The general election to be held on 12 December has been necessitated by irreconcilable differences within the House of Commons over the terms of a Brexit deal. These differences are an expression of the divisions within the ruling class over whether an alliance with the EU or with US imperialism would better protect its strategic interests. With no possibility of securing a majority for any Brexit outcome by the second deadline of 31 October, a general election became inevitable; at the fourth attempt, Prime Minister Boris Johnson secured the necessary majority on 29 October after the EU had agreed a further extension of the deadline to 31 January 2020.
Despite its relative decline, Britain remains a major imperialist power. However, in conditions of deepening world crisis and rising inter-imperialist rivalries, it is incapable of sustaining this global position unless it develops a closer alliance with one or other of the two key protagonists: either with the European imperialist bloc or with US imperialism. Divisions within the ruling class over these two options underpin the Brexit crisis. At stake is the future of the City of London as one of the world’s leading financial centres, the hub of a network of offshore secrecy jurisdictions, and vast overseas assets which at around £11 trillion are more than five times the size of Britain’s GDP of £2.07 trillion. Despite liabilities of a similar size, the net positive income from these overseas investments together with other services has been crucial to sustaining the British economy and offsetting a large loss on the balance of trade in goods. It is a gigantic usury capital: but this will be under threat whatever Brexit choice prevails.
The general election offers no guarantee that the parliamentary divisions over Brexit will be resolved one way or the other. Although the Tory Party is nominally opposed to a no-deal Brexit, there is now a substantial majority of MPs who would favour an exit at any cost. At stake are the 5.25 million votes cast for the Brexit Party at the May 2019 European elections, which saw the Tory vote slump to 1.5 million, a loss of 15 of its 19 seats and a humiliating fifth position after the Green Party. Labour is also split, however, and its inability to put forward a clear Remain position in opposition to the Tories saw it come third after the Lib Dems in the same election. With an estimated 149 Labour MPs in leave-majority constituencies compared to 83 in pro-remain constituencies, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has had to preside over a series of compromises to hold the Parliamentary Labour Party together. In order to keep everyone on board, a Labour government would honour the result of the 2016 referendum by negotiating a fresh deal, and put it to a referendum, but with Remain included as an option.
Because Labour is first and foremost an electoral party, it must secure the votes of the mass of the working class and of its better-off layers if it is to win a general election. Its compromise Brexit position aims to achieve this. Many privileged workers, especially those in the public sector, are pro-remain because they see continued EU membership as sustaining a form of social democratic state which can underpin their jobs and living conditions. They also see a threat to those conditions arising from the sort of deregulation that would inevitably accompany a closer economic relationship with the US. To them, Labour will say it is for a close relationship with the EU, and for the free movement of labour. However, other better-off workers have different concerns: they are older, and their material conditions are based more on wealth in the form of house ownership rather than income. They perceive the threat to their position to come from unwarranted largesse towards the poor in the form of excessive benefits and their perception of uncontrolled immigration. They are the core of the Brexit vote – but Labour cannot afford to alienate them. So it will tell these workers it will honour the 2016 referendum, and implement a skills-based set of immigration controls.
The vast majority of the left are calling for a vote for Labour. They point to the proposals for a Green New Deal, nationalisation of energy, water companies and railways, the promise to scrap Universal Credit, raise the minimum wage and abolish the anti-trade union laws. What they ignore is that, despite Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Labour remains an imperialist party. Essential reassurances to the ruling class will remain Labour policy, in particular, its commitment to the imperialist NATO alliance and its military spending target of 2% of GDP, and the pledge to upgrade Trident. Labour will continue to signal clearly that under a Labour government, British imperialism’s world-wide interests will not be under threat.
Labour’s Green New Deal does not address the soaring level of debt repayments by underdeveloped countries – up by 60% in three years – which are being used by the World Bank to demand that they commodify their land and sell it to monopoly agribusinesses for destructive monoculture. It does not question the role of the giant British-based mining companies such as BHP Billiton and Anglo-American which loot the metals necessary for the new ‘green’ technologies, and therefore to implement the Green New Deal. Labour’s talk about a just approach to addressing climate change references only the interests of the British working class. Such justice does not extend to the under-developed countries which are bearing the brunt of global warming and eco-destruction, there is no suggestion that their debts should be abolished, or their resources should be taken away from giant multinationals and handed back to them. Labour’s Green New Deal is green-washed social imperialism.
The mantra of the left is that Labour has changed under Corbyn; in the words of Carlos Martinez writing in Telesur, ‘What it comes down to is that, for the first time, Labour has a leadership which, in addition to being pro-working class and pro-poor, is solidly anti-imperialist, anti-war and anti-racist.’ Yet what is really different? The promise of a massive campaign against austerity that was the cornerstone of Corbyn’s 2015 leadership campaign never materialised. Within a couple of months, he was instructing Labour-run councils to set legal pro-cuts budgets in a letter signed jointly with John McDonnell. The following year, a party rule change made it a disciplinary offence to refuse to set a legal budget. Labour-run councils continued to implement swingeing cuts in local services.
The weakness of his leadership was exposed further with the campaign against supposed anti-Semitism within the Labour Party. A combination of The Guardian, the Israeli embassy and Labour Zionists forced Corbyn to make key concessions over his previous support for Palestine, particularly with the adoption of the IHRA Zionist definition of anti-Semitism and the expulsion of figures who had adopted a clear pro-Palestinian position. Already the general election campaign has seen Scottish Labour force one candidate, Kate Ramsden, stand down because of a blog post in which she compared Israel to an abused child who becomes an abusive adult. She had published the post during the 2014 Zionist onslaught on Gaza which resulted in the deaths of 2,200 Palestinians. Scottish Labour’s statement had no comment on this: Palestinians remain a non-people for Labour Zionists. Meanwhile, Chris Williamson, who was suspended from the Labour Party in February 2019 on bogus charges of anti-Semitism, has been dropped as a candidate in Derby to be replaced by a Unite regional official. Now Corbyn is ‘looking into’ an equally bogus charge of anti-Semitism against left-wing MP Dan Carden.
The evidence is clear: it only takes slight pressure on Corbyn to force him into retreat. There is no reason to suppose it will be any different if he were to become Prime Minister where such pressure will be far more intense. He has no forces. There is no movement of the working class, no trade union struggle of any significance: 2018 saw the second smallest number of workers engaged in strike action in history, the smallest number having been recorded in 2017. There is no challenge on the streets to austerity. What this means is that when Labour faces resistance from the ruling class to policies it tries to enact there is no countervailing force to push it forward. Added to this will be the resistance from within the Parliamentary Labour Party itself: the great majority of Labour MPs will still be those who endorsed austerity prior to Corbyn’s election and who have pilloried him over the alleged anti-Semitism within the Labour Party. They will be a force preventing any challenge in the first place.
Labour supporters whether inside or outside the Party are intent on spreading the illusion that Parliament can be used to shower benefits on the working class without the need for any struggle whatsoever. Furthermore, they want us to ignore the looting and plunder of underdeveloped countries which would be the basis of such largesse. Socialists cannot be party to such backward and chauvinist ideas. The Revolutionary Communist Group will therefore not be calling for a vote for any of the parties in the coming general election. In fighting for the interests of the working class there is no shortcut through this election – it requires the building of a movement unwaveringly opposed to British imperialism. Such a movement can only be built outside of the structures that keep capitalist parties in power – in communities and on the streets.
Robert Clough
