Video from the huge rally in London on Saturday 2nd July
The delusions of the anti-Corbyn plotters
On Thursday 23rd June the unexpected triumph of the Leave campaign can only be read as a rebuke to the authority of the political class. Certainly racism and anti-immigrant prejudice informed many voters, but that was far from the only motive for so many people rejecting the overwhelming consensus view of experts and professionals who counseled caution.
What credibility did George Osborne have in saying that leaving the European Union would jeopardize the prosperity and strength of the UK economy, when millions work on zero hours contracts, or with only a few hours through agencies; when a million people rely upon food banks; when there is a crippling housing crisis; when there is both a growth of in-work poverty, and also a brutal and inhuman regime of sanctioning the unemployed; when thousands of graduates are burdened by an unimaginable yoke of debt.
For people who cannot afford the bus to go and sign on, what did it matter that they might lose the theoretical opportunity to take a job in Milan or Berlin. When people see their local employers advertising vacancies only in Poland or the Czech Republic, without giving them an opportunity to apply, then the employment law protections enshrined in EU law may as well be dust in their mouths.
The arguments from anti-Corbyn rebels in the Labour Party make scarce sense. The vote to Remain had to be won amongst those angry and alienated, and who are highly skeptical about the EU. The argument from Corbyn that the EU is far from perfect, but on balance it was still better to remain, was one carefully calibrated to engage with potential swing voters in the referendum.
The plotters know that Corbyn is not responsible for losing the referendum. As Angela Eagle herself explained on 13th June, “Jeremy is up and down the country, pursuing an agenda that would make a 25-year-old tired. He has not stopped. We are doing our best, but if we are not reported it is difficult.”
However, it takes a staggering lack of self awareness by Labour MPs, many of whom failed to convince the electors in their own constituencies to vote Remain, to fail to see that the referendum revolt against the politics of “business as usual” also rejects them, and the whole culture of the Portcullis House bubble; it rejects the incestuous linkeage between conspiring careerists and establishment journalists.
At the very moment when the prospect of Brexit threatens to rip up employment rights, when the economy might be overwhelmed by catastrophe as business confidence is lost, and investment decisions are postponed and cancelled. When the falling pound jeopardizes thousands of jobs in UK companies who buy on the world market in US dollars. At a time when not only 3 million EU citizens in the UK are unsure of their future, but there is a terrifying rise in racially motivated hate crime. At this very moment Labour shadow cabinet members indulge in an orchestrated fiasco of resignations, and student union antics. It is beyond contempt.
And who is the mighty, unifying figure who they suggest can bring the party back together as an alternative to Corbyn. Angela Eagle!? Does anyone seriously think that Angela Eagle, particularly if she is elected in a process that makes the assassination of Julius Caesar look quite proper and dignified, will have the authority and stature to unite the party, to appease the sense of betrayal from members and activists? Is Angela Eagle, who has not even carried the support of her own constituency party, the person who can bring back alienated Labour voters who are listening to the simplistic siren song of UKIP?
It is a far cry from the 1976 contest, when 6 giants sought the leadership. Michael Foot, Anthony Crosland, Tony Benn, Denis Healey, Roy Jenkins and James Callaghan.
The statement from General Secretaries of 10 of the 14 affiliated unions issued yesterday is not quite a ringing endorsement of Corbyn. However it is withering in its scorn for the rebels of the parliamentary party, who have played parlour games at the moment when their nation, and their constituents needed them most to act as a unified and determined opposition.
The current crisis within the Parliamentary Labour Party is deeply regrettable and unnecessary. Last week’s vote to leave the European Union presents the entire labour movement with unprecedented challenges. Above all, we need to be fighting to preserve our members’ jobs, already under threat in several industries and across the public sector as a consequence. The government is in crisis, but already serious debates are taking place and decisions being made which profoundly affect the interests of working people.
Under these circumstances, our members and millions of others will be looking with dismay at the events in parliament. It cannot be right to seek to denude the Labour front bench at this time, when the government more than ever needs to be scrutinised and held to account by an effective and united opposition that does the job it is paid to do.
Jeremy Corbyn is the democratically-elected Leader of our Party who secured such a resounding mandate less than ten months ago under an electoral procedure fully supported by Labour MPs. His position cannot and should not be challenged except through the proper democratic procedures provided for in the Party’s constitution. We urge all Labour MPs to abide by those procedures, and to respect the authority of the Party’s Leader.
While we have stated that we believe a Leadership election would be an unwelcome distraction at this time of crisis, if one nevertheless occurs through the proper procedures we would expect all parts of the Party to honour the result and pull together in the interests of the country, and working people in particular. The only party that can win for working people is a strong and united Labour Party.
Len McCluskey, General Secretary, Unite the Union
Dave Prentis, General Secretary, UNISON
Tim Roache, General Secretary, GMB
Dave Ward, General Secretary, CWU
Brian Rye, Acting General Secretary, UCATT
Manuel Cortes, General Secretary, TSSA
Mick Whelan, General Secretary, ASLEF
Matt Wrack, General Secretary, FBU
Ronnie Draper, General Secretary, BFAWU
Chris Kitchen, General Secretary, NUM
Each trade union will make its own decisions, by the appropriate processes according to their own rule books.
However, the rightful scorn against the MP plotters, will I am sure be a factor in those decisions; and while many trade union activists and officers may have some reservations about Corbyn; the alternatives look far worse.
Those who plunge Labour into civil war will never be forgiven
The referendum decision to leave the EU has created the greatest period of economic uncertainty for Britain since the 1947 Sterling crisis. The UK weathered that storm mainly due to the decisive political leadership of Sir Stafford Cripps as Chancellor, and a political context where a Labour government had accumulated significant goodwill, not only through its welfare and housing policies, but also due to an industrial policy that was seen to benefit Labour’s core, working class voters:
The government [] effectively used the Distribution of Industry Act of 1945 to promote employment. A staggering four million men and women were demobilised from the armed forces by the end of 1946, yet the Board of Trade, first under Cripps, and later under Harold Wilson made aggressive use of Industrial development Certificates to force modern, new industry into area of unemployment, like the North East, South Wales and Central Scotland, and then provide these new industries with remission of rents, zero rates, and interest free loans.
The North East of England had unemployment of 38% in 1932, by 1948 this stood at 2%; over the same period Scotland saw unemployment fall from 35% to 4.5%, and Wales saw unemployment fall from 41% to 5.5%. The UK national average unemployment by 1951 was just 1.8%. Although there was only limited forward planning, government direction effectively produced full employment, and intervention against the market’s bias towards the South East of England spread the benefits across the UK.
Indeed, the feeling that the Labour government was on the side of ordinary working people was so tangible, that when Cripps cut the food ration to below wartime levels in 1947 to address the Sterling crisis, this was supported by Labour voters.
How very different from the drift of the economy towards the South East in the Blair/Brown years, and the growing feeling of being “left behind” from Wales, Scotland and the English Regions. As Kevin Morgan from Cardiff university noted some years ago:
“As the UK’s most over-developed region, the south east is the chief source of inflationary pressures, hence UK monetary policy tends to be calibrated to the over-heated conditions in this core region rather than the ‘under-heated’ conditions in the less developed regions of the north and the west. In a celebrated public relations gaffe the Governor of the Bank of England, Eddie George, actually conceded this point when, asked if job loss in the north was an acceptable price to pay for the control of inflation in the south, he was reported to have said ‘yes, I suppose in a sense I am’. ”
The Sterling crisis in 1947 did not cause a political crisis, and because there was no political crisis its historical significance has been underestimated. Significantly, the Labour Party stood together in the national interest, despite bitter divisions in the Cabinet over Cripps’s response.
Coming to the modern day, the Labour Party in opposition needs to present itself as an alternative government, but just as importantly the role of the main opposition party in a parliamentary democracy is to seek to influence the decisions of government, and shape the political debate.
Given the potentially economically catastrophic vote to leave the EU last Thursday, an outcome that most Labour Party members, and most Labour voters opposed; and which was opposed by the overwhelming majority of affiliated trade unions; then it is essential that the Labour Party quickly develops a policy of how to deal with the fall out.
It should have been obvious that the task for the Labour Party was to keep the media focus on the lies and false promises from the leading Brexit campaigners; and it should have been obvious that the task for the Labour Party was to exploit the division in the Conservative Party and the paralysis of the lame-duck Cameron administration. It should also have been obvious that it was necessary to keep the party unified behind those tasks.
The meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party on Monday 27th June should have been an opportunity to develop a strategy to deal with the Brexit crisis, and to speak up for the interests of the millions of those that the Labour Party exists to represent whose economic prospects are now less secure.
Instead, we saw an exercise of self-indulgent narcissism, with the Westminster bubble concerns of professional politicians trumping the very real fear and anxiety that ordinary people are feeling.
As GMB General Secretary, Tim Roache, said in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote:
We’re in uncharted waters. The government needs to act straight away to secure jobs and keep the economy moving – too many working people are still carrying the can for the last economic crash, they can ill afford another one.
What happens next cannot be the preserve of a government elected with 37% of the vote or potentially a Prime Minister who was never elected at all. The British people have spoken, many of them frustrated with business as usual, choosing to leave the EU because of the impacts of the flexible labour market and the pursuit of free trade above all else.
Our place in the world cannot be one based on a Tory Party free-for-all, free market philosophy. A race to the bottom which prioritises the removal of trade barriers and the flexible labour market above all else will fail working people and the very voters who made their decision yesterday.
The Prime Minister must act now, on a cross party basis, to heal and represent the whole county. Not just the rifts in his Party. That means an urgent plan to protect jobs and a guarantee that no workplace rights will face the axe.
Tim is undoubtedly right to say that an urgent plan is needed to protect jobs, resolve uncertainty over workplace rights. It is an entirely reasonable expectation from the trade unions that the parliamentary party should also have understood that those were the urgent priorities.
I think it is no secret that many in the trade unions are not uncritical supporters of Corbyn. There is a very real question mark over whether Corbyn’s undoubted appeal to a politically engaged minority can translate into the mass electoral appeal that can win a general election. Both Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornberry have failed to engage substantively with the question of how tens of thousands of skilled, well paid and organized jobs in manufacturing and shipbuilding could be protected were the Trident successor programme to be cancelled, as they desire. But clearly even for those who may be more critical friends of Corbyn, now was the time for the party to unite behind him.
The disdain with which rebels in the Parliamentary Labour Party disregarded the statement from General Secretaries of 12 of the 14 affiliated trade unions, indicates turning their backs on the ethos and traditions of the Party. The General Secretaries, speaking in the interests of some 3 million working people, said:
The Prime Minister’s resignation has triggered a Tory leadership crisis. At the very time we need politicians to come together for the common good, the Tory party is plunging into a period of argument and infighting. In the absence of a government that puts the people first Labour must unite as a source of national stability and unity.
It should focus on speaking up for jobs and workers’ rights under threat, and on challenging any attempt to use the referendum result to introduce a more right-wing Tory government by the backdoor.
The last thing Labour needs is a manufactured leadership row of its own in the midst of this crisis and we call upon all Labour MPs not to engage in any such indulgence.
Let us be clear, whatever failing there may have been with Labour’s campaign to stay in the EU, the party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership saw most Labour voters backing remain – a figure between 63% and 70% depending upon the polling. The inchoate expression of alienation against the political class that led to so many voting Leave, against what objectively are their own best interests, did not grip working class communities in the last 9 months of Corbyn’s stewardship of the party.
The wounds go deeper, and further back. The bond of trust between the Labour Party and much of the electorate was broken by the deceit that led the UK to participate in a criminally irresponsible war in Iraq. The economic policies that led to a million manufacturing jobs lost since 1997 undermined Labour’s credibility to speak for many communities in the English regions, and the other nations of the UK.
The triangulation and spin meant that Labour’s message was increasingly attuned to swing voters in marginal constituencies. This was particularly damaging over the issue of immigration, where de facto the last Labour government encouraged migrants due to the economic benefits, while simultaneously some figures in the Labour party indulged in dog-whistle collusion in anti-migrant sentiment. The failure by Blair and Brown to deal with the UK’s growing housing crisis, and their unwillingness to ensure that Employment Law was strong enough to prevent unscrupulous bosses abusing migrants to push down wages in entry level jobs, meant that many working class people have real-life, negative experiences associated with migration. There are many areas where increased population has not seen the necessary, corresponding increase in housing, schooling and health capacity. There are many areas where increased population has not seen the necessary. corresponding increase in housing, schooling and health capacity
These are just some of the reasons why Labour lost the elections of 2010, and 2015. Long before Jeremy Corbyn even thought he might one day be leader of the party.
The Labour Party now has a challenging landscape to confront. The type of message and the type of party that plays well in Scotland or Wales is different from the North of England, which is again different from London, and different from the pockets of Labour support in the rest of the South of England.
Not only are those Labour MPs indulging in the circus of destabilizing Corbyn letting down people in the constituencies they were elected to serve, and failing to act to promote stability which is their duty in the national interest; they are utterly deluded that there is any alternative leader waiting in the wings that has the stature or appeal to solve Labour’s problems. They are deluded if they think that a Labour leader who had been more enthusiastic about the EU would have been better able to reach out to skeptical and disengaged voters.
They are also deluded if they think that their exercise of fiddling while Rome burns is the way to appeal to voters of any stripe. They are risking blowing the Labour Party up into civil war at exactly the time when the people that the Labour Party was established to represent more than ever need the Party to be strong and united.
Why Corbyn got it right.
By Luke Davies
So why exactly did 51.9% of Britain’s voting population choose to ignore world leaders, 90% of economists, the UK’s top business leaders and independent EU law experts last Thursday?
The easiest answer is that they were misled: the blatant lie that the UK has been losing £350 million weekly to the EU and that this money could be spent on the NHS; questionable claims about the threat of Turkey joining the union; and backtracking following the last minute decision to put immigration at the forefront of the Vote Leave campaign.
Stories of people googling ‘What is the EU?‘ the day after the referendum, and tweets, interviews and confessions from people who have come to regret voting Leave are widely circulating social media.
But the idea that voters were blind to the debunking of myths on both sides of the debate, or that they somehow voted against their own will, is to skirt around a difficult truth – which is that Vote Leave and media organisations that supported Brexit won because they spoke to the general public’s very real concerns.
During a post-recession age of austerity – it was the Vote Leave camp, and not Britain Stronger in Europe, who reached out to people in their misery and promised them change.
In a bizarre reversal of political norms, Boris Johnson was the one putting inequality at the top of the agenda in the BBC’s Great Debate(drawing 3.9 million viewers). He argued that: ‘the differentials in income in our country have become too great’, before bemoaning a state of affairs in which ‘FTSE100 chiefs are now earning 150 times the average pay of people on the shop floor’.
He even cast the Remain Stronger in Europe campaign as being callously disinterested in the welfare of people on lower incomes, quoting the Remain campaign leader Lord Rose’s remarks that wages of low skilled workers could rise in the event of a Brexit (which Rose had inadvisably insisted was ‘not necessarily a good thing’).
Johnson – in common with his fellow Leave campaigners – was drawing on and taking advantage of a popular belief that the EU is a fundamentally inegalitarian institution.
A YouGov poll published back in April revealed that even before the referendum campaign had got going, most people imagined that Brexit would have minimal negative impact on the working classes, whilst having a significant negative impact on people running big businesses.
Media coverage of the referendum in leading pro-Leave publications firmed up these convictions by concentrating on the impact of EU membership on Britain’s poorest – the success of which has been clearly demonstrated by the class divide in the nation‘s voting patterns.
The Sun, for instance, continuously fixated on the cost for British workers of EU open borders, whilst arguing that in turn ‘big businesses’ have ‘benefitted from cheap labour’. The Daily Express led with articles about EU regulations keeping food prices high.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail ran stories on the impact of EU open borders on those awaiting social housing.
Of course many of these claims are questionable. Most obviously, research carried out by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research suggests that low-income households are likely to shoulder a disproportionate share of the costs of Brexit – immediately detracting from any claims of potential positive gains.
And yet Vote Leave still won the argument. Why?
It is true that the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign also put jobs, prices and workers’ rights at its forefront. But it made a basic error: it adopted the position of defending the status quo at a time of hardship.
Britain Stronger in Europe told Britons: you and your family have ‘more opportunities and more financial security‘ now than you would outside of the EU. It tried to convince voters that they were already enjoying the benefits of ample workers’ rights; of saving £350 a year through lower prices; of massive investment from the EU; and of unprecedented employment opportunities courtesy of Europe.
Its campaign leaders adopted the policy of trying to persuade the nation that they’ve never had it so good at a time when 4.6 million people live in a state of persistent poverty, homeownership is majorly in decline, foodbank use is continuing to rise, people face long-term wage stagnation and claims of a return to acceptable employment levels mask a reality in which precarious new forms of employment have replaced stable, full-time jobs.
Under these circumstances, spelling out the benefits of EU membership is a bit like a doctor patronisingly telling a patient in acute pain that the medicine is working.
The tragedy is that the Remain vote could so easily have accepted people’s complaints and shifted the debate in the direction of the need for change.
Whilst Brexit may well be a red herring – deceiving people into believing that they have found the single solution for all of the social injustices that they are subjected to – the EU is hardly a blameless target.
It is an undemocratic institution that in Greece, Portugal and Ireland has shown that it puts the interest of bankers and big business before the people.
Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Owen Jones and Yanis Varoufakis are among those on the left who have been busy arguing that people’s anger at the EU is legitimate and should be turned to good use.
The point is that in conceding points against the EU and speaking about the need for reform, Corbyn was completely at odds with the referendum strategy of Britain Stronger in Europe.
The campaign sidelined Corbyn and MsDonnell, choosing Sadiq Khan instead as their Labour representative in the televised debate, and rejecting the Another Europe is Possible movement in favour of their rose-tinted vision of life inside the EU.
Of course, this strategy failed spectacularly.
It is deeply ironic that Corbyn is now being blamed for this failure. His acknowledgment of the valid basis of people’s anger was the only seriously credible alternative to the blind veneration of Britain Stronger in Europe.
So what of the criticisms currently being made of his apparently spiritless campaign?
It was back in April when Corbyn first faced the accusation (from the same group of MPs who staged the recent coup) that his position was unclear. Four days later he responded by delivering a definitive speech to the party in which he quelled all suggestions that he was pro-Leave: ‘Europe needs to change. But that change can only come from working with our allies in the EU‘. Ever since, he has campaigned tirelessly in favour of Remain.
His Twitter feed provides irrefutable evidence of this – with photographic proof of him canvassing on the streets, speaking at rallies and touring the country promoting Labour In For Remain.
The idea that Corbyn failed to throw his weight into his campaign should be seen for what it is: an opportunistic attempt by the party establishment to quash the grassroots movement that Corbyn has established and reclaim the middle ground.
Before resigning, deputy leader Tom Watson was more than willing to acknowledge how much work Corbyn has been doing, stating in response to criticisms of a lacklustre campaign: ‘Of all the bricks that are thrown at Jeremy, I think this is the unfairest I’ve seen […] He’s done speech after speech after speech.’
Corbyn’s Twitter feed proves that he has made more public and television appearances than David Cameron during this campaign.
If Corbyn’s voice was quiet, it is because others made it so. It is because Britain Stronger in Europe – a campaign group run by business leaders, Blairites and Conservative politicians – chose instead to put forward an uncomplicated vision of our present prosperity. And because news coverage reflected this, whilst failing to report on Corbyn’s parallel campaign.
Anyone pushing the line that Corbyn sat back and watched as everything imploded is either practising the dark art of New Labour spin or has imbibed its noxious fumes.
And they are all around us – with underhand tactics being used evocative of the Mandelson era, like the circulation of rumours that Corbyn himself voted to Leave.
MPs have even resorted to levelling the objection against him that he tried to sabotage the Remain campaign by deleting excessively pro-EU messages from speeches – completely missing the fact that this euroscepticism was the much needed antidote that could have won over Britain’s voters, if only it had been more widely adopted.
Still, it would be wrong to say that Corbyn had no impact.
63% of Labour voters voted to Remain.
As for whether he lacks the strength and recognition to lead the party in a snap election – since April, Corbyn has polled favourably with significantly more voters than Cameron.
By no means is his leadership ideal; he campaigns like its still the 1990s, failing to make good use of social media and to exploit the unprecedented levels of support for him among the young and the politically engaged.
But even so – this referendum was not a defeat for Corbyn. It was a defeat for Britain Stronger in Europe, who sidelined him and ran with a strategy completely at odds with the campaign he fought – which succeeded in spite of being underrepresented in the media and unsupported by his fellow Labour MPs.
There has never been a greater need for a socialist candidate to refocus the debate.
The world’s media are in little doubt that this was a vote against the establishment. At the same time, it is clear to all that Brexit is not going to calm the waters. As the myths are exposed, a void will be left for new narratives that can explain to people the true causes of their discontent.
Only Hilary Benn and his cohort of Blairites could possibly think that now is the time to take us back into the dark ages, when there was little to distinguish right from left.
Of course it is not just the Blairites who are walking out, as the exodus has left a few loyal Corbyn supporters feeling that they are on board a sinking ship.
But Corbyn will win any future leadership election.
His detractors should seek solace in the knowledge that Corbyn’s strategy was right. The failure lies in the fact that it didn’t receive enough attention.
That should be a challenge – not a cause for defeat.
The true face of Brexit II
The true face of Brexit
The pro-Brexit left were and are but a mouse riding the back of a tiger.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/police-probe-racist-signs-distributed-after-brexit-vote-in-eu-referendum-a3281021.html
Scotland and Ireland should now secede from the Confederate States of the United Kingdom
“Forgive them father for they know not what they do.” Attributed to Jesus Christ as he lay dying on the cross, those words neatly describe the ramifications of the astonishing vote just taken to end Britain’s membership of the EU.
However, with the overwhelming majority of people in Scotland voting to remain in the EU, and with a majority in the North of Ireland voting to remain also, we are now looking at the prospect of the fragmentation of the UK itself.
UKIP’s Nigel Farage, a politician whose entire political career has been built on the objective of effecting Britain’s exit from the EU, is today the man of the hour in British politics, even though just one week ago he unveiled a gratuitously racist poster in support of his Brexit campaign which in a civilized society would automatically have heralded the end of that career. Its unveiling came just prior to the murder or Labour MP Jo Cox by an avowed neo-fascist, which today puts the words uttered by Farage in response to the referendum result – that it was “achieved without a shot being fired” – into stark relief.
Brexit will go down in history as one of the most ugly, reactionary and regressive political campaigns ever conducted in an advanced and mature democracy. For strip away the embroidery this was a referendum on immigration and migrant workers, whom a large swathe of the white working class across England’s deindustrialized north have been persuaded are the source of their increasing alienation and inability to make ends meet. In conditions of severe economic depression, compounded by austerity, along with the free movement of people that is a condition of the single market, the archetypal perfect storm was in place, one that proved political manna from heaven for the right and extreme right of the British political spectrum.
Placing Brexit in a wider context, it is the UK manifestation of the resurgence of the far right that has and is taking place across Europe – in western Ukraine, Scandinavia, Holland, Hungary, France and Germany – such as we haven’t since the 1930s, when similar conditions of economic depression and austerity obtained. Ultra nationalism, even neo fascism, is the result, portending an alarming retreat into national particularisms, chauvinism, and in the last analysis the elevation of racism to mainstream prominence.
Meanwhile, back in the UK we now have a situation where the people of Scotland have voted for the future while the people of England have voted for the past. In response, as England prepares to sail back into the 19th century, a second referendum on Scottish independence has already been placed on the table by the leader of the SNP Nicola Sturgeon.
Unlike the first referendum on independence on Scotland in 2014, which was defeated, the stakes involved in the second will be even greater. For unlike in 2014 when the primary objective of its progressive wing was to break from the status quo of neoliberalism, the second will involve breaking from an even more grievous status quo of xenophobia and ugly British nationalism, erected as a monument to the country’s colonial past. Indeed, for a picture of what Brexit looks like in the raw just cast your eyes over to France and the thousands of drunken English football fans who are over there at Euro 2016, boorishly waving the Union Jack while serenading the locals with songs in tribute to British jingoism and martial might.
In the short term we can expect an economic shock as the markets deliver their verdict in the form of a sharp drop in the value of sterling, followed by a concomitant rise in UK interest rates and a rise in inflation. The three million British workers whose livelihoods depend on Britain’s membership of the single market will be feeling less than comfortable now, as indeed will tens of thousands of migrant workers across the UK who’ve been demonized, stigmatized and scapegoated over the course of these past few weeks and months.
This is not to say that the EU is anything other than a banker’s union tied to Washington’s coattails when it comes to foreign policy, specifically the implementation of economic sanctions against Russia and NATO expansion. But is anybody seriously suggesting that Britain, a country whose malign role in the world as a colonial and imperialist state predates the EU by around 400 years, will now suddenly morph into Russia or China or Iran or Venezuela’s best friend? On the contrary, watch now as the British establishment subordinates itself to Washington even more, as it places even more emphasis on its membership of NATO, in order to retain its seat at the imperialist table.
So, yes, the one ray of hope from all this is the very real prospect of an independent Scotland, perhaps followed or joined by a united Ireland, and the break up of the UK. Speaking personally, as someone who opposed Scottish independence in 2014, I am now unofficially one of its biggest supporters and advocates on the back of this referendum result.
Let them have their Union Jacks, their Buckingham Palace, their monuments and statues dripping in the blood of the millions of victims of a British Empire that was nothing more than a vast criminal enterprise. Yes, let them have all that and let Scotland join the rest of the world as a progressive, sovereign, and civilized country wherein its people are regarded as the end rather than the means to the end.
As the man said, “A reactionary is a man walking backwards with his face to the future.”
Welcome to Brexit Britain.
Editorial statement on the referendum result
Vote Remain and say No to racism
By Ian Drummond
For as long as I can remember politicians have been saying not only that we need to have a debate about immigration but that the debate has been supressed until now. The latter part of which can’t possibly be true the second let alone tenth or twentieth time it is robotically repeated, yet adds to a sense of sullen alienation around the question while doing nothing to clarify or solve it.
But whether as a lazy commonplace or cynical pandering, it surely cannot be credible ever again to allege that Britain has not talked about immigration or that the case against has been gagged. Instead, it must surely now seem not such a bad thing to people of goodwill across the land if we never again have a “national conversation” like the one we have over the EU referendum.
A toxic swamp of xenophobia, racism and dishonesty has characterised the official Leave campaign, culminating in Farage’s disgusting Breaking Point poster that was so quickly shown near identical to actual Nazi propaganda. Right wing arguments have predictably dominated a referendum held as a vote by the public on an exceptionally vitriolic civil war in a Tory Party that 77% of that public did not vote for.
It was the rise of UKIP and harrying by the Thatcherite Tory hard right that forced Cameron’s hand in calling for a referendum in the first place. And it is only now happening because of a Tory majority smaller than the number of Tory victories the electoral commission are now investigating over serious allegations of electoral fraud.
Along with its murky origins the referendum has been structured in a reactionary way. EU immigrants who will be more directly affected than anyone else have been seemed unfit to vote on their own future, even though those who lived in Scotland were deemed fit to vote on the future existence of the UK. There will in fact be local councillors, which EU nationals can become, who will be deemed unfit to vote in the most important poll in British politics. And anyone born between June 23 and September 18 1998 in Scotland will have been deemed old enough to pass judgement on the existence of Britain almost two years ago but an incompetent minor on the issue of whether it stays in the EU now.
The debate on both sides of the Tory civil war has been dire. Cameron invoking the threat of World War III to boost Remain rang hollow after he spent several years not ruling out the possibility he would be for Leave himself, if the renegotiation wasn’t mean enough to migrants on benefits for him to sell to the Tory right. Boris sat on the fence longer than anyone else and left his decision to a day after all the others, the better to be the main headline for that day, only to embrace the worst excesses of the Leave side, comparing the EU to Hitler and insinuating that Obama was for Remain because he’s anti-British because he’s black.
This is the context of the referendum and would be that of Brexit were it to happen, where no Greek style struggle against EU imposed austerity has yet taken place but ultra-Thatcherite forces have turned a referendum on the EU into a referendum on migrants. Cynically attempting to deflect anger and alienation created by their own policies of decades long deindustrialisation and union-busting followed by six of the worst years for the economy and human misery onto some of the most vulnerable people in the country and the world.
And it was out of this sewer of hate that a fascist emerged to murder a Member of Parliament. It is now certain that Thomas Mair was politically motivated and not merely mentally ill in his vile murder of Jo Cox; giving his name as “death to traitors, freedom for Britain” in court removed all doubt. It is not credible that the timing of his foul crime, though a lone wolf action, was mere coincidence.
Like Walter Rathenau, Yitzhak Rabin and Chris Hani, Jo Cox was murdered by a far right fanatic at a time of political ferment across her whole society, with the wider hard right playing an outsized role in that ferment. If this is not to be a sign of things to come and society is to pull back from the brink, Britain First and its mainstream amplifiers – Farage, Boris, the Sun and co – need to be but back in their box, firmly and fast.
The argument that this is not the time and manner in which we should leave, whatever the many correct points left Leave campaigners make about the EU itself, is now overwhelming. Furthermore Yanis Varoufakis’s position that an unplanned, despair-driven, right-led collapse of the EU would strengthen the far right has been borne out in practice in the first potential splinter from the edifice. Instead the first port of call for socialists and democrats must be to stay in and fight, hard, for major reforms to break the grip of an undemocratic bureaucracy and a recessionary economic policy that is driving the bitterness and disintegration we oppose.
The idea that such a struggle is so doomed from the outset that we must vote for Brexit now, despite a real world context that no leftist could welcome, is a counsel of despair. On multiple levels.
Firstly the idea that this is a “once in a generation” vote and Remain gives the EU elite cart blanche to do what they like with us can be answered in one word – Scotland. A narrow In vote does not, on the recent evidence, mean the Out side see the matter as finished. That may be no good thing given the tone of the Leave campaign, but it does mean their scare stories about being forced to join the Euro and so on are for the birds. And that a future Corbyn government would have considerable room for manoeuvre in any conflicts with Brussells.
Further the idea that only a Leave vote could create the Tory crisis needed to bring down the government is misplaced. Except in the almost inconceivable scenario of a crushing Remain victory Cameron is probably toast anyway, seen as a traitor by his own side most as most of the Tory base will vote Leave. While the party of government, if Britain votes Remain, will have just voted differently to the public and likely still elect a leader who did the same. In any case the Tory crisis has already begun, from the bungled budget to the Panama Papers to the gathering storm of the election spending scandal; and the two warring sides are not likely to come back together harmoniously whoever wins.
The replacement of this vicious and pathetic Tory rump by a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn would be electrifying for the left and progressive forces across Europe. The loss of Britain would be a traumatic event for all the pushers of austerity and neoliberalism around the world.
It is not British chauvinism but plain fact that Britain is a much bigger, richer, more powerful state than Greece. We are not in the single currency and would not be negotiating massive debts with the EU institutions. If we were to try and chart a more socially just and economically viable course at home and fight for change in the way the EU was run, we should not think that we would be crushed just because Greece was, when we would have incomparably more leverage.
And we would have allies. In Spain just 3 days after the British referendum there will be a general election which Podemos, now running with a wider left alliance, could win, and form a left-left government with the Socialist Party that they have overtaken. If on the other hand the Socialists enter a coalition to prop up the hard right current governing PP they will face the fate of PASOK and Podemos will likely consolidate as an even stronger left opposition and future government
In Portugal there is already a social democratic government dependent on Communist and Left Bloc votes, and in Ireland a whole range of anti-austerity forces have advanced at the last election while the traditional parties of government have been reduced to rumps, in the absence of any UKIP-style right wing populist breakthrough. (Ireland also, incidentally, makes a good case against Brexit, as the return of a hard border could harm the peace process. Northern Ireland is in fact the most pro-Remain part of the UK, despite major support for Brexit among sectarian loyalists.)
If despite all efforts, work with allies across Europe, and the inspiration that Corbyn’s election would represent across the continent, it proved both impossible to reform the edifice of the EU or even to renationalise the railways while still a member, different conditions would be created. The conditions for a left exit, unlike today’s.
In such an exit not only would immigration not be the driving issue but there should be a guarantee (not given by this Leave campaign) that such an exit, forced on us, would not prejudice the rights of EU citizens living here. But such an exit would not be the only possible outcome of a left government’s approach to the EU, and far from the ideal one. In the struggle for democracy and against austerity, we might actually win.
But we will be less likely to see, and take part in, the various struggles that a Corbyn victory would unleash if there is a vote for the Brexit that is currently on the table. The stamp of approval on a racist campaign that doesn’t deserve to win, the messy divorce negotiations with Brussels, the recessionary hit to the economy in a right led political context, and the likely re-emergence of the Scottish question which would splinter the working class and spell disaster the economies of all parts of this island – none of these immediate consequences of a Leave vote would increase the likelihood of someone as anti-racist as Jeremy Corbyn coming to power.
Instead in this referendum we must take the necessary, if in itself insufficient, step of voting Remain. And do so as a national revolt against the racism and even fascism that the Brexit campaign has unleashed.