It is obvious that Labour's claims that it wants a General Election are untrue. Labour does not want a General Election, because it knows that its disastrous stance over Brexit has seen it bleed votes to the Liberals in England, and to the SNP in Scotland, and to Plaid and the Liberals in Wales. Quite simply, it is frightened of a General Election in which its disastrous and unprincipled Brexit position may not only see it fail to win a majority, but in which it could easily end up in third place behind the Liberals in England, annihilated in Scotland, whilst the split Remain vote simply allows the Tories to obtain a working majority. But, the answer to that is not to continue to purvey these ridiculous lies about wanting an election, but being prevented from voting for one for fear of a No Deal Brexit, but is to remedy its terrible standing in the polls by dropping its pro-Brexit stance, and coming out clearly and militantly for stopping Brexit. Labour must say clearly Brexit is Reactionary; Make Brexit End; Revoke Article 50; General Election Now.
Having continually demanded a General Election, Labour is now in the ridiculous position of continually voting against having one. Labour says, we don't want to agree to a General Election, the date of which Johnson could set, if, in the meantime, that enables Johnson to crash Britain out of thee EU. This argument is ridiculous and obviously lying for several reasons. Firstly, the Liberals and SNP have come forward with a proposal to pass an Act of Parliament that would set a fixed date for a General Election on 9th December, provided that the EU has come forward with an extension of Article 50 to 31st January 2020, which, under the Benn Act, the government is obliged to accept. So, this proposal deals with Labour's objection that Johnson could simply change the date of an election to after a No Deal crash out has occurred. It also deals with the objection that the EU might not give an extension to 31st January 2020, because it only comes in if such an extension has been agreed.
But, Jonathan Ashworth appeared on Sophie Ridge to immediately rubbish the proposal, agreeing with the Tories that it was a “stunt”. Ashworth, continually refused to answer the question of why Labour would not support such a procedure if the EU, as expected, early next week, does give an extension to 31st january. Instead he kept repeating that Labour is desperate for an election to be able to get a Labour government to deal with issues such as the NHS etc. This is just the same kind of lying, spinning and duplicity that characterised the Blair years. It is the same duplicity and triangulating that has characterised Labour's position over Brexit itself. It was all supposed to be so different under a Corbyn regime. Indeed, the fact that Corbyn's Labour has appeared even more openly duplicitous than previous Labour leaderships is one reason that it has so quickly lost the support it accumulated in 2017, and particularly amongst all of those younger voters that flocked to it at that time.
Labour's argument that it could only back an election if No Deal was taken off the table has been shown to be a lie by its failure to support this Liberal/SNP proposal. Of course, the Tories are lying through their teeth even more. They also claim to want a General Election, but they have linked their call for a General Election not to No Deal, but to parliament first approving Johnson's worse than May's Deal! But, the fact that the Tories continue to lie is not a justification for Labour's lies. The Tories are lying because they want to try to get Johnson's Withdrawal Bill passed, which with the treacherous actions of the 29 Brexiteer scab Labour MP's, they still hold out some hope of achieving. If they can do that, any pressure on them to hold an election would be removed, slightly, but they would still be in a minority of 45, and Johnson would feel rightly confident about going into a General Election having got Brexit done. He would have killed off the Faragists.
But, Labour's claims that it won't support a General Election because Johnson might use it to sneak through a Crash Out Brexit is also a lie, and makes no sense. One thing that unites all MP's in parliament, other than a dozen or so, ERG members, is that a crash out Brexit is a disaster. They are right. A crash out Brexit means that the various licences that allow British trucks to transport goods into Europe would be lacking, the agreements on certification of pharmaceuticals, air safety and so on would lapse. Some very temporary agreements on these things have been reached to minimise the catastrophe that would ensue, but those are more for the benefit of the EU than for Britain. The various government analyses of the consequences shows the extent of the chaos that would occur, with drugs ceasing to be available, motorways and ports being jammed, food disappearing from supermarket shelves, and even the possibility that imported gas and electricity might be cut off, over the Winter.
So, let's follow the logic. Labour says that Johnson's hidden agenda is to get a No Deal crash out Brexit that would lead to all this chaos and catastrophe. Their argument has been that if they had agreed to an election, now, Johnson could have set the date for it to after October 31st, so that he could allow Britain to crash out. So, let's assume that Johnson did that, and sets the date for an election as say November 7th. Parliament would have been dissolved, electioneering would take place, Britain crashes out on 31st October, and utter chaos ensues, with a week to go to polling day. If Johnson and Cummings had come up with such a plan they would clearly be idiots. However large a lead they might have had in the polls, what is certain is that with the onset of such a disaster, it would have disappeared down the toilet. The only party with a clear potential for forming a government in their stead would have been Labour. Labour would have stormed into government on November 7th with a landslide, whilst the Tories would have been destroyed, and Brexit would be dead forever. And, this applies even more now. If the EU grants an extension to 31st January so that a General Election could occur on 9th December, then, first, Johnson can't change that date, but second even if he could somehow move it to after 31st January, all of the above consequences of a crash out would apply. What is more, no one can seriously doubt that, under those conditions, an incoming Labour government would be able to retrospectively cancel Brexit, and negotiate with the EU, to remain within it.
So, this claim that Labour could not support a General Election for fear that Johnson would push through a crash out Brexit was and is nonsense. It is a lie thought up so as to cover Labour's fear of a General Election, an election it knows that, currently, it would lose badly, and would lose badly because of its disastrous pro-Brexit stance. There is, and never was, any more chance of Boris Johnson pushing through a crash out Brexit than there was of Theresa May doing so. It spells the death of whoever was responsible, and of Brexit. Of course, Johnson does want some kind of No Deal Brexit, or, at least, the forces he is resting upon do. But, that No Deal Brexit is not a disastrous crash out. It is what is envisioned in Johnson's Withdrawal Bill. Johnson wants to use the 12 months between now and the end of the transition period to codify all of those temporary agreements on licences, certification and so on, and to extend them and make them permanent. Then, having done so, he would attempt to negotiate a Canada style free trade agreement, at the same time as trying to negotiate a trade deal with the US.
The fact is that the only party offering anything approaching a rational position on Brexit, for those that oppose it, is the Liberals. If you believe that Brexit is reactionary, and should be opposed, then why would you go into an election saying anything other than that? Offering a referendum instead is stupid. It means months of delay in trying to decide on what should go on to the referendum ballot. And, if the voters, then, in that referendum, vote for Brexit, you, as a government, have put yourself in the invidious position of having to implement a policy which you believe is reactionary, and to which you are opposed! A principled government, in such conditions, would have to refuse to implement that reactionary policy, and stand down from government, calling a General Election on the issue, which simply puts you back to square one. In the end, referendum results have to be implemented by governments, in a parliamentary democracy. So, it is only rational, instead to resolve the question by a General Election, in which those supporting either option, Remain or Leave set out their stall, and win or lose on it accordingly. Of course, it would be better if such elections were undertaken on the basis of proportional representation rather than Britain's corrupt and undemocratic first past the post system, but for now, we have to deal with what we have.
But, the problem is that the Liberals are not going to win a parliamentary majority in any such election, and nor will, or should, Labour form an electoral alliance with them. The Liberals represent a continuation of the old conservative social-democracy of Thatcher/Major and Blair/Brown whose time has past, because the material conditions that engendered it have past. They represent the British equivalent of Macron in France. They have the most progressive and rational position on Brexit, which is the decisive class issue of the day, but they can offer no wider political solutions that deal with the problems of workers, and the middle class. As with Macron, that means that they could only cause even greater disillusionment and demoralisation, that plays directly into the hands of reaction, and of the ultra-nationalists who seek to take advantage of that situation to further their own agenda.
The real problem here arises from the bankruptcy of the progressive social-democrats, both in France that led to the desertion of millions of votes from the Socialist Party that let in Macron, and in Britain, where the Labour Party, under Corbyn and his Stalinist cabal, has lost millions of the voters it attracted in 2017, because of its adoption of a reactionary nationalist pro-Brexit stance, a repeat of the disastrous nationalist deviation that these same sections of the Left undertook in the 1970's and 1980's.
It is up to the progressive internationalist Left to provide the solution. Labour needs to dump the reactionary 19 scab MP's that voted with the Tories, and all of the others that have intimated similar views. Labour needs to commit to Revoking Article 50, call a Special Policy Conference to adopt a progressive policy for the election. Labour should make clear its commitment to Remain voters, not only by saying it will Revoke Article 50, but by saying it will take Britain back into the EU, if the Tories take us out. Labour needs to adopt a progressive, social-democratic agenda not just for Britain but for Europe. We need to reconstruct a functioning, fighting Socialist International, and we should start by building EU wide socialist parties, cooperatives and trades unions. To all those fed up with the endless Brexit nightmare, we should say,
Make It End. Revoke Article 50. General Election Now. For A Workers Europe.
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