CORBYN has been transformed into his opposite as far as the ruling class and Labour’s rabid Blairite right wing is concerned. He has gone from a villain or buffoon, into a hero and just the man for the EU job.
The saga began when as the accidental, unexpectedly elected left leader of the Labour Party he was treated as an ogre or as an idiot depending on the needs of the ruling class at any moment. However, necessity expresses itself through accidents. The no hoper’s standing was greeted by the working class as a chance to hit out at the hated Blair leadership.
Despite the appearance of his ‘chance’ election, Corbyn defied all attempts to remove him as hundreds of thousands of new members joined the party. This crisis was overtaken by the massive Tory Party implosion over the EU and the austerity cuts, when it split, leaving Cameron and Osborne exposed to the anger of the working class.
The prospect was that the masses would vote to bring down Cameron and Osborne by registering a ‘leave’ vote majority on June 23. The alarm bells began ringing for the ruling class. Corbyn’s hour had struck. He had voted against the EEC (the forerunner of the EU) in 1975 and during the leadership battle had refused to commit himself to voting to remain in the EU in any referendum.
With the Tory party split from stem to stern, and Labour’s right wing led by hated Blairites, the ruling class really needed him – and under great pressure he answered the call, not allowing his previous position to get in the way of his new-found popularity.
Overnight he became the ideal leader – his equivocations being seen as positive by the ruling class, and reflecting the doubts of the ordinary worker, who like him could hopefully be persuaded to do the right thing for the bosses and bankers at the end of the day.
With the Tory leadership split and at each others’ throats, Corbyn will now be the main man to keep the UK in the EU, and will no doubt be palling up with President Obama when he arrives in the UK to join the Tory campaign. He has turned his back on the struggle for socialism and now has his own ‘project fear’, that only the EU can protect us from a Tory dictatorship.
He said in his speech on Wednesday: ‘Just imagine what the Tories would do to workers’ rights here in Britain if we voted to leave the EU in June. They’d dump rights on equal pay, working time, annual leave, for agency workers, and on maternity pay as fast as they could get away with it. It would be a bonfire of rights that Labour governments secured within the EU.’
However, under the EU, a war was begun in the Ukraine, mass austerity has been imposed all over Europe, with hundreds of thousands of workers being forced to leave Ireland, the Greek workers are being crushed again and again, and now there is a civil war taking place on the streets of Paris against new anti-union laws. At the same time, international trade deals are being signed that will lead to the irreversible privatisation of the NHS, while the EU is firing stun grenades and poison gas at refugees, having paid Turkey 3bn euros to traffic them back.
Corbyn has given up the struggle for socialism and the Socialist United States of Europe, to be the temporary leader of the UK ruling class campaign to remain in the EU. Unite’s McCluskey is peddling the same line. He said yesterday that, ‘Outside of the EU, we will be at the mercy of a right-wing Conservative government determined to push that agenda still further. Even to those who feel let down by the EU, it is abundantly clear that only by staying in the EU will UK working people have any protection against the determined Conservative assault on our rights and living standards.’
This is reactionary nonsense. The UK trade unions have huge power. They are much stronger than the split and divided Tories. The problem is that McCluskey and the other trade union leaders refuse to use that power to get rid of capitalism and go forward to socialism. They would rather play a corporatist role in the EU, helping out the the bosses and bankers.
The Corbyn debacle proves that left talk does not make a leader. The workers who elected Corbyn and the working class as a whole must now move forward to build up the real revolutionary leadership of the Workers Revolutionary Party.
We must vote ‘Leave’ on June 23, to bring down the Tories, and organise to bring in a workers government in the UK and to begin the struggle for a Socialist United States of Europe.