The SWP will not be organising electoral challenges in the near future, so Chris Nineham indicated in a session on "Is Labour on the road to recovery?" at the SWP's "Marxism 2008 special event" on 6 December.
So it's back to the old SWP line of ignoring parliamentary politics most of the time, and saying "vote Labour without illusions" come polling day (though Nineham didn't spell out that particular slogan).
The argument? Labour has regained working-class support. Gordon Brown's turn to some Keynesian policies shows that "we have won the arguments".
Thus a turn in Socialist Worker towards "good work, Gordon, but go further" articles like Here’s how Labour could offer a real alternative to the crisis.
This probably means that the Socialist Green Unity Coalition, uniting AWL, the Socialist Party, the Alliance for Green Socialism, and others, will be the biggest presence on general election day openly advocating policies to serve the working class.
Comments
Regaining working-class support?
The "Labour has regained working-class support" argument seems particularly odd to me. When the SWP was enthusiastic about standing in elections - from when it joined the Socialist Alliance through to Respect - Labour's working-class was measurably, significantly higher than it is now. Recently, Labour's working-class support has recovered a little from a spectacular collapse - hardly "regaining working-class support".
John Rees on the divisions in the SWP
A long document by John Rees on his views of the divisions within the SWP leadership has now been made available on Andy Newman's "Socialist Unity" blog.