Livingstone out; Labour to follow?

The results

The collapse of Labour’s support countrywide, Livingstone’s defeat and the revitalisation of the Tories under the aegis of a clique of Eton-educated public school toffs is nothing if not a salutary lesson.

Outside London, Labour’s council election defeats can be attributed to their abandonment of the poor. This section of the New Labour coalition had held up during the last two general elections, because they benefited from reforms like tax credits for low income families and the minimum wage. Under the impact of rising prices and the 10p tax fiasco they unsurprisingly deserted Brown’s project.

In London, while the Evening Standard polls exaggerated the Johnson lead, the writing had been on the wall for weeks if not months, even if the final result was somewhat closer than many expected. In fact, the sharply increased turn-out linked to the mayoral race led to the Labour vote in a number of Greater London Assembly constituencies going up both in absolute and percentage terms (45% compared to 36% in 2004). Brent & Harrow actually went back to Labour, while in London North East the Labour majority doubled in absolute terms to 28,000.

But the doughnut bit back. An alliance of the sugar-soaked, super-rich suburbs plus white van man and co got behind soft racist Tory scum-bag Boris Johnson, ensuring his victory. Of them 120,000 also voted BNP for good measure.

What happened to Labour’s electoral base?

In the space of a decade New Labour have squandered a wellspring of anti-Tory hate which ran so deep that for a while some pundits doubted the Conservatives could ever recover. How did they do it?

New Labour’s relentless attacks on the working class, its obsession with privatisation and the market, its support for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are prime culprits. Labour in power have both reflected and reinforced an overall shift to the right, exacerbated by the decline in union density, the rusting away or collapse of the labour movement and a credit-fuelled housing boom, which in turn paid for a consumer binge that appears to be over at least for the moment if not for ever.

Add to this the Cameron effect – the capitalists’ renewed optimism that their man could recapture power. Finally, in London throw in a relentless and very successful media campaign to unseat Ken which ranged from a classic “Trotskyite cabal” red scare through to straightforward racism and Islamophobia – manifested in the fascist BNP success in the GLA elections.

All these factors inevitably meant that Labour lost this time and now face the very real prospect that they could be out at the next election.

The London disaster

Livingstone’s defeat in the capital is the end of this particular road for the erstwhile Red Rebel. Of course the former GLC leader had failed before, abandoning the struggle to defend the GLC back in 1986 when the ruling class judges declared him out of order. His record as mayor has been no better, content to oversee the PFI of the underground once the courts told him to stop being silly, supporting Sir Ian Blair’s cover up of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes and generally presenting himself as a big fan of the City of London in particular and finance capitalism in general.

Ironically, his ambitious plans to destroy the London skyline with an assortment of sky scrapers (plans that will be inherited by Johnson) are now unlikely to be realised due to the burgeoning crisis in the construction industry – proving that the market is in fact more powerful than the whims of its champions, be they nominally left or openly right.

Johnson has threatened to force through a no-strike deal with the RMT, plans to abandon the higher congestion charge for Chelsea tractors, intends to get rid of Ken’s all too feeble proposals for social housing and will generally work for the fatty part of the doughnut.

The left and the way forward

And what of the left? On both sides of the Respect split its electoral challenge totally failed. The Left List’s 0.96% of the vote is an accurate reflection of its standing among the working class. There is no dressing up the scale of this defeat, the fascists got 53,000 more votes than the only left of Labour candidate. Respect Renewal did little better, winning no more than a single additional councillor in Birmingham. Its combined vote in London was lower than that of the BNP, who now boast a seat on the GLA – a presence every socialist in London must actively campaign against and challenge.

So what way forward now? The idea that the left can mount a united electoral challenge is comprehensively refuted by the experience of the last decade. The various attempts at left unity – the SLP, SSP, SA, Solidarity, CNWP, Respect and Respect Renewal – have all failed.

This was certainly in part because of the conflicting interests of the various groups involved. However, more importantly it was because, rather than addressing what the working class objectively needed to take it forward, these groups were all premised on something the working class certainly did not need – the abandonment or watering down of huge chunks of the socialist programme in order to make their electoral message more “palatable”.

The “tactic” of socialists pretending to be whatever they think will win them votes – the underlying meaning of Lindsey German’s abandonment of socialist shibboleths and a method adopted by both wings of the Respect project – is surely now shown to be a complete dead end.

The left has to rebuild itself first and foremost in the struggles outside Parliament. When it enages in electoral activity in future it must present an uncompromising revolutionary anti-capitalist programme – it could hardly fare worse than it did this time around!

Instead of another false unity initiative the left needs to honestly and openly reassess its mistakes over the last decade. No single party however nominally broad can at present encompass a spectrum of activists both inside and outside the Labour Party and on the left of the Greens as well as non-aligned socialists and members the various left groups.

But socialists from all these strands of the left must begin to organise and work alongside each other now. The demand that before we can unite in action we must join a single party or quasi-party organisation is a sectarian barrier to the real regroupment that urgently needs to take place.

Rather, activists need to agree to fight together around the key priorities of the working class now. That means starting right now to build the base organisations of the unions ready for a renewed offensive by Labour and the Tories. It means fighting any upsurge in repossessions or evictions with the oncoming housing crisis. And it means standing firm against the continued attacks on women’s rights and immigrants, campaigning resolutely against the war and using opportunities like the Convention of the Left in Manchester this September to agree on joint campaigning priorities and to begin a real debate about the way forward.

Sun 04, May 2008 @ 11:16