General Elections

A 12 April opinion poll put Labour ahead of the Tories, 34/31, for only the second time since the 2015 general election. Among people aged 18 to 24, it showed a Labour lead of 51/20. The Tories have been battered by Ian Duncan Smith’s resignation, by their splits over Europe, by their forced retreat on disabled benefits, and by the Panama Papers. Labour can get ahead. It will be hard on 5 May. Sadiq Khan should win London mayor for Labour. But an SNP landslide in Scotland is almost certain. In polls for the Welsh Assembly, Labour is still ahead of the Tories and Plaid Cymru, but less than it...

3 articles on the construction of New Labour and what it meant for the party, and the left. Download PDF

Solidarity and Workers’ Liberty activists will seek in the May 2015 general election to work with other socialists in the Labour Party and in the labour movement to create a clear socialist voice within the campaign to win a Labour government. As against Ukip, the Tories, the Lib-Dems, possible Tory-Ukip or Tory/ Lib-Dem coalitions, or a possible Labour/ Lib-Dem coalition, we are in solidarity with the broad labour movement and its desire for a Labour government. Yet Labour leaders say they will continue cuts, and are designing policies for government through unaccountable cabals rather than...

UKIP could top the poll in the the European parliamentary election on 22 May, a vertiginous rise that has been analysed in recently published Revolt on the Right by Nottingham University academics Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin. The book raises two issues worth further discussion on the left: can UKIP be considered fascist; and are UKIP attracting working class voters away from Labour? Ford and Goodwin rightly conclude that UKIP are different to the overtly fascist BNP. UKIP leader Nigel Farage was recently mobbed by demonstrators in Scotland chanting “fascist scum off our streets”‘ Similarly...

Rhodri Evans ( Solidarity 323) is wrong to simply say: “That socialists will have to vote Labour and step up the fight in the unions”. That might have been sufficient in 1991 but it hardly deals with the complexities of the situation we now face. Workers’ Liberty has analysed the Blairite restructuring of the Labour Party and increasingly recognised the diminished scope for party members and union members to affect policy. Indeed from 1999-2010 we stood candidates against Labour, sometimes in alliance with other socialists, sometimes alone. In 2010 it was argued that we could reckon upon some...

Labour activists should not be complacent about Labour’s victory in the three by-elections on 29 November. All three were in safe Labour seats. That Labour won when in opposition to a coalition government whose economic strategy is both hurting and not working in its own terms reflects no endorsement on the parachuting-in of candidates or on “one nation” blather. The party with best cause to be pleased was UKIP: second in Rotherham, with 22%, and in Middlesborough, with 12%, and third in Croydon North with 6%. Probably few UKIP voters knew about or specifically voted for such UKIP policies as...

Pete McLaren, independent socialist representative on the TUSC National Steering Committee and 2012 candidate in Rugby, says TUSC has made modest gains. TUSC’s election results were a modest improvement on last year. Standing mostly as Trade Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts, TUSC stood a total of 133 candidates in England and Wales on 3 May, standing in 132 wards in 40 councils, proportionally a higher number of candidates than last year. In addition TUSC stood in the Liverpool Mayoral contest and for the GLA. In total these candidates polled 43,671 votes. In the council elections TUSC...

Labour gained 823 council seats in the 3 May 2012 local elections. The Tories lost 405, and the Lib Dems 336. UKIP and Greens scored fairly well, but made no breakthrough: the Greens gained 11 new seats, UKIP gained no new seats despite a slightly raised vote. The BNP lost all the seats it contested. Up to and including George Osborne's 21 March 2012 budget, the Tories had retained their base much better than a party in their position might expect. Since May 2010 they have led a government ramming through unpopular measures - huge cuts in social spending, big rises in student tuition fees...

Discussion article about the Alternative Vote referendum which the Lib/Tory coalition government says it will organise for 5 May 2011. Labour politicians, and some Tories, have objected to the referendum being set for the same date as local elections in many, but not all, areas of Britain, with the implication that those areas would be given greater weight in the referendum by a larger turnout there. Tory prime minister David Cameron says he will oppose AV in the referendum, but mildly; Lib Dem leaders say they will not quit the coalition if AV is defeated. The Labour manifesto in May 2010...

To sign this statement email stopthetoriesandfascists@gmail.com . To download the statement click here or see "attachment", below. For the campaign website see stopthetoriesandfascists.wordpress.com . The choice of government at the general election will be between Labour and the Tories. The current signs point to a Tory victory. These are Tories who, in the midst of the worst crisis of capitalism since the 1930s, have promised cuts matching or outstripping the Thatcher cuts of the 1980s. Who already say they will slash public-sector pensions. Who, to push through these cuts, will have to try...