Could Labour Drop To Fourth in Gorton & Denton By-Election?

The establishment seem to be apoplectic at the thought that the Greens look set to win the by-election in Gorton and Denton, tomorrow.  On the one hand, we have the far-right wing of the establishment such as The Daily Mail, which has followed Trump down the rabbit hole of absurdity, and is now claiming ridiculously, on its front page that the Greens are going to offer illegal migrants a free house.  The claims of the Mail, are an hysterical extension of its long-standing racist lies about preferential treatment for immigrants, going back decades, as it now fears that, not only are the Greens going to beat Labour,, but are set to, also, beat Reform

On the other hand, we have the centrist elements of the establishment, similarly concerned that the Greens might beat Labour from its Left, and might, also beat Reform.  The centrists have no desire for a Reform victory, but they certainly would prefer it over a win for the Greens.  For the last 6 years, Starmer has tagged along behind first the Tories, and, then, their reincarnation as Reform, in a continual ratchet to the reactionary, nationalist Right.  The narrative was created that Reform could only be defeated by Labour, despite the fact that voters were presented with just different shades of reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalism and the prospect of increasing attacks on workers' living standards and rights, following Brexit, and attempts to distract them by the usual appeals to rally around the flag on the basis of ridiculous claims about imminent invasion.

A win for the Greens shatters that narrative, and what scares the establishment is that its quite clear that with the Conservatives now destroyed, Labour is headed to the same fate.  The race in Gorton and Denton, formerly a rock solid Labour seat, is solely between Reform and The Greens.  The question is only which of these two parties come out on top, and how badly Labour does, further down the ballot.  Labour further destroyed its chances by blocking Burnhan from standing, in the interests, purely of Starmer's Blue Labour faction, which has wrecked the party, and, is now, reaping the consequences, as it loses its grip.  The same factionalism and cronyism has led to the current scandals around Epstein and Mandelson, which look set to gradually draw in all of those that were a part of that Mandelson cabal.

What the establishment and pundits have failed to recognise is that class based politics, continues to dominate, and to determine voting.  The reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, which, as a class was the bedrock of the Tories/Conservatives has simply shifted to Reform, which is nothing more than a rebranding of the Tories.  The aspiring, professional middle-class fraction of Conservative support, which was the support base of the social-democratic wing of the party, typified by the likes of Heath, Heseltine and Clarke (the Wets) and, consequently, of the interests of large-scale capital, and the EU, has moved to its rational home in the Liberals.  As Blue Labour has abandoned even that kind of conservative, social-democracy, it is unable to attract either those sections of the middle-class, in the way Blair did, or to attract the working-class, on the back of a pursuit of progressive social-democracy, as it did under Attlee, Wilson/Callaghan, or Corbyn.  That working-class/middle-class vote has now gone to the Greens.

According to numerous reports, local Labour activists in Gorton and Denton have already acknowledge that reality, and given up.  Why on Earth, would any rational Labour activist waste their time trudging the streets to advocate a vote for someone and something that the vast majority of them, also, do not support.  Its not like in the past, when activists might do that to support a given candidate, using the contact with voters to, set out their own disagreements with the leadership, and encourage the to join the party, and assist in a struggle to transform it, as for example, we did with the Socialist Campaign for A Labour Victory, in 1979.  Today, Starmer's Bonapartist Blue Labour regime has prevented any such struggle within the party, as seen with the mass expulsions, the imposition from above of candidates, and the blocking of Burnham.  No amount of high profile flying visits to the seat will change that reality, as they try to shore up an illusion.

The progressive working-class vote in the constituency has already moved to the Greens, and all those former Labour voters, can, now, see that to beat Reform the Greens offer the only hope.  They look set to fulfil that hope, which is why the establishment in both its far-right and centrist factions have united to try to stop the Greens.  Labour, has tried to attack the Greens from the opposite direction, with its own sets of lies.  Rather than joining in with the racist lies of the Daily Mail, about Greens giving free houses to illegal migrants and so on, Labour instead have focussed on The Greens opposition to the genocide being committed by the Zionist regime against Palestinians.  Its not that Blue Labour has not mimicked the racist policies of Reform, the Tories and the Mail, but that they know that, in this seat, echoing those particular lies would be likely to lose it even more votes.

And, despite the fact that Polansky is himself Jewish, Blue Labour think that with their ridiculous attacks on his opposition to the genocide, a genocide that Starmer and Blue Labour has denied exists, and which they have armed and supported, they will turn some of those voters against the Greens in that constituency.  No doubt they have blindly looked back to the former Labour MP for Manchester, Gerald Kaufman, but, had they looked more closely, they would have seen that Kaufman was, also, a critic of the kind of politics that the Zionist regime has been undertaking.

Blue Labour has destroyed the Labour Party, much as the same petty-bourgeois nationalists have destroyed the Conservative Party.  In the latter case they have emerged like the monster on Alien, out of the stomach of the Conservatives, now, as Reform, that reality shown by the number of Tory MP's like Jenrick, Jenkyns and so on that now, litter its ranks.  At some point, the same is likely to be true with Blue Labour, as, having destroyed Labour, those elements also, join Reform.  A look at the journey travelled by many of those associated with the likes of Glassman, in the ranks of Spiked Online, shows how easily that is done.

So, the banner of social-democracy has now fallen, by default, into the hands of the Greens, or, in Scotland and Wales, the SNP and Plaid.  To beat Reform, the working-class, and progressive, professional middle-class, now, rationally, have only those parties as a means of doing, so in elections.  In places, the Liberals may, also, offer a similar alternative.  The tragedy, once again, is that socialists have not risen to the task of filling that void.  The labour vote in Gorton has collapsed, and the beneficiaries are the Greens.  To defeat Reform, it will need to collapse completely.  Given the reactionary, anti-working-class nature of Blue Labour, that should not be hard to envisage, and the question now is, will Labour even be able to muster enough votes to beat the Liberals into third place.