Brexit – Doing Nothing is Not a Political Strategy – Labour has no Option but to Support a Second Referendum

There is no Lexit - Leaving the EU is a Project of the Right and far-Right

Barring a miracle Theresa May’s deal with Europe, backstop and all, is likely to be rejected by a hefty majority in the Commons tomorrow. It is quite possible that May herself will resign although it is equally possible that she will have to be dragged out of Downing Street kicking and screaming.

Of one thing we can be sure. There is nothing at all progressive or socialist in cutting our ties with the European Union. The problem with the EU is not that it is leading to European integration or the loss of a mythical sovereignty but that capitalism, based as it is on nation states, is incapable of achieving the goal of European integration.

The original 6 members of the EEC

The project for European unity began as a consequence of World War 2 with the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951. A common market in iron and steel was created under the control of a supranational Higher Authority. Iron and steel competition had symbolised the drive to war in previous decades.

At the time the UK, which still had an Empire, refused to join what became the European Common Market. It was only with the humiliation of the Suez War, when the United States forced Britain into retreating that the UK began to orientate to the EEC. As Dean Acheson, Harry Truman’s Secretary of State observed, “Great Britain had lost an Empire and not yet found a role.” It was a way of casting scorn on the special relationship’ with the United States.

Charles de Gaulle - French President

Three times, Britain applied to join the Common Market. The first application, in July 1961 by Harold MacMillan, was vetoed by the French President Charles de Gaulle. The second application in May 1967 under Harold Wilson was also vetoed by de Gaulle. It was only the third application under Ted Heath, by which time de Gaulle was dead, that was successful.

The Labour Party came to power in February 1974, in the wake of the Miners Strike when Ted Heath called a General Election under the banner ‘Who Rules the Country’ – he got a rude shock when the electorate said it wasn’t him! Harold Wilson had held the Labour Party together by promising to renegotiate our terms of entry and then hold a referendum. After gaining minor concessions the referendum in 1975 produced a 2-1 majority in favour of remaining in the EEC.

The left of the Labour Party, Tony Benn, Michael Foot and Barbara Castle joined forces with the Tory Right – people such as Enoch Powell and Teddy Taylor – to campaign on an openly nationalist basis against the EEC. The Out campaign warned that the EEC ‘"sets out by stages to merge Britain with France, Germany, Italy and other countries into a single nation," in which Britain would be a "mere province". What a terrible thing!

The opposition of the Labour Left to the EU has always been a pale reflection of the Right, based on a nostalgia for when Britain was ‘great’.  At a time when MAGA is the slogan of Trump and the alt-Right it should not be difficult to see the parallels.

The 1970’s were a time of unparalleled class struggle, the likes of which we haven’t seen since. In 1972 and 1974 the National Union of Miners went on strike twice and and it brought the government of Ted Heath to its knees. The industrial and political struggle against the Industrial Relations Act led to the defiance and then repeal of the Industrial Relations Act by the dockers in 1972 with the gaoling of the Pentonville 5.  When the TUC called a one-day General Strike the courts, in the form of Lord Denning, caved in.

It was in this context that the Labour left, which had made its peace with Labour’s class collaborationist ‘social contract’ with Capital turned its attention to opposition to Britain’s membership of the EEC. The campaign against the EEC, alongside the Tory Right was politically disastrous and weakened the Left. After the referendum Wilson demoted Tony Benn moving him from his powerful position as Minister of Trade and Industry to Minister of Energy.

In short the Labour Left’s opposition to the EU has been a disastrous capitulation to the forces of nationalism and an abandonment of class struggle politics from its inception. The Labour left took its lead from the Communist Party and its British Road to Socialism which posits the Stalinist idea that you can achieve socialism in one country.

There is nothing progressive or socialist and never has been in opposition to the European Union.

Opposition to the EU has at its heart opposition to the free movement of labour. Capital in today’s world can move wherever it wants but workers are forced to stay where they are and compete against each other. Those who argue that free movement of labour undercuts the wages and conditions of native workers are conceding to the idea that British workers and bosses have more in common than with foreign workers. It is no surprise that it is the same anti-trade union right which employs this same argument as it did against Jewish workers in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

The socialist argument is quite simple. Organise migrant labour don’t exclude it alongside reactionary and racist Toryism. Class   action and trade union organisation between migrant and indigenous labour is the best way of protecting wages and conditions.

Opposition to the EU is based on the idea that an independent British capitalist state is preferable. It is a harking back to the days of Empire. Only last week Jeremy Hunt visited Singapore saying that after Brexit Britain could adopt the Singaporean model of low taxes. Those who argue for Brexit are playing with fire – they are laying the basis for a low wage, low tax economy in which we effectively undercut wages in Europe.  This is the ‘socialist’ solution of our so-called Left.  Unfortunately Jeremy Corbyn has always been part of this left.

General Election

If and when the Commons rejects Theresa May’s Deal tomorrow, it is essential that Labour does more than call for a General Election. It should take over the campaign for a referendum. The defeat of Brexit at a second referendum would almost guarantee the victory of Labour at a General Election. It would also nip in the bud the moves for some form of national coalition between the Labour Right and Tory anti-Brexiteers.

The argument that a second referendum doesn’t respect the first referendum is barely worth arguing against. People are clearly in possession of more information now about the consequences of Brexit, leaving aside the fraudulent use of money at the last referendum. A strong campaign by Labour can not only overturn the 2016 referendum but it will strike a decisive blow against the far-Right in this country which is riding on the coat tails of Brexit.

A successful rejection of Brexit will provide an unstoppable momentum for a General Election. Far from damaging Labour’s chances the rejection of Brexit would enhance them enormously. It should be able to capture significant territory in the anti-Brexit South, London and the Home Counties. By taking head on the anti-migrant narrative in the North, viz. that deindustrialisation and austerity are the product of the EU rather than the politics of the free market and Austerity, Labour can overcome any Tory campaign. Labour should argue that what motivated people to vote No in 2016 were policies that made the working class pay for the financial crisis of 2008-9, Those who say we should ‘respect’ the first referendum result are really saying they have no confidence in being able to challenge this racist and nationalist narrative.

The 2016 Referendum led to an increase in racist attacks and     xenophobia. It was the far-Right who felt emboldened by the result.  We have seen with James Duggard and his far-Right acolytes last week exactly who stands to benefit from Brexit.

All over Europe the far-Right has grown on the back of a Euro-scepticism allied to anti- refugee feeling. The Brexit vote in the 2016 referendum was a visible sign of that and those who say we should ‘respect’ it are in essence saying that we should not challenge the racist Right any longer.

It is also obvious that the alt-Right and Trump in the United States welcome Brexit as the first instalment in the break up of the European Union. The idea that Britain would become independent is for the birds. It would tie Britain hand and foot to US capitalism.

Socialists should counter the message that Europe is the cause of austerity and unemployment. We should also be clear that we do not accept the neo-liberal policies of Europe and its competition law either but that the place to fight them is inside not outside. We should take our lead from French workers who have been in the forefront of the fight against Macron and his Blairite economic policies. Cutting our ties with Europe is a strange way of building working class alliances with European workers.

Jeremy Corbyn’s strategy of wanting a ‘Jobs First Brexit’ is politically and economically absurd. Brexit has already led to the loss of thousands of jobs and will lead to many more as firms transfer investment to mainland Europe. One may as well talk about a ‘life enhancing suicide’ or a healthy heart attack. It is an oxymoron.

We are entering into the territory of a constitutional crisis with a Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, who is prepared to tear up precedent and existing procedure in order to enable the Commons to override a government that has lost its majority. The Sunday Times at the weekend speculated on a plot to suspend Standing Order 14 which gives precedence to government motions.  If true then the government will have lost control.

Labour has a golden opportunity to use the ruling class crisis over Brexit to its advantage and ride to power in its wake.  The alternative could also be that the Corbyn phenomenon is derailed entirely.

Tony Greenstein

Corbyn's Disastrous Brexit Strategy - Labour’s slow moving car crash

Support for Article 50 is a failure of principle and strategy

  

The current members of the European Union

If love is blind, then falling out of love can seem like an emotional roller coaster.   So it is with Britain's relationship with the EU and Labour members relationship with Jeremy Corbyn.  Corbyn was the Accidental Leader of the Labour Party.  He only became Leader because no one thought he’d actually win and because Ed Miliband believed that allowing all of Labour’s members a vote would guarantee that the Left would never come to power.

There was, of course, a third factor.  The unexpected victory of David Cameron in the 2015 General Election on 36% of the vote, which caused a political backlash in the Labour Party.  If Labour’s Right misjudged the chances of Corbyn winning they also misjudged the mood of the country with their talk of aspiring Waitrose shoppers.  The mood music was more that of the Clash than D:Ream.  For most people things could only get worse.

The EEC before the accession of Eastern European countries

Indications of the changing mood were the Peoples’ Assembly march in June 2015.  Large numbers of people felt that Cameron’s victory had no legitimacy.  The Tories had only achieved a majority on the backs of the collapse of the Lib Dem vote.  Cameron had no escape route from his rash promise of a referendum on the European Union.  This backlash manifested itself in the doubling of Labour’s membership and the thousands of people who became registered supporters.

Robert Schumann and Jean Monnet - founding fathers of the European Union

Corbyn is the first person to admit that he was not cut out to become Leader of the Labour Party.  He might have been a serial rebel but he was also seen as a genuinely nice guy.  Unfortunately this had its negative consequences as well.  Although his niceness has been spun as straightforward, honest politics it has also meant that he lacks the killer instinct.  This was painfully obvious when pitted against David Cameron, the Flashman of British politics, at the dispatch box each week.  With Theresa May Corbyn has had an easier task, but still he hasn’t landed any killer blows despite her wooden performance.

Wishful thinking

But even more seriously is Corbyn’s inability to take control of the Labour Party.  In the aftermath of his victory last September, he had the golden opportunity to send Iain  McNicol, Labour’s treacherous General Secretary packing.  This was a man who had not only tried to fix the vote but had gone out of the way to prevent him even standing.  For a Labour leader not to have any control over his civil service is a fatal mistake.  His failure to support the Left in the party has meant that the Right, although a minority, has managed to keep control of the Conference and the NEC.

There have also been policy failures.  Corbyn should have made it clear that the railways would be nationalised within the first six months of a Labour victory and that compensation would be capped.  Instead there is the absurdity of waiting for 15 year contracts to expire.  He should have come up with a radical programme on housing – immediate return to security of tenure in the private sector, controlled rents and massive council house building.  On utilities there has also been nothing in terms of the massive fuel poverty that people are suffering from.  On all of these issues and more Labour’s message is muffled.  The attack on benefits – from the abolition of Council Tax Benefit to the Bedroom tax – has been met with silence.

seat of high authority Luxembourg

It should have been obvious, as Al Jazeera’s The Lobby has demonstrated, that the ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis was wholly manufactured.  His failure to call the anti-Semitism witch-hunt what it was, allowing a destabilising campaign to take hold just before the local elections, has severely weakened his leadership.  Furthermore, Corbyn’s repeated proclamations that he will not tolerate anti-Semitism in the Party can only give the impression that there is a problem.  He has completely played into the hands of his political enemies and it was embarrassing at the Zionist debate with Owen Smith for him to declare that he admired Israel’s ‘spirit and verve’  given his long work with the Palestine solidarity movement.

The biggest policy failure is the decision to support triggering Article 50 and to accept the inevitability of Brexit (which despite all the punditry may not be inevitable).  As the article below from Socialist Action argues, the result of pulling out of the Single Market will be a serious decline in working class living standards.  If May chooses to make Britain a tax haven then this will mean that with far less tax revenue not only will there not be enough resources to fund an expansion of the welfare state but a Labour government would be a rerun of previous austerity governments. 

It was New Labour's failures that gave Farage his chance

Access to the single market, both for manufacturing and the financial services is crucial.  London faces the prospect of losing its role as the world’s leading financial sector to New York, Frankfurt and Paris.   Companies which are located in Britain because of tariff free access to Europe will simply move.  The fact that a narrow majority of people were fooled into voting against their own interests, for good reasons, by nationalist bile is not a reason to accept the decision.  Parties exist to change peoples’ minds not to pander to their prejudices. 

Those who thought that Lexit was a nice phrase will find out that hitching your wagon to Nigel Farage can only lead to disaster.  That that is the position of Britain’s two far-left parties, the Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party, demonstrates how out of touch modern day Trotskyism is.  It should have been obvious from the rash of racist attacks in the wake of the Brexit vote that the political mood was not one of an independent socialist Britain but a retrograde and nationalist little England (& Wales). 

The idea that an independent British capitalist state is preferable to European capitalism is nothing more than an attempt to march backwards into history.  Marx and Engel’s described this best in the Communist Manifesto when they wrote that feudal socialism was ‘half lamentation, half lampoon; half an echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart’s core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history.’

The Mail, like most of the Tory press is all in favour of Brexit

A beautifully poetic description of the belief that there is a nationalist road to socialism.  National or nationalist socialism isn’t exactly a road paved with glory, be it in Germany or Israel.  The attempt to unify Europe economically and politically, which is the proclaimed goal of the European Union cannot succeed under capitalism.  That should be obvious.  But the attempt to try and attain that goal is progressive.  For socialists to oppose it is backward and reactionary.  The attempt to form a single currency is progressive but without economic and fiscal and thus political union, it is doomed as the recent crises have shown. 

The debate around leaving the EU was never going to be about anything else other than the wonders of an independent British capitalism.  Theresa May’s humiliating itinerary, from Trump to Erdogan and Netanyahu shows how absurd this belief is that Britain can go it alone.

Socialism has not been advanced one iota by Brexit or Lexit.  Unfortunately Tony Benn was wedded to the idea that Parliament could regain its sovereignty. It was an illusion then and it still is today.

What should be the position of Corbyn?  He should be implacably opposed to withdrawal from the Single Market as it will have a devastating effect on the welfare state or what is left of it.  Socialism is not best served by advocating policies that lead to a recession.  The only argument that May has for leaving the single market is one of the EU’s three pillars – freedom of movement for workers.  It isn’t an argument that Labour should avoid.  There is no mileage in competing with Farage.  We should be saying loud and clear that the reasons people voted for Brexit, the industrial wastelands of the Midlands and the North were not caused by immigration but the free market principles of Thatcher.  It wasn’t immigration that closed the mines and the shipyards but Tory economic policies.  The same policies that UKIP represent.

It is no accident that the most reactionary section of the American ruling class, as represented by Trump, also favour Brexit.  They want to see the break up of the EU because it will enable the US to gain privileged access on its terms to the European market. 

The wiser members of the Labour left, including Dianne Abbot with her diplomatic illness can see this.  Corbyn thinks that he will gain something by trying to compete with May and Farage on the terms of our exit from the EU.  It is an utter delusion.  What Labour should be doing is   pointing out that the referendum campaign was won on the basis of a lie that can never be delivered.  Our bonus from Brexit,  £300m for the NHS turned to dust the minute the result was announced.  With a base of 48%, it should be clear that a principled stance in opposition to Brexit can very soon, if not already be a majority position in the country.  Corbyn could have won respect for a clear stance on this and not left it to the Labour Right.  It is a failure of leadership of immense proportions.

The European Union came about because the capitalist leaders of Germany and France, Robert Schumann and Jean Monnet, wished to create the economic, political and social conditions that would prevent a recurrence of world war.  At first this was via the Iron and Steel Community and the 1951 Treaty of Paris which morphed into the European Common Market via the 1957 Treaty of Rome and then the European Union with the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht when Euro-scepticism first began to poison the British body politic.

Corbyn has been heavily influenced by the petty nationalism of the Communist Party’s British Road to Socialism.  There is still time for him to change course but I suspect not much time.

Tony Greenstein

Labour should unite around membership of the Single Market

Posted: 30 Jan 2017 02:33 AM PST

By Pat Tanner

It is clear, and becoming increasingly publicly evident, that in the coming period the living standards of the British population and British workers cannot be maintained without membership of the European Single Market. The inflation that will be created by the plunging pound will significantly cut living standards, while refusal of companies to invest without free access to a European market which is many time bigger than any UK one will lead to heavy job losses. The significantly lower economic growth that will result will put further pressure on social spending.

It is for this reason that May’s only threat to try to maintain Britain’s economic growth is to make it what is called by the media and the Tories a ‘tax haven’. But this conceals the reality, a ‘tax haven’, a country without an adequate tax base, is one in which social protection and social services would be slashed. The economic path May proposes outside the European Single Market is actually one of a low wage, low job security country with massively reduced social protection.

These economic forces are so powerful they would overwhelm in their effect of living standards measures which are desirable in themselves proposed by Labour such as a National Investment Bank, and rational industrial policy etc. There must therefore be no illusion – if Britain leaves the European Single market living standards will fall and substantial job losses will occur. Labour, therefore, cannot really defending working class living standards without maintaining membership of the Single Market.

It is because of this economic reality that there are significant divisions even within the Tory Party on the Single Market. For the time being Theresa May can unite her party by making the reduction of immigration the priority. But not merely is such a course to be rejected because it is racist but because it cannot solve the negative economic effects on living standards and jobs of leaving the Single Market..

These objective economic realities mean that Labour needs to unite around membership of the EU Single Market.

Labour has tabled seven amendments to the parliamentary Bill authorising Article 50 to be triggered (and is supporting two others on workers’ rights). They should all be supported and the first two are particularly important. They give parliament a vote on the terms of the Brexit deal that the Tory government agrees with the EU. Secondly, they “establish a number of key principles the Government must seek to negotiate during the process, including protecting workers’ rights, securing full tariff and impediment free access to the Single Market.” This corresponds to the actual requirements of the British economy and would protect jobs and living standards. Labour’s priorities are the correct ones.

But the political process has been mishandled and the major effect could be to undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party. Corbyn’s leadership is decisive in maintaining the Labour party’s opposition to war, austerity and racism, and its policies in favour of peace, investment and equality.

The imposition of a three-line whip on the Article Bill is a blunder. It is widely understood that Labour MPs have strongly-held views on opposite sides of the Brexit debate. The imposition of any three-line whip was always going to cause divisions, splits and resignations. It stands in contrast to the free votes on Trident and on bombing Syria, which was in the most literal sense a matter of life and death. It also does not correspond to the views of Labour’s members, as 90 per cent of them voted to Remain or to the views of Labour voters, as 63 per cent also voted Remain.

It is the imposition of a minority position that has provoked the splits. Corbyn’s enemies within Labour have now been handed a cause celebre to rally around. This was totally unnecessary and self-inflicted. Because of Labour splits and the Tories’ temporary unity, Labour’s vote was never going to be decisive on this issue. Article 50 will pass whatever Labour does.

Instead, Labour should fight for its amendments, attempting to get the other opposition parties to support them and trying to draw in pro-EU Tories. For Labour, the paramount issue must be jobs and living standards.

It is becoming increasingly public that leaving the Single Market will be deeply damaging. A large number of international businesses announced they would be seeking to relocate jobs after Theresa May’s clearly ‘Hard Brexit’ speech as she confirmed she would be looking to leave the Single Market. The chair of Toyota said the carmaker would have to ‘examine how it would survive’, if the UK leaves the Single Market. Many other businesses will be doing the same.

Derby and Deeside, the locations for the big Toyota plants both voted to Leave, as did Sunderland. But they did not vote for unemployment. Labour can unite and build a majority by opposing the devastation caused by leaving the Single Market. The same point applies in numerous sectors and locales.

The fantasies swirling around the referendum campaign are being blown away. The vote is already lowering living standards and cutting investment. The sole realistic prospect for the economy outside the Single Market is not a free trade land of plenty, but a trade deal with Trump. This would destroy the NHS, abolish environmental protections, devastate farming and remove food safety standards. Most sectors of the economy would face severe disruption. The sole major sector where the UK is arguably more competitive than the US is finance.

This is not a perspective Labour can accept or embrace. It has to fight for the interests of the majority, which for the foreseeable future must mean remaining in the Single Market.

There will be two parliamentary by-elections on Thursday 23rd February. To assist Labour's campaigns activists are encouraged to participate in the events in Copeland here and Stoke here. Also Momentum are organising carpools for activists (see the Facebook groups: Carpool to Copeland and Carpool to Stoke).