Reacting to Britain’s election

Despair in England, hope in Scotland

By rs21 | Against all predictions, the Tories have won a majority, and David Cameron will be prime minister again. This will feel like a punch in the stomach for socialists, trade unionists and anti-austerity campaigners across the country. We have to confront the stark reality of five more years of austerity, cuts and the continued dismantling of the NHS. Our first solidarity should be to everyone who will suffer more under the Tories. The smiles on the faces in the City of London will be unbearable this morning.

But the Tory vote hides a number of possible crises. It benefited from the most significant development of the election--the collapse of the center ground in general, and the Lib Dems in particular. Most Lib Dem votes appear to have split to the Tories, while UKIP rallied voters from all parties and none, around an openly racist and reactionary agenda. UKIP's success will drive divisions in the Conservative Party over the EU from day one, while Scotland's vote will only exacerbate the constitutional crisis. That's without even mentioning the economy.

The election has been a disaster for Labour. They have been near wiped out in Scotland, and failed to break through in large parts of England. They have to take much of the blame for that. Although Miliband shifted his rhetoric significantly in recent weeks, five years of failing to challenge Tory austerity clearly left their base uninspired and unmotivated. The post-mortem will begin for Labour today, and the Blairites will already argue the campaign was "too left wing." There will be an immense fight in Labour and the trade union movement for interpretation, and for the future direction of the party. This is a debate that should matter to us all. Labour was not "too left wing"--it was unable to inspire and mobilize people.

Scotland gives a lie to the Blairite line. There was an overwhelming vote for the SNP, a party that campaigned on a clear anti-austerity and anti-Trident position. The other clear difference was the impact of a substantial social movement around the referendum, which fed directly into the political earthquake. Too many in Labour are now dismissing this as "nationalism," and attempting to deflect responsibility for their failures in Scotland. This is absurd. The vote in Scotland was a clear anti-austerity vote, something Labour largely failed to offer.

The SNP's success indicates a deepening constitutional crisis, which the Tories will not be able to resolve. The Westminster parties have one seat each in Scotland, the SNP have 55. No one in Scotland will feel the Tories can rule them legitimately from Westminster, and they are right. There will be calls for more powers, but the crisis for the British state runs deeper than that. Indeed, England, too, looks an increasingly divided country, with Labour holding sway in London and the North. Behind the Tories' majority is a series of tensions, fractures and instabilities that could explode at any moment.

Another fragment of good news is the failure of Nigel Farage in Thanet South. This is a massive blow to UKIP, since Farage has said he will stand down if he loses. It is hard to overestimate Farage's importance to UKIP, in holding it together and detoxifying the brand. Without him, they may struggle. As always, this was a combination of national and local factors. The Tory press who celebrated Farage dropped him like a stone, and UKIP support stalled somewhat. But equally, huge credit has to be given to Thanet Stand Up to UKIP, which campaigned tirelessly and deserves to be celebrating this morning.

Nonetheless, UKIP gained large votes right across the country, coming second in a swathe of seats. This shows the depth of anti-migrant sentiment out there and, combined with the Tory victory, makes a referendum on the EU increasingly likely. If and when that happens, it is essential that the left can find ways to articulate both an uncompromising defense of free movement and migrants, and a staunch critique of the neoliberal and racist institutions of Fortress Europe, which impose austerity in Greece and leave migrants to drown in the Mediterranean. This will not be easy.

It is good news that Caroline Lucas held her seat in Brighton, expanding her majority, and showing that being a principled voice in parliament can win. The Greens also gained votes overall, and made a credible showing in a number of other seats. Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, the rest of the left of Labour failed to make much impact, with relatively poor showings even in places it hoped to do well.

Finally, we need to continue to build campaigns, networks and movements that can challenge the austerity consensus. The major difference between England and Scotland in this election was the presence of a social movement and a credible but "anti-establishment" alternative in the form of the SNP. This is something we have failed so far to achieve in England. Such a movement cannot be wished into existence, but it is important that we continue to build networks and organizations capable of seizing the opportunities to build them when they appear. Given how unpredictable these results were, opportunities may appear quite soon. In this context, the People's Assembly demonstration on June 20 takes on real importance, as the first national opportunity to challenge the new government. We also hope people will attend our one-day event They Don't Represent Us, on May 16, to discuss with us the way forward for the left.

First published at the rs21 website.

The collapse of the Labour Party

By Richard Seymour | This is not 1992. In a way, it's far worse than that. Imagine this: Labour has given the Conservatives their "Portillo moment," with Ed Balls losing his seat in Morley and Outwood, not from incumbency but from opposition.

The perspective gets even worse when you look at the figures. Overall, the Tory vote has barely shifted from 36.1 percent to (on present counts) 36.8 percent. That is, the Tories have a bit more than a third of the vote, and fractionally more than the total with which they failed to win a parliamentary majority in 2010. This is not, chiefly, a Tory surge. In previous elections, historically, a vote share of this scale would have left the Tories on the opposition benches.

But Labour's vote also flatlined, currently about 30.6 percent, compared to 29 percent in 2010--which was its worst share of the vote since 1918. In key marginals, like Nuneaton, it barely made a dent. In some relatively safe Tory seats where it should have had a swing, like North Swindon (a safe Tory area since 2010 boundary changes), the Tories actually gained.

National turnout looks like it was about 66 percent, which is fractionally above the turnout in 2010, and most of that increase will have been in Scotland and certain UKIP hot spots like Thanet South. So Labour has mobilized almost no one who hadn't previously voted Labour during its worst election defeat since 1918.

Both Labour and the Conservatives are in the middle of a long-term crisis, neither has done anything to reverse that, and the question in this election was: whose crisis is worse?

Unsurprisingly, and highly satisfactorily, the Liberal Democrats have been crushed, with their share of the vote falling from 23 percent to 7.7 percent. Indeed, this is the big shift in the 2015 election: the collapse of the Liberals and the rise of the smaller parties.

I want to point out something of great importance regarding the Liberals. I said before that the reason their leadership didn't care about getting mauled in the elections was because they were preparing themselves to act as kingmakers in future coalitions, as exercisers of "responsible" political authority, detached from their base, but integrated into the machinery of government. This, let us be honest, is where they'd rather be.

And in the last few days, we've had their leader, Nick Clegg, saying that a government without the Liberal Democrats involved would lack legitimacy. Even knowing that his party would be hammered into fourth place, he still saw a central role for his wheelers and dealers. In effect, the Liberal leadership chose, with the Orange Book coup, to turn their party into a mandarin, de facto apparatus of an increasingly post-democratic state.

The obverse of the Liberals in this election is the Scottish National Party (SNP). Every tendency in advanced post-democracy is being reversed in Scotland, where working-class electoral participation and party membership is rising, not falling.

The SNP took fifty-six seats, up from six in 2010. The tsunami-like proportions of this wipeout may be exaggerated by the electoral system, but the swing is huge and signifies something far deeper than a shift in voter identifications or, god help us, a "protest vote." Old right-wing Labour stalwarts like Tom Harris vaguely understand that since the referendum for Scottish independence, something at the deepest strata of Scottish working-class consciousness shifted. But he doesn't get what shifted, or why.

The reality is that the referendum's No coalition signified everything that was wrong with Westminster politics: all the main parties in it together, on the side of militarism and the multinationals. Despite Gordon Brown's absurd "big beast" posturing, despite all the talk of the "UK pension" and the "UK NHS," Labour attacked independence from the Right, from a position of loyalty to the state, to the war machine, and to the neoliberal doctrines of the civil service.

Miliband, during the election campaign, tried to reassure middle-class voters that Labour utterly ruled out any SNP influence on policies like austerity or the Trident nuclear system. And while the Labour Party tailed the Tories on austerity, while they imitated Tory language on welfare, while they copied the UK Independence Party (UKIP) on immigration, the SNP defended a simple, civilized position: no austerity, stop demonizing people on welfare, and welcome immigrants.

In England, Labour aping the right just leads to its base abstaining, as they have done in growing numbers since 2001. But in Scotland, working-class voters had a tried and tested reformist alternative, with an optimistic political identity linked to a profound socio-demographic shift, and were able to rally to it.

And now, with England cleaving broadly to the right and Scotland shifting left, it's hard to see how the current constitutional arrangements are sustainable. Scotland will simply not assent to being governed by the Tories, and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon will be under huge pressure to deliver another referendum.

There will be more to say, on the other side of the political spectrum, about the farraginous hordes that are banging at Prime Minister David Cameron's door, but for now it's worth pointing out how many of them there are: almost 4 million in this election. Only the perversities of the electoral system prevented UKIP from gaining the 50 or 60 seats they would have got if their vote was more geographically concentrated.

As it is, Douglas Carswell, the least UKIP of UKIPers, is the only one of them to have held onto a seat. What is particularly absurd about this is that the distribution of UKIP's votes points to its political strength. That is, it managed to eat into Labour heartlands almost as much as Tory seats, making UKIP possibly Britain's first truly successful, cross-class, populist formation. For example, in Sunderland, it drew tens of thousands of voters, a surge first noticed during the city council elections last year when it took almost a quarter of the vote.

Of course, the party is still very fragile, its momentum may now dissipate, and it is much weaker now that Nigel Farage has resigned the leadership. But the basis upon which they won these votes was ideologically hardcore, with Farage using the televised debates not to broaden his support but to consolidate his base. If the dominant parties are forced to accept proportional representation, as seems increasingly likely, this signifies a major realignment on the Right.

Finally, a word or two about the Greens. They did well with 3.7 percent of the vote, about as well as they could reasonably have expected. It looks as though in addition to keeping Brighton Pavilion, where they increased their margin with a 10 percent swing in their favor, they also gave Labour a run for their money in Bristol West, where the sitting Liberal was overturned, and came a good third in a number of constituencies, such as Norwich South, or Holborn and St. Pancras, where Natalie Bennett got over 7,000 votes.

I think this represents something more than a protest vote. Once more, if we get anything like proportional representation, the game is up: in those circumstances, the Green vote will easily surge past 5 percent toward the double figures, and the Pasokification of Labour will take another lurch forward.

This election has been about the collapse of the Labour Party and of labor movement politics: precisely as I warned.

First published at Lenin's Tomb and republished at Jacobin.

Angry London protest attacked by police

By rs21 | The protest was defiant from the beginning, as Neil Rogall reports:

In the wake of the election demoralization and depression, the last thing I expected when I got off the bus by Westminster Cathedral was to find a 1,000-strong vibrant demonstration. This was not a protest of the old and tired, but one that was very young and very angry. Clearly, most of those marching had been too young to be at Millbank, when protesters attacked Tory HQ six months after the Con-Dems were elected in 2010. This was already a new generation.

The march, called by London Black Revs and Brick Lane Debates, was built almost entirely through social media. As it went to Conservative HQ by St James's Park and then up Whitehall and through Trafalgar Square, it grew in size and volume, maybe reaching over 2,000. This was a march that wanted to tear the head off the system--not so much an anti-Tory march as an anti-capitalist one. The slogans chanted were aimed not just at the Tories, but targeted Labour and the whole rotten system. If the revolutionary and radical left wants to rebuild itself, here is an audience that we need to be listening to and learning from.

Slogans chanted included "One solution--revolution," "Tory scum, here we come" and "No cuts, no cuts, no fucking Tory cuts." The protest moved up and down Whitehall, from Trafalgar Square to Westminster Bridge--here, at one point a sit-down stopped buses, which turned round and headed back south.

Pictures in the mainstream media show baton-wielding police. Shelly Asquith, president of the University of the Arts Students' Union, described what happened in central London as "police violence," and it is reported that protesters have been injured by the cops. Georgie Robertson, co-president of SOAS Student's Union, stated, "Alongside hundreds of others, I was kettled by the police for over three hours. Despite it being a nonviolent protest, the police decided to randomly seal off a whole area outside Downing Street with everyone still in the area, including tourists, getting kettled."

Another eyewitness spoke to rs21 about being kettled:

The police tried to kettle all of us. Most people got away, but they got about a hundred of us. The mood in the kettle was pretty good, with plenty of music and dancing. Eventually, they let us go--I think this was about 8:30, but I'm not sure. They didn't take down anyone's names but filmed everyone as they let them out."

The heavy-handed response of the cops is strikingly similar to the huge numbers of police in Walthamstow the same day, protecting the EDL as they marched and handing out legal notices to intimidate protesters there. The Tories are clearly determined to clamp down on protest. But it's excellent that from day one of the new Tory government, we are seeing resistance--as well as over 2,000 in Whitehall, 1,000 people opposed the EDL in Walthamstow, and dozens more leafleted for Rabina Khan in Tower Hamlets after the witch hunt against Lutfur Rahman.

Report from Cardiff: There was also a successful protest in Cardiff, as a local activist reports:

Around 200 people joined a protest organiszd by Cardiff People Assembly. There was a marked difference in mood to usual demos and plenty of new faces, although the demo mainly seemed to bring together old faces in a moment of anti-Tory unity. The singer Charlotte Church told protesters, "This is a government that does not care about its people and is only interested in cozying up to big business." The protest then turned into a march down the main shopping street. Certainly everyone who was there would have gone away feeling more positive and less demoralized, and so will have people reading about it in the press this morning. A very useful first step, but only a first step."

First published at the rs21 website.