Brown in the brown stuff

There is socialist analysis of the disastrous election results for New Labour in London and nationally over at Lenin's Tomb and in more detail here. Briefly, thanks to Gordon Brown's government's arrogant contempt for, and relentless attacks on, the working class, Labour voters in their millions sat on their hands at home in protest at a government which has presided over growing levels of social inequality. As a result, the Labour Party took one of the biggest electoral hammerings in its history, and even Ken Livingstone went down to defeat because of his ties to Gordon Brown. Worse, Gordon Brown and New Labour's attempt to blame the economic crisis not on rich bankers but on migrant workers (with racist rhetoric stolen from the fascists about 'British Jobs for British Workers') in the climate of permanent war and Islamophobia has, lo and behold, led to the British Nazi Party getting a seat on London's GLA. Given Brown shows little sign of doing the decent thing and resigning - but rather seems content to try to shove more neo-liberal shit down the throats of everyone, the following points made in a statement by the Left List seem worth reiterating:

'The period opening up is in some ways like that at the end of the 1970s. Then a tired Labour government also paved the way for Margaret Thatcher by adopting anti-union, socially conservative agenda at a time when it was also attacking working class living standards.

What is necessary now is not a left that runs the line 'Labour at any cost' but a left that stands by working class people and struggles alongside them.

This will not necessarily be a primarily electoral struggle. It will be an industrial struggle, an anti-war struggle, an anti-fascist struggle and a struggle on many other fronts that we cannot foresee. This is especially true at a time when the extra-electoral struggle is not declining, as it was in the late 1970s, but rising. But there will still be an electoral dimension.

The Left List votes outside London showed some good examples of effective campaigning. In Preston we got 37 percent and missed electing a second councillor by 70 votes. In Sheffield we came second with 25 percent of the vote. In Manchester we won 12 percent and, in a newly contested ward, nearly 10 percent. In Cambridge and Bolton the vote was around 15 percent.

The Galloway operation in contrast has reduced itself to a local party in a couple of areas without even the pretence of being a national organisation. Galloway will not be able to win a seat in the general election if he cannot win more than 11.3 percent in East London. And although Salma Yaqoob's Sparkbrook ward returned another councillor the vote went down in the neighbouring Sparkhill and Kings Heath wards, both of which would need to see increased votes for her to win the whole parliamentary constituency of which they are a part.

The Left List does have serious trade union support and a nationwide presence. We must now use this to assist in the rebuilding of an alternative to New Labour that will not be derailed by the surge in Tory and Nazi support at the ballot box.'