Britain, Labor Party Conference: A strange silence...

"Bollocks to Brexit" March Outside Labor Party Conference

It's hard to figure out which country has the deeper political crisis, the US with the Democrats and Republicans or Britain that still has no real Brexit plan. In the US both parties are facing potential splits and in Britian the Tories (Conservative Party, is in a civil war) FFWP Admin

Roger Silverman
London Socialist
Labor Party Member

A strange silence...

Sherlock Holmes famously solved one of his cases using the evidence of the strange behaviour of the dog in the night. The equally strange behaviour of the habitually rabid media following the Labour Party conference could be equally revealing. Where was the expected raucous jeering at Corbyn? The mock hysterical outrage at the display of Palestinian flags? The denunciations of the threat to Blairite MPs’ lifelong job security? The exposure of Labour’s ambiguous equivocation over Brexit? The incessant howling against anti-Semitism? The dogs have fallen mysteriously silent.

Could it be that a dominant section of the ruling class is beginning to weigh up the option of seeking an emergency way out under a Labour administration? The Tory party is demented; the lunatics have taken over the asylum. Under their regime, any prospect of a Brexit deal has now shrunk to zero. The EU will refuse May’s Chequers proposals… and so will the Tory parliamentary party. Whatever deal she manages to cobble together with the EU will be rejected in Parliament. Britain is hurtling towards a no-deal Brexit. And that equals catastrophe.

Could a Labour government offer a way out? With Starmer at the helm of negotiations, might that not prove a safer alternative? Extreme danger demands extreme solutions. A brief and severely clipped Labour government might succeed better in cobbling together a tolerable Brexit deal. That way all the hysterical blame from the rabble could be heaped on Labour for its “betrayal” of the referendum.

A brief spell under Labour might also turn out to be the only way to prick the Corbyn bubble. And now that the threat of open selection of Labour candidates has been exorcised by the deal cobbled together with the unions, a quick election would guarantee the survival of a substantial fifth column of Blairite MPs which could maintain a permanent veto over any proposed measures of extreme radicalism. Whenever deemed necessary, the ruling class could secure overnight the withdrawal of Corbyn’s majority. Once having salvaged something from the Tories’ EU mess, a Labour government could be unceremoniously kicked out. That possibility might at least be figuring in their calculations.

It’s a dangerous strategy. Once a left Labour government is in place, the genie’s out of the bottle. Expectations would be aroused, morale would be boosted. It would take the whole panoply of dirty tricks to destabilise and topple it: an investment strike, a run on the pound, racist attacks, assassinations, terrorist outrages, if necessary “false flag” operations, even military mutinies. But that’s the nature of the period we’ve entered into. And we have to be prepared.