How To Repair an Irrepparably Split Political Party

I wrote this story about 35 years ago on my Commodore64, neither its USB or HDMI connections were functioning but I managed to Bluetooth it directly to my tablet.

Today It seems almost profetic but as you know, having been written so long ago, it couldn't possibly have been based on any recent events.

                                                             Setting The Scene

Imagine if you will, a political party split on whether to go to war or not, a split that runs so deep, that it threatens the very existence of the party. The leader of that party only has a few merry men and women standing firmly behind her, but to her advantage she holds the support, of the majority of the membership. The remainder of the party leadership are pro-war and vastly outnumber the leader, but their membership following is far smaller. Neither side is willing to give any quarter.

So, the pro war faction decide to stage a coup to oust the anti war leader. And to lend weight to their treachery, they devise a plan to assissinate her, not with weapons, no, but with words. They were not brave enough to use weapons, because they thought that they might get into trouble. So they called her names and made shit up.

The pro war side had a terrible weapon in their arsenal, for they held power over the selection process for new candidates and undemocratically, they have selected all of their own candidates for election. Meaning that, even though the vast majority of members support the anti-war agenda, they will never get to see any of their preferred candidates selected, which they felt was very, very unfair.

To make matters worse, every time one of the pro war candidates lost, they tried to put all of the blame on the shoulders of anti-war candidate, but her supporters were having none of it.

Both sides stake claim to having the support of the wider electorate, but neither can prove their claims because they are based on heresay, doorstep gossip. Their refusal to put this question to the electorate meant that the answer to this question will never be discovered.

                               The situation seemed hopeless, stalemate, or was it?

Whilst both sides of the party had reached an impasse, a small group of 500 of the most faithful and loyal members had had enough and decided to do the unthinkable, they resigned their membership of the party and created a new party so they could carry on with their anti-war beliefs without hinderance.

Eventually, the time to start campaigning for the long awaited general election arrived, the pro war faction of the party fielded all of their own candidates and were ready for battle. The anti war majority, predicted to have done well in the elections, had no-one standing. 

On the day of the election the candidates were announced, the 500 loyal anti-war members who resigned from the party, re-emerge as independent candidates. Well funded by a number of wealthy benefactors, foreign governments, we'll never know but they have a clear purpose in mind, to stand against everyone except, the anti-war members from their old party.
The campaigns came went and were surprisingly strong for the independents, no-one expected it.

When election day finally arrived, slowly over the course of the night, the results came in......
1st place 250 seats - The pro war party.
2nd place 180 seats - The anti war party.
3rd place 120 seats - The Independents
Everyone else won 50 seats between them.

The massive loss of seats cost the anti-war party dearly in the election and the pro-war party of division, hate and poverty were duly elected.

                                                                   The Fallout

On day one of the new government there was nervousness in the air, no victory celebration from the pro-war party and the entire country were glued to their TV sets, waiting for the announcement that they had long suspected was coming.

The news reader came on....

"We are hearing reports of mass defections from the independents to the Anti-war party, we will keep you posted with developments".

By early evening, the news anchor came back on the TV, the atmosphere in the country was charged with excitment and anticipation, could it really happen? could it be true? because everyone knew what had just happened, they just wanted it confirmed.

"Well its been an extraordinary day in politics, a day that shall be long remembered. The final counts are in and we understand that all, I shall repeat that, all of the independents who won their seats have now all defected to the anti-war party, We are unclear what this means exactly, but it does appear that the main opposition to the government actually hold more seats in parliament than the elected government itself. Ladies and gentlemen, on their first day in office, the elected government has been rendered a 'lame duck'. Quite extraordinary."

On day one, all of the winning independents defected to the anti-war party who, for the first time in years, are now unified in their anti-war majority, massively strengthening the leaders position. Their resignation wasn't an act of desperation but a calculated act to illicit a specific outcome. Some called it unfair but the fact remained that defections were well within the rules.

The benefactors and the public were well aware and supportive of their agenda but no-one believed it could happen, for they knew that these independents had no intention of remaining as independent. On day one of the new parliament all of those who won, defect back to their old party to rejoin the leader in her anti-war stance. Sadly, because of the unavoidability of this action, the party lost this election by 130 seats and handed the victory to the party of division, hate and poverty. But, 180 of the faithfull 500 won their seats and immediately defected.

This now resulted in the unprecedented, extraordinary situation where the opposition party had lost the election, but had more representatives in parliament than the government, thereby rendering them a lame duck government, with no power to enact any of their dreadful, punishing laws. It was only a matter of time until the government in waiting, the anti-war party, seized power.

The End         

The Death of Neoliberalism - Part 2

One can't help but notice that there has been some political shenanigans going on of late.
Tory, Labour or Ukip? The posturing, the argument, it has all been great fun and yes, maybe a little boisterous. But what is it that is actually at stake here? What battle is really being fought here?

The fight isn’t just between political parties this time, its for a change in the economic model. In 1979, Margaret Thatcher introduced a new kind of economic model to the people of Britain, the economics of neoliberalism. It is this very economic model that ‘leaves people behind’. In 1997, when Tony Blair became prime minister, he rejected socialism and adopted neoliberalism as his favoured economic model. So the labour party were no longer socialists but had become neoliberals. Every election since then, irrespective of a tory or labour win at the ballot box, neo-liberalism in one form or another, always won and for almost 40 years, those left behind have struggled to survive. Forgotten by both the Tories and New Labour, it isn’t difficult to understand the distrust in the political establishment.

There is an easy way to separate neo-liberalism from socialism. Neoliberals want the wealth and power of the people handed over to the private sector, our NHS, railways, utility companies. Its a kind of ‘corporate communism’ which has been evolving for decades where business as opposed to the state own everything, but its still basically communism.
Socialism wants wealth and power handed over to the people so as everyone benefits, not contracted out to the private sector, where profits are kept as personal wealth in private bank accounts, instead of being re-invested into our services.
This is the real battle that is going on, the fight to wrestle the wealth and power once rightfully owned by the British people and taken piece by valuable piece, by successive neoliberal governments, to hand back to the British people so as they alone, not corporations, will be the architects or their own future.

As there are neoliberals and socialists within the Labour party, this also explains why the party is split. This isn’t a battle over a weak leader, but a battle for the very soul of the Labour Party, is the Labour Party neoliberal or socialist? When the Labour Party fielded a true socialist candidate for leader of the Labour Party in 2015, socialists around the country woke up and flocked to the party. Now the membership is made up primarily of true socialists. This is also why the Labour Party cannot depose Corbyn, because he has the overwhelming backing of, the membership. All the neoliberal element of the Labour Party can hope to achieve is to erode the membership support for Corbyn enough to launch yet another leadership challenge. It seems that the job of the socialist Labour members is to stay united, stay strong and stay members. The main danger for the Socialist labour party is that as time goes on, the membership who joined to support Corbyn as leader may feel their job is finished. Lapsing membership is one of the great threats to Corbyns leadership, especially if they are not allowed vote in leadership elections, without being party members for 6 months.

These same splits are evident, within the tory party who have their own internal (but suppressed from public view) battles between capitalism and neoliberalism, but you’d be lucky to find it documented though. Ken Clarke though strikes a lonely figure as one of the last remnants of a true tory conservative.

As for the future, neoliberalism has almost finished draining the last drop of capitalism from the Tory party. With capitalism being a close cousin of neoliberalism, it wasn’t too difficult for capitalism to be overwhelmed and subdued. The return of Socialism to the Labour Party has created a powerful defence against neoliberalism, and over the next 3 years, those defences will be continually tested for weaknesses. The weapons deployed by neoliberals run along the lines of leadership challenges, false accusations (trot infiltrations, unelectable etc) demonising the membership and of course, fake news which is happily delivered by the main stream media in the hope that they can create enough lethargy to divide Corbyns support base.
It seems to me that the battle for the next general election isn’t in 2020, its now. Neoliberalism does not want to face socialism in a fair fight, it would much rather face itself as it has done for he last 38 years. Neoliberal tory, or neoliberal Labour, it matters little. But neoliberal versus Socialism? that is a battle that neoliberalism knows that it can't win and therefore has to kill off socialism before the next general election.   

While neoliberalism has just elected its first president in the States, in the UK neoliberalism is in retreat and fighting for its very survival. If socialism wins in 2020, neoliberalism in the UK will be forced back into obscurity and the Tories will have to create more left leaning policies in order to just survive.
All 'socialism' has to do to win, is stay united, stay strong and retain the membership.