Breaking The Westminster Duopoly

Labour's sudden swerve to the right can't have escaped the attention of many. Under the hands of our dear benevolent leaders, Kieth "Keir Starmer" Stauner and Evans "David Evans" Almighty, party democracy and freedom of speech have both been reduced to the consistency of wheat-based breakfast cereals - utterly shredded. The anti-union, anti-worker, pro-corporate rhetoric is ramping up and the party is losing members quicker than a Tory can lose a pouch of party powder up their snot-locker.

All promises and pledges have been all but officially reneged on and they've returned to the beige world of tinkering around the edges of capitalism. Basically, they're part of the establishment furniture once again; no vision, no ideas, no clarity but a room full of suits and fuck me if Kieth doesn't have a decent haircut!

They are essentially no different from the Tories.  The only real difference is that they'll follow on through with the well-flogged-donkey of "moderation" with a smile and a nod to minority communities. Nothing will fundamentally change. I can't say I'm surprised considering that Kieth is a member of the Trilateral Commission, an invite-only institution, which has previously stated that its mission is to save the world from "an excess of democracy".

So where does that leave us? Liberal, centrists and moderate-adults-in-the-room are pushing the all too familiar line of "If you don't vote Labour, you're voting for the Tories!", a phrase that was conveniently memory-holed when Jeremy Corbyn was the leader of the party. It's the same phrase that rabid liberals in the recent US elections used to justify voting Democrat, and look how that's turned out!  

It's a moralising and frankly bollocks rhetorical argument that only serves as an attempt to disarm those who don't have a full, coherent understanding of the root problems. Thankfully, I'm more than happy to explain why it's bollocks and present a historical argument against it.

Serving up the head of Corbyn to the establishment. Thanks, Steve Bell!

Dismantling The Nonsense

First of all, you can't just vote Labour simply because they're not Tories, that doesn't make any sense. When you do so, you're tacitly making the assumption that guidance and leadership of the party being in the hands of centre-right ghouls is acceptable. Secondly, you're propping up the established Westminster duopoly for yet another election cycle. In doing that, there's the implicit assumption that first past the post (FPTP) is the only correct system of electoral democracy, which clearly and self-evidently is not the case.

Think about that last point - neither party supports electoral reform. Some MPs do, sure, but as long as FPTP serves the interests of capitalism by guaranteeing only one of two pro-capitalist parties can take the reins, electoral reform will only ever proffered by smaller parties. Those smaller parties will never get a look in though because of a) the aforementioned bollocks rhetorical argument and b) the nature of FPTP is that of tending towards a duopoly! 

To put it another way, the bollocks rhetorical argument might be better phrased as "If you don't vote for nice capitalism, you'll get less nice capitalism!", as if there is any material difference. Actually, there is a difference - Labour will sanction benefit claimants with a smile whilst Tories will double-down on the evil and also kick you squarely in the downstairs-disco-area.

We don't want capitalism though, we socialists want socialism. That's why we're socialists. Duh.

It took 23 years for Labour to become a viable party in the UK, from 1900 - 1923. Do you honestly think people back then were taken in with similar "If you don't vote Liberal, you'll get the Tories!" rhetoric?

No! Of course they weren't! That's how Labour got into power in the first place! Look at how the votes for Labour accrued from foundation to first government:

• 1900 - 62,698 votes, 2 seats.
• 1906 - 321,663 votes, 29 seats.
• 1910 - 505,657 votes, 40 seats.
• 1918 - 2,245,777 votes, 57 seats.
• 1922 - 4,076,665 votes, 142 seats.
• 1923 - 4,267,831 votes, 191 seats - Minority government.

You see, political parties don't just magically spring out of the woodwork with vast support. It takes time and effort to build.

Not only does this show that it's more than possible for a new party to breakthrough into the mainstream but it also demonstrates how undemocratic FPTP is. Yes, that's right, FPTP was only instituted as the electoral system in 1950! It shows the necessity for rallying behind a party that is both socialist as Labour were back then and dedicated to electoral reform.

It's a process that we need to repeat but this time with an emphasis on electoral reform. As I mentioned in an older, also poorly written article, it's the only real way to break the capitalist duopoly and break the Tory stranglehold on politics. We must play the long game as an imperative and develop networks of mutual aid and self-help in the meantime to help meet the needs of the less well-off in our communities. 

The next argument the sensibles usually make is "But you're fracturing the left!". I'm not - I'm not fracturing anything, it is them, those who blindly and uncritically believe that Labour is the best viable alternative who is doing this. Political partisanship is a hell of a drug. 

I won't give power to people I fundamentally disagree with, just because it lays claim to being the historic party of my "class", and especially when they've done everything in their power to destroy grass-roots democracy within the party. It's my class that deserves my solidarity, not what is essentially a political Ship of Theseus where rotten planks are consistently replaced with different rotten planks. If that party's politics don't align with the interests of my class, then they can get back in the sea and rebuild themselves properly until they do.

I advocate the same as the unions: "If Labour isn't for me, I'm not for Labour"

The rot of right-wing entryism has made a little euthanasia necessary in Labours case, as I've previously argued.

There is absolutely no chance of the left recapturing the party. Even we did, there is no one waiting in the wings to take the reins. There's but a tiny contingent of socialist MPs who exist within a sea of, well, bastards to put it bluntly.

To Summarise My Rant...

Historical precedence exists for a brand new party getting into power, especially when the largest contingent of society is unrepresented. Our electoral system remains a barrier to a better form of democracy but that can only ever be changed by a party that exists outside of the duopoly.

Therefore it's crucial for socialists and everyone who is part of the working class to rally behind and agitate for a party that will work in our interests and reform the electoral system. Without doing so, we condemn ourselves to revisit the same ridiculous Labour-Tory electoral cycle over and over again. It's the political equivalent of Groundhog Day except nowhere near as hilarious because Bill Murray isn't in it and it's literally our welfare that's being repetitively toyed with.

As socialists, we should support the widest expansion of democratic rights possible under capitalism and we should do so within parties, or a coalition of parties, where there is grass-roots control. Labour no longer has grass-roots control nor is it interested in an expansion of democracy. It's obvious why - it'd mean the destruction of capitalist hegemony in parliament because we'd vote for policies that help ourselves over the bourgeois class.

So to anyone who says "If you don't vote Labour, you're voting the Tories in!", I say fuck right off out of here you utter wazzock, and then fuck off some more. If you really care about working class interests, you'll get behind a party that better represents them than Labour do.

As it stands, there is no better party than the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition. Unions and other prominent figures are already making a move back toward the TUSC.

Until a better party makes itself known, that's who I'll vote for. 

I hope you do too.

"If the Labour Party could be bullied or persuaded to denounce its Marxists, the media - having tasted blood - would demand next that it expelled all its socialists and reunited the remaining Labour Party to form a harmless alternative to the Conservatives, which could then be allowed to take office now and then when the Conservatives fell out of favour with the public. 

Thus British Capitalism, it is argued, will be made safe forever, and socialism would be squeezed off the National agenda. But if such a strategy were to succeed… it would in fact profoundly endanger British society. For it would open up the danger of a swing to the far-right, as we have seen in Europe over the last 50 years." - The ever-prescient Tony Benn speaking in 1982.