The Rabble Alliance

Last week, all of the very highly paid representatives of the mainstream media, along with senior politicians and other pundits were crowing that Boris Johnson was caught in a trap. Parliament was going to take control of the Order Paper and pass legislation demanding that, if Johnson did not get a Brexit Deal, before the EU Council Meeting, on October 17th, he would have to go to them, and plead for an extension of Article 50. When Johnson made clear he would not do that, and would instead call a General Election, they responded by saying that he would be prevented from doing that, under the terms of the Fixed Terms Parliament Act, if opposition parties voted against him, because it requires a two-thirds majority. What all of these very highly paid journalists and pundits seemed to have missed, in all that, but which I had pointed out a week ago, is that Johnson had a very obvious, and useful alternative, which suited his purpose, and that was simply to resign!

A week later, some of those very highly paid journalists and pundits, have eventually cottoned on to that possibility. But, it was fairly obvious, if you step back from the realms of parliamentary cretinism, and a world in which success or failure is measured by whether you win or lose parliamentary votes, that this is precisely where Johnson/Cummings’ strategy needed to take them, and where they were planning to be. Their strategy, and their narrative depends upon presenting themselves as (counter) revolutionaries, fighting on behalf of the common man against the privileged elites whose representatives, in parliament, for the last three years, have frustrated the implementation of the Brexit vote. Its rather hard to present yourself as a revolutionary opposition, if, in fact, you are the government, which was the position that Johnson found himself in, having unseated May. To make that narrative work, Johnson had to turn himself and his ranks into the principled opposition, prepared to “die in a ditch”, rather than succumb to the demands of the traitors and surrender monkeys on the opposition benches, demanding that he crawl to Brussels to ask for another extension of Article 50. And, that is precisely what he has been able to do over the last week, and the opposition have helped him do it at every step of the way!

Cummings/Johnson, in fact, have done what Corbyn and his supporters should have done, in the Labour Party, four years ago, after he was elected Leader. Johnson has cleared out all of the soft Cameroons, and conservative social-democrats from the Tory benches, cowing any of those remaining who did not make themselves susceptible to expulsion, by voting against the government whip. Already, in the Tory Associations, where 80% of the members are No Deal Brexiters, backing Johnson, they have replacement, hard right candidates lined up to fill those positions. Compare that with the weakness and vacillation of the Corbyn leadership, despite its mass backing by half a million new members, and initially the organisation of Momentum.

Confronted with this new reality, the liberal luvvies do not have a clue about the world they are now in. Kirsty Walk on Newsnight, confronted Andrea Jenkyns, one of the new breed of Hard Right Tories. Walk began, pathetically, by asking her about Johnson’s “intemperate language” of talking about “dying in a ditch”. Its as though Walk has never read any of the great Scottish novelists, and their use of all of the facets of the English language for florid description, the use of metaphor and simile, and wants the language to be reduced to the same dull greyness as the centrist politics that has, itself, dominated for the last thirty years. Walk must be overcome with the vapours whenever she reads the intemperate language of Shakespeare, one must think. But, of course, Johnson, in any case, was not talking about someone else dying in a ditch (even were that to be idiotically understood literally) but himself. And, so Jenkyns, fully in line with the Cummings/Johnson narrative, could easily respond that it simply reflected Johnson’s passion on the issue, not to surrender, but to stand up for principle, and for all those that voted for Brexit.

In this new world, the liberal luvvies of the BBC and elsewhere, simply have no compass to deal with the realities of people who will give a straight and pointed answer, rather than the endless waffle and meaningless, grey verbiage that centrist politicians have got away with, as a staple diet, for the last thirty years. So, when Walk expected Jenkyns to show due deference to former Tory Leader John Major, she was completely thrown off her feet, when Jenkyns simply replied that he was a hypocrite, causing the interview to come to an abrupt end.

Eventually, some of the very highly paid journalists, and pundits have realised what I pointed out a week ago. Johnson can simply resign rather than comply with the demand that he plead for an extension of Article 50. Nick Watt, on Newsnight, suggested that, instead, he might use a manoeuvre, by not appointing an EU Commissioner. That too misunderstands the situation, and what Johnson is about. Using that manoeuvre would be a defeat for the Cummings/Johnson strategy and narrative. It would be seen as running away from a fight with the opposition. Moreover, it assumes that what is foremost in their minds is pushing through a No Deal Brexit, which it isn’t. What is foremost in their minds, is winning a General Election, reversing the damage that May did in 2017, and, from there, carrying through their counter-revolution. Simply getting Britain thrown out of the EU on October 31st doesn’t achieve that, or change anything in their favour. It would leave Johnson leading a Minority Government, and ,potentially, one having to cope with the actual chaos that will follow a No Deal Brexit. It would give them the worst conditions on which to fight an election. Johnson certainly does not want to be fighting a General Election, after the inevitable chaos that a No Deal crash out will bring. That is why it would have been better for Labour to simply challenge him to carry through his No Deal Brexit threat, promising to retrospectively revoke Article 50 after it was returned to government. Now Labour has let him off that hook.

But, the strength of the Cummings’ strategy was shown clearly yesterday. It is, in fact, the strategy I had set out last December, of what May should have done had she been a more competent politician. I said, last year, that I expected May to call a snap election in February. The reason was that Labour was in disarray under Corbyn, because of his continued pursuit of his own fantasy Brexit agenda. Had May swung right in February to a hard, Managed No Deal Brexit position, she could do what Cummings/Johnson are doing now, which is to rally the Tory core vote behind them, along with the core Brexit vote, for which there is a large overlap. With Corbyn’s Labour shedding support by the bucket load to the Liberals, Greens, Plaid and SNP, because of its continued pro-Brexit stance, May would have faced a divided opposition, and swept in with a sizeable working majority. The Cummings/Johnson strategy is the same now.

Yesterday, on Politics Live, Andrew Neill, a week late in realising that Johnson could simply resign, rather than agree to go to Brussels to ask for an extension, put that scenario to Jo Swinson of the Liberals. “So, what would you do, then,” Neill asked, “would you then support Jeremy Corbyn as caretaker Prime Minister?” And, of course, just as Cummings/Johnson anticipate, the answer back from Swinson was an emphatic “No!” The Liberals, with their pathetic dozen or so MP’s, even after Blair-right and Cameroon defections, insist on determining who that caretaker PM should be, and thereby holding Labour’s 246 MP’s to ransom. The reason for that is again quite simple. The Liberals’ primary aim, as with the Blair-rights, still inside the PLP, is to break apart the Labour Party, and Corbyn’s leadership of it. Their primary aim, above even preventing a No Deal Brexit, is to support their fellow centrists inside the Labour Party to implement their own coup to remove Corbyn, which would spell the end of the Corbynite project within Labour.

Its quite clear that Labour is not going to accept any attempts by the Liberals to tell Labour who the next Prime Minister will be. Labour is not going to allow the Liberals, and other assorted rabble alliance forces to tell Labour that they must back Harriet Harman, or some other Blair-right to fulfil that role. So, its quite clear that the Cummings/Johnson strategy is playing out perfectly. Johnson will resign as a matter of principle, of defending democracy on October 17th, rather than carry out the act of surrender that the rabble alliance wants to impose on the country. When that rabble alliance itself then collapses in a fit of internecine squabbling over who should become PM, Johnson will rise above the fray, as an authority figure, pointing out that it was exactly this kind of chaos and disorder that he had tried to prevent, and will make the traditional Bonapartist appeal for order. He will demand the election that the opposition had been too afraid, too undemocratic to agree to, and as the rabble alliance fails to reach agreement, a General Election will then result by default.

But, even if that rabble does get itself together enough to select a caretaker Prime Minister, the fractures amongst it will be fatal. If the Liberals, and other rabble have to agree to Corbyn, it will involve them in eating a huge dollop of humble pie. Corbyn, himself, will have to take responsibility for asking for the further extension, which will consolidate opposition to Labour from Leave voters. That will also cause some concern in Labour ranks. The Labour rightwingers, who should have been expelled long ago for having voted with the Tories, are already hankering after some Brexit deal to assuage their reactionary constituents who want to end free movement. At the same time, progressive Labour members do not trust Corbyn not to use the opportunity of such an extension to again pursue the course of trying to negotiate Labour’s fantasy “Jobs First Brexit”, and indeed the fact that Corbyn and Labour has held that position, and it has been resurrected in the last few days, is one reason that the Liberals have been able to justify their own refusal to back him as caretaker PM.

And, indeed, it is not at all clear, at this stage, that some rabble alliance comprising the Liberals, SNP, Plaid, Greens, and rebel former Tories might not by-pass Labour, and appoint their own caretaker Prime Minister. After all, Corbyn can probably only count, absolutely, on around 20 Labour MP’s; another result of having failed to carry through mandatory reselection after 2015, which allowed all of those right-wing Labour MP’s to fight the 2017 election. It would mean a fundamental split in the Labour Party, and the fundamental contradictions in such an alliance would quickly break it apart, but it would probably result in a realignment of parties, with the Liberals taking on sizeable extra weight, from the bulk of Blair-right MP’s, and some Cameroon Tories.

Of course, I do not want to see any such development. Everything I have written over the last few years has tried to warn of this kind of development, but the job of Marxists, as social scientists, as well as revolutionaries, who must begin from facts, in our attempts to understand and change the world, is to analyse and describe the world, objectively, as it is, not to act as moralists and subjectivists describing the world as we would like it to be. In 2016, I spent many weeks arguing against Brexit, and setting out how it needed to be opposed by putting forward a positive, progressive, internationalist view of how the EU could be reformed, and utilised by socialists. Yet, on the eve of the vote, I pointed out that, any objective analysis indicated that, the vote would be lost, and there would be a vote to Leave. It arose, because the forces backing Remain were a rabble, they had no clear positive attractive message to sell, whilst the Brexiteers were able to concentrate on a core vote strategy. On one level it was symbolised by the slogan “Take Back Control”, but that slogan was itself code for “Close The Borders”, and in the minds of some “Kick Out the Immigrants”.

Today, Cummings is again directing Johnson’s strategy, and he is pursuing the same core strategy of focusing on the 80% of Tory members and voters that want a No Deal Brexit. They represent only around 25–30% of the electorate as a whole, but with a divided opposition split amongst the rabble alliance, that is enough, with the other elements of the Tory vote, to secure a majority, especially as Labour continues to vacillate with its own fantasy Brexit position.

The stage is set, for Johnson to resign and adopt a position of extreme opposition, presenting himself as a principled tribune of the people, ready to step back into the fray, to end the chaos and disorder that the rabble alliance will have caused. He does not have to actually carry through an immediate No Deal Brexit, once elected with a sizeable parliamentary majority. Once elected, he will have five years, more if his Bonapartist regime simply amends the Constitution. He will be able to go back to the EU, to negotiate a deal before the end of any extension agreed by the caretaker PM runs out. But, he can simply put forward the case for a Managed No Deal, and argue the case for negotiating that over a longer period if required, because he will not have a General Election, and the Brexit party then breathing down his neck.

Of course, given the Bonapartist nature of the Cummings/Johnson regime, they may feel that confrontation is what they thrive on. They may challenge the EU to accept a No Deal crash out in January, seeing that as a good opportunity to utilise the Emergency Powers Act to implement martial law, and grab additional executive power. Either way, we are in for a period of a strong state, unless the labour movement can stop them in their tracks, by decisive, militant, direct action. We are likely to see a regime that will be something between that of Trump, and that of Orban. The liberal luvvies had better get used to a lot more harsh and intemperate language, as the least of their troubles.

Originally published at https://boffyblog.blogspot.com.