Corbyn's Fake Neutrality Is Not Credible

Jeremy Corbyn's announcement, on Question Time, that he would adopt a neutral position, in an EU referendum, following a Labour government negotiating a new Brexit Deal, is laughable.  It was claimed that this announcement was a scoop, yet, in reality, Labour canvassers have been telling voters, on the doorstep, for more than a week, that that is the position that Corbyn would take!  And, most voters know that its laughable.

This election is being reduced to a choice between lesser-evils.  On the one hand, we have Johnson's Tories that are moving on to the ground of traditional right-wing populism of the kind seen in various countries over the last 100 years.  It involves the development of a large authoritarian state that adopts conservative, populist positions on social policy, and combines it with big state, interventionist economic policy.  Its the policy that was adopted by Mussolini in the 1920's,  and Hitler in the 1930's; it was proposed by Moseley in Britain, and used by Peron in the 1940's, as well as by Peronists, at various points, after; it is being used by right-wing populists in Hungary and Poland today.

If Johnson wins the election, it will mean him taking on the reactionary, libertarian wing of the Tory Party.  Faced with a crash out No Deal, Johnson will almost certainly baulk.  He knows it would be catastrophic and bring down his government.  The likelihood is that Johnson would like to be able to do a deal to stay in the EU, because he knows that the future of Britain depends on large-scale capital, which, in turn, depends on being inside the EU.  But, for now, he is held hostage by the Tory party base.  If he wins, he is likely to attempt to negotiate a managed no deal during the transition period, with an eye, on rejoining the EU at a future date.

Given a choice between a No Deal crash out, and a fudged deal, a crash out is preferable.  A fudged deal will simply mean years of slow decay, and misery, before it becomes obvious that Britain needs to rejoin the EU.  A crash out means that chaos will ensue.  There will be a few weeks, whilst this catastrophe unfolds, before the government collapses, and Britain has to make an emergency appeal to be readmitted to the EU, an appeal that the EU would almost certainly agree to, provided that Britain gives up some of the concessions it had previously enjoyed, and agrees to joining the Eurozone.

It now looks inevitable that Labour cannot win the election, even if the Tories do not win it either.  Labour suffers from a similar problem to that of the Liberals.  The Tories have a clear position of "Get Brexit Done".  It may yet be enough to win the election for them, with the Brexit Party having disappeared up its own backside.  The Liberals also have a clear position of Revoke Article 50.  That was a sensible position to adopt, because there is a clear majority of voters who oppose Brexit.  The problem for the Liberals is that, unless the two main parties had split, and formed a large centrist party around the Liberals, there was no way that the Liberals could win enough seats to implement that position.

The strength of the Revoke position was only to be able to act as a pole of attraction for Remain voters, and thereby to draw Labour further in that direction.  But, given that the Liberals could never have won a majority, unless they could draw large numbers of Labour Remain voters to them, the only way that strategy could work is if the Liberals were seen as acting as an undeclared militant Remain wing of Labour.  It would have meant Remain voters having confidence to vote Liberal, safe in the knowledge that having done so, the Liberals would vote to support a Corbyn Labour government, and would, as the price of doing so, insist that Labour either Revoke Article 50, or else call another referendum, with Labour committed to campaigning all out for Remain.  It would have put the Liberals in a similar position of leverage to that which the DUP held over the Tories, or which the SNP could hold over Labour after the election. 

But, the Liberals, and their Leader, Jo Swinson, are politically incompetent, arrogant and engaged in political fantasy.  Their repeated insistence that they would not support Corbyn's Labour, and their outright hostility to him, combined with their ridiculous insistence that their dozen or so MP's could dictate to Labour who its Leader should be, has completely undermined their position, and removed any potential leverage they might have had.

But, Labour suffers from a similar problem, because it cannot win an election with a split Remain vote.  The obvious route for Labour was to hoover up the Remain vote in the way the Tories have hoovered up the Leave vote.  It would have meant Labour being the most militant opponent of Brexit.  There is, in fact, only one thing that prevented that, and it is Corbyn's own personal support for Brexit, and that of his Stalinist backers.  It has meant that, despite that being the rational electoral stance to adopt, as well as the principled, international socialist stance to adopt, and despite it being the position that 90% of the party would support, Corbyn has continually refused to do so.  In fact, Corbyn's Stalinist backers have even gone as far as to suggest that the vast majority of the party's members who back Remain should be expelled!

The Stalinists, having driven away a large proportion of Labour's vote, by pursuing their reactionary pro-Brexit position, now, it seems, would be prepared to destroy the party itself, in pursuit of that reactionary agenda.  So, it is utterly incredible to believe that Corbyn would adopt a genuine neutral position.  It is simply another manifestation of the same political dishonesty that has characterised Corbyn's leadership over the last four years.

But, the position put forward is not just laughable because no one believes that Corbyn is anything other than an ardent pro-Brexiteer, but, also, because the whole idea of Labour negotiating its fantasy "Jobs First Brexit" is just as ludicrous today as it has always been.  There is no such deal to be had.  The EU is not going to negotiate a deal that gives Britain all of the advantages of membership but with none of the costs or obligations, any more than UNITE would allow individuals to have all the benefits of union membership with none of the costs or obligations.  Britain could have the benefits of Single Market and Customs Union membership, provided it also accepted the costs and obligations, but it would then also not have the ability to determine any of the rules and regulations of those bodies, which means that it would have been pointless leaving the EU in the first place!

So, even if Labour were to win an election, or be a Minority government, it could not negotiate any such deal, which would leave it with the question of either supporting something like Johnson's Deal, supporting No Deal, or supporting a deal involving Single Market and Customs Union membership, but with no seat at the table, or else advocating Remain.  The idea that any future referendum question could be reduced to a simple binary choice again, is, therefore, also not credible.  Consequently, any idea that negotiations are going to take only three months, with a referendum in six months, is also not credible. 

Its true that Labour's position is now clear, whereas for the last three years even the position has been undecipherable, but having made it clear, it has only succeeded in illustrating what nonsense it amounts to.  The justification being given for this dishonesty is that Labour wants the electorate to decide!  Well we want the electorate to decide in every vote undertaken, but we want them always to decide in our favour!  We put forward our arguments to them in as clear and convincing a way as we possibly can, in order to try to get them to vote for our positions.  That is what Marx meant by the need to win the battle of democracy.  It certainly does not mean that we abandon our responsibility for leadership, or put ourselves in the position of being merely opportunists, and of tailing the working-class, of acting merely as representatives of public opinion.

Shami Chakrabarti, speaking after the QT programme, said that the idea of leadership being of someone on a white horse, leading the troops into battle was outdated, and that leadership in the 21st century, involves listening to the voters, trusting in them, and then acting on their wishes.  Complete and utter tosh from start to finish.  Why on Earth would a socialist simply trust the voters, when those voters include representatives and supporters of the ruling class, include Tories, racists, fascists and all sorts of other unsavoury elements?  Why indeed, would we trust the voters, when those voters have recently voted for the reactionary agenda of Brexit?

If all democracy amounts to is listening to the voters and passively implementing their will, then there is no point whatsoever in having political parties or politicians.  We have the technology already, whereby we could simply enable every voter to express their opinion on every conceivable issue, by casting an electronic vote, rather in the way millions already do in voting for contestants in various talent shows etc.  We have a vast array of social media that enables every individual to argue their case as to why individuals should vote on some particular proposition, and in what way they should cast their vote.

We would do away with all politicians, as in this way, every citizen becomes a politician and decision maker.  Of course, if we were to actually trust the voters in this way, we know what the result would be.  Some of the first votes would be to restore the death penalty, to end immigration and begin a programme of repatriation, and so on.  There might be no requirement for parties in such a situation, of the kind I described recently in relation to a society divided directly between the mass and various competing elites, but, it would not prevent those elites from utilising their existing power in society to shape popular ideas, and thereby to manipulate the mass to achieve their particular ends.  It would not prevent those with large pockets from using them to shape this mass popular opinion.

It would mean that there would be no requirement for parliament, or for government, simply for a bureaucratic state machine staffed by full-time civil servants, to implement the "will of the people".  As with other such "democratic republics" this facade of democracy would simply act as a cover for the true nature of the totalitarian regime beneath.

Of course, in some distant, communist future, when abundance has made everyone more or less equal, when no one can exercise influence or control over anyone else, when there are no more classes, status groups or elites, such mass participation of the whole of society in decision making and execution, will become possible, but it is not now.  One Man had developed the means of powered flight, it became possible for everyone to venture to rise into the skies, but before then, all such attempts simply sent those involved to their deaths.  In order to confront capitalism, and its ideologists, today, the working class needs those that can provide leadership, not those who simply want to act as weather vanes.  Any refusal to provide that leadership is simply an act of abandoning the field of battle and of class betrayal.  In Corbyn's case, even that is simply a cover for his real betrayal of being a proponent of the reactionary programme of Brexit.