of what remains of the
Labour Party.

Even the ‘most extreme’ lefts, such as Alan Simpson, Labour MP
for Nottingham South, have urged that

"the movement will have to stand together… It’s important
not to be rolling off in fragments". (Morning Star, 28 April)

He was countered by RMT general secretary, Bob Crow, at a rally he
shared with Alan Simpson. Bob Crow said that despite the

"excellent work done by Mr Simpson and others like him in the
Labour Party, the party can’t be changed. We need a new party to
represent working men and women… The sooner we all realise the
sooner we can pick up the pieces and move on". (Morning Star)

Similar statements have been made by Bob Crow and other left figures
in the past but their words have not been matched by deeds. The RMT in
Scotland supported the first steps towards a new workers’ party in the
decision to affiliate and financially support the SSP. In England and
Wales, however, the union leaders are ambivalent, and even give the
impression that in some way the Labour Party can be salvaged.

The RMT is reported to be taking out legal action against Labour,
because it has been ‘expelled’. Will the real RMT and the real Bob
Crow please stand up? To cling to the Labour Party in circumstances
where it can no longer be reformed into a vehicle for working-class
struggle and then refuse to draw the obvious conclusions is to let down
millions of workers in Britain who are looking for a lead, including
members of the RMT.

In this election the New Labour machine propounded the theory, once
more, of the ‘lesser evil’. If it is on the ropes in the next
election, as it is likely to be, it will again trundle out this ‘theory’.
In the election after that, whether it is in opposition or in
government, the same arguments will be used. In the meantime, the New
Labour leaders will continue to fervently defend capitalism, thereby
betraying the hopes and aspirations of working-class people.

The ‘lesser evil’ argument was also used by the Lib-Labs within
the Liberal Party in the late 19th century. But then the recognition
that the Liberal Party could no longer be even a partial vehicle for the
aspirations of the trade unions led to a new generation of workers –
most of them from families with a Lib-Lab tradition – to make a
decisive break.

They heaved the new Labour Party up on their shoulders. The new
generation of workers, environmentalists and young people, in
particular, faces the same challenge today. Before this election even
New Labour admitted that three million former Labour voters were so
disaffected that they were threatening to not support them in the
election. Labour, as we have seen, did lose a million votes compared to
the last election.

But, on a mass scale, these disenfranchised potential supporters of a
new mass formation had nowhere to go and, therefore, either abstained or
supported the Liberal Democrats, a regression politically back to the
pre-Labour Party of the 19th century. Some supported Respect or the
Socialist Party.

Not just in elections, but in the much more important battles in
between, these three million and many more must be offered a mass pole
of attraction. The left can take the first steps towards this by
beginning the process of once more seriously setting about organising
the framework, through discussion and debate, of a new left formation.

In order that this does not run into the sand, the lessons of the
failures of the Socialist Labour Party, the Socialist Alliance, and the
obvious weaknesses of Respect have to be absorbed. A new party including
socialists, left and radical environmentalists, socialist greens,
disaffected trade unionists and others, can be drawn into a discussion
and debate on the need for such a new formation. No time must be lost.

The election of Matt Wrack to displace the discredited Andy Gilchrist
as the new general secretary of the Fire Brigades’ Union on the very
day after the general election betokens a new mood amongst workers and a
change in the industrial and political situation which will take place
in Britain.

Genuine forces of the left and socialists must do everything to build
on such steps forward to politically rearm the trade unions with
combative leaderships and to extend this into the political sphere with
the beginnings of a new mass workers’ party.

This can advance the interests of the British working class much more
decisively than anything we have seen from the establishment capitalist
parties in this election.