Unfortunately, all the evidence suggests that the Corbyn project is doomed.
Even if Corbyn does stick to his opposition to Trident, he seems to have no idea how to defend such a policy from the resistance of the military establishment.
When a senior general said that the British military will ‘use whatever mean possible, fair or foul’ to prevent Corbyn from ‘emasculating’ their power, Corbyn’s response was merely to suggest that it didn’t matter because the general had now been ‘
told off’ by his superiors!
In terms of economics, a likely trajectory of any Corbyn-led government will be to end up imposing austerity - just as Syriza are now doing in Greece.
Labour already say they support the Tory idea of a ‘
welfare cap of £120 billion’. Indeed, the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, sounds more like Thatcher than Marx when he says: ‘We are going to have to live within our means and we always will’.
Like Ken Livingstone, who he worked with in the 1980s, McDonnell is very good at sometimes sounding radical. But, once in power, McDonnell may well repeat Livingstone’s trajectory as London’s Mayor, i.e. he’ll just end up running capitalism. It is significant that Corbyn’s top advisers used to
advise Livingstone when he was Mayor.
This is not to say that Labour’s new leaders do not have other, more ‘radical', tendencies. Both Corbyn and McDonnell, for instance, believe that ‘
we can learn a lot’ from Castro’s dictatorship in Cuba and its ‘
amazing success story’ [sic] . Furthermore, back in 1991, when even official Communists were giving up on the Soviet Union, Corbyn still saw the Soviet Union as an important part of the leadership of the international left, at one point saying that he was ‘concerned at the break-up of the Soviet Union and the leadership it gave.’ (
Morning Star, 24/9/91)
Right-wingers may use such facts to claim that Labour’s leaders are secret revolutionaries. But anyone who knows the history of Stalinism knows that people with Stalinist illusions are often opposed to revolutionary change.
One obvious example is Socialist Action, an ex-Trotskyist group who have been accused of having influence over Corbyn’s leadership. Socialist Action, for instance, say that in a war between the US and China they would defend China on the grounds that the ‘
Chinese capitalist class … do not hold power’. Such pro-Chinese views may worry a pro-US military establishment. But all these views really show is how Socialist Action are more Stalinist fantasists than any sort of genuine revolutionaries.
For more arguments against the Labour Party see:
Arguments AGAINST Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party
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