Britain
Cartel Parties Incapable of Addressing Any Problem Facing the People
The Conservative and Labour parties in Britain recently held conferences which demonstrated their incapacity to address a single problem facing the peoples of England, Scotland or Wales, let alone Ireland where Britain continues to claim dominance over the north.
The slogan “Build Back Better” that Prime Minister Boris Johnson has adopted means that the old pre-pandemic normal is to be brought back, but with an increased onslaught on working people, their lives, working conditions and well-being. To the demands of so many sections of the working people that the government should address the problems it has created for them, the government’s response is that they should be more proud to be British. It is as if that will cause the problems to disappear! Its effect has been to increase the people’s anger and frustration while the awareness that the government does not listen is also increasing.
As for the Labour Party, under Sir Keir Starmer, it deliberately shies away from tackling injustice. The fraudulent logic given is that to do so would be to divide people. This is despite the overwhelming sentiment amongst the movements of the working class and people for justice and to defend the rights of all.
Above all, the Labour Party makes sure that there is no questioning of the outdated Westminster system with its so-called “representative democracy.” Under this system, MPs pledge allegiance to the sovereign not to the electorate, thus representing not the people’s concerns but rather a decadent ruling class which is self-serving and superfluous. At this time, this old society is wholly geared to paying the rich and the need for democratic renewal is palpable.
“Electability” is made the goal of the parties, an “electability” which ensures the perpetuation of a system where the people have no say. It is an “electability” in which what is just is turned on its head. When Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party, every aspect of what he stood for, including opposition to war, was to be crushed and the full power of the state was put behind doing just that.
The cartel parties’ concern for “electability” is a fraud covering over that private interests rule the roost in society, and the cartel parties in the Westminster consensus serve these interests or do nothing to challenge them.
A cruel joke is played on the working class and people in which, rather than people uniting to voice their solutions to real problems, the powers-that-be divide them into “left” versus “right” and attempt to get the people’s movements to express their allegiances on this basis, while the cartel parties allegedly represent the “mainstream.”
All this emphasizes the necessity for the people’s voice to be heard, for the working class and people to speak in their own name, dealing with their actual problems and putting forward actual solutions. To strengthen this trend, to make it conscious, is the key to turning things around in the people’s favour in the coming period.
(With file from Workers’ Weekly, newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist))