LABOUR was routed in Thursday’s regional and council elections losing by late yesterday afternoon 454 councillors and eight councils in England, while it lost its overall majority in the Welsh Assembly elections, and was running neck and neck with the Scottish nationalists for which is to be the biggest party in the Scottish regional government elections.
This means that in Scotland, Labour will have to seek a coalition partner to keep the nationalists out.
The other major loser in the UK elections was the Liberal Democrats. The class polarisation between the working class and the ruling class, reflected in the clash between Labour and Tory voters, saw the Liberal Democrats lose 247 councillors and five councils, in a disaster for the party of the centre.
The only gainers were the Tories and the Scottish and Welsh nationalists.
The Tories were yesterday heading for a gain of over 837 councillors and over 37 councils in the English elections.
They also advanced in the Welsh Assembly election winning 12 seats.
That this is the direct result of ten years of the Blair-Brown government’s policies – 10 years of foreign imperialist wars, including the bloodbath in Iraq, alongside a frantic drive at home to privatise the NHS and education, to destroy the Welfare State and drive the working class back 100 years – there is not the slightest doubt.
The main architect of this debacle, Blair, is set to leave the scene. He intends to carve out a new role for himself as an international aide to US imperialism and in the process enrich himself by many millions of dollars.
He is leaving behind his partner Gordon Brown, to be Premier, to carry on the war with the working class at home.
Brown has supported every one of Blair’s ruinous policies at home and abroad and is pledged to even intensify them and to speed up their delivery when he is premier.
This means that a Brown premiership will enormously strengthen the Tories by further pauperising and alienating the working class and the middle class, creating the ground for a Tory return at the next general election.
The Tories will then build on the spadework done for them by the Blair-Brown governments to completely privatise health and education, putting an end to the Welfare State, the great gain of the working class in Britain.
The working class must take warning from these election results, and it must take action to prevent a return of the Tories.
This can only be done by building a new leadership in the trade unions that will take industrial and political action to defend the NHS, free state education and the Welfare State.
The trade unions must carry this struggle right through to its conclusion, that is they must bring down what will be the Brown led government in order to bring in a workers’ government that will carry out socialist policies both at home and abroad.
This will mean withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and nationalising the banks and the major industries at home to finance the further development of the NHS and the Welfare state including the building of millions of new council houses.
Only the WRP fights for these policies and this perspective, to prevent a return of the Tories by bringing down the Blair government to go forward to a workers’ government in Britain.
The only alternative to this is to sit around watching Brown making the Tories stronger through his anti-working class policies.
That this is no alternative is obvious.
After yesterday’s election results the only road forward is the road of the socialist revolution.