No, the Labour Party is not “dead”, “dying”, or in “a death spiral”. For good, but often for ill, Labour remains the dominant and unavoidable fact of working-class politics in Britain (although a bit less so on Scotland).
Even with a dull right-wing leader attacking the left, failing to attack the Tories, and not making much impression, millions of people still vote Labour, including the most organised workers.
It still has organisational and organic links to the biggest unions (or to their bureaucracies at least).
It still retains a prestige, however tarnished, from founding the NHS and the Welfare State, that even Blair hadn’t totally managed to rub off.
Just declaring Labour dead is a rhetorical flourish, a retreat from reality, an abstention from thought.
As a socialist you can entirely focus on trade union or social struggles or think we need a new working-class party outside of Labour, but you still have to think about how you relate to the many many people who see the election of a Labour government as the main route to achieving any positive social change or concessions.
It would be a tragedy if socialists spend nearly four years entirely engaging in Schadenfreude and telling ourselves “Pasokification” is on its way [a huge decline like that of Greece’s formerly strong social-democratic party Pasok]. Liking tweets of people who say they can never vote Labour again. Setting up competing electoral projects then trying to persuade people 1.3% of the vote is an impressive result. Flirting with trade union bureaucrats who dangle the enticing prospect of disaffiliation before left wing audiences before falling back in line behind Labour.
And then, in 2024, ending up telling people to vote Labour anyway “without illusions”. Honestly, are the illusions in the voters’ head or in ours?
Would it not be better whether inside or outside of Labour to accept that most working-class people with any kind of political class consciousness want a Labour government, even one headed by a someone as wretched and as bourgeois as Starmer?
Those people are not wrong to want this. It’s easier to wrest concessions from even a thoroughly right wing Labour government than it is from a Tory one.
We should be part of that fight to kick the Tories out and get Labour into office. Even if it’s with our own materials and on our own terms. A united front.
We also simultaneously fight for the kind of labour movement and government we want to see:
• through our own demands placed on the leadership of that movement, including Starmer and Labour councils.
• through developing and building rank and file organisation in the unions and in the Labour party.
• getting local Labour parties collecting for strike funds, going to picket lines, getting involved in working class social struggles, building international solidarity campaigns.
It is those struggles, in the final analysis, that will bring about socialism.
All of that was easier under Corbyn but his leadership on its own did not fundamentally change the nature of Labour, its relationship with the union bureaucracy and its fundamental limitations as a vehicle for socialism.
