Less than two-thirds of members voted in the Labour leadership election. 65 percent of trade union members did not vote. Sir Keir Starmer got a smaller vote than the number of abstentions.
Labour is now a second eleven for capitalism. Starmer's appointments to the front bench involved sacking supporters of Corbyn and promoting the right wing.
Sir Keir has not yet started to roll back the programme of the Labour Party. The backers of Sir Keir Starmer were the likes of George Osborne. In all practical terms the machinery of the Labour Party has swung to the right. This coincides with working families facing the most desperate conditions.
It has been recommended by some representatives of capitalism that Starmer should be brought into a coalition government by Johnson to share the guilt for the handling of the C-virus. Frances O'Grady called for a national council of reconstruction involving the government, the unions and big business.
The working class needs a party to represent their interests as enthusiastically as the Tories represent big business interests.
The lockdown now has predictions such as a 35% fall in output. A world recession of 1930s proportions is possible. It is unclear whether the economy will "bounce back" from the recession.
The amount of subsidies to big business in the UK is 300 billion, twice the amount in the last recession. The figure is 2.2 trillion pounds in America. There has been a sharper fall in employment than in the 1930s.
Are the rich going to pay the price? In 2007 the richest 1000 families had £250 billion, that figure is over £750 billion now.
A Financial Times editorial suggests there is a generational gap so the elderly should be made to pay. Blairites have suggested that the money should come from pensions.
Despite Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, a majority of councillors and the PLP were busy sabotaging the Labour Party's radical agenda.
Mandatory reselection was not brought in. There was no instruction to councils to fight the cuts. 90 pages of the infamous report examine how at director level the Labour bureaucrats actively worked to prevent the Labour Party winning the election.
Labour remained two parties in one. The right-wing machine was in control of a party with radical policies.
Despite the end of the Corbyn era, the need for a workers' party remains. Labour can only become that party if the members take control. Labour could allow Socialist organisations and trade union militants to affiliate.
The Socialist Party worked with the RMT and other Socialist forces to build the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC). After Corbyn's victory, TUSC Candidates in national elections were withdrawn whilst candidates in local elections raised the issue of cuts in opposition to the policy of the right wing Labour councillors.
We should engage with those who are angry about the resurgence of the right wing. Practical work over the issue of Covid-19 is exemplified by the charter published by the Socialist Party..The key task for Marxists should be to look two or three steps ahead to the way the capitalist class want to make the working class pay the price for the C-virus crisis.
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