Brexit

Taking the illiberal side?

Andrew Murray, one of Jeremy Corbyn’s key advisers, gave a “rare interview” to the Guardian on 30 October in which he warned against Labour taking the “liberal side” of the “culture war” around Brexit and “warned that the campaign to stop Brexit has increasingly become a form of identity politics”. Mr Murray, it should be noted, was until 2016 a senior member of the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) and has been one of the “four Ms” (together with fellow Stalinist Seumas Milne, plus Karie Murphy, and Len McCluskey) actively promoting pro-Brexit lines in tune with the CPB within the top...

Johnson’s Trump-Brexit

According to the most thorough study so far, Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal will reduce average income per head in Britain by 6.4%. It will cost you about £1300 a year if your income is £20,000. That’s not as bad as “no-deal” (8.1%). It is worse than Theresa May’s deal (4.9%), and of course a lot worse than Remain. The bad economic impact comes from the barriers to trade and the barriers to immigration. Immigration, which mainly brings in young and energetic workers, boosts economic growth. That is not the worst of it. Boris Johnson’s prime alternative to the economic integration which Britain...

Back Labour, fight for Remain!

In backing the dissolution of Parliament and an election, Jeremy Corbyn promised: “We will now launch the most ambitious and radical campaign for real change our country has ever seen.” Every socialist, every labour movement activist, everyone who cares about equality and human rights, should throw themselves into the fight to kick out Boris Johnson and win a Labour government. We should simultaneously organise to hold Corbyn and the Labour leadership to that pitch. How? In 2017, Labour’s message – taxing the rich to reverse a substantial number of cuts – contrasted clearly to the Tories’. It...

Interview with an invertebrate

What to call those Labour MPs who backed Johnson’s Brexit bill? I tend to the view that the word “scab” should be restricted to industrial strike-breaking. “Traitor” should probably be avoided in the present incendiary political atmosphere. So how about “invertebrate”? We surely shouldn’t expect one such invertebrate receiving an entirely uncritical interview in what claims to be Britain’s only socialist daily paper. Yet the Morning Star’s Lamiat Sabin (23 Oct) made Melanie Onn MP seem almost heroic: “But, where she differs from many of her parliamentary colleagues, Onn is prepared to put her...

Letters

Last week, you reported on the Morning Star coming out clearly in support of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal. Events have also pushed Socialist Worker to clarify its stance, in fact to show how bad it is. For some time now SW’s basic line has been: “Shout about something else loudly enough to drown all thoughts about Brexit”. SW of 22 October, however, explicitly applauded the victory of the nationalist-minded big union bureaucracies against the left-wing rank and file at Labour conference (Brighton, 22-25 September). It complained that leading Labour MPs’ speeches on 19 October “flew in the face...

Left win in Nottingham East

26 October was called “Super Sunday” because of the number of Labour parliamentary selection meetings held on that day – nine, and in important seats. The most positive development was undoubtedly the selection, in a fiercely fought contest, of Nadia Whittome in Nottingham East. Nadia’s campaign was distinctive in terms of her advocacy of policies far to the left of mainstream “Corbynism”; her strong opposition to Brexit; her commitment to “working-class representation”; and her pledge to take a worker’s wage and to always submit to open selections. In a wider picture of limited shifts, from...

The left and the election

On 29 October Labour for a Socialist Europe is meeting to discuss its plans, including plans to organise an internationalist-left profile within the Labour campaign in the general election likely to come soon. A basic leaflet is being printed, and an L4SE video has been produced. Other materials being discussed include: • short “position papers” or “explainers” on a range of issues, to be available on the website and printable in short runs or from pdfs for street stalls and hand-to-hand use: Green New Deal, public ownership, union rights, etc. • posters • stickers • tote bags Everything is...

Pay claim for Brexit work

The ongoing chaos around Brexit is having many detrimental impacts on PCS members’ working lives. In Stratford DWP, hundreds of workers have been temporarily reallocated to Brexit-related work on behalf of the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra). Members have said they want to ballot over this. The concern is that DWP is looking to move work outside of London, where they don’t have to pay London weighting, so workers are worried that they might not get their DWP work back after the Defra project is finished. The union will be submitting a pay claim to the government...

Democracy vs Johnson

As we go to press on Tuesday 22 October, the Tory government has been voted down, 308 to 322, on its plan to bounce its Withdrawal Agreement through Parliament at panic speed. MPs have insisted on the right to debate amendments. These may include amendments which will make the government drop its deal, or make the deal conditional on a new public vote. Boris Johnson responded by saying that he would “pause” discussion on the Withdrawal Agreement he was so keen to rush through. In defiance of the “Benn Act”, he will seek to persuade the EU to deny a Brexit extension to allow debate. He...

Organising the left on the 19 October march

The “Let Us Be Heard” demonstration on Saturday 19 October felt bigger than the previous march against Brexit in July. In face of Johnson’s shocking disregard for democracy, Remainers felt obliged to turn out. Organisers claimed one million, and there were certainly many hundreds of thousands on the streets. We had an anxious wait for the vote from Parliament’s Saturday sitting, followed by cheers for the Letwin amendment. Socialists don’t normally celebrate Tory-sponsored amendments, but this one meant we were still “in the game”: Johnson had failed in his first attempt to bounce Parliament...

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