Socialist Appeal October Editorial
Speculation has reached fever pitch in the press over whether or not
Brown will call a snap General Election after only three months as
prime minister. With the Tories languishing in the polls, one giving
Labour an eleven percentage lead, and the government surviving the
different crises of foot and mouth, floods and the run on Northern
Rock, the young Turks of New Labour's front bench are keen to launch an
election.
 But
Brown has generated little enthusiasm amongst traditional Labour
supporters, desperately hoping for a break with a decade of Blair. But
Brown is simply continuing where Blair left off: more "reform", which
is double-speak for counter-reforms. It is no accident that Brown
invited, as did Blair before him, Margaret Thatcher to Downing Street.
It is someone Prime Minister Brown very much admires (a "conviction
politician"). True, she had plenty of "conviction" during her period in
office - in attacking the old, the sick and the infirm and destroying
the lives of millions of ordinary working class people. For them, she
is a hated figure who ruthlessly butchered working class communities.
She represented capitalism "in the raw". So it is fitting that Gordon,
who worships at the altar of the market economy, also bends the knee to
its arch political representative, Baroness Thatcher. For loyal
ordinary Labour voters the scene outside Number Ten was enough to make
them ill.
Brown's speech at this year's Labour Party conference could have
been made by a centre-left Conservative. There was no mention of the
chasm between rich and poor. No mention of the City tycoons and their
millionaire bonuses. No mention of the millions in debt. And, of
course, there was not a single word about socialism. This is because
the speech is aimed not at Labour voters but at the most rich and
powerful in the land, whose trust he craves. He is keen, as over the
last ten years, to do their bidding.
 Brown
sees himself as standing above "narrow" class interest, although he
sides with Big Business, and brings together his so-called "government
of all the talents", the nearest thing to a National Government. The
ex-director general of the CBI, Lord Digby Jones, is brought in as a
minister and given a life peerage. In reality, a veritable rouges
gallery: Tories, Liberals, ex-Labour renegades, Lords and Ladies, and
millionaire Tory tycoons are all included; much easier to bury the
ideas of socialism, as Ramsay MacDonald attempted to do in 1931.
The ruling class are hoping that Brown can hold the line as Blair did.
The Tories are still too tarnished. They have the mark of Cain on them.
Cameron's attempt to portray himself as another Blair has no appeal.
Only when Brown cannot hold the unions in check will they turn to the
Tories, their traditional political representatives. For the time
being, Brown can do their dirty work. After all, for Big Business, is
this not the role of Labour Governments?
When the discontent of the working class breaks through - and that
doesn't appear too far off given the industrial climate - the ruling
class and their kept press will turn on Brown with a vengeance. When
the time is ripe they will throw aside the New Labour government like
some used rag. For now, a Brown government has its purposes. In regard
to policies, there is little difference in essence between New Labour
and the Tories, both of which bow down before Big Business.
At the moment the Brown entourage are all smiles. They have
weathered the storms. Or so they think. Like a blind man, they stumble
from day to day. Not long ago, didn't they praise Northern Rock as
Britain's fastest-growing mortgage lender? The storm clouds are now
gathering. There is deep hostility to Brown's wage restraint throughout
the public sector. This winter will certainly be a winter of Discontent
for many, and this discontent could take the form of widespread
strikes.
 The
economic climate is extremely volatile. Northern Rock will not be the
last banking collapse. "How, if everything else was fine, could a bank
like Northern Rock be brought to its knees by some careless lending
3,000 miles away on the other side of the Atlantic?" asks the Financial
Times. Globalisation, as this shock has proved, also means global
crisis. The lines of desperate people queuing outside Northern Rock -
the first British bank crash in 144 years - are a harbinger of what is
to come.
The booming housing market is about to collapse. There was a 2.6%
drop in house prices in September. Even Alan Greenspan, the former
chairman of the Federal Reserve, stated that Britain faces the prospect
of falling house prices and rising inflation within a few years. He
added that the UK market is more susceptible to the credit crunch than
America, because variable-rate mortgages are more popular here. With a
mountain of personal debt, some £1.4 trillion, such a "credit crunch"
would have an enormous impact on the real economy.
Whether the election is called or not, there can be no solution to
the fundamental problems of the working class on the basis of
capitalism. It is the market economy which is the root cause of these
problems. While the economy trundles forward Brown my hold the line,
but as the capitalist crisis deepens, at a certain point, the whole New
Labour edifice will come crashing down. Only on the basis of socialist
policies, which means taking over the commanding heights of the
economy, can society be rationally planned in the interests of the
majority. Only then can the problems of working people be eradicated
once and for all.
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