Spanish Socialists Teach Corbyn A Lesson

To shouts of “Larga vida a la lucha de clases” (Long Live The Class Struggle), tens of thousands of Spanish workers came out last night to celebrate the victory of the Spanish Socialist Party, in the most important elections since the fall of the Franco regime, in the 1970's. In doing so, Pedro Sánchez, and the Spanish Socialist Party also taught Jeremy Corbyn a lesson on how to deal with right-wing nationalists. Spoiler alert – its not by adopting nationalist ideas yourself. 

For the last few years, the bourgeois media has been full of stories about the rise of right-wing populism across Europe. The worst place for such stories has been in Britain, where the historic reactionary nationalism and xenophobia of its Tory Party, and that sizeable portion of the population that backs it, has meant that there has always been a large market for papers such as the Daily Express, Daily Mail, The Sun, and so on, to pander to, as they struggle for circulation, so as to stay in business. With a 24 hour news cycle, and News Channels that have obliterated the line between news and entertainment/celebrity, the emphasis is on ratings, and so the need to turn every event into a drama, and to court those whose controversial activities, can ensure viewers. 

Some years ago, the BBC justified inviting Nick Griffin on to Question Time, on the basis that it would expose his ideas. But, it only exposed them to those who already knew that his ideas were grotesque. For all of the racists, and xenophobes who supported Griffin and the BNP, it was simply an opportunity to hear him promote them to a wider audience, just as the supporters of Tommy Robinson hope to do, or indeed as the supporters of political Islam seek to do. For the supporters of Griffin, it was just confirmation that the “liberal elite” tried to stitch him up. But, the real reason that the BBC invited Griffin on to Question Time, just as the reason they invite, repeatedly Farage, Suzanne Evans, Claire Fox, and Brendan O'Neill on to their programmes, despite the fact these people represent nothing and no one, is the fact that they know that their controversial statements will get them viewers, and responses. 

The truth is that the British media, in particular, is lazy and decadent. Anyone who is actually well-informed about politics, knows that the British media, with all of its very highly paid journalists and TV presenters, is not. Moreover, as a media that, in large part, is a Tory media that simply and lazily repeats established tropes, it is easier for it to just carry on in that way, rather than to actually engage in any serious investigation, and analysis of its own. Hence we have the “Paper Reviews” where the same old talking heads are simply recirculated, reinforcing the same old cliches. 

Talking up the rise of far-right populists across Europe has been part of that narrative. Particularly in Britain, it has been part of that narrative about the potential for the EU itself to fall apart. And, of course, across Europe, the far right has been advancing, just as it has with Trump in the US, with Bolsanaro in Brazil, with Putin in Russia, Erdogan in Turkey, and so on. But, who has it been advancing against? The truth of the advance of the far-right, as the election in Spain yesterday showed, is that it is an advance at the expense of the not so far right! In other words, the far right's advance, is simply a mirror image of an advance of the left. Both are the inevitable consequence, as I wrote several years ago, of the collapse of the political centre.  The idea that there could ever be a collapse of the political centre that only benefits the left, is naive wishful thinking.  The idea that when such sharp class divisions manifest themselves the answer can be some cuddly consensus and unity, is itself a reflection of the same old centre-ground, liberal sentimentality.  In such conditions, unity only comes when one side - progress or reaction - crushes the other.  It is a unity imposed by the victor. 

But, much to the chagrin of those reactionary nationalists, and those in the media for whom the collapse of the EU would be nothing more than a bonanza for ratings and circulation, similar to their relishing of a good war, the advance of the far right has never managed to go beyond being a fringe activity. Every time there is an election, even with the proportional representation systems, used in Europe, the far right have failed to win, other than in a few places such as Hungary. Even in Italy, where the right-wing Northern League/Five Star Movement managed to form a ruling coalition, they have had to constrain many of their policies, including removing any commitment to leaving the EU. 

A lot is made of UKIP, then under Farage, winning the most seats in the last European Parliament elections, but that is nothing more than an example of fringe parties being able to mobilise fanatical supporters in low turnouts. The fact is that UKIP were never able to get their candidates elected as MP's, other than where they simply crossed the aisle from being Tory MP's. Farage himself was never able to get elected to parliament. 

In the Spanish elections, the Socialists emphasised the importance of the election, in defeating the right-wing nationalists of Vox, who are a throw-back to Franco. The socialists made clear that the election was a struggle between progress and reaction, between the future and the past, and they won. They won by emphasising their nature as an internationalist, pro-EU party, of progressive social-democracy. In his victory speech, Pedro Sanchez made a point of emphasising that the Socialist Party victory was also a victory for the EU. 

Of course, socialists will have disagreements with the social-democratic programme that the Spanish Socialists fought the election on, as we would with any social-democratic programme, including that of Corbyn and the Labour Party. That is because we are socialists not social-democrats. A progressive social-democratic agenda is at best part of what used to be termed the “Minimum Programme”, of socialists. We would, for similar reasons, have differences in relation to our attitude to the EU itself, though it has to be said that the programme of the European Socialists group in the European Parliament offers a more progressive way forward than is currently offered by the stance of Corbyn's Labour Party, even though, technically, the Labour Party is signed up to that programme. 

The point is, however, that whereas Corbyn and the Stalinists that advise him have been appeasing and facilitating right-wing nationalists, by themselves adopting a reactionary nationalist stance over Brexit, a stance which has, in turn, seen Corbyn entering into class collaborationist talks with the Tories, to try to save their reactionary Brexit agenda; has seen Labour disgracefully adopting reactionary positions in support of ending free movement, and the imposition of immigration controls; and has appeased bigoted views on all these issues, thereby legitimising the very same arguments put forward by Farage and his Brexit Party, which then not surprisingly has rallied a large degree of support around it, from ex- Tory voters, the Spanish Socialists adopted an internationalist stance, a pro-EU stance, and a stance of militantly opposing the right-wing nationalist agenda of Vox, and won. 

Not only did the Spanish socialists win, but they increased their share of the vote, where all of the media were talking about them losing seats, and the potential for Vox to be the kingmakers, claiming seats in a Spanish centre-right government. Vox did win seats. But, they only won 24 seats, whereas the media had been talking about them winning 36 or 38 seats. The 24 seats won by Vox, did not even compensate for the 69 seats lost by the centre-right People's Party, from whom Vox took most of its votes. By contrast, the Socialists increased their share of the vote, by 6.1% points, in a poll that was itself 9.3% points larger than in 2016. The Socialists took nearly 29% of the vote, and increased their number of seats by 38. 

Listen to the Tory media in Britain, and you would almost think that Vox had won the election, rather than that it actually gained only two-thirds of the seats they had been forecast to win. In fact, Vox is only the fifth largest party in the election, with just 10.3%. It is behind the Socialists on 28.7%, the PP on 16.7% (whose vote halved), Ciudadanos on 15.9%, and Podemos on 14.3%. In reality, the far-right in the elections were smashed. Its not that this 10% of the poll is something that did not exist before, it is simply a transfer of an already existing reactionary core vote that previously voted for the PP, and has now been separated out by Vox, just as UKIP acted to do that with all of the reactionaries, racists and xenophobes that have traditionally voted Tory. 

The lines of the great battle between two great class camps are being drawn more clearly. They are being drawn on the question of internationalism v nationalism. Spain was a skirmish won for progress against reaction. It is not yet victory in the war itself, but it shows the way forward.