Why vote Labour today?
Philip Roddis
Following my Jesus or Barabbas post yesterday and – replicated on OffGuardian – Dirty War on the NHS post the day before, I’ve seen fit to respond to commenters who share my view of parliamentary democracy as a sham, but draw a conclusion I do not share; namely, that in no circumstances can any party, including Labour under its current leadership, be supported.
This is my response to that erroneous conclusion.
*
The Labour question has preoccupied the Left for a hundred years. Ever since Lenin advised the fledgling Communist Party of Britain to “support the Labour Party as a rope supports a hanged man” (this from the man whose brother went to the gallows after a failed ultra-leftist uprising against the Tsar) it has divided those who see parliamentary democracy for the chimera it is.
There are those within that minority – anarchists for instance – who couldn’t care less what Lenin thought. And even those who do care fall into two broad camps.
Both see a stark choice for humanity: socialism or barbarism. (The latter updated to add environmental meltdown to the list of possibilities.) And both are with Marx in insisting a capitalist ruling class will never allow socialism via the parliamentary route. (A seventies film, A Very British Coup, is excellent on the why and how of this).
But they differ on whether Lenin’s advice still holds. Or – forget Lenin – whether the inability of social democracy to deliver socialism makes the Labour Party, notwithstanding its ties to trade unionism, unsupportable – however conditional and limited that support.
At some point I’ll dedicate a post to the history of this but for now I’ll just say that I see blanket refusal by socialists to back Labour under any circumstances as sectarian. The British section of the international working class is facing, as is the French section to name but one other, assault on every front. I focused on the NHS but that’s a metonym for wider attacks as Capital seeks to make labour (small l) pay for its crises.
As I said before, this is the most vital election since 1945. I urge all socialists to vote Labour not because Corbyn is an honourable man – though he manifestly is – but because he has been a lightning rod, a conduit for impotent resentment hitherto mistaken by our rulers and their tame media for acquiescence and passive consent to ‘austerity’ – in reality a cover for rapid transfers of wealth from the many to the few.
With Labour in office on these terms, even with a civil war between Tory-lite and socialist wings, the unions will be emboldened and direct protests both inevitable and necessary.
I urge all British socialists to vote Labour today because when it betrays, as it must, there’ll be a stronger current prepared to take the fight beyond Westminster, to support and if need be bully Corbyn into not backing down when the pressures for him to do just that will be immense. He has already conceded too much ground and this also is what parliamentary socialists – actually an oxymoron – always do, however steely their character and piercing their intelligence.
This is not personal. There’s a science to it.
But do we join those sectarians who insist on all or nothing? Regardless of where most people are at? To do so is to insist there’s no difference between the utterly unprincipled BoJo and the demonstrably principled Jezza. Or to put it in less personal terms, no difference between the Tory’s plans for the NHS – remember, I use this as metonym – and the collectivist aspirations of Labour as it is currently led.
This is not 2015. At the very least the ruling class can proceed with its plans, to make the many pay for its own crises, a good deal more speedily under Boris than under Corbyn.
I think that makes this a no-brainer. Especially when the ultra-leftists who advocate abstention have nothing to offer in lieu. Nada. Zilch. Sweet Fanny Adams.
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Well, the parliamentary Labour Party clearly prefer the electoral wilderness to a Corbyn led government because they know that this result will cause Jeremy to resign. Having tried to defeat him twice yet without success, it was their only option.
Calm down folks.
Does Britain really want another decade of ‘austerity’, and all the rest of it?
Of course not.
Which suggests that these election results have been rigged.
I cannot of course (at the moment) prove that. Everything I’ve seen today pointed towards a narrow Labour majority.
The ‘youth vote’ was very big, and the psychopaths who rule us panicked and gave Bojo & Co a big majority.
That will prove to be a big mistake.
If the “election results have been rigged” then that would explain the curious inactivity of the Tories. And I’m becoming so jaded now that I’m even wondering if Flaxgirl/Petra is right in suggesting that you’re even supposed to KNOW that it’s a fraud. It’s like the sadistic torturer opening the door and waiting for you to try to escape before tripping you up.
What fresh hell is this? Are the British public really as criminally gullible as these exit polls suggest?
Yep, its shocking isnt it.
IF this pans out, the lesson to be drawn from it is that a party can’t win an election when it is at war with itself. The same was true of the Tory party from the early to mid 90s.
What was it, 180 plus in the PLP tried to stab Corbyn in the back not once, but twice? Mouthing off that he wasn’t fit to be elected dog catcher?
How can you ask people on the doorstep to vote for a party with that record?
The Tories were divided as well, but not as badly.
Or a party which treated Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and Ken Livingstone the way it did?
Another factor is the north/ south divide. Most Labour MPs, whatever their constituency, are representative of the metropolitan elite.
Plus you can’t just trash a referendum result and ignore 17 million people, whatever your view of Brexit.
Thats because Brexit was made a THING. It was made a THING as an oppourtunity to kill off the Corbyn project. People became so fixated, they never realised that under Corbyn, they would get their chance again. As a Brexiteer who voted Corbyn, those that voted with the Tories first chose to ignore the other stuff of greater importance he stood for. It was they who turned their back on prehaps the greatest chance to change this countries course. Corbyn may have put a foot wrong on the issue but it was a minor transgression compared to the people who turned away and sided with the Tories. They can bitch to the cows come home how he ignored them. The coutry will pay the price for their pettiness. Of course given our pathetic voting system, this doesn’t preclude the fact that the votes were rigged. Bring on the PLP, the… Read more »
Your right about the PLP stabbing Jeremy in the back, but now they have their way. The result of yesterday’s election has been clear since it was called. I can only conclude that many in the PLP will be secretly rubbing their hands with glee because they have finally succeeded where two coups had failed.
The question which now must arise is, whither the Labour Party? Not a resurgence of Tony Blair or a chosen successor?
Labour was a lost cause, a dead end, and a waste of time and energy long before this election. It was eviscerated by Blair and his cronies and is now politically dead.
Well, various idiots suggest it doesn’t matter who, as long as it’s a woman. Even bigger idiots suggest Jess Phillips and the utter lunatics suggest Lisa Nandy so I wouldn’t expect improvement any time soon!
But who is reporting the results of the exit polls? If the folks reporting these results are the ones who don’t want Corbyn as Prime Minister, and who have painted him as Britain’s real life answer to Lord Voldemort, would you put it past them to report the opposite of what the exit polls are actually saying?
Alas, exit polls tend to be pretty accurate. We can hope for a miracle — after all, Brexit was going down in flames until it wasn’t — but this may just be clutching at a straw.
If it does turn out to be a disaster for Labour then the only glimmer of hope from this is that we in the US can hopefully glean some lessons from this to prevent a similar debacle in our General Election next November.
It’s been the most mixed-up election in modern history.
The Brexit issue seems to have won over (despite the fact that Bojo & Co will never deliver it).
For the record, I’ve lived in France for decades, I’m a Brexiteer, and I get bored with trying to tell Brits about the massive social unrest that’s going on in France at the moment.
Methinks this will come to the streets of Britain sometime soon.
The British public but excluding your good self who is clearly above such follies. Of course the Labour party which said it would support the people’s will on Brexit then reneged, or the Lib Dems who simply said that they would ignore the result of the referendum, thereby casting the concept of democracy into the rubbish bin- neither are responsible for the fact that millions throughout the north and the midlands felt they had nowhere to go other than the Tories. I am a member of the Labour Party and I am ashamed of the stupidity that has ruled over the past two years. Although I considered spoiling my paper yesterday, since I knew my party hadn’t a cat in hell’s chance of winning, I voted for the sitting Labout MP who did manage to get in, but only just. WHat sickens me, apart from the fact that Jeremy Corbyn,… Read more »
So I was right then when I said in another comment to try and explain this vote other than by reference to fraud: The only logical alternative – if you can call it that – is that “Brexit at any cost” was the main incentive behind much of the voting. It seems to me that these determined Brexiteers were so focussed on getting away from the admittedly swinish EU that they didn’t see they were headed towards that vastly more swinish US salivating over that juicy NHS banquet. From the sinking ship of the EU to the sunk ship of the US.
According to reports reaching Australia, exit polls suggest Tories 368 seats, Labour 191.
No info yet as to where Labour has lost seats, but if they are in the party’s North of England heartland, its Brexit U-turn must be blamed. This would vindicate the views of George Galloway and Kit Knightly – the latter declared that Corbyn had signed his own death warrant when he agreed to the policy.
Meanwhile, ABC radio today continues its inglorious tradition of broadcasting only those of right-wing views: Theresa May’s former Director of Legislation and Britain’s two chief Iraq war villains: Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell (of dodgy dossier infamy) the latter trotting out the usual anti-Corbyn smears.
Yes, that’s what the exit polls said. In the event, they slightly exaggerated both Tory gains and Labour losses, as well as exaggerating SNP gains. It was still a terrible night for Labour, and embarrassing for the LibDems to lose their leader (the SNP could not help themselves, even though she is more pro-EU than Jean-Claude Juncker, as is the SNP. They have to have their wee IndyRef2 d’ye see noo?).
I hope the SNP get their IndyRef2, and that the result is precisely 52% Yes and 48% No, a nice parallel to the EU Referendum. And then I hope the “No” side spends the next 3+ years fighting this with gritted teeth through the courts, especially the Scottish Court of Session. that would have a feeling of rightness about it.
This is how it goes when they ignore Brexit. Time to wake up, left.
MSM are calling a Boris landslide. Let’s hope they’re wrong.
This is too bleak. IF Labour is smashed and disappears, it makes room for something that can only be better than what we have now. Like when the dinosaurs became extinct. Something emerges to fill the vacuum.
Why should something better succeed Labour? We’re not talking resurrection here but politics. Why not a Nazi party next, like Ukraine? Frightened citizens, like stampeding cattle, will plunger into the sea to escape a fire, even if they can’t swim.
You could be right. Hope not.
So do I. I’ve seen fascists at work, humans become animals. But if “hope” were bankable, I’d be a millionaire. I’m not.
The people who lord it over us really like Ukraine and Bolivia as they now are. Maybe that’s what they’ve got planned for us.
I remember some time back in the early 1970s when I was a member of a small radical left-wing group. The view was that we should play part in the unions and Labour party since this is where the people were. These seemed eminently plausible to me at the time given the dreary round of leftist student politics. We believed that we, and others like us, could move the Labour party into a more radical direction and that sectarianism was to be eschewed. So this was the position which we adopted. But the dog it was that died. We didn’t infiltrate them, they infiltrated us. By a slow insidious attrition social-democratic formulations practises and the deadly routinism inherent in Labourist politics wore away our revolutionary fervour. What were once radical socialists became middle-aged and resigned to the slow plod of gradualism and incremental reform. Incremental reform wasn’t permanent however; it… Read more »
https://twitter.com/CerveauxNon/status/1202572490243006464
The SCUM are seriously taking the p.ss now, there’s no way the Tories could even dream of that sort of majority for real. think this election result should be decided in the courts.
No, it’s all over according to the BBC. 368 seats for our Tory chums. The Botty Bangers Club has spoken.
Oh God, exit polls suggest a big Tory majority.
Problem is today’s Off G could turn into Counter Punch.
Endorsing Labour with ‘caveats’. Tomorrow who knows.
Disappointing for the first time. Then again I don’t generally read the election and BREXIT threads which breeds this mentality, even here.
If I’ve missed something in this regard please someone correct my misperceptions. Perhaps the populace of the U.K. is ready, motivated and poised to vote for a new massive post-capitalist, eco-friendly, post-imperialist, post-materialist paradigm shift (something I totally support) – only to find that Corbyn and Labour have made it clear that they are steadfastly standing in the way of that change. If that is the case, and I’ve somehow missed this story in all the MSM smears of Corbyn and Labour, then I can certainly see why one might not vote labor, or might choose to refuse to vote as some form of protest. However, even if simply maintaining access to basic services including affordable health care for common folks through the NHS means anything in one’s value system – well, I guess I’m a bit mystified as to why one wouldn’t vote Labour (with all it’s warts) and… Read more »
https://www.greanvillepost.com/2019/12/10/the-dirty-war-on-the-national-health-service-john-pilger-documentary-goes-to-the-heart-of-the-struggle-for-democracy-today/
ideological crap
To which I replied: Nothing to offer in lieu but life. Life which the neoliberal market economy society has all but rejected. So we have two flavours of market economy society to choose from. Both are completely contingent functions of the globalisation of market forces. And we make the limited self-preservational choice on marginal contingent policies – subject to the global free-enterprise market doing well from its core ‘money multiplier cancer’. So how do you choose a particular brand of metastases? Or between cancer and kidney-failure? On a pantomime unpopularity contest? I cannot believe we have got to the latest stage of capitalism’s cancerous imperialism over all life without even diagnosing the pathology and etiology of our disease. Have you read McMurtry’s ‘Cancer Stage of Capitalism’? Because it diagnoses the ‘transnational money multiplier sequence’ as being the ’cause of causes’ and ‘pathology of pathologies’. Which has its central accumulation hub… Read more »
The fact there is a debate about this shows Labour in its present form is like the other parties, unfit for office. Now if you are asking me if it’s slightly better they win yes of course. In the remote hope they do in power that they failed
in opposition – are they suddenly going to get some balls and chuck out the Blarites?
Is that any clearer to those normal rational people selling their soul to a
The current election media circus?
As far as i see it it is imperative to vote Labour. Finally they have a viable and serious leadership,. The laughable accusations of anti semitism (errrr…..election interference anyone ???) smack of the same crazed desperation that clouds the current impeachment efforts in the US despite Corbyn and Trump being politically on opposite sides of the spectrum.
Some want war and some dont. Those that do are evil, and that is where we are.
Vote against evil, condescension and greed , even if it’s making jokes, stroking dogs and delivering the milk in that jocular pied piper fashion that Tories have always carried off with aplomb. Fuck ’em!!!
Voting for ‘what’ exactly? Does NOT do what it says on the tin! – to misquote the Ronseal advert. Socially engineered outcomes are rolled out regardless of apparently left or right feet. Brexit was presented as IF a chance to leave the EU – and as IF democracy has any power or place in a corporatocracy, but EU is simply one currently reconfiguring region of a globalism that doesn’t care who or what runs the country or region, Britain was and is starkly divided by brexit and other neo-truth agenda and may be intended to cease to continue as the UK. The brexit debacle was economically framed from start to finish with limiting migration almost the only symbolic icon for ‘independence or freedom’. The disaffected brexit voter is suitably primed to vote for our our own version of Trump – our very own Chump – who is the puppet of… Read more »
Ironically, his brother, Piers Corbyn, is a Climate sceptic, or rather a CO2-induced, anthropogenic-Climate-Change sceptic. See various Youtube videos featuring him, and his website, www. weatheraction.com (the latter is mostly about weather forecasting, but does have some climate stuff on there. Unfortunately, it looks like it’s been designed on the back of an envelope).
He’s also at least as left-wing as Jeremy, and is an EU-sceptic. (But very loyal to Jeremy, so you won’t find him criticising the latter’s differences on policy).
I’ve met Piers. My brothers are entirely free to hold their own views. Why not the Corbyns? However, Jeremy will certainly be very aware of Piers’s views. But on both I wonder if being preset AGAINST the establishment – renders them unable to read anything but their own hates? And trapped in their own moral superiority? Business’s and corporates pay for Piers’s long range weather predictions, that analyses Solar activity patterns with matches in the past record. There is more to the stars than a giant Nuclear explosion rising from gravitational collapse, and even in nuclear explosion the actual force that breaks out from its nuclear containment is primarily electrical – with radiant energy being a subsidiary of its own interactions. Is the Sun covered in Lightning – or plasma discharge in arc-mode? And is the Solar ‘wind’ a constantly fluctuating electrical field in which its planetary system is embraced… Read more »
That was an early 1980s novel by Labour MP Chris Mullin, which some years later was adapted into a very good BBC series, not a film. Off the top of my head, I would say about 1982 and 1989.
After Corbyn got elected, Chris Mullin wrote an article in the Guardian, speculating whether JC would be subjected to a similar coup. Possibly he already has been, thus preventing him ever becoming PM. I wonder if the truth will ever fully come out.
Mullin hinted he might write a kind of sequel, inspired by Corbyn. If he has, I’ve not heard that it’s been published, but
it may yet appear some day.
I have, as always, without any hope, voted Labour today. One reason to be very unhappy. My polling station, which is always near empty, has cars backed up down the road, waiting to get in the carpark. You can’t move for doddering, wealthy old fuckers going to stop the security risk, anti-Semite and get Brexit done.
The only hope now, is in 5 years time there hasn’t been a collapse of the Euro or more countries bailing out which would vindicate Johnson. People will then know Johnson was lying when we’re still as close to Europe as ever, and paying through the nose for the privalage. The middle-class will very likely find themselves squeezed by Indian immigrants…….and if Corbyn’s replacement is a left winger, Rebecca Long Bailey(?) Who knows. But that’s grasping at straws. More likely the Labour party will return to right wing control.
Philip
What is a British socialist?
This is my scenario . I live with an 81 year old mum whose terrified of Corbyn because she rightly fears as I can see is going to taxed when she dies – more than the tories.
Meanwhile me I’m anti war. ( which my lovely conservative mum is sympathetic) I have empathy for the people next on the US hit list.
And with a large percentage of the party being Blair toads, what is the point in legitimizing a corrupt system by voting?
Voting today is a ridiculous notion for the smart thinkers.
No love, it’s a ridiculous notion for people who think they’re more perceptive than they really are. For people who actually do have enough common sense to live in the real world, rather than in the imaginary-but-non-deliverable perfection of a ‘correct’ radical political analysis, backing what is self-evidently the much lesser of two evils, with a good chance of it delivering substantially less-bad outcomes than the tory scum will inflict, is just bloody obvious!
come on, I am the most optimist of people, but surely you can’t believe that?
You can take the cynical route on this (ie, Mark Twain: “if voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it”), or you can take the optimistic route. The optimistic route is that huge amounts of people, all around the world, are protesting against neoliberalism. This includes our friends just across the English Channel, where we are now into day 8 of a crippling general strike, the biggest general strike in French post-war history. I’m sure those nice people at the BBC, and the American presstitutes, have told you all about this. Not. My original prediction – re: the UK general election – is that it will be a hung parliament, with Corbyn as prime minister with the backing of the Scottish nationalists. From what I’ve seen today, I’m now predicting a Labour majority; albeit a slim one (I say this with still three hours to go until the… Read more »
This is not my election, and since I cannot vote (being Dutch) it may be too easy for me to say ‘don’t vote’. Still, a Labour win would be a ‘decent’ outcome, I think. IMO that would show that people in the UK are opting for care for another and are willing to leave the century of the self behind (which is neoliberalism) and all the identity politics and racism that comes with it. I hope that Labour wins. But the idea that Labour will change the UK for the better, well I just don’t see it. If I look at the traditional Labour party in the NL (PvdA): as soon as they were capable to form a government, they threw away all their ‘ideological feathers’ and opted for austerity. They did this in the 1990s and in 2012 they did this again, after which a large part of those… Read more »
Willem, tell us what’s going on in Holland.
I believe the farmers are a bit pissed-off?
I am a British socialist, but no longer can vote Labour. I voted for Brexit and my vote is being ignored. Not only that but the working class is completely ignored by the current members of the Labour Party. All their arguments are flimflam and manipulation just to get power and save their jobs, nothing else. I am disgusted by what the Labour Party has become and I don’t blame Corbyn, but the undemocratic bulk of tje Labour MPs who are willing to ignore 17.4 million voters. To be as polite as I can, Labour can shove it where the sun don’t shine.
Ok, go vote for Bojo, or the other complete lunatic, Swinson.
No, but thank you for allowing me a choice, even though between them all there is little choice.
‘Press the button’ and incinerate 100s of millions of completely innocent human beings.
This, when the world has ended, anyway.
These politicians are complete, total and utter psychopaths.
And you vote for them?!
No
Jim,
I’ve been kicked out of the LP for fighting the buggers, and they play as dirty as the Tories. However, and despite the Brexit September Conference farce, I’ve voted Labour and voted Labour due to Corbyn, who’s been treated awfully by much of the PLP and Party hierarchy, which is most undemocratic, as Chris Williamson found out to his peril.
Similar here but Corbyn will be gone by the weekend, win or lose. Then what? The sharks are circling and Labour is down the tube. I feel sorry for the likes of Chris Williamson
Yes, they’ll probably end up with a Zionist, identity politics wonk like Jess Phillips as leader to put a final end to the party.
Was looking forward to seeing her defeated, but no such luck.
Well they brought in Alistair Cambell on the BBC election coverage to put the boot in, as soon as the exit poll and a few results showed that Labour was doomed. And today, Blunkett on the radio.
Fortunately, I have managed to miss the man himself, Blair, and Mandelson, but no doubt they are out there somewhere, mouthing off.
Johnson won’t “get Brexit done” in anything but name.
None of them have any intention of getting Brexit done.
Is your criticism only about British Labour not supporting Brexit? What about Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto for revitalising British industry and bringing manufacturing and other production and employment back to the country in the form of investing in renewable energies and other new industries? Would that not be worth voting for?
Or at the very least stopping the rapid privatisation of the NHS and the domination of British hospitals, medical centres, medical staff and the support staff who work at medical institutions by US and other foreign corporations? A Labour government might stop that or at the very least slow down that process or block most of it. Is that not worth supporting?
Who would you vote for that can stop or slow down the Americanisation of Britain if you cannot vote for Labour?
Their U-turn on Brexit was what first opened my eyes and then all I could see was manipulation and lies. By not leaving the EU means that almost half of their manifesto won’t get to see the light of day. EU rules won’t allow it. On the other half, the only parts that interest me are the NHS and Universal Credit. Half the Labour MPs own shares in the companies that service the already privatised parts of the NHS so my trust is very low. That leaves UC and I would have loved to have voted for them just for this, but they have become so Londoncentric that I don’t believe they care about anyone else. If they had just kept Brexit in their manifesto, they would win by a landslide….. Oh, too late. (Just on exit polls).
Sounds about right to me.
I think that Jeremy should have handled the antisemitism smear though. I don’t think that many people believed it, yet Jeremy allowed the wound to fester and I think that diminished his reputation in the eyes of many.
First item on the BBC 6 O’clock news: the London bridge attack:
Gosh – I wonder why that came up at this particular time on this particular day?
Do enlighten us all, oh font of all knowledge.
I recall the immortal words of the late Kenneth Williams, “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it infamy!”
I tire of this paranoia. I don’t watch the BBC or listen to it’s radio programmes, but I find it hard to believe that it is actively working on behalf of the Conservative Party [This rhetorical trick is known as ‘argument from incredulity’- attempting to dismiss a very obvious fact or plausible theory based purely on the subject’s alleged inability to believe it – ed]
Labour has been it’s own worst enemy. Not guaranteeing Brexit and not dealing with the antisemitism smear. (And I voted Remain).
Well if you “don’t watch the BBC or listen to it’s radio programmes”, you can believe what you want. I did watch and I saw the most staggering bias.
Isn’t it just a mite curious that this London Bridge story happened two weeks ago, that the latest “news” was something they could have told us at any time and yet they spring it now?
The BBC has always worked on behalf of the government.