Socialists must demand a General Election now.
With the sacking by Prime Minister Liz Truss of her own Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and her own resignation after just 44 days in the job, the Tories are in absolute crisis. Their mandate for government has evaporated.
Democracy demands that we have an election now.
There is an economic, democratic and constitutional crisis, alongside the environmental crisis and the possibility of war spreading.
Workers and their families cannot pay their bills. People are petrified for their futures.
Socialists are nowhere near a strong enough force at the present time to present ourselves as an alternative government. But we have to set out our ideas for an alternative. Only by setting out our alternative and struggling alongside workers can we hope to gain their ear and win them to our ideas.
The Starmer-led Labour Party will not solve the crises. But millions of working-class voters will vote for them in the hope that they can. They will be disappointed.
Starmer’s Labour Party is now seen by the capitalist markets and commentators as a ‘safe’ alternative, one that will act in their interests. This is its role.
But if socialists are to grow into a credible movement, we have to go though the process with those voters, pointing out the inadequacies of Starmer’s programme and how his government will also make workers pay for the crises.
We must therefore support every working-class struggle against the Tories, as long as they survive, and that will inevitably unfold against a Starmer-led Labour government, and mercilessly criticise it for bowing down before the ‘market’, instead of breaking its power.
We need a society that is based on production for the needs of all, rather than for the profits of a few.
More than ever, we need Marxists to organise together to present a programme for a fundamental break with the profit system and its undemocratic, anti-working class state.
This system cannot guarantee stability, adequate health care, permanent employment, a living wage, a free education, an affordable home, or any of the other basic necessities of life.
We need a change in the way society is organised. But this won’t happen on its own. The working class is the only force that can make it happen.
Marxists cannot jump over the working class to lead it in one bound. But by urgently and patiently explaining our programme we can begin to make headway.
It has been strange over the last six months to hear many socialists saying that they don’t want to demand a General Election, because they don’t want to put Starmer’s Labour Party in power. Even, in some cases, that they want to do all they can to stop Labour being elected. This is a bizarre position, and one that most working class voters would find utterly bemusing. As Nick says, it is extremely unlikely that socialists can get to a position where they might challenge for power in the next General Election. In fact, that will only really be possible once significant sections of the trade union movement have broken from Labour. So what do we do in the meantime? As Nick says, the working class will look to the Labour Party, even one led by Starmer. They will place their hopes in that Party. A strong victory for Labour will give confidence to the working class, and embolden them in their demands. And when Labour lets them down, working class people will turn on Starmer. There lies the opportunity for socialist voices and organisation to influence working class consciousness and struggle. But we have to be in the room, and fighting alongside the class, to have any chance of that – in the unions, in the campaigns, and even in the Labour Party (if we haven’t already been expelled!) There lies as well, of course, an opportunity for fascists. There is much at stake.