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Editorial Election results don’t change the desperate need for a united left response to the post-Corbyn era

BY the time this is read, the results of the local elections across England held will be clear, and the air will be thick with pundits assessing their implications.

However, we can be sure of two things in advance. We still have a Tory government committed to solving the multiple crises besetting Britain in the interests of capital, and a Labour “opposition” in headlong flight from any transformative agenda.

These facts frame the agenda of the left, regardless of the redistribution of council seats. It is idle to pretend that the political left is in a good place at present. The defeat of Corbynism still resonates.

Momentum and the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs are floundering, in urgent need of capacity to cope with Starmer’s all-out offensive against the left in both policy and organisational terms.

The trade unions have proved their essential purpose 100 times over in the course of the last year in defending working people’s living standards and workplace rights. There is no doubt that in doing so they are discharging their main class function.

However, some that are affiliated to the Labour Party have also often accommodated the Starmer agenda, as over the denial of Jeremy Corbyn’s rights.

The other campaigning class-based organisations are not immediately offering a way out of the malaise. Enough is Enough (EiE) aroused tremendous public enthusiasm in the context of solidarity with striking workers, but the concerns which attended its launch — that it was overcentralised and afforded no avenues for democratic participation — appear to have been vindicated.

Certainly, the over half a million people who signed up to support EiE have not been organised locally or mobilised as they could have been for the most part. It is unclear what political strategy it is now following.

The People’s Assembly has more developed and participatory structures but has not recently attained the mass strength and enthusiasm which EiE inspired last year.

Surely as a first step these two organisations, which are united in opposing austerity, supporting trade unions in struggle and campaigning for progressive economic policies, should be discussing unity.

The unions too need to consider a political strategy that goes beyond waiting for a Labour government and hoping for the best. Winning strikes is essential, not least for building working-class confidence, but it is not sufficient.

If the railway workers win their demands in full, we would still have a fragmented railway run in the interests of private profit.

If the NHS workers secure their entirely justifiable aims, the health service would still be chronically underfunded. And so on.

Political action refreshes the parts other forms of struggle cannot reach. Of course, it is easier to assert that truth than develop a plan that meets the present unfavourable conjuncture.

If there is no early prospect of change in the Labour Party, neither is there any sign that the formation of a new party of the left would attract the support required for viability.

But here too it is good to talk. An initiative should be taken to bring the left — unions, Labour MPs, campaigning groups — together to consider how to revive the radical policy agenda associated with Corbyn’s Labour and deal with Starmer’s authoritarianism which increasingly sees trade union-supported workers blocked from running as Labour parliamentary candidates.

Such discussions need to presuppose no particular outcome. The aim should be to build unity and confidence and increase the capacity of the movement to fight for the people’s pressing needs while advocating for socialism.

A united left with renewed confidence will be better placed to face the rough challenges and choices ahead.

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