Nothing to be done about Miliband

Submitted by AWL on 18 November, 2014 - 5:43 Author: Duncan Morrison

‘Labour needs anti-cuts policy, not a Blairite new leader’ by Jon Lansman (Solidarity 343) might have been appropriate for the comment section in the Guardian or the Observer, it was not appropriate for a revolutionary newspaper.

Firstly, it should be noted that despite the headline the article does not argue for an anti-cuts policy, simply for not replacing Miliband as leader.

Secondly, in as much as we agree that Miliband junior is the least worst bourgeois politician on offer to lead the Labour Party, what do we propose that activists should do about it?

Move motions of support in their labour movement bodies extoling the virtues of the current leadership? I would strongly suggest we shouldn’t do that. The current leadership of the Party is not what we want and we should take no responsibility for it, it is simply that the available alternatives are worse.

In addition the motions would almost certainly have no effect as the decision to topple Miliband will be made by the Parliamentary Party, without consulting the rest of the party let alone the labour movement.

The whole issue puts into stark relief the problems for revolutionaries in their approach to the Labour Party at the moment. I can’t remember another point in the past twenty-five years when we wouldn’t have welcomed the opportunity a leadership election would have afforded us to make the case for a left-wing programme and a genuine left candidate.

That Miliband can be removed by the MPs, that the labour movement can have virtually no influence on this and that there is no better option than Miliband practically available to us, tells us all we need to know about how the Blairite reforms have altered the party.

We need to step up our fight for a genuine working-class politics and a workers’ government.

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