With only months to go until the 2015 General Election, there is little enthusiasm for any of the options being presented. Ordinary workers and youth are presented with the “choice” of cuts, cuts, or cuts. With capitalism in a state of permanent crisis, the time for reforms is over. Only a socialist transformation of society can offer a way out.
With only months to go until the 2015 General Election, there is little enthusiasm for any of the options being presented. Ordinary workers and youth are presented with the “choice” of cuts, cuts, or cuts. With capitalism in a state of permanent crisis, the time for reforms is over. Only a socialist transformation of society can offer a way out.
Craving for a choice
“There is a moment in an election campaign when I crave a choice, not an echo. That moment is now. For starters, I want a real Labour party. I know what the Tories are about. I have watched them at it for years. But against them the nation surely deserves a party of what is conventionally called the left. Where is it?”
So wrote Simon Jenkins in the Guardian newspaper of 14th January 2015, reflecting even the frustration of middle-class elements over the state of the Westminster parties.
He goes on to outline his dream of a traditional reformist Labour party, Real Labour he calls it, which will take action (albeit very limited) in order to “see through the politics of fear that now dominates British politics.”
He concludes by writing, “Elections should be between real options, not between leaders who disguise their fear of radicalism with waffle about transformative authenticity, realism and delivering change. Real Labour would be a beacon, not a guttering candle. Political choice has become a meander across a landscape of echoes.”
Reformism without reforms
Of course, what is lacking from Simon Jenkins’ yearnings for a return to the past is an explanation as to why the Labour leadership has abandoned even this old-style limited reformism.
When capitalism was enjoying a relative extended boom, as occurred in the period after the Second World War, then it could afford to grudgingly permit reforms, albeit under pressure. However, as capitalism returned to its normal status of boom and slump then pressure was put on to limit or even reverse reforms – the very use of the word was reversed to mean its opposite, hence the “reforms” of privatisation, attacks on union rights, cuts, etc. carried out first by the Tories, then by New Labour.
Austerity and crisis
With the current crisis, the worst since the Great Depression, the demand of big business and international capital has been for a vicious regime of austerity, which the current coalition government has given us over the last five years.
Under such pressure all the leaders of the traditional social democratic parties around the world have capitulated, as have all parties in government, likewise in Britain.
Undoubtedly, the Labour leaders would like to present a nice reformist programme as before, but the system has left them no choice on the matter. This is not to let them off the hook, they should be listening to the millions not the millionaires; but this is a direct consequence of a capitalist system in crisis and a Labour leadership which accepts that system.
With the Chinese economy now joining the others of the world in a state of decline, the prospects for whoever wins the May general election in under a hundred days are not good. Only the US economy is showing any signs of growth and even that is relatively pathetic compared to past levels. The warnings are all now about “permanent stagnation” and so on, hardly a great encouragement.
The “choice” of cuts or cuts
So we are left with an election campaign that nobody is looking forward to, where the choice is between grim austerity (the Tories), austerity with a smile (Labour), or austerity with whoever will give us a place in government (the Lib-Dems). What a choice!
People are basing their choice of support not on what a party promises, but what another party threatens. So Labour’s small rise in the opinion polls last December was as a result of the grim news contained in the Autumn Statement of George Osborne rather than any good news from the Labour leadership… of which there has been none.
Political fragmentation
The Tories are now hoping that their endless spin about the economy getting better will save the day for them in May.
Tell that to the City Link workers now unemployed. Tell that to those workers at Tesco’s and Sainsbury’s now facing redundancy as well as those who were expecting to get jobs at stores that will now never open. Tell that to the oil workers being sacked because of the economic crisis. Britain remains an economy of pay freezes, part-time work and uncertain futures. This is the “new norm.”
No wonder the latest opinion polls represent bad news for all the main Westminster parties in what is now being called by many a “six-party” system.
Despite the NHS now being considered the most important issue by people, something that should benefit Labour you would have thought, the latest Guardian/ICM poll of 21st January puts Labour just at 33%, the Tories at 30% and the Lib-Dems down at 11%. This leaves the combined level of polling support for the three parties at an all-time low level. Lord Ashcroft’s private polling has also confirmed this collective decline.
UKIP, despite all the media hype are down at 11% also, whereas the Green Party is now up to 9% representing their highest level of support for two decades. In addition the SNP now stands at 7% national support despite only being based and having voters in Scotland.
Coalitions of crisis
These figures are hardly good news for the Establishment. More tellingly is the data on which sort of coalition government people would prefer given that no party may get an outright majority in the election. 15% would like a Tory-UKIP coalition, an indication of the polarisation within British society.
However the most popular scenario is evidently for a Labour-Green-SNP coalition, which come top of the options with 19% support. The reason is obvious; people think that such an arrangement will push Labour to the left.
Whether this would ever happen is another matter. The statement of Ed Balls last autumn that Labour in office would stick to Tory spending levels and carry out vicious cuts which would result in “bleeding stumps” inside the public sector, shows how committed to the demands of capitalism they now are.
Deals are always ready to be made at Westminster which will leave people’s hopes high and dry whatever is promised in the heat of an election battle beforehand.
Uncharted waters
Despite everything, millions of people are still hoping against hope that Labour will somehow deliver them from the ravages of Tory austerity come the May elections.
However, it does not take a Nostradamus to predict what will actually happen whoever wins – cuts, cuts, cuts. The question will then be: what now? There may be a second general election before the end of the year given the political instability.
This is already occupying the minds of the thinkers of the ruling class as they warn of growing social unrest and look with fear at the progress in Europe of parties like PODEMOS and SYRIZA.
The old dominant “two-party” system was designed to encourage capitalist stability. Now, as we wrote in a previous editorial, we have entered uncharted waters. For the masses the question of a struggle for socialism will increasingly have to take centre stage as the only way forward out of this era of crisis and decay.
