Liberals Could Be The Largest Party

If an election were held, now, the Liberals could win the largest number of seats. In reality, as against the appearance of the current parliamentary arithmetic, they could already be the largest party. That is the measure of the disgrace of both the official Tory Party, and of the Tory Party Mk.II, i.e. of Starmer's Blue Parliamentary Party. This is a Liberal Party that should have disappeared from history, and which, back in 2015, I confidently predicted was about to be dumped into the dustbin of history, following its coalition with the Tories. It is a calamity, but, now, as a result of the collapse of both Tories and Blue Labour into reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalism, a probability.

As I have been writing this Boris Johnson has gone. The Tories are saying that they will get on with carrying out their programme, and rebuild themselves, in time for the next election. That will not happen. Its not just that Johnson has ripped his party into two: all of the Tory Ministers that walked away from government, in the middle of a national cost of living crisis, itself in large part a result of the Brexit that many of them pushed for, leaving the country without a government, have also done that. All of the Tory MP's that jumped on the bandwagon of moral outrage against Johnson that lacked any fundamental political principle to unify it, have also contributed to that. There is no way this party is going to unify, or that even its core voters, let alone its soft voters, are going to enthusiastically turn out for it.

The reality is that the Tory Party has been ripped apart, again, not by Boris Johnson, but by the same class divisions that ripped it apart in the 1990's, and whose manifestation is Brexit. The Tory Party is a coalition of class interests, as is the Labour Party. The Tory Party, going back to its split in the first half of the 19th century, into a Tory and Conservative Party, over the Repeal of the Corn Laws, has tried to represent the interests of landed property and the financial oligarchy, as well as the interests of industrial capital.

These are two antagonistic forms of property, and of class interests resting upon those forms of property. In the end, as every Bonapartist has realised since the 19th century, whatever social base they rest upon, and to win government office that normally means the rabble of the petty-bourgeoisie in conjunction with lumpen elements, the future of the state depends upon the prosperity of large-scale industrial capital, and again since, at least, the latter half of the 19th century, that, in turn, depends upon the creation of large single markets, such as the United States, or the EU, where the state itself is not already of such a large scale, such as with China. Its why wars have continually occurred in Europe to construct such a framework, be it the Franco-Prussian, or the European War of 1914-18/1939-45. Its why this manifestation takes its sharpest form in the battle over Brexit, a battle that has been going on, in Britain, since WWII.

And, the reality is that that class antagonism, and the battle over Brexit resulting from it, has not gone away, however much Boris might have proclaimed to have “Got Brexit Done”. The contradictions resulting from it have simply heightened, as both the chaos caused by Brexit in mainland Britain, and, even more acutely, in relation to the Northern Ireland Protocol, that now threaten to plunge Britain into a trade war, and potentially worse, with the EU, as Tory politicians, supported by some of the more rabid jingoes of the Blue Parliamentary Labour Party, seek popular support amongst the rabble, by plunging even deeper into nationalist rhetoric.

A large part of the opposition to Johnson, inside the Tory Party, came from the minority, now, of Remain supporting Tory MP's, who saw their opportunity to strike back following his knifing of first Cameron, and then May, over the issue, for his own aggrandisement. They are the representatives of that large-scale industrial capital. But, another larger part came from those hard-line, reactionary, petty-bourgeois elements, who rightly saw Johnson as back-pedalling at every stage over Brexit, despite his flamboyant rhetoric to the contrary.

The driving force against Johnson, within the Tory Party, comes from those hard Right, Brexit supporting MP's, like Steve Baker and even Remain supporters, like Truss, with hopes of being a contender, have been forced to move solidly on to that ground in recent months, to give themselves any hope of becoming Leader. When Johnson goes, his replacement will be even worse, because, in order to win, they will have to shift even more sharply on to that ground of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, and of right-wing nationalism, rallying the rabble around the flag, as the last refuge of the scoundrel.

But, already, a large chunk of the Tory voter base has deserted them to the Liberals, as the by-elections in the last year demonstrated, and those by-elections which saw these massive swings to the Liberals, whilst Labour either failed to win, or else, as at Wakefield won, but with an abysmal performance, shows its the reality as against the appearance.

Today's Tory party is even more conflicted, and racked by contradictory class interests than was its 19th century version. Its still the party of the landed aristocracy, and of the financial aristocracy, but its core membership and voter base comes from the ranks of the petty-bourgeoisie, of the regiments of “white-van man”, the British equivalent of the Gilets Jaunes. In places, it is also the party of the aspiring, professional middle-class, particularly where they are also petty-bourgeois, business people, running small firms of accountants, solicitors and so on. But, a large part of that professional middle-class, long ago, separated from the Tories. It sees its own interests in the rational development of large-scale industrial capital, and recognises the need for large single markets, like the EU, for that development. They are also turned off from the old conservative social policies, based upon bigotry. Those elements have become the natural supporters of liberalism, including in the form of Labour, whilst it upheld those values.

Indeed, the interests of the ruling-class itself, of the owners of fictitious-capital, are antagonistic to those of the Tory Party, and its petty-bourgeois, membership and base. The financial market traders, epitomised by the Rees-Mogg's and Farage's, all of those that make money from arbitraging across national borders, and from volatility, have an interest in promoting a plethora of such borders, and instability, but that is not the case with the ruling class that requires long-term planning and regulation of macro-economic conditions, to provide economic stability, in order that the large multinational companies, whose shares and bonds they own, can maximise their profits, and so pay them increasing amounts of dividends and interest.

So, now, its not only the Tories that are racked by these contradictions of class interest, and their manifestation in the form of a collapse into jingoism, and Brexitism. It is the Labour Party too. In reality, that is even more the case. The Labour Party is now two parties co-existing in the same shell. On the one hand, there is the small reactionary, bunch of jingoes of Starmer's Blue Parliamentary Party that is rapidly moving to the Right, attempting to make itself into a Tory Party Mk.II, and, on the other, there is the mass Labour Party of still nearly half a million, progressive working-class members, 90% of whom reject Brexit, and all of that reactionary nationalism, as does around 70% of Labour voters. But, Starmer's reactionary Blue PLP has control of the party name, media, finances, and organisational structure. It is able to operate in Bonapartist fashion to ride roughshod over the party members, and to leach off them, sucking the life blood from the healthy body, to sustain the parasite.

That is not sustainable either, and will rip Labour apart, just as it has done the Tories. In the 19th century, it was the Liberals that were able to represent a more clearly defined set of class interests, and to prosper on that basis. It was the Liberals that represented, clearly, the interests of large-scale industrial capital, against the interests of the old landed, and financial aristocracies, and the elements of commercial capital historically associated with them. 

In the absence of a mass, independent workers' party, the Liberals also represented the interests of the working-class, in so far, as its interests, as Marx, and later Lenin described, are also for the most rational, and rapid development of that large-scale industrial capital, at the expense of those previous forms of property. When workers' got the vote, and that party depended upon the votes of those workers, rather than the votes of a dwindling number of actual industrial capitalists, the Labour Party was formed, reflecting that reality, whilst its own social-democratic ideology, simply continued the ideology of the Liberal Party itself, making it, as Lenin described, a bourgeois workers' party.

Starmer's Blue PLP is actually a fundamental break with that social-democratic tradition of Labour, as he careens, headlong into the camp of petty-bourgeois, nationalist reaction, in search of the votes of reactionary petty-bourgeois bigots, in a handful of seats in the North and Midlands. Its more akin to the kind of reactionary, nationalist party that Oswald Mosely envisaged, when he was a Labour Minister, in the early 1930's, or of the type that Josef Pilsudki created with the Polish Socialist Party, at that time, as well as the trajectory of the national socialist, Benito Mussolini, in Italy, or the kind of reactionary national socialism that Zionism rerpresents, and which was pursued in Israel.

The difference is that Mosely, Pilsudski and Mussolini, at least made propaganda in favour of a more radical socio-economic agenda, whereas, Starmer, having conned his way into the Labour Leadership, by saying he would continue with Corbyn's popular statist agenda of nationalising energy and railways etc., has quickly abandoned those positions, in order to pursue a straight, petty-bourgeois, nationalist agenda, based on cutting taxes for the petty-bourgeoisie, with heavier taxes on the larger, more progressive sections of capital, and the petty-bourgeois daydream of a small state. At a time when Macron has announced that the French state is to fully nationalise EDF, Starmer, the former supposed Trotskyist, is now to the Right of a Thatcherite!

Marxists always argue for support of the mass workers' party, and mass organisations of the working-class, but that begs the question of exactly what these are, today, in Britain? Its clear in terms of the trades unions, cooperatives and so on, but what about the Labour Party? In so far as the Labour members, and the party in the country, organised into branches and CLP's, that also seems pretty clear, but what about Starmer's Blue PLP? As set out above, it is effectively a separate organism, leaching off the healthy host.

Its possible that with the help of the trades unions, the party membership could bring it under control, but the history of such attempts is not promising, and to do so, requires a root and branch clear out of 99% of all existing members of the PLP, of the party apparatus, and all the hangers on, as well as of the large majority of local councillors. In many ways, it would be easier for the actual party in the country to simply recognise the reality of its own separate existence, and to formally split away from Starmer's reactionary rump, taking the trades unions along with them. The precedent for that is the National Left-Wing Movement, and it is certainly a much easier and more rational approach than all of the proposals for trying to create a Labour Party Mk.II from scratch, let alone the reactionary nationalist ventures of TUSC and so on.

It is again necessary to examine reality as against appearance, and we have no requirement to simply operate on the basis of giving support to labels, such as Labour Party, irrespective of the reality. We support the reality of the hundreds of thousands of Labour Party members organised in branches across the country, and their connections to the working-class and other elements of the labour movement, such as the trades unions, but that, in no way, commits us to supporting the reality of Starmer's reactionary rump Blue PLP. It has repeatedly failed even to provide any principled political opposition to Johnson, and his Tory government. How could they, when politically there is not a hair's breadth of difference between them. Even now, the Blue PLP refuses to provide any political opposition to Johnson by calling a vote of no confidence in the Tories, the bare minimum of political opposition they might offer, in conditions of the country no longer having a government!!!

In these conditions, the stage seems set for the Liberals again to benefit from representing a clearer set of class interests, those of large-scale industrial capital, and thereby of the working-class. Compared to progressive social-democracy, let alone socialism, the Liberals, as representatives of conservative social-democracy, of the interests of the ruling class owners of fictitious-capital, are not progressive. But, compared to both the Tories, and to Starmer's Blue Parliamentary Party, they are progressive.

The Tories have again destroyed themselves, as they did after the Repeal of the Corn Laws, and in the 1990's. They will retain some die hard, reactionary petty-bourgeois voters, but many of them will now become demoralised too. Johnson – despite the fact he never believed in Brexit – symbolised for them all of those petty-bourgeois dreams of a return to national glory that previously they had to look to the politically impotent Farage to fulfil. The defeat of Johnson is also the defeat of all of that Brexit idiocy, but its spectre continues to haunt British politics, within the Tory Party, and in the shape of Starmer's reactionary Blue PLP. It is history reduced to farce, and the last couple of years has been its stage play.

Its impossible, now, for Starmer to change course. He has pinned his colours to the mast of a ghost ship steaming headlong towards the reef of disaster that is reactionary nationalism, as he has again committed to continuing to press on regardless with Johnson's reactionary Brexit agenda, and even a refusal to commit to re-joining the single market. As Ian Blackford of the SNP said in parliament, yesterday, Johnson and the Tories departure would be no great change for a Scotland that voted to remain in the EU, given its replacement by a Starmer government committed to the same reactionary nationalist agenda, and with little difference on other policies either, as far as can be seen, given a failure of Starmer to put any forward in any detail.

Both Labour and Tories will be destroyed in Scotland, in the next elections. A similar fate looks likely in Wales, and the Tories Northern Ireland equivalent, the DUP, is already disappearing into the dustbin of history. But, the Liberals performances in all of the by-elections, when compared to that of Labour shows the writing on the wall in England too. Its the Liberals, and, in places, Greens, that are in line to pick up large swathes of those professional, middle class votes that previously attached themselves to Tory candidates, and where they do, they will act as magnets for those same kinds of elements, as well as progressive working-class voters that would normally have gone to Labour, before it collapsed into jingoism.

Its hard to see how the Tories hold on to those reactionary petty-bourgeois, and lumpen votes on the old decaying areas known as the “red wall”, and those votes will revert to their previous condition of sitting at home, waiting for some potential alternative to UKIP or the BNP to come along to rouse them to local activity, and a protest vote. The chance of Labour winning them, even if it should want to without a sea-change in their ideas, is remote.

In Wakefield, unlike in North Shropshire where Liberals came from third to overhaul a second place Labour, the Liberals and Greens had no history, and no prospect of winning the seat, but, now, that is likely to change. If the Liberals look set to swallow up dozens of former Tory seats, creating a momentum like that behind Blair in 1997, a whole new set of possibilities is created for them. The First Past the Post System would begin to work in their favour, and, in a whole range of seats, where they are second to Labour, or even third behind the Tories, their chances of winning increase substantially. Expect to see a re-emergence of the Small Change UK members such as Soubry and Umunna, but now as prominent Liberal supporters.

Indeed, in many constituencies faced with the choice of supporting a reactionary nationalist Blue Labour candidate, imposed from on high, by Starmer's Bonapartist machine, or supporting a more progressive Liberal, and recognising where a large number of progressive Labour voters will end up, even large numbers of Labour members may realign their positions, as they did in early 2019, when 60% of party members rebelled at Corbyn's economic nationalism and voted for Liberals and other anti-Brexit parties. The reactionary nationalist vote, even in Brexit supporting seats is likely to get split between the Tories and Starmer's Blue PLP, leaving it possible for Liberals and Greens to squeeze through the middle.

Liberals are unlikely to win an outright majority, but the conditions appear set for a collapse of the Tories, and a failure of Starmer's Blue PLP to make headway, leaving the Liberals as the progressive alternative, and potentially the largest party.