Across Britain on May 6 there will be district, county, mayoral and PCC elections and, in addition to these, there will be elections to the Scottish Government, the Welsh Assembly and a parliamentary by-election in Hartlepool. It is despite, not because of, the current leadership of the Labour Party, that we urge workers to support Labour candidates in these elections.
In the last twelve months, political life has been completely dominated by the Covid pandemic and in Britain as elsewhere, political leaders will be judged on their responses. Unfortunately, in many cases that judgement will be delayed. Going by opinion polls, it certainly looks like the Johnson government is being judged, not on his shambolic and mercenary approach to the pandemic, but by the results of a vaccine roll-out which is entirely down to the NHS and not the Tory government.
Secretive, non-competitive public contracting for tens of billions
The more revelations are leaked, the thicker appears the miasma of corruption around this government. We have a Prime Minister who doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies and, if he does, his approach is always to just brazen it out.
We have a system of secretive, non-competitive public contracting – and let us remember, it runs to tens of billions of pounds of public money – that is entirely based on the patronage of current Tory ministers, ex-Tory ministers or top civil servants, all of whom have connections to business that are kept hidden under a veil of secrecy. Every damaging revelation of sleaze has come about as a result of leaks and not public disclosures. Even the publication of government contracts – which is supposed to be a legal necessity – have been delayed.
In short, there has not been a government in modern times so beset by the stink of corruption, nepotism and sleaze as has this one. There have not been so many dirty snouts in the public trough, looting the NHS and the public purse, in living memory. For that reason alone, we would urge voters to express their outrage on May 6, by voting for the largest national opposition party, the Labour Party.
Starmer’s baleful effect on Labour supporters
We have carried many articles and editorials outlining the baleful effect of the Starmer leadership on Labour’s membership and Labour voters. Keir Starmer and his hand-picked general secretary, David Evans, have conducted a non-stop war of attrition against the left of the Party and they and they alone are dragging Labour down in the polls.
If Boris Johnson appears to be getting away with murder – the highest per capita death rate in Europe, tens of billions in dodgy contracts, an exorbitant ‘test and trace’ system that has never worked, and so on – it is only because of the utter ineptitude of this Labour leadership.
It has seemed at times that the parliamentary opposition to Boris Johnson has been so ineffectual that there is no opposition at all. It is little short of a disgrace that opinion polls have shown the Tories ahead of Labour, despite Johnson leading such a corrupt government. Had Jeremy Corbyn still been leader, Labour’s right wing would have chorused in unison, “Why aren’t Labour twenty points ahead?”. As it is, unable to offer any explanation for Labour’s dismal poll rating, the right-wing are reduced to an embarrassed silence.
Labour Party branches cannot even discuss issues
From the time of his election a year ago, Keir Starmer has attacked the left, using the issue of anti-Semitism as a pretext. The sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey, the unconstitutional suspension of Corbyn from the PLP and the blizzard of suspensions of parties and individuals across the country have severely dented the morale of tens of thousands of Labour activists.
To make matters worse, there are now strictures placed on Labour Parties against even discussing the tide of bureaucracy sweeping the party. Through David Evans in Labour central office as well as regional offices of the Party, candidates are being more carefully vetted than ever before, so they chime with the outlook of the Leader.
We even have letters from Labour members so disgusted with the creeping bureaucracy in the Party that they are put off voting Labour. And as the voting figures for the NEC show, between Starmer’s election and last Autumn, in only six months, ten per cent of the membership walked away.
Nine months after everyone else, Starmer sees the corruption
That suits the head-bangers on the party’s extreme right, who would be happy to see the Labour Party reduced to a tenth of its size, if it was necessary to remove the radicalism engendered in the Corbyn years. Given the choice, they would always prefer a Tory victory to a radical Labour victory.
Starmer and Labour’s front bench have at last woken up – nine months after everyone else – to the corruption surrounding Johnson, and some Labour spokespersons are beginning to make some of the right noises about Johnson and his thieving crew. Despite the effect of the Starmer/Evans axis, pulling Labour down in the polls, Left Horizons supports the Labour Party as a movement, based as it is on the trade unions and the aspirations of millions of working class people.
‘Corbynism’ represented a movement, not one man
What many on the left have failed to understand is that the movement referred to as ‘Corbynism’ really meant something, and it was not the personality of one man. It reflected a deep-seated longing for something different, for a new kind of politics, among millions of working people, in the first instance Labour members and supporters. Corbynism bespoke a significant shift in public opinion – particularly among young working class people – and for that reason it was seen by the capitalist class as a serious threat. It was not Corbyn the establishment feared, but what he represented.
It was only with a mountain of lies, distortions and half-truths, that the media were able to undermine Jeremy Corbyn. They were assisted in that goal by the right-wing of the Labour Party in parliament, among Labour’s apparatchiks and its councillors. There was outright sabotage of Labour’s 2017 election campaign, as the leaked anti-Semitism report showed clearly. Overshadowing all of this, as leitmotif and a pretext for the attack on a radicalised Labour membership, was the charge of anti-Semitism.
A gale of fresh air blew through politics for four years
Left Horizons supports the Labour Party despite Starmer and not because of him. We believe the shift in public opinion that brought the gale of fresh air into Labour politics from 2015 to 2019 was never going to be a one-off. ‘Normal’ politics has been put on hold for a year, but the political ‘weather forecast’ remains the same – or worse – as it was this time last year.
Workers in their millions are going to demand their rights: decent wages, decent jobs, affordable housing, an NHS with enough properly-paid staff, an education system fit for purpose, and so on. And whenever workers make these demands and engage in struggles for them, the Starmer wing of the party will have nothing to say, because they have nothing to offer.
We support the Labour Party, not because of what it is now, but for what it can become in the future. Starmer is not the Labour Party, and the Labour Party is not Starmer. We urge workers to do two things: not only to vote for the Labour candidate in their locality, but to become active in the Labour Party and work with Left Horizons and other lefts in an organised and systematic way to win the Party back for socialist ideas.
