To nobody’s surprise, the Conservative Party has lost its position as the governing party in Britain following a massive electoral defeat. Back in 2010, the liberal media confronted every voter with the pernicious characterisation of the Conservative Party as the force of sensible statesmanship: the people who would cut your taxes and let you keep more of your money. It’s certainly not an unattractive proposition for those workers who earn enough to feel the bite of income tax. Elected on such a promise of private prosperity, they set about mindlessly retrograding the quality of life in this country. For over a decade, we have seen the miserly cuts to public services, the cruel bedroom tax, the neglect of the National Health Service, the erosion of our freedoms, and the soaring rates of crime in our cities. We cannot also forget the mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, in which 227,000 people died, a visceral neoliberal atrocity which has been relatively ignored over this election cycle. This litany of policy failure would perhaps make some logical sense for the Conservatives’ period in power: their support base has typically been the independently wealthy bourgeois, the home-owning pensioners, the finance capitalists, and so on. They have no need to conserve, nevermind improve the living standards of ordinary people, who won’t vote for them anyway. So long as the London economy grew steadily, property prices increased year on year, and the media ranted endlessly about the deficit, they could be openly contemptuous of everyone living north of the M25, yet still retain power.
Such a cynical programme was quite successful for the Conservatives. Even better, the Labour Party failed to appropriate enough of this winning formula to replicate their success. Out of a cacophony of desperation, jest and sincere hope, Labour appeared to return to its historical position as a mass, social-democratic party, after Jeremy Corbyn was elected its leader in 2015. Whilst his nomination was in itself a joke by the turbid Labour staffer clique, Corbyn accidentally became the nucleus for a genuine grassroots movement across Britain. It rejected the narratives of ‘sensible spending’, ‘cutting the deficit’, and all the other neoliberal clichés given as justifications for driving down our living standards. This movement demanded a change in the way politics in Britain operated; this was, overall, a meagre challenge to the liberal consensus of British politics, but still one which offered a vision of a life beyond neoliberalism.
The ruling class in Britain met this minor but tangible defiance with a sophisticated response. All sections of the media dropped the pretence of impartiality, and published ludicrous attacks on Corbyn as an individual, whether as a supposed racist, a misogynist or even a former Czechoslovak spy. The liberal left, then uncomfortable in supporting the Labour leader with such negative media coverage, effectively pressured his leadership to endorse a deeply unpopular second referendum on European Union membership. This betrayal of the party’s working-class base, was then exasperated by the Conservatives publicly upholding the people’s democratic decision, and appropriating Corbyn’s flagship economic policy with their own ‘levelling up’ programme. As all this was happening, the same cabal of professionals and careerists within Labour, who had nominated Corbyn as an insipid joke, were quietly working in the background to undermine their own party. Whilst the Conservatives were overseeing a real-terms pay cut for millions of British workers, the Labour middle management lodged thousands of bogus complaints against their own members, made numerous media appearances to undermine their elected leadership, and instigated a farcical splinter group of MPs. It is little wonder that with such an attack from both outside and inside Labour, Corbyn never won the 2019 general election, and the Conservatives remained in power for nearly five more years.
But the unity of the ruling class against Corbyn quickly began to dissipate once he had resigned as a leader. Internal squabbles, factional moves and a lack of strategic coherence within the Conservative Party effectively prevented any long-term decision making. This dysfunction was best illustrated by Liz Truss’ 40 day premiership, which collapsed after a budget statement which nearly caused the country’s pension funds to go insolvent. Her replacement, Rishi Sunak, has led a largely impotent government, achieving none of its major promises made in 2019. Meanwhile the faction of staffers and lobbyists in the Labour Party reasserted their control.
Keir Starmer was elected to the position of leader as a unity candidate, proposing a ‘soft Corbynism’. Almost as soon as he was elected his first order of business was to reconfigure the Labour Party in the image of the Conservative Party, eventually creating one of the most lacklustre British political campaigns in decades. Purging all those who stood in their way, the right of the Labour Party has positioned itself as the successor management for British capitalism and imperialism, the election of this Labour government has not been through some sort of optimism in the same neoliberal politics as the Tories but as a cry of frustration in a ‘democracy’ that fails to represent working people.
Whilst it’s positive to see the enemies of our class suffer a humiliation, we must remember that the ritual of parliamentary democracy in this country is entirely symbolic. Thus the defeat of our enemies are also symbolic. Differences between the two parties have become more and more vague in recent months. Keir Starmer and the other “Labour Friends of Israel” have made clear their intention to continue funding the genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, all while communities across our country remain “left behind”, in want of much-needed investments.
We emphatically reject the hubris around the victory of the Labour Party, although the Tories are out of power for now, we are being given a new colour of neoliberalism that will not benefit working people in any material way. Despite winning a majority of seats the Labour Party’s victory is not a safe one with voter turnout at its lowest in 20 years and an overall vote share increase of less than 2% since the last election. Beyond that, we’ve seen a historic number of seats won by independents, largely on pro Palestine platforms.
Working people seeing and understanding the failings of Liberalism have now begun to look to alternatives to Labour and the Tories as a way of seeing a future beyond this nightmare. Independent candidates, Reform UK, and left, progressive parties such as the Workers Party, despite their many differences, have been able to captivate large portions of voters by appealing to a vision beyond neoliberalism where each party is not attempting to recreate the efforts of the party that is currently in power; this is not something that can be ignored.
The focus for the next five years will be on continuing to undermine the administration of British capitalism, now performed by the Labour Party. It is now up to us to develop the Communist party and its youth section the YCL to become a fighting force that is ready to grasp the material conditions of working people in Britain and fight for socialism in our lifetimes. We will continue to struggle within our trade unions and communities, building alliances to challenge and expose the new government as it inevitably continues to bow to the big bosses and fails to address the needs of the working class. Particularly, we will be watching our left allies in Labour and the affiliated trade unions, to see which they put first: working people or the governing party.
Central Committee
Young Communist League
05 July 2024
London, Britain
