The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 18th August 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 18th August 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
North of the border the media pundits are focusing on the forthcoming by-election in south Lanarkshire and Labour’s efforts to take the seat from the Scottish nationalists. Sir Keir Starmer tells the voters that he’s going to “smash the class ceiling” and deliver a new deal for workers’ rights.
The Scottish nationalists, battling to keep the seat for the SNP, tell the people of Rutherglen & Hamilton West that “every vote for the SNP will send a message that only the powers of independence will deliver the change Scotland needs”.
The SNP is dipping in the opinion polls following Ms Sturgeon’s resignation and amidst the ongoing police investigation into the party’s finances, and the bookies make Labour the odds-on favourite to win the seat.
Starmer says: “What we’re being absolutely clear about is an anti-poverty strategy driven by an incoming Labour government will focus on growing the economy and mak- ing sure we get that growth in every part of the country. The single worst thing you could do for child poverty is to re-elect a Tory government or re-elect another SNP government here in Scotland.”
Katy Loudon, the SNP candidate, will try to outflank Scottish Labour on the social agenda whilst reminding voters of her party’s Remainer credentials.
Labour’s man, Michael Shanks, tells the media he believes “in the European project” and says he would back reversing Brexit if there was a public appetite for a rethink – which is not official Labour policy, although it does reflect the stand of the bureaucracy in most of the major unions.
The SNP upholds a veneer of internal democracy but like all bourgeois parties the real decisions are made by a handful of power-brokers at the top. Nicola Sturgeon was brought down through the exploitation by these factions of financial scandals surrounding the party and this has naturally created a credibility gap amongst the electorate.
Although the SNP like to pose as social-democrats they are, in fact, bourgeois liberals. Their modest social reform programme that included free prescription charges and the abolition of student tuition fees was, in the past, enough to win tens of thousands of traditional Labour supporters over to the nationalist camp. Whether they can retain that support is another matter.
Labour’s problem is that nobody can believe a word Starmer says these days. He’s broken virtually every pledge he made to the unions and the membership when he first became leader. He lost the confidence of the Remainers who thought he would take up their call for a second ref- erendum. His only loyalty is to the Blairite faction that believes in serving US imperialism and what they perceive to be the dominant trend in the British ruling class.
As always, the SNP are hoping for a hung parliament after the next election. Their new leader Hamza Yousaf says the SNP could make life “very difficult” for Labour in a hung parliament if it refused to give Scotland the power to call a new independence referendum. Labour has naturally ruled out a new ‘Indie’ referendum or any sort of coalition with the SNP. But Yousaf says nothing about a possible deal with the Tories and the Liberal Democrats or the ‘other’ referendum that the Remainers across the bourgeois spectrum are determined to get.
Creating the conditions for a hung parliament is a difficult task for any block to accomplish in British politics. But it can be done. We saw that at the 2017 election. We also saw how close the Remainers were to reversing the Brexit vote during the days that followed.
A hung parliament may well give Yousef a second referendum but it may not be quite what the SNP faithful have in mind…