General Elections

PCS says: join coup protests

PCS nationally has made a clear statement against Johnson’s coup, and is encouraging members to join protests. Our National Executive Committee (NEC) meets this week [starting 2 Sep], and will discuss the unfolding situation in more detail. Our conference policy on Brexit is to remain neutral on the question itself, which the NEC can’t overturn, but obviously we will need to think about how we respond, particularly as it’s PCS members’ labour that will be relied upon to a large extent to “deliver Brexit”. It may be during the NEC meeting itself that a general election is announced. We would...

Make Labour fight Brexit

So far, so good! — as we go to press, on Wednesday 4 September. Britain’s poundshop Mussolini, the lying public-school bully-boy prime minister Boris Johnson, has been decisively beaten in two House of Commons votes. There will be almost surely a request to the European Union for an extension of the leaving date to 31 January 2020. Johnson does not have enough support in the House of Commons to carry out his threat to get round the decision by calling an instant general election. Johnson tried to override parliamentary democracy by shutting down Parliament, hoping that would give him space to...

Labour and the 3.6% swing

The Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore describes the Tory conference: “May visibly flinching at a direct question, in her babble of repetitive phrases that mean nothing. It is as if she is not really there. There is a vacancy at the top”. Bookmakers now make Jeremy Corbyn the favourite to be next prime minister. Their second-most-rated, at about 6/1 against, are Boris Johnson, David Davis, and Philip Hammond. Labour needs a swing of about 3.6% from the Tories (and a continued falling-back of the SNP, Lib-Dems, and UKIP) to win a parliamentary majority. That figure will rise if the new...

Labour to blame in Scotland?

Scottish Labour and/or its leader Kezia Dugdale bear the blame for the re-election of a Tory government on 8 June. That’s the line currently being systematically promoted by cybernats. And it’s not confined to the fringe elements of cybernattery. SNP MP Angus McNeil and SNP MSP and Scottish Government minister Mike Russell have both tweeted about how Scottish Labour supposedly backed a vote for Tory candidates in the general election. The cybernat argument runs as follows: • If the Tories had not won 12 new seats in Scotland, then Tory MPs plus DUP MPs would be a minority in Westminster. • The...

How to go forward from 8 June

The 8 June election result has re-energised Labour’s activist base and helped put basic working-class demands back on the agenda. The increase in turnout among young voters, and the huge Labour lead among young voters, signal a major shift in British politics. All of this opens up a new period of Labour revival and recomposition. That gives us many opportunity to argue for socialist ideas among people attracted to the Labour Party, and to work to rebuild the labour movement. At least 25,000 people have joined Labour since the election. It is reasonable to assume that a majority of these new...

France: unions must reject consensus with Macron

The French socialist newsletter Arguments pour la lutte sociale comments on the second round of France’s legislative elections, 18 June: "Abstentions: 57.4%. Watch out! This major fact must not be interpreted only as a “civic strike”, as Jean-Luc Mélenchon puts it. That is true for many, and for the majority of the 10% of blanked or spoiled ballots or ballots where the two candidates in the run-off were both more or less for Macron. But to see it only that way is to ignore the defeat suffered by the working class on 23 April [in the first round of the Presidential poll]. Also, many abstentions...

Macron: a landslide with 15%?

The socialist newsletter Arguments pour la Lutte Sociale reports on the first round of France’s legislative elections (11 June). The dominant feature of the first round is not the triumph of Macron, but the majority [51%] abstention, for the first time in a legislative ballot in France.It looks like the lowest-income groups and the youth have massively abstained. From the start the newly elected assembly will be one suspended in mid-air.That trait is accentuated by the second main feature, which is the success of [Macron’s] En Marche candidates, even where they were complete unknowns. They...

Contrast and compare

British Labour Party: continued pink-neoliberal policy from 1997 through to 2015, with a shade more pink from 2010. It went down from 43% of the poll in 1997 to 29% in 2010, and recovered only to 30.5% in 2015. 2017: left policy. Share of poll up to 40%, and overall turnout up to 69% (which still leaves much work to do, but...). 3.5 million extra votes gained. French Socialist Party: continued pink-neoliberal policy. 2012: won the presidency and a parliamentary majority (with small allied parties). 2017: down to 6% of the vote in the presidential election, and 9% (with its small allies) in the...

Force the Tories out!

We have a Tory minority government. But how long Theresa May, or any Tory, can stay is another matter. The Tories look likely get a working majority in Parliament, at least on budget and confidence votes, by a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).There will be divisions between the Tories and the DUP, and within the Tory Party as the talks on Brexit proceed and as economic stresses sharpen. The Tories are likely to drop more abrasive policies like reintroduction of grammar schools, but they are in deep trouble. Labour was right to call immediately for May to resign and to say that...

SNP smear opponents

When the SNP government’s record on the NHS was criticised by a nurse during the Scottish party leaders’ debate a fortnight ago, the response from the SNP and their followers was to vilify the nurse. SNP MSP Jeane Freeman and SNP (ex-)MP Joanna Cherry led the charge, falsely claiming that the nurse was the wife of a Tory councillor. Once unleashed by Freeman and Cherry, the allegation was then taken up by other SNP parliamentarians and by SNP cybernats. In fact, they ratcheted up the smear campaign to the level of a frenzy, claiming that the nurse had been a BBC “plant” and that she was not...

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