Labour's Leadership Is Useless

Theresa May is probably the worst Prime Minister Britain has had in over a century. Her government is falling apart over Brexit. Yet, despite that, if there was an election tomorrow, and, as I have been saying since Christmas, that is very likely, the Tories would win it! Despite how bad May is, she continually scores way ahead of Corbyn, in terms of popularity, and the Tories, despite their government falling apart, are currently between 8-10 points ahead of Labour in the polls, and that gap has been widening rather than closing. It is a measure of just how useless Corbyn, and the current Labour Leadership are. 

Why is Labour so useless, and doing so badly? It comes down to the fact that a) Labour is offering no credible alternative to the Tories, on the main issue of the day, i.e. Brexit, b) it does not show any real commitment to the alternative it is offering, c) its offering on the other issues of the day is more radical and popular than that of the Tories, but is being drowned out, because Brexit swallows all of the oxygen of politics, and d) the view of the offering, on these other issues is coloured by the perception of duplicity and incompetence over Brexit, and that is facilitated by the fact that these other offerings have also been poorly thought out, and suffer the same kinds of confusion and contradiction. 

If we take the main line Tory policy on Brexit, as proposed by May, it is that Britain should remain inside the Customs Union and Single Market, as part of the “backstop”, until such time as a new trading arrangement, between Britain and the EU, is established. The ERG, who usually claim that the question of the Irish border is not a problem, actually show they do not believe that, because they argue that the backstop means that Britain would be kept in the backstop indefinitely, as no solution to the Irish border was found, and so Britain would have to remain inside the Customs Union and Single Market, without having any say in those institutions. That is also the basis of the Attorney General's legal advice that Britain could legally be kept within the backstop, other than if the EU was acting in “bad faith”. 

As Hillary Benn pointed out, and Cox could not dispute, if the question of the Irish border meant that Britain could not provide a suitable alternative to Northern Ireland remaining in the Customs Union and Single Market, i.e. one that ensures that the same regulatory framework exists on both sides of the border, so that no border is required, the EU is legally entitled to reject it, and so Britain would remain indefinitely inside the Customs Union and Single Market, but without a say. Alternatively, a border down the Irish Sea would be required, which both Labour and Tories have rejected, or else, it will require that Northern Ireland be united once more with the Republic. 

So, the ERG are quite right in saying that the backstop means that Britain would remain inside the Customs Union and Single Market indefinitely, because there is no means of squaring that circle. No amount of electronic equipment is going to make up for the fact of different regulatory systems on either side of the border, and with goods and services being imported into Britain/N.I. from the US, and other countries with their own, different regulatory systems, which then pass into the production processes within Britain. Currently, such goods and services that do not meet EU requirements cannot be imported into Britain, and N.I. so that problem does not arise - which is also why only a small % of non-EU goods get inspected. As was stated in the debate, yesterday, in parliament, that should not be a problem for Labour, because Labour's policy, anyway, is that Britain should remain inside the Customs Union, and retain a close relation to the Single Market. So, Labour should be glad that, in practice, the backstop Theresa May agreed, as part of the Withdrawal Agreement, effectively keeps Britain inside the Customs Union and Single Market indefinitely, because that is what it says it wants! 

And, this is one reason that voters have no reason to support Labour rather than May. For all intents and purposes, Labour's Brexit policy appears identical, in effect, if not in intention, to that of May. The only difference, here, is that Labour says, from the start, that it wants to obliterate May's red lines over the Customs Union and Single Market, whereas May has long since had to, herself, obliterate those red lines, in order to get a deal, even if she keeps up the pretence that “nothing has changed”, and that she is still committed to negotiating a trade deal with the EU, during the transition period, that removes the need to remain in the Customs Union and Single Market, whilst complying with the requirements of the GFA. But, no such solution exists or can exist. That is why May has had to keep the details of that future arrangement, contained in the meagre 26 pages of the statement of political intent, attached to the 580 page Withdrawal Agreement, so vague and so minimal. May's strategy, with this next stage, is the same as the first, it is to simply vacillate, and talk in vacuous language, changing from one position to another, so as to kick the can down the road for a further two years, in the hope that something will turn up to provide an answer. 

But, voters have no reason to support Labour's version of May's Brexit deal either, because, where, at least, May proposes some, illusory, non-existent deal, whereby Britain can be outside the Customs Union and Single Market, at some point, and yet still have all the benefits of being inside them, as well as, thereby, being able to negotiate its own trade deals, and end freedom of movement, Labour ridiculously arrives at exactly the same point, by arguing that it could somehow Remain inside the Customs Union, and remain close to the Single Market, and yet still, as the Tories want, be free to negotiate its own trade deals, end freedom of movement, but also, unlike the Tories, thinks it could also be able to have a seat at the table! Its like a member of UNITE going to McCluskey and saying, “Look Len, I find having to pay subs and abide by union rules a bit of an inconvenience, so I'd like to negotiate a new arrangement whereby I can turn up to meetings and vote, but not pay any subs, where I can get all the benefits of union membership, but be able to pick and choose which decisions I want to have to abide by.” Labour's policy amounts to wanting the EU to be like McCluskey, welcoming the above approach, rather than responding with a two word answer the second word being off! 

Labour has put itself in the position of effectively fighting for the same pool of Brexit votes that the Tories already effectively have a stranglehold over. The Tories do not need to appeal to Remain voters, because 80% of the Tory vote not only back Brexit, but backs a No Deal Brexit. The Tories are electorally savvy enough to know that you do not piss off 80% of your core vote, in the hope of retaining the other 20%, or collecting a few other Remain voters. That indeed, is precisely why, May has always had to appease the ERG wing of her party, and hopes that she might reach across to Labour, for some form of deal, based on an overt commitment to remain in the Customs Union and Single market, are naïve in the extreme. May's weak position results precisely from the fact that her current position is seen by the ERG, reflecting the Tory base, as already being far too conciliatory in that direction. 

Yet, Labour's leadership does not seem to have understood even this basic lesson. Firstly, they have failed the first lesson of socialist politics, which is to defend basic principles. Whatever the electoral calculations, Brexit is a reactionary nationalist policy that Labour should have opposed vigorously, and that opposition cannot be modified simply on the back of a one off opinion poll, which is what a referendum essentially is. The job of any political party, if it wants a long-term future, is to base its programme on its ideological foundations. Those ideological foundations are ultimately determined by the class interests it seeks to defend and promote. It is not to act like a political weather-vane, simply being blown hither and thither, by the current winds of public opinion. The job of a political party is to determine the weather, by arguing for its ideology and programme, and thereby acting to change public opinion so that it blows in its direction. 

Labour hobbled itself by the ridiculous tailing of public opinion, and commitment to ideas of democratic primitivism, when, in 2017, it committed to “respecting” the decision of the 2016 referendum, indeed not just to respecting that decision, but committing to implement it. Labour should have stood, in 2017, on a programme of setting out why Brexit was reactionary, and why a Labour government, if elected, would refuse to implement it. Had it done so, it would probably have won that election. Either way, it would have removed many of the arguments that the Tories have been able to use against it afterwards, and would be in a strong position now, as the Tories Brexit fiasco unfolds. 

Yet, rather than learning that lesson, Labour still continues with the nonsense of respecting the Brexit vote, and still suggests that if an election were held, it would fight that election on the basis of itself pushing through Brexit. In doing so, it spits in the eye of the 75% of Labour voters that oppose Brexit, not to mention the 90% of Labour members that oppose Brexit, on the pretext that in doing so it is upholding some abstract principle of democracy – despite the fact that every opinion poll since 2016 shows that a majority of the electorate today oppose Brexit – or on the even more unprincipled basis that it fears it might lose some seats in the North of England that voted Leave in 2016. I have shown in numerous previous posts that this last argument is quite simply contradicted by the facts. 

We have, the ridiculous situation, therefore, where Theresa May, who was probably a closet Brexiteer all along, is led to pursue a Brexit policy that recognises that a No Deal crash out would be disastrous for capital, but which is contrary to the wishes of 80% of her party members, and core voters, whilst in a mirror image, Corbyn and the Labour leadership, also pursue a policy of Brexit that is opposed by 90% of his party members, and 75% of Labour voters. May is led to defy her party, because she sees the need try to represent the longer-term interests of the dominant section of the ruling-class, Corbyn is led to defy his party, because he is driven by his own ideological commitment to the Stalinist concept of socialism in one country, and the influence in that direction of his inner circle of Stalinist advisors. 

So, we have the ridiculous spectacle that with the time for Brexit increasingly being measured in hours rather than months, weeks or days, the Labour Leadership still cannot bring themselves even to advocate the party policy of demanding another referendum. It is still not time to do so, they tell us, and the process must unfold further! On that basis, they will be arguing for a referendum on whether we should remain in the EU, months after we have already crashed out on March 29th. So, is it any wonder that voters have no confidence in this pathetic, floundering, and duplicitous Labour leadership? 

Moreover, is it any wonder that their opinion of Labour's other policies, which should have been winning it support is viewed through this lens? I've set out before why the Tory objections to Labour's proposals for taking back control over various privatised industries do not hold up. But, I have also set out why Labour's proposals are poorly thought out also. Borrowing money through the issuing of bonds, simply to buy up shares, is a waste of money. It is borrowing that does nothing to increase real capital accumulation, and instead simply puts money into the pockets of speculators. If Labour wants to borrow money, it should do so in order to use that money productively, by making real investments in infrastructure and so on, not lining the pockets of shareholders and other parasites. Rather than nationalising industries, at great expense, it should instead, simply change the current laws on corporate governance, to end the right of shareholders to vote or appoint Boards of Directors, and should instead make it necessary for companies to elect their Boards of Directors, by and from the workers and managers in the company. That would end the Tory nonsense about Labour borrowing £1 trillion, to finance its plans, overnight. 

But, Labour's plans for redistribution, make all the same errors that social-democracy has always made. More than 200 years ago, Adam Smith, overturned the ideas that previously held sway about the basis of the wealth of nations. Smith showed that it was not from unequal exchange in foreign trade that countries grew wealthy, but from the accumulation of capital, the employment thereby of additional value creating labour, and the raising up of productivity, that made made possible even more rapid capital accumulation. Marx embraced Smith's leap forward in understanding. Marx, like Smith and Ricardo, understood this basis of the way nations become rich, via capital accumulation, and, like Ricardo, Marx saw the historic mission of capital as being to drive up the rate of surplus value, and thereby the accumulation of that surplus value as additional capital. 

But, Marx also understood the basis contradiction that arises from Ricardo's view of that capital accumulation, and that resides at the heart of Ricardian Socialism, and of the social-democracy that flows from it. It is that, whilst it is in workers interests for there to be the maximum capital accumulation, the maximum capital accumulation comes from the maximum rate of surplus value, which entails holding back wages. If wages – including the social wage – are raised beyond what is optimal for capital accumulation, then irrespective of the ill-will or otherwise of capitalists, capital accumulation will be slower, the employment of labour will be lower than it otherwise would have been, and so on. Moreover, in a world where capital can escape higher taxes, or more onerous obligations, in one economy, compared to another, it will inevitably try to do so, unless other factors mitigate against it. That is precisely why the concept of socialism in one country, but also thereby of social-democracy in one country is a dangerous, utopian fantasy. It is why, when coupled with Corbyn's Brexit stance, Labour's economic, industrial and social policy also begins to fall apart. 

Capital accumulation comes from the production and accumulation of surplus value. If surplus value is reduced, either because wages are raised above the value of labour-power, or else because taxes are raised, so as to transfer revenue from profits to benefits, or unproductive government spending of some other form, then less surplus value is available for capital accumulation. The rate of economic growth is thereby reduced, the demand for labour is reduced, and so consequently wages fall. As Marx puts it, in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, 

“Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of nonworkers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labor power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one. Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democrats) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. After the real relation has long been made clear, why retrogress again?” 

It is precisely that retrogression that social-democratic redistributive policies are based upon, and which Corbyn's economic and social policy adopts. But, it is also thereby clear that the solution lies not in such redistribution via the tax and benefits system, but from workers having real control over capital, in the way suggested above. That requires a political revolution to bring about industrial democracy in the same way that over the 19th, and early 20th century, a political revolution was required to bring about political democracy, via universal suffrage. But, such a political revolution cannot come about in one country alone. For the reasons set out above, if Britain were to move alone to introduce real industrial democracy, the financial markets would attack the Pound, there would be capital flight, as shareholders moved money out of Britain to EU and other countries, and along with that, they would, use their current control of company boards, to close down production, and shift real capital overseas. Such a struggle can only be waged on an EU wide basis as a minimum. 

And, so we come back to the beginning that the most pressing question for the day, for workers in Britain, but also in the rest of the EU, is the question of Brexit. Because, likewise, a Brexit Britain, under the control of a Bojo or Rees-Mogg, would begin by slashing workers pay, conditions and union rights. In doing so, and given the size of the UK economy, they would immediately put pressure on other EU countries, particular the smaller, weaker economies, to follow suit, to try to maintain some level of competitiveness, which creates a spiral of decline, as part of a race to the bottom. Any Labour MP that says they believe the Tories' promises that they would introduce higher standards than the EU is either a liar or a fool. 

If Labour wants to win the next election, it must rapidly begin to put itself in the vanguard of opposition to Brexit. It must do so by stressing that to pursue a progressive policy requires an EU wide struggle, and thereby requires Britain to be inside the EU, with the LP and TUC fighting alongside our EU brothers and sisters to bring about such a transformation. But, currently, Corbyn's leadership is facing in the wrong direction, and so undermining that struggle. By failing to take a principled internationalist stance, it has facilitated the disastrous Tory Brexit fiasco that has unfolded, it has simultaneously undermined the massive progress made by the left in the party, over the last three years, by abandoning the field to the Blair-rights and Liberals that were able to put themselves at the head of the large People's Vote movement. What is more, the weak vacillating leadership that Corbyn has provided in the last three years, also allowed those Blair-rights to continue to have a platform, via the PLP, and its access to the Tory media, by failing to press ahead with democratic reform of the party and mandatory reselection of MP's. 

Now, having appeased the right of the party over the accusations of bullying and anti-Semitism, by failing to root them out via mandatory reselection, despite their repeated undermining of Corbyn's leadership, and their coup attempts against him, they are seeing the obvious culmination of that process with Tom Watson using his position as elected Deputy Leader, to openly challenge Corbyn, by setting up not only his own party within a party, within the PLP, but within the party at large with his proposals for setting up his own Bonapartist administrative and disciplinary structure, with him sitting atop it, as police, judge and jury, and in direct opposition to the party's official structures. 

Again, as Corbyn allows that situation to unfold, is it any wonder that voters see a weak party leadership that engenders no confidence? The party leadership is useless on multiple levels. It should go, but it should not go to give way to a return to the past, represented by Watson and the right of the PLP. Yet, unless the rank and file of the party take control of the situation, that is precisely where Corbyn's misleadership is taking us.