Let There Be Chaos

The Last Thing We Need Is A “Strong” Government

The announcement of a general election will be greeted by most workers with a shrug of the shoulders or (at most) a decision to vote against one of the major political parties rather than positively being able to endorse any of them.  The promise by Prime Minister Sunak that he “has a plan” and his assertion that inflation was now “under control” will be laughed at bitterly by British workers who have seen energy prices go up by 51% on average since 2021 and food prices have jumped by 25% between 2022 and 2024.  Sunak’s claims regarding falling prices are of course utter garbage, as you’d expect from him.  The Tories being an anti-working class party that is built by and for the British ruling class will hardly come as a surprise to most workers. The fact that the labour party offer absolutely nothing to the working class continues to be the bigger disgrace though as does the fact that the leadership of the trade union movement in Britain continues to lie to its members about this party. 

Sharon Graham of Unite spent last week in apparent disagreement with Keir Starmer over the latter’s dropping of the very weak reforms he had previously stood for.  This row was rapidly forgotten as Graham along with most other trade union leaders piled in to cry “get the Tories out”.  We at the Class Consciousness Project have commented before about how empty and meaningless this phrase is but Keir Starmer confirmed this again yesterday. In his usual wooden delivery he made a series of vague commitments mentioning real issues (stagnating wages, escalating prices and polluted waterways) but offering nothing to actually address the root causes of any of these problems.  Starmer’s job of course is not to do anything for the working class (despite repeatedly saying “working people” in a strange forced tone in his speech) but to act as a more “credible” face of the ruling class than the discredited Tories can manage to be. 

We have seen Labour play this role before on numerous occasions. They are brought in to carry out attacks on the working class dressed up as “reforms” and endorsed by the leadership of the trade union movement. Wilson and Callaghan spent the 1974-79 period dividing and demoralising the working class in order to weaken the class’s unity so that Thatcher could more easily win the battles the followed.

Blair and Brown carried out a vast privatisation of the NHS that John Major couldn’t have got away with but Labour did with the full cooperation of the union leaders. Now British capitalism is in deep trouble and needs Labour to fulfill its traditional role again. They need wages reduced, services slashed and burnt and the price of labour in this country reduced as far as possible. They also need a more credible government that can be in a stronger position to launch imperialist wars.  The ruling class hope that Starmer can give them this.

It is much in the interests of our class to reject this false choice. Not one vote should be given to the labour party. The last thing our class needs is a strong government headed by either party of big business.  It is much more in our interests to have a hung parliament or minority government that is too weak and discredited to be able to effectively organise against us.  Our position must be that we reject the rotten choices presented to us by capitalist democracy.

The Chartists didn’t campaign for the vote in order that the working class would be asked to choose between getting attacked by a party led by a banker and another led by a career state bureaucrat, both of which are run in the interests of our class enemy.  Whoever wins this election we must be ready for the assault they will launch upon us.  Our resistance stands a much better chance of succeeding if the result of this election produces as weak a government as possible.