Labour's Biggest Asset Is Swinson

As Labour's Vote Has Been Dismembered,
McCluskey and Labour's Stalinist Backers Claim
"'Tis But A Scratch"

Jeremy Corbyn and his Stalinist backers and advisors have all but destroyed Labour's chance of forming a majority government.  If they had actually wanted a Tory government elected that would implement Brexit, its hard to see what more they could have done to facilitate it.  In the 2017 Brexit Election, Labour benefited from millions of Remain voters, millions of whom were natural Liberal or Green voters, lending it their votes, in order to prevent a hard Tory Brexit.  In the two and a half years since then, Corbyn has done all in his power to alienate those voters, and the rest of the 75% of Labour voters that back Remain, let alone the 90% of labour members that back Remain.  Even when, earlier this year, the consequence was illustrated, as Labour's votes were shredded, reducing it to 5th and 6th places in many contests, Corbyn and his Stalinist backers continued to push the line that Labour should continue kicking its supporters in the nuts, and push ahead with its reactionary pro-Brexit stance.  As Labour's vote share was dismembered, those Stalinist advisors, and people like McCluskey and Ward, seemed like Monthy Python's Black Knight, claiming that "'Tis but a scratch."!

Labour's radical Manifesto has many flaws, but it has the benefit of at least returning the party to its traditional social-democratic agenda as previously put forward by the likes of Attlee, and Wilson.  A major flaw with it is that much of its context appear as stuff that has come out of the blue, no doubt discussed on high in various policy forums, but not widely discussed and promoted amongst the membership, or the party's working-class base.  The trouble with radical policies that are not grounded in months, and even years of previous extensive discussion within the class, is that they can easily be derided as unachievable.  Simply saying in advance, as Corbyn did at the manifesto launch that the party's enemies will describe them as such is no alternative to having build a large social movement in advance to defend them.

Moreover, the trouble is that for the last two and a half years, the party has been totally embroiled in trying to promote its ludicrous pro-Brexit position.  That means that amongst a whole swathe of the party's support there is distrust of any position that Corbyn now promotes.  A weak and dithering leadership has time and again backtracked on positions, and in respect of Brexit has simply ignored and manoeuvred against the vast majority of party members, and its voters.  However good the Manifesto might have been is now irrelevant, because the party's reactionary pro-Brexit position means that it will never get into government to implement any of it.

A partial saviour of the party, however, has been Liberal Leader, Jo Swinson.  Earlier in the year, when the Liberals won dozens of seats in the European Parliament elections, and hundreds of local Council seats, as part of the dismantling of Labour's vote, the route to defeating the Tories appeared obvious.  On the one hand, both Labour and Tory parliamentary parties were fraying at the edges.  The farcical Change UK was stillborn, and the Liberals absorbed its carcass.  Had the Liberals been clever they could have continued to nibble at the edges of these parties, in the hope of a trickle turning into a flood defections.  But, Swinson, as new party Leader showed an exasperating degree of arrogance, combined with a ludicrous display of fantasy politics.

However, much the Liberals claimed that their main goal was to defeat Brexit, with each day, it became obvious that their only goal was a sectarian party building exercise for the themselves.  Their attitude to other Remain supporting parties displayed an inevitable sectarianism flowing from that, which, however, considering that the other parties, such as the Greens and Plaid were so much smaller than them was probably inevitable.  But, Swinson continued that approach when it came also to Labour.  She demanded the right for a handful of Liberal MP's to determine who Labour's Leader should be, a party with 20 times as many MP's, and five times as many rank and file members.

It was a total fantasy, and simply reflected Swinson's main goal was not to defeat Brexit, but simply to get as many Liberal MP's as possible, even though that was never going to amount to more than perhaps 30, without the two main parties first having split.  But, Swinson's approach was itself a major factor in helping to prevent any such split, because the more fanciful her approach, the more sectarian the adventure she took her party on, the less credible the Liberals looked, and the more that said to potential splitters from the main parties that they still had a chance of winning, and that their best bet was to stay put.

Had Swinson made clear that their main goal was to defeat Brexit, and that to bring that about they would provide support for a Corbyn led government, either prior to the election being called, or now as part of the election campaign, and would do so along with the SNP, Plaid and Greens, then they could have looked credible, and they could have picked up many Remain voters in seats where they had a better chance of winning than Labour, and vice versa they could have picked up Remainer Tory votes in Tory marginals.  Instead, they have failed to capitalise on their results from earlier in the year.  In many seats they do not appear as a credible alternative, and so their vote is getting squeezed by Labour.

That in itself has had a deleterious effect, because it has taken some of the pressure off Corbyn, who has felt free to push ahead with a more pro-Brexit position, a more reactionary position on free movement, and so on, and in recent days, we have even seen John McDonnell also say that he could now vote to Leave the EU.  In the meantime, Swinson apparently recognising that she is not going to collect the Labour Remain votes she fantasised about, has swung further to the right herself.  That is now a conscious attempt to focus their efforts on winning Tory marginals.  At a time when economists across the globe are advising that the experiment with austerity had come to the end of the road, and when the Tories have swung to a traditional right populist, big state position, similar to that being pursued in Hungary and Poland, and previously promoted by people like Oswald Moseley, not to mention Mussolini and Hitler, the Liberals have decided to promote themselves as the heirs of Thatcher, as continuity austerity, and promotion of the liberal free market!  As a means of winning a few more former Tory seats, it might work, but at the cost of them losing votes in Labour marginals.

In the same way that the Brexit Party was a threat to the Tories hopes of winning a majority, so the Liberals were a threat to Labour preventing them from doing that, as they took away Labour Remain votes.  Swinson's sectarian fantasy politics have largely removed that threat.  largely, but not wholly, because we have still to see how many Labour remain voters, still vote Liberal or Green in protest, or who simply stay at home on election day.  The more Corbyn and McDonnell veer back towards their reactionary pro-Brexit position, the more that is likely to be the case.  Either way, its unlikely that Labour can now win a majority.

The problem for Labour is that the Stalinists that have been promoting the pro-Brexit position, and who think that traditional Labour voters can be encouraged to "come back home to Labour", completely misunderstand the nature of the working-class, and Labour's vote.  Listen to many of those older voters who voted for Brexit, and listen to their response to Corbyn, and his politics.  The truth is that those voters are not ones who were crying out for a red in tooth and claw programme, and only prevented from voting Labour because of Labour's opposition to Brexit.  On the one hand, many of those old folks never were Labour voters, or if they were they were part of that cohort that, in the 1980's, were completely hostile to the Left in the party, and who, for them is symbolised by Corbyn.  Its not Labour's opposition to Brexit that many of these people voice opposition to, but Corbyn himself.

If labour salvages anything from this election it will not be because these old working-class voters have been persuaded to "come home to Labour" by a radical programme, any more than such a radical programme in 1983, caused hem to vote for Michael Foot, rather than, as they did, throwing their votes behind the SDP, or even Thatcher, but because the votes of these old reactionary working-class voters is outweighed by the votes of younger, more progressive Labour voters, who seeing the sectarianism and fantasy politics of Swinson and the Liberals, are forced to bit their lip, hold their nose, and vote Labour despite the reactionary pro-Brexit position.

But, that is  not going to be enough for labour to win, and it only means that it builds up resentment, and an inevitable explosion of anger later.  When labour loses the election, it will be obvious where the responsibility lies.  It lies with Corbyn and the Stalinists behind him, including the trades union leaders like McCluskey, Ward et al.  If the inevitable burn out and demoralisation following such a defeat can be contained, it means that the anger will need to be channelled into holding the leadership in the party and trades unions to account.  It means that we will need to push forward with democratisation of both, and the task of rebuilding our organisations, and installing a new progressive leadership.  For the fact is that, even if the Tories win the election, Brexit is not going away.  The supporters of remain are not going to give up any more than the proponents of Leave ever stopped demanding that Britain get out of the EU.  the difference is that today, numbers, demographics and history is on the side of the Remainers.  Labour will never be able to win a future election without promising to take Britain back into the EU, and for the next year, that debate, and that struggle is going to continue, simply as part of the transition period.

The bad news for Corbyn and his backers is that, following an election defeat, he is going to be under considerable pressure to stand down, but having failed to democratise the party over the last four years, the Blair-rights have a massive majority within the PLP.  Even if he does not stand down, he will be held hostage by the PLP, and the potential continues to exist for a hung parliament, in which then the two main parties do split, to form a centrist anti-Brexit formation.  A hung parliament in which Johnson cannot get his deal through, could see the EU eventually refuse to give any further extensions, leaving parliament only with the effective alternative of Revoking Article 50 to avoid a devastating cash out.