THE DULLEST of election campaigns has yielded the most interesting results. Labour won 411 seats with just 33.7% of the vote. In fact Keir Starmer won fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn in the ‘historic’ defeat of 2019. And Corbyn held his seat against Labour by over 7,000 votes in Islington North.
Labour achieved its ‘landslide’ courtesy of our undemocratic first-past-the-post system. With the 38% right wing vote in England and Wales split between the Tories and Reform, Labour won dozens of seats up and down the country even though it lost votes overall.
This archaic electoral system means that millions of voters are unrepresented whilst others are grossly overrepresented. It needs to be replaced with the most democratic form of proportional representation. We should also demand the recallability of MPs should they renege on their promises.
Labour put to the test
Nevertheless Starmer and Rachel Reeves are now ensconced in Downing St. They and other Labour ministers can no longer hide behind vacuous slogans like ‘Change’. They have to deliver action. Millions of trade unionists and Labour supporters will need to watch them like hawks and press home their demands.
Having Labour in office doesn’t change the goals of our battle—we’ll still have to fight on every front—but it does alter the battlefield. Labour is essentially the party of the trade unions’ bureaucratic leaders and it shares their outlook: compromise with the bosses, putting the country’s finances first, loyalty to British imperialism, etc.
We know how a Labour government will try and ‘act’ from its first week. Starmer, David Lammy and John Healy called for more weapons of mass destruction to secure the West’s global power at Nato’s conference in Washington.
Reeves went straight to the City to discuss favourable, i.e. profitable, terms for its investment in ‘growth’. Health Secretary Wes Streeting may reach an agreement with the doctors over pay, but the big winners are private healthcare multinationals that will be offered huge chunks of the NHS.
Some union leaders have said there should be no ‘honeymoon’ period for the new government. But most will settle initially for what’s on offer, which is generally more negotiating rights for themselves.
Even Sharon Graham is likely to seek only a job-shedding deal and bailout for Tata Steel when she should be demanding that Labour nationalises the firm without compensation and under workers’ control.
After surviving on crumbs for so long, we must demand catch-up and full restoration in jobs, pay and public spending.
United front
Just as rank and file members will have to come into conflict with their union leaders over what we can demand from Starmer and Reeves, so too the wider working class, in our communities, our schools and universities, our workplaces, will come up against the limits of a Labour government.
So our task is to make our unions and social movements fight Labour’s coming attacks—with the existing leadership where possible, without where necessary. That’s why Workers Power is calling for a united front of all those forces prepared to fight. This united front should be based on committees of action that can respond to the needs of the movement with delegates from unions, student encampments, social movements, like Palestine solidarity and environmentalists. Together we can either push Labour to deliver for us, not the bosses and, where they refuse, to gather mass forces that can build a fighting alternative to Labour as the party of the British working class.
We propose the following initial basis for united action:
• Make the bosses pay for the economic and environmental crises. Tax the rich— restore pay and funding levels; Fully fund the restoration of the NHS, cancel the debts of the councils. Expropriate Thames Water, Tata Steel.
• Down with war and militarism—no to Nato rearmament, break with Zionism, solidarity with those fighting imperialism or reactionary regimes.
• Stop and reverse climate change—nationalise the energy multinationals, for a planned, just and rapid transition away from fossil fuels.
• Refugees and migrants welcome—fight racism and racist immigration controls.
