Tomorrow, if you are a socialist, you should vote Labour. This is not just because the electoral left alternatives to Labour look unlikely to make an impact, although they do. The independents who are standing against Labour, many for principled reasons and some because they felt they had no choice, will at best, comprise a group of a few individuals whose main point of agreement is their opposition to Starmer’s Labour (and the Tories, of course). This is not the basis for taking forward a strategy for fundamental change to our society and some of those standing, for example Workers’ Party candidates, would not in any case want to challenge significant, socially conservative aspects of British society.
In Scotland, it is not ‘independents’ who challenge from the Left, it is ‘independence’ as articulated either by the SNP or the Scottish Greens or Alba, although in reality, neither Alba nor even the Scottish Greens are likely to get close to winning a seat. Still, Chris McEleny, general secretary of Alba, did the Left a service last year when he tweeted out that the campaign for independence was just that – a campaign for independence. In his words, it was “not a campaign for socialism.”
It may seem odd that this has to be stated, but independence advocates, especially the SNP’s leadership, have an endless capacity to portray themselves as a ‘left’ alternative to Labour, even when acting in precisely the opposite direction. A case in point: a few weeks ago, in the Scottish Parliament, SNP and Tories MSPs joined forces to block a bid to ensure “standards of decency and dignity” in housing for migrant farmworkers. At a more profound level, the SNP’s vision of independence, the only one available at this election, far from liberating Scotland insists on the Crown, the currency, membership of NATO and membership of the EU. Their “independence” would mean an administratively independent country where key decisions on our economy would be taken in the City of London.
There are positive reasons for voting Labour too, The New Deal for Workers, being, perhaps the best. It has of course been watered down since its first version, but even in this diluted form, would anyone on the left argue it is better to have no changes whatsoever to the current framework of employment law? Surely better, as Mick Lynch, General Secretary of RMT argues, that we, among other things: “hold the party’s feet to the fire on repealing the draconian Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023, which requires a percentage of staff to cross their own pickets during industrial action.”
That promise to repeal that Act is part of the New Deal for Workers and Lynch said in an interview in the Morning Star that the RMT, along with other unions, will apply the pressure to make sure it stays “undiluted.” Ironically, the unions will need the best possible legal framework if they have to mount a defence against continued austerity.
It could be argued, then, that we should vote Labour because there is no serious left alternative to them and/or that there might be some benefits at least, from a Labour victory. But more than anything else we need to ensure that the Labour Party survives with a an organised and committed left based on its trade union affiliations and its constituency socialist activists.
Given the strangely ambiguous stance the Morning Star has taken to the Labour campaign in this election, the strategy it adheres to, The British Road to Socialism, makes the case for supporting Labour very well:
“For as long as many of the biggest trade unions are affiliated to the Labour Party, the potential exists to wage a broad-based fight to secure the party for the labour movement and left-wing policies. Certainly, this is the most direct route to ensuring the continued existence of a mass party of labour in Britain and is a goal that every communist and non-sectarian socialist should support.”
It may seem odd that this has to be stated, but independence advocates, especially the SNP’s leadership, have an endless capacity to portray themselves as a ‘left’ alternative to Labour, even when acting in precisely the opposite direction. A case in point: a few weeks ago, in the Scottish Parliament, SNP and Tories MSPs joined forces to block a bid to ensure “standards of decency and dignity” in housing for migrant farmworkers. At a more profound level, the SNP’s vision of independence, the only one available at this election, far from liberating Scotland insists on the Crown, the currency, membership of NATO and membership of the EU. Their “independence” would mean an administratively independent country where key decisions on our economy would be taken in the City of London.
There are positive reasons for voting Labour too, The New Deal for Workers, being, perhaps the best. It has of course been watered down since its first version, but even in this diluted form, would anyone on the left argue it is better to have no changes whatsoever to the current framework of employment law? Surely better, as Mick Lynch, General Secretary of RMT argues, that we, among other things: “hold the party’s feet to the fire on repealing the draconian Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023, which requires a percentage of staff to cross their own pickets during industrial action.”
That promise to repeal that Act is part of the New Deal for Workers and Lynch said in an interview in the Morning Star that the RMT, along with other unions, will apply the pressure to make sure it stays “undiluted.” Ironically, the unions will need the best possible legal framework if they have to mount a defence against continued austerity.
It could be argued, then, that we should vote Labour because there is no serious left alternative to them and/or that there might be some benefits at least, from a Labour victory. But more than anything else we need to ensure that the Labour Party survives with a an organised and committed left based on its trade union affiliations and its constituency socialist activists.
Given the strangely ambiguous stance the Morning Star has taken to the Labour campaign in this election, the strategy it adheres to, The British Road to Socialism, makes the case for supporting Labour very well:
“For as long as many of the biggest trade unions are affiliated to the Labour Party, the potential exists to wage a broad-based fight to secure the party for the labour movement and left-wing policies. Certainly, this is the most direct route to ensuring the continued existence of a mass party of labour in Britain and is a goal that every communist and non-sectarian socialist should support.”
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