Corbyn’s Brexit incoherence

Jeremy Corbyn is neither the cause of Brexit nor is he a participant in government Brexit policy, but his incoherence is helping the Tory Right.

The truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy.
Robert Louis Stevenson

Saturday June 23rd saw around 100 000 people from all political parties march through the centre of London to oppose Brexit and call for a second referendum. The cry went up, “Where’s Jeremy Corbyn?” who, of course, was not there. Supporters of Corbyn’s leadership need to state frankly some home truths.

Brexit is the most significant development in British politics so far this century; and Jeremy Corbyn’s position on the issue is a complete mess. In the 2016 referendum, Labour campaigned for Remain, but Jeremy’s backing was only half-hearted, as his views were still frozen in a eurosceptic hangover from the Benn years a generation before.

Essentially today Corbyn has evolved a neutral stance hovering between the three factions that divide Labour MPs on the issue - the view of the wider Labour membership, overwhelmingly anti-Brexit and radical hardly seems to count.

One faction is the Brexit supporters or sympathises (some of them post -referendum converts) who support Brexit on xenophobic grounds. These MPs, mostly, representing northern English small towns, want to echo the anti-immigrant prejudices which motivated much of the Leave vote. Their main issue is to stop free movement, and as representatives of indigenous people, instead of working people irrespective of nationality, they can’t really be considered left-wing or progressive at all.

A second faction are the so-called Lexiteers. These people believe that EU rules would prevent a future Labour government from implementing a genuine socialist programme.But the chance of a majority of Labour MPs after the next election supporting such a programme is remote. If, on the contrary, a future Labour government were to achieve the same level of social progress as in those EU countries of north-west Europe, Jeremy Corbyn would be heralded the most successful socialist prime minister in Labour history. In short, Lexiteers are fantasists, who are doing nothing more than helping the political right.

The third faction is that mass of Blairite Labour MPs who oppose Brexit, but have now reconciled themselves to campaigning for a soft Brexit in which the UK stays in the customs union and some parts of the single market. Their fault is that they are thoroughly anti-Corbyn and see Brexit entirely through the lens of business interests. Their ideal solution would be to allow freedom of movement for capital, services and goods, but to restrict the free movement of people..

For the sake of people’s rights, economic prosperity, Ireland and opposition to xenophobic populism, one would have expected Jeremy Corbyn to come out as a firm opponent of Brexit. But he does nearly nothing, except mutter that 52 percent of the electorate in 2016 backed Leave, so he supports Leave. Since when has the policy of the Labour Party been made by a poll of the British electorate? Why does he oppose a second referendum?

Labour’s position is thus utterly incoherent. The Labour Party just talks nonsense while the damage of Brexit - both economic and political - is being done by the Right of the Tory Party, almost unopposed.

Ken Livingstone resigns from the Labour Party

Jeremy Corbyn has sacrificed Ken Livingstone to appease those making fake antisemitism allegations.

On 21 May 2018, the twice elected Mayor of London, former leader of the GLC and former Labour MP, Ken Livingstone resigned from the Labour Party. From 1981 onwards no elected-into-office Labour politician has done more to advance progressive politics.

In 2016 Livingstone was accused of antisemitism on account of his remark on television that Adolf Hitler "was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”

This comment was indeed disastrously ill-expressed. It is true that there was a temporary alignment of purpose between some Zionists and the Third Reich in the pre-war years, both parties seeking the departure of Jews from Germany. And as regards the other part of his remark, for Ken Livingstone to dismiss the holocaust as merely the result of the mental state of Hitler is cruelly inadequate.

Livingstone can certainly be 'accused' of pointing to a concealed aspect of historical Zionism, of opposing the Zionist project, of supporting Palestinian rights and of criticism of Israeli government policy. But so what? The whole case against Livingstone only blew up because of an anti-Corbyn alliance comprising the Blairite right of the Labour Party on the one hand, and by organisations representing the Israeli government on the other.

Ken Livingstone is no antisemite and he was wrongly accused. It is therefore a betrayal of him and of principle that Jeremy Corbyn should welcome the departure of his former ally from the Labour Party. In sacrificing his old ally Corbyn may hope that he has appeased his critics so the fake antisemitism allegations will stop, but there is the likely danger that all he has done is to embolden their attacks.

The Salisbury chemical attack: whatever the truth socialists should not support Putin

Russian society and politics should not be supported by socialists, irrespective of whether Putin is responsible for the Salisbury chemical attack.

I have little more than contempt for those so-called socialists who are using the Salisbury chemical attack to paint Russia as a paragon of virtue vis-a-vis the western capitalist states.

Russia under Putin is a politically corrupt kleptocracy which promotes a chauvinistic foreign policy. It seeks to undermine the western capitalist countries, not by promoting socialism, but by feeding the poison of the fascist right: support for Brexit and Trump, support for ultra-right wing parties in Europe, and hostility to lesbian and gay rights at home and abroad. Put simply everything that is wrong in North America and the EU is more wrong in Russia. Thus the argument for backing Putin rests on nothing more than the false argument that our enemy’s enemy is our friend.

Received wisdom says the Russian state was responsible for the Salisbury attack. And on the balance of probabilities that is true. Yet an element of doubt must remain: what reason did Russia have to mount a clumsy assassination attempt against a retired Russian spy in exile? And why was it done in such a way as to obviously implicate Russia?

Jeremy Corbyn is right in saying that this incident needs thorough independent investigation.There is nothing to be gained in unnecessary confrontation with Russia - even more so if it turns out that Russia is not responsible and has been set up.

Brexit: Corbyn should reject Leavers' arguments

Jeremy Corbyn should not respect the reasons most Leaver voted for Brexit

It is worth examining the argument, often heard, that the Labour leadership is right to back Brexit because seven out ten of Labour seats voted for Leave.

First numbers. Yes, 70% of Labour MPs may have a majority of their constituents who voted Leave, but that does not mean that a majority of the Labour voters in those seats backed Brexit. Sure, in the post-industrial towns of England, there are some seats where a majority of Labour voters probably did back Leave, but it is fewer than the touted 70% of Labour seats.

The vast majority of Brexit votes were cast for one of the following reasons, or both. First, Brexit would yield an economic advantage for ordinary people. Well, this argument is simply wrong. The other reason was the attraction of xenophobic nationalism.

So when Jeremy Corbyn talks about respecting the referendum decision, it is legitimate to ask, which of those two motivations for Brexit should be respected and promoted by Labour? Economic fallacies, or respect for xenophobic nationalism?

Those who support Corbyn and the Left, but are utterly opposed to British nationalism and xenophobia, need organisations to starting fighting within Labour (and outside it) for the policies and values in which we believe.

Jeremy Corbyn: we support him, but he's making mistakes

Socialist should support the Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party, but that does not mean Corbyn is not making serious mistakes.

The election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party in 2015 ended a quarter of a century of New Labourism and the collaboration of the Labour Party with neo-economic liberalism. While that victory is welcome, the Corbyn leadership has failed to adjust to the requirements of socialism in the twenty-first century. The main points of criticism are these:

1. On Brexit Corbyn flops around. Brexit means a loss of rights, economic damage and is a fuel for nationalist-xenophobia. These are all things Labour should unconditionally oppose.

2. The 2017 General Election temporarily silenced the New-Labourites who still dominate the PLP and the Party bureaucracy. Yet there is no coordinated struggle from the top against the Right; e.g. supporting de-selection of at least those Labour MPs who would be disloyal to a Crobyn-led Labour government. The leadership has also failed to speak out against the witchhunt of socialists in the party.

3. The leadership is committed to an outdated tribalism and will not work or form electoral arrangements with other progressives forces, in particular the Green Party. The leadership also support the current undemocratic first-past-the-post electoral system.

4. Despite waffle about constitutional conventions, the current leadership supports the Union and opposes independence for Scotland (and for an independent Scottish Labour Party). While it is not for the English left to tell Scotland to be independent, the Labour Party should at least be neutral on the issue rather than rallying behind British nationalism.

Progressive people need to support the Corbyn leadership generally, but also need to organise separately within and outside the British Labour Party for a progressive radical socialism.

End Labour’s Brexit Incoherence

Opposing Hard Brexit is not issue-number-one for Labour, but we still need coherence

In the June 2017 General Election Jeremy Corbyn was completely correct to emphasise the bread-and-butter issues that impact directly on working people’s lives: eternal austerity, mushrooming inequality, the running down of public services in health education and transport, and the unaffordability of housing - ideas encapsulated in the slogan “For the Many Not the Few.” The Liberal Democrats highlighted opposition to Brexit and flopped.

The reason is clear. The vast majority of British voters are not affected directly by Brexit. Most do not live or work in the EU27, nor did they ever plan to do so. Few have family members with other EU passports.The loss of European political rights is prioritised only by politically conscious progressives; and the negative economic impact of Brexit for most people is indistinguishable from the other failings of British capitalism.

But, because Brexit is not issue-number-one, that can’t justify Labour’s obscurantism. There seem to me to be three possible reasons (none of them good) why Jeremy lines up by default behind the Tory Brexiteers and doesn’t clearly call for retaining membership of the Single Market and the Customs Union. Remaining in these institutions would remove the economic cost of withdrawal from the EU and keep Freedom of Movement. What are Corbyn’s not-very-good reasons?

First, by not saying anything coherent, Labour keeps the focus on the Tory Government. Brexit is likely to be a disaster, mainly economic, leading to division within, and opposition to, the Tories. Labour, it could be argued, will benefit in the 2022 election.

Second, Hard Brexit will remove any legal restrictions on Britain. A future majority Labour Government could then start implementing ‘socialism in one country.’

Third, that minority of Labour voters, and potential voters, who are ardent Leave supporters, would be so incensed by retaining freedom of movement that they would be able to prevent the election of a Labour Government.

For me none of these arguments adds up, nor do they justify Labour’s muddled messages on Brexit and on freedom of movement in particular.

As things are going at present, from the end of March 2019 Freedom of Movement will exist from Donegal to Athens, from the Arctic Circle to Sicily and from Tallinn to Lisbon, with just the UK excluded. Britons will be locked in - lacking the right to retire to Spain, study in Berlin or work in Paris. The Polish plumber in London may be able to stay with “settled status” as a second class citizen, but his younger brother can’t come to work with him. No socialist should be muddled about opposing such a state of affairs.

Postscript: At the end of August 2017, the Labour leadership let it be known that now Labour would support continued membership of the Single Market and the Customs Union for at least between two and four years after the UK leaves the EU in March 2019. The issue of permanent membership would be left open. On the desirability of freedom of movement, Labour's message remains muddled.

Will Ben Bradshaw support Jeremy Corbyn for Prime Minister?

Ben Bradshaw, Exeter's Labour MP, is a known opponent of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn

Will Ben Bradshaw support Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister? Apparently yes – although I am completely sure that Ben doesn’t believe for a single moment that Labour will emerge from the election with a majority. So the undertaking is costless.

Corbyn made a grave error in voting for this election – and without Labour’s votes the two-thirds majority to trigger it would not have been achieved. The vast bulk of the PLP do not support Corbyn and voted for the election not to get rid of the Tories, but to get rid of the current leader of the Labour Party.

The choice for the left is capitulation or implosion. Labour will lose in June. If Corbyn stays on – and I hope he does – it is probable that the Blairites in the rump PLP will defect. If that happens, it happens, but socialists should not capitulate to Blairite threats, and we will just have to pick up the pieces from where we find ourselves.

Jeremy Corbyn is hamstrung over Gibraltar

Jeremy Corbyn can’t state the obvious on Gibraltar because he has gone along with Brexit.

At the end of March it became known that Spanish diplomats had succeeded in inserting a clause into the provisional treaty governing the transition after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019. The clause states that those transitional arrangements will only apply to Gibraltar if Spain agrees.The British Government which desperately needs a transitional agreement to prevent a cliff edge departure from the EU can neither veto nor opt-out; they just have take what they are given - or walk away with nothing.

Now whether the tax-haven Gibraltar is ruled by Britain or Spain doesn’t interest me, nor does the loss of international power by the British state. But there is a point here. The Brexiteers who are all British nationalists of one sort or another, claimed that EU departure was about ‘taking back control.’ Yet the reality, as highlighted by the Gibraltar issue, shows the exact opposite: a massive loss of ability for the British state to wield influence and control.

And, had Jeremy Corbyn continued to oppose Brexit after the referendum - of course mainly for reasons nothing to do with Gibraltar - he could have pressed home the point that power and influence are seeping away from Britain, and the Brexiteers’ triumphalism of a powerful, proud and independent nation is a mere delusion. But with Corbyn de facto co-sponsoring Brexit with the Tories, and inevitably falling into step with with the nationalist discourse that accompanies it, the Labour leader is hamstrung and can’t make the point.

Corbyn should realise that Brexit will screw working people

Jeremy Corbyn is wrong to support and downplay Brexit. He should oppose processes which attack working people.

March 29th 2017 saw the British Government finally triggering Article 50 to start the two year process of leaving the European Union. In the House of Common, Jeremy Corbyn hardly made headlines when he repeated his Brexit mantra “Brexit is the will of the people,” and no to Britain becoming a low tax, low regulation economy.

Quite clearly Corbyn doesn’t feel strongly about Brexit. He probably thinks it is an issue which will just fade away. Or he might even harbour illusions of it granting his vainly hoped-for majority Labour government, elected in 2020, extra powers. In the meantime, however, he wants to concentrate on economic issues and leave talking about Brexit to others.

But what Corbyn fails to understand is the link between Brexit and the increased exploitation of working people. Brexit is already causing capital flight, for instance the news the following day that Lloyds and J. P. Morgan were moving some of their operations outside the UK. And on top of that, much more capital simply won’t flow into Britain in the first place. Trade barriers increase costs. So put simply the Tories, to maintain profit levels, will need to increase exploitation through a further cutting of wages, taxes,employment rights and benefits.

It won’t be long before the economic price of Brexit becomes obvious. And Corbyn will pay heavily for his foolishness in co-sponsoring Brexit with the May Government.

Divorcing the Scottish Labour Party

The Labour Party in Scotland should become a wholly independent organisation.

Jeremy Corbyn’s position on the question of a second Scottish independence referendum is utterly muddled, though it is unclear whether he is at fault or the mainstream media. But cutting through the confusion, his opinion seems to be this: Scotland should be allowed to have a referendum if it wants one, but it should not want one. In short, Corbyn has hitched himself to Unionism, and believes that, despite the Scottish rejection of Brexit in the April 2016 referendum, Scotland, as part of the UK, should be taken out of the EU against its will.

In taking that line Corbyn has fallen into step with the fiercely Unionist Scottish Labour Party leadership, the body which has sunk Labour in the last decade from Scotland’s dominant force into a measly third-placed party. Scottish Labour leader, Kezia Dugdale, is strongly anti-Corbyn, as is Ian Murray, Scotland’s sole Labour MP. They won't help Corbyn to achieve anything.

Of course, it’s not up to Corbyn to tell Scotland that the country should be independent, any more than it is up to him to say that it should not be. That issue is for Scotland alone to decide. But Corbyn could, and should, disassociate himself from the Scottish Labour Party, and declare that Scottish Labour ought to be a wholly independent organisation. But sadly I don’t think Corbyn will take that step.

Brexit: Corbyn Screwed Up

Jeremy Corbyn steered Labour into unconditionally supporting Brexit. In so doing he stained progressive politics and sunk the Left.

When Jeremy Corbyn was elected to the Labour leadership in 2015, my hopes were rekindled that for the first time in decades a progressive force had emerged in British politics. But Corbyn’s decision to whip the PLP into voting unconditionally for the May Government’s hard Brexit finally dashed any such optimism. There are some mistakes in politics which are survivable, and some which are not. Corbyn’s Brexit stance, I believe, falls into the latter category.

Let us add up the damage.

1. Corbyn aligned Labour alongside the xenophobia which is the cause and effect of Brexit. Many right-wing Labour MPs are seemingly happy to accommodate themselves to the wave of anti-liberal, foreigner-hating nationalism now sweeping England, but the tragedy for the progressive left is that Corbyn joined them. His commitment to Freedom of Movement is dead, even if he continues to plead the case of the three million or so non-British EU nationals resident in the UK.

2. Seventy percent of Labour voters, and an even larger majority of Labour members, voted for Remain. The vast bulk of the young left that joined to support Corbyn’s leadership campaigns saw Britain’s future in the EU. Many will now be seeking new political homes, or abandoning politics altogether. The future for the left in the party without them is bleak.

3. Corbyn threw away the chance of building any kind of progressive alliance with other centre and left-leaning parties: the Liberal Democrats, SNP and the Greens. A key element of any working arrangement would have been opposing Brexit and the consequences of Brexit. The official Labour position, namely, that it will win the 2020 General Election single handed is highly improbable.

4. Brexit will impede trade and drive away investment. And, as the economic negatives become apparent, Labour will lack any credibility in blaming Theresa May’s hard Brexit on the Tories. Corbyn led Labour through the Tory lobbies and thus willed the consequences.

Following the House of Commons vote to endorse a hard Brexit backed by Corbyn, the Labour leader tweeted,"Real fight starts now. Over next two years Labour will use every opportunity to ensure Brexit protects jobs, living standards & the economy." This must rank among the most pathetic utterances in modern political history, as he vouched to fight the consequences of his own actions. Corbyn hopelessly mis-analysed the situation, lost friends without finding new ones, damaged the left, and stained Labour as a progressive movement.

It is hard not to agree with Martin Kettle writing in The Guardian (02-March-2017), "There is nothing socialist about this, nothing social democratic, nothing liberal, nothing progressive, nothing moral, nothing with any optimism or imagination.”

Brexit: victory for the British far right

Brexit and right-wing xenophobic nationalism are symbiotically related. Each is the result and cause of the other.

The decision by the May government to plough on with its preparations for a hard Brexit is certainly injurious to business, but it is even more harmful to the interests of ordinary working people. Let’s list the damage:

• Economic pain: sterling down, lower investment and the prospect of tariffs
• Workers rights: a bonfire of EU-created employment rights can be expected..
• Mass insecurity: for millions of EU residents in the UK and reciprocally for UK citizens in other EU states;
• Locked in: British citizens will have no right to live and work in mainland Europe.
• Scotland: to be taken out of the EU against its will.
• Northern Ireland: the re-imposition of a ‘hard’ border will threaten the peace process;
• Racism and xenophobia: stimulated and legitimised in Britain.
• European Identity: undermined and fractured.
• Pan-European socialism: a united fightback across the continent undermined.

The May government has now become the willing vehicle of Ukip inspired right-wing populism, the poisonous ideology which has brought about the Brexit nightmare. But while the formal raison d'etre of Ukip has always been the withdrawal of the UK from the EU, that goal alone could never have motivated millions of ordinary people to back Brexit with such appalling enthusiasm. “Taking back control”, the defining slogan of the Brexit campaign, was never mainly about transferring to London full control over food labelling, or other such intricacies of EU law. No, taking back control was shorthand for cleansing Britain of “foreignness,” and junking tolerance and liberal values. Brexitmania was and is a movement primarily within the white “indigenous” English (and to some extent Welsh) to affirm their dominant status within “their” community and in “their” country, against outsiders, who were taking “their” jobs and making demands on “their” housing and “their” social services.

In the first instance Brexit propaganda targeted East European EU citizens in the UK, but behind that veneer lay racist antipathy to anyone not white British. Thus the defining moment in Ukip's campaign was Nigel Farage standing in front of a poster showing long queues of Syrian refugees in Slovenia - an issue nothing to do with Britain’s EU membership. But that did not matter a jot to Farage; the poster was promoting racist fear of ‘the other’, and the message hit home in its intended constituency.

The causes of the current explosion of right-wing populism are various, but one idea needs to be knocked on the head. It is false to claim the existence of high numbers of non-British EU citizens in a locality caused a high Leave vote. It did not. Those areas with the highest number of non-British EU citizens, such as London, Manchester or Bristol, voted Remain. Ukip propaganda was most successful wherever multicultural communities were lacking, not where they existed.

Right-wing populism is the diametric opposite of everything socialists stand for. The Labour Party is not properly the party of British working people; it is the party of workers in Britain, irrespective of race, ethnic background or nationality. Socialists support multicultural and cosmopolitan communities across the UK, and defend the free movement of EU citizens as a basic acquired right. There is no such thing as a Left-wing Brexit because the political reality is that Brexit is a tool of the right to restrict individual freedoms and social solidarity in favour of authoritarian nationalism, xenophobia and ethnic chauvinism.

Labour has responded badly to the referendum result. While the result does give Prime Minister May a mandate to pursue Brexit, it does not bind the Labour Party to anything. If a majority in a referendum had voted for capital punishment, would Labour then support it? Of course not. Labour policy is made by its members, not by national referenda.

Sadly, Labour has backed the triggering Article 50, mostly in a misguided attempt of stave off Ukip’s advance in northern seats. Yet, the more right-wing populism is accommodated, the more acceptable and stronger it becomes. The more Labour capitulates to Ukip’s agenda, the more it betrays the young, and the multicultural and progressive communities in the metropolitan centres across England.

On Labour’s right-wing, politicians have been quick to accommodate themselves to the xenophobic upsurge. Rachel Reeves among others has sung the praise of immigration controls on EU citizens. Andy Burnham, Labour’s candidate for mayor of Manchester, has chided Labour for prioritising access to the internal market over ending free movement. But the left, too, has not disentangled itself entirely from the right-wing populist offensive. John MacDonald has foolishly spoken of Brexit as an “enormous opportunity.” Well it is, but only for the enemies of the left. Jeremy Corbyn, for his part, while courageously defending free movement, has sometimes given the impression that Brexit is a low priority issue.

Labour should echo the Liberal Democrats, Greens and SNP in opposing Brexit. Insofar as Brexit is unstoppable, we should strive to remain in the European Economic Area (the so-called Norway solution), and with that retain free movement. And, if Britain does in the end leave the EU, which seems likely, we should work with the left across Europe for Britain to rejoin.

Blair's New Labour: Ending Labour as a progressive movement

The following comment, penned in October 2006 during the Blair New Labour years, remains an accurate description of the period, especially in predicting David Cameron's election in 2010. What I did not foresee was the Financial Crisis of 2008 or the rise of Jeremy Corbyn in 2015.

Blair's New Labour is a reactionary creed and has destroyed the Labour Party as a progressive party

There are some elections which mark a transformation in the body politic, such as 1945 and 1979. There are others which mark its continuation; I see 1951 and 1997 as elections which are mostly about new management teams to administer the status quo. Until Britain's two historic parties of left and right have both had a turn in Number 10, one cannot talk of a new consensus. Mr Blair's role was to consolidate the Thatcherite consensus; he has done so admirably well.

There are two practices of New Labour which stifled left and progressive forces. The first happened inside the Labour Party: the defeat of social democracy and the establishment of a top-down, managerial non-democratic party structure. The second is ongoing: the political practice of triangulation; i.e. moving so far to the right on policies (e.g. civil liberties) that the Conservative opposition can only utter me-tooisms, (like David Cameron) or else take refuge in lonnyland (like John Redwood). Triangulation, though, is only possible because Blair faces no threat to his left flank (Cf. Schroeder with the Greens and the Linkspartei/PDS).

Some people point out that Labour's social and educational policies have improved the lot of the worst-off in the inner cities. I acknowledge the point that vis-à-vis the Tories New Labour has higher social spending because if it did not there would little to sustain New Labour's electoral base. Yet, it should be noted that inequality in the UK continues to grow, and the commercialisation of every aspect of social service provision undermines the collectivist universalistic philosophy on which that social provision was based.

Social democracy sought to modify capitalism so that it functioned at least to some degree in the interests of working people. New Labour has reversed the logic: people need to be modified so that they function for globalised capitalism. While it might often be better to be employed on the minimum wage than to be on the dole, Blairism is a revolting enslaving philosophy that is an anathema to everything the left ever strove for.

Most people in Britain in Blair's decade have experienced rising living standards so there has been a period of political peace and political disengagement. What Iraq did was to thrust the rottenness of New Labour in front of people's faces, and, once the teflon had cracked, mud stuck everywhere. Discontent there is, but sadly it is not channelled constructively, and is it is likely to end up propelling Mr Cameron into government.

Defend Free Movement

The free movement of EU citizens between member states was a major gain for ordinary working people. Brexit and Labour’s right-wing threaten it.

“I refuse to imagine a Europe where lorries and hedge funds are free to cross borders but citizens are not,” Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament, October 2016.

In 2004 the New Labour government was one of only three in the EU to permit the immediate right of citizens from the new member states of central and eastern Europe to live and work in their country. Blair and Brown's decision in the matter was motivated by neither love nor international solidarity, but by a desire to dampen wage pressure in Britain’s inflated and credit-fuelled economy. East European migration into Britain was a policy of New Labour.

Yet, in the wake of the Brexit referendum leading right wing Labour MPs, including Rachel Reeves, Stephen Kinnock and Chuka Umunna, have called for Labour to end free movement. After Brexit, EU citizens will be able to move, live and work freely across the European continent, but the UK should, in their view, be locked out of free movement.

The hypocrisy and political bankruptcy of these right wingers is breathtaking. After rightly campaigning for EU membership, which guarantees freedom of movement, they subsequently underwent a conversion, now arguing that EU nationals should lose the right to live and work in the UK. Such an outcome would affect not only future arrivals, but also the million plus people already resident. Their reasoning is that the presence of people of other nationalities in the community prompted the Brexit vote; and the way to garner votes is to outflank UKIP and the Tory right by falling into step with the slogan, “Stop them coming; kick them out.” They probably know that such a policy by Labour would inflame xenophobia and further the racist attacks already taking place, but they presumably don’t care.

In their desire to curtail the free movement of people, these right wingers ignore a key fact. It was not those areas with the highest concentrations of non-British EU citizens (e.g. London, Manchester, Bristol) which voted for Brexit. The existence of strong multicultural communities did not lead to Brexit support. On the contrary, it was where xenophobic and racist propaganda was accepted and believed that a majority plumped for Brexit. The right wingers are not responding to a demand by those in places of high non-British EU settlement - they are accepting and building on the xenophobic and racist propaganda put out by UKIP and the far right, and are seeking to exploit prejudices and misinformation to their political advantage.

Socialists should condemn the whole mindset of these people. We should celebrate and support the fact that today people in the EU, including ourselves, can live and work in any EU country we choose. We need to defend that right for everybody, not undermine it. And as socialists in Britain, we should support workers and people in the community, be they English, Irish, Polish or whatever. Their idea propagated that we should favour one nationality and have others thrown out of their jobs, homes and the country is utterly repugnant. And fortunately, thanks to the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn, the ideas put forward by these Labour MPs will have no support from the leader of the Labour Party.

Vladimir Derer: his argument was correct

The election of Jeremy Corbyn seems to suggest that the way forward for the political left is through the Labour Party.

I remember back to a winter’s evening in the mid 1980s when Vladimir Derer addressed a meeting in the Exeter City Library. The gathering wasn’t heavily attended, with only a handful of Labour left people from Exeter and the south Devon area, plus a couple of activists from the non-Labour Party sects, communist and Trotskyist. Derer had already passed the height of his influence and the majority of Exeter Labour Party had by then already turned their back on him.

To the younger generation today, Derer’s name and work are not well-known; yet in the 1970s and early 1980s he was the organisational driving force behind the move to the left in Labour Party. Earlier, in the 1950s and 1960s, the Labour Party had been comfortably in the grip of leaders who pursued mild social amelioration from inside the Parliamentary party. But by the early 1970s several things had changed: economic growth had faltered, so hard choice about who got what had to be made; power in the trade unions had partially shifted to radical shop stewards; and the constituency Labour Parties were gaining an influx of young left-wingers. The situation was ripe for change.

Derer believed that the key to socialist reform lay in and through the Labour Party. His thesis was both articulate and simple: in the advanced capitalist countries no new socialist parties had emerged as a significant political force since the formation of the Third International in the 1920s, and therefore effective socialist activity could only take place inside the prevailing party of the centre-left, by which he meant the Labour Party in Britain. Opportunities (not opportunism), he argued, were few and far between and had to be seized when available. Such an opportunity was now presenting itself.

The problem, though, with the Labour Party left in the 1970s was that it ranged from left-wing social democrats though to revolutionary Trotskyite groups, so building a unity based on policy was impractical. Yet, the party could be moved leftwards by democratisation: if the rank and file elected and controlled the leadership, then the result would a left-wing party. To that end the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy was formed in 1973 and Derer became its secretary in 1974. The drive to the left was by means of an intra-party struggle for party democracy.

The left reached its peak of influence in the Party in 1980. In 1981 the tide turned: Tony Benn failed in his attempt to take the deputy leadership and the right regained control of the Party’s National Executive Committee. Though the final reckoning wasn’t fully apparent until a few years later, the left had lost the fight for the Labour Party; and the steady march to the right had begun.

The lean years for the left 1983-2015

The third of a century leading up to sudden and unexpected election of Jeremy Corbyn as party leader in September 2015 was one of almost continual and progressive defeat for the left inside the party. There were two phases of defeat. The first was under the leadership of Neil Kinnock (1983-92) plus the short reign of John Smith (1992-94) in which the divide in the Labour party was mainly about alternative economic policies. Labour’s right believed, economic conditions permitting, in taxing, spending and regulating to ameliorate the conditions of working people. The left believed economic power (nationalisation and worker’s control) was needed to change the ways of capitalism, if not to abolish capitalism all together. But some kind of compromise between the two positions was theoretically possible, even if difficult to achieve. Though the role of the left diminished, particularly after the 1987 election defeat, the left still possessed a minor influence over policy.

The second period began in 1994 with arrival of Tony Blair and the birth of New Labour. Social democracy and redistribution were thrown out in favour of full acceptance of unbridled market capitalism. Working people were to be slotted into capitalism and not have resources re-directed to them; public provision in health education and elsewhere was to be provided by private capital and private management. Labour in government after 1997 saw a bonfire of everything traditional Labour, left or right, had ever stood for: the acceptance of growing inequality, with Blair flaunting his and New Labour’s relationship with the super-rich; a love affair with the far right around the globe which led to Britain eagerly following President Bush into the Iraq War in 2003; and at home New Labour oversaw a growing illiberalism manifesting itself in an expansion police powers and a diminution of civil liberties.

Life inside the Labour Party fundamentally changed, too. Since the eighties, but particularly since the arrival of Blair and New Labour in 1994, the Party structures were de-democratised, conferences choreographed from above; meaningless forms of consultation replaced intra-party elections. Worse still, the Left vacated the Party leaving a membership consisting mainly of municipal careerists and their hangers-on. Outside the ranks of Labour, no new left-wing Party established itself, even after Labour abandoned social democracy in the 1990s. The Green Party remained fixed in a niche partly of its own making; and George Galloway’s ephemeral Respect Party was both a parody and betrayal of socialist values. So when Labour lost office in 2010, with its lowest share of the poll since 1983, it was empty and irrelevant in the face of the financial crisis that had engulfed Britain and the world since 2008.

The Corbyn revival

In 2010 Labour had its first contested leadership election for sixteen years. In a feeble reaction against the excesses of New Labourism, its members – and particularly its trade union members - opted for Ed as opposed to David Miliband. The new leader proved not just personally ineffective, but also surrounded himself by a team of people like himself who had made their careers during New Labour’s neo-liberal years in government. For this reason, the Labour leadership were utterly hamstrung in their ability to stand up for working people, and went into the 2015 election without any clear message and lost. Ed Miliband resigned as leader within hours of defeat.

The right had ruled the labour Party for decades unchallenged and had grown complacent. In a move to weaken the trade unions, the election of the leader was turned into a direct vote of all party members, registered Labour trade unionists and any Labour supporter who paid £3. The veteran left-winger, Jeremy Corbyn who had entered Parliament in 1983 just managed to get onto the ballot paper and then unexpectedly went on to win with 59% of the vote. New Labour was slapped in the face by Corbyn-supporting party members, who had been sidelined for years, but still harboured progressive thoughts. Corbyn also won among trade unionists, manual and non manual in both the public and private sectors. Workers were fed up; they had been told for years to hang onto New Labour, even though despised them, lest things be worse for them under the Tories. And finally new ranks of Corbyn activists sprang up among the educated young, whose educational debts and abysmal prospects in housing and employment consigned them to a life of misery.

Furious at Corbyn’s election to the leadership, a majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party did all they could to destabilise him: a series a staged resignations from his shadow cabinet and a vote of no confidence in him, culminating in a leadership challenge by Owen Smith. The NEC did all it could to bias the election against Corbyn: 130 000 new party members, disproportionally Corbyn supporters, were denied a vote, thousands more were expelled or suspended for any number of dubious reasons. Yet, Corbyn triumphed, boosting his vote to 62%. And though the right-wing, by bureaucratic manoeuvring, has managed to keep control of the NEC, nonetheless today the Left is a powerful force in the Labour Party, and has a reasonable chance of taking control of it.

And Vladimir Derer

Vladimir Derer died in June 2014, so like Tony Benn who had passed away three months earlier, he never saw the election of victory of Jeremy Corbyn. Yet all the evidence points to his vindication. Left activism is more effective inside Labour than outside it: and it was to Labour that progressive people turned after 2015, not to smaller left parties or to new parties. The proof will never be final but today seems to prove the correctness of an analysis penned by Derer four decades earlier.

Social Media: Rope for your own neck

Believing that your comments online were just off-the cuff and for a couple of friends is sometimes wrong. You might just be giving your adversaries the rope for your own neck.

In the last couple of decades, the growth of the Internet, both in terms of availability and functionality, has enabled progressive people to communicate and organise on a scale which in an earlier age would have been unimaginable. The victory of Jeremy Corbyn in his campaign for the leadership of the Labour Party in September 2015 could not have occurred without social media platforms. Yet the Internet, as a means of communication and organisation, is at the same time a powerful tool for surveilling progressive people and groups.

It is helpful to distinguish between two types of surveillance. The first is the kind which the former CIA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed in 2013. This is an attempt by state agencies to gain access to all electronic communication, using methods, which if attempted by private citizens would constitute serious crimes. We cannot know whether the state agencies who gather information about left-wing people make that information available to our political opponents. But it would be foolish to dismiss the possibility that this happens.

The second form of surveillance is perfectly legal: our political adversaries comb the net for our comments. Richer adversaries may employ professionals to do this: and of course various grey methods are deployed such as joining our “private” discussion groups with pseudonyms to find out what particular people are saying. Fishing the net for dirt and using it against us goes on all the time.

Of course, holding left-wing views and discussing them with others is not illegal in Britain, except in a small number of cases where the affair is covered by a court injunction. And there is a strong current of opinion which argues along the lines:

Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone,
Dare to have a purpose,
And dare to make it known.

Whether “to publish and be damned” by broadcasting every opinion and every action to police, other state agencies and our political adversaries is a matter of debate. There is certainly something in the argument for openness, because constant vigilance, excessive secrecy and perennial distrust and paranoia can suffocate the left. So, yes, there is a case for openness, but not one that necessarily trumps everything. Here, though I want to focus on comments on social media can undermine the left in the struggle to support Jeremy Corbyn.

The rise in support for Jeremy Corbyn, and his election as leader of the Labour Party, has provoked a furious response from the Parliamentary Labour Party and the Party bureaucracy. The latter has done everything it can to suspend left-wing members of the party, and to disqualify members and supporters from voting. The most typical line of attack against socialist members is to find some half (or badly) articulated comment on Facebook, which is alleged (nearly always untruthfully) to be antisemitic or otherwise abusive. These out-of-context Facebook comments are then misinterpreted and paraded in the media as evidence of wrongdoing. In a similar vein, voters in the leadership election are subject to disqualification because they have commented favourably on Facebook, often months previously, about the Green Party, Left Unity or similar progressive groups.

The fact is that unguarded discussions on social media among friends, and making comments not designed as polished prose for the whole world, is seriously unwise. The commentator, even if he or she doesn't realise it at the time, is often making the rope for his or her own neck. Again and again, though, this mistake is made. To resolve this problem I will make a couple of suggestions for people who send email or post in social media.

If you are sending a message to particular people, whether it is an opinion or information, you should ensure, as far as possible, that only the intended recipients have access to it, not the Internet searching public, and not the Internet Giants like Google and Facebook. Send your message end-to-end encrypted. Today, that is technically straightforward, if both or all of the parties use, for instance, the email provider Tutanota. Of course Tutanota is not a panacea, but it goes a very long way to solving this problem.

But if you really are intending to post to the big wide world, then think long and hard before you post, and consider using a pseudonym.

Jeremy Corbyn: Trident, Scotland and the Greens

Jeremy Corbyn faces concerted opposition from the right-wing PLP, but there are three issues he could have dealt with differently to strengthen the left: Trident, Scotland and the Greens.

We are in the strange position today where the leader of the Labour Party is a socialist, yet all but a handful of the Parliamentary Labour Party stand well to his right and differ among themselves only in how to contain or get rid of him. Stranger still is that since the New Labour era in the Party determining policy is de facto in the hands of the Leader alone. Yet in practice the PLP constrains Jeremy by the never uttered, but very real, threat of mass defection to form a new Party, which would return Corbyn to the back benches and split Labour in the country. So where could Jeremy have taken decisive action at the top to strengthen his hand, win allies and neutralise the right?

Calling for a referendum on the renewal of Trident. Jeremy is right: Trident is immoral and useless for any realistic defence purpose. It serves today only as a national status symbol of prowess, and as a huge subsidy to the US arms industry. The Labour Right, who dominate the PLP and shadow cabinet are wedded to the Britain-as-superpower narrative. Labour says it will have a review, but Jeremy says he would never push the button. Irrespective of whether you are for or against nuclear weapons, the current position is ridiculous. But there is a way out the mire which would help the left: call for a referendum on the issue. A referendum could be initiated either by the current Tory government (unlikely) or by a future Labour-led government. Letting the people speak would shut up the the Labour Right. The issue would be: should we spend the billions on bombs or the health service? Let the people decide whether during a Labour-led government there should be nuclear weapons which Corbyn won’t use - or whether the people want the money freed up for health and education.

Let Scotland do its own thing. The momentum is towards independence, and why should socialists worry about that and get into unnecessary conflict with a currently centre-left leaning SNP? Scottish Labour today, led by the Labour Right, has been reduced to a single Scottish Labour MP, partly because the Scottish Party was treated as a branch office of UK Labour. The solution is simple: bestow independence on the Scottish Labour Party and let them do whatever they want, but hoping of course for a left turn. The next Labour government - supposing there is one and Scottish independence has not been achieved by then - would be a coalition between the the Scottish Labour Party, the Labour Party of England and Wales, hopefully the Greens, and even possibly the SNP and Plaid.

Work with the Greens. If in the 2020 General Election Corbyn were short of a majority by say five seats and the Greens had say ten, would anyone be against a Corbyn-Green coalition? Of course not. In fact, most would positively welcome it. So if a coalition is OK in government, then why not in opposition? One step Jeremy could have taken was to call for a coalition in Parliament and in the country with the Greens and, if she were willing, appoint Caroline Lucas to the environmental portfolio in the Shadow Cabinet. Outside Parliament Corbyn and the Greens have a common interest in working together for a government which would end austerity, get rid of Trident, and protect the environment within which we all live.

Jeremy Corbyn’s problem is not that he is too left-wing, but that he is trapped into a Labour tribalist Westminster mindset. He should be bolder.

Jeremy Corbyn needs the mandatory re-selection of Labour MPs

Jeremy Corbyn needs socialists in the next Parliament, so right-wing Labour MPs need to be booted out by their Constituency Labour Parties.

In the middle of October, Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, more or less told the Parliamentary Labour Party that he opposed any move by the party membership to replace Blairite MPs with socialists. He thinks by doing this he can stabilise the party and win support for his leadership. He is wrong: the Labour right will never support him.

The time for the left to act in the party is now. Already Corbyn is being pushed to the right by the PLP. In little more than a year, the call for unity in time for the next election will go up; and the left will be framed as wreckers, if they haven’t re-oriented the Party by then.

The next Parliament needs a contingent of socialist Labour MPs - if not there is no chance of a genuine progressive government. That’s why the left should seize its opportunity now, and Corbyn is foolish to side with the PLP against his own supporters.

Jeremy Corbyn's stunning victory

The stunning victory of Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership election on 12 September 2015 has changed the political game for the Left

One of the advantages of being a rather insignificant person is that I can be wrong about things without it having any great significance. I was among those who didn’t believe until it actually happened that the bureaucracy of the Labour Party, probably in cahoots with the security services, would allow Jeremy Corbyn to be elected leader of the Labour Party. But fortunately from my point of view the Labour Party bureaucracy screwed up to an extent that nothing could help them.

Ed Miliband thought that widening the leadership franchise to one-person-with-three-quid one vote would excite Britain’s middle class into choosing between a handful of New Labour politicians, and so bring them over to Labour. It failed: progressives and working people took up the offer and used it to batter New Labour. Then Labour MPs miscalculated in nominating Corbyn, thinking that a defeated left in the party would be better than facing a challenge to Labour from outside. But very soon they then had to contend with the fact that Corbyn was not about to be defeated. And even though they responded by disqualifying thousands of Labour supporters with the sole purpose of denying Corbyn votes, they failed to prevent his election. Corbyn won among party members, affiliate organisation members and registered supporters. And all together he won a stunning victory garnering just under 60% of the vote.

And I was wrong too about the Labour Party. I wrote recently: “[Since the 1990s] The Labour Party has swung to the right, and under the label of New Labour became a mere adjunct of capitalist power, while jettisoning any meaningful attempt to reform capitalism or the British state in a progressive direction. By the end of the 1990s, even before the Iraq War, I ceased to identify with Labour, and saw the way forward - if there were one - as outside the Labour Party.”

So I was wrong again. The election of Jeremy Corbyn with a quarter of a million votes is the greatest victory for the left since at least the defeat of the poll tax. But the way ahead is difficult. Not only will Corbyn face an onslaught from the media and the wider establishment, but also Labour MPs and and party bureaucracy will do what they can to undermine him. But all that underlies the key point: the coming political fight is now inside the Labour Party not outside it fiddling around in left groups. To the extent that parties like Left Unity played a role in bringing about Corbyn’s victory it won, but it no longer has a meaningful role opposing Corbyn’s Labour - certainly not in putting up a Left Unity candidate in Islington North.

Jeremy Corbyn: a glimmer of light in the Labour Party

The promising levels of support for Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership race indicate that the Labour Party should not be written off too quickly.

I remember watching TV reports of the cliffhanger Labour Conference in 1981 when Denis Healey beat Tony Benn for the deputy leadership of the Party by a fraction of one percent. The cameras flashed briefly onto the conference floor highlighting a young bearded left-wing activist sporting a badge “Benn for Number 10.” It was Jeremy Corbyn.

In the years that followed the Labour Left was defeated and marginalised. The Labour Party swung to the right, and under the label of New Labour became a mere adjunct of capitalist power, while jettisoning any meaningful attempt to reform capitalism or the British state in a progressive direction. By the end of the 1990s, even before the Iraq War, I ceased to identify with Labour, and saw the way forward - if there were one - as outside the Labour Party. Thus in recent years I have welcomed the birth of Left Unity and the growing number of votes for the Greens and the SNP.

Jeremy Corbyn became an MP in 1983, and during the next thirty-two years, ignored by the corporate media, he was one of the isolated few who never abandoned socialist politics. I admit that I thought his cause inside Labour was hopeless. Yet in 2015 for whatever miscalculated Machiavellian reasons, he secured sufficient nominations from MPs to enter the race for the Labour leadership. Initially cast a joke outsider, his appeal to end austerity, militarism and to promote the cause of ordinary working people has won him widespread support. Aided by a new electoral system where party members plus any Tom, Dick or Harry who coughs up three quid can vote, he now, according to opinion polls, leads the pack in the race for Labour Leader.

I still fear that the Labour establishment in alliance with the security services and the corporate media will stymie his election. And even if elected he will head a parliamentary party in which the vast majority oppose him. Nonetheless something is happening here - and I might have been to too quick to write the Labour Party off.