European Union

Make May resign!

According to the media over the 8-9 July weekend, the argument among Tory MPs is whether to replace Theresa May now by David Davis, or to wait to replace her until the autumn. Even Tory party chair Grant Shapps has no confidence in May: “Theresa May will need to operate a completely different model to remain in power”. Getting May out will be a first step in bringing down the Tory government. Only a first step. Tory writers proverbially boost their party as “the most formidable fighting machine in political history”. There is half-truth to it: under Davis or some other new leader, the Tories...

Keep fighting for free movement!

Interviewed by ITV on 15 May, Jeremy Corbyn said that Brexit means the free movement of citizens between the UK and the EU is going to end, even if Labour wins the election. In January Corbyn had said much the same, only later to retract, saying that he was not proposing new restrictions on the rights of people to move to the UK. At that time he hinted that free movement would be part of a negotiation to keep the UK in the single market. No such clarification now. Although Labour’s shadow Brexit Secretary Kier Starmer has given a commitment that Labour would “unilaterally guarantee” the...

Tories seek mandate to increase cuts, inequality, poverty

“Mrs May”, writes the Tory-leaning columnist of the Financial Times, Janan Ganesh, “could not survive an election campaign saying so little so often if people paid attention”. Since so many don’t, “the repetition of slogans in lieu of answers carries no cost”. Fraser Nelson, another Tory, comments in the Spectator: “She seems to think that, if you refuse to give the press anything, the public won’t care. Worse, she seems to be right – for now, at least”. May’s purpose, so Nelson writes, is not to “seek a mandate”, but to evade one. “That’s what this election is really about: a bonfire of these...

No “Progressive Alliances”!

The snap election and Labour’s position in the polls has once again raised the idea of a Progressive Alliance and coordinated tactical voting. Compass, the “centre left” think tank, Tony Blair, and investment manager Gina Miller have all proposed some kind of organisation aimed at stopping hard Brexit. Gina Miller, who brought the court case that forced a vote on Article 50, was able to crowdfund almost £300,0000 in 48 hours to support such an initiative. Their argument: the majority of the population did not vote for a hard Brexit. The traditional opposition to the Tories, the Labour Party...

Build Labour into a workers’ party, rebuild the labour movement

The intense election activity, drawing in a lot of people who have not yet come to meetings, has the potential to alter the longer-term shape of the Labour Party and the labour movement. We can make it a much broader movement of activists, with local parties having deeper roots in communities and a higher level of political activity. We also need to ensure that all sections of the labour movement — Momentum groups, union branches, Labour Clubs, Young Labour groups — and all activists are mobilised. In the first place Labour needs every activist it can get! In addition to launching a membership...

The Socialist Party, nationalism and free movement

Lindsey oil refinery dispute, 2009 (discussed below) At best, Hannah Sell’s article “Brexit and the left” ( Socialism Today , the magazine of the Socialist Party, Issue 207, April 2017) is a series of platitudinous banalities. At worst, it is a wretched concession to nationalism. In a rare direct polemic against other group on the left (the Socialist Party prefer to plough their own sectarian furrow, acknowledging the existence of other tendencies only occasionally), Sell makes a number of claims about Workers’ Liberty which range from the distorted to the straightforwardly untrue. She accuses...

Fight Brexit all the way

On 29 March, Theresa May will trigger Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, starting the clock on the UK leaving the EU. Unless the UK and all the EU states agree to a special extension on negotiations, the UK will quit the EU in or before March 2019. Already, the Brexit vote is leading to stresses on migrant workers, and an increase in nationalism and xenophobia in the UK; and strengthens the worst, most right-wing elements in the ruling class and their political party, the Tories. The labour movement needs to carve out a pro-worker, pro-migrant vision of the future, with ties as close...

Greece: Towards a fourth memorandum?

The latest poll in Greece shows Syriza has the support of just 15% of the electorate. Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos has boasted that a third of the austerity measures Greece had to impose as part of the current programme have been “totally completed”, another third are “totally agreed”, while the rest are subject to “political negotiation”. Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza-Anel government, elected in January 2015 with the claim and the hope that it would be Greece’s first government of the left, is overseeing a social counterrevolution. More than a third of the population (35.7 per cent) are...

Labour should fight Brexit all the way

Prime minister Theresa May will formally announce her wish to quit the European Union, and thus trigger separation proceedings under Article 50 of the 1991 Maastricht Treaty, on 29 March. Current Labour Party policy is to give the Tories a free hand to shape Brexit. Labour leaders say they must defer out of respect for the referendum decision on 23 June 2016. Labour leaders have talked about "holding the Tories to account" and pushing a "People's Brexit", but surrendered the means to make those words reality by voting with the Tories when they legislated to give themselves a free hand. The...

Defend EU migrants’ right to stay!

The House of Lords has voted by a large margin of 102 in favour of guaranteeing the rights of EU citizens in the UK after Brexit. With 358 in favour to 256 against, the Lords backed an amendment to the Article 50 bill, the bill giving the Prime Minister the power to trigger the Brexit process. The amendment said that when the UK leaves the EU, EU citizens should keep all the rights they currently have, regardless of what happens during the Brexit negotiations. The debate on 1 March came down on the correct side, but we can’t and shouldn’t pin our hopes on the unelected second chamber. The...

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